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• Should we design programs to randomly kill themselves?

  - by jimbojw

  In a nutshell, should we design death into our programs, processes, and threads at a low level, for the good of the overall system? Failures happen. Processes die. We plan for disaster and occasionally recover from it. But we rarely design and implement unpredictable program death. We hope that our services' uptimes are as long as we care to keep them running. A macro-example of this concept is Netflix's Chaos Monkey, which randomly terminates AWS instances in some scenarios. They claim that this has helped them discover problems and build more redundant systems. What I'm talking about is lower level. The idea is for traditionally long-running processes to randomly exit. This should force redundancy into the design and ultimately produce more resilient systems. Does this concept already have a name? Is it already being used in the industry?

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• Dropbox 99% instalation crash. Strange "Searching" Ubuntu Software Center bug [closed]

  - by kocios

  Possible Duplicate: Dropbox fails to install, stuck at 99% I just installed Dropbox via Ubuntu Software Center, and the known crash of 99%, which was in Ubuntu Software center, happened. I want to remove Dropbox completely since something went wrong, but I can't. When I start my Ubuntu, it starts a process which eats up all of the CPU. In Ubuntu Software Center, there is a process "Searching Applying Changes", but nothing really happens. When I'm trying to uninstall Dropbox, nothing happens, since the seaching thing is "first". Please, I'm asking for a option which doesn't include proper reinstallation of Dropbox, only of getting rid of it, and without reinstalling the whole Ubuntu system (format, chaos etc).

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• Are there programs that iteratively write new programs?

  - by chris

  For about a year I have been thinking about writing a program that writes programs. This would primarily be a playful exercise that might teach me some new concepts. My inspiration came from negentropy and the ability for order to emerge from chaos and new chaos to arise out of order in infinite succession. To be more specific, the program would start by writing a short random string. If the string compiles the programs will log it for later comparison. If the string does not compile the program will try to rewrite it until it does compile. As more strings (mini 'useless' programs) are logged they can be parsed for similarities and used to generate a grammar. This grammar can then be drawn on to write more strings that have a higher probability of compilation than purely random strings. This is obviously more than a little silly, but I thought it would be fun to try and grow a program like this. And as a byproduct I get a bunch of unique programs that I can visualize and call art. I'll probably write this in Ruby due to its simple syntax and dynamic compilation and then I will visualize in processing using ruby-processing. What I would like to know is: Is there a name for this type of programming? What currently exists in this field? Who are the primary contributors? BONUS! - In what ways can I procedurally assign value to output programs beyond compiles(y/n)? I may want to extend the functionality of this program to generate a program based on parameters, but I want the program to define those parameters through running the programs that compile and assigning meaning to the programs output. This question is probably more involved than reasonable for a bonus, but if you can think of a simple way to get something like this done in less than 23 lines or one hyperlink, please toss it into your response. I know that this is not quite meta-programming and from the little I know of AI and generative algorithms they are usually more goal oriented than what I am thinking. What would be optimal is a program that continually rewrites and improves itself so I don't have to ^_^

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• Pretty Pixel-level Picture Painting, Programatically

  - by dreeves

  My mac laptop has 1,024,000 pixels. What's the simplest way to turn my display completely black and go nuts with writing little programs to twiddle pixels to my heart's delight? To make it more concrete, say I wanted to implement the Chaos Game to draw a Sierpinski triangle, at the pixel level, with nothing else on the screen. What are ways to do that?

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• Week in Geek: 4chan Falls Victim to DDoS Attack Edition

