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  • Can the user take the resource from the iPhone Apps?

    - by Tattat
    I know that the Apple Mac OS .app file is a collection of programs and data. I guest the iPhone is similar in this way. I can unzip a Mac OS .app to find the resource , images using this way. Can the iPhone App do the similar thing? I mean, can the user unzip the iPhone .app to get the resource/ img from that? thz.

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  • Best way to password protect a folder?

    - by Mahmoud
    I am trying to create a similar way to Cpanel password protect directory, where a pop up comes out asking the user for a username and a password, but Cpanel way is amazing but my client doesn't know anything on how to do that, so i wanted to create a pop up msgbox informing the visitor to enter a user name and a password, and i totaly confused on how to create it, and which programming language support similar to CPanel

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  • Is there a template engine for Node.js?

    - by Seb
    I'm kind of falling in love with Node.js not because you write app code in javascript but because of its performance. I really don't care a lot about how beautiful a server side language might be but how much requests per second it can handle. So anyway I'm looking forward to experiment building an entire webapp using Node.js (and going back to the actual question) is there a template engine similar to let's say the django template engine or something similar (that at least allows you to extend base templates) available for Node.js?

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  • Icons in dired in Emacs (on Mac or Linux)

    - by Dave
    I'd like to have dired show a little icon next to each file, similar to what you'd see in "list" or "details" view on a graphical file browser. Someone posted a similar question but the only answer was for Windows only; I want to be able to do this on Linux or Mac.

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  • Anyone using RailRoad diagrams generator?

    - by cnicolaou
    I recently installed RailRoad gem to generate an .svg diagram of my app's models and controllers. The rake task keeps breaking with a similar error: 1.8/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-1.4.4/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:263:in `load_missing_constant': uninitialized constant I tried the rake task on 2 seperate apps and the error keeps appearing with a different "constant" name. Anyone using it with similar problems?

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  • What would be better, (1 database + 4 tables) or (2 databases + 2 tables each) ?

    - by griseldas
    Hi there, I would like to be advised on what would be better (in regards to performance) A) 1 DATABASE with 4 tables or B) 2 DATABASES (same server), each with 2 tables. The tables size and usage are more or less similar, so the 2 tables on Database 1 would be similar usage/size to the 2 tables on database 2 The tables could have +500,000 records and the 2 tables on each database are not related (no join queries etc between them) Thanks in advance for your comments

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  • Middleware Test Automation Tools

    Hi I would like to know about any Test Automation Solution adopted in Middle ware Testing. Is it similar to automation solutions provided for functional tests? I would like to know in what ways it is similar / different than Functional test automation. What are the tools which can be used to accomplish test automation in Middleware testing?

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  • Plan Caching and Query Memory Part II (Hash Match) – When not to use stored procedure - Most common performance mistake SQL Server developers make.

