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• What causes bad performance in consumer apps?

  - by Crashworks

  My Comcast DVR takes at least three seconds to respond to every remote control keypress, making the simple task of watching television into a frustrating button-mashing experience. My iPhone takes at least fifteen seconds to display text messages and crashes ¼ of the times I try to bring up the iPad app; simply receiving and reading an email often takes well over a minute. Even the navcom in my car has mushy and unresponsive controls, often swallowing successive inputs if I make them less than a few seconds apart. These are all fixed-hardware end-consumer appliances for which usability should be paramount, and yet they all fail at basic responsiveness and latency. Their software is just too slow. What's behind this? Is it a technical problem, or a social one? Who or what is responsible? Is it because these were all written in managed, garbage-collected languages rather than native code? Is it the individual programmers who wrote the software for these devices? In all of these cases the app developers knew exactly what hardware platform they were targeting and what its capabilities were; did they not take it into account? Is it the guy who goes around repeating "optimization is the root of all evil," did he lead them astray? Was it a mentality of "oh it's just an additional 100ms" each time until all those milliseconds add up to minutes? Is it my fault, for having bought these products in the first place? This is a subjective question, with no single answer, but I'm often frustrated to see so many answers here saying "oh, don't worry about code speed, performance doesn't matter" when clearly at some point it does matter for the end-user who gets stuck with a slow, unresponsive, awful experience. So, at what point did things go wrong for these products? What can we as programmers do to avoid inflicting this pain on our own customers?

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• Final Man vs. Machine Round of Jeopardy Unfolds; Watson Dominates

  - by ETC

  The final round of IBM’s Watson against Ken Jenning and Brad Rutter ended last night with Watson coming out in a strong lead against its two human opponents. Read on to catch a video of the match and see just how quick Watson is on the draw. Watson tore through many of the answers, the little probability bar at the bottom of the screen denoting it was often 95%+ confident in its answers. Some of the more interesting stumbles were, like in the last matches, based on nuance. By far the biggest “What?” moment of the night, however, was when it answered the Daily Double question of “The New Yorker’s 1959 review of this said in its brevity and clarity, it is ‘unlike most such manuals, a book as well as a tool’”. Watson, inexplicably, answered “Dorothy Parker”. You can win them all, eh? Check out the video below to see Watson in action on its final day. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Enable User-Specific Wireless Networks in Windows 7 How to Use Google Chrome as Your Default PDF Reader (the Easy Way) How To Remove People and Objects From Photographs In Photoshop Ask How-To Geek: How Can I Monitor My Bandwidth Usage? Internet Explorer 9 RC Now Available: Here’s the Most Interesting New Stuff Here’s a Super Simple Trick to Defeating Fake Anti-Virus Malware The Citroen GT – An Awesome Video Game Car Brought to Life [Video] Final Man vs. Machine Round of Jeopardy Unfolds; Watson Dominates Give Chromium-Based Browser Desktop Notifications a Native System Look in Ubuntu Chrome Time Track Is a Simple Task Time Tracker Google Sky Map Turns Your Android Phone into a Digital Telescope Walking Through a Seaside Village Wallpaper

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• Silverlight 4, MVVM and Test-Driven Development

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  As part of his UK tour Microsoft's Jesse Liberty will be talking in Edinburgh for an evening on Silverlight 4. [Register Now, there are some places left]  The Talk MVVM and Silverlight to build test-driven programs Understanding Refactoring and Dependency Injection A Walk through of a non-trivial application The Speaker Jesse Liberty, Silverlight Geek, is a Developer Community Program Manager for Microsoft (US). Lately he has been focused on Component-based, Test-Driven, Cross-platform line-of-business application development, and has led the development of the open source  Silverlight HyperVideo Platform. Liberty is the author of over two dozen books, and his blog is a required resource for Silverlight programmers. His twenty years of programming experience include stints as a Distinguished Software Engineer at AT&T; Vice President of Human-Computer Interaction at Citibank and Software Architect at PBS/Learning Link. The Venue We are meeting at Microsoft's offices in Edinburgh in Waterloo Place. This is the building on the corner of North Bridge at the east end of Princes Street. Parking can be found at the nearby Greenside Row car park which is just off Leith Walk (used for the Omni Centre). The venue is approximately 2-3 minutes walk away from Edinburgh Waverly train station. The Agenda 18:30 Doors open 19:00 Welcome 19:10 Part 1 20:00 Break 20:10 Part 2 20:50 Feedback and Prizes 21:00 End   [Register Now, there are some places left] Technorati Tags: Silverlight,MVVM,TDD

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• Great Debugging skills weak problem solving

  - by Mahmoud

  For the 5 years I worked for various companies, I worked in large software like computer vision kits, embedded, games. I found myself very good at debuggins skills, I've even found and fixed bugs in frameworks and I solved them. The problem is that I'm very weak at problem solving. I got interview with Qualcomm, and they said you're fine at software, but you have a limited problem solving, I also had the same results with Google. I'm very bad at solving puzzles and brain teasers. During the interviews I solve all of the software related problems on the blackboard, but when I went to the GM and face math problems and probabilities, I struggle. How can I improve my problem solving skills? Edit Some of the problems: A cake that is cut from anywhere and needs just one cut to halved in equal. I told him cut it horizontally, he said No, consider it as a 2D Problem!. Consider a concenteric 3 circles, each one can get a color, but not matched with the other circle, how many blobs you can make out of those circles ? this was with the GM ( Augmented Reality SDK) Consider a train, an infinite one, and you looked at the window, and there are two cars, one big, and one small, what is the probability of having only a big car, I said 50%, he said, what if that two cars you dont know their length, and you want to get the probability of getting the biggest one, I struggled, didn't solve it... I was really exahusted after long day of interviews prob of having a number divisible by 5 in numbers from 1 to 100.. struggled!! All coding questions I solved them like reverse a string, detect a cycle in a linked list,..etc.

