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• What are the disadvantages of automated testing?

  - by jkohlhepp

  There are a number of questions on this site that give plenty of information about the benefits that can be gained from automated testing. But I didn't see anything that represented the other side of the coin: what are the disadvantages? Everything in life is a tradeoff and there are no silver bullets, so surely there must be some valid reasons not to do automated testing. What are they? Here's a few that I've come up with: Requires more initial developer time for a given feature Requires a higher skill level of team members Increase tooling needs (test runners, frameworks, etc.) Complex analysis required when a failed test in encountered - is this test obsolete due to my change or is it telling me I made a mistake? Edit I should say that I am a huge proponent of automated testing, and I'm not looking to be convinced to do it. I'm looking to understand what the disadvantages are so when I go to my company to make a case for it I don't look like I'm throwing around the next imaginary silver bullet. Also, I'm explicity not looking for someone to dispute my examples above. I am taking as true that there must be some disadvantages (everything has trade-offs) and I want to understand what those are.

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• A list of pros and cons to giving developers “Local Admin” privileges to their machines? [closed]

  - by Boden

  Possible Duplicate: Is local “User” rights enough or do developers need Local Administrator or Power User while coding? I currently work for a large utilities company which currently does not grant “Local Admin” access to developers. This is causing a lot of grief as anything that requires elevated privileges needs to be done by the Desktop Support/Server Teams. In some cases this can take several days and requires our developers to have to show why they need this access. I personally think that all developers should have local administration rights and are currently fighting with management to achieve this but I would like to know what other people think about this. To achieve this I would like to hear what people believe are the pros and cons of letting developers have local admin access to their machines. Here are some I have come up with: Pros Loss time is keep low as developers can resolve issues that would normally require Local Admin Evaluation of tools and software are possible to improve productivity Desktop support time not wasted installing services and software on developers PC Cons Developers install software on local PC that could be malicious to others or inappropriate in a business environment Desktop Support required to support a PC that is not the norm Development done with admin access that then fails when promoted to another environment that does not have the same access level

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• SQL Azure Pricing

  - by kaleidoscope

  Microsoft’s pricing for SQL Server in the cloud, SQLAzure has been announced: $9.99   per month for 0 – 1GB $99.99 per month up to 10GB. There’s currently a 10GB maximum size cap for SQLAzure. For larger data storage needs, you’ll need to break the databases into smaller sizes. Scaling SQL Azure Applications If you think you’re going to need 100GB in the near term, it probably makes sense to break your application up into multiple separate databases from the get-go (10 x $9.99 = $99.99 anyway) and just make really sure none of the individual databases exceed 10GB. Beep Beep, Back That Database Up The bandwidth costs for SQL Azure are $.15 per GB of outbound bandwidth.  Assuming that you don’t compress the data before you pull it out of the cloud, that means daily backups of a 1GB database will add another $4.50 per month, and a 10GB database will add another $45/month.  Daily backups will cost about half of what your monthly service charges cost. It’s not completely clear from the press release, but if Microsoft follows Amazon’s pricing model, bandwidth between the Microsoft cloud services will not incur a cost.  That would mean it might make sense to spin up an Windows Azure computing application for $.12 per hour, use that application to compress your SQL Azure database, and then send the compressed data off to Azure storage for backup.  That would eliminate the data in/out costs, and minimize the Azure storage costs ($.15/GB).  Database administrators would back up their SQL Azure data to Azure Storage, keep a history of backups there, and restore them to SQL Azure faster when needed. Of course, there’s no native backup support in SQL Azure, and it’s not clear whether Windows Azure will include tools like SQL Server Integration Services. More details can be found at http://www.brentozar.com/archive/2009/07/sql-azure-pricing-10-for-1gb-100-for-10gb/   Anish, S

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• Manager keeps changing requirement specification after every demo.