    - by sqlworkshops
    SQL Server estimates Memory requirement at compile time, when stored procedure or other plan caching mechanisms like sp_executesql or prepared statement are used, the memory requirement is estimated based on first set of execution parameters. This is a common reason for spill over tempdb and hence poor performance. Common memory allocating queries are that perform Sort and do Hash Match operations like Hash Join or Hash Aggregation or Hash Union. This article covers Hash Match operations with examples. It is recommended to read Plan Caching and Query Memory Part I before this article which covers an introduction and Query memory for Sort. In most cases it is cheaper to pay for the compilation cost of dynamic queries than huge cost for spill over tempdb, unless memory requirement for a query does not change significantly based on predicates.   This article covers underestimation / overestimation of memory for Hash Match operation. Plan Caching and Query Memory Part I covers underestimation / overestimation for Sort. It is important to note that underestimation of memory for Sort and Hash Match operations lead to spill over tempdb and hence negatively impact performance. Overestimation of memory affects the memory needs of other concurrently executing queries. In addition, it is important to note, with Hash Match operations, overestimation of memory can actually lead to poor performance.   To read additional articles I wrote click here.   The best way to learn is to practice. To create the below tables and reproduce the behavior, join the mailing list by using this link: www.sqlworkshops.com/ml and I will send you the table creation script. Most of these concepts are also covered in our webcasts: www.sqlworkshops.com/webcasts  Let’s create a Customer’s State table that has 99% of customers in NY and the rest 1% in WA.Customers table used in Part I of this article is also used here.To observe Hash Warning, enable 'Hash Warning' in SQL Profiler under Events 'Errors and Warnings'. --Example provided by www.sqlworkshops.com drop table CustomersState go create table CustomersState (CustomerID int primary key, Address char(200), State char(2)) go insert into CustomersState (CustomerID, Address) select CustomerID, 'Address' from Customers update CustomersState set State = 'NY' where CustomerID % 100 != 1 update CustomersState set State = 'WA' where CustomerID % 100 = 1 go update statistics CustomersState with fullscan go   Let’s create a stored procedure that joins customers with CustomersState table with a predicate on State. --Example provided by www.sqlworkshops.com create proc CustomersByState @State char(2) as begin declare @CustomerID int select @CustomerID = e.CustomerID from Customers e inner join CustomersState es on (e.CustomerID = es.CustomerID) where es.State = @State option (maxdop 1) end go  Let’s execute the stored procedure first with parameter value ‘WA’ – which will select 1% of data. set statistics time on go --Example provided by www.sqlworkshops.com exec CustomersByState 'WA' goThe stored procedure took 294 ms to complete.  The stored procedure was granted 6704 KB based on 8000 rows being estimated.  The estimated number of rows, 8000 is similar to actual number of rows 8000 and hence the memory estimation should be ok.  There was no Hash Warning in SQL Profiler. To observe Hash Warning, enable 'Hash Warning' in SQL Profiler under Events 'Errors and Warnings'.   Now let’s execute the stored procedure with parameter value ‘NY’ – which will select 99% of data. -Example provided by www.sqlworkshops.com exec CustomersByState 'NY' go  The stored procedure took 2922 ms to complete.   The stored procedure was granted 6704 KB based on 8000 rows being estimated.    The estimated number of rows, 8000 is way different from the actual number of rows 792000 because the estimation is based on the first set of parameter value supplied to the stored procedure which is ‘WA’ in our case. This underestimation will lead to spill over tempdb, resulting in poor performance.   There was Hash Warning (Recursion) in SQL Profiler. To observe Hash Warning, enable 'Hash Warning' in SQL Profiler under Events 'Errors and Warnings'.   Let’s recompile the stored procedure and then let’s first execute the stored procedure with parameter value ‘NY’.  In a production instance it is not advisable to use sp_recompile instead one should use DBCC FREEPROCCACHE (plan_handle). This is due to locking issues involved with sp_recompile, refer to our webcasts, www.sqlworkshops.com/webcasts for further details.   exec sp_recompile CustomersByState go --Example provided by www.sqlworkshops.com exec CustomersByState 'NY' go  Now the stored procedure took only 1046 ms instead of 2922 ms.   The stored procedure was granted 146752 KB of memory. The estimated number of rows, 792000 is similar to actual number of rows of 792000. Better performance of this stored procedure execution is due to better estimation of memory and avoiding spill over tempdb.   There was no Hash Warning in SQL Profiler.   Now let’s execute the stored procedure with parameter value ‘WA’. --Example provided by www.sqlworkshops.com exec CustomersByState 'WA' go  The stored procedure took 351 ms to complete, higher than the previous execution time of 294 ms.    This stored procedure was granted more memory (146752 KB) than necessary (6704 KB) based on parameter value ‘NY’ for estimation (792000 rows) instead of parameter value ‘WA’ for estimation (8000 rows). This is because the estimation is based on the first set of parameter value supplied to the stored procedure which is ‘NY’ in this case. This overestimation leads to poor performance of this Hash Match operation, it might also affect the performance of other concurrently executing queries requiring memory and hence overestimation is not recommended.     The estimated number of rows, 792000 is much more than the actual number of rows of 8000.  