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• Google Sky Map Turns Your Android Phone into a Digital Telescope

  - by ETC

  Whether you’re an astronomy buff or just somebody looking for a perfect “look how sweet my smartphone is!’ application, Google’s Sky Map application for Android phones is a must have app. If all the application did was show you detailed views of the night sky it would be pretty awesome based on that alone. Where Sky Map dazzles, however, is in linking together the GPS and tilt-sensors on your phone to turn your phone into a sky-watching window. Whatever you point the phone at, the screen displays. Want to see what stars are directly above you despite it being the middle of the day? Point the phone up. Curious what people on the opposite side of the word are seeing? Point the phone down and take a peek right through the Earth. Check out the video below to see the application in action: Google Sky Map is free and works wherever Android does. Google Sky Map [AppBrain] Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Enable User-Specific Wireless Networks in Windows 7 How to Use Google Chrome as Your Default PDF Reader (the Easy Way) How To Remove People and Objects From Photographs In Photoshop Ask How-To Geek: How Can I Monitor My Bandwidth Usage? Internet Explorer 9 RC Now Available: Here’s the Most Interesting New Stuff Here’s a Super Simple Trick to Defeating Fake Anti-Virus Malware The Citroen GT – An Awesome Video Game Car Brought to Life [Video] Final Man vs. Machine Round of Jeopardy Unfolds; Watson Dominates Give Chromium-Based Browser Desktop Notifications a Native System Look in Ubuntu Chrome Time Track Is a Simple Task Time Tracker Google Sky Map Turns Your Android Phone into a Digital Telescope Walking Through a Seaside Village Wallpaper

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• The Splendiferous Array of Culinary Tools [Infographic]

  - by ETC

  If your geeking out extends from the workbench to the kitchen counter, you’ll love this swanky infographic detailing the families of utensils in your kitchen drawers and cupboards. The poster showcases everything from scissors to strainers in a retro-style poster. If you can find a culinary tool in your kitchen that isn’t on the chart then you’re obviously a culinary wizard of the highest order. You can hit up the link below to check out the poster in full-size and downloadable glory or head over to the design company that created it here (and pre-order a printed copy for your kitchen). A Complete Guide to Your Kitchen Tools [Fast Co. Design via Design Sponge] Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Enable User-Specific Wireless Networks in Windows 7 How to Use Google Chrome as Your Default PDF Reader (the Easy Way) How To Remove People and Objects From Photographs In Photoshop Ask How-To Geek: How Can I Monitor My Bandwidth Usage? Internet Explorer 9 RC Now Available: Here’s the Most Interesting New Stuff Here’s a Super Simple Trick to Defeating Fake Anti-Virus Malware The Splendiferous Array of Culinary Tools [Infographic] Add a Real-Time Earth Wallpaper App to Ubuntu with xplanetFX The Citroen GT – An Awesome Video Game Car Brought to Life [Video] Final Man vs. Machine Round of Jeopardy Unfolds; Watson Dominates Give Chromium-Based Browser Desktop Notifications a Native System Look in Ubuntu Chrome Time Track Is a Simple Task Time Tracker

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• Issue 55 - Skin Object Tokens, Optimized Control Panel, OWS Validation and Security, RAD

  April 2010 Welcome to Issue 55 of DNN Creative Magazine In this issue we focus on the new Skin Object token method introduced in DotNetNuke 5 for adding tokens into a DotNetNuke skin. A Skin Object Token is a web user control which covers skin elements such as the logo, menu, search, login links, date, copyright, languages, links, banners, privacy, terms of use, etc. Following this we demonstrate how to install and use two Advanced DotNetNuke Admin Control Panels which are available for free from Oliver Hine. These control panels provide an optimized version of the admin control panel to improve performance and page load times, as well as a ribbon bar control panel which adds additional features. Next, we continue the Open Web Studio tutorials, this month we demonstrate some very advanced techniques for building a car parts application in Open Web Studio. Throughout the tutorial we cover form input, validation, how to use dependant drop down lists, populating checkbox lists and introduce a new concept of data level security. Data level security allows you to control which data a user can access within a module. To finish, we have part five of the "How to Build a News Application with DotNetMushroom Rapid Application Developer (RAD)" article, where we demonstrate how to implement paging. This issue comes complete with 14 videos. Skinning: Skin Object Tokens for DotNetNuke 5 (8 videos - 64mins) Free Module: Advanced Optimized Control Panel by Oliver Hine (1 video - 11mins) Module Development Series: Form Validation, Dependant Drop Downs and Data Level Security in OWS (5 videos - 44mins) How to Implement Paging with DotNetMushroom RAD View issue 55 to download all of the videos in one zip file DNN Creative Magazine for DotNetNuke Web Designers Covering DotNetNuke module video reviews, video tutorials, mp3 interviews, resources and web design tips for working with DotNetNuke. In 55 issues we have created 563 videos!Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Podcast Show Notes: The Big Deal About Big Data