  - by Asian Angel

  This week we learned how to tweak the low battery action on a Windows 7 laptop, access an eBook collection anywhere in the world, “extend iPad battery life, batch resize photos, & sync massive music collections”, went on a reign of destruction with Snow Crusher, and had fun decorating our desktops with abstract icon collections. Photo by pasukaru76. Random Geek Links We have included extra news article goodness to help you catch up on any developments that you may have missed during the holiday break this past week. Note: The three 27C3 articles listed here represent three different presentations at the 27th Chaos Communication Congress hacker conference. 4chan victim of DDoS as FBI investigates role in PayPal attack Users of 4chan may have gotten a taste of their own medicine after the site was knocked offline by a DDoS attack from an unknown origin early Thursday morning. Report: FBI seizes server in probe of WikiLeaks attacks The FBI has seized a server in Texas as part of its hunt for the groups behind the pro-WikiLeaks denial-of-service attacks launched in December against PayPal, Visa, MasterCard, and others. Mozilla exposes older user-account database Mozilla has disabled 44,000 older user accounts for its Firefox add-ons site after a security researcher found part of a database of the account information on a publicly available server. Data breach affects 4.9 million Honda customers Japanese automaker Honda has put some 2.2 million customers in the United States on a security breach alert after a database containing information on the owners and their cars was hacked. Chinese Trojan discovered in Android games An Android-based Trojan called “Geinimi” has been discovered in the wild and the Trojan is capable of sending personal information to remote servers and exhibits botnet-like behavior. 27C3 presentation claims many mobiles vulnerable to SMS attacks According to security experts, an ‘SMS of death’ threatens to disable many current Sony Ericsson, Samsung, Motorola, Micromax and LG mobiles. 27C3: GSM cell phones even easier to tap Security researchers have demonstrated how open source software on a number of revamped, entry-level cell phones can decrypt and record mobile phone calls in the GSM network. 27C3: danger lurks in PDF documents Security researcher Julia Wolf has pointed out numerous, previously hardly known, security problems in connection with Adobe’s PDF standard. Critical update for WordPress A critical update has been made available for WordPress in the form of version 3.0.4. The update fixes a security bug in WordPress’s KSES library. McAfee Labs Predicts Geolocation, Mobile Devices and Apple Will Top the List of Targets for Emerging Threats in 2011 The list comprises 2010’s most buzzed about platforms and services, including Google’s Android, Apple’s iPhone, foursquare, Google TV and the Mac OS X platform, which are all expected to become major targets for cybercriminals. McAfee Labs also predicts that politically motivated attacks will be on the rise. Windows Phone 7 piracy materializes with FreeMarketplace A proof-of-concept application, FreeMarketplace, that allows any Windows Phone 7 application to be downloaded and installed free of charge has been developed. Empty email accounts, and some bad buzz for Hotmail In the past few days, a number of Hotmail users have been complaining about a rather disconcerting issue: their Hotmail accounts, some up to 10 years old, appear completely empty.  No emails, no folders, nothing, just what appears to be a new account. Reports: Nintendo warns of 3DS risk for kids Nintendo has reportedly issued a warning that the 3DS, its eagerly awaited glasses-free 3D portable gaming device, should not be used by children under 6 when the gadget is in 3D-viewing mode. Google eyes ‘cloaking’ as next antispam target Google plans to take a closer look at the practice of “cloaking,” or presenting one look to a Googlebot crawling one’s site while presenting another look to users. Facebook, Twitter stock trading drawing SEC eye? The high degree of investor interest in shares of hot Silicon Valley companies that aren’t yet publicly traded–like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Zynga–may be leading to scrutiny from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Random TinyHacker Links Photo by jcraveiro. Exciting Software Set for Release in 2011 A few bloggers from great websites such as How-To Geek, Guiding Tech and 7 Tutorials took the time to sit down and talk about their software wishes for 2011. Take the time to read it and share… Wikileaks Infopr0n An infographic detailing the quest to plug WikiLeaks. The New York Times Guide to Mobile Apps A growing collection of all mobile app coverage by the New York Times as well as lists of favorite apps from Times writers. 7,000,000,000 (Video) A fascinating look at the world’s population via National Geographic Magazine. Super User Questions Check out the great answers to these hot questions from Super User. How to use a Personal computer as a Linux web server for development purposes? How to link processing power of old computers together? Free virtualization tool for testing suspicious files? Why do some actions not work with Remote Desktop? What is the simplest way to send a large batch of pictures to a distant friend or colleague? How-To Geek Weekly Article Recap Had a busy week and need to get caught up on your HTG reading? Then sit back and relax while enjoying these hot posts full of how-to roundup goodness. The 50 Best How-To Geek Windows Articles of 2010 The 20 Best How-To Geek Explainer Topics for 2010 The 20 Best How-To Geek Linux Articles of 2010 How to Search Just the Site You’re Viewing Using Google Search Ask the Readers: Backing Your Files Up – Local Storage versus the Cloud One Year Ago on How-To Geek Need more how-to geekiness for your weekend? Then look through this great batch of articles from one year ago that focus on dual-booting and O.S. installation goodness. Dual Boot Your Pre-Installed Windows 7 Computer with Vista Dual Boot Your Pre-Installed Windows 7 Computer with XP How To Setup a USB Flash Drive to Install Windows 7 Dual Boot Your Pre-Installed Windows 7 Computer with Ubuntu Easily Install Ubuntu Linux with Windows Using the Wubi Installer The Geek Note We hope that you and your families have had a terrific holiday break as everyone prepares to return to work and school this week. Remember to keep those great tips coming in to us at [email protected]! Photo by pjbeardsley. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC 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 Complete List of iPad Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials Tune Pop Enhances Android Music Notifications Another Busy Night in Gotham City Wallpaper Classic Super Mario Brothers Theme for Chrome and Iron Experimental Firefox Builds Put Tabs on the Title Bar (Available for Download) Android Trojan Found in the Wild Chaos, Panic, and Disorder Wallpaper

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• A Guided Tour of Complexity

