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  • Defunct website taken over by spammer. How to stop them?

    - by Robert
    A friend of mine used to publish a small literary fiction magazine, both in print and on the web. In 2011 she announced that she was quitting, put a note on the website, and carefully unwound the subscriptions. She continued hosting the site (with all the back-issues available for free) until the beginning of this year, when she let the hosting lapse and the domain name expire. Today she discovered that some unknown person has purchased her former domain name and put up a modified version of her entire site. The design is different but all the content is the same, including all of the back-issues of the magazine (and the stories by diverse authors contained within), their cover art, news posts, and even her contact information. All the content would have been available from Archive.org, so it's no mystery how they got it. The only thing noticeably changed is a column added to the front page titled "Favorite Videos", with around 35 links to Youtube videos. The links are named things like "Video (Worry)" and "Video (Squirting)" and the videos all feature a man named Leo giving dubious advice and promoting his life-coaching website. Here's one of the suspect videos. There does not appear to be any connection between the content of the videos and my friend or her magazine. I also posted to the Security StackExchange to ask why someone would do this and what the security risks are to her. What I want to know here is, what can she do to stop them? To be clear she doesn't want the domain name back. She just doesn't want her name and copyrighted material used deceptively. Also, what (if anything) could she have done when shutting down her website to avoid this happening?

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  • Procedural world generation oriented on gameplay features

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

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  • Tools for game script / storyboard

    - by Pietro Polsinelli
    I am searching for a tool that will help in writing a game script. By "script" I mean the text core of a storyboard - without the drawing drafts, which may or may not be there (yet). What I'm thinking of will let write a piece of text of the script, define a simplified workflow from that step, and then define the text of next steps, and so on. Searching online, I found Inform http://inform7.com/ ("A Design System for Interactive Fiction Based on Natural Language") which in theory is exactly what I am searching for, but trying to use it it has this model of a space (a dungeon, a library) where you are picking up objects and exploring them. In my case I am designing more a Sims like game, the flow is entirely different. Considering non specific software, mind mapping tools miss the linearity of the process. What I am writing is a directed graph - simply a work-flow, but the way I want to design it is more text based than work-flow based. SO what I'm doing now is using a text editor, which I'll transform directly in code. Any suggestions?

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  • Sharing My Thoughts on Space Flight

    - by Grant Fritchey
    This went out in the DBA newsletter from Red Gate, but I enjoyed writing it so much, I thought I'd share it to a wider audience: I grew up watching the US space program. I watched men walk on the moon for the first time in 1969, when I was only six years old. From that moment on, I dreamed of going into space. I studied aeronautics and tried to get into the Air Force Academy, all in preparation for my long career as an astronaut. Clearly, that didn't quite work out for me. But it sure could for you. At Red Gate, we're running a new contest: DBA in Space. The prize is a sub-orbital flight. When I first got word of this contest, my immediate response was, "And you need me to go right away and do a test flight? Excellent!" No, no test flight needed, plus I was pretty low on the list of volunteers. "That's OK, I'll just enter." Then I was told that, as a Red Gate employee, I couldn't win. My next response was, "I quit".eventually, I was talked down off the ledge, and agreed to help make this special for some other DBA. Many (most?) of us are science fiction fans, either the soft science of Star Trek and Star Wars, or the hard science of Niven and Pournelle, or Allen Steele. We watched the Shuttles go up and land. We've been dreaming of our own trips into orbit and our vacation-home on the Moon for a long, long time. All that might not arrive on schedule, but you've got a shot at breaking clear of the atmosphere. The first stage is a video quiz, starring Brad McGehee, and it's live at www.DBAinSpace.com now. Go for it. Good luck and God speed!

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  • Mahout - Clustering - "naming" the cluster elements

    - by Mark Bramnik
    I'm doing some research and I'm playing with Apache Mahout 0.6 My purpose is to build a system which will name different categories of documents based on user input. The documents are not known in advance and I don't know also which categories do I have while collecting these documents. But I do know, that all the documents in the model should belong to one of the predefined categories. For example: Lets say I've collected a N documents, that belong to 3 different groups : Politics Madonna (pop-star) Science fiction I don't know what document belongs to what category, but I know that each one of my N documents belongs to one of those categories (e.g. there are no documents about, say basketball among these N docs) So, I came up with the following idea: Apply mahout clustering (for example k-mean with k=3 on these documents) This should divide the N documents to 3 groups. This should be kind of my model to learn with. I still don't know which document really belongs to which group, but at least the documents are clustered now by group Ask the user to find any document in the web that should be about 'Madonna' (I can't show to the user none of my N documents, its a restriction). Then I want to measure 'similarity' of this document and each one of 3 groups. I expect to see that the measurement for similarity between user_doc and documents in Madonna group in the model will be higher than the similarity between the user_doc and documents about politics. I've managed to produce the cluster of documents using 'Mahout in Action' book. But I don't understand how should I use Mahout to measure similarity between the 'ready' cluster group of document and one given document. I thought about rerunning the cluster with k=3 for N+1 documents with the same centroids (in terms of k-mean clustering) and see whether where the new document falls, but maybe there is any other way to do that? Is it possible to do with Mahout or my idea is conceptually wrong? (example in terms of Mahout API would be really good) Thanks a lot and sorry for a long question (couldn't describe it better) Any help is highly appreciated P.S. This is not a home-work project :)

