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  • 3 Ways to Make Steam Even Faster

    - by Chris Hoffman
    Have you ever noticed how slow Steam’s built-in web browser can be? Do you struggle with slow download speeds? Or is Steam just slow in general? These tips will help you speed it up. Steam isn’t a game itself, so there are no 3D settings to change to achieve maximum performance. But there are some things you can do to speed it up dramatically. Speed Up the Steam Web Browser Steam’s built-in web browser — used in both the Steam store and in Steam’s in-game overlay to provide a web browser you can quickly use within games – can be frustratingly slow on many systems. Rather than the typical speed we’ve come to expect from Chrome, Firefox, or even Internet Explorer, Steam seems to struggle. When you click a link or go to a new page, there’s a noticeable delay before the new page appears — something that doesn’t happen in desktop browsers. Many people seem to have made peace with this slowness, accepting that Steam’s built-in browser is just bad. However, there’s a trick that will eliminate this delay on many systems and make the Steam web browser fast. This problem seems to arise from an incompatibility with the Automatically Detect Proxy Settings option, which is enabled by default on Windows. This is a compatibility option that very few people should actually need, so it’s safe to disable it. To disable this option, open the Internet Options dialog — press the Windows key to access the Start menu or Start screen, type Internet Options, and click the Internet Options shortcut. Select the Connections tab in the Internet Options window and click the LAN settings button. Uncheck the Automatically detect settings option here, then click OK to save your settings. If you experienced a significant delay every time a web page loaded in Steam’s web browser, it should now be gone. In the unlikely event that you encounter some sort of problem with your network connection, you could always re-enable this option. Increase Steam’s Game Download Speed Steam attempts to automatically select the nearest download server to your location. However, it may not always select the ideal download server. Or, in the case of high-traffic events like big seasonal sales and huge game launches, you may benefit from selecting a less-congested server. To do this, open Steam’s settings by clicking the Steam menu in Steam and selecting Settings. Click over to the Downloads tab and select the closest download server from the Download Region box. You should also ensure that Steam’s download bandwidth isn’t limited from here. You may want to restart Steam and see if your download speeds improve after changing this setting. In some cases, the closest server might not be the fastest. One a bit farther away could be faster if your local server is more congested, for example. Steam once provided information about content server load, which allowed you to select a regional server that wasn’t under high-load, but this information no longer seems to be available. Steam still provides a page that shows you the amount of download activity happening in different regions, including statistics about the difference in download speeds in different US states, but this information isn’t as useful. Accelerate Steam and Your Games One way to speed up all your games — and Steam itself —  is by getting a solid-state drive and installing Steam to it. Steam allows you to easily move your Steam folder — at C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam by default — to another hard drive. Just move it like you would any other folder. You can then launch the Steam.exe program as if you had never moved Steam’s files. Steam also allows you to configure multiple game library folders. This means that you can set up a Steam library folder on a solid-state drive and one on your larger magnetic hard drive. Install your most frequently played games to the solid-state drive for maximum speed and your less frequently played ones to the slower magnetic hard drive to save SSD space. To set up additional library folders, open Steam’s Settings window and click the Downloads tab. You’ll find the Steam Library Folders option here. Click the Add Library Folder button and create a new game library on another hard drive. When you install a game in Steam, you’ll be asked which library folder you want to install it to. With the proxy compatibility option disabled, the correct download server chosen, and Steam installed to a fast SSD, it should be a speed demon. There’s not much more you can do to speed up Steam, short of upgrading other hardware like your computer’s CPU. Image Credit: Andrew Nash on Flickr     

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  • Is LISP still useful in, and which version is most used in todays world ?

    - by shan23
    I try to teach myself a new programming language in regular intervals of time. Recently, I've read how Lisp and its dialects are at the complete opposite end of the spectrum from languages like C/C++, which made me curious enough to know more about it. However, two things are unclear to me, and I'm looking for guidance on them : Is LISP still practiced/used in todays world, or is it a legacy language like FORTRAN/COBOL ? I mean, apart from maintaining existing code, is it used on new projects at all ? What is the most widely used dialect ? I came across Scheme and Common Lisp as the 2 most prevalent dialects, and wanted your opinion as to which is the most favored/useful one to learn - and would be immensely gratified if you can suggest any resources for a rank beginner to start from. While eager to learn a language which is fundamentally different from the procedural languages I'm used to, I don't want to invest undue effort in something if its totally obsolete - I'd still learn it if it was professionally "dead", but only with an academic perspective...

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  • Easy to use cross-platform 3D engines for C++ game development?

