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• How do games like Halo 3 save in-game footage? [duplicate]

  - by CPP_Person

  This question already has an answer here: How to design a replay system 11 answers I was just wondering how games (such as Halo 3, like the title says) save in-game replay? Since it gives the ability to look around at almost every possible angle it can't be a simple recording. What is the logic behind this? Here is a good example of what Halo 3's footage looks like.

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• Explaining interfaces to beginning programmers?

  - by cbmeeks

  I've had discussions with other programmers on interfaces (C#). I tried to use the analogy of interfaces being like a contract between programmers. Meaning that when you design to an interface, you are designing to a "thought out plan". This didn't fly. The other programmers (limited experience) couldn't get the concept. Or worse, refused to participate. How do you explain to people like that there are reasons to use interfaces? Thanks

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• Get Visitors to Your Website Using Website Building Tips

  Before building a website there are many things that you need to take in mind. For example, how are you going to design your website, what is it going to cost you, how long will it take you to build, etc. All of these things mentioned are important aspects to consider when designing a website, but there is no point in doing all of this if you can't get visitors to your website afterward.

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• What is Python 20th and final guideline

  - by Eric

  Sometimes when my life needs some guiding light, I read the Zen of Python by Tim Peters and usually manage to get back on the tracks. Today was one of those days, so I checked it again. I've noticed that the "abstract" section says: Long time Pythoneer Tim Peters succinctly channels the BDFL's guiding principles for Python's design into 20 aphorisms, only 19 of which have been written down. What would be this last unwritten aphorism?

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• Tuesday 6th Manchester SQL User Group - Chris Testa-O'Neil (Loading a datawarehouse using SSIS) and

  - by tonyrogerson

  Chris will give a talk on Loading a datawarehouse using SQL Server Integration Services, Tony Rogerson will give a talk on Database Design: Normalisation/Denormalisation and using Surrogate Keys - practicalities/pitfalls and benefits in Microsoft SQL Server. Registration is essential which you can do here: http://sqlserverfaq.com?eid=218 . Come and join us for an evening of SQL Server discussion, as well as the two formal sessions by Chris Testa-O'Neil and Tony Rogerson there will be a chance...(read more)

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• Blend for Visual Studio 2013 Prototyping Applications with SketchFlow

  - by T

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/tburger/archive/2014/08/10/blend-for-visual-studio-2013-prototyping-applications-with-sketchflow.aspxSketchFlow enables rapid creating of dynamic interface mockups very quickly. The SketchFlow workspace is the same as the standard Blend workspace with the inclusion of three panels: the SketchFlow Feedback panel, the SketchFlow Animation panel and the SketchFlow Map panel. By using SketchFlow to prototype, you can get feedback early in the process. It helps to surface possible issues, lower development iterations, and increase stakeholder buy in. SketchFlow prototypes not only provide an initial look but also provide a way to add additional ideas and input and make sure the team is on track prior to investing in complete development. When you have completed the prototyping, you can discard the prototype and just use the lessons learned to design the application from or extract individual elements from your prototype and include them in the application. I don’t recommend trying to transition the entire project into a development project. Objects that you add with the SketchFlow style have a hand-sketched look. The sketch style is used to remind stakeholders that this is a prototype. This encourages them to focus on the flow and functionality without getting distracted by design details. The sketchflow assets are under sketchflow in the asset panel and are identifiable by the postfix “–Sketch”. For example “Button-Sketch”. You can mix sketch and standard controls in your interface, if required. Be creative, if there is a missing control or your interface has a different look and feel than the out of the box one, reuse other sketch controls to mimic the functionality or look and feel. Only use standard controls if it doesn’t distract from the idea that this is a prototype and not a standard application. The SketchFlow Map panel provides information about the structure of your application. To create a new screen in your prototype: Right-click the map surface and choose “Create a Connected Screen”. Name the screens with names that are meaningful to the stakeholders. The start screen is the one that has the green arrow. To change the start screen, right click on any other screen and set to start screen. Only one screen can be the start screen at a time. Rounded screen are component screens to mimic reusable custom controls that will be built into the final application. You can change the colors of all of the boxes and should use colors to create functional groupings. The groupings can be identified in the SketchFlow Project Settings. To add connections between screens in the SketchFlow Map panel. Move the mouse over a screen in the SketchFlow and a menu will appear at the bottom of the screen node. In the menu, click Connect to an existing screen. Drag the arrow to another screen on the Map. You add navigation to your prototype by adding connections on the SketchFlow map or by adding navigation directly to items on your interface. To add navigation from objects on the artboard, right click the item then from the menu, choose “Navigate to”. This will expose a sub-menu with available screens, backward, or forward. When the map has connected screens, the SketchFlow Player displays the connected screens on the Navigate sidebar. All screens show in the SketchFlow Player Map. To see the SketchFlow Player, run your SketchFlow prototype. The Navigation sidebar is meant to show the desired user work flow. The map can be used to view the different screens regardless of suggested navigation in the navigation bar. The map is able to be hidden and shown. As mentioned, a component screen is a shared screen that is used in more than one screen and generally represents what will be a custom object in the application. To create a component screen, you can create a screen, right click on it in the SketchFlow Map and choose “Make into component screen”. You can mouse over a screen and from the menu that appears underneath, choose create and insert component screen. To use an existing screen, select if from the Asset panel under SketchFlow, Components. You can use Storyboards and Visual State animations in your SketchFlow project. However, SketchFlow also offers its own animation technique that is simpler and better suited for prototyping. The SketchFlow Animation panel is above your artboard by default. In SketchFlow animation, you create frames and then position the elements on your interface for each frame. You then specify elapsed time and any effects you want to apply to the transition. The + at the top is what creates new frames. Once you have a new Frame, select it and change the property you want to animate. In the example above, I changed the Text of the result box. You can adjust the time between frames in the lower area between the frames. The easing and effects functions are changed in the center between each frame. You edit the hold time for frames by clicking the clock icon in the lower left and the hold time will appear on each frame and can be edited. The FluidLayout icon (also located in the lower left) will create smooth transitions. Next to the FluidLayout icon is the name of that Animation. You can rename the animation by clicking on it and editing the name. The down arrow chevrons next to the name allow you to view the list of all animations in this prototype and select them for editing. To add the animation to the interface object (such as a button to start the animation), select the PlaySketchFlowAnimationAction from the SketchFlow behaviors in the Assets menu and drag it to an object on your interface. With the PlaySketchFlowAnimationAction that you just added selected in the Objects and Timeline, edit the properties to change the EventName to the event you want and choose the SketchFlowAnimation you want from the drop down list. You may want to add additional information to your screens that isn’t really part of the prototype but is relevant information or a request for clarification or feedback from the reviewer. You do this with annotations or notes. Both appear on the user interface, however, annotations can be switched on or off at design and review time. Notes cannot be switched off. To add an Annotation, chose the Create Annotation from the Tools menu. The annotation appears on the UI where you will add the notes. To display or Hide annotations, click the annotation toggle at the bottom right on the artboard . After to toggle annotations on, the identifier of the person who created them appears on the artboard and you must click that to expand the notes. To add a note to the artboard, simply select the Note-Sketch from Assets ->SketchFlow ->Styles ->Sketch Styles. Drag and drop it to the artboard and place where you want it. When you are ready for users to review the prototype, you have a few options available. Click File -> Export and choose one of the options from the list: Publish to Sharepoint, Package SketchFlowProject, Export to Microsoft Word, or Export as Images. I suggest you play with as many of the options as you can to see what they do. Both the Sharepoint and Packaged SketchFlowProject allow you to collect feedback from one or more users that you can import into the project. The user can make notes on the UI and in the Feedback area in the bottom left corner of the player. When the user is done adding feedback, it is exported from the right most folder icon in the My Feedback panel. Feeback is imported on a panel named SketchFlow Feedback. To get that panel to show up, select Window -> SketchFlow Feedback. Once you have the panel showing, click the + in the upper right of the panel and find the notes you exported. When imported, they will show up in a list and on the artboard. To document your prototype, use the Export to Microsoft Word option from the File menu. That should get you started with prototyping.