Intermediate Summary: This issue can be avoided by not caching the plan for memory allocating queries. Other possibility is to use recompile hint or optimize for hint to allocate memory for predefined data range.Let’s recreate the stored procedure with recompile hint. --Example provided by www.sqlworkshops.com drop proc CustomersByState go create proc CustomersByState @State char(2) as begin declare @CustomerID int select @CustomerID = e.CustomerID from Customers e inner join CustomersState es on (e.CustomerID = es.CustomerID) where es.State = @State option (maxdop 1, recompile) end go  Let’s execute the stored procedure initially with parameter value ‘WA’ and then with parameter value ‘NY’. --Example provided by www.sqlworkshops.com exec CustomersByState 'WA' go exec CustomersByState 'NY' go  The stored procedure took 297 ms and 1102 ms in line with previous optimal execution times.   The stored procedure with parameter value ‘WA’ has good estimation like before.   Estimated number of rows of 8000 is similar to actual number of rows of 8000.   The stored procedure with parameter value ‘NY’ also has good estimation and memory grant like before because the stored procedure was recompiled with current set of parameter values.  Estimated number of rows of 792000 is similar to actual number of rows of 792000.    The compilation time and compilation CPU of 1 ms is not expensive in this case compared to the performance benefit.   There was no Hash Warning in SQL Profiler.   Let’s recreate the stored procedure with optimize for hint of ‘NY’. --Example provided by www.sqlworkshops.com drop proc CustomersByState go create proc CustomersByState @State char(2) as begin declare @CustomerID int select @CustomerID = e.CustomerID from Customers e inner join CustomersState es on (e.CustomerID = es.CustomerID) where es.State = @State option (maxdop 1, optimize for (@State = 'NY')) end go  Let’s execute the stored procedure initially with parameter value ‘WA’ and then with parameter value ‘NY’. --Example provided by www.sqlworkshops.com exec CustomersByState 'WA' go exec CustomersByState 'NY' go  The stored procedure took 353 ms with parameter value ‘WA’, this is much slower than the optimal execution time of 294 ms we observed previously. This is because of overestimation of memory. The stored procedure with parameter value ‘NY’ has optimal execution time like before.   The stored procedure with parameter value ‘WA’ has overestimation of rows because of optimize for hint value of ‘NY’.   Unlike before, more memory was estimated to this stored procedure based on optimize for hint value ‘NY’.    The stored procedure with parameter value ‘NY’ has good estimation because of optimize for hint value of ‘NY’. Estimated number of rows of 792000 is similar to actual number of rows of 792000.   Optimal amount memory was estimated to this stored procedure based on optimize for hint value ‘NY’.   There was no Hash Warning in SQL Profiler.   This article covers underestimation / overestimation of memory for Hash Match operation. Plan Caching and Query Memory Part I covers underestimation / overestimation for Sort. It is important to note that underestimation of memory for Sort and Hash Match operations lead to spill over tempdb and hence negatively impact performance. Overestimation of memory affects the memory needs of other concurrently executing queries. In addition, it is important to note, with Hash Match operations, overestimation of memory can actually lead to poor performance.   Summary: Cached plan might lead to underestimation or overestimation of memory because the memory is estimated based on first set of execution parameters. It is recommended not to cache the plan if the amount of memory required to execute the stored procedure has a wide range of possibilities. One can mitigate this by using recompile hint, but that will lead to compilation overhead. However, in most cases it might be ok to pay for compilation rather than spilling sort over tempdb which could be very expensive compared to compilation cost. The other possibility is to use optimize for hint, but in case one sorts more data than hinted by optimize for hint, this will still lead to spill. On the other side there is also the possibility of overestimation leading to unnecessary memory issues for other concurrently executing queries. In case of Hash Match operations, this overestimation of memory might lead to poor performance. When the values used in optimize for hint are archived from the database, the estimation will be wrong leading to worst performance, so one has to exercise caution before using optimize for hint, recompile hint is better in this case.   I explain these concepts with detailed examples in my webcasts (www.sqlworkshops.com/webcasts), I recommend you to watch them. The best way to learn is to practice. To create the above tables and reproduce the behavior, join the mailing list at www.sqlworkshops.com/ml and I will send you the relevant SQL Scripts.  Register for the upcoming 3 Day Level 400 Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2005 Performance Monitoring & Tuning Hands-on Workshop in London, United Kingdom during March 15-17, 2011, click here to register / Microsoft UK TechNet.These are hands-on workshops with a maximum of 12 participants and not lectures. For consulting engagements click here.   Disclaimer and copyright information:This article refers to organizations and products that may be the trademarks or registered trademarks of their various owners. Copyright of this article belongs to R Meyyappan / www.sqlworkshops.com. You may freely use the ideas and concepts discussed in this article with acknowledgement (www.sqlworkshops.com), but you may not claim any of it as your own work. This article is for informational purposes only; you use any of the suggestions given here entirely at your own risk.   R Meyyappan [email protected] LinkedIn: http://at.linkedin.com/in/rmeyyappan