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  • JSLint reports "Unexpected dangling" character in an underscore prefixed variable name

    - by Zhami
    I know that some people consider the presence of a leading underscore to imply that a variable is "private," that such privacy is a fiction, and assume this is why JSLint reports such names with an error message. I use Google Analytics on a Web site I am building. I make reference to GA's variables, such as "_gaq." I am trying to get my JS code to be 100% JSLint clean (I'm not religious about my coding style, and so will go with Mr. Crockford's counsel). That said, I can't do anything about Google's variables names... so, I guess I can't get 100% "clean." I post here in case I've misunderstood the message, and can do something to comply with JSLint practices.

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  • How can I get full filenames from Git difftool (for Microsoft Word "Compare Documents" feature)?

    - by Doug
    I am using the latest version of Git (1.6.6) on a Mac. My wife wants to use Git to manage her fiction writing as long as she can still use Microsoft Word 2008 (Mac). Instead of pushing her into saving everything as plain text, I would like to use Git Difftool to pass the files to Word and use Word's Compare Documents feature. She wouldn't be able to use Git Diff since Word docs are binary files but she could still use Git Difftool. I have written an Applescript which takes two filenames in this format: /Users/foo/Documents/my_novel.docx and opens Word to do the file comparison. However, Git Difftool seems to only pass the bare filenames (e.g. my_novel.docx) as parameters. Is there anyway to get the full filenames from Git Difftool? Thanks, Doug

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  • FTS: Searching across multiple fields 'intelligently'

    - by Wild Thing
    Hi, I have a SP using FTS (Full Text Search). I want searches across multiple fields, 'intelligently' ranking results based on the weights I assign. Consider a search on a view fetching data from tables: Book, Author and Genre. Now, I want the searcher to be able to do: "Ludlum Fiction", "Robert Ludlum Bourne", "Bourne Ludlum", etc. Unfortunately, the only way I have been able to do that at present is this: http://pastebin.com/fdce11ff This is pretty bad, because I am manually breaking up the search string. I know I am doing this completely the wrong way, but can't figure out the right way to search across multiple fields in FTS. Can somebody help please?

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  • Best programming novel to take on holiday

    - by Ed Guiness
    I am about enjoy a two week break in Spain where I expect to have lots of time for relaxing and reading. I normally read a lot of non-fiction so I'm looking for novel suggestions. If there is another Cryptonomicon out there I'd love to hear about it! UPDATE: In the end I took four books including Quicksilver. Quicksilver was fantastic and I look forward to continuing the series. I was disappointed with Gen X (Coupland) and Pattern Recognition (Gibson). Upon arrival I also found The Monsters Of Gramercy Park (Leigh) which was enjoyable though sad. Thanks for all the recommendations, I'm sure to return to this list when I have more free time.

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  • Context aware breadcrumbs with php sessions - Will search engines index each variation?

    - by Haroldo
    Some pages on my website appear differently depending on where the user has been, using php sessions. for example with breadcrumbs: standard crumb setup: All Books - fiction - Lord Of the Flies if the visitor has just been on the 'William Golding Page', a session will have been created to say, this visitor is broswing by author, so i would check if( $_SESSION['browsing by] == 'author' ): and the breadcrumbs (for the exact same page as before) would now be: Authors - William Golding - Lord Of the Flies to summarise: So 1 page exists for each book, but depending where the user has come from, the page will show different breadcrumbs. the questions: Can search engines create my 'browsing by' SESSION? Would they index the same page multiple times (for each variation)?

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  • is it better to use a "natural" language to write code?

    - by M.H
    I recently saw a programming language called supernova and they said in the web page : The Supernova Programming language is a modern scripting language and the First one presents the concept of programming with direct Fiction Description using Clear subset of pure Human Language. and you can write code like: i want window and the window title is Hello World. i want button and button caption is Close. and button name is btn1. btn1 mouse click. instructions are you close window end of instructions my question is not about the language itself but it is that are we need such languages and did they make writing code easier or not?

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  • is it better to use a "natural" language to write codes ?