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• So, how is the Oracle HCM Cloud User Experience? In a word, smokin’!

  - by Edith Mireles-Oracle

  By Misha Vaughan, Oracle Applications User Experience Oracle unveiled its game-changing cloud user experience strategy at Oracle OpenWorld 2013 (remember that?) with a new simplified user interface (UI) paradigm.  The Oracle HCM cloud user experience is about light-weight interaction, tailored to the task you are trying to accomplish, on the device you are comfortable working with. A key theme for the Oracle user experience is being able to move from smartphone to tablet to desktop, with all of your data in the cloud. The Oracle HCM Cloud user experience provides designs for better productivity, no matter when and how your employees need to work. Release 8  Oracle recently demonstrated how fast it is moving development forward for our cloud applications, with the availability of release 8.  In release 8, users will see expanded simplicity in the HCM cloud user experience, such as filling out a time card and succession planning. Oracle has also expanded its mobile capabilities with task flows for payslips, managing absences, and advanced analytics. In addition, users will see expanded extensibility with the new structures editor for simplified pages, and the with the user interface text editor, which allows you to update language throughout the UI from one place. If you don’t like calling people who work for you “employees,” you can use this tool to create a term that is suited to your business.  Take a look yourself at what’s available now. What are people saying?Debra Lilley (@debralilley), an Oracle ACE Director who has a long history with Oracle Applications, recently gave her perspective on release 8: “Having had the privilege of seeing a preview of release 8, I am again impressed with the enhancements around simplified UI. Even more so, at a user group event in London this week, an existing Cloud HCM customer speaking publically about his implementation said he was very excited about release 8 as the absence functionality was so superior and simple to use.”  In an interview with Lilley for a blog post by Dennis Howlett  (@dahowlett), we probably couldn’t have asked for a more even-handed look at the Oracle Applications Cloud and the impact of user experience. Take the time to watch all three videos and get the full picture.  In closing, Howlett’s said: “There is always the caveat that getting from the past to Fusion [from the editor: Fusion is now called the Oracle Applications Cloud] is not quite as simple as may be painted, but the outcomes are much better than anticipated in large measure because the user experience is so much better than what went before.” Herman Slange, Technical Manager with Oracle Applications partner Profource, agrees with that comment. “We use on-premise Financials & HCM for internal use. Having a simple user interface that works on a desktop as well as a tablet for (very) non-technical users is a big relief. Coming from E-Business Suite, there is less training (none) required to access HCM content.  From a technical point of view, having the abilities to tailor the simplified UI very easy makes it very efficient for us to adjust to specific customer needs.  When we have a conversation about simplified UI, we just hand over a tablet and ask the customer to just use it. No training and no explanation required.” Finally, in a story by Computer Weekly  about Oracle customer BG Group, a natural gas exploration and production company based in the UK and with a presence in 20 countries, the author states: “The new HR platform has proved to be easier and more intuitive for HR staff to use than the previous SAP-based technology.” What’s Next for Oracle’s Applications Cloud User Experiences? This is the question that Steve Miranda, Oracle Executive Vice President, Applications Development, asks the Applications User Experience team, and we’ve been hard at work for some time now on “what’s next.”  I can’t say too much about it, but I can tell you that we’ve started talking to customers and partners, under non-disclosure agreements, about user experience concepts that we are working on in order to get their feedback. We recently had a chance to talk about possibilities for the Oracle HCM Cloud user experience at an Oracle HCM Southern California Customer Success Summit. This was a fantastic event, hosted by Shane Bliss and Vance Morossi of the Oracle Client Success Team. We got to use the uber-slick facilities of Allergan, our hosts (of Botox fame), headquartered in Irvine, Calif., with a presence in more than 100 countries. Photo by Misha Vaughan, Oracle Applications User Experience Vance Morossi, left, and Shane Bliss, of the Oracle Client Success Team, at an Oracle HCM Southern California Customer Success Summit.  