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  • Learning to be a good developer: what parts can you skip over?

    - by Andrew M
    I have set myself the goal of becoming a decent developer by this time next year. By this I mean full experience of the development 'lifecycle,' a few good apps/sites/webapps under my belt, and most importantly being able to work at a steady pace without getting sidelined for hours by some should-know-this-already technique. I'm not starting from scratch. I've written a lot of html/css, SQL, javascript, python and VB.net, and studied other languages like C and Java. I know about things like OOP, design patterns, TDD, complexity, computational linguistics, pointers/references, functional programming, and other academic/theoretical matters. It's just I can't say I've really done these things yet. So I want to get up to speed, and I want to know what things I can leave till a later date. For instance, studying algorithms and the maths behind them is interesting and all, but so far I've hardly needed to write anything but the most basic nested loops. Investigating Assembly to have a clearer picture of low-level operations would be cool... but I imagine rarely infringes on daily work. On the other hand, looking at a functional programming language might help me write programs that are more comprehensible and less prone to hidden failures (at the moment I'm finding the biggest difficulty is when the complexity of the app exceeds my capacity to understand it - for instance passing data around was fine... until I had to start doing it with AJAX, which was a painful step up). I could spend time working through case studies of design patterns, but I'm not sure how many of them get used in 'real life.' I'm a programmer with basic abilities - what skills should I focus on developing? (also my Unix skills are very weak, and also knowledge of Windows configuration... not sure how much time I should spend on that)

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  • Octree implementation for fustrum culling

    - by Manvis
    I'm learning modern (=3.1) OpenGL by coding a 3D turn based strategy game, using C++. The maps are composed of 100x90 3D hexagon tiles that range from 50 to 600 tris (20 different types) + any player units on those tiles. My current rendering technique involves sorting meshes by shaders they use (minimizing state changes) and then calling glDrawElementsInstanced() for drawing. Still get solid 16.6 ms/frame on my GTX 560Ti machine but the game struggles (45.45 ms/frame) on an old 8600GT card. I'm certain that using an octree and fustrum culling will help me here, but I have a few questions before I start implementing it: Is it OK for an octree node to have multiple meshes in it (e.g. can a soldier and the hex tile he's standing on end up in the same octree node)? How is one supposed to treat changes in object postion (e.g. several units are moving 3 hexes down)? I can't seem to find good a explanation on how to do it. As I've noticed, soting meshes by shaders is a really good way to save GPU. If I put node contents into, let's say, std::list and sort it before rendering, do you think I would gain any performance, or would it just create overhead on CPU's end? I know that this sounds like early optimization and implementing + testing would be the best way to find out, but perhaps someone knows from experience?

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  • Alternative to Game State System?

    - by Ricket
    As far as I can tell, most games have some sort of "game state system" which switches between the different game states; these might be things like "Intro", "MainMenu", "CharacterSelect", "Loading", and "Game". On the one hand, it totally makes sense to separate these into a state system. After all, they are disparate and would otherwise need to be in a large switch statement, which is obviously messy; and they certainly are well represented by a state system. But at the same time, I look at the "Game" state and wonder if there's something wrong about this state system approach. Because it's like the elephant in the room; it's HUGE and obvious but nobody questions the game state system approach. It seems silly to me that "Game" is put on the same level as "Main Menu". Yet there isn't a way to break up the "Game" state. Is a game state system the best way to go? Is there some different, better technique to managing, well, the "game state"? Is it okay to have an intro state which draws a movie and listens for enter, and then a loading state which loops on the resource manager, and then the game state which does practically everything? Doesn't this seem sort of unbalanced to you, too? Am I missing something?

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  • PowerShell One Liner: Duplicating a folder structure in a Sharepoint document library

    - by Darren Gosbell
    I was asked by someone at work the other day, if it was possible in Sharepoint to create a set of top level folders in one document library based on the set of folders in another library. One document library has a set of top level folders that is basically a client list and we needed to create the same top level folders in another library. I knew that it was possible to open a Sharepoint document library in explorer using a UNC style path and that you could map a drive using a technique like this one: http://www.endusersharepoint.com/2007/11/16/can-i-map-a-document-library-as-a-mapped-drive/. But while explorer would let us copy the folders, it would also take all of the folder contents too, which was not what we wanted. So I figured that some sort of PowerShell script was probably the way to go and it turned out to be even easier than I thought. The following script did it in one line, so I thought I would post it here in my "online memory". :) dir "\\sharepoint\client documents" | where {$_.PSIsContainer} | % {mkdir "\\sharepoint\admin documents\$($_.Name)"} I use "dir" to get a listing from the source folder, pipe it through "where" to get only objects that are folders and then do a foreach (using the % alias) and call "mkdir".

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  • How does a segment based rendering engine work?

    - by Calmarius
    As far as I know Descent was one of the first games that featured a fully 3D environment, and it used a segment based rendering engine. Its levels are built from cubic segments (these cubes may be deformed as long as it remains convex and sides remain roughly flat). These cubes are connected by their sides. The connected sides are traversable (maybe doors or grids can be placed on these sides), while the unconnected sides are not traversable walls. So the game is played inside of this complex. Descent was software rendered and it had to be very fast, to be playable on those 10-100MHz processors of that age. Some latter levels of the game are huge and contain thousands of segments, but these levels are still rendered reasonably fast. So I think they tried to minimize the amount of cubes rendered somehow. How to choose which cubes to render for a given location? As far as I know they used a kind of portal rendering, but I couldn't find what was the technique used in this particular kind of engine. I think the fact that the levels are built from convex quadrilateral hexahedrons can be exploited.