  - by Bob Rhubart

  This week the OTN ArchBeat kicks off a three-part series that looks at Big Data: what it is, its affect on enterprise IT, and what architects need to do to stay ahead of the big data curve. My guests for this conversation are Jean-Pierre Dijks and Andrew Bond . Jean-Pierre, based at Oracle HQ in Redwood Shores, CA, is product manager for Oracle Big Data Appliance and Oracle's big data strategy. Andrew Bond  is Head of Transformation Architecture for Oracle, where he specialzes in Data Warehousing, Business Intelligence, and Big Data. Andrew is based in the UK, but for this conversation he dialed in from a car somewhere on the streets of Amsterdam. Listen to Part 1What is Big Data, really, and why does it matter? Listen to Part 2 (Oct 10)What new challenges does Big Data present for Architects? What do architects need to do to prepare themselves and their environments? Listen to Part 3 (Oct 17)Who is driving the adoption of Big Data strategies in organizations, and why? Additional Resources http://blogs.oracle.com/datawarehousing http://www.facebook.com/pages/OracleBigData https://twitter.com/#!/OracleBigData Coming Soon A conversation about how the rapidly evolving enterprise IT landscape is transforming the roles, responsibilities, and skill requirements for architects and developers. Stay tuned: RSS

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• SQL SERVER – First Month as DBA Trainee – Disasters and Recovery

  - by pinaldave

  This blog post is written in response to the T-SQL Tuesday hosted by Allen Kinsel. He has selected very interesting subject for T-SQL Tuesday – Disaster and Recovery. This subject took me in past – my past. There were various things, I had done or proposed when I started very first month as a DBA trainee. I was tagged along with very senior DBA in my organization who always protected me or correct my mistake. He was great guy and totally understand the young mind of over-enthusiastic Trainee DBA. I respect him very much. Here are few things which I had learned in my very first month (not necessarily I have practices them on production). Never compress (zip) native backup using any tools, when disaster happen sometime the extra time to un-compress the database can be too long and not acceptable for business SLA Do not truncate logs After restoring full database backup – only restore latest differential back, no need to restore all the backup Always write WHERE condition when deleting and updating Sr. DBA always advised me – always keep your résumé ready and car ready – you never know when you can not recover disaster! Well for sure it was a joke. Today’s T-SQL Tuesday remind me of my very first month as DBA trainee. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: About Me, Best Practices, Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Add a Real-Time Earth Wallpaper App to Ubuntu with xplanetFX

  - by Asian Angel

  Are you tired of the same old wallpaper on your Ubuntu desktop? Now you can go from blah to literally spacious, real-time styled views of Earth with the xplanetFX Wallpaper App for Linux. You can conveniently access the “file type” downloads, screenshots, and jump-to links all on the front page. For our example we downloaded the .deb setup file on our system. The setup file will need to download three additional files to complete the setup process. After those are downloaded all dependencies will have been met and you can complete the installation process. Once that is done you can find xplanetFX by going to the Accessories Section of your Ubuntu Menu. This is what the main control window looks like when you start xplanetFX for the first time. You should take a few moments to look through the various tabs and tweak the settings for items like location, screen resolution, timing, auto-start, etc. When you are done click on Execute and within a few moments your desktop will have a fresh new look! Note: It took ~30 seconds for the display to activate on our system. Have fun with xplanetFX! xplanetFX Homepage [via OMG! Ubuntu!] Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Enable User-Specific Wireless Networks in Windows 7 How to Use Google Chrome as Your Default PDF Reader (the Easy Way) How To Remove People and Objects From Photographs In Photoshop Ask How-To Geek: How Can I Monitor My Bandwidth Usage? Internet Explorer 9 RC Now Available: Here’s the Most Interesting New Stuff Here’s a Super Simple Trick to Defeating Fake Anti-Virus Malware Add a Real-Time Earth Wallpaper App to Ubuntu with xplanetFX The Citroen GT – An Awesome Video Game Car Brought to Life [Video] Final Man vs. Machine Round of Jeopardy Unfolds; Watson Dominates Give Chromium-Based Browser Desktop Notifications a Native System Look in Ubuntu Chrome Time Track Is a Simple Task Time Tracker Google Sky Map Turns Your Android Phone into a Digital Telescope

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• Penalty for collision during a racing game

  - by Arthur Wulf White

  In a racing game: How should we penalize the player for colliding head on into obstacles such as walls, trees and so on. What is the way it is done in your favorite racing game? How is it done in other successful racing games? Do you think temporarily disabling the engine for a second is too severe? If I do go that route, how would I convey the 'engine is disabled' to the player in a subtle and easily understood way? Is this 'too much' of a penalty? Would the slow-down from the collision be sufficient to discourage the player from driving too carelessly? Which one is more fun? Should I consider a health-bar and affect engine performance for 'low health' status? Could you offer examples of games that handle this well and one that do it poorly? Please share your experience with racing games obstacles and reference games you feel perform well in this aspect. I am sure we all enjoy our racing games differently and I would like to hear different opinions regarding this issue. I would also like to hear how you feel we should penalize or reward for colliding with other vehicles? Should enemy vehicles be destroyable? Should they slow down severely when they hit the back of your car or would that make the gameplay imbalanced?