  - by Jungle Hunter

  Background of my working environment My manager has no background or understanding of computers or software whatsoever. It is highly likely he hasn't seen code in any form (not even from a physical distance of 10 feet or less) in his life. There is no one who understands the complexity of what I am asked to implement. To the point that if I semi-hardcode no one would know. On Joel's test we score an unbelievable score 0. The problems The manager and at times other "senior" keep changing the requirement specification. Changes which, if good engineering be done and not patchy "fixes", require change in the underlying design. There is absolutely no one who looks at code (probably because no one knows how to, or even if it should be done) which means no one will ever be able to: Appreciate the complexity of the problem or the elegance of the solution. Suggest improvement to the approach. Appreciate the quality of the code. Point out where the code can be improved. A lot of jargon is used which makes sense grammatically but fails to make any sense any other way. Doesn't feel, behave or work like a software company. The question What should be done? Especially regarding there being no one who would point out improvements in my code. Update To answer HLGEM's (and possibly others) question about what I've done to try and fix it. I offered to set up Redmine and introduce source control to everyone. I said I would recommend distributed (git or mercurial) but will also talk about centralized ones and let the team decide. Response was that things are being done and will be done within weeks. Haven't seen that nor am I aware if other parts of the company use it.

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• BPM 11gR1 now available on Amazon EC2

  - by Prasen Palvankar

  BPM 11gR1 now available on Amazon EC2The new Oracle BPM 11gR1, including the latest Oracle SOA Suite 11gR1 Patchset-2 is now available as an Amazon Machine Image (AMI). This is a fully configured image which requires absolutely no installation and lets you get hands on experience with the software within minutes. This image has all the required software installed and configured and includes the following:Oracle 11g Database Standard Edition Oracle SOA Suite 11gR1 Patch-set 2Oracle BPM 11gR1Oracle Webcenter with BPM Process SpacesOracle Universal Content ManagementOracle JDeveloper with SOA and BPM pluginsNote: Use of this AMI requires acceptance of Oracle Technology Network (OTN) terms of use.To use this AMI, follow these steps: Login to your Amazon account and browse to Amazon AWS Console. If this is the first time you are using Amazon Web Services please visit https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/ for information on Amazon Elastic Cloud Computing and how to get started with Amazon EC2Make sure your security group that you will be using to launch the instance allows the following ports to be opened:22 (SSH)1521, 7001, 8001, 8888, 9001Click on AMIsChange the Viewing filters to 64-bit and enter soa-bpm in the search box. You should see the following AMI:083342568607/oracle-soa-bpm-11gr1-ps2-4.1-pubSelect the AMI and click on Launch or Spot Request. For more information on spot requests, please visit the Amazon EC2 link aboveAccept all the defaults and launch the instanceWhen the instance state changes to running, copy the assigned public host name and connect to it using either PuTTY or SSH command. For PuTTY usage, refer to this document.Once you are connected to the instance using PuTTY or SSH, you will be presented with the terms of use.Accept the terms of use to proceed. This will prompt you to set passwords for your oracle OS login as well as for VNC. Note that the instance will not be usable until you have accepted the terms of use.The instance is now ready to use. The SOA/BPM and other servers are automatically started once you accept the term of use. Initial startups can take about 5-10 minutes.If you would like to use the JDeveloper installed in the AMI, you can access it either using VNC or NX. You can get the NX client from NoMachine./home/oracle/README.txt contains all the URLs that you can use to access the Enterprise Manager, BPM Composer, BPM Workspace, Webcenter etc.

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• What build tools do not depend on java (or Ruby)?

  - by Mohamed Meligy

  I'm wondering what generic build tools out there include their binary run-times and do not depend on another environment not shipped with them. For example, ANT requires Java, Rake requires Ruby, etc.. would be great if talking about also target-platform-agnostic tools, where I'd just give whatever command for building, whatever command for testing, etc.. and can then define my artifacts in CI or so. Would see something like that useful for building .NET projects (say, on both Windows .NET and Mono), and Node JS projects especially. I do not want to install Java and / or Ruby if what I want is a .NET build or a Node JS build. This is a bit of general awareness question not an exact problem I'm facing, that's why it's here not on StackOverflow. Update: To explain a bit more, what I'm after is the build script that would run MSBuild for compiling for example ( in .NET, and then maybe several Node/NPM commands in Node, etc..), and then have the rest build/test steps, instead of setting these all in MSBuild (again, in .NET case, also, wondering if there is equivalent story in Node).