We were treated to a few really excellent talks around human resources (HR). Alice White, VP Human Resources, discussed Allergan's process for global talent acquisition -- how Allergan has designed and deployed a global process, and global tools, along with Oracle and Cognizant, and are now at the end of a global implementation. She shared a couple of insights about the journey for Allergan: “One of the major areas for improvement was on role clarification within the company.” She said the company is “empowering managers and deputizing them as recruiters. Now it is a global process that is nimble and efficient."  Deepak Rammohan, VP Product Management, HCM Cloud, Oracle, also took the stage to talk about pioneering modern HR. He reflected modern HR problems of getting the right data about the workforce, the importance of getting the right talent as a key strategic initiative, and other workforce insights. "How do we design systems to deal with all of this?” he asked. “Make sure the systems are talent-centric. The next piece is collaborative, engaging, and mobile. A lot of this is influenced by what users see today. The last thing is around insight; insight at the point of decision-making." Rammohan showed off some killer HCM Cloud talent demos focused on simplicity and mobility that his team has been cooking up, and closed with a great line about the nature of modern recruiting: "Recruiting is a team sport." Deepak Rammohan, left, and Jake Kuramoto, both of Oracle, debate the merits of a Google Glass concept demo for recruiters on-the-go. Later, in an expo-style format, the Apps UX team showed several concepts for next-generation HCM Cloud user experiences, including demos shown by Jake Kuramoto (@jkuramoto) of The AppsLab, and Aylin Uysal (@aylinuysal), Director, HCM Cloud user experience. We even hauled out our eye-tracker, a research tool used to show where the eye is looking at a particular screen, thanks to teammate Michael LaDuke. Dionne Healy, HCM Client Executive, and Aylin Uysal, Director, HCM Cloud user experiences, Oracle, take a look at new HCM Cloud UX concepts. We closed the day with Jeremy Ashley (@jrwashley), VP, Applications User Experience, who brought it all back together by talking about the big picture for applications cloud user experiences. He covered the trends we are paying attention to now, what users will be expecting of their modern enterprise apps, and what Oracle’s design strategy is around these ideas.   We closed with an excellent reception hosted by ADP Payroll services at Bistango. Want to read more?Want to see where our cloud user experience is going next? Read more on the UsableApps web site about our latest design initiative: “Glance, Scan, Commit.” Or catch up on the back story by looking over our Applications Cloud user experience content on the UsableApps web site.  You can also find out where we’ll be next at the Events page on UsableApps.

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• Silverlight Cream for April 07, 2010 -- #833

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Alan Mendelevich, Siyamand Ayubi, Rudi Grobler(-2-), Josh Smith, VinitYadav, and Dave Campbell. Shoutouts: Jordan Knight has a demo up of a project he did for DigiGirlz: DigiGirlz, Deep Zoom and Azure, hopefully we'll get source later :) Jeremy Likness has a must-read post on his Ten Reasons to use the Managed Extensibility Framework I put this on another post earlier, but if you want some desktop bling for WP7, Ozymandias has some: I Love Windows Phone Wallpaper If you're not going to be in 'Vegas next week, Tim Heuer reminds us there's an alternative: Watch the Silverlight 4 Launch event and LIVE QA with ScottGu and others From SilverlightCream.com: Ghost Lines in Silverlight Alan Mendelevich reports an issue when drawing lines with odd coordinate values. He originated it in Silverlight 3, but it is there in SL4RC as well... check it out and leave him a comment. A Framework to Animate WPF and Silverlight Pages Similar to the PowerPoint Slides Siyamand Ayubi has an interesting post up on animating WPF or Silverlight pages to make them progress in the manner of a PPT slideshow. And it can also make phone calls… Rudi Grobler has a list of 'tasks' you can do with WP7 such as PhoneCallTask or EmailComposeTask ... looks like this should be plasticized :) Using the GPS, Accelerometer & Vibration Controller Rudi Grobler is also investigating how to use the GPS, Accelerometer, and Vibration in WP7 with a bunch of external links to back it up. Assembly-level initialization at design time Josh Smith has a solution to the problem of initializing design-time data in Blend (did you know that was an issue?) ... the solution is great and so is the running commentary between Josh and Karl Shifflett in the comments! ySurf : A Yahoo Messenger Clone built in Silverlight VinitYadav built a Yahoo Messenger app in Silverlight and has detailed out all the ugly bits for us on the post, plus made everything available. Your First Silverlight Application Dave Campbell's first post at DZone cracking open a beginner's series on Silverlight. If you're expecting something heavy-duty, skip this. If you're wanting to learn Silverlight and haven't jumped in yet, give it a try. 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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• 7 Habits of Highly Effective Media Queries - by Brad Frost