    - by davr
    I want to try my hand at writing a 3D game. However I don't want to start at such a low level of drawing individual triangles and writing my own 3D object loader and so on. I've heard of things like Irrlicht, Crystal Space 3D, and Cafu, but I don't have any experience with any of them. I'm looking for suggestions from people who have experience with these or other engines on which ones are well written, and are easy to get started using, without having to learn a ton of 3D math theory and how GPU's work internally.

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  • Ubuntu black screen and icons messed up 12.04

    - by user69869
    I had a successful install when i updated from 11.10 but when i actually went to start it it hanged and the purple screen for a few seconds then flickered my boot screen then showed the desktop i cant interact its black i can see the icons marked out but no images they are just gray wireless doesnt connect it seems that it messed up all the drivers. i tried to stat the old version i had its the same exept i can interact most window close buttons are missing and most of the time it doesnt know what screen im on. any ideas on what i can do? oh and recovery mode shows alot of errors and doesnt do much i ran it for the old version and it just goes through failing and gives an error beep. Thanks in advance any advice is appreciated (note windows still works fine on this system... unfortunately ;D )

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  • How to install and make development use of gtk+ on Ubuntu 12.04

    - by el10780
    I want to install gtk+ in order to make an application with a graphical environment.I went to the official website of gtk(gtk.org) and I tried to follow the instructions,but I wasn't able to make it work.I think that I have successfully managed to do the whole process till the part that I had to run make install and after that ldconfig.So far so good.After that though the complete chaos.I do not know how to set all these configurations so I can make my compilers know where to look for the include files.I just want to make it work in my Ubuntu when I start making a source file and then compile it and run it.

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  • Simple Preferred time control using silverlight 3.

    - by mohanbrij
    Here I am going to show you a simple preferred time control, where you can select the day of the week and the time of the day. This can be used in lots of place where you may need to display the users preferred times. Sample screenshot is attached below. This control is developed using Silverlight 3 and VS2008, I am also attaching the source code with this post. This is a very basic example. You can download and customize if further for your requirement if you want. I am trying to explain in few words how this control works and what are the different ways in which you can customize it further. File: PreferredTimeControl.xaml, in this file I have just hardcoded the controls and their positions which you can see in the screenshot above. In this example, to change the start day of the week and time, you will have to go and change the design in XAML file, its not controlled by your properties or implementation classes. You can also customize it to change the start day of the week, Language, Display format, styles, etc, etc. File: PreferredTimeControl.xaml.cs, In this control using the code below, first I am taking all the checkbox from my form and store it in the Global Variable, which I can use across my page. List<CheckBox> checkBoxList; #region Constructor public PreferredTimeControl() { InitializeComponent(); GetCheckboxes();//Keep all the checkbox in List in the Load itself } #endregion #region Helper Methods private List<CheckBox> GetCheckboxes() { //Get all the CheckBoxes in the Form checkBoxList = new List<CheckBox>(); foreach (UIElement element in LayoutRoot.Children) { if (element.GetType().ToString() == "System.Windows.Controls.CheckBox") { checkBoxList.Add(element as CheckBox); } } return checkBoxList; } Then I am exposing the two methods which you can use in the container form to get and set the values in this controls. /// <summary> /// Set the Availability on the Form, with the Provided Timings /// </summary> /// <param name="selectedTimings">Provided timings comes from the DB in the form 11,12,13....37 /// Where 11 refers to Monday Morning, 12 Tuesday Morning, etc /// Here 1, 2, 3 is for Morning, Afternoon and Evening respectively, and for weekdays /// 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 where 1 is for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thrusday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday respectively /// So if we want Monday Morning, we can can denote it as 11, similarly for Saturday Evening we can write 36, etc /// </param> public void SetAvailibility(string selectedTimings) { foreach (CheckBox chk in checkBoxList) { chk.IsChecked = false; } if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(selectedTimings)) { string[] selectedString = selectedTimings.Split(','); foreach (string selected in selectedString) { foreach (CheckBox chk in checkBoxList) { if (chk.Tag.ToString() == selected) { chk.IsChecked = true; } } } } } /// <summary> /// Gets the Availibility from the selected checkboxes /// </summary> /// <returns>String in the format of 11,12,13...41,42...31,32...37</returns> public string GetAvailibility() { string selectedText = string.Empty; foreach (CheckBox chk in GetCheckboxes()) { if (chk.IsChecked == true) { selectedText = chk.Tag.ToString() + "," + selectedText; } } return selectedText; }   In my example I am using the matrix format for Day and Time, for example Monday=1, Tuesday=2, Wednesday=3, Thursday = 4, Friday = 5, Saturday = 6, Sunday=7. And Morning = 1, Afternoon =2, Evening = 3. So if I want to represent Morning-Monday I will have to represent it as 11, Afternoon-Tuesday as 22, Morning-Wednesday as 13, etc. And in the other way to set the values in the control I am passing the values in the control in the same format as preferredTimeControl.SetAvailibility("11,12,13,16,23,22"); So this will set the checkbox value for Morning-Monday, Morning-Tuesday, Morning-Wednesday, Morning-Saturday, Afternoon of Tuesday and Afternoon of Wednesday. To implement this control, first I have to import this control in xmlns namespace as xmlns:controls="clr-namespace:PreferredTimeControlApp" and finally put in your page wherever you want, <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Style="{StaticResource LayoutRootGridStyle}"> <Border x:Name="ContentBorder" Style="{StaticResource ContentBorderStyle}"> <controls:PreferredTimeControl x:Name="preferredTimeControl"></controls:PreferredTimeControl> </Border> </Grid> And in the code behind you can just include this code: private void InitializeControl() { preferredTimeControl.SetAvailibility("11,12,13,16,23,22"); } And you are ready to go. For more details you can refer to my code attached. I know there can be even simpler and better way to do this. Let me know if any other ideas. Sorry, Guys Still I have used Silverlight 3 and VS2008, as from the system I am uploading this is still not upgraded, but still you can use the same code with Silverlight 4 and VS2010 without any changes. May be just it will ask you to upgrade your project which will take care of rest. Download Source Code.   Thanks ~Brij