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• Give Chromium-Based Browser Desktop Notifications a Native System Look in Ubuntu

  - by Asian Angel

  Desktop notifications from Chromium-based browsers are an awesome feature, but they do not blend in well at all with the native system theming in Ubuntu. Now you can fix that small problem using the wonderful Chromify-OSD extension created by Marco Ceppi. Once you get the extension installed you can give it a quick test run using the link and information we have listed below. As you can see in the image above the new notification style looks absolutely wonderful. Chromify-OSD (Chrome Web Store) [via OMG! Ubuntu!] You can test the new look of the notifications for yourself using the following webpage. Keep in mind that the extension needs to be installed first before this will work though. Note: Enter the following image URL into the Icon Blank (http://www.rgraph.net/images/logo.png) or the URL for an appropriate image, otherwise the notification may not work properly during your test. Chromify Sample HTML5 Notification Test Page The wallpaper shown in the screenshot above can be downloaded here: anime sport [DesktopNexus] Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Enable User-Specific Wireless Networks in Windows 7 How to Use Google Chrome as Your Default PDF Reader (the Easy Way) How To Remove People and Objects From Photographs In Photoshop Ask How-To Geek: How Can I Monitor My Bandwidth Usage? Internet Explorer 9 RC Now Available: Here’s the Most Interesting New Stuff Here’s a Super Simple Trick to Defeating Fake Anti-Virus Malware The Citroen GT – An Awesome Video Game Car Brought to Life [Video] Final Man vs. Machine Round of Jeopardy Unfolds; Watson Dominates Give Chromium-Based Browser Desktop Notifications a Native System Look in Ubuntu Chrome Time Track Is a Simple Task Time Tracker Google Sky Map Turns Your Android Phone into a Digital Telescope Walking Through a Seaside Village Wallpaper

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• Why does TDD work?

  - by CesarGon

  Test-driven development (TDD) is big these days. I often see it recommended as a solution for a wide range of problems here in Programmers SE and other venues. I wonder why it works. From an engineering point of view, it puzzles me for two reasons: The "write test + refactor till pass" approach looks incredibly anti-engineering. If civil engineers used that approach for bridge construction, or car designers for their cars, for example, they would be reshaping their bridges or cars at very high cost, and the result would be a patched-up mess with no well thought-out architecture. The "refactor till pass" guideline is often taken as a mandate to forget architectural design and do whatever is necessary to comply with the test; in other words, the test, rather than the user, sets the requirement. In this situation, how can we guarantee good "ilities" in the outcomes, i.e. a final result that is not only correct but also extensible, robust, easy to use, reliable, safe, secure, etc.? This is what architecture usually does. Testing cannot guarantee that a system works; it can only show that it doesn't. In other words, testing may show you that a system contains defects if it fails a test, but a system that passes all tests is not safer than a system that fails them. Test coverage, test quality and other factors are crucial here. The false safe feelings that an "all green" outcomes produces to many people has been reported in civil and aerospace industries as extremely dangerous, because it may be interepreted as "the system is fine", when it really means "the system is as good as our testing strategy". Often, the testing strategy is not checked. Or, who tests the tests? I would like to see answers containing reasons why TDD in software engineering is a good practice, and why the issues that I have explained above are not relevant (or not relevant enough) in the case of software. Thank you.

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• Chrome Time Track Is a Simple Task Time Tracker

  - by ETC

  If you don’t need advanced project tracking but still want to track how long it takes you to finish certain tasks or projects, Chrome Time Tracker is a free Chrome extension with a dead simple interface. Install the extension and a Time Track icon appears in your toolbar. Click it to create new tasks, delete old tasks, and start, stop, and reset your task timers. When the timer is running the icon changes to indicate you’re on the clock; pause the timer and it toggles back to the default icon. Hit up the link below to grab a copy. Chrome Time Track is free and works wherever Google Chrome does. Chrome Time Track [Google Chrome Extensions] Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Enable User-Specific Wireless Networks in Windows 7 How to Use Google Chrome as Your Default PDF Reader (the Easy Way) How To Remove People and Objects From Photographs In Photoshop Ask How-To Geek: How Can I Monitor My Bandwidth Usage? Internet Explorer 9 RC Now Available: Here’s the Most Interesting New Stuff Here’s a Super Simple Trick to Defeating Fake Anti-Virus Malware The Citroen GT – An Awesome Video Game Car Brought to Life [Video] Final Man vs. Machine Round of Jeopardy Unfolds; Watson Dominates Give Chromium-Based Browser Desktop Notifications a Native System Look in Ubuntu Chrome Time Track Is a Simple Task Time Tracker Google Sky Map Turns Your Android Phone into a Digital Telescope Walking Through a Seaside Village Wallpaper

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• Spotlight on an Office – Reading TVP offices