  - by ihaynes

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/ihaynes/archive/2013/10/11/7-habits-of-highly-effective-media-queries---by-brad.aspxBrad Frost, one of the original proponents of responsive design, has written a great article on the "7 Habits of Highly Effective Media Queries".Let content determine breakpointsTreat layout as an enhancementUse major and minor breakpointsUse relative unitsGo beyond widthUse media queries for conditional loadingDon't go overboardGot you wondering? Read Brad's full article.Oh, and if you haven't read Steven Covey's original "7 Habits of Highly Effective People" book, it's a valuable read too, and might just change the way you relate to others and the world around you.

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• Professional Flash Designers for Flash Designs

  When did you hear about Flash first? Could you exactly remember the time when you happened to talk about those exciting Flash games or Flash movie files with your friends? Well, Flash has been in the... [Author: David Jackson - Web Design and Development - August 31, 2009]

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• Adding an expression based image in a client report definition file (RDLC)

  - by rajbk

  In previous posts, I showed you how to create a report using Visual Studio 2010 and how to add a hyperlink to the report.  In this post, I show you how to add an expression based image to each row of the report. This similar to displaying a checkbox column for Boolean values.  A sample project is attached to the bottom of this post. To start off, download the project we created earlier from here.  The report we created had a “Discontinued” column of type Boolean. We are going to change it to display an “available” icon or “unavailable” icon based on the “Discontinued” row value.    Load the project and double click on Products.rdlc. With the report design surface active, you will see the “Report Data” tool window. Right click on the Images folder and select “Add Image..”   Add the available_icon.png and discontinued_icon.png images (the sample project at the end of this post has the icon png files)    You can see the images we added in the “Report Data” tool window.   Drag and drop the available_icon into the “Discontinued” column row (not the header) We get a dialog box which allows us to set the image properties. We will add an expression that specifies the image to display based the “Discontinued” value from the Product table. Click on the expression (fx) button.   Add the following expression : = IIf(Fields!Discontinued.Value = True, “discontinued_icon”, “available_icon”)   Save and exit all dialog boxes. In the report design surface, resize the column header and change the text from “Discontinued” to “In Production”.   (Optional) Right click on the image cell (not header) , go to “Image Properties..” and offset it by 5pt from the left. (Optional) Change the border color since it is not set by default for image columns. We are done adding our image column! Compile the application and run it. You will see that the “In Production” column has red ‘x’ icons for discontinued products. Download the VS 2010 sample project NorthwindReportsImage.zip Other Posts Adding a hyperlink in a client report definition file (RDLC) Rendering an RDLC directly to the Response stream in ASP.NET MVC ASP.NET MVC Paging/Sorting/Filtering using the MVCContrib Grid and Pager Localization in ASP.NET MVC 2 using ModelMetadata Setting up Visual Studio 2010 to step into Microsoft .NET Source Code Running ASP.NET Webforms and ASP.NET MVC side by side Pre-filtering and shaping OData feeds using WCF Data Services and the Entity Framework

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• Java Spotlight Episode 139: Mark Heckler and José Pereda on JES based Energy Monitoring @MkHeck @JPeredaDnr