    - by M.H
    I recently saw a programming language called supernova and they said in the web page : The Supernova Programming language is a modern scripting language and the First one presents the concept of programming with direct Fiction Description using Clear subset of pure Human Language. and you can write codes like : i want window and the window title is Hello World. i want button and button caption is Close. and button name is btn1. btn1 mouse click. instructions are you close window end of instructions my question is not about the language itself but it is that are we need such languages and did they make writing codes more easier or not ?

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  • A Computer Poem for those over 30 [closed]

    - by arvind
    I recd. a very good poem, that i wished to share with everyone. so for once we need no answers. lol ;-) A computer was something on TV From a science fiction show of note A window was something you hated to clean And ram was the cousin of a goat. Meg was the name of my girlfriend And gig was a job for the nights Now they all mean different things And that really mega bytes. An application was for employment A program was a TV show A cursor used profanity A keyboard was a piano.

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  • Access the camera of a Smartphone using libGDX

    - by PH-zero
    I searched the web, browsed through the libGDX wiki, but without success. My Question: Is there a way, to access the camera of smartphones, let the user take a photo, and then store the image in a Texture-instance? I could imagin something like this: @Override public void onCamTrigger(){ ApplicationType appType = Gdx.app.getType(); switch (appType) { case Android: case iOS: Texture someTexture = new Texture(Gdx.input.getCamera().getImage()); //do something with the Texture instance... someTexture.dispose(); break; default: break; } } Of course this is pure fiction! I know that there's a lot more to this like opening the camera, displaying it, then take a photo etc. . But is there a convenience method like this? If so, how does it work? On Android, i think i could implement it without using any convenience methods offered by libGDX, but i have no idea on how this works on iOS =/

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  • The Niantic Project: Ingress by Felicia Hajra-Lee

    Despite the current fact that the augmented reality game for Android is still in beta phase, it is amazing to see that the world of literature is already taking momentum on this 'real-life' universe. After reading 'The Alignment: Ingress' by Thomas Greanias it took only a blink of the eye to go for 'The Niantic Project: Ingress' by Felicia Hajra-Lee, too. Here is the review I posted on Amazon.com: Ingress, a parallel universe to our reality, is here. There is no doubt about this anymore... The Niantic Project, originated at the CERN collider in Geneva, Switzerland, got into focus of global players. And the game is hard; fair-play is only for the fainted ones. Felicia understands to drag the audience directly into the action of the Niantic Project and its protagonists. The novella is heavily based on the investigations posted daily on the website of Ingress. She really understands how to interweave the various clues and creates an atmosphere where it sometimes feels challenging to differentiate between fiction and reality. It all starts with 'Epiphany Night' at the Niantic Labs, the high exposure of Exotic Matter (XM) and the escape of scientist Dr. Devra Bogdanovich and 'sentinel' Roland Jarvis. Of course, a new research, or should we name it technology, like the Niantic Project has to be protected and there are multiple parties on the hunt. Throughout the various chapters Felicia introduces new potential buyers from all over the globe, gives us detailed insights on the hunters and their brutal effectiveness to finish an assignment, and manages to keep the reader in high-pitched mode thanks to a couple of turn-arounds in the overall story. Personally, I have to say that I really enjoyed reading this title. Felicia's love to details is absolutely amazing, and sometimes I was really wondering whether she would be one of the assassins. But unfortunately I also have to say that I'm not a great fan of the structural organization of the (title-less) chapters. It is fascinating to follow the ventures of Devra, Farlowe and 855 but occasionally I had to go back to previous paragraphs in order to keep track of the individual plots. Overall a great title, captivating and rich in details but simply too short. Please Fecilia, gives us more to read. As an owner of an Android smartphone or tablet, you should get yourself into the world of Ingress. Check out the Play Store to install the app. Now. ;-)

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  • News, Perspektiven und jede Menge Gesprächsstoff - Der Oracle Partner Day 2012