  - by JoshReuben

  I just re-read Complexity – A Guided Tour by Melanie Mitchell , protégé of Douglas Hofstadter ( author of “Gödel, Escher, Bach”) http://www.amazon.com/Complexity-Guided-Tour-Melanie-Mitchell/dp/0199798109/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1339744329&sr=8-1 here are some notes and links:   Evolved from Cybernetics, General Systems Theory, Synergetics some interesting transdisciplinary fields to investigate: Chaos Theory - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory – small differences in initial conditions (such as those due to rounding errors in numerical computation) yield widely diverging outcomes for chaotic systems, rendering long-term prediction impossible. System Dynamics / Cybernetics - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Dynamics – study of how feedback changes system behavior Network Theory - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_theory – leverage Graph Theory to analyze symmetric  / asymmetric relations between discrete objects Algebraic Topology - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algebraic_topology – leverage abstract algebra to analyze topological spaces There are limits to deterministic systems & to computation. Chaos Theory definitely applies to training an ANN (artificial neural network) – different weights will emerge depending upon the random selection of the training set. In recursive Non-Linear systems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonlinear_system – output is not directly inferable from input. E.g. a Logistic map: Xt+1 = R Xt(1-Xt) Different types of bifurcations, attractor states and oscillations may occur – e.g. a Lorenz Attractor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorenz_system Feigenbaum Constants http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feigenbaum_constants express ratios in a bifurcation diagram for a non-linear map – the convergent limit of R (the rate of period-doubling bifurcations) is 4.6692016 Maxwell’s Demon - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_demon - the Second Law of Thermodynamics has only a statistical certainty – the universe (and thus information) tends towards entropy. While any computation can theoretically be done without expending energy, with finite memory, the act of erasing memory is permanent and increases entropy. Life & thought is a counter-example to the universe’s tendency towards entropy. Leo Szilard and later Claude Shannon came up with the Information Theory of Entropy - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(information_theory) whereby Shannon entropy quantifies the expected value of a message’s information in bits in order to determine channel capacity and leverage Coding Theory (compression analysis). Ludwig Boltzmann came up with Statistical Mechanics - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_mechanics – whereby our Newtonian perception of continuous reality is a probabilistic and statistical aggregate of many discrete quantum microstates. This is relevant for Quantum Information Theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_information and the Physics of Information - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_information. Hilbert’s Problems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert's_problems pondered whether mathematics is complete, consistent, and decidable (the Decision Problem – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entscheidungsproblem – is there always an algorithm that can determine whether a statement is true).  Godel’s Incompleteness Theorems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del's_incompleteness_theorems  proved that mathematics cannot be both complete and consistent (e.g. “This statement is not provable”). Turing through the use of Turing Machines (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_machine symbol processors that can prove mathematical statements) and Universal Turing Machines (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Turing_machine Turing Machines that can emulate other any Turing Machine via accepting programs as well as data as input symbols) that computation is limited by demonstrating the Halting Problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem (is is not possible to know when a program will complete – you cannot build an infinite loop detector). You may be used to thinking of 1 / 2 / 3 dimensional systems, but Fractal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal systems are defined by self-similarity & have non-integer Hausdorff Dimensions !!!  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fractals_by_Hausdorff_dimension – the fractal dimension quantifies the number of copies of a self similar object at each level of detail – eg Koch Snowflake - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch_snowflake Definitions of complexity: size, Shannon entropy, Algorithmic Information Content (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithmic_information_theory - size of shortest program that can generate a description of an object) Logical depth (amount of info processed), thermodynamic depth (resources required). Complexity is statistical and fractal. John Von Neumann’s other machine was the Self-Reproducing Automaton http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_machine  . Cellular Automata http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_automaton are alternative form of Universal Turing machine to traditional Von Neumann machines where grid cells are locally synchronized with their neighbors according to a rule. Conway’s Game of Life http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_Game_of_Life demonstrates various emergent constructs such as “Glider Guns” and “Spaceships”. Cellular Automatons are not practical because logical ops require a large number of cells – wasteful & inefficient. There are no compilers or general program languages available for Cellular Automatons (as far as I am aware). Random Boolean Networks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boolean_network are extensions of cellular automata where nodes are connected at random (not to spatial neighbors) and each node has its own rule –> they demonstrate the emergence of complex  & self organized behavior. Stephen Wolfram’s (creator of Mathematica, so give him the benefit of the doubt) New Kind of Science http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_New_Kind_of_Science proposes the universe may be a discrete Finite State Automata http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite-state_machine whereby reality emerges from simple rules. I am 2/3 through this book. It is feasible that the universe is quantum discrete at the plank scale and that it computes itself – Digital Physics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_physics – a simulated reality? Anyway, all behavior is supposedly derived from simple algorithmic rules & falls into 4 patterns: uniform , nested / cyclical, random (Rule 30 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_30) & mixed (Rule 110 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_110 localized structures – it is this that is interesting). interaction between colliding propagating signal inputs is then information processing. Wolfram proposes the Principle of Computational Equivalence - http://mathworld.wolfram.com/PrincipleofComputationalEquivalence.html - all processes that are not obviously simple can be viewed as computations of equivalent sophistication. Meaning in information may emerge from analogy & conceptual slippages – see the CopyCat program: http://cognitrn.psych.indiana.edu/rgoldsto/courses/concepts/copycat.pdf Scale Free Networks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale-free_network have a distribution governed by a Power Law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_law - much more common than Normal Distribution). They are characterized by hubs (resilience to random deletion of nodes), heterogeneity of degree values, self similarity, & small world structure. They grow via preferential attachment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preferential_attachment – tipping points triggered by positive feedback loops. 2 theories of cascading system failures in complex systems are Self-Organized Criticality http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-organized_criticality and Highly Optimized Tolerance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highly_optimized_tolerance. Computational Mechanics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_mechanics – use of computational methods to study phenomena governed by the principles of mechanics. This book is a great intuition pump, but does not cover the more mathematical subject of Computational Complexity Theory – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_complexity_theory I am currently reading this book on this subject: http://www.amazon.com/Computational-Complexity-Christos-H-Papadimitriou/dp/0201530821/ref=pd_sim_b_1   stay tuned for that review!

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• How to open a program on particular desktop?

  - by Vi

  When I start GUI program, it's window appears appears on currently active desktop (essentially, on random desktop). How to make it to appear on the specified desktop? For example, at startup I want certain programs to be started and distributed to desktops. I've already set up config file of openbox to force some programs to always start on specific desktop. Ideally it should be like: start_on_desktop 1 gnome-terminal --tab -e program1 --tab -e program2 start_on_desktop 2 gnome-terminal --tab -e program3 --tab -e program4 start_on_desktop 3 firefox It should be able to start the same program on other desktop. Also dislike when I start program while being on desktop X then switch to desktop Y and SUDDENLY a program which should be on X appears on Y. When I start lots of programs on and switch often between desktops they end up being in chaos and I need to collect them together and redistribute sanely. Also I want the first initial gnome-terminal to be on desktop 3, but I also want subsequent gnome-terminals to be on the desktop where I pressed the keystroke (also configured in openbox) that launches gnome-terminal.

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• Tools for tracking disk usage

  - by Carey

  I manage a number of linux fileservers. These all run applications written from 0-10 years ago. As sometimes happens, a machine will come close to, or run out of disk space. Reasons include applications not rotating log files, a machine with 500GB of disk producing 150GB of new files every month that were not written to tape, databases gradually increasing in size, people doing silly things...generally a bit of chaos. Anyway, when a machine unexpectedly goes from 50% to 100% full in a couple of hours, I figure out what broke (lots of "du") and delete files or contact someone. I also can look at cacti graphs to figure out what the machine's normal disk usage is (e.g. for /home). Does anyone know of any tools that will give finer grained information on historial usage than a cacti/RRD graph? Like "/home/abc/xyz increased 50GB in the last day".