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  • Why do you use not free software and what not free software do you use?

    - by 0101
    I prefer to use free software, because I believe its more universal(I can use it anywhere, I can tell people about it and they will have no problem with using it) - i like to say "learn once, use anywhere". I was wondering why people use not free software when free alternatives exists?(for example JIRA, Clover for code coverage, not free marge tools, etc.). P.S. I only use TotalCmd that is not free, but I was not able to find any good alternative(I even wrote one myself, but It was not as great). P.S. I dont want to start any flamewar, Im just curious what is your take on it.

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  • trouble setting up dns for vps

    - by Zenph
    I had registered a domain at namecheap and forwarded the dns to my host at vps.net. The strange thing is, when I did that the site was showing up. I even uploaded files and everything was displaying correctly on my new domain. Now, it is just the namecheap holding page again. I have no idea why this is happening as I haven't touched the configuration since it was working. Could anyone point me in the right direction? When I enter http://domain.com it redirects to http://www.domain.com and the namecheap holding page is shown. Prior to this domain.com was showing what the host was serving. I am completely lost and have no idea where to start so I'd appreciate any help I can get.

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  • Mocking successive calls of similar type via sequential mocking

    In this post , i show how you can benefit from  sequential mocking feature[In JustMock] for setting up expectations with successive calls of same type.  To start lets first consider the following dummy database and entity class. public class Person { public virtual string Name { get; set; } public virtual int Age { get; set; } }   public interface IDataBase { T Get<T>(); } Now, our test goal is to return different entity for successive calls on IDataBase.Get<T>()....Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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  • Download the Windows 8 Logo and Icons to Use on Your Favorite Computer

    - by Asian Angel
    Do you like how the icons from Windows 8 look and want to use them on a different system? Then you are in luck! The good folks over at 7 Tutorials have pulled out nineteen icons from Windows 8 and packaged them into a downloadable set. Note: White icons not shown above. Download the Windows 8 Logo & Other Windows 8 Icons [7 Tutorials] Make Your Own Windows 8 Start Button with Zero Memory Usage Reader Request: How To Repair Blurry Photos HTG Explains: What Can You Find in an Email Header?

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  • Can i make money with my Android Engine or should I focus on game-making?

    - by Roger Travis
    I have dedicated past few month to developing my own android 2d engine. You can see its description, demo and tutorials here http://www.aboxengine.com/ ( jar files will be up in a day or two ). While working on the engine I believed it to be better then most available alternatives ( such as andengine, etc. ) and that people would love to use it in their games and, hopefully, would give me some royalties. Yet as I started posting about my engine on other forums, it start looking like people are only interested in free/opensource engines. Based on your experience, what do you think, is there some way for me to make money with that engine or should I forget about selling it and more focus on making games with it myself? Thanks!

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  • Stairway to Database Source Control Level 2: Getting a Database into Source Control

    In this level, we're going to continue the philosophy of learning by example, and get a database into our SVN repository. We will also consider our overall approach to source control for databases, and the manner in which our team will develop these databases, concurrently. 24% of devs don’t use database source control – make sure you aren’t one of themVersion control is standard for application code, but databases haven’t caught up. So what steps can you take to put your SQL databases under version control? Why should you start doing it? Read more to find out…

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  • Do most companies not know how to write software?