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  • How to use shared_ptr for COM interface pointers

    - by Seefer
    I've been reading about various usage advice relating to the new c++ standard smart pointers unique_ptr, shared_ptr and weak_ptr and generally 'grok' what they are about when I'm writing my own code that declares and consumes them. However, all the discussions I've read seem restricted to this simple usage situation where the programmer is using smart in his/her own code, with no real discussion on techniques when having to work with libraries that expect raw pointers or other types of 'smart pointers' such as COM interface pointers. Specifically I'm learning my way through C++ by attempting to get a standard Win32 real-time game loop up and running that uses Direct2D & DirectWrite to render text to the display showing frames per second. My first task with Direct2D is in creating a Direct2D Factory object with the following code from the Direct2D examples on MSDN: ID2D1Factory* pD2DFactory = nullptr; HRESULT hr = D2D1CreateFactory(D2D1_FACTORY_TYPE_SINGLE_THREADED, &pD2DFactory); pD2DFactory is obviously an 'out' parameter and it's here where I become uncertain how to make use of smart pointers in this context, if indeed it's possible. My inexperienced C++ mind tells me I have two problems: With pD2DFactory being a COM interface pointer type, how would smart_ptr work with the Add() / Release() member functions for a COM object instance? Are smart pointers able to be passed to functions in situations where the function is using an 'out' pointer parameter technique? I did experiment with the alternative of using _com_ptr_t in the comip.h header file to help with pointer lifetime management and declared the pD2DFactory pointer with the following code: _com_ptr_t<_com_IIID<pD2DFactory, &__uuidof(pD2DFactory)>> pD2DFactory = nullptr; and it appears to work so far but, as you can see, the syntax is cumbersome :) So, I was wondering if any C++ gurus here could confirm whether smart pointers are able to help in cases like this and provide examples of usage, or point me to more in-depth discussions of smart pointer usage when needing to work with other code libraries that know nothing of them. Or is it simply a case of my trying to use the wrong tool for the job? :)

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  • Oracle Inroduces a New Line of Defense for Databases

    - by roxana.bradescu
    Today at the 2011 RSA Conference, we announced the immediate availability of our new Oracle Database Firewall, the latest addition to a comprehensive portfolio of database security solutions. Oracle Database Firewall is a network-based software solution that monitors database traffic, and can detect and block SQL injection and other attacks from reaching Oracle and non-Oracle databases. According to the 2010 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, SQL injection attacks against databases are responsible for 89% of all breached data. SQL injection attacks are a technique for controlling responses from the database server through applications. This attack exploits the inherent trust between application layer and the back-end database. Previously the only way organizations had to safeguard against SQL injection attacks was a complete overhaul of their application code. Obviously a very costly, complex, and often impossible undertaking for most organizations. Enter the new Oracle Database Firewall. It can help prevent SQL injection attacks by establishing a defensive perimeter around your databases. The Oracle Database Firewall uses an innovative SQL grammar analysis to inspect the database traffic against pre-defined policies. Normal expected traffic is allowed to pass (and can be optionally logged to demonstrate regulatory compliance), ensuring no false positives or disruption to your business. SQL statements that are explicitly forbidden or unknown SQL statements can either pass, be logged, alert, block or be substitute with pre-defined SQL statements. Being able to substitute an unknown potentially harmful SQL statement with a harmless statement is especially powerful since it foils an attack while allowing the application to operate normally and preventing DoS attacks. So, if you're at RSA, stop by our booth or attend the session with Steve Moyle, Oracle Database Firewall CTO. Or if you want to learn more immediately, please watch our on-demand webcast and download the new Oracle Database Firewall Resource Kit with everything you need to get started today.

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  • Can web apps allow fast data-typists to "type-ahead"?

    - by user61852
    In some data entry contexts, I've seen data typists, type really fast and know so well the app they use, and have a mechanic quality in their work so that they can "type ahead", ie continue typing and "tab-bing" and "enter-ing" faster than the display updates, so that in many occasions they are typing in the data for the next form before it draws itself. Then when this next entry form appears, their keystrokes fill the text boxes and they continue typing, selecting etc. In contexts like this, this speed is desirable, since this persons are really productive. I think this "type ahead of time" is only possible in desktop apps, but I may be wrong. My question is whether this way of handling the keyboard buffer (which in desktop apps require no extra programming) is achievable in web apps, or is this impossible because of the way web apps work, handle sessions, etc (network latency and the overhead of generating new web pages ) ? Edit: By "type ahead" I mean "keyboard type ahead" (typing faster than the next entry form can load), not suggets-as-you-type-like-google type ahead. Typeahead is a feature of computers and software (and some typewriters) that enables users to continue typing regardless of program or computer operation—the user may type in whatever speed he or she desires, and if the receiving software is busy at the time it will be called to handle this later. Often this means that keystrokes entered will not be displayed on the screen immediately. This programming technique for handling user what is known as a keyboard buffer.

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  • Combined Likelihood Models