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  • Customize the Five Windows Folder Templates

    - by Mark Virtue
    Are you’re particular about the way Windows Explorer presents each folder’s contents? Here we show you how to take advantage of Explorer’s built-in templates, which cuts down the time it takes to do customizations. Note: The techniques in this article apply to Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7. When opening a folder for the first time in Windows Explorer, we are presented with a standard default view of the files and folders in that folder. It may be that the items are presented are perfectly fine, but on the other hand, we may want to customize the view.  The aspects of it that we can customize are the following: The display type (list view, details, tiles, thumbnails, etc) Which columns are displayed, and in which order The widths of the visible columns The order in which the files and folders are sorted Any file groupings Thankfully, Windows offers us a shortcut.  A particular folder’s settings can be used as a “template” for other, similar folders.  In fact, we can store up to five separate sets of folder presentation configurations.  Once we save the settings for a particular template, that template can then be applied to other folders. Customize Your First Folder We’ll start by setting up the first of our templates – the default one.  Once we create this template and apply it, the vast majority of the folders in our file system will change to match it, so it’s important that we set it up very carefully.  The first step in creating and applying the template is to customize one folder with the settings that all the rest will have. Choose a folder that is typical of the folders that you wish to have this default template.  Select it in Windows Explorer.  To ensure that it is a suitable candidate, right-click the folder name and select Properties, then go to the Customize tab.  Ensure that this folder is marked as General Items.  If it is not, either choose a different folder or select General Items from the list. Click OK.  Now we’re ready to customize our first folder. Changing the way one single folder is presented is straightforward.  We start with the folder’s display type.  Click the Change your view button in the top-right corner of every Explorer window. Each time you click the button, the folder’s view cycles to the next view type.  Alternatively you can click the little down-arrow next to the button to see all the display types at once, and select the one you want. Click the view you want, or drag the slider next to the one you want. If you have chosen Details, then the next thing you may wish to change is which columns are displayed, and the order of these.  To choose which columns are displayed, simply right-click on any column heading.  A list of the columns currently being display appears. Simply uncheck a column if you don’t want it displayed, and check the columns that you want displayed.  If you want some information displayed about your files that is not listed here, then click the More… button for a full list of file attributes. There’s a lot of them! To change the order of the columns that are currently being displayed, simply click on a column heading and drag it to where you think it should be.  To change the width of a column, click the line that represents the right-hand edge of the column and drag it left or right. To sort by a column, click once on that column.  To reverse the sort-order, click that same column again. To change the groupings of the files in the folder, right-click in a blank area of the folder, select Group by, and select the appropriate column. Apply This Default Template to All Similar Folders Once you have the folder exactly the way you want it, we now use this folder as our default template for most of the folders in our file system.  To do this, ensure that you are still in the folder you just customized, and then, from the Organize menu in Explorer, click on Folder and search options. Then select the View tab and click the Apply to Folders button. After you’ve clicked OK, visit some of the other folders in your file system.  You should see that most have taken on these new settings. What we’ve just done, in effect, is we have customized the General Items template.  This is one of five templates that Windows Explorer uses to display folder contents.  The five templates are called (in Windows 7): General Items Documents Pictures Music Videos When a folder is opened, Windows Explorer examines the contents to see if it can automatically determine which folder template to use to display the folder contents.  If it is not obvious that the folder contents falls into any of the last four templates, then Windows Explorer chooses the General Items template.  That’s why most of the folders in your file system are shown using the General Items template. Changing the Other Four Templates If you want to adjust the other four templates, the process is very similar to what we’ve just done.  If you wanted to change the “Music” template, for example, the steps would be as follows: Select a folder that contains music items Apply the existing Music template to the folder (even if it doesn’t look like you want it to) Customize the folder to your personal preferences Apply the new template to all “Music” folders A fifth step would be:  When you open a folder that contains music items but is not automatically displayed using the Music template, you manually select the Music template for that folder. First, select a folder that contains music items.  It will probably be displayed using the existing Music template: Next, ensure that it is using the Music template.  If it’s not, then manually select the Music template. Next, customize the folder to suit your personal preferences (here we’ve added a couple of columns, and sorted by Artist). Now we can set this view to be our Music template.  Choose Organize, then the View tab, and click the Apply to Folders button. Note: The only folders that will inherit these settings are the ones that are currently (or will soon be) using the Music template. Now, if you have any folder that contains music items, and you want it to inherit all of these settings, then right-click the folder name, choose Properties, and select that this folder should use the Music template.  You can also cehck the box entitled Also apply this template to all subfolders if you want to save yourself even more time with all the sub-folders. Conclusion It’s neat to be able to set up templates for your folder views like this.  It’s a shame that Microsoft didn’t take the concept just a little further and allow you to create as many templates as you want. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Fix For When Windows Explorer in Vista Stops Showing File NamesCustomize the Windows 7 or Vista Send To MenuFix for New Contact Group Button Not Displaying in VistaWhy Did Windows Vista’s Music Folder Icon Turn Yellow?Make Your Last Minute Holiday Cards with Microsoft Word TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Office 2010 reviewed in depth by Ed Bott FoxClocks adds World Times in your Statusbar (Firefox) Have Fun Editing Photo Editing with Citrify Outlook Connector Upgrade Error Gadfly is a cool Twitter/Silverlight app Enable DreamScene in Windows 7

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  • Use Autoruns to Manually Clean an Infected PC