  - by Maria Sandu

  This month we’re in the UK at the Reading offices, for ‘Spotlight on an office’. The Reading Office, which is Oracle’s UK Headquarters, is based in Thames Valley Park (TVP), which is a bustling hive of activity that houses many different companies, a gym, and even a nursery. Overlooking the Thames and some of England’s beautiful countryside, this office, just a short free bus ride from Reading Town Centre is in a fantastic location. The offices themselves are made up of 5 different buildings, each with their own car park, restaurant, and design. The main building or TVP 510 as it is referred to, sits resplendent next to an extremely blue (for the UK) pond, filled with large koi-carp that on a sunny day like to come to the surface of the lake and bask. As the main hub of activity, TVP 510 is where you will find our Dry Cleaning service, the Ozone Gym, the main restaurant (which never fails to have someone in it), and the Marquee which sits outside the back amongst the picnic benches, and is where we have Barbeques in the summer time. Another highlight of the Reading Offices is tucked away in TVP530; the home of H20, and our sports and social club. This is the building that can be best be described as having the ‘cool’ vibe, where you can relax and unwind, all whilst sipping a Starbucks (or Costa if you prefer, located in TVP550), and playing a game of Pool in the cafeteria, or alternatively you can sit back and enjoy a seat in one of the luxury massage chairs! If you feel so inclined, you can also hire out an OraBike from any of the TVP offices, and if you are anything like some of my team, cycle from Reading to Bath using the towpath starting in Thames Valley Park. Oracle’s Reading Offices are a great place to work, they are home to a diverse range of people and have great atmosphere which would suit a graduate, intern, or anyone who is looking to come and work for Oracle in the UK.

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• Stop YOUR emails from starting those company-wide Reply All email threads

  - by deadlydog

  You know you’ve seen it before; somebody sends out a company-wide email (or email to a large diverse audience), and a couple people or small group of people start replying-all back to the email with info/jokes that is only relative to that small group of people, yet EVERYBODY on the original email list has to suffer their inbox filling up with what is essentially spam since it doesn’t pertain to them or is something they don’t care about. A co-worker of mine made an ingenious off-hand comment to me one day of how to avoid this, and I’ve been using it ever since.  Simply place the email addresses of everybody that you are sending the email to in the BCC field (not the CC field), and in the TO field put your email address.  So everybody still gets the email, and they are easily able to reply back to you about it.  Note though, that the people you send the email to will not be able to see everyone else that you sent it to. Obviously you might not want to use this ALL the time; there are some times when you want a group discussion to occur over email.  But for those other times, such as when sending a NWR email about the car you are selling, asking everyone what a good local restaurant near by is, collecting personal info from people, or sharing a handy program or trick you learnt about (such as this one ), this trick can save everybody frustration and avoid wasting their time.  Trust me, your coworkers will thank you; mine did

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• Does Unity's "Transparent Bumped Specular" translate to "semi-shiny must be semi-transparent"?

  - by Shivan Dragon

  Unity's documentation for the "Transparent Bumped Specular" shader/material-type is simply a concatenation of each of the descriptions for its Transparent and Specular Shaders (and also Bumped, but that doesn't apply to the question): Transparent Properties This shader can make mesh geometry partially or fully transparent by reading the alpha channel of the main texture. In the alpha, 0 (black) is completely transparent while 255 (white) is completely opaque. If your main texture does not have an alpha channel, the object will appear completely opaque. (...) Specular Properties (...) Additionally, the alpha channel of the main texture acts as a Specular Map (sometimes called "gloss map"), defining which areas of the object are more reflective than others. Black areas of the alpha will be zero specular reflection, while white areas will be full specular reflection. To me this translates to: I have a mesh representig a car tire The texture need to be very shiny on the rims parts, and almost not shiny at all for the rubber parts Also since the rim is really complex, (with like cut-out decoretions and such), I will not build that into the mesh, but fake it with transparency in the texture I can't do all this using Unity's "Transparent Bumped Specular" shader, because the "rubber" part of the texture will become semi transparent due to me painting the alpha channel dark-grey (because I want it to also be less shiny). Is this correct? If not, how can I make this work?

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• How-To Geek Gets the Microsoft MVP Award, Thanks to You

  - by The Geek

  The How-To Geek has won a Microsoft MVP award for the second year in a row, and it’s all thanks to you, our great readers that keep the site going. Join us for some mutual back-patting and some terrible photography of all the award stuff. Of course, if you’re familiar with the MVP award you’ll probably know that it’s actually for a single person, but in my opinion the award belongs to the entire How-To Geek community, without which this site would be nothing. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC HTG Projects: How to Create Your Own Custom Papercraft Toy How to Combine Rescue Disks to Create the Ultimate Windows Repair Disk What is Camera Raw, and Why Would a Professional Prefer it to JPG? The How-To Geek Guide to Audio Editing: The Basics How To Boot 10 Different Live CDs From 1 USB Flash Drive The 20 Best How-To Geek Linux Articles of 2010 Five Sleek Audi R8 Car Themes for Chrome and Iron MS Notepad Replacement Metapad Returns with a New Beta Version Spybot Search and Destroy Now Available as a Portable App (PortableApps.com) ShapeShifter: What Are Dreams? [Video] This Computer Runs on Geek Power Wallpaper Bones, Clocks, and Counters; A Look at the First 35,000 Years of Computing

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• 50 Years After The Jetsons

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  The Jetsons, the future-oriented animated cartoon series from the 1960s, turned 50 this week. The Smithsonian takes a look at what the show meant, then and now. At the Smithsonian blog Paleofuture, Matt Novak looks back at the last 50 years and the impact that The Jetsons had. He writes: It’s important to remember that today’s political, social and business leaders were pretty much watching ”The Jetsons” on repeat during their most impressionable years. People are often shocked to learn that “The Jetsons” lasted just one season during its original run in 1962-63 and wasn’t revived until 1985. Essentially every kid in America (and many internationally) saw the series on constant repeat during Saturday morning cartoons throughout the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s. Everyone (including my own mom) seems to ask me, “How could it have been around for only 24 episodes? Did I really just watch those same episodes over and over again?” Yes, yes you did. But it’s just a cartoon, right? So what if today’s political and social elite saw ”The Jetsons” a lot? Thanks in large part to the Jetsons, there’s a sense of betrayal that is pervasive in American culture today about the future that never arrived. We’re all familiar with the rallying cries of the angry retrofuturist: Where’s my jetpack!?! Where’s my flying car!?! Where’s my robot maid?!? “The Jetsons” and everything they represented were seen by so many not as a possible future, but a promise of one. Hit up the link below for the full article–prepare to be surprised at just how few episodes of the show were ever animated and aired. 8 Deadly Commands You Should Never Run on Linux 14 Special Google Searches That Show Instant Answers How To Create a Customized Windows 7 Installation Disc With Integrated Updates