    - by Lukas Vermeer
    In a series of posts on this blog we have already described a flexible approach to recording events, a technique to create analytical models for reporting, a method that uses the same principles to generate extremely powerful facet based predictions and a waterfall strategy that can be used to blend multiple (possibly facet based) models for increased accuracy. This latest, and also last, addition to this sequence of increasing modeling complexity will illustrate an advanced approach to amalgamate models, taking us to a whole new level of predictive modeling and analytical insights; combination models predicting likelihoods using multiple child models. The method described here is far from trivial. We therefore would not recommend you apply these techniques in an initial implementation of Oracle Real-Time Decisions. In most cases, basic RTD models or the approaches described before will provide more than enough predictive accuracy and analytical insight. The following is intended as an example of how more advanced models could be constructed if implementation results warrant the increased implementation and design effort. Keep implemented statistics simple! Combining likelihoods Because facet based predictions are based on metadata attributes of the choices selected, it is possible to generate such predictions for more than one attribute of a choice. We can predict the likelihood of acceptance for a particular product based on the product category (e.g. ‘toys’), as well as based on the color of the product (e.g. ‘pink’). Of course, these two predictions may be completely different (the customer may well prefer toys, but dislike pink products) and we will have to somehow combine these two separate predictions to determine an overall likelihood of acceptance for the choice. Perhaps the simplest way to combine multiple predicted likelihoods into one is to calculate the average (or perhaps maximum or minimum) likelihood. However, this would completely forgo the fact that some facets may have a far more pronounced effect on the overall likelihood than others (e.g. customers may consider the product category more important than its color). We could opt for calculating some sort of weighted average, but this would require us to specify up front the relative importance of the different facets involved. This approach would also be unresponsive to changing consumer behavior in these preferences (e.g. product price bracket may become more important to consumers as a result of economic shifts). Preferably, we would want Oracle Real-Time Decisions to learn, act upon and tell us about, the correlations between the different facet models and the overall likelihood of acceptance. This additional level of predictive modeling, where a single supermodel (no pun intended) combines the output of several (facet based) models into a single prediction, is what we call a combined likelihood model. Facet Based Scores As an example, we have implemented three different facet based models (as described earlier) in a simple RTD inline service. These models will allow us to generate predictions for likelihood of acceptance for each product based on three different metadata fields: Category, Price Bracket and Product Color. We will use an Analytical Scores entity to store these different scores so we can easily pass them between different functions. A simple function, creatively named Compute Analytical Scores, will compute for each choice the different facet scores and return an Analytical Scores entity that is stored on the choice itself. For each score, a choice attribute referring to this entity is also added to be returned to the client to facilitate testing. One Offer To Predict Them All In order to combine the different facet based predictions into one single likelihood for each product, we will need a supermodel which can predict the likelihood of acceptance, based on the outcomes of the facet models. This model will not need to consider any of the attributes of the session, because they are already represented in the outcomes of the underlying facet models. For the same reason, the supermodel will not need to learn separately for each product, because the specific combination of facets for this product are also already represented in the output of the underlying models. In other words, instead of learning how session attributes influence acceptance of a particular product, we will learn how the outcomes of facet based models for a particular product influence acceptance at a higher level. We will therefore be using a single All Offers choice to represent all offers in our combined likelihood predictions. This choice has no attribute values configured, no scores and not a single eligibility rule; nor is it ever intended to be returned to a client. The All Offers choice is to be used exclusively by the Combined Likelihood Acceptance model to predict the likelihood of acceptance for all choices; based solely on the output of the facet based models defined earlier. The Switcheroo In Oracle Real-Time Decisions, models can only learn based on attributes stored on the session. Therefore, just before generating a combined prediction for a given choice, we will temporarily copy the facet based scores—stored on the choice earlier as an Analytical Scores entity—to the session. The code for the Predict Combined Likelihood Event function is outlined below. // set session attribute to contain facet based scores. // (this is the only input for the combined model) session().setAnalyticalScores(choice.getAnalyticalScores); // predict likelihood of acceptance for All Offers choice. CombinedLikelihoodChoice c = CombinedLikelihood.getChoice("AllOffers"); Double la = CombinedLikelihoodAcceptance.getChoiceEventLikelihoods(c, "Accepted"); // clear session attribute of facet based scores. session().setAnalyticalScores(null); // return likelihood. return la; This sleight of hand will allow the Combined Likelihood Acceptance model to predict the likelihood of acceptance for the All Offers choice using these choice specific scores. After the prediction is made, we will clear the Analytical Scores session attribute to ensure it does not pollute any of the other (facet) models. To guarantee our combined likelihood model will learn based on the facet based scores—and is not distracted by the other session attributes—we will configure the model to exclude any other inputs, save for the instance of the Analytical Scores session attribute, on the model attributes tab. Recording Events In order for the combined likelihood model to learn correctly, we must ensure that the Analytical Scores session attribute is set correctly at the moment RTD records any events related to a particular choice. We apply essentially the same switching technique as before in a Record Combined Likelihood Event function. // set session attribute to contain facet based scores // (this is the only input for the combined model). session().setAnalyticalScores(choice.getAnalyticalScores); // record input event against All Offers choice. CombinedLikelihood.getChoice("AllOffers").recordEvent(event); // force learn at this moment using the Internal Dock entry point. Application.getPredictor().learn(InternalLearn.modelArray, session(), session(), Application.currentTimeMillis()); // clear session attribute of facet based scores. session().setAnalyticalScores(null); In this example, Internal Learn is a special informant configured as the learn location for the combined likelihood model. The informant itself has no particular configuration and does nothing in itself; it is used only to force the model to learn at the exact instant we have set the Analytical Scores session attribute to the correct values. Reporting Results After running a few thousand (artificially skewed) simulated sessions on our ILS, the Decision Center reporting shows some interesting results. In this case, these results reflect perfectly the bias we ourselves had introduced in our tests. In practice, we would obviously use a wider range of customer attributes and expect to see some more unexpected outcomes. The facetted model for categories has clearly picked up on the that fact our simulated youngsters have little interest in purchasing the one red-hot vehicle our ILS had on offer. Also, it would seem that customer age is an excellent predictor for the acceptance of pink products. Looking at the key drivers for the All Offers choice we can see the relative importance of the different facets to the prediction of overall likelihood. The comparative importance of the category facet for overall prediction might, in part, be explained by the clear preference of younger customers for toys over other product types; as evident from the report on the predictiveness of customer age for offer category acceptance. Conclusion Oracle Real-Time Decisions' flexible decisioning framework allows for the construction of exceptionally elaborate prediction models that facilitate powerful targeting, but nonetheless provide insightful reporting. Although few customers will have a direct need for such a sophisticated solution architecture, it is encouraging to see that this lies within the realm of the possible with RTD; and this with limited configuration and customization required. There are obviously numerous other ways in which the predictive and reporting capabilities of Oracle Real-Time Decisions can be expanded upon to tailor to individual customers needs. We will not be able to elaborate on them all on this blog; and finding the right approach for any given problem is often more difficult than implementing the solution. Nevertheless, we hope that these last few posts have given you enough of an understanding of the power of the RTD framework and its models; so that you can take some of these ideas and improve upon your own strategy. As always, if you have any questions about the above—or any Oracle Real-Time Decisions design challenges you might face—please do not hesitate to contact us; via the comments below, social media or directly at Oracle. We are completely multi-channel and would be more than glad to help. :-)

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  • Implementing Light Volume Front Faces

    - by cubrman
    I recently read an article about light indexed deferred rendering from here: http://code.google.com/p/lightindexed-deferredrender/ It explains its ideas in a clear way, but there was one point that I failed to understand. It in fact is one of the most interesting ones, as it explains how to implement transparency with this approach: Typically when rendering light volumes in deferred rendering, only surfaces that intersect the light volume are marked and lit. This is generally accomplished by a “shadow volume like” technique of rendering back faces – incrementing stencil where depth is greater than – then rendering front faces and only accepting when depth is less than and stencil is not zero. By only rendering front faces where depth is less than, all future lookups by fragments in the forward rendering pass will get all possible lights that could hit the fragment. Can anyone explain how exactly you need to render only front faces? Another question is why do you need the front faces at all? Why can't we simply render all the lights and store the ones that overlap at this pixel in a texture? Does this approach serves as a cut-off plane to discard lights blocked by opaque geometry?