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• How to structure an application that combines WCF and WPF

  - by CiaranG

  I'm in the process of learning how to use WCF (Windows Communication Foundation) to allow a client/server desktop application to communicate. The application's UI will be implemented using WPF, and we will probably use SQL Server for our database. What I'm struggling with, is understanding how to structure such an application. From what I've read, there are three components of a WCF application (which in the examples I've seen have existed as separate projects): A WCF service A WCF service host A WCF service client My question then, is - should these projects solely implement the functionality of sending/receiving data from the client/server? Would it make better sense this way? Would it make sense to create a separate WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) project to implement the UI for the application? And so, when I need to send/receive data from the client/server, I could simply invoke the operations provided in the WCF projects that I have created? For anyone who has built similar applications previously, perhaps you could explain what worked best for you in terms of structuring your application? For example, if I create a user registration page. When the user clicks the 'Register' button, the client application will need to send the data to the server. In this case, could I just invoke the methods provided in the WCF projects to send the data? Also, what data structures worked best for you when sending/receiving data? My initial thought is sending/receiving XML containing the data. Is this an option that is easy to implement? I realise that answers to this question may well be a matter of opinion - unless there are specific best practices that I'm not aware of. Thank you

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• What design patterns are the worst or most narrowly defined?

  - by Akku

  For every programming project, Managers with past programming experience try to shine when they recommend some design patterns for your project. I like design patterns when they make sense or if you need a scalbale solution. I've used Proxies, Observers and Command patterns in a positive way for example, and do so every day. But I'm really hesitant to use say a Factory pattern if there's only one way to create an object, as a factory might make it all easier in the future, but complicates the code and is pure overhead. So, my question is in respect to my future career and my answer to manager types throwing random pattern-names around: Which design patterns did you use, that threw you back overall? Which are the worst design patterns, that you shouldn't have a look at if it's not that only single situation where it makes sense (read: which design patterns are very narrowly defined)? (It's like I was looking for the negative reviews of an overall good product of amazon to see what bugged people most in using design patterns). And I'm not talking about Anti-Patterns here, but about Patterns that are usually thought of as "good" patterns. Edit: As some answered, the problem is most often that patterns are not "bad" but "used wrong". If you know patterns, that are often misused or even difficult to use, they would also fit as an answer.

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• The Hot-Add Memory Hogs

  - by Andrew Clarke

  One of the more difficult tasks, when virtualizing a server, is to determine the amount of memory that Hypervisor should assign to the virtual machine. This requires accurate monitoring and, because of the consequences of setting the value too low, there is a great temptation to err on the side of over-provisioning. This results in fewer guest VMs and, in fact, with more accurate memory provisioning, many virtual environments could support 30% more VMs. In order to achieve a better consolidation (aka VM density) ratio, Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 has introduced what Microsoft calls ‘Dynamic Memory’. This means that the start-up RAM VM memory assigned to guest virtual machines can be allowed to vary according to demand, changing dynamically while the VM is running, based on the workload of applications running inside. If demand outstrips supply, then memory can be rationed according to the ‘memory weight’ assigned to the guest VM. By this mechanism, memory becomes a shared resource that can be reallocated automatically as demand patterns vary. Unlike VMWare’s Memory Overcommit technology, the sum of all the memory allocations to each virtual machine will not exceed the total memory of the host computer. This is fine for applications that are self-regulating in their demands for memory, releasing memory back into the 'pool' when not under peak load. Other applications however, such as SQL Server Standard and Enterprise, are by nature, memory hogs under high workload; they can grab hot-add memory whilst running under load and then never release it. This requires more careful setting-up and the SQLOS team have provided some guidelines from for configuring SQL Server in virtual environments. Whereas VMWare’s Memory Overcommit is well-proven in a number of different configurations, Hyper-V’s ‘Dynamic Memory’ is new. So far, the indications are that it will improve the business case for virtualizing and it is probably a far more intuitive technology for the average IT professional to grasp. It is certainly worth testing to see whether it works for you.