    - by SnOrfus
    If you're an active reader here, try to think about how many times you've heard (and even agreed) when someone here has told someone else to start looking for a new job. Personally, I've seen it a lot more than I expected: it's almost starting to sound cliche. I get that there are bound to be a number of companies that are bad at developing software or managing a software project, but it almost seems like it's getting worse and more frequent, maybe we're just hearing from them and not all of the places that have decent work atmospheres/conditions. So I ask: In your experience, and through your developer friends do you find that it is common that companies have bad development environments and if so: Why do you think it's common? What do you think could be done to fix it as a developer, as a manager, as an industry? Do you think it's improving?

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  • Questions about an Engine Java

    - by CJ Sculti
    so I am going to start developing Java games (3D) but I have a few questions. So I dont know if I should use an engine or make my own. I feel like I am "cheating" if I use an engine to make my game. Is it frowned upon in the game developing world? What are some advantages and disadvantages to using an engine for my game and is it really that much harder to make my own engine? I know that engines have built in models and textures with easy drag and drop interfaces, would I have any of that if I were to code my own engine? Thanks guys.

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  • What is so good about Linux? [closed]

    - by Chris Bridgett
    Self-explanatory question title. I've only ever used Windows OS's (except Mac OSX at friends etc, years ago occasionally) and when diving into the world of programming, Linux is a name that is coming up every other tutorial or article. All my web hosts run Linux and a lot of programming literature covers how to go about various tasks on Linux as well as Windows, but other than the odd raving I've read years ago about Linux being less resource-intensive, I haven't really given it much thought. Any article I read about Linux and whether it should be used for... 'regular' use, it's shunned since any windows applications I'm familiar with will usually require the windows API and there's no end of 'hacking' to get various programs working on Linux. As far as I understand a GUI is optional on Linux too? This all sounds very noobish I'm sure, but we all start somewhere, so: What is Linux good for? What should Linux be used for?

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  • iPhone image asset recommended resolution/dpi/format

    - by Matthew
    I'm learning iPhone development and a friend will be doing the graphics/animation. I'll be using cocos2d most likely (if that matters). My friend wants to get started on the graphics, and I don't know what image resolution or dpi or formats are recommended. This probably depends on if something is a background vs. a small character. Also, I know I read something about using @2x in image file names to support high res iphone screens. Does cocos2d prefer a different way? Or is this not something to worry about at this point? What should I know before they start working on the graphics?

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  • How much should I charge an hour for freelance iOS development?

    - by Tyler Bell
    I am a fairly competent developer who already holds a job developing iOS applications. This job is through the university which I attend. The producer of the apps that I develop is always trying to set me up with some freelance opportunities to get my work out there and to get me some more work/experience. What is a reasonable price to charge (either hourly or per app)? I'd be working by myself, on my own equipment, from start to finish in the design process. Just wondering what a reasonable price was...I've heard up to $30? Thanks

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  • What changed with timidity, alsa and jack in 11.10?

    - by Dave
    I (just) upgraded from 11.4 to 11.10 and noticed some differences in the behavior of timidity. I used to (11.4) exectute >timidity midifile.midi without running jackd, and thus using alsa (or pulseaudio?) to produce sound from midi files. Now having upgraded, this does not work -- currently this command just freezes if jack is not running. If jack is running, it does work but there is an initial audio glitch (noise burst at the start of playback, analogous to the sound of a plug being inserted) that I'd rather not have to deal with. All the indications that I have is that in 11.10 timidity will only work (albeit glitchy) with jack on, whereas in 11.4 it did not require this. Is there any way to restore timidity's non-jack operation in 11.10? Is there a way to get rid of the audio glitch in with jack operation? Overall, what underlying changes in these programs and the audio infrastructure are behind this?

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  • What should be contained in a game scene graph?

    - by Bunkai.Satori
    Would you help me to clarify, please, what what exactly should be contained within a game scene graph? See the following list, please: Game Actors? (obviously yes, all the objects changing state should be the major prart of the Scene Graph) Simple static game ojbects? (I mean ojects places in the background that do not get animated, neither do they collide) Game Triggers? Game Lights? Game Cameras? Weapon Bullets? Game Explosions and Special Effects? The above considered object types. Now to the coverage of the scene graph: Should a scene graph contain the whole game level map since the level start, or should it contain only the visible portion of the map? If the second is true, it would mean that scene graph would be continuously updated, by adding/removing game objects, as the player moves. However, containing only the visible are of the map obviously would be much faster to traverse and update.