    - by Mark Virtue
    There are many anti-malware programs out there that will clean your system of nasties, but what happens if you’re not able to use such a program?  Autoruns, from SysInternals (recently acquired by Microsoft), is indispensable when removing malware manually. There are a few reasons why you may need to remove viruses and spyware manually: Perhaps you can’t abide running resource-hungry and invasive anti-malware programs on your PC You might need to clean your mom’s computer (or someone else who doesn’t understand that a big flashing sign on a website that says “Your computer is infected with a virus – click HERE to remove it” is not a message that can necessarily be trusted) The malware is so aggressive that it resists all attempts to automatically remove it, or won’t even allow you to install anti-malware software Part of your geek credo is the belief that anti-spyware utilities are for wimps Autoruns is an invaluable addition to any geek’s software toolkit.  It allows you to track and control all programs (and program components) that start automatically with Windows (or with Internet Explorer).  Virtually all malware is designed to start automatically, so there’s a very strong chance that it can be detected and removed with the help of Autoruns. We have covered how to use Autoruns in an earlier article, which you should read if you need to first familiarize yourself with the program. Autoruns is a standalone utility that does not need to be installed on your computer.  It can be simply downloaded, unzipped and run (link below).  This makes is ideally suited for adding to your portable utility collection on your flash drive. When you start Autoruns for the first time on a computer, you are presented with the license agreement: After agreeing to the terms, the main Autoruns window opens, showing you the complete list of all software that will run when your computer starts, when you log in, or when you open Internet Explorer: To temporarily disable a program from launching, uncheck the box next to it’s entry.  Note:  This does not terminate the program if it is running at the time – it merely prevents it from starting next time.  To permanently prevent a program from launching, delete the entry altogether (use the Delete key, or right-click and choose Delete from the context-menu)).  Note:  This does not remove the program from your computer – to remove it completely you need to uninstall the program (or otherwise delete it from your hard disk). Suspicious Software It can take a fair bit of experience (read “trial and error”) to become adept at identifying what is malware and what is not.  Most of the entries presented in Autoruns are legitimate programs, even if their names are unfamiliar to you.  Here are some tips to help you differentiate the malware from the legitimate software: If an entry is digitally signed by a software publisher (i.e. there’s an entry in the Publisher column) or has a “Description”, then there’s a good chance that it’s legitimate If you recognize the software’s name, then it’s usually okay.  Note that occasionally malware will “impersonate” legitimate software, but adopting a name that’s identical or similar to software you’re familiar with (e.g. “AcrobatLauncher” or “PhotoshopBrowser”).  Also, be aware that many malware programs adopt generic or innocuous-sounding names, such as “Diskfix” or “SearchHelper” (both mentioned below). Malware entries usually appear on the Logon tab of Autoruns (but not always!) If you open up the folder that contains the EXE or DLL file (more on this below), an examine the “last modified” date, the dates are often from the last few days (assuming that your infection is fairly recent) Malware is often located in the C:\Windows folder or the C:\Windows\System32 folder Malware often only has a generic icon (to the left of the name of the entry) If in doubt, right-click the entry and select Search Online… The list below shows two suspicious looking entries:  Diskfix and SearchHelper These entries, highlighted above, are fairly typical of malware infections: They have neither descriptions nor publishers They have generic names The files are located in C:\Windows\System32 They have generic icons The filenames are random strings of characters If you look in the C:\Windows\System32 folder and locate the files, you’ll see that they are some of the most recently modified files in the folder (see below) Double-clicking on the items will take you to their corresponding registry keys: Removing the Malware Once you’ve identified the entries you believe to be suspicious, you now need to decide what you want to do with them.  Your choices include: Temporarily disable the Autorun entry Permanently delete the Autorun entry Locate the running process (using Task Manager or similar) and terminating it Delete the EXE or DLL file from your disk (or at least move it to a folder where it won’t be automatically started) or all of the above, depending upon how certain you are that the program is malware. To see if your changes succeeded, you will need to reboot your machine, and check any or all of the following: Autoruns – to see if the entry has returned Task Manager (or similar) – to see if the program was started again after the reboot Check the behavior that led you to believe that your PC was infected in the first place.  If it’s no longer happening, chances are that your PC is now clean Conclusion This solution isn’t for everyone and is most likely geared to advanced users. Usually using a quality Antivirus application does the trick, but if not Autoruns is a valuable tool in your Anti-Malware kit. Keep in mind that some malware is harder to remove than others.  Sometimes you need several iterations of the steps above, with each iteration requiring you to look more carefully at each Autorun entry.  Sometimes the instant that you remove the Autorun entry, the malware that is running replaces the entry.  When this happens, we need to become more aggressive in our assassination of the malware, including terminating programs (even legitimate programs like Explorer.exe) that are infected with malware DLLs. Shortly we will be publishing an article on how to identify, locate and terminate processes that represent legitimate programs but are running infected DLLs, in order that those DLLs can be deleted from the system. Download Autoruns from SysInternals Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Using Autoruns Tool to Track Startup Applications and Add-onsHow To Get Detailed Information About Your PCSUPERAntiSpyware Portable is the Must-Have Spyware Removal Tool You NeedQuick Tip: Windows Vista Temp Files DirectoryClear Recent Commands From the Run Dialog in Windows XP TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional 15 Great Illustrations by Chow Hon Lam Easily Sync Files & Folders with Friends & Family Amazon Free Kindle for PC Download Stretch popurls.com with a Stylish Script (Firefox) OldTvShows.org – Find episodes of Hitchcock, Soaps, Game Shows and more Download Microsoft Office Help tab

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  • How Can I Improve This Card-Game AI?

    - by James Burgess
    Let me get this out there before anything else: this is a learning exercise for me. I am not a game developer by trade or hobby (at least, not seriously) and am purely delving into some AI- and 3D-related topics to broaden my horizons a bit. As part of the learning experience, I thought I'd have a go at developing a basic card game AI. I selected Pit as the card game I was going to attempt to emulate (specifically, the 'bull and bear' variation of the game as mentioned in the link above). Unfortunately, the rule-set that I'm used to playing with (an older version of the game) isn't described. The basics of it are: The number of commodities played with is equal to the number of players. The bull and bear cards are included. All but two players receive 8 cards, two receive 9 cards. A player can win the round with 7 + bull, 8, or 8 + bull (receiving double points). The bear is a penalty card. You can trade up to a maximum of 4 cards at a time. They must all be of the same type, but can optionally include the bull or bear (so, you could trade A, A, A, Bull - but not A, B, A, Bull). For those who have played the card game, it will probably have been as obvious to you as it was to me that given the nature of the game, gameplay would seem to resemble a greedy algorithm. With this in mind, I thought it might simplify my AI experience somewhat. So, here's what I've come up with for a basic AI player to play Pit... and I'd really just like any form of suggestion (from improvements to reading materials) relating to it. Here it is in something vaguely pseudo-code-ish ;) While AI does not hold 7 similar + bull, 8 similar, or 8 similar + bull, do: 1. Establish 'target' hand, by seeing which card AI holds the most of. 2. Prepare to trade next-most-numerous card type in a trade (max. held, or 4, whichever is fewer) 3. If holding the bear, add to (if trading <=3 cards) or replace in (if trading 4 cards) hand. 4. Offer cards for trade. 5. If cards are accepted for trade within X turns, continue (clearing 'failed card types'). Otherwise: a. If only one card remains in the trade, go to #6. Otherwise: i. Remove one non-penalty card from the trade. ii. Return to #5. 6. Add card type to temporary list of failed card types. 7. Repeat from #2 (excluding 'failed card types'). I'm aware this is likely to be a sub-optimal way of solving the problem, but that's why I'm posting this question. Are there any AI- or algorithm-related concepts that I've missed and should be incorporating to make a better AI? Additionally, what are the flaws with my AI at present (I'm well aware it's probably far from complete)? Thanks in advance!