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• XNA and C# vs the 360's in order processor

  - by Richard Fabian

  Having read this rant, I feel that they're probably right (seeing as the Xenon and the CELL BE are both highly sensitive to branchy and cache ignorant code), but I've heard that people are making games fine with C# too. So, is it true that it's impossible to do anything professional with XNA, or was the poster just missing what makes XNA the killer API for game development? By professional, I don't mean in the sense that you can make money from it, but more in the sense that the more professional games have phsyics models and animation systems that seem outside the reach of a language with such definite barriers to the intrinsics. If I wanted to write a collision system or fluid dynamics engine for my game, I don't feel like C# offers me the chance to do that as the runtime code generator and the lack of intrinsics gets in the way of performance. However, many people seem to be fine working within these constraints, making their successful games but seemingly avoiding any of the problems by omission. I've not noticed any XNA games do anything complex other than what's already provided by the libraries, or handled by shaders. Is this avoidance of the more complex game dynamics because of teh limitations of C#, or just people concentrating on getting it done? In all honesty, I can't believe that AI war can maintain that many units of AI without some data oriented approach, or some dirty C# hacks to make it run better than the standard approach, and I guess that's partly my question too, how have people hacked C# so it's able to do what games coders do naturally with C++?

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• Is there ever a reason to use C++ in a Mac-only application?

  - by Emil Eriksson

  Is there ever a reason to use C++ in a Mac-only application? I not talking about integrating external libraries which are C++, what I mean is using C++ because of any advantages in a particular application. While the UI code must be written in Obj-C, what about logic code? Because of the dynamic nature of Objective-C, C++ method calls tend to be ever so slightly faster but does this have any effect in any imaginable real life scenario? For example, would it make sense to use C++ over Objective-C for simulating large particle systems where some methods would need to be called over and over in short time? I can also see some cases where C++ has a more appropriate "feel". For example when doing graphics, it's nice to have vector and matrix types with appropriate operator overloads and methods. This, to me, seems like it would be a bit clunkier to implement in Objective-C. Also, Objective-C objects can never be treated plain old data structures in the same manner as C++ types since Objective-C objects always have an isa-pointer. Wouldn't it make sense to use C++ instead in something like this? Does anyone have a real life example of a situation where C++ was chosen for some parts of an application? Does Apple use any C++ except for the kernel? (I don't want to start a flame war here, both languages have their merits and I use both equally though in different applications.)

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• HTML5 Development for Dummies

  - by Geertjan

  What's HTML5 all about and what does it actually mean, concretely, to develop HTML5 applications? NetBeans IDE 7.3 provides something called "Project Easel", which is a bundling of HTML5-related tools into a coherent toolset. Within a matter of hours, you'll know everything you need to know about what all this is about if you follow the steps below.  Get A Solid Overview. Start by viewing this screencast from JavaOne 2012 (click the media link on the right side once you've clicked the link below, a downloadable MP4 file is also available there):https://oracleus.activeevents.com/connect/sessionDetail.ww?SESSION_ID=4038That is an awesome way to get you in the right mindframe for what HTML5 is and how it fits into the programming world, together with a very cool and entertaining demo, presented by JB Brock. He starts with about three slides and then does a super awesome demo that puts you into the picture very quickly. Understand How HTML5 Relates To Java EE. Now here's a very cool follow up to the above, again demo-driven (click the media links on the right side once you've clicked the link below):https://oracleus.activeevents.com/connect/sessionDetail.ww?SESSION_ID=4737David Konecny takes the Affable Bean project created via the NetBeans E-commerce Tutorial and creates an HTML5 front end for it! I.e., you are shown how HTML5 can provide a different front end, as an alternative to JSF. Why would you do that? Well, that's explained in David's session, as well as in JB Brock's session, i.e., choose the right technology for the right situation. Sometimes HTML5 might make sense, other times JSF might make sense. Follow The NetBeans Screencasts. To revise and firm up everything you've learned from the above two JavaOne sessions, watch two screencasts by Ken Ganfield, part 1, Getting Started with HTML5 and part 2, Working with JavaScript in HTML5 Applications. In particular, you'll learn how NetBeans IDE provides tools to thoroughly cover the needs of HTML5 developers. Having taken the above three steps, you now have a thorough background, together with an understanding of the tools and procedures needed for creating your own HTML5 applications.