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• HTG Explains: The Best and Worst Ways to Send a Resume

  - by Eric Z Goodnight

  With so many people looking for jobs, the slightest edge in your resume presentation has potential to make or break your chances. But not all filetypes or methods are created equal—read on to see the potential pitfalls your resume faces. In this article, we’ll explore what can go wrong in a resume submission, what can be done to counteract it, and also go into why a prospective employer might ignore your resume based on your method of sending a resume. Finally, we’ll cover the best filetypes and methods that can help get you that new job you’ve been looking for. What Sets Your Resume Apart? Latest Features How-To Geek ETC Internet Explorer 9 RC Now Available: Here’s the Most Interesting New Stuff Here’s a Super Simple Trick to Defeating Fake Anti-Virus Malware How to Change the Default Application for Android Tasks Stop Believing TV’s Lies: The Real Truth About "Enhancing" Images The How-To Geek Valentine’s Day Gift Guide Inspire Geek Love with These Hilarious Geek Valentines The Citroen GT – An Awesome Video Game Car Brought to Life [Video] Four Awesome TRON Legacy Themes for Chrome and Iron Anger is Illogical – Old School Style Instructional Video [Star Trek Mashup] Get the Old Microsoft Paint UI Back in Windows 7 Relax and Sleep Is a Soothing Sleep Timer Google Rolls Out Two-Factor Authentication

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• Prevent oversteering catastrophe in racing games