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  • NRF Big Show 2011 -- Part 1

    - by David Dorf
    When Apple decided to open retail stores, they came to 360Commerce (now part of Oracle Retail) to help with the secret project. Similarly, when Disney Stores decided to reinvent itself, they also came to us for their POS system. In both cases visiting a store is an experience where sales take a backseat to entertainment, exploration, and engagement This quote from a recent Stores Magazine article says it all: "We compete based on an experience, emotion and immersion like Disney," says Neal Lassila, vice president of global information technology for Disney. "That's opposed to [competing] on price and hawking a doll for $19.99. There is no sales pressure technique." Instead, it's about delivering "a great time." While you're attending the NRF conference in New York next week, you'll definitely want to stop by the new 20,000 square-foot Disney store in Times Square. If you're not attending, you can always check out the videos to get a feel for the stores' vibe. This year we've invited Disney Stores to open a pop-up store within the Oracle Retail booth. There will be lots of items on sale that fit in your suitcase, and there's no better way to demonstrate our POS, including the mobile POS running on an iPod Touch. You should also plan to attend Tuesday morning's super-session The Magic of the Disney Store: An Immersive Retail Experience with Steve Finney. In the case of Apple and Disney, less POS is actually a good thing. In both cases it was important to make the checkout process fast and easy so as not to detract from the overall experience. There will be ample opportunities to see this play out in New York next week, so I hope you take advantage.

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  • Does DirectX implement Triple Buffering?

    - by Asik
    As AnandTech put it best in this 2009 article: In render ahead, frames cannot be dropped. This means that when the queue is full, what is displayed can have a lot more lag. Microsoft doesn't implement triple buffering in DirectX, they implement render ahead (from 0 to 8 frames with 3 being the default). The major difference in the technique we've described here is the ability to drop frames when they are outdated. Render ahead forces older frames to be displayed. Queues can help smoothness and stuttering as a few really quick frames followed by a slow frame end up being evened out and spread over more frames. But the price you pay is in lag (the more frames in the queue, the longer it takes to empty the queue and the older the frames are that are displayed). As I understand it, DirectX "Swap Chain" is merely a render ahead queue, i.e. buffers cannot be dropped; the longer the chain, the greater the input latency. At the same time, I find it hard to believe that the most widely used graphics API would not implement such fundamental functionality correctly. Is there a way to get proper triple buffered vertical synchronisation in DirectX?

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  • HTTPS To http redirect issue. How to overcome?

    - by Akshay
    Have already seen suggests on how to rewrite https to http. currently using this technique : RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} ^443$ RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mysite.com/$1 [L,R=301] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http ://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L] Problem : I am currently on hostgator VPS and have found Google indexing my HTTPS pages. Weird for me as never bought an SSL. My site is a blog only. When spoke to Google forums, ( https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/webmasters/2Hz46t44nwk/7voZWudFtAQJ ), they say I should redirect https to http. Now when I have redirected this using the above method, I am still getting SSL warning in browsers. And found that Google is still indexing my new pages with https. I feel as I do not have an SSL, adding a redirect in https doesn't work. So if Google indexes my https page, then I should go and buy SSL, and tell there to redirect https to http. Why would I do that? Please help me, reduced the traffic by nearly 30% because of this. Have even told search engines to go to this file (disallows everything) if they are on https. Options +FollowSymlinks RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} ^443$ RewriteRule ^robots.txt$ robots_ssl.txt

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  • Fuzzing for Security

    - by Sylvain Duloutre
    Yesterday, I attended an internal workshop about ethical hacking. Hacking skills like fuzzing can be used to quantitatively assess and measure security threats in software.  Fuzzing is a software testing technique used to discover coding errors and security loopholes in software, operating systems or networks by injecting massive amounts of random data, called fuzz, to the system in an attempt to make it crash. If the program contains a vulnerability that can leads to an exception, crash or server error (in the case of web apps), it can be determined that a vulnerability has been discovered.A fuzzer is a program that generates and injects random (and in general faulty) input to an application. Its main purpose is to make things easier and automated.There are typically two methods for producing fuzz data that is sent to a target, Generation or Mutation. Generational fuzzers are capable of building the data being sent based on a data model provided by the fuzzer creator. Sometimes this is simple and dumb as sending random bytes, swapping bytes or much smarter by knowing good values and combining them in interesting ways.Mutation on the other hand starts out with a known good "template" which is then modified. However, nothing that is not present in the "template" or "seed" will be produced.Generally fuzzers are good at finding buffer overflow, DoS, SQL Injection, Format String bugs etc. They do a poor job at finding vulnerabilites related to information disclosure, encryption flaws and any other vulnerability that does not cause the program to crash.  Fuzzing is simple and offers a high benefit-to-cost ratio but does not replace other proven testing techniques.What is your computer doing over the week-end ?

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  • How do I account for changed or forgotten tasks in an estimate?

    - by Andrew
    To handle task-level estimates and time reporting, I have been using (roughly) the technique that Steve McConnell describes in Chapter 10 of Software Estimation. Specifically, when the time comes for me to create task-level estimates (right before coding begins on a project), I determine the tasks at a fairly granular level so that, whenever possible, I have no tasks with a single-point, 50%-confidence estimate greater than four hours. That way, the task estimation process helps with constructing the software while helping me not to forget tasks during estimation. I come up with a range of hours possible for each task also, and using the statistical calculations that McConnell describes along with my historical accuracy data, I can generate estimates at other confidence levels when desired. I feel like this method has been working fairly well for me. We are required to put tasks and their estimates into TFS for tracking, so I use the estimates at the percentage of confidence I am told to use. I am unsure, however, what to do when I do forget a task, or I end up needing to do work that does not neatly fall within one of the tasks I estimated. Of course, trying to avoid this situation is best, but how do I account for forgotten/changed tasks? I want to have the best historical data I can to help me with future estimates, but right now, I basically am just calculating whether I made the 50%-confidence estimate and whether I made it inside the ranged estimate. I'll be happy to clarify what I'm asking if needed -- let me know what is unclear.