  - by Roger Brinkley

  Interview with Mark Heckler and José Pereda on using JavaSE Embedded with the Java Embedded Suite on a RaspberryPI along with a JavaFX client to monitor an energy production system and their JavaOne Tutorial- Java Embedded EXTREME MASHUPS: Building self-powering sensor nets for the IoT Right-click or Control-click to download this MP3 file. You can also subscribe to the Java Spotlight Podcast Feed to get the latest podcast automatically. If you use iTunes you can open iTunes and subscribe with this link: Java Spotlight Podcast in iTunes. Show Notes News Java Virtual Developer Day Session Videos Available JavaFX Maven Plugin 2.0 Released JavaFX Scene Builder 1.1 build b28 FXForm 2 release 0.2.2 OpenJDK8/Zero cross compile build for Foundation model HSAIL-based GPU offload: the Quest for Java Performance Begins Progress on Moving to Gradle Java EE 7 Launch Keynote Replay Java EE 7 Technical Breakouts Replay Java EE 7 support in NetBeans 7.3.1 Java EE 7 support in Eclipse 4.3 Java Magazine - May/June Events Jul 16-19, Uberconf, Denver, USA Jul 22-24, JavaOne Shanghai, China Jul 29-31, JVM Language Summit, Santa Clara Sep 11-12, JavaZone, Oslo, Norway Sep 19-20, Strange Loop, St. Louis Sep 22-26 JavaOne San Francisco 2013, USA Feature Interview Mark Heckler is an Oracle Corporation Java/Middleware/Core Tech Engineer with development experience in numerous environments. He has worked for and with key players in the manufacturing, emerging markets, retail, medical, telecom, and financial industries to develop and deliver critical capabilities on time and on budget. Currently, he works primarily with large government customers using Java throughout the stack and across the enterprise. He also participates in open-source development at every opportunity, being a JFXtras project committer and developer of DialogFX, MonologFX, and various other projects. When Mark isn't working with Java, he enjoys writing about his experiences at the Java Jungle website (https://blogs.oracle.com/javajungle/) and on Twitter (@MkHeck). José Pereda is a Structural Engineer working in the School of Engineers in the University of Valladolid in Spain for more than 15 years, and his passion is related to applying programming to solve real problems. Being involved with Java since 1999, José shares his time between JavaFX and the Embedded world, developing commercial applications and open source projects (https://github.com/jperedadnr), and blogging (http://jperedadnr.blogspot.com.es/) or tweeting (@JPeredaDnr) of both. What’s Cool AquaFX 0.1 - Mac OS X skin for JavaFX by Claudine Zillmann DromblerFX adds a docking framework Part 2 of Gerrit’s taming the Nashorn for writing JavaFX apps in Javascript Tool from mihosoft called JSelect for quickly switching JDKs Apache Maven Javadoc Plugin 2.9.1 Released Proposal: Java Concurrency Stress tests (jcstress) Slide-free Code-driven session at SV JUG JavaOne approvals/rejects gone out

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• HPC Server Dynamic Job Scheduling: when jobs spawn jobs

  - by JoshReuben

  HPC Job Types HPC has 3 types of jobs http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc972750(v=ws.10).aspx · Task Flow – vanilla sequence · Parametric Sweep – concurrently run multiple instances of the same program, each with a different work unit input · MPI – message passing between master & slave tasks But when you try go outside the box – job tasks that spawn jobs, blocking the parent task – you run the risk of resource starvation, deadlocks, and recursive, non-converging or exponential blow-up. The solution to this is to write some performance monitoring and job scheduling code. You can do this in 2 ways: manually control scheduling - allocate/ de-allocate resources, change job priorities, pause & resume tasks , restrict long running tasks to specific compute clusters Semi-automatically - set threshold params for scheduling. How – Control Job Scheduling In order to manage the tasks and resources that are associated with a job, you will need to access the ISchedulerJob interface - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.hpc.scheduler.ischedulerjob_members(v=vs.85).aspx This really allows you to control how a job is run – you can access & tweak the following features: max / min resource values whether job resources can grow / shrink, and whether jobs can be pre-empted, whether the job is exclusive per node the creator process id & the job pool timestamp of job creation & completion job priority, hold time & run time limit Re-queue count Job progress Max/ min Number of cores, nodes, sockets, RAM Dynamic task list – can add / cancel jobs on the fly Job counters When – poll perf counters Tweaking the job scheduler should be done on the basis of resource utilization according to PerfMon counters – HPC exposes 2 Perf objects: Compute Clusters, Compute Nodes http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc720058(v=ws.10).aspx You can monitor running jobs according to dynamic thresholds – use your own discretion: Percentage processor time Number of running jobs Number of running tasks Total number of processors Number of processors in use Number of processors idle Number of serial tasks Number of parallel tasks Design Your algorithms correctly Finally , don’t assume you have unlimited compute resources in your cluster – design your algorithms with the following factors in mind: · Branching factor - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branching_factor - dynamically optimize the number of children per node · cutoffs to prevent explosions - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limit_of_a_sequence - not all functions converge after n attempts. You also need a threshold of good enough, diminishing returns · heuristic shortcuts - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristic - sometimes an exhaustive search is impractical and short cuts are suitable · Pruning http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruning_(algorithm) – remove / de-prioritize unnecessary tree branches · avoid local minima / maxima - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_minima - sometimes an algorithm cant converge because it gets stuck in a local saddle – try simulated annealing, hill climbing or genetic algorithms to get out of these ruts   watch out for rounding errors – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Round-off_error - multiple iterations can in parallel can quickly amplify & blow up your algo ! Use an epsilon, avoid floating point errors,  truncations, approximations Happy Coding !