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• How to open a program on particular desktop?

  - by Vi.

  When I start GUI program, it's window appears appears on currently active desktop (essentially, on random desktop). How to make it to appear on the specified desktop? For example, at startup I want certain programs to be started and distributed to desktops. I've already set up config file of openbox to force some programs to always start on specific desktop. Ideally it should be like: start_on_desktop 1 gnome-terminal --tab -e program1 --tab -e program2 start_on_desktop 2 gnome-terminal --tab -e program3 --tab -e program4 start_on_desktop 3 firefox It should be able to start the same program on other desktop. Also dislike when I start program while being on desktop X then switch to desktop Y and SUDDENLY a program which should be on X appears on Y. When I start lots of programs on and switch often between desktops they end up being in chaos and I need to collect them together and redistribute sanely. Also I want the first initial gnome-terminal to be on desktop 3, but I also want subsequent gnome-terminals to be on the desktop where I pressed the keystroke (also configured in openbox) that launches gnome-terminal.

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• Messing with the Team

  - by Robert May

  Good Product Owners will help the team be the best that they can be.  Bad product owners will mess with the team and won’t care about the team.  If you’re a product owner, seek to do good and avoid bad behavior at all costs.  Remember, this is for YOUR benefit and you have much power given to you.  Use that power wisely. Scope Creep The product owner has several tools at his disposal to inject scope into an iteration.  First, the product owner can use defects to inject scope.  To do this, they’ll tell the team what functionality that they want to see in a feature.  Then, after the feature is developed, the Product Owner will decide that they don’t really like how the functionality behaves.  To change it, rather than creating a new story, they’ll add a defect.  The functionality is correct, as designed, but the Product Owner doesn’t like it.  By creating the defect, the Product Owner destroys the trust that the team has of the product owner.  They may not be able to count the story, because the Product Owner changed the story in the iteration, and the team then ends up looking like they have low velocity for something over which they have no control.  This is bad.  One way to deal with this is to add “Product Owner Time” to the iteration.  This will slow the velocity, but then the ScrumMaster can tell stake holders that this time is strictly in place to deal with bad behavior of the Product Owner. Another mechanism often used to inject Scope is the concept of directed development.  Outside of planning, stand-ups, or any other meeting, the Product Owner will take a developer aside and ask them to complete a task for them.  This is bad!  The team should be allocating all of their time to development.  If the Product Owner asks for a favor, then time that would normally be used for development will be used for a pet project of the Product Owner and the team will not get credit for this work.  Selfish product owners do this, and I typically see people who were “managers” do this behavior.  Authoritarian command and control development environments also see this happen.  The best thing that can happen is for the team member to report the issue to the ScrumMaster and the ScrumMaster to get very aggressive with management and the Product Owner to try and stop the behavior.  This may result in the ScrumMaster being fired, but if the behavior continues, Scrum is doomed.  This problem is especially bad in cases where the team member’s direct supervisor is the Product Owner.  I don’t recommend that the Product Owner or ScrumMaster have a direct report relationship with team members, since team members need the ability to say no.  To work around this issue, team members need to say no.  If that fails, team members need to add extra time to the iteration to deal with the scope creep injection and accept the lower velocity. As discussed above, another mechanism for injecting scope is by changing acceptance tests after the work is complete.  This is similar to adding defects to change scope and is bad.  To get around, add time for Product Owner uncertainty to the iteration and make sure that stakeholders are aware of the need to add this time because of the Product Owner. Refusing to Prioritize Refusing to prioritize causes chaos for the team.  From the team’s perspective, things that are not important will be worked on while things that the team knows are vital will be ignored.  A poor Product Owner will often pick the stories for the iteration on a whim.  This leads to the team working on many different aspects of the product and results in a lower velocity, since each iteration the team must switch context to the new area of development. The team will also experience confusion about priorities.  In one iteration, Feature X was the highest priority and had to be done.  Then, the following iteration, even though parts of Feature X still need to be completed, no stories to address them will be in the iteration.  However, three iterations later, Feature X will again become high priority. This will cause the team to not trust the Product Owner, and eventually, they’ll stop caring about the features they implement.  They won’t know what is important, so to insulate themselves from the ever changing chaos, they’ll become apathetic to all features.  Team members are some of the most creative people in a company.  By losing their engagement, the company is going to have a substandard product because the passion for the product won’t be in the team. Other signs that the Product Owner refuses to prioritize is that no one outside of the product owner will be consulted on priorities.  Additionally, the product, release, and iteration backlogs will be weak or non-existent. Dealing with this issue is not easy.  This really isn’t something the team can fix, short of taking over the role of Product Owner themselves.  An appeal to the stake holders might work, but only if the Product Owner isn’t a “manager” themselves.  The ScrumMaster needs to protect the team and do what they can to either get the Product Owner to prioritize or have the Product Owner replaced. Managing the Team A Product Owner that is also the “boss” of team members is a Scrum team that is waiting to fail.  If your boss tells you to do something, failing to do that something can cause you to be fired.  The team needs the ability to tell the Product Owner NO.  If the product owner introduces scope creep, the team has a responsibility to tell the Product Owner no.  If the Product Owner tries to get the team to commit to more than they can accomplish in an iteration, the team needs the ability to tell the Product Owner no. If the Product Owner is your boss and determines your pay increases, you’re probably not going to ever tell them no, and Scrum will likely fail.  The team can’t do much in this situation. Another aspect of “managing the team” that often happens is the Product Owner tries to tell the team how to develop the stories that are in the iteration.  This is one reason why I recommend that Product Owners are NOT technical people.  That way, the team can come up with the tasks that are needed to accomplish the stories and the Product Owner won’t know better.  If the Product Owner is technical, the ScrumMaster will need to take great care to protect the team from the ScrumMaster changing how the team thinks they need to implement the stories. Product Owners can also try to manage the team by their body language.  If the team says a task is going to take 6 hours to complete, and the Product Owner disagrees, they will use some kind of sour body language to indicate this disagreement.  In weak teams, this may cause the team to revise their estimate down, which will result in them taking longer than estimated and may result in them missing the iteration.  The ScrumMaster will need to make sure that the Product Owner doesn’t send such messages and that the team ignores them and estimates what they REALLY think it will take to complete the tasks.  Forcing the team to deal with such items in the retrospective can be helpful. Absenteeism The team is completely dependent upon the Product Owner to develop features for the customer.  The Product Owner IS the voice of the customer and without them, the team will lack direction.  Being the Product Owner is a full time job!  If the Product Owner cannot dedicate daily time with the team, a different product owner should be found. The Product Owner needs to attend every stand-up, planning meeting, showcase, and retrospective that the team has.  The team also must be able to have instant communication with the product owner.  They must not be required to schedule meetings to speak with their product owner.  The team must be the highest priority task that the Product Owner has. The best way to work around an absent Product Owner is to appoint a new Product Owner in the team.  This person will be responsible for making the decisions that the Product Owner should be making and to act as the liaison to the absent Product Owner.  If the delegate Product Owner doesn’t have authority to make decisions for the team, Scrum will fail.  If the Product Owner is absent, the ScrumMaster should seek to have that Product Owner replaced by someone who has the time and ability to be a real Product Owner. Making it Personal Too often Product Owners will become convinced that their ideas are the ones that matter and that anyone who disagrees is making a personal attack on them.  Remember that Product Owners will inherently be at odds with many people, simply because they have the need to prioritize.  Others will frequently question prioritization because they only see part of the picture that Product Owners face. Product Owners must have a thick skin and think egos.  If they don’t, they tend to make things personal, which causes them to become emotional and causes them to take actions that can destroy the trust that team members have in the Product Owner. If a Product Owner is making things person, the best thing that team members can do is reassure them that its not personal, but be firm about doing what is best for the Company and for the users.  The ScrumMaster should also spend significant time coaching the Product Owner on how to not react emotionally and how to accept criticism without becoming defensive. Conclusion I’m sure there are other ways that a Product Owner can mess with the team, but these are the most common that I’ve seen.  I would encourage all Product Owners to seek to be a good Product Owner.  If you find yourself behaving in any of the bad product owner ways, change your behavior today!  Your team will thank you. Remember, being Product Owner is very difficult!  Product Owner is one of the most difficult roles in Scrum.  However, it can also be one of the most rewarding roles in Scrum, since Product Owners literally see their ideas brought to life on the computer screen.  Product Owners need to be very patient, even in the face of criticism and need to be willing to make tough decisions on priority, but then not become offended when others disagree with those decisions.  Companies should spend the time needed to find the right product owners for their teams.  Doing so will only help the company to write better software. Technorati Tags: Scrum,Product Owner