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• Unity scaling instantiated GameObject at Start() doesn't "keep"

  - by Shivan Dragon

  I have a very simple scenario: A box-like Prefab which is imported from Blender automatically (I have the .blend file in the Assets folder). A script that has two public GameObject fields. In one I place the above prefab, and in the other I place a terrain object (which I've created in Unity's graphical view): public Collider terrain; public GameObject aStarCellHighlightPrefab; This script is attached to the camera. The idea is to have the Blender prefab instantiated, have the terrain set as its parent, and then scale said prefab instance up. I first did it like this, in the Start() method: void Start () { cursorPositionOnTerrain = new RaycastHit(); aStarCellHighlight = (GameObject)Instantiate(aStarCellHighlightPrefab, new Vector3(300,300,300), terrain.transform.rotation); aStarCellHighlight.name = "cellHighlight"; aStarCellHighlight.transform.parent = terrain.transform; aStarCellHighlight.transform.localScale = new Vector3(100,100,100); } and first thought it didn't work. However later I noticed that it did in fact work, in the sense where the scale was applied right at the start, but then right after the prefab instance came back to its initial scale. Putting the scale code in the Update() methods fixes it in the sense where now it stays scaled all the time: void Update () { aStarCellHighlight.transform.localScale = new Vector3(100,100,100); //... } However I've noticed that when I run this code, the object is first displayed without the scale being applied, and it takes about 5-10 seconds for the scale to happen. During this time everything works fine (like input and logging, etc). The scene is very simple, it's not like it has a lot of stuff to load or anything (there's a Ray cast from the camera on to the terrain, but that seems to happen without such delays). My (2 part) question is: Why doesn't it take the scale transform when I do it at the beginning in the Start() method. Why do I have to keep scaling it in the Update() method? Why does it take so long for the scale to "apply/show up".

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• Should I list this work experience on my resume? [closed]

  - by Phoenix

  I am currently working at a company. I did an internship before this job with a prestigious company and project itself was challenging but it was in the initial phases and hence there were no tight schedules and we ended up doing brainstorming for the first month and the 2nd month actually setting up our hardware, which is linux servers in lab and a cluster administrator for the servers. And then i wrote an addin task which runs on the server and uses existing API to collect some statistics from the the servers in the cluster and feeding them into another entity which is basically an algorithm that calculates how the load on the servers should be automatically balanced. Neither of these things went into production by the time I left the company and I'm not even sure of their current state. Does it make sense to include it in my resume then? I also worked as a software engineer right out of school at another prestigious company for 9 months. I was involved in some bug fixes before the product launched and I don't even recollect the exact fixes I made to the product. So, will it make sense to have these experiences on my resume ? Will people question me about them and will saying it was bug fixes and mentioning what kind of fixes suffice as enough to justify my work ex there ?

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• PLINQ Adventure Land - WaitForAll

  - by adweigert

  PLINQ is awesome for getting a lot of work done fast, but one thing I haven't figured out yet is how to start work with PLINQ but only let it execute for a maximum amount of time and react if it is taking too long. So, as I must admit I am still learning PLINQ, I created this extension in that ignorance. It behaves similar to ForAll<> but takes a timeout and returns false if the threads don't complete in the specified amount of time. Hope this helps someone else take PLINQ further, it definitely has helped for me ...  public static bool WaitForAll<T>(this ParallelQuery<T> query, TimeSpan timeout, Action<T> action) { Contract.Requires(query != null); Contract.Requires(action != null); var exception = (Exception)null; var cts = new CancellationTokenSource(); var forAllWithCancellation = new Action(delegate { try { query.WithCancellation(cts.Token).ForAll(action); } catch (OperationCanceledException) { // NOOP } catch (AggregateException ex) { exception = ex; } }); var mrs = new ManualResetEvent(false); var callback = new AsyncCallback(delegate { mrs.Set(); }); var result = forAllWithCancellation.BeginInvoke(callback, null); if (mrs.WaitOne(timeout)) { forAllWithCancellation.EndInvoke(result); if (exception != null) { throw exception; } return true; } else { cts.Cancel(); return false; } }

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• does my js replace view?