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• Payment Gateway Choices

  Commissioning a new eCommerce Website is a process that demands answer after answer to questions that before you begin you may not be prepared for. One of the most fundamental choices that you must m... [Author: Diane Forster - Web Design and Development - March 29, 2010]

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• Dependency injection with n-tier Entity Framework solution

  - by Matthew

  I am currently designing an n-tier solution which is using Entity Framework 5 (.net 4) as its data access strategy, but am concerned about how to incorporate dependency injection to make it testable / flexible. My current solution layout is as follows (my solution is called Alcatraz): Alcatraz.WebUI: An asp.net webform project, the front end user interface, references projects Alcatraz.Business and Alcatraz.Data.Models. Alcatraz.Business: A class library project, contains the business logic, references projects Alcatraz.Data.Access, Alcatraz.Data.Models Alcatraz.Data.Access: A class library project, houses AlcatrazModel.edmx and AlcatrazEntities DbContext, references projects Alcatraz.Data.Models. Alcatraz.Data.Models: A class library project, contains POCOs for the Alcatraz model, no references. My vision for how this solution would work is the web-ui would instantiate a repository within the business library, this repository would have a dependency (through the constructor) of a connection string (not an AlcatrazEntities instance). The web-ui would know the database connection strings, but not that it was an entity framework connection string. In the Business project: public class InmateRepository : IInmateRepository { private string _connectionString; public InmateRepository(string connectionString) { if (connectionString == null) { throw new ArgumentNullException("connectionString"); } EntityConnectionStringBuilder connectionBuilder = new EntityConnectionStringBuilder(); connectionBuilder.Metadata = "res://*/AlcatrazModel.csdl|res://*/AlcatrazModel.ssdl|res://*/AlcatrazModel.msl"; connectionBuilder.Provider = "System.Data.SqlClient"; connectionBuilder.ProviderConnectionString = connectionString; _connectionString = connectionBuilder.ToString(); } public IQueryable<Inmate> GetAllInmates() { AlcatrazEntities ents = new AlcatrazEntities(_connectionString); return ents.Inmates; } } In the Web UI: IInmateRepository inmateRepo = new InmateRepository(@"data source=MATTHEW-PC\SQLEXPRESS;initial catalog=Alcatraz;integrated security=True;"); List<Inmate> deathRowInmates = inmateRepo.GetAllInmates().Where(i => i.OnDeathRow).ToList(); I have a few related questions about this design. 1) Does this design even make sense in terms of Entity Frameworks capabilities? I heard that Entity framework uses the Unit-of-work pattern already, am I just adding another layer of abstract unnecessarily? 2) I don't want my web-ui to directly communicate with Entity Framework (or even reference it for that matter), I want all database access to go through the business layer as in the future I will have multiple projects using the same business layer (web service, windows application, etc.) and I want to have it easy to maintain / update by having the business logic in one central area. Is this an appropriate way to achieve this? 3) Should the Business layer even contain repositories, or should that be contained within the Access layer? If where they are is alright, is passing a connection string a good dependency to assume? Thanks for taking the time to read!

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• Microsoft Press Deal of the Day - 5/April/2012 - Windows® Internals, Part 1, Sixth Edition

  - by TATWORTH

  Today's Deal of the day from Microsoft Press at http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0790145305930.do is Windows® Internals, Part 1, Sixth Edition."Delve inside Windows architecture and internals—guided by a team of internationally renowned internals experts. Fully updated for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, this classic guide delivers key architectural insights on system design, debugging, performance, and support—along with hands-on experiments to experience Windows internal behavior firsthand."

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• QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More

  <b>Linux Foundation:</b> "Matt took some time recently to share his perspective with me on why Canonical can take Linux places Red Hat can't, how Linux beats Apple, and how the Ubuntu community's passion and focus on design will change the way people see Linux for a long time."

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• Daily tech links for .net and related technologies - Mar 18-21, 2010

  - by SanjeevAgarwal

  Daily tech links for .net and related technologies - Mar 18-21, 2010 Web Development TDD kata for ASP.NET MVC controllers (part 2) -David Take Control Of Web Control ClientID Values in ASP.NET 4.0 - Scott Mitchell Inside the ASP.NET MVC Controller Factory - Dino Esposito Microsoft, jQuery, and Templating - stephen walther Cross Domain AJAX Request with YQL and jQuery - Jeffrey Way T4MVC Add-In to auto run template -Wayne Web Design Website Content Planning The Right Way - Kristin Wemmer Microsoft...(read more)

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• Robotic Arm &ndash; Hardware