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• Desktop Fun: Dual Monitor Wallpaper Collection Series 2

  - by Asian Angel

  Last month we brought you the first batch of wallpapers geared specifically towards dual monitor setups. Today we present the second offering in our series of dual monitor wallpaper collections. Note: Click on the picture to see the full-size image—these wallpapers vary in size so you may need to crop, stretch, or place them on a colored background in order to best match them to your screen’s resolution. More Dual Monitor Goodness Desktop Fun: Dual Monitor Wallpaper Collection Series 1 Span the same wallpaper across two monitors or use a different wallpaper for each. Dual Monitors: Use a Different Wallpaper on Each Desktop in Windows 7, Vista or XP For more wallpapers be certain to see our great collections in the Desktop Fun section. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC 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 Complete List of iPad Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials Tune Pop Enhances Android Music Notifications Another Busy Night in Gotham City Wallpaper Classic Super Mario Brothers Theme for Chrome and Iron Experimental Firefox Builds Put Tabs on the Title Bar (Available for Download) Android Trojan Found in the Wild Chaos, Panic, and Disorder Wallpaper

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• Working with Legacy code #5: The blackhole.

  - by andrewstopford

  Someone creates a class or series of classes for something, the classes are big in size with large complicated methods. The effort is a sea of technical debt for the entire team but in the thick of the daily chaos it is lost. With out the coder talking to the team, with no team code policy and no code reviews (and action points) it remains. Pretty soon the team forget about that code. A few weeks\months\years goes by, some of the team may have left, some may remain but business asks for the team to add to that code. The team is now looking at a black hole, no one knows how it works, what it does, what it is for, it is a smelly hell hole and the deadline is fast approaching. The team now tries to change the code, with no approach at unit tests or refactoring in fear of breaking the black hole the team do just that and the business have just lost money. If you are faced with a black hole you need to look back over my series, even a black hole in what might seem like a clean unit tested application. Don't be fooled into thinking that legacy code does not apply to your code base.  The next stage is don't let blackholes in your codebase. Effective code reviews, team communication and good overal team coding policies will really help. Even if you are faced with a deadline do not let them appear, stop, take stock, what can be done and who can help. If you allow them through they will grow and grow and grow and the technical debt will hit you like a tidal wave soon enough,.  