    - by A&C Redaktion
    Was für ein Tag! Unter dem Motto „Maximize your Potential“ kamen über 470 Teilnehmerinnen und Teilnehmer beim Oracle Partner Day 2012 zusammen. Hier drehte sich alles um unsere Partner, die, wie Silvia Kaske, Senior Director Alliances & Channel Europe North, in ihrer Begrüßung betonte, „ein sehr wichtiger Baustein in der Wachstumsstrategie von Oracle“ sind. Wie einmalig diese Partnerschaft ist, betonte auch David Callaghan, Senior Vice President EMEA Alliances & Channel in seiner Keynote. Niemand sonst habe, so Callaghan, in ähnlichem Ausmaß wie Oracle, Hardware und Software tatsächlich integriert. So manche Anbieter würden zwar beides zusammenschnüren, aber bei weitem nicht so optimal abgestimmt und verflochten, wie beim „Red Stack“ von Oracle. Neben Keynotes von Jürgen Kunz, SVP Technology Northern Europe & Country Leader Germany, und Christian Werner, Senior Director Alliances & Channels Germany, zu Neuheiten und Entwicklungspotenzialen im Oracle Universum und den Präsentationen aus verschiedenen Spezialisierung-Fachgebieten, gab es sogar einen Blick in die Zukunft der IT: Der Informatiker Professor Hermann Maurer präsentierte nicht nur existierende und geplante Innovationen, etwa die berüchtigte Computerbrille, die bald das Smartphone abzulösen soll – eine ordentliche Portion Science-Fiction war auch dabei. Im Laufe des Tages nutzten diverse Partner die Möglichkeit, vor Ort den Test als OPN Implementation Specialist beim Testcenter Pearson Vue abzulegen. Viele Teilnehmer zeigten sich beeindruckt von den vielen guten Gesprächen untereinander und schöpften die Möglichkeit zum Networking und Erfahrungsaustausch voll aus. Bei einem so dichten Programm ist es natürlich schwierig, wirklich alles mitzunehmen. Daher haben wir die Präsentationen, die auf dem Oracle Partner Day gehalten wurden, hier in der Agenda noch einmal für Sie zusammengestellt. Spannend wurde es bei der Oracle Partner Award Ceremony: Zum zweiten Mal wurden dort deutsche Partner ausgezeichnet, die sich mit besonderem Engagement und Erfolg spezialisiert haben. Wer die glücklichen Gewinner sind und was ihr Unternehmen auszeichnet, lesen sie ebenfalls hier im Blog. Allen Siegern gratulieren wir noch einmal ganz herzlich! Nachdem es im voraus schon wilde Spekulationen gab, was sich wohl hinter der „Oracle Sports Challenge“ verbergen würde, wollen wir diese Frage auch hier auflösen: Wer nach dem vielen Sitzen Lust auf Bewegung hatte, konnte sich verschiedenen, mehr oder weniger sportlichen Herausforderungen stellen. Zu meistern waren verschiedene Geschicklichkeits-Spiele, unter anderem ein fast mannshoher „Oracle Stack“, den es in Yenga-Manier aufrecht zu erhalten galt, Torschüsse auf ein Tor, das von einem vollautomatischen Robo-Keeper bewacht wurde und eine Video-Wand mit einem spielerischen Reaktionstest rund um den „Red Stack“. Den ganzen Tag über konnten die Teilnehmer hinter QR-Codes versteckte Buchstaben sammeln und mit etwas Glück und Geschick einen von drei iPod Supernanos gewinnen. Abgerundet wurde das Programm durch Auftritte der Entertainment-Saxophonistinnen „Hot Sax Club“, der beeindruckenden Fußball-Freestyler mit ihrer Ballakrobatik, dem Close-up Magier Marc Gassert und unseren DJ, der für Stimmung sorgte. Eindrücke und Highlights vom Oracle Partner Day in Frankfurt sehen Sie hier, im Best-of-Video und in unserer Fotogalerie. Lassen Sie einen gelungenen Tag noch einmal Revue passieren – oder sehen Sie, was Sie alles verpasst haben. Aber: nicht traurig sein, der nächste Oracle Partner Day kommt bestimmt!

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  • News, Perspektiven und jede Menge Gesprächsstoff - Der Oracle Partner Day 2012