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  • Equivalent of typedef in C#

    - by Matthew Scharley
    Is there a typedef equivalent in C#, or someway to get some sort of similar behaviour? I've done some googling, but everywhere I look seems to be negative. Currently I have a situation similar to the following: class GenericClass<T> { public event EventHandler<EventData> MyEvent; public class EventData : EventArgs { /* snip */ } // ... snip } Now, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that this can very quickly lead to alot of typing (appologies for the horrible pun) when trying to implement a handler for that event. It'd end up being something like this: GenericClass<int> gcInt = new GenericClass<int>; gcInt.MyEvent += new EventHandler<GenericClass<int>.EventData>(gcInt_MyEvent); // ... private void gcInt_MyEvent(object sender, GenericClass<int>.EventData e) { throw new NotImplementedException(); } Except, in my case, I was already using a complex type, not just an int. It'd be nice if it was possible to simplify this a little... Edit: ie. perhaps typedefing the EventHandler instead of needing to redefine it to get similar behaviour.

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  • How do you efficiently implement a document similarity search system?

    - by Björn Lindqvist
    How do you implement a "similar items" system for items described by a set of tags? In my database, I have three tables, Article, ArticleTag and Tag. Each Article is related to a number of Tags via a many-to-many relationship. For each Article i want to find the five most similar articles to implement a "if you like this article you will like these too" system. I am familiar with Cosine similarity and using that algorithm works very well. But it is way to slow. For each article, I need to iterate over all articles, calculate the cosine similarity for the article pair and then select the five articles with the highest similarity rating. With 200k articles and 30k tags, it takes me half a minute to calculate the similar articles for a single article. So I need another algorithm that produces roughly as good results as cosine similarity but that can be run in realtime and which does not require me to iterate over the whole document corpus each time. Maybe someone can suggest an off-the-shelf solution for this? Most of the search engines I looked at does not enable document similarity searching.

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  • Choosing a Java Web Framework now?

    - by hbagchi
    we are in the planning stage of migrating a large website which is built on a custom developed mvc framework to a java based web framework which provides built-in support for ajax, rich media content, mashup, templates based layout, validation, maximum html/java code separation. Grails looked like a good choice, however, we do not want to use a scripting language. We want to continue using java. Template based layout is a primary concern as we intend to use this web application with multiple web sites with similar functionality but radically different look and feel. Is portal based solution a good fit to this problem? Any insights on using "Spring Roo" or "Play" will be very helpful. I did find similar posts like this, but it is more than a year old. Things have surely changed in the mean time! EDIT 1: Thanks for the great answers! This site is turning to be the best single source for in-the-trenches programmer info. However, I was expecting more info on using a portal-cms duo. Jahia looks goods. Anything similar?

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  • Collaborative filtering in MySQL ?

    - by user281434
    Hi I'm trying to develop a site that recommends items(fx. books) to users based on their preferences. So far, I've read O'Reilly's "Collective Intelligence" and numerous other online articles. They all, however, seem to deal with single instances of recommendation, for example if you like book A then you might like book B. What I'm trying to do is to create a set of 'preference-nodes' for each user on my site. Let's say a user likes book A,B and C. Then, when they add book D, I don't want the system to recommend other books based solely other users experience with book D. I wan't the system to look up similar 'preference-nodes' and recommend books based on that. Here's an example of 4 nodes: User1: 'book A'->'book B'->'book C' User2: 'book A'->'book B'->'book C'->'book D' user3: 'book X'->'book Y'->'book C'->'book Z' user4: 'book W'->'book Q'->'book C'->'book Z' So a recommendation system, as described in the material I've read, would recommend book Z to User 1, because there are two people who recommends Z in conjuction with liking C (ie. Z weighs more than D), even though a user with a similar 'preference-node', User2, would be more qualified to recommend book D because he has a more similar interest-pattern. So does any of you have any experience with this sort of thing? Is there some things I should try to read or does there exist any open source systems for this? Thanks for your time! Small edit: I think last.fm's algorithm is doing exactly what I my system to do. Using the preference-trees of people to recommmend music more personally to people. Instead of just saying "you might like B because you liked A"

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  • How to get SQL Function run a different query and return value from either query?