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, October 27, 2012

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, October 27, 2012Popular ReleasesRazorSourceGenerator: RazorSourceGenerator v1.1 Installer: RazorSourceGenerator v1.1 Installer ?? include ??,???????。Fruit Juice: Fruit Juice v1.1: Changelog (v1.1):Minor design fixes; Added live tiles; Added the new Windows Phone Store Download Badge;ZXMAK2: Version 2.6.7.0: - small performance improvements - fix & improvements for Direct3D renderer (thanks to zebest for testing)Media Companion: Media Companion 3.507b: Once again, it has been some time since our release, and there have been a number changes since then. It is hoped that these changes will address some of the issues users have been experiencing, and of course, work continues! New Features: Added support for adding Home Movies. Option to sort Movies by votes. Added 'selectedBrowser' preference used when opening links in an external browser. Added option to fallback to getting runtime from the movie file if not available on IMDB. Added new Big...MSBuild Extension Pack: October 2012: Release Blog Post The MSBuild Extension Pack October 2012 release provides a collection of over 475 MSBuild tasks. A high level summary of what the tasks currently cover includes the following: System Items: Active Directory, Certificates, COM+, Console, Date and Time, Drives, Environment Variables, Event Logs, Files and Folders, FTP, GAC, Network, Performance Counters, Registry, Services, Sound Code: Assemblies, AsyncExec, CAB Files, Code Signing, DynamicExecute, File Detokenisation, GUI...NAudio: NAudio 1.6: Release notes at http://mark-dot-net.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/naudio-16-release-notes-10th.htmlPowerShell Community Extensions: 2.1 Production: PowerShell Community Extensions 2.1 Release NotesOct 25, 2012 This version of PSCX supports both Windows PowerShell 2.0 and 3.0. See the ReleaseNotes.txt download above for more information.DbDiff: Database Diff and Database Scripting: 1.3.3.5: - Wrong load options (deskey wrong)Building Windows 8 Apps with C# and XAML: Full Source Chapters 1 - 10 for Windows 8 Fix 001: This is the full source from all chapters of the book, compiled and tested on Windows 8 RTM. Includes a fix for the Netflix example from Chapter 6 that was missing a service reference.PdfReport: PdfReport 1.3: - Removed the limitation of defining non duplicate column names. See DuplicateColumns sample for more info. - Added horizontal stack panel mode. See CharacterMap sample for more info. - Added pdfStamper to onFillAcroForm of PdfTemplate. See QuestionsAcroForm sample for more info. Added 6 new samples (http://pdfreport.codeplex.com/SourceControl/BrowseLatest): - AccountingBalanceColumn - CharacterMap - CustomPriceNumber - DuplicateColumns - QuestionsAcroForm - QuestionsFormUmbraco CMS: Umbraco 4.9.1: Umbraco 4.9.1 is a bugfix release to fix major issues in 4.9.0 BugfixesThe full list of fixes can be found in the issue tracker's filtered results. A summary: Split buttons work again, you can now also scroll easier when the list is too long for the screen Media and Content pickers have information of the full path of the picked item Fixed: Publish status may not be accurate on nodes with large doctypes Fixed: 2 media folders and recycle bins after upgrade to 4.9 The template/code ...AcDown????? - AcDown Downloader Framework: AcDown????? v4.2.2: ??●AcDown??????????、??、??、???????。????,????,?????????????????????????。???????????Acfun、????(Bilibili)、??、??、YouTube、??、???、??????、SF????、????????????。 ●??????AcPlay?????,??????、????????????????。 ● AcDown??????????????????,????????????????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??,????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7/8 ???? 32??64? ???Linux ????(1)????????Windows XP???,????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86),?????"?????????"??? (2)???????????Linux???,????????Mono?? ??2...Rawr: Rawr 5.0.2: This is the Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!For web-based version see http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.php You can find the version notes at: http://rawr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=VersionNotes Rawr Addon (NOT UPDATED YET FOR MOP)We now have a Rawr Official Addon for in-game exporting and importing of character data hosted on Curse. The Addon does not perform calculations like Rawr, it simply shows your exported Rawr data in wow tooltips and lets you export your character to Rawr (including ba...MCEBuddy 2.x: MCEBuddy 2.3.5: Changelog for 2.3.5 (32bit and 64bit) 1. Fixed a bug causing MCEBuddy to crash during or after installation on Windows XP 2. Bugfix for resource leak with UPnP which would lead to a failure after many days 3. Increased the UPnP discovery re-scan interval from 10 minutes to 30 minutes 4. Added support for specifying TVDB and IMDB id’s in the conversion task page (forcing the internet lookup for metadata)CRM 2011 Visual Ribbon Editor: Visual Ribbon Editor (1.3.1025.5): [NEW] Support for connecting to CRM Online via Office 365 (OSDP) [NEW] Current connection information and loaded ribbon name are displayed in the status bar [IMPROVED] Connect dialog minor improvements and error message descriptions [IMPROVED] Connecting to a CRM server will close currently loaded ribbon upon confirmation (if another ribbon was loaded previously) [FIX] Fixed bug in Open Ribbon dialog which would not allow to refresh entity list more than onceReadable Passphrase Generator: KeePass Plugin 0.8.0: Changes: Interrogative phrases (questions) like why did the statesman burgle amidst lucid sunlamps Support transitive / intransitive verbs (whether a verb needs a subject or not). Change adverbs to be either before or after the verb, at random. Add an "equal" version of each strength, where each possibility is equally likely (for password purists). 3401 words in the default dictionary (~400 more than previous release) Fixed bugs when choosing verb tensesMicrosoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.72: Fix for Issue #18819 - bad optimization of return/assign operator.WPF Application Framework (WAF): WPF Application Framework (WAF) 2.5.0.390: Version 2.5.0.390 (Release Candidate): This release contains the source code of the WPF Application Framework (WAF) and the sample applications. Requirements .NET Framework 4.0 (The package contains a solution file for Visual Studio 2010) The unit test projects require Visual Studio 2010 Professional Changelog Legend: [B] Breaking change; [O] Marked member as obsolete WAF: Fix recent file list remove issue. WAF: Minor code improvements. BookLibrary: Fix Blend design time support o...Fiskalizacija za developere: FiskalizacijaDev 1.1: Ovo je prva nadogradnja ovog projekta nakon inicijalnog predstavljanja - dodali smo nekoliko feature-a, bilo zato što smo sami primijetili da bi ih bilo dobro dodati, bilo na osnovu vaših sugestija - hvala svima koji su se ukljucili :) Ovo su stvari riješene u v1.1.: 1. Bilo bi dobro da se XML dokument koji se šalje u CIS može snimiti u datoteku (http://fiskalizacija.codeplex.com/workitem/612) 2. Podrška za COM DLL (VB6) (http://fiskalizacija.codeplex.com/workitem/613) 3. Podrška za DOS (unu...Liberty: v3.4.0.0 Release 20th October 2012: Change Log -Added -Halo 4 support (invincibility, ammo editing) -Reach A warning dialog now shows up when you first attempt to swap a weapon -Fixed -A few minor bugsNew Projects25minutes the simpliest, best looking, hassle free Pomodoro Technique® timer: 25 minutes __________________________________________________ it is the simplest, best looking, hassle free timer for all Pomodoro Technique® fans out there.Argument: A website for constructing logical arguments in tree form.Asset manager: More information comming soon!bootster: bootster is a bootstrapper for small/medium sized .net web projects.BugHerd-4-DNN: This DotNetNuke(TM) extension simplifies the integration of BugHerd on your DNN portals.CaptureLinks 2.0: CaptureLink2.0 with SharePoint 2013 SupportDeploy File Demo: Deployfile Demo is the companion piece to Deploy File Generator. It shows how to deploy files that have been imported into a special '.resources' file.DIfmClient: DIfmClient is a WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) DI.FM streaming radio player, written in C#.FinApps201240: Aplicación Financiera para La CaixaFirstTasteKudo: Just a taste of Kudo feature.Imgx: This is specifically for internal use only.jamestest123: Blah blah blahMezanmiTechFireMyTeam: In short we can use this project for any rating systems.MezanmiTechInTouchReminder: just a way to contact peopleMoniMisiDemo: Para el desarrollo de aplicaciones web en ASP.net del tipo SPI (Single Page Interface).Orchard Redirect404: This project allows you to configure redirects for 404 errors via the Orchard admin interface. P/Opus (.NET Wrapper for libopus): P/Opus is a .NET library written in C# to wrap around the libopus C API/library to provide a more .NET friendly way of encoding and decoding Opus packets.Pengaturan Sambungan (Connection Setting): Aplikasi untuk menyimpan connection string secara terpisah dari program utamaPwdManagement: mgrrezaTest: TestSnowflake Id Generator: Snowflake is a network service for generating unique ID numbers at high scale with some simple guarantees.The Game for Microsoft Dynamics CRM2011: A solution containing a framework for Microsoft Dynamics CRM2011 to enable gamification of the product in order to drive user adoption and business objectives.UCMA 4.0 Async Extension Methods: This collection of extension methods makes it easy for developers to use the async/await pattern for multithreaded development with UCMA 4.0.ValtechGitTfs: Sandbox project to test git-tfs with a TFS serverWarriorG: PokerWeb site bán thú cung: [TRY]XVIB 360: XBOX 360???????????????????????。