  - by Szymon Kobalczyk

  This is first in series of articles about project I've been building  in my spare time since last Summer. Actually it all began when I was researching a topic of modeling human motion kinematics in order to create gesture recognition library for Kinect. This ties heavily into motion theory of robotic manipulators so I also glanced at some designs of robotic arms. Somehow I stumbled upon this cool looking open source robotic arm: It was featured on Thingiverse and published by user jjshortcut (Jan-Jaap). Since for some time I got hooked on toying with microcontrollers, robots and other electronics, I decided to give it a try and build it myself. In this post I will describe the hardware build of the arm and in later posts I will be writing about the software to control it. Another reason to build the arm myself was the cost factor. Even small commercial robotic arms are quite expensive – products from Lynxmotion and Dagu look great but both cost around USD $300 (actually there is one cheap arm available but it looks more like a toy to me). In comparison this design is quite cheap. It uses seven hobby grade servos and even the cheapest ones should work fine. The structure is build from a set of laser cut parts connected with few metal spacers (15mm and 47mm) and lots of M3 screws. Other than that you’d only need a microcontroller board to drive the servos. So in total it comes a lot cheaper to build it yourself than buy an of the shelf robotic arm. Oh, and if you don’t like this one there are few more robotic arm projects at Thingiverse (including one by oomlout). Laser cut parts Some time ago I’ve build another robot using laser cut parts so I knew the process already. You can grab the design files in both DXF and EPS format from Thingiverse, and there are also 3D models of each part in STL. Actually the design is split into a second project for the mini servo gripper (there is also a standard servo version available but it won’t fit this arm).  I wanted to make some small adjustments, layout, and add measurements to the parts before sending it for cutting. I’ve looked at some free 2D CAD programs, and finally did all this work using QCad 3 Beta with worked great for me (I also tried LibreCAD but it didn’t work that well). All parts are cut from 4 mm thick material. Because I was worried that acrylic is too fragile and might break, I also ordered another set cut from plywood. In the end I build it from plywood because it was easier to glue (I was told acrylic requires a special glue). Btw. I found a great laser cutter service in Kraków and highly recommend it (www.ebbox.com.pl). It cost me only USD $26 for both sets ($16 acrylic + $10 plywood). Metal parts I bought all the M3 screws and nuts at local hardware store. Make sure to look for nylon lock (nyloc) nuts for the gripper because otherwise it unscrews and comes apart quickly. I couldn’t find local store with metal spacers and had to order them online (you’d need 11 x 47mm and 3 x 15mm). I think I paid less than USD $10 for all metal parts. Servos This arm uses five standards size servos to drive the arm itself, and two micro servos are used on the gripper. Author of the project used Modelcraft RS-2 Servo and Modelcraft ES-05 HT Servo. I had two Futaba S3001 servos laying around, and ordered additional TowerPro SG-5010 standard size servos and TowerPro SG90 micro servos. However it turned out that the SG90 won’t fit in the gripper so I had to replace it with a slightly smaller E-Sky EK2-0508 micro servo. Later it also turned out that Futaba servos make some strange noise while working so I swapped one with TowerPro SG-5010 which has higher torque (8kg / cm). I’ve also bought three servo extension cables. All servos cost me USD $45. Assembly The build process is not difficult but you need to think carefully about order of assembling it. You can do the base and upper arm first. Because two servos in the base are close together you need to put first with one piece of lower arm already connected before you put the second servo. Then you connect the upper arm and finally put the second piece of lower arm to hold it together. Gripper and base require some gluing so think it through too. Make sure to look closely at all the photos on Thingiverse (also other people copies) and read additional posts on jjshortcust’s blog: My mini servo grippers and completed robotic arm  Multiply the robotic arm and electronics Here is also Rob’s copy cut from aluminum My assembled arm looks like this – I think it turned out really nice: Servo controller board The last piece of hardware I needed was an electronic board that would take command from PC and drive all seven servos. I could probably use Arduino for this task, and in fact there are several Arduino servo shields available (for example from Adafruit or Renbotics).  However one problem is that most support only up to six servos, and second that their accuracy is limited by Arduino’s timer frequency. So instead I looked for dedicated servo controller and found a series of Maestro boards from Pololu. I picked the Pololu Mini Maestro 12-Channel USB Servo Controller. It has many nice features including native USB connection, high resolution pulses (0.25µs) with no jitter, built-in speed and acceleration control, and even scripting capability. Another cool feature is that besides servo control, each channel can be configured as either general input or output. So far I’m using seven channels so I still have five available to connect some sensors (for example distance sensor mounted on gripper might be useful). And last but important factor was that they have SDK in .NET – what more I could wish for! The board itself is very small – half of the size of Tic-Tac box. I picked one for about USD $35 in this store. Perhaps another good alternative would be the Phidgets Advanced Servo 8-Motor – but it is significantly more expensive at USD $87.30. The Maestro Controller Driver and Software package includes Maestro Control Center program with lets you immediately configure the board. For each servo I first figured out their move range and set the min/max limits. I played with setting the speed an acceleration values as well. Big issue for me was that there are two servos that control position of lower arm (shoulder joint), and both have to be moved at the same time. This is where the scripting feature of Pololu board turned out very helpful. I wrote a script that synchronizes position of second servo with first one – so now I only need to move one servo and other will follow automatically. This turned out tricky because I couldn’t find simple offset mapping of the move range for each servo – I had to divide it into several sub-ranges and map each individually. The scripting language is bit assembler-like but gets the job done. And there is even a runtime debugging and stack view available. Altogether I’m very happy with the Pololu Mini Maestro Servo Controller, and with this final piece I completed the build and was able to move my arm from the Meastro Control program.   The total cost of my robotic arm was: $10 laser cut parts $10 metal parts $45 servos $35 servo controller ----------------------- $100 total So here you have all the information about the hardware. In next post I’ll start talking about the software that I wrote in Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 4. Stay tuned!