    - by RoguePlanetoid
    I need a function, but cannot seem to get it quite right, I have looked at examples here and elsewhere and cannot seem to get this just right, I need an optional item to be included in my query, I have this query (which works): SELECT TOP 100 PERCENT SKU, Description, LEN(CONVERT(VARCHAR (1000),Description)) AS LenDesc FROM tblItem WHERE Title = @Title AND Manufacturer = @Manufacturer ORDER BY LenDesc DESC This works within a Function, however the Manufacturer is Optional for this search - which is to find the description of a similar item, if none is present, the other query is: SELECT TOP 100 PERCENT SKU, Description, LEN(CONVERT(VARCHAR (1000),Description)) AS LenDesc FROM tblItem WHERE Title = @Title ORDER BY LenDesc DESC Which is missing the Manufacturer, how to I get my function to use either query based on the Manufacturer Value being present or not. The reason is I will have a function which first checks an SKU for a Description, if it is not present - it uses this method to get a Description from a Similar Product, then updates the product being added with the similar product's description. Here is the function so far: ALTER FUNCTION [dbo].[GetDescriptionByTitleManufacturer] ( @Title varchar(400), @Manufacturer varchar(160) ) RETURNS TABLE AS RETURN ( SELECT TOP 100 PERCENT SKU, Description, LEN(CONVERT(VARCHAR (1000),Description)) AS LenDesc FROM tblItem WHERE Title = @Title AND Manufacturer = @Manufacturer ORDER BY LenDesc DESC ) I've tried adding BEGINs and IF...ELSEs but get errors or syntax problems each way I try it, I want to be able to do something like this pseudo-function (which does not work): ALTER FUNCTION [dbo].[GetDescriptionByTitleManufacturer] ( @Title varchar(400), @Manufacturer varchar(160) ) RETURNS TABLE AS BEGIN IF (@Manufacturer = Null) RETURN ( SELECT TOP 100 PERCENT SKU, Description, LEN(CONVERT(VARCHAR (1000),Description)) AS LenDesc FROM tblItem WHERE Title = @Title ORDER BY LenDesc DESC ) ELSE RETURN ( SELECT TOP 100 PERCENT SKU, Description, LEN(CONVERT(VARCHAR (1000),Description)) AS LenDesc FROM tblItem WHERE Title = @Title AND Manufacturer = @Manufacturer ORDER BY LenDesc DESC ) END

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  • Looking for good PHP editor or IDE with 'IntelliSense'

    - by Andrew
    Hello, I'm looking for suitable PHP Editor or IDE with syntax auto-completion. I've tried trial versions of programs like Zend Studio, PHPDesigner, NetBeans PHP, NuSphere PhpED, and similar -- but none of them fully satisfied me. I quite liked hint window with detailed info about what function does and what it returns. Also I liked the way NetBeans auto-complete code (for example inserts all required parameters in function declaration as "dummy fields" and then you can jump between them using TAB in order to edit them). On the other hand, environment of NetBeans doesn't belong to the nicest. In this regard I prefer PHPDesigner with its sleek and light interface. At this moment I don't use any of the debugging options, since I don't know yet how to use profiller, breakpoints, watches and what not, so at this point my only concern is good autocompletion. For this purpose NetBean would be great choice, but with future in mind I am not sure debugging will be good in NetBeans, especially as I would prefer to use remote Linux server for this. So in short, I'm looking for editor that: Have similar code auto-completion (IntelliSense) like NetBeans Allow you to debug code using remote server (or sets up own debugging server like PHPDesigner does) without need to run Apache and similar on local computer Is preferably easy to use / intuitive interface Any ideas?

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  • Which to use, XMP or RDF?

    - by zotty
    What's the difference between RDF and XMP? From what I can tell, XMP is derived from RDF... so what does it offer that RDF doesn't? My particular situation is this: I've got some images which need tagging with details of how an experiment was performed, and what sort of data analysis has been performed on the images. A colleague of mine is pushing for XMP, but he's thinking of the images as photos - they're not really, they're just bits of data. From what I've seen (mainly by opening images in notepad++) the XMP data looks very similar to RDF - even so far as using RDF in the tag names (e.g. <rdf:Seq>). I'd like this data to be usable by other people who use similar instruments for similar experiments, so creating a mini standard (schema?) seems like the way to go. Apologies for the lack of fundemental understanding - I'm a Doctor, not a programmer! If it makes any difference, the language of choice will be C#. Edit for more information: First off, thanks for the excellent replies - thinking of XMP as a vocabulary for RDF makes things a lot clearer. The sort of data I'll be storing wont be avaliable in any of the pre-defined sets. It'll detail experimental set ups, locations and results. I think using RDF is the way to go.

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  • Downloading a picture via urllib and python.

    - by Mike
    So I'm trying to make a Python script that downloads webcomics and puts them in a folder on my desktop. I've found a few similar programs on here that do something similar, but nothing quite like what I need. The one that I found most similar is right here (http://bytes.com/topic/python/answers/850927-problem-using-urllib-download-images). I tried using this code: >>> import urllib >>> image = urllib.URLopener() >>> image.retrieve("http://www.gunnerkrigg.com//comics/00000001.jpg","00000001.jpg") ('00000001.jpg', <httplib.HTTPMessage instance at 0x1457a80>) I then searched my computer for a file "00000001.jpg", but all I found was the cached picture of it. I'm not even sure it saved the file to my computer. Once I understand how to get the file downloaded, I think I know how to handle the rest. Essentially just use a for loop and split the string at the '00000000'.'jpg' and increment the '00000000' up to the largest number, which I would have to somehow determine. Any reccomendations on the best way to do this or how to download the file correctly? Thanks!