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  • Common request: export #Tabular model and data to #PowerPivot

    - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)
    I received this request in many courses, messages and also forum discussions: having an Analysis Services Tabular model, it would be nice being able to extract a correspondent PowerPivot data model. In order of priority, here are the specific feature people (including me) would like to see: Create an empty PowerPivot workbook with the same data model of a Tabular model Change the connections of the tables in the PowerPivot workbook extracting data from the Tabular data model Every table should have an EVALUATE ‘TableName’ query in DAX Apply a filter to data extracted from every table For example, you might want to extract all data for a single country or year or customer group Using the same technique of applying filter used for role based security would be nice Expose an API to automate the process of creating a PowerPivot workbook Use case: prepare one workbook for every employee containing only its data, that he can use offline Common request for salespeople who want a mini-BI tool to use in front of the customer/lead/supplier, regardless of a connection available This feature would increase the adoption of PowerPivot and Tabular (and, therefore, Business Intelligence licenses instead of Standard), and would probably raise the sales of Office 2013 / Office 365 driven by ISV, who are the companies who requests this feature more. If Microsoft would do this, it would be acceptable it only works on Office 2013. But if a third-party will do that, it will make sense (for their revenues) to cover both Excel 2010 and Excel 2013. Another important reason for this feature is that the “Offline cube” feature that you have in Excel is not available when your PivotTable is connected to a Tabular model, but it can only be used when you connect to Analysis Services Multidimensional. If you think this is an important features, you can vote this Connect item.

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  • Applying Interactive Sorting to Multiple Columns in Reporting Services

    - by smisner
    A nice feature that appeared first in SQL Server 2008 is the ability to allow the user to click a column header to sort that column. It defaults to an ascending sort first, but you can click the column again to switch to a descending sort. You can learn more about interactive sorts in general at the Adding Interactive Sort to a Data Region in Books Online. Not mentioned in the article is how to apply interactive sorting to multiple columns, hence the reason for this post! Let’s say that I have a simple table like this: To enable interactive sorting, I open the Text Box properties for each of the column headers – the ones in the top row. Here’s an example of how I set up basic interactive sorting: Now when I preview the report, I see icons appear in each text box on the header row to indicate that interactive sorting is enabled. The initial sort order that displays when you preview the report depends on how you design the report. In this case, the report sorts by Sales Territory Group first, and then by Calendar Year. Interactive sorting overrides the report design. So let’s say that I want to sort first by Calendar Year, and then by Sales Territory Group. To do this, I click the arrow to the right of Calendar Year, and then, while pressing the Shift key, I click the arrow to the right of Sales Territory Group twice (once for ascending order and then a second time for descending order). Now my report looks like this: This technique only seems to work when you have a minimum of three columns configured with interactive sorting. If I remove the property from one of the columns in the above example, and try to use the interactive sorting on the remaining two columns, I can sort only the first column. The sort on the second column gets ignored. I don’t know if that’s by design or a bug, but I do know that’s what I’m experiencing when I try it out!

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  • Preventing Users From Copying Text From and Pasting It Into TextBoxes

    Many websites that support user accounts require users to enter an email address as part of the registration process. This email address is then used as the primary communication channel with the user. For instance, if the user forgets her password a new one can be generated and emailed to the address on file. But what if, when registering, a user enters an incorrect email address? Perhaps the user meant to enter [email protected], but accidentally transposed the first two letters, entering [email protected]. How can such typos be prevented? The only foolproof way to ensure that the user's entered email address is valid is to send them a validation email upon registering that includes a link that, when visited, activates their account. (This technique is discussed in detail in Examining ASP.NET's Membership, Roles, and Profile - Part 11.) The downside to using a validation email is that it adds one more step to the registration process, which will cause some people to bail out on the registration process. A simpler approach to lessening email entry errors is to have the user enter their email address twice, just like how most registration forms prompt users to enter their password twice. In fact, you may have seen registration pages that do just this. However, when I encounter such a registration page I usually avoid entering the email address twice, but instead enter it once and then copy and paste it from the first textbox into the second. This behavior circumvents the purpose of the two textboxes - any typo entered into the first textbox will be copied into the second. Using a bit of JavaScript it is possible to prevent most users from copying text from one textbox and pasting it into another, thereby requiring the user to type their email address into both textboxes. This article shows how to disable cut and paste between textboxes on a web page using the free jQuery library. Read on to learn more! Read More >

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  • Writing to a D3DFMT_R32F render target clamps to 1