  - by Milla Well

  I am writing a web application which is based on Codeigniter and jQuery. I primarily use ajax to call my controller functions and it turned out, that there are just 4 view*.php files, because most of my contoller functions return JSON data, which is processed in my jQuery. So my actual code is divided in kind of MVCC model: Codeigniter model (db, computations) Codeigniter controller (filtering, xss-cleaning, checking permissions, call model functions) jQuery controller (callback functions) jQuery view (adding/removing classes, appending elements,... ) So I violate the paradigm of not using the echo function in my Codeiginter controller and simply call echo json_encode($result); because it doesn't make any sense to me to create a view*.php file for one loc. Especially because all the regular view*.php stuff is covered in my jQuery view. I was wondering if I am missing something out, or if there is a way to integrate this jQuery-controller in my Codeigniter. I found some words on this topic, but this seems pretty handmade. Are there some neat solutions? Does a MVCC model make sense?

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• How to reset display settings in XFCE \ Ubuntu 12.04 and also flgrx drivers

  - by Agent24

  I recently upgraded to Ubuntu 12.04 and since I hate unity I installed the Xubuntu package and am using XFCE instead. Since I have a Radeon HD5770 I also installed the fglrx drivers. This all went fine (aside from the fact that the post-release update fglrx drivers have an error on installation and Ubuntu thinks they're not installed when they actually are. I configured my display settings (dual monitors, a 17" CRT on VGA and a 17" LCD on DVI) in the amdcccle program and everything was perfect. THEN, 2 days ago, I accidentally clicked on the "Display" settings in XFCE "settings" manager. After that, everything got screwed. Now, I normally run the CRT at 1152x854 and the LCD at 1280x1024 with the CRT as my primary monitor (with panel) and the LCD without panels etc just to display other windows when I want to drag them over there. The problem is now that if I set my CRT to 1152x864, it stays at 1280x1024 virtually and half the stuff falls off the screen. It also puts the LCD at 1280x1024 BUT then overlays the CRT's display ontop with different wallpaper in an L shape down the right-hand and bottom edges. In short, nothing makes sense and everything is FUBAR. I tried uninstalling fglrx through synaptic, and renaming xorg.conf and also the xfce XML file that has monitor settings but it still won't make sense. Unity on the other hand can currently set everything normally so the problem appears to be only with XFCE. In any case, I can't even get the fglrx drivers back, when I re-installed them, I can't run amdccle anymore as it says the driver isn't installed!! Can someone help me reset my XFCE settings so the monitors aren't screwed with some incorrect virtual desktop size and also so I can get fglrx drivers back and working? I really don't want to have to format and reinstall and go through all the hassle but it looks like I may have to :(

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• Demystifying "chunked level of detail"

  - by Caius Eugene

  Just recently trying to make sense of implementing a chunked level of detail system in Unity. I'm going to be generating four mesh planes, each with a height map but I guess that isn't too important at the moment. I have a lot of questions after reading up about this technique, I hope this isn't too much to ask all in one go, but I would be extremely grateful for someone to help me make sense of this technique. 1 : I can't understand at which point down the Chunked LOD pipeline that the mesh gets split into chunks. Is this during the initial mesh generation, or is there a separate algorithm which does this. 2 : I understand that a Quadtree data structure is used to store the Chunked LOD data, I think i'm missing the point a bit, but Is the quadtree storing vertex and triangles data for each subdivision level? 3a : How is the camera distance usually calculated. When reading up about quadtree's, Axis-aligned bounding box's are mentioned a lot. In this case would each chunk have a collision bounding box to detect the camera or player is nearby? or is there a better way of doing this? (raycast maybe?) 3b : Do the chunks calculate the camera distance themselves? 4 : Does each chunk have the same "resolution". for example at top level the mesh will be 32x32, will each subdivided node also be 32x32. Example below:

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• How can player actions be "judged morally" in a measurable way?

  - by Sebastien Diot

  While measuring the player "skills" and "effort" is usually easy, adding some "less objective" statistics can give the player supplementary goals, especially in a MUD/RPG context. What I mean is that apart from counting how many orcs were killed, and gems collected, it would be interesting to have something along the line of the traditional Good/Evil, Lawful/Chaotic ranking of paper-based RPG, to add "dimension" to the game. But computers cannot differentiate good/evil effectively (nor can humans in many cases), and if you have a set of "laws" which are precise enough that you can tell exactly when the player breaks them, then it generally makes more sense to actually prevent them from doing that action in the first place. One example could be the creation/destruction axis (if players are at all allowed to create/build things), possibly in the form of the general effect of the player actions on "ecology". So what else is there left that can be effectively measured and would provide a sense of "moral" for the player? The more axis I have to measure, the more goals the player can have, and therefore the longer the game can last. This also gives the players more ways of "differentiating" themselves among hordes of other players of the same "class" and similar "kit".