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• OpenGL: Attempt to allocate a texture to big for the current hardware

  - by AnonymousMan

  I'm getting the following error: java.io.IOException: Attempt to allocate a texture to big for the current hardware at org.newdawn.slick.opengl.InternalTextureLoader.getTexture(InternalTextureLoader.java:320) at org.newdawn.slick.opengl.InternalTextureLoader.getTexture(InternalTextureLoader.java:254) at org.newdawn.slick.opengl.InternalTextureLoader.getTexture(InternalTextureLoader.java:200) at org.newdawn.slick.opengl.TextureLoader.getTexture(TextureLoader.java:64) at org.newdawn.slick.opengl.TextureLoader.getTexture(TextureLoader.java:24) The image I'm trying to use is 128x128. System.out.println(GL11.glGetInteger(GL11.GL_MAX_TEXTURE_SIZE)); I get: 32. 32??!! My graphics card is AMD Radeon HD 7970M with 2048 MB GDDR5 RAM, I can run all the latest games in 1080p and 60fps with no problem, and those textures sure as hell doesn't look like they are 32x32 pixels to me! How can I fix this? -- Edit: Here's the chaos code I use to init OpenGL: Display.setDisplayMode(new DisplayMode(500,500)); Display.create(); if (!GLContext.getCapabilities().OpenGL11) { throw new Exception("OpenGL 1.1 not supported."); } Display.setTitle("Game"); glMatrixMode(GL_PROJECTION); glLoadIdentity(); GLU.gluPerspective(45, 1, 0.1f, 5000); Mouse.setGrabbed(true); glMatrixMode(GL_MODELVIEW); glLoadIdentity(); glEnable(GL_TEXTURE_2D); glClearColor(0, 0, 0, 0); glEnable(GL_DEPTH_TEST); glDepthFunc(GL_LEQUAL); glHint(GL_PERSPECTIVE_CORRECTION_HINT, GL_NICEST); glBlendFunc(GL_SRC_ALPHA, GL_ONE_MINUS_SRC_ALPHA); glEnable(GL_BLEND); glEnable(GL_POINT_SMOOTH); glEnable(GL_LINE_SMOOTH); glEnable(GL_POLYGON_SMOOTH); glEnable(GL_POLYGON_OFFSET_FILL); glShadeModel(GL_SMOOTH); Display is a LWJGL thing, it makes the OpenGL context and the window. Anyway, I don't think there's anything in the init code that can help me but you never know...

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• Which tools you use for development in your company?…Please be exact [closed]

  - by predrag.music

  If you are a professional php/(my/postgre/?)sql/? developer and working in a professional team ... I would like to know which tools you use for development in your company. I do not care which tool is better or worse, but "which tools you use", if it is not a TOP SECRET :) For example, these are just some of the tools i/we use (first those used most (in general)): Pen, paper lots of cofee, cola ... let me think ... mmmm ... yeah more cofee :) All kinds of books (a lots of books) OS: Win / MacOS X Server: Hosted (CentOS )/ At work Mac OS X Dev server: XAMPP / MAMP / LAMP Editor: Notepad++ IDE: Netbeans / Zend Studio / Eclipse Version Control System: Mercurial / SVN FTP: Filezilla mostly / ... Passwords: KeePass js / ajax: jQuery / pure js / jQuery UI Framework:CI / Zend / pure php Database: MySQL / Other ORM: Framework layer db (Not an ORM I know but...) / Doctrine (2) / no ORM Debugging: Xdebug (PHP) / firebug (ajax/js/html/css/...) / framework profiler (stuff) / ... (x) Dreaming: About... Thinking: Not about chaos in ? direction .... n Anything else that comes to mind n+1 Zilion other stuff i know but i can't remember ... 8 some other stuff i (don't) remember i forgot, give up, delete, lost, said to myself never again, i haven't had time stuff, have on computer stuff but can't find or don't even know i have it on my computer at least 2-3 or more times, stuff I said to myself i'll check later and never checked again for all sort of "perfectly justified" reasons (time, memory, wife :), whatever,...), ... what is the reason i'm asking this?:) 8 and beyond looking forward to see a lot of answers ?

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• How to Be a Software Engineer?

  - by Mistrio

  My problem is kind of weird so please bear with me. I have been working in a start up concerned basically with mobile development since my graduation 2 years ago. I develop apps for iOS but it's not really relevant. The start up structure is simply founders developers, with no middle-tier technical supervision or project management whatsoever. A typical project cycle of ours is like this: meet with a client send very vague recruitment to an outsourced graphics designer dig in development right after we get the design, no questions asked then improvise improvise improvise! It's not that we are unaware that stuff like requirements analysis, UML, design patterns, source code control, testing, development methodologies... etc. exist, we just simply don't use them, and I mean like never. The result is usually a clunk of hardly-maintainable yet working code. Despite everything we are literally flourishing with many successful apps on all platforms and bigger clients each project. The thing is, we want the chaos and we're looking for advice. How would you fix our company technically? Given that you can't hire project managers or team leaders just because we are barely 5 developers, so it wouldn't be a justified cost for the founders, but one-time things like courses, books, private training... etc is an option. Lastly, if it's relevant, we are based in Egypt. Thank you a lot in advance.

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• Your personal backlog

  - by johndoucette

  Whenever I start a new project or come in during a hectic time to help salvage a deliverable – there is always a backlog. Generating the backlog can be a daunting exercise, but worth the effort. Once I have a backlog, I feel in control and the chaos begins to quell. In your everyday life, you too should keep a backlog. Here is how I do it; 1. Always carry a notebook 2. Start each day marking a new page with today’s date 3. Flip to yesterday’s notes and copy every task with an empty checkbox next to it, to the new empty page (today) 4. As the day progresses and you go to meetings, do your work, or get interrupted to do something…jot it down in today’s page and put an empty checkbox next to it. If you get it done during the day, awesome. Mark it complete. Keep carrying and writing every task to each new day until it is complete. Maybe one day, you will have an empty backlog and your sprint will be complete!

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• How do I find a programming internship / practice?