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• NetBeans Podcast 69

  - by TinuA

  Podcast Guests: Terrence Barr, Simon Ritter, Jaroslav Tulach (It's an all-Oracle lineup!) Download mp3: 47 Minutes – 39.5 mb Subscribe on iTunes NetBeans Community News with Geertjan and Tinu If you missed the first two Java Virtual Developer Day events in early May, there's still one more LIVE training left on May 28th. Sign up here to participate live in the APAC time zone or watch later ON DEMAND. Video: Get started with Vaadin development using NetBeans IDE NetBeans IDE was at JavaCro 2014 and at Hippo Get-together 2014 Another great lineup is in the works for NetBeans Day at JavaOne 2014. More details coming soon! NetBeans' Facebook page is almost at 40,000 Likes! Help us crack that milestone in the next few weeks! Other great ways to stay updated about NetBeans? Twitter and Google+. 09:28 / Terrence Barr - What to Know about Java Embedded Terrence Barr, a Senior Technologist and Principal Product Manager for Embedded and Mobile technologies at Oracle, discusses new features of the Java SE Embedded and Java ME Embedded platforms, and sheds some light on the differences between them and what they have to offer to developers. Learn more about Java SE Embedded Tutorial: Using Oracle Java SE Embedded Support in NetBeans IDE Learn more about Java ME Embedded Video: NetBeans IDE Support for Java ME 8 Video: Installing and Using Java ME SDK 8.0 Plugins in NetBeans IDE Follow Terrence Barr to keep up with news in the Embedded space: Blog and Twitter 26:02 / Simon Ritter - A Massive Serving of Raspberry Pi Oracle's Raspberry Pi virtual course is back by popular demand! Simon Ritter, the head of Oracle's Java Technology Evangelism team, chats about the second run of the free Java Embedded course (starting May 30th), what participants can expect to learn, NetBeans' support for Java ME development, and other Java trainings coming to a desktop, laptop or user group near you. Sign up for the Oracle MOOC: Develop Java Embedded Applications Using Raspberry Pi Find out when Simon Ritter and the Java Evangelism team are coming to a Java event or JUG in your area--follow them on Twitter: Simon Ritter Angela Caicedo Steven Chin Jim Weaver 36:58 / Jaroslav Tulach - A Perfect Translation Jaroslav Tulach returns to the NetBeans podcast with tales about the Japanese translation of the Practical API Design book, which he contends surpasses all previous translations, including the English edition! Order "Practical API Design" (Japanese Version)  Find out why the Japanese translation is the best edition yet *Have ideas for NetBeans Podcast topics? Send them to ">nbpodcast at netbeans dot org. *Subscribe to the official NetBeans page on Facebook! Check us out as well on Twitter, YouTube, and Google+.

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• ASP.NET 4 WebForms TailSpin SpyWorks Tutorial from Joe Stagner

  Joe Stagner begins a multi-part series on WebForms in ASP.NET 4. with a free 84 page tutorial on how to build a store he calls "TailSpin SpyWorks." He shows Linq to Entities, an integrated AJAX editor, and a MasterPage and CSS-based design.

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• Performance Improvement: Session State

  Performance is critical to today's successful applications and web sites. If you design with an awareness of the session state management challenges you can always change your strategies to match your performance needs.

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• Performance Improvement: Session State

  Performance is critical to today's successful applications and web sites. If you design with an awareness of the session state management challenges you can always change your strategies to match your performance needs.

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• The Dos and Don'ts of Database Indexing

  The creation of database indexes is the last thing developers and database designers think about--almost an afterthought. Greg Larsen shows you some of the dos and don'ts of indexing to help you pick reasonable indexes at design time.

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• Windows Azure Use Case: Infrastructure Limits

  - by BuckWoody

  This is one in a series of posts on when and where to use a distributed architecture design in your organization's computing needs. You can find the main post here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/buckwoody/archive/2011/01/18/windows-azure-and-sql-azure-use-cases.aspx  Description: Physical hardware components take up room, use electricity, create heat and therefore need cooling, and require wiring and special storage units. all of these requirements cost money to rent at a data-center or to build out at a local facility. In some cases, this can be a catalyst for evaluating options to remove this infrastructure requirement entirely by moving to a distributed computing environment. Implementation: There are three main options for moving to a distributed computing environment. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) The first option is simply to virtualize the current hardware and move the VM’s to a provider. You can do this with Microsoft’s Hyper-V product or other software, build the systems and host them locally on fewer physical machines. This is a good option for canned-applications (where you have to type setup.exe) but not as useful for custom applications, as you still have to license and patch those servers, and there are hard limits on the VM sizes. Software as a Service (SaaS) If there is already software available that does what you need, it may make sense to simply purchase not only the software license but the use of it on the vendor’s servers. Microsoft’s Exchange Online is an example of simply using an offering from a vendor on their servers. If you do not need a great deal of customization, have no interest in owning or extending the source code, and need to implement a solution quickly, this is a good choice. Platform as a Service (PaaS) If you do need to write software for your environment, your next choice is a Platform as a Service such as Windows Azure. In this case you no longer manager physical or even virtual servers. You start at the code and data level of control and responsibility, and your focus is more on the design and maintenance of the application itself. In this case you own the source code and can extend or change it as you see fit. An interesting side-benefit to using Windows Azure as a PaaS is that the Application Fabric component allows a hybrid approach, which gives you a basis to allow on-premise applications to leverage distributed computing paradigms. No one solution fits every situation. It’s common to see organizations pick a mixture of on-premise, IaaS, SaaS and PaaS components. In fact, that’s a great advantage to this form of computing - choice. References: 5 Enterprise steps for adopting a Platform as a Service: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/davidmcg/archive/2010/12/02/5-enterprise-steps-for-adopting-a-platform-as-a-service.aspx?wa=wsignin1.0  Application Patterns for the Cloud: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/kashif/archive/2010/08/07/application-patterns-for-the-cloud.aspx

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