    - by Mike
    I'm currently implementing a picking system. I render some objects in a frame buffer, which has a render target, which has the D3DFMT_R32F format. For each mesh, I set an integer constant evaluator, which is its material index. My shader is simple: I output the position of each vertex, and for each pixel, I cast the material index in float, and assign this value to the Red channel: int ObjectIndex; float4x4 WvpXf : WorldViewProjection< string UIWidget = "None"; >; struct VS_INPUT { float3 Position : POSITION; }; struct VS_OUTPUT { float4 Position : POSITION; }; struct PS_OUTPUT { float4 Color : COLOR0; }; VS_OUTPUT VSMain( const VS_INPUT input ) { VS_OUTPUT output = (VS_OUTPUT)0; output.Position = mul( float4(input.Position, 1), WvpXf ); return output; } PS_OUTPUT PSMain( const VS_OUTPUT input, in float2 vpos : VPOS ) { PS_OUTPUT output = (PS_OUTPUT)0; output.Color.r = float( ObjectIndex ); output.Color.gba = 0.0f; return output; } technique Default { pass P0 { VertexShader = compile vs_3_0 VSMain(); PixelShader = compile ps_3_0 PSMain(); } } The problem I have, is that somehow, the values written in the render target are clamped between 0.0f and 1.0f. I've tried to change the rendertarget format, but I always get clamped values... I don't know what the root of the problem is. For information, I have a depth render target attached to the frame buffer. I disabled the blend in the render state the stencil is disabled Any ideas?

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  • geomipmapping using displacement mapping (and glVertexAttribDivisor)

    - by Will
    I wake up with a clear vision, but sadly my laptop card doesn't do displacement mapping nor glVertexAttribDivisor so I can't test it out; I'm left sharing here: With geomipmapping, the grid at any factor is transposable - if you pass in an offset - say as a uniform - you can reuse the same vertex and index array again and again. If you also pass in the offset into the heightmap as a uniform, the vertex shader can do displacement mapping. If the displacement map is mipmapped, you get the advantages of trilinear filtering for distant maps. And, if the scenery is closer, rather than exposing that the you have a world made out of quads, you can use your transposable grid vertex array and indices to do vertex-shader interpolation (fancy splines) to do super-smooth infinite zoom? So I have some questions: does it work? In theory, in practice? does anyone do it? Does this technique have a name? Papers, demos, anything I can look at? does glVertexAttribDivisor mean that you can have a single glMultiDrawElementsEXT or similar approach to draw all your terrain tiles in one call rather than setting up the uniforms and emitting each tile? Would this offer any noticeable gains? does a heightmap that is GL_LUMINANCE take just one byte per pixel(=vertex)? (On mainstream cards, obviously. Does storage vary in practice?) Does going to the effort of reusing the same vertices and indices mean that you can basically fill the GPU RAM with heightmap and not a lot else, giving you either bigger landscapes or more detailed landscapes/meshes for the same bang? is mipmapping the displacement map going to work? On future cards? Is it going to introduce unsurmountable inaccuracies if it is enabled?

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  • Solving Big Problems with Oracle R Enterprise, Part I

    - by dbayard
    Abstract: This blog post will show how we used Oracle R Enterprise to tackle a customer’s big calculation problem across a big data set. Overview: Databases are great for managing large amounts of data in a central place with rigorous enterprise-level controls.  R is great for doing advanced computations.  Sometimes you need to do advanced computations on large amounts of data, subject to rigorous enterprise-level concerns.  This blog post shows how Oracle R Enterprise enables R plus the Oracle Database enabled us to do some pretty sophisticated calculations across 1 million accounts (each with many detailed records) in minutes. The problem: A financial services customer of mine has a need to calculate the historical internal rate of return (IRR) for its customers’ portfolios.  This information is needed for customer statements and the online web application.  In the past, they had solved this with a home-grown application that pulled trade and account data out of their data warehouse and ran the calculations.  But this home-grown application was not able to do this fast enough, plus it was a challenge for them to write and maintain the code that did the IRR calculation. IRR – a problem that R is good at solving: Internal Rate of Return is an interesting calculation in that in most real-world scenarios it is impractical to calculate exactly.  Rather, IRR is a calculation where approximation techniques need to be used.  In this blog post, we will discuss calculating the “money weighted rate of return” but in the actual customer proof of concept we used R to calculate both money weighted rate of returns and time weighted rate of returns.  You can learn more about the money weighted rate of returns here: http://www.wikinvest.com/wiki/Money-weighted_return First Steps- Calculating IRR in R We will start with calculating the IRR in standalone/desktop R.  In our second post, we will show how to take this desktop R function, deploy it to an Oracle Database, and make it work at real-world scale.  The first step we did was to get some sample data.  For a historical IRR calculation, you have a balances and cash flows.  In our case, the customer provided us with several accounts worth of sample data in Microsoft Excel.      The above figure shows part of the spreadsheet of sample data.  The data provides balances and cash flows for a sample account (BMV=beginning market value. FLOW=cash flow in/out of account. EMV=ending market value). Once we had the sample spreadsheet, the next step we did was to read the Excel data into R.  This is something that R does well.  R offers multiple ways to work with spreadsheet data.  For instance, one could save the spreadsheet as a .csv file.  In our case, the customer provided a spreadsheet file containing multiple sheets where each sheet provided data for a different sample account.  To handle this easily, we took advantage of the RODBC package which allowed us to read the Excel data sheet-by-sheet without having to create individual .csv files.  We wrote ourselves a little helper function called getsheet() around the RODBC package.  Then we loaded all of the sample accounts into a data.frame called SimpleMWRRData. Writing the IRR function At this point, it was time to write the money weighted rate of return (MWRR) function itself.  The definition of MWRR is easily found on the internet or if you are old school you can look in an investment performance text book.  In the customer proof, we based our calculations off the ones defined in the The Handbook of Investment Performance: A User’s Guide by David Spaulding since this is the reference book used by the customer.  (One of the nice things we found during the course of this proof-of-concept is that by using R to write our IRR functions we could easily incorporate the specific variations and business rules of the customer into the calculation.) The key thing with calculating IRR is the need to solve a complex equation with a numerical approximation technique.  For IRR, you need to find the value of the rate of return (r) that sets the Net Present Value of all the flows in and out of the account to zero.  With R, we solve this by defining our NPV function: where bmv is the beginning market value, cf is a vector of cash flows, t is a vector of time (relative to the beginning), emv is the ending market value, and tend is the ending time. Since solving for r is a one-dimensional optimization problem, we decided to take advantage of R’s optimize method (http://stat.ethz.ch/R-manual/R-patched/library/stats/html/optimize.html). The optimize method can be used to find a minimum or maximum; to find the value of r where our npv function is closest to zero, we wrapped our npv function inside the abs function and asked optimize to find the minimum.  Here is an example of using optimize: where low and high are scalars that indicate the range to search for an answer.   To test this out, we need to set values for bmv, cf, t, emv, tend, low, and high.  We will set low and high to some reasonable defaults. For example, this account had a negative 2.2% money weighted rate of return. Enhancing and Packaging the IRR function With numerical approximation methods like optimize, sometimes you will not be able to find an answer with your initial set of inputs.  To account for this, our approach was to first try to find an answer for r within a narrow range, then if we did not find an answer, try calling optimize() again with a broader range.  See the R help page on optimize()  for more details about the search range and its algorithm. At this point, we can now write a simplified version of our MWRR function.  (Our real-world version is  more sophisticated in that it calculates rate of returns for 5 different time periods [since inception, last quarter, year-to-date, last year, year before last year] in a single invocation.  In our actual customer proof, we also defined time-weighted rate of return calculations.  The beauty of R is that it was very easy to add these enhancements and additional calculations to our IRR package.)To simplify code deployment, we then created a new package of our IRR functions and sample data.  For this blog post, we only need to include our SimpleMWRR function and our SimpleMWRRData sample data.  We created the shell of the package by calling: To turn this package skeleton into something usable, at a minimum you need to edit the SimpleMWRR.Rd and SimpleMWRRData.Rd files in the \man subdirectory.  In those files, you need to at least provide a value for the “title” section. Once that is done, you can change directory to the IRR directory and type at the command-line: The myIRR package for this blog post (which has both SimpleMWRR source and SimpleMWRRData sample data) is downloadable from here: myIRR package Testing the myIRR package Here is an example of testing our IRR function once it was converted to an installable package: Calculating IRR for All the Accounts So far, we have shown how to calculate IRR for a single account.  The real-world issue is how do you calculate IRR for all of the accounts?This is the kind of situation where we can leverage the “Split-Apply-Combine” approach (see http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/815.html).  Given that our sample data can fit in memory, one easy approach is to use R’s “by” function.  (Other approaches to Split-Apply-Combine such as plyr can also be used.  See http://4dpiecharts.com/2011/12/16/a-quick-primer-on-split-apply-combine-problems/). Here is an example showing the use of “by” to calculate the money weighted rate of return for each account in our sample data set.  Recap and Next Steps At this point, you’ve seen the power of R being used to calculate IRR.  There were several good things: R could easily work with the spreadsheets of sample data we were given R’s optimize() function provided a nice way to solve for IRR- it was both fast and allowed us to avoid having to code our own iterative approximation algorithm R was a convenient language to express the customer-specific variations, business-rules, and exceptions that often occur in real-world calculations- these could be easily added to our IRR functions The Split-Apply-Combine technique can be used to perform calculations of IRR for multiple accounts at once. However, there are several challenges yet to be conquered at this point in our story: The actual data that needs to be used lives in a database, not in a spreadsheet The actual data is much, much bigger- too big to fit into the normal R memory space and too big to want to move across the network The overall process needs to run fast- much faster than a single processor The actual data needs to be kept secured- another reason to not want to move it from the database and across the network And the process of calculating the IRR needs to be integrated together with other database ETL activities, so that IRR’s can be calculated as part of the data warehouse refresh processes In our next blog post in this series, we will show you how Oracle R Enterprise solved these challenges.