  - by user828584

  I'm taking the SAT soon, and quickly heading toward the chaos of figuring out which college's I will be able to attend, and how on Earth I'll be able to afford it. I would like to be able to gain some experience in programming or web development, but I don't know where to look. I've been trying my best to learn over the past year, and have been doing alright in C# and the web languages (HTML, PHP, CSS, javascript). I have no idea where to look though. I've asked similar questions and rummaged through old questions on here, and they all say nothing specifically. The main two points are always "Contribute to open source projects" and "Find a company and ask to be a part of it." I don't know how to find either of the two. I've looked online at github and source forge, and the like, but all the projects are already so progressed and I just don't have the experience needed to bring myself up to speed with their code. I don't have much experience in code management, and I don't know how to get it. I would be ecstatic to be able to start a project with a group of more experienced members, but, like I said, I have no clue how to find these people.

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• Designing business objects, and gui actions

  - by fozz

  Developing a product ordering system using Java SE 6. The previous implementations used combo boxes, text fields, and check boxes. Preforming validation on action events from the GUI. The validation includes limiting existing combo boxes items, or even availability. The issue in the old system was that the action was received and all rules were applied to the entire business object. This resulted in a huge event change as options were changed multiple times. To be honest I have no idea how an infinite loop wasn't produced. Through the next iteration I stepped in and attempted to limit the chaos by controlling the order in which the selections could be made. Making configuration of BO's a top down approach. I implemented custom box models, action events, beans/binding, and an MVC pattern. However I still am unable to fully isolate action even chains. I'm thinking that I've approached the whole concept backwards in an attempt to stay closest to what was already in place. So the question becomes what do I design instead? I'm currently considering an implementation of Interfaces, Beans, Property Change Listeners to manage the back and forth. Other thoughts were validation exceptions, dynamic proxies.... I'm sure there are a ton of different ways. To say that one way is right is crazy, and I'm sure it will take a blending of multiple patterns. My knowledge of swing/awt validation is limited, previously I did backend logic only. Other considerations are were some sort of binding(jgoodies or otherwise) to directly bind GUI state to BO's.

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• Best practices in versioning

  - by Gerenuk

  I develop some scripts for data analysis in a small team. For the moment we use SVN, but not in a very structured way. We haven't even looked how to use branches even though we need this functionality. What do you suggest as the best practice to setup the following system: two code bases (core and plugins) versions can be incompatible to previous scripts sometimes individual features are being developed and not yet finished, while other fixes have to be done urgently to the code In the end we don't deliver the code as a package, but rather place the Python scripts in some directory (with version names?). Some other python script which serves as a configuration choses the desired version, sets the path to these libraries and then starts to import the modules. I saw stable releases to be named "trunk" so I did the same. However, no version numbers yet. Core and plugins are different repositories, however we have to match versions for compatibility. Can you suggest some best practices or reference to ease development and reduce chaos? :) Some suggested GIT. I haven't heard about it, but I'm free to change.

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• Developing an Interface to a Dynamic System

  - by radix07

  I work for a small company and have been designing a GUI to interface our embedded system. The problem with this embedded system is that it is not a finished product (may never be) and is constantly under development and being tweaked and updated for different customers and applications in small volumes. So to deal with this I made a program that can export all the data from a spreadsheet where most of the embedded system variables are sourced from and throw them into a small database for the GUI application to use. This database program I made also spits out a cross reference file for the embedded system which allows the GUI to look up all the variables. This system works pretty well so far, and is even integrated with version control among the GUI, database, and embedded system. The big problem is that there is constant development on several projects that use this system and it gets terribly tedious to keep the system up to date and bring in new changes. This has gotten to the point to where I have had to code the GUI to dynamically (generically) generate all interfaces since I am never guaranteed to find the same data the same way. I have not been able to come up with a good way to uniquely identify the data I import from excel since all fields are able to be changed (due to engineering stubbornness, code re-factoring and/or excel issues) and I cannot assign a fixed reference within the sheet itself. So, are there any good methods or ideas on how to handle the chaos?

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• Create Adjustable Depth of Field Photos with a DSLR

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  If you’re fascinating by the Lytro camera–a camera that let’s you change the focus after you’ve taken the photo–this DSLR hack provides a similar post-photo focus processing without the $400 price tag. Photography tinkers at The Chaos Collective came up with a clever way of mimicking the adjustable depth-of-field adjustment effect from the Lytro camera. The secret sauce in their technique is setting the camera to manual focus and capturing a short 2-3 second video clip while they rotate the focus through the entire focal range. From there, they use a simple applet to separate out each frame of the video. Check out the interactive demo below: Anywhere you click in the photo shifts the focus to that point, just like the post processing in the Lytro camera. It’s a different approach to the problem but it yields roughly the same output. Hit up the link below for the full run down on their technique and how you can get started using it with your own video-enabled DLSR. Camera HACK: DOF-Changeable Photos with an SLR [via Hack A Day] Secure Yourself by Using Two-Step Verification on These 16 Web Services How to Fix a Stuck Pixel on an LCD Monitor How to Factory Reset Your Android Phone or Tablet When It Won’t Boot

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• Push Trunk or Push Branch to Production