  - by jdm

  When playing GTA III on Android I noticed something that has been annoying me in almost every racing game I've played (maybe except Mario Kart): Driving straight ahead is easy, but curves are really hard. When I switch lanes or pass somebody, the car starts swiveling back and forth, and any attempt to correct it makes it only worse. The only thing I can do is to hit the brakes. I think this is some kind of oversteering. What makes it so irritating is that it never happens to me in real life (thank god :-)), so 90% of the games with vehicles inside feel unreal to me (despite probably having really good physics engines). I've talked to a couple of people about this, and it seems either you 'get' racing games, or you don't. With a lot of practice, I did manage to get semi-good at some games (e.g. from the Need for Speed series), by driving very cautiously, braking a lot (and usually getting a cramp in my fingers). What can you do as a game developer to prevent the oversteering resonance catastrophe, and make driving feel right? (For a casual racing game, that doesn't strive for 100% realistic physics) I also wonder what games like Super Mario Kart exactly do differently so that they don't have so much oversteering? I guess one problem is that if you play with a keyboard or a touchscreen (but not wheels and pedals), you only have digital input: gas pressed or not, steering left/right or not, and it's much harder to steer appropriately for a given speed. The other thing is that you probably don't have a good sense of speed, and drive much faster than you would (safely) in reality. From the top of my head, one solution might be to vary the steering response with speed.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, October 28, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, October 28, 2013Popular ReleasesExtJS based ASP.NET Controls: FineUI v4.0beta1: +2013-10-28 v4.0 beta1 +?????Collapsed???????????????。 -????：window/group_panel.aspx??，???????，???????，?????????。 +??????SelectedNodeIDArray???????????????。 -????：tree/checkbox/tree_checkall.aspx??，?????，?????，????????????。 -??TimerPicker???????（????、????ing）。 -??????????????????????（???）。 -?????????????，??type=text/css（??~`）。 -MsgTarget???MessageTarget，???None。 -FormOffsetRight?????20px??5px。 -?Web.config?PageManager??FormLabelAlign???。 -ToolbarPosition??Left/Right。 -??Web.conf...CODE Framework: 4.0.31028.0: See change notes in the documentation section for details on what's new. Note: If you download the class reference help file with, you have to right-click the file, pick "Properties", and then unblock the file, as many browsers flag the file as blocked during download (for security reasons) and thus hides all content.Event-Based Components AppBuilder: AB3.AppDesigner.57.11: Iteration 57.11 (Cleaning): Removing obsolete code parts because of improvements done in this iteration. Removed: LineSourceToTargetDragDropEventHandler, LineSourceToTargetAdorner, LineSourceToTargetToAppDefinitionConverter, LineSourceToPointDragDropEventHandler, LineSourceToPointToAppDefinitionConverter, LinePointToTargetDragDropEventHandler, LinePointToTargetToAppDefinitionConverter, LinePointToTargetAdorner, LineSourceToPointAdorner, LineAdornerBase Improved: EditChartFlow Still missin...Online Radio 3.1: Source Code: Source CodeVidCoder: 1.5.10 Beta: Broke out all the encoder-specific passthrough options into their own dropdown. This should make what they do a bit more clear and clean up the codec list a bit. Updated HandBrake core to SVN 5855.multi: multi (alpha version 0.1): extract the zip to a folder say c:\scripts\multi follow the instructions found in readme.txtAscend 3D: Ascend (2013-10-26): Ascend 2.2.2 Timeline improvements Added ability to specify end frame for TimelineAnimations Added ability to specify a play rate for TimelineAnimations All frame rates are now doubles instead of ints Minor API documentation updatesIndent Guides for Visual Studio: Indent Guides v14: ImportantThis release has a separate download for Visual Studio 2010. The first link is for VS 2012 and later. Version History Changed in v14 Improved performance when scrolling and editing Fixed potential crash when Resharper is installed Fixed highlight of guides split around pragmas in C++/C# Restored VS 2010 support as a separate download Changed in v13 Added page width guide lines Added guide highlighting options Fixed guides appearing over collapsed blocks Fixed guides not...ASP.net MVC Awesome - jQuery Ajax Helpers: 3.5.3 (mvc5): version 3.5.3 - support for mvc5 version 3.5.2 - fix for setting single value to multivalue controls - datepicker min max date offset fix - html encoding for keys fix - enable Column.ClientFormatFunc to be a function call that will return a function version 3.5.1 ========================== - fixed html attributes rendering - fixed loading animation rendering - css improvements version 3.5 ========================== - autosize for all popups ( can be turned off by calling in js...Media Companion: Media Companion MC3.585b: IMDB plot scraping Fixed. New* Movie - Rename Folder using Movie Set, option to move ignored articles to end of Movie Set, only for folder renaming. Fixed* Media Companion - Fixed if using profiles, config files would blown up in size due to some settings duplicating. * Ignore Article of An was cutting of last character of movie title. * If Rescraping title, sort title changed depending on 'Move article to end of Sort Title' setting. * Movie - If changing Poster source order, list would beco...MoreTerra (Terraria World Viewer): MoreTerra 1.11.4: Release 1.11.4 =========== = Compatibility = =========== Updated to add the new tiles/walls in 1.2.1PowerShell App Deployment Toolkit: PowerShell App Deployment Toolkit v3.0.7: This is a bug fix release, containing some important fixes! Fixed issue where Session 0 was not detected correctly, resulting in issues when attempting to display a UI when none was allowed Fixed Installation Prompt and Installation Restart Prompt appearing when deploy mode was non-interactive or silent Fixed issue where defer prompt is displayed after force closing multiple applications Fixed issue executing blocked app execution dialog from UNC path (executed instead from local tempo...BlackJumboDog: Ver5.9.7: 2013.10.24 Ver5.9.7 (1)FTP???????、２?????????????shift-jis????????????? (2)????HTTP????、???????POST??????????????????CtrlAltStudio Viewer: CtrlAltStudio Viewer 1.1.0.34322 Alpha 4: This experimental release of the CtrlAltStudio Viewer includes the following significant features: Oculus Rift support. Stereoscopic 3D display support. Based on Firestorm viewer 4.4.2 codebase. For more details, see the release notes linked to below. Release notes: http://ctrlaltstudio.com/viewer/release-notes/1-1-0-34322-alpha-4 Support info: http://ctrlaltstudio.com/viewer/support Privacy policy: http://ctrlaltstudio.com/viewer/privacy Disclaimer: This software is not provided or sup...VsTortoise - a TortoiseSVN add-in for Microsoft Visual Studio: VsTortoise Build 32 Beta: Note: This release does not work with custom VsTortoise toolbars. These get removed every time when you shutdown Visual Studio. (#7940) This release has been tested with Visual Studio 2008, 2010, 2012 and 2013, using TortoiseSVN 1.6, 1.7 and 1.8. It should also still work with Visual Studio 2005, but I couldn't find anyone to test it in VS2005. Build 32 (beta) changelogNew: Added Visual Studio 2013 support New: Added Visual Studio 2012 support New: Added SVN 1.8 support New: Added 'Ch...ABCat: ABCat v.2.0.1a: ?????????? ???????? ? ?????????? ?????? ???? ??? Win7. ????????? ?????? ????????? ?? ???????. ????? ?????, ???? ????? ???????? ????????? ?????????? ????????? "?? ??????? ????? ???????????? ?????????? ??????...", ?? ?????????? ??????? ? ?????????? ?????? Microsoft SQL Ce ?? ????????? ??????: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=17876. ???????? ?????? x64 ??? x86 ? ??????????? ?? ?????? ???????????? ???????. ??? ??????? ????????? ?? ?????????? ?????? Entity Framework, ? ???? ...patterns & practices: Data Access Guidance: Data Access Guidance 2013: This is the 2013 release of Data Access Guidance. The documentation for this RI is also available on MSDN: Data Access for Highly-Scalable Solutions: Using SQL, NoSQL, and Polyglot Persistence: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn271399.aspxLINQ to Twitter: LINQ to Twitter v2.1.10: Supports .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, .NET 4.5, Silverlight 4.0, Windows Phone 7.1, Windows Phone 8, Client Profile, Windows 8, and Windows Azure. 100% Twitter API coverage. Also supports Twitter API v1.1! Also on NuGet.TerrariViewer: TerrariViewer v7.2 [Terraria Inventory Editor]: Added "Check for Update" button Hopefully fixed Windows XP issue You can now backspace in Item stack fieldsSimple Injector: Simple Injector v2.3.6: This patch releases fixes one bug concerning resolving open generic types that contain nested generic type arguments. Nested generic types were handled incorrectly in certain cases. This affects RegisterOpenGeneric and RegisterDecorator. (work item 20332)New ProjectsAnimation Manager: The Animation Manager project is designed to be a very simple way of adding animations to XAML content.ASP.NET MVC Plugin Framework: Provides a framework for building ASP.NET MVC sites that can use plugins to extend their functionality.Assignment1_Sum_of_two_numbers: 7COM1052 In this project, a simple ASP.NET web page has been created where the user can calculate the sum of two numbers.Car Cost Simulator: Car Cost SimulatorCpuMon: CpuMon is a small windows 4.5.0 program enables live monitoring of system resources via desktop.CruxOMatic: Crux-O-Matic is a full blown application development platform, with support for authentication, authorization, workflows, scaffolding and multi-tenancy.Deppon: deppon projectFlareCAD: FlareCAD is a solid modeling program implementing a new 3D file format that has emphasis on artificial intelligence.FlareGIS: FlareGIS is a mapping program implementing a new 3D file format that has emphasis on artificial intelligence.joge: Toy code for my own amusementJS1: Art Book Review UGCMSBuild Editor: MSBuildEditor provides intellisense for MSBuild Tasks and Properties. mubeen hussain calculation test: The above is a addition calculator designed using ASP.net via Visual Studio 2013.Parallel Web Crawler: In this project demonstrate how can write an effective parallel crawler using TPL api. As the size of the Web grows, it becomes imperative to parallelize apps.Resources Editor: This tool give you a simplified way to edit your resources (ResX files) in combining all cultures in the same view.SID Translator: Make Active Directory SID Translation easier : - Translate a SID from String to Hex or Hex to String - Compare two SID, no matter the format.TestGaneshmj: This is test summary.Webcam Security Application: Webcam Security is an application which utilizes an ordinary camera. This application is still under construction as new features will be added as time goeswebprojects: webprojectswebprojectswebprojectswebprojectswebprojectswebprojectswebprojectswebprojectswebprojectswebprojectswebprojectswebprojectswebprojectswindowsphoneproject: windowsphoneprojectwindowsphoneprojectwindowsphoneprojectwindowsphoneprojectwindowsphoneprojectWSAD module 2013: university project codeXml Visualiser: This tool can edit a simple xml file into a multi tables like DataBase