    - by A&C Redaktion
    Was für ein Tag! Unter dem Motto „Maximize your Potential“ kamen über 470 Teilnehmerinnen und Teilnehmer beim Oracle Partner Day 2012 zusammen. Hier drehte sich alles um unsere Partner, die, wie Silvia Kaske, Senior Director Alliances & Channel Europe North, in ihrer Begrüßung betonte, „ein sehr wichtiger Baustein in der Wachstumsstrategie von Oracle“ sind. Wie einmalig diese Partnerschaft ist, betonte auch David Callaghan, Senior Vice President EMEA Alliances & Channel in seiner Keynote. Niemand sonst habe, so Callaghan, in ähnlichem Ausmaß wie Oracle, Hardware und Software tatsächlich integriert. So manche Anbieter würden zwar beides zusammenschnüren, aber bei weitem nicht so optimal abgestimmt und verflochten, wie beim „Red Stack“ von Oracle. Neben Keynotes von Jürgen Kunz, SVP Technology Northern Europe & Country Leader Germany, und Christian Werner, Senior Director Alliances & Channels Germany, zu Neuheiten und Entwicklungspotenzialen im Oracle Universum und den Präsentationen aus verschiedenen Spezialisierung-Fachgebieten, gab es sogar einen Blick in die Zukunft der IT: Der Informatiker Professor Hermann Maurer präsentierte nicht nur existierende und geplante Innovationen, etwa die berüchtigte Computerbrille, die bald das Smartphone abzulösen soll – eine ordentliche Portion Science-Fiction war auch dabei. Im Laufe des Tages nutzten diverse Partner die Möglichkeit, vor Ort den Test als OPN Implementation Specialist beim Testcenter Pearson Vue abzulegen. Viele Teilnehmer zeigten sich beeindruckt von den vielen guten Gesprächen untereinander und schöpften die Möglichkeit zum Networking und Erfahrungsaustausch voll aus. Bei einem so dichten Programm ist es natürlich schwierig, wirklich alles mitzunehmen. Daher haben wir die Präsentationen, die auf dem Oracle Partner Day gehalten wurden, hier in der Agenda noch einmal für Sie zusammengestellt. Spannend wurde es bei der Oracle Partner Award Ceremony: Zum zweiten Mal wurden dort deutsche Partner ausgezeichnet, die sich mit besonderem Engagement und Erfolg spezialisiert haben. Wer die glücklichen Gewinner sind und was ihr Unternehmen auszeichnet, lesen sie ebenfalls hier im Blog. Allen Siegern gratulieren wir noch einmal ganz herzlich! Nachdem es im voraus schon wilde Spekulationen gab, was sich wohl hinter der „Oracle Sports Challenge“ verbergen würde, wollen wir diese Frage auch hier auflösen: Wer nach dem vielen Sitzen Lust auf Bewegung hatte, konnte sich verschiedenen, mehr oder weniger sportlichen Herausforderungen stellen. Zu meistern waren verschiedene Geschicklichkeits-Spiele, unter anderem ein fast mannshoher „Oracle Stack“, den es in Yenga-Manier aufrecht zu erhalten galt, Torschüsse auf ein Tor, das von einem vollautomatischen Robo-Keeper bewacht wurde und eine Video-Wand mit einem spielerischen Reaktionstest rund um den „Red Stack“. Den ganzen Tag über konnten die Teilnehmer hinter QR-Codes versteckte Buchstaben sammeln und mit etwas Glück und Geschick einen von drei iPod Supernanos gewinnen. Abgerundet wurde das Programm durch Auftritte der Entertainment-Saxophonistinnen „Hot Sax Club“, der beeindruckenden Fußball-Freestyler mit ihrer Ballakrobatik, dem Close-up Magier Marc Gassert und unseren DJ, der für Stimmung sorgte. Eindrücke und Highlights vom Oracle Partner Day in Frankfurt sehen Sie hier, im Best-of-Video und in unserer Fotogalerie. Lassen Sie einen gelungenen Tag noch einmal Revue passieren – oder sehen Sie, was Sie alles verpasst haben. Aber: nicht traurig sein, der nächste Oracle Partner Day kommt bestimmt!

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  • Game timings and formats

    - by topright
    There are more or less standardized TV-show/movie formats and recommended timings: 1. By the early 1960s, television companies commonly presented half-hour long "comedy" series, or one hour long "dramas." Half-hour series were mostly restricted to situation comedy or family comedy, and were usually aired with either a live or artificial laugh track. One hour dramas included genre series such as police and detective series, westerns, science fiction, and, later, serialized prime time soap operas. Programs today still overwhelmingly conform to these half-hour and one hour guidelines. Source 2. In the United States, most medical dramas are one hour long. Source 3. Traditionally serials were broadcast as fifteen minute installments each weekday in daytime slots. In 1956 As the World Turns debuted as the first half-hour soap opera. All soap operas broadcast half-hour episodes by the end of the 1960s. With increased popularity in the 1970s most soap operas expanded to an hour (Another World even expanded to ninety minutes for a short time). More than half of the serials had expanded to one hour episodes by 1980. As of 2010, six of the seven US serials air one hour episodes each weekday. Source Interesting. Are there any standards of timing in game development? Well, 5-20 minutes casual games, of course. There is even a "5-minutes-game" site. And 1-hour-gamer site. Are there 1-week, 1-year, 1-eternity game formats? Chess and Go - deep games that you can study all your life; but they are played in hour or several days (pro games). Addictive long-term online role-playing games (without win-condition) are played in monthes and, possibly, years. Replayability is an important factor to consider. It's good when game design document contains a line: "A game is designed for solving in X hours". How can it be measured before there is any prototype or demo? When you know your game format, you know your audience (and vice versa). It is practical question. Are there psychological researches about dynamic of gaming interest and involvement? And is there a correlation between game format and game genre?