  - by coffeeaddict

  I'd like to get an idea of some processes on build process with Tortoise SVN. Primarily I'm wondering do you push: The Mainline Trunk A branch after QA has grabbed it into a working copy locally and tested the branch and then some build pushes that branch The problem I have is I work at a craphole (hey, it is what it is and I'm venting on stackoverflow, you better believe it..good way to relieve stress due to complete utter chaos) and we have no formal process for pushing anything. In fact even worse my boss directly codes against production. When I have changes, he pushes the mainline trunk. The problem becomes when I make database changes on our Dev database for lets say Branch A. Well...that breaks Branch B and C. I have like 4 projects going on at once! Why? Well, I will not get into that (chaos). So consequently I rename a table field, or add a field or whatever in SQL Server and walla, now my other branches have stale code pointing to previous field names. So what happens? I have to merge certain changes to this branch, to that branch, etc. It feels like a war zone. Finally, what happens is I try to only merge the minimum. Lets say I made DB changes for Branch A's code but now I had to jump back on Branch B's project. Well I need to merge "some" of A's changes over for those database changes so that B's code is not going to bomb out and is able to work with the new table changes. Finally boss pushes the mainline trunk to production. Now I get an email "you forgot to remove the hyperlink for this". That hyperlink was actually a feature I added in Branch A. But what he's talking about here is he just pushed the mainline trunk to production which now has my merged changes from Branch B and any database scripts for Branch A because remember I had some DB changes and if he pushes code, it's got to reflect those changes thus some partial database changes must also be pushed even if it's not related to this project. Well...I missed the hyperlink, so kill me. Maybe that's why we need a build process boss? (sorry, it's been a nightmare working here which is why this thread is getting so detailed). Anyway, obviously this is a nightmare. And he dictates almost everything. The only reason we have source control is because I've worked on hard core teams and that's the first thing you setup. Well there was none here. Problem is I can't dictate the structure..he does but he's never really used source control!! My God. So we have no QA. This is an e-commerce website. That's another huge issue. So consequently I'm expected to be perfect. That means mainline trunk needs to be perfect for whatever we're pushing, whatever branch feature. Is this luda? wtf do I do? I could go off on him after tying so many times tactfully to explain that we need a freakin build process (not just copy local mainline trunk to production!) but I've tried to push before and got yelled at. So I gave up on that. So it will help me tremendously to know how others are pushing their source from Tortoise to production. I was not the person pushing when I was on previous teams so really I'm not too versed in build processes. We are a fairly good size e-commerce site and get a couple millions hits a month.

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• Most simple way to do holiday calculation?

  - by brainfrog

  I want to make a little free calendar program to help me and others calculate how much time we have got left in a project. I mean real working time, not just time. Time in a raw form is not saying much. Typically when my boss tells me that I have time until 05-05-2011 it doesn't tell me really how much time I have to do my job. You know...so many things stop me from work: A) beeing at home, not at work (so called "free time" or "spare time"). That is in my case I work exactly 8 hours a day and then the cleaning ladies throw me out of the office with their incredible loud industrial vacuum cleaners every evening (my boss accepts that as an excuse to go home in time, regularly). B) weekends, or more precisely saturdays and sundays C) official holiday rescuing me from having to go to work. what I want to do is make a little utility which tells me how many working hours I really have in a given time period. The first two things A and B are pretty easy to implement. But the last thing C scares my pants off. Holidays. OOOHHH man. You know what that means. Chaos. Pure chaos. The huge question is: HOW TO CALCULATE HOLIDAYS?! Since I want my program to be useful for anyone anywhere in the world, I can't just hardcode all holidays for my little town. So which options do I have? I) I could hand-craft downloadable lists of holidays. Users search them within the application and download them from an webserver. Or I ship all of them in the package. But I would get very, very old if I tried that by myself for every country, state and town. II) I make an initial data sheet with holidays for my town, and don't care about the rest. However, I make that sheet with an how-to public, so that everyone who feels like beeing very nice can provide holiday data for his country / region / whatever. Those are made public on a webserver and everyone can get the data packages he/she needs for the app. III) ? I care a lot about usability. I don't want to make an ugly linux hack style hard to use app that only computer freaks can use. So you need to tell me more about holiday science. I was never really clever at this. I assume every single country in the world has it's own set of holidays. In every country there may be several states. For example the US has some, and Germany has also some states. Holidays vary from state to state. But I know from an good programmer he told me never assume anything. So the questions about holiday science are: Which categories do I need to make holiday-data-packs searchable? A guy from India should find quickly his holiday data pack, and a guy from Sillicon Valley should find his pack as equally fast. It makes most sense to me to filter for COUNTRY STATE WHATEVER. Like a drill-down-search. Did I miss something? What would be the best data format to hold holiday information? A holiday has a start and end date and a name. That should be enough. Would I put all this stuff in thousands of XML files? How would you go about this? Any hint / help is highly welcome! Thanks to everyone!

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• Etiquette for refactoring other people's sourcecode?

  - by Prutswonder

  Our team of software developers consists of a bunch of experienced programmers with a variety of programming styles and preferences. We do not have standards for everything, just the bare necessities to prevent total chaos. Recently, I bumped into some refactoring done by a colleague. My code looked somewhat like this: public Person CreateNewPerson(string firstName, string lastName) { var person = new Person() { FirstName = firstName, LastName = lastName }; return person; } Which was refactored to this: public Person CreateNewPerson (string firstName, string lastName) { Person person = new Person (); person.FirstName = firstName; person.LastName = lastName; return person; } Just because my colleague needed to update some other method in one of the classes I wrote, he also "refactored" the method above. For the record, he's one of those developers that despises syntactic sugar and uses a different bracket placement/identation scheme than the rest of us. My question is: What is the (C#) programmer's etiquette for refactoring other people's sourcecode (both semantic and syntactic)?

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• Ideas for web development practical jokes?

  - by Ellie P.

  I am a web developer for a Django-based site for a student organization, and I have the opportunity to make the website temporarily absurd for a day of general campus-wide debauchery and chaos (long story, doesn't matter.) What are your best ideas for web development practical jokes (that you could never use in the real world)? For example, one idea we had was to use a client-side script to convert each character to its upside down equivalent in Unicode, si?? ??i? ?ui????os. I'm not necessarily looking for Django-specific solutions. I imagine most of these things would happen on the front-end. I am also quite aware that usability will suffer considerably--the point is to be fun for a day, and there will always be a link to the normal version of the site. Also, everything must be relatively cosmetic and easily reversible--I'm happy to swap out static CSS/JS/HTML/templates/images, and even temporarily add a django view, but no messing with the data level!

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