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• Project Codenames - Yea or Nay?

  - by rmx

  Where I work, most of our projects have (or at least attempt) descriptive, useful names. However we have a few with names that make no sense: I found that an assembly named WiFi which actually has nothing whatsoever to do with wi-fi, but is a codename. When I asked why, I was told that it's to protect company secrets incase some intern has few too many at the pub on Friday and starts chatting about the brand new 'WiFi' project he's been working on. Its clear that some people find enjoyment in finding silly / amusing codenames for their projects (like in this question). My question is: is it really a good idea to use codenames for your projects or are you better off spending the time to decide upon a descriptive name? My opinion is that in the long-run its better to give your projects relevant names. My reasoning is that if you can't think of a decent name, perhaps you don't really know the requirements well enough. I think there are better ways to 'protect company secrets' and I find it quite confusing when the name does not correlate at all with the content. It's just common sense, surely?! So do you use codenames and what the your reasons for or against this seemingly common, yet annoying (to me at least) practice?

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• Partial upgrade on 12.04, how to stop nagging after locking to a working NVIDIA & xorg

  - by alsk

  How to stop the upgrade manager from offering updates and upgrades that potentially would harm my working 2D and 3D graphics? Finally, I got 12.04 working as it should: with nvidia-173 drivers by downgrading xorg and locking the version: On my 32-bit system on Athlon64, with (Albatron) NVIDIA GeForce FX5700XT, locked (/pinned) to xorg 1:7.6-7ubuntu7, xserver-xorg-core 2:11.1-0obuntu10.07, nvidia-173 173.14.35-0ubuntu0.2? An annoying thing left is that every time the updates are checked, I get warning of partial updates, and ambiguous options of "partial update" and "close". Ambiguous in that sense that if I click close, I will get option to update a few packages, which has been OK, while "partial update" would like to update my kernel to 3.2, alter xorg, remove nvidia-173 etc., and update mesa etc. This is not what I call appropriate, after locking XORG and NVIDIA drivers to working ones. One may say according to package management logic it may be correct, but to me as an user it makes little sense. Last Ubuntu that worked without big mess for me was 10.10, hence I will not put 12.10 to my "production" system, until I can be sure it will not trash the system again. P.S. Is there a recommended way to keep NVIDIA GeForce FX working with 3D on Ubuntu... in future?

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• The internal storage of a DATETIMEOFFSET value

  - by Peter Larsson

  Today I went for investigating the internal storage of DATETIME2 datatype. What I found out was that for a datetime2 value with precision 0 (seconds only), SQL Server need 6 bytes to represent the value, but stores 7 bytes. This is because SQL Server add one byte that holds the precision for the datetime2 value. Start with this very simple repro declare    @now datetimeoffset(7) = '2010-12-15 21:04:03.6934231 +03:30'   select     cast(cast(@now as datetimeoffset(0)) as binary(9)),            cast(cast(@now as datetimeoffset(1)) as binary(9)),            cast(cast(@now as datetimeoffset(2)) as binary(9)),            cast(cast(@now as datetimeoffset(3)) as binary(10)),            cast(cast(@now as datetimeoffset(4)) as binary(10)),            cast(cast(@now as datetimeoffset(5)) as binary(11)),            cast(cast(@now as datetimeoffset(6)) as binary(11)),            cast(cast(@now as datetimeoffset(7)) as binary(11)) Now we are going to copy and paste these binary values and investigate which value is representing what time part. Prefix  Ticks       Ticks         Days    Days    Suffix  Suffix  Original value ------  ----------  ------------  ------  ------  ------  ------  ------------------------ 0x  00  0CF700             63244  A8330B  734120  D200       210  0x000CF700A8330BD200 0x  01  75A609            632437  A8330B  734120  D200       210 0x0175A609A8330BD200 0x  02  918060           6324369  A8330B  734120  D200       210  0x02918060A8330BD200 0x  03  AD05C503        63243693  A8330B  734120  D200       210  0x03AD05C503A8330BD200 0x  04  C638B225       632502470  A8330B  734120  D200       210  0x04C638B225A8330BD200 0x  05  BE37F67801    6324369342  A8330B  734120  D200       210  0x05BE37F67801A8330BD200 0x  06  6F2D9EB90E   63243693423  A8330B  734120  D200       210  0x066F2D9EB90EA8330BD200 0x  07  57C62D4093  632436934231  A8330B  734120  D200       210  0x0757C62D4093A8330BD200 Let us use the following color schema Red - Prefix Green - Time part Blue - Day part Purple - UTC offset What you can see is that the date part is equal in all cases, which makes sense since the precision doesn't affect the datepart. If you add 63244 seconds to midnight, you get 17:34:04, which is the correct UTC time. So what is stored is the UTC time and the local time can be found by adding "utc offset" minutes. And if you look at it, it makes perfect sense that each following value is 10 times greater when the precision is increased one step too. //Peter