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  • Cheating on Technical Debt

    - by Tony Davis
    One bad practice guaranteed to cause dismay amongst your colleagues is passing on technical debt without full disclosure. There could only be two reasons for this. Either the developer or DBA didn’t know the difference between good and bad practices, or concealed the debt. Neither reflects well on their professional competence. Technical debt, or code debt, is a convenient term to cover all the compromises between the ideal solution and the actual solution, reflecting the reality of the pressures of commercial coding. The one time you’re guaranteed to hear one developer, or DBA, pass judgment on another is when he or she inherits their project, and is surprised by the amount of technical debt left lying around in the form of inelegant architecture, incomplete tests, confusing interface design, no documentation, and so on. It is often expedient for a Project Manager to ignore the build-up of technical debt, the cut corners, not-quite-finished features and rushed designs that mean progress is satisfyingly rapid in the short term. It’s far less satisfying for the poor person who inherits the code. Nothing sends a colder chill down the spine than the dawning realization that you’ve inherited a system crippled with performance and functional issues that will take months of pain to fix before you can even begin to make progress on any of the planned new features. It’s often hard to justify this ‘debt paying’ time to the project owners and managers. It just looks as if you are making no progress, in marked contrast to your predecessor. There can be many good reasons for allowing technical debt to build up, at least in the short term. Often, rapid prototyping is essential, there is a temporary shortfall in test resources, or the domain knowledge is incomplete. It may be necessary to hit a specific deadline with a prototype, or proof-of-concept, to explore a possible market opportunity, with planned iterations and refactoring to follow later. However, it is a crime for a developer to build up technical debt without making this clear to the project participants. He or she needs to record it explicitly. A design compromise made in to order to hit a deadline, be it an outright hack, or a decision made without time for rigorous investigation and testing, needs to be documented with the same rigor that one tracks a bug. What’s the best way to do this? Ideally, we’d have some kind of objective assessment of the level of technical debt in a software project, although that smacks of Science Fiction even as I write it. I’d be interested of hear of any methods you’ve used, but I’m sure most teams have to rely simply on the integrity of their colleagues and the clear perceptions of the project manager… Cheers, Tony.

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  • What are useful .screenrc settings?

    - by gyaresu
    Basically like some of my own that I've posted below. I'm looking for added functionality to the programme 'screen'. At the very least have a look at the last line for a fantastic 'menu bar' at the bottom of a screen session. ## gyaresu's .screenrc 2008-03-25 # http://delicious.com/search?p=screenrc # Don't display the copyright page startup_message off # tab-completion flash in heading bar vbell off # keep scrollback n lines defscrollback 1000 # Doesn't fix scrollback problem on xterm because if you scroll back # all you see is the other terminals history. # termcapinfo xterm|xterms|xs|rxvt ti@:te@ # These will let you use bind -c selectHighs 0 select 10 #these three commands are bind -c selectHighs 1 select 11 #added to the command-class bind -c selectHighs 2 select 12 #selectHighs bind -c selectHighs 3 select 13 bind -c selectHighs 4 select 14 bind -c selectHighs 5 select 15 bind - command -c selectHighs #bind the hyphen to #command-class selectHighs screen -t rtorrent 0 rtorrent #screen -t tunes 1 ncmpc --host=192.168.1.4 --port=6600 #was for connecting to MPD music server. screen -t stuff 1 screen -t irssi 2 irssi screen -t dancing 4 screen -t python 5 python screen -t giantfriend 6 these_are_ssh_to_server_scripts.sh screen -t computerrescue 7 these_are_ssh_to_server_scripts.sh screen -t BMon 8 bmon -p eth0 screen -t htop 9 htop screen -t hellanzb 10 hellanzb screen -t watching 3 #screen -t interactive.fiction 8 #screen -t hellahella 8 paster serve --daemon /home/gyaresu/downloads/hellahella/hella.ini shelltitle "$ |bash" # THIS IS THE PRETTY BIT #change the hardstatus settings to give an window list at the bottom of the ##screen, with the time and date and with the current window highlighted hardstatus alwayslastline #hardstatus string '%{= mK}%-Lw%{= KW}%50>%n%f* %t%{= mK}%+Lw%< %{= kG}%-=%D %d %M %Y %c:%s%{-}' hardstatus string '%{= kG}[ %{G}%H %{g}][%= %{= kw}%?%-Lw%?%{r}(%{W}%n*%f%t%?(%u)%?%{r})%{w}%?%+Lw%?%?%= %{g}][%{B} %d/%m %{W}%c %{g}]'

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  • Do We Indeed Have a Future? George Takei on Star Wars.