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  • Detecting Browser Types?

    - by Mike Schinkel
    My client has asked me to implement a browser detection system for the admin login with the following criteria, allow these: Internet Explorer 8 or newer Firefox 3.6 or newer Safari 5 or newer for Mac only And everything else should be blocked. They want me to implement a page telling the user what browser they need to upgrade/switch to in order to access the CMS. Basically I need to know the best way to detect these browsers with PHP, distinct from any other browsers, and I've read that browser sniffing per se is not a good idea. The CMS is WordPress but this is not a WordPress question (FYI I am a moderator on the WordPress Answers site.) Once I figure out the right technique to detect the browser I'm fully capable to make WordPress react as my client wants, I just need to know what the best ways are with PHP (or worse case jQuery, but I much prefer to do on the server) to figure how what works and what doesn't. Please understand that "Don't do it" is not an acceptable answer for this question. I know this client too well and when they ask me to implement something I need to do it (they are a really good client so I'm happy to do what they ask.) Thanks in advance for your expertise. -Mike

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  • Rendering different materials in a voxel terrain

    - by MaelmDev
    Each voxel datapoint in my terrain model is made up of two properties: density and material type. Each is stored as an unsigned integer value (but the density is interpreted as a decimal value between 0 and 1). My current idea for rendering these different materials on the terrain mesh is to store eleven extra attributes in each vertex: six material values corresponding to the materials of the voxels that the vertices lie between, three decimal values that correspond to the interpolation each vertex has between each voxel, and two decimal values that are used to determine where the fragment lies on the triangle. The material and interpolation attributes are the exact same for each vertex in the triangle. The fragment shader samples each texture that corresponds to each material and then uses the aforementioned couple of decimal values to interpolate between these samples and obtain the final textured color of the fragment. It should work fine, but it seems like a big memory hog. I won't be able to reuse vertices in the mesh with indexing, and each vertex will have a lot of data associated with it. It also seems pretty slow. What are some ways to improve or replace this technique for drawing materials on a voxel terrain mesh?

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  • Page Spamming via locations

    - by codemonkey
    Hi guys I am new here so please be gentle :) I have created a web page for a small mail order business. The page asks the reader if they are in need of a supplier for products in their "area" and if they have ever been let down by a supplier in that "area" etc. It also lists all the local villages and hamlets around the [area] where they can also supply too. This page is dynamically created and the [area] changes and so do the small towns that are local to the town. The page also contains information on the products so the word count vs town names is not stupid. An example of one of the URL would be www.website.com/1014/Halesowen/ It basically covers the whole of the UK so around 800 main towns with 28,000 local villages. The URL changes, so does the title and h1 tags, also each page is Geo coded for that town. My question really is this a good or bad idea? Is it a black hat technique ? I have been told if I have to ask the question then it probably is but the site does supply to all these areas just as any mail order company does and would like to get listed higher in each town for the products. I have seen this done on a few sites but only with a few targeted towns and not the whole of the UK so I would be really interested in your guys thoughts on this. I would post the URL to the site but as I am new here I am a bit unsure of the rules regarding posting links. The whole site needs a lot of other onsite SEO work doing and I will be doing that over the next few weeks. I look forward to your views on this. p.s. If I am allowed to post the URL without getting into trouble so you can see it someone let me know? Thanks in advance

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