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• How to Enable User-Specific Wireless Networks in Windows 7

  - by The Geek

  Wireless network settings in Windows 7 are global across all users, but there’s a little-known option that lets you switch them to per-user, so each user has access to only the networks they are allowed to connect to. Here’s how it all works. How is this useful? Maybe you want to prevent a particular user from accessing the internet—if you don’t give them the wireless password, they won’t be able to get online. This could be very useful if you’ve got mini-people playing games on the family PC, but you don’t want them getting online Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Enable User-Specific Wireless Networks in Windows 7 How to Use Google Chrome as Your Default PDF Reader (the Easy Way) How To Remove People and Objects From Photographs In Photoshop Ask How-To Geek: How Can I Monitor My Bandwidth Usage? Internet Explorer 9 RC Now Available: Here’s the Most Interesting New Stuff Here’s a Super Simple Trick to Defeating Fake Anti-Virus Malware The Citroen GT – An Awesome Video Game Car Brought to Life [Video] Final Man vs. Machine Round of Jeopardy Unfolds; Watson Dominates Give Chromium-Based Browser Desktop Notifications a Native System Look in Ubuntu Chrome Time Track Is a Simple Task Time Tracker Google Sky Map Turns Your Android Phone into a Digital Telescope Walking Through a Seaside Village Wallpaper

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• What did programmers do before variable scope, where everything is global?

  - by hydroparadise

  So, I am having to deal with seemingly archiac language (called PowerOn) where I have a main method, a few datatypes to define variables with, and has the ability to have sub-procedures (essentially void methods) that does not return a type nor accepts any arguements. The problem here is that EVERYTHING is global. I've read of these type of languages, but most books take the aproach "Ok, we use to use a horse and cariage, but now, here's a car so let's learn how to work on THAT!" We will NEVER relive those days". I have to admit, the mind is struggling to think outside of scope and extent. Well here I am. I am trying to figure out how to best manage nothing but global variables across several open methods. Yep, even iterators for for loops have to be defined globaly, which I find myself recycling in different parts of my code. My Question: for those that have this type experience, how did programmers deal with a large amount of variables in a global playing field? I have feeling it just became a mental juggling trick, but I would be interested to know if there were any known aproaches.

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• Any ideas about how to make Programming Techniques Class more interesting.

  - by Eedoh

  Hello. I already found similar question here on SO, but almost all the answers were more philosophical, then practical. I'd like You to share some of Your PRACTICAL ideas about how to make my course more interesting. It doesn't matter how much effort it takes from me. I even thought about trying to motivate them to pick some topic in the beginning of the course and to work on it as some kind of real, small, startup project that they could maybe financially exploit once it's finished. But I'm afraid that most of them will not get the project to the end, and that it could be boring to them working on one thing all year long. Also I thought about involving them in Torcs, but I'm afraid most of them wouldn't be up to the task. Btw, Torcs is Car Racing Simulation, but there's an API for developers so they can develop their own AI for the driver, and then race their cars against the other programmer's AI's. I'm not asking here for problem examples, as I asked a separate question about that. I need ideas about making my lectures more interesting and fun.

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