    - by Bil Simser
    George Takei (rhymes with Okay), probably best known for playing Hikaru Sulu on the original Star Trek, has always had deep concerns for the present and the future. Whether on Earth or among the stars, he has the welfare of humanity very much at heart. I was digging through my old copies of Famous Monsters of Filmland, a great publication on monster and films that I grew up with, and came across this. This was his reaction to STAR WARS from issue 139 of Famous Monsters of Filmland and was written June 6, 1977. It is reprinted here without permission but I hope since the message is still valid to this day and has never been reprinted anywhere, nobody will mind me sharing it. STAR WARS is the most pre-posterously diverting galactic escape and at the same time the most hideously credible portent of the future yet.While I thrilled to the exploits that reminded me of the heroics of Errol Flynn as Robin Hood, Burt Lancaster as the Crimson Pirate and Buster Crabbe as Flash Gordon, I was at the same time aghast at the phantasmagoric violence technology can place at our disposal. STAR WARS raised in my mind the question - do we indeed have a future?It seems to me what George Lucas has done is to masterfully guide us on a journey through space and time and bring us back face to face with today's reality. STAR WARS is more than science fiction, I think it is science fictitious reality.Just yesterday, June 7, 1977, I read that the United States will embark on the production of a neutron bomb - a bomb that will kill people on a gigantic scale but will not destroy buildings. A few days before that, I read that the Pentagon is fearful that the Soviets may have developed a warhead that could neutralize ours that have a capacity for that irrational concept overkill to the nth power. Already, it seems we have the technology to realize the awesome special effects simulations that we saw in the film.The political scene of STAR WARS is that of government by force and power, of revolutions based on some unfathomable grievance, survival through a combination of cunning and luck and success by the harnessing of technology -  a picture not very much at variance from the political headlines that we read today.And most of all, look at the people; both the heroes in the film and the reaction of the audience. First, the heroes; Luke Skywalker is a pretty but easily led youth. Without any real philosophy to guide him, he easily falls under the influence of a mystical old man believed previously to be an eccentric hermit. Recognize a 1960's hippie or a 1970's moonie? Han Solo has a philosophy coupled with courage and skill. His philosophy is money. His proficiency comes for a price - the highest. Solo is a thoroughly avaricious mercenary. And the Princess, a decisive, strong, self-confident and chilly woman. The audience cheered when she wielded a gun. In all three, I missed qualities that could be called humane - love, kindness, yes, I missed sensuality. I also missed a sense of ideals and faith. In this regard the machines seemed more human. They demonstrated real affection for each other and an occasional poutiness. They exhibited a sense of fidelity and constancy. The machines were humanized and the humans conversely seemed mechanical.As a member of the audience, I was swept up by the sheer romantic escapsim of it all. The deering-dos, the rope swing escape across the pit, the ray gun battles and especially the swash buckle with the ray swords. Great fun!But I just hope that we weren't too intoxicated by the escapism to be able to focus on the recognizable. I hope the beauty of the effects didn't narcotize our sensitivity to violence. I hope the people see through the fantastically well done futuristic mirrors to the disquieting reflection of our own society. I hope they enjoy STAR WARS without being "purely entertained".

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  • Friday Fun: Spell Blazer

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

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  • Personal Financial Management – The need for resuscitation

    - by Salil Ravindran
    Until a year or so ago, PFM (Personal Financial Management) was the blue eyed boy of every channel banking head. In an age when bank account portability is still fiction, PFM was expected to incentivise customers to switch banks. It still is, in some emerging economies, but if the state of PFM in matured markets is anything to go by, it is in a state of coma and badly requires resuscitation. Studies conducted around the year show an alarming decline and stagnation in PFM usage in mature markets. A Sept 2012 report by Aite Group – Strategies for PFM Success shows that 72% of users hadn’t used PFM and worse, 58% of them were not kicked about using it. Of the rest who had used it, only half did on a bank site. While there are multiple reasons for this lack of adoption, some are glaringly obvious. While pretty graphs and pie charts are important to provide a visual representation of my income and expense, it is simply not enough to encourage me to return. Static representation of data without any insightful analysis does not help me. Budgeting and Cash Flow is important but when I have an operative account, a couple of savings accounts, a mortgage loan and a couple of credit cards help me with what my affordability is in specific contexts rather than telling me I just busted my budget. Help me with relative importance of each budget category so that I know it is fine to go over budget on books for my daughter as against going over budget on eating out. Budget over runs and spend analysis are post facto and I am informed of my sins only when I return to online banking. That too, only if I decide to come to the PFM area. Fundamentally, PFM should be a part of my banking engagement rather than an analysis tool. It should be contextual so that I can make insight based decisions. So what can be done to resuscitate PFM? Amalgamation with banking activities – In most cases, PFM tools are integrated into online banking pages and they are like chapter 37 of a long story. PFM needs to be a way of banking rather than a tool. Available balances should shift to Spendable Balances. Budget and goal related insights should be integrated with transaction sessions to drive pre-event financial decisions. Personal Financial Guidance - Banks need to think ground level and see if their PFM offering is really helping customers achieve self actualisation. Banks need to recognise that most customers out there are non-proficient about making the best value of their money. Customers return when they know that they are being guided rather than being just informed on their finance. Integrating contextual financial offers and financial planning into PFM is one way ahead. Yet another way is to help customers tag unwanted spending thereby encouraging sound savings habits. Mobile PFM – Most banks have left all those numbers on online banking. With access mostly having moved to devices and the success of apps, moving PFM on to devices will give it a much needed shot in the arm. This is not only about presenting the same wine in a new bottle but also about leveraging the power of the device in pushing real time notifications to make pre-purchase decisions. The pursuit should be to analyse spend, budgets and financial goals real time and push them pre-event on to the device. So next time, I should know that I have over run my eating out budget before walking into that burger joint and not after. Increase participation and collaboration – Peer group experiences and comments are valued above those offered by the bank. Integrating social media into PFM engagement will let customers share and solicit their financial management experiences with their peer group. Peer comparisons help benchmark one’s savings and spending habits with those of the peer group and increases stickiness. While mature markets have gone through this learning in some way over the last one year, banks in maturing digital banking economies increasingly seem to be falling into this trap. Best practices lie in profiling and segmenting customers, being where they are and contextually guiding them to identify and achieve their financial goals. Banks could look at the likes of Simple and Movenbank to draw inpiration from.