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• Relationship between Repository and Unit of Work

  - by NullOrEmpty

  I am going to implement a repository, and I would like to use the UOW pattern since the consumer of the repository could do several operations, and I want to commit them at once. After read several articles about the matter, I still don't get how to relate this two elements, depending on the article it is being done in a way u other. Sometimes the UOW is something internal to the repository: public class Repository { UnitOfWork _uow; public Repository() { _uow = IoC.Get<UnitOfWork>(); } public void Save(Entity e) { _uow.Track(e); } public void SubmittChanges() { SaveInStorage(_uow.GetChanges()); } } And sometimes it is external: public class Repository { public void Save(Entity e, UnitOfWork uow) { uow.Track(e); } public void SubmittChanges(UnitOfWork uow) { SaveInStorage(uow.GetChanges()); } } Other times, is the UOW whom references the Repository public class UnitOfWork { Repository _repository; public UnitOfWork(Repository repository) { _repository = repository; } public void Save(Entity e) { this.Track(e); } public void SubmittChanges() { _repository.Save(this.GetChanges()); } } How are these two elements related? UOW tracks the elements that needs be changed, and repository contains the logic to persist those changes, but... who call who? Does the last make more sense? Also, who manages the connection? If several operations have to be done in the repository, I think using the same connection and even transaction is more sound, so maybe put the connection object inside the UOW and this one inside the repository makes sense as well. Cheers

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• What's a good entity hierarchy for a 2D game?

  - by futlib

  I'm in the process of building a new 2D game out of some code I wrote a while ago. The object hierarchy for entities is like this: Scene (e.g. MainMenu): Contains multiple entities and delegates update()/draw() to each Entity: Base class for all things in a scene (e.g. MenuItem or Alien) Sprite: Base class for all entities that just draw a texture, i.e. don't have their own drawing logic Does it make sense to split up entities and sprites up like that? I think in a 2D game, the terms entity and sprite are somewhat synonymous, right? But I do believe that I need some base class for entities that just draw a texture, as opposed to drawing themselves, to avoid duplication. Most entities are like that. One weird case is my Text class: It derives from Sprite, which accepts either the path of an image or an already loaded texture in its constructor. Text loads a texture in its constructor and passes that to Sprite. Can you outline a design that makes more sense? Or point me to a good object-oriented reference code base for a 2D game? I could only find 3D engine code bases of decent code quality, e.g. Doom 3 and HPL1Engine.

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• Securely automount encrypted drive at user login

  - by Tom Brossman

  An encrypted /home directory gets mounted automatically for me when I log in. I have a second internal hard drive that I've formatted and encrypted with Disk Utility. I want it to be automatically mounted when I login, just like my encrypted /home directory is. How do I do this? There are several very similar questions here, but the answers don't apply to my situation. It might be best to close/merge my question here and edit the second one below, but I think it may have been abandoned (and therefore never to be marked as accepted). This solution isn't a secure method, it circumvents the encryption. This one requires editing fstab, which necessitates entering an additional password at boot. It's not automatic like mounting /home. This question is very similar, but does not apply to an encrypted drive. The solution won't work for my needs. Here is one but it's for NTFS drives, mine is ext4. I can re-format and re-encrypt the second drive if a solution requires this. I've got all the data backed up elsewhere.

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