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  • Problem Routing domains subfolder

    - by hkda150
    Hi there, I'm pretty new to ASP.NET MVC and I hope it is not a too silly question. So here it comes. I have ... a ASP.NET MVC application with a domain similar to http://mydomain/mysubfoler1/myappfolder My problem... The problem for me is the routing of my application (it worked fine without using a subfolder after the domain-name). The applications homepage loads not to bad, with css files but without ressources like images (defined in css files) and without jQuery ajax calls similar to /mycontroller/myaction links are only working once (the second time I get a page similar to this link: http://mydomain/mysubfoler1/myappfolder/myController/myController/myAction) Here's my Global.asax contaning the routing: public static void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes) { routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}"); routes.MapRoute( "Default", "{controller}/{action}/{id}", new { controller = "myController", action = "Index", id = "" } defaults ); routes.MapRoute( "Root", "", new { controller = "myController", action = "Index", id = "" } ); } protected void Application_Start() { ViewEngines.Engines.Clear(); ViewEngines.Engines.Add(new MyApplicationWeb.LocalizationWebFormViewEngine()); RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes); //RouteDebug.RouteDebugger.RewriteRoutesForTesting(RouteTable.Routes); } Any suggestions? My first suggestion was to use areas like: "mysubfolder1/myappfolder/{controller}/{action}/{id}" (but without any luck) Thank you very much for your help!

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  • In Python, how to make sure database connection will always close before leaving a code block?

    - by Cawas
    I want to prevent database connection being open as much as possible, because this code will run on an intensive used server and people here already told me database connections should always be closed as soon as possible. def do_something_that_needs_database (): dbConnection = MySQLdb.connect(host=args['database_host'], user=args['database_user'], passwd=args['database_pass'], db=args['database_tabl'], cursorclass=MySQLdb.cursors.DictCursor) dbCursor = dbConnection.cursor() dbCursor.execute('SELECT COUNT(*) total FROM table') row = dbCursor.fetchone() if row['total'] == 0: print 'error: table have no records' dbCursor.execute('UPDATE table SET field="%s"', whatever_value) return None print 'table is ok' dbCursor.execute('UPDATE table SET field="%s"', another_value) # a lot more of workflow done here dbConnection.close() # even more stuff would come below I believe that leaves a database connection open when there is no row on the table, tho I'm still really not sure how it works. Anyway, maybe that is bad design in the sense that I could open and close a DB connection after each small block of execute. And sure, I could just add a close right before the return in that case... But how could I always properly close the DB without having to worry if I have that return, or a raise, or continue, or whatever in the middle? I'm thinking in something like a code block, similar to using try, like in the following suggestion, which obviously doesn't work: def do_something_that_needs_database (): dbConnection = MySQLdb.connect(host=args['database_host'], user=args['database_user'], passwd=args['database_pass'], db=args['database_tabl'], cursorclass=MySQLdb.cursors.DictCursor) try: dbCursor = dbConnection.cursor() dbCursor.execute('SELECT COUNT(*) total FROM table') row = dbCursor.fetchone() if row['total'] == 0: print 'error: table have no records' dbCursor.execute('UPDATE table SET field="%s"', whatever_value) return None print 'table is ok' dbCursor.execute('UPDATE table SET field="%s"', another_value) # again, that same lot of line codes done here except ExitingCodeBlock: closeDb(dbConnection) # still, that "even more stuff" from before would come below I don't think there is anything similar to ExitingCodeBlock for an exception, tho I know there is the try else, but I hope Python already have a similar feature... Or maybe someone can suggest me a paradigm move and tell me this is awful and highly advise me to never do that. Maybe this is just something to not worry about and let MySQLdb handle it, or is it?

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  • Choosing approach for an IM client-server app

    - by John
    Update: totally re-wrote this to be more succint. I'm looking at a new application, one part of which will be very similar to standard IM clients, i.e text chat, ability to send attachments, maybe some real-time interaction like a multi-user whiteboard. It will be client-server, i.e all traffic goes through my central server. That means if I want to support cross-communication with other IM systems, I am still free to pick any protocol for my own client<--server communication - my server can use XMPP or whatever to talk to other systems. Clients are expected to include desktop apps, but probably also browser-based as well either through Flex/Silverlight or HTML/AJAX. I see 3 options for my own client-server communication layer: XMPP. The benefits are clients already exist as do open-source servers. However it requires the most up-front research/learning and also appears like it might raise legal issues due to GPL. Custom sockets. A server app makes connections with the clients, allowing any text/binary data to be sent very fast. However this approach requires building said server from scratch, and also makes a JS client tricky Servlets (or similar web server). Using tried and tested Java web-stack, clients send HTTP requests similar to AJAX-based websites. The benefit is the server is easy to write using well-established technologies, and easy to talk to. But what restrictions would this bring? Is it appropriate technology for real-time communication? Advice and suggests are welcome, especially what pros and cons surround using a web-server approach as compared to a socket-based approach.

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