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  • Is there a standard lexer/parser tool for Python?

    - by Salim Fadhley
    A volunteer job requires us to convert a large number of LaTeX documents into ePub format. It's a series of open-source fiction book which has so far only been produced only on paper via a print on demand service. We'd like to be able to offer the book to users of book-reader devices (such as Kindle) which require the ePub format for best results. Fortunately, ePub is a very simple format, however there's no trivial way for LaTeX to produce the XHTML outut required. We experimented with alternative LaTeX compilers (e.g. plastex) but in the end we figured that it would probably be a lot easier to simply write our own compiler which understands a tiny subset of the LaTeX language and compiles directly to XHTML / ePub. Previously I used a tool on Windows called GOLD. This allowed me to go directly from BNF grammars to a stub parser. It also alllowed me to implement the parser in any language I liked. (I'd choose Python). This product has to work on Linux, so I'm wondering if there's an equivalent toolchain that works as well under Ubutnu / Eclipse / Python. The idea is that we will take the grammar of TeX and just implement a teeny subset of that, but we do not want to spend a huge amount of time worrying about grammar and parsing. A parser generator would obviously save us a great deal of time. Sal UPDATE 1: Bonus marks for a solution with excellent documentation or tutorials.

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  • subtotals in columns usind reshape2 in R

    - by user1043144
    I have spent some time now learning RESHAPE2 and plyr but I still do not get it. This time I have a problem with (a) subtotals and (b) passing different aggregate functions . Here an example using data from the excellent tutorial on the blog of mrdwab http://news.mrdwab.com/ # libraries library(plyr) library(reshape2) # get data and add few more variables book.sales = read.csv("http://news.mrdwab.com/data-booksales") book.sales$Stock = book.sales$Quantity + 10 book.sales$SubjCat[(book.sales$Subject == 'Economics') | (book.sales$Subject == 'Management') ] <- '1_EconSciences' book.sales$SubjCat[book.sales$Subject %in% c('Anthropology', 'Politics', 'Sociology') ] <- '2_SocSciences' book.sales$SubjCat[book.sales$Subject %in% c('Communication', 'Fiction', 'History', 'Research', 'Statistics') ] <- '3_other' # to get to my starting dataframe (close to the project I am working on) book.sales1 <- ddply(book.sales, c('Region', 'Representative', 'SubjCat', 'Subject', 'Publisher'), summarize, Stock = sum(Stock), Sold = sum(Quantity), Ratio = round((100 * sum(Quantity)/ sum(Stock)), digits = 1)) #melt it m.book.sales = melt(data = book.sales1, id.vars = c('Region', 'Representative', 'SubjCat', 'Subject', 'Publisher'), measured.vars = c('Stock', 'Sold', 'Ratio')) # cast it Tab1 <- dcast(data = m.book.sales, formula = Region + Representative ~ Publisher + variable, fun.aggregate = sum, margins = c('Region', 'Representative')) Now my questions : I have been able to add the subtotals in rows. But is it possible also to add margins in the columns. Say for example, Totals of Stock for one Publisher ? Sorry I meant to say example total sold for all publishers There is a problem with the columns with “ratio”. How can I get “mean” instead of “sum” for this variable ? P.S: I have seen some examples using reshape. Will you recommend to use it instead of reshape2 (which seems not to include the functionalities of two functions).

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