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  • The Unspoken - The Why of GC Ergonomics

    - by jonthecollector
    Do you use GC ergonomics, -XX:+UseAdaptiveSizePolicy, with the UseParallelGC collector? The jist of GC ergonomics for that collector is that it tries to grow or shrink the heap to meet a specified goal. The goals that you can choose are maximum pause time and/or throughput. Don't get too excited there. I'm speaking about UseParallelGC (the throughput collector) so there are definite limits to what pause goals can be achieved. When you say out loud "I don't care about pause times, give me the best throughput I can get" and then say to yourself "Well, maybe 10 seconds really is too long", then think about a pause time goal. By default there is no pause time goal and the throughput goal is high (98% of the time doing application work and 2% of the time doing GC work). You can get more details on this in my very first blog. GC ergonomics The UseG1GC has its own version of GC ergonomics, but I'll be talking only about the UseParallelGC version. If you use this option and wanted to know what it (GC ergonomics) was thinking, try -XX:AdaptiveSizePolicyOutputInterval=1 This will print out information every i-th GC (above i is 1) about what the GC ergonomics to trying to do. For example, UseAdaptiveSizePolicy actions to meet *** throughput goal *** GC overhead (%) Young generation: 16.10 (attempted to grow) Tenured generation: 4.67 (attempted to grow) Tenuring threshold: (attempted to decrease to balance GC costs) = 1 GC ergonomics tries to meet (in order) Pause time goal Throughput goal Minimum footprint The first line says that it's trying to meet the throughput goal. UseAdaptiveSizePolicy actions to meet *** throughput goal *** This run has the default pause time goal (i.e., no pause time goal) so it is trying to reach a 98% throughput. The lines Young generation: 16.10 (attempted to grow) Tenured generation: 4.67 (attempted to grow) say that we're currently spending about 16% of the time doing young GC's and about 5% of the time doing full GC's. These percentages are a decaying, weighted average (earlier contributions to the average are given less weight). The source code is available as part of the OpenJDK so you can take a look at it if you want the exact definition. GC ergonomics is trying to increase the throughput by growing the heap (so says the "attempted to grow"). The last line Tenuring threshold: (attempted to decrease to balance GC costs) = 1 says that the ergonomics is trying to balance the GC times between young GC's and full GC's by decreasing the tenuring threshold. During a young collection the younger objects are copied to the survivor spaces while the older objects are copied to the tenured generation. Younger and older are defined by the tenuring threshold. If the tenuring threshold hold is 4, an object that has survived fewer than 4 young collections (and has remained in the young generation by being copied to the part of the young generation called a survivor space) it is younger and copied again to a survivor space. If it has survived 4 or more young collections, it is older and gets copied to the tenured generation. A lower tenuring threshold moves objects more eagerly to the tenured generation and, conversely a higher tenuring threshold keeps copying objects between survivor spaces longer. The tenuring threshold varies dynamically with the UseParallelGC collector. That is different than our other collectors which have a static tenuring threshold. GC ergonomics tries to balance the amount of work done by the young GC's and the full GC's by varying the tenuring threshold. Want more work done in the young GC's? Keep objects longer in the survivor spaces by increasing the tenuring threshold. This is an example of the output when GC ergonomics is trying to achieve a pause time goal UseAdaptiveSizePolicy actions to meet *** pause time goal *** GC overhead (%) Young generation: 20.74 (no change) Tenured generation: 31.70 (attempted to shrink) The pause goal was set at 50 millisecs and the last GC was 0.415: [Full GC (Ergonomics) [PSYoungGen: 2048K-0K(26624K)] [ParOldGen: 26095K-9711K(28992K)] 28143K-9711K(55616K), [Metaspace: 1719K-1719K(2473K/6528K)], 0.0758940 secs] [Times: user=0.28 sys=0.00, real=0.08 secs] The full collection took about 76 millisecs so GC ergonomics wants to shrink the tenured generation to reduce that pause time. The previous young GC was 0.346: [GC (Allocation Failure) [PSYoungGen: 26624K-2048K(26624K)] 40547K-22223K(56768K), 0.0136501 secs] [Times: user=0.06 sys=0.00, real=0.02 secs] so the pause time there was about 14 millisecs so no changes are needed. If trying to meet a pause time goal, the generations are typically shrunk. With a pause time goal in play, watch the GC overhead numbers and you will usually see the cost of setting a pause time goal (i.e., throughput goes down). If the pause goal is too low, you won't achieve your pause time goal and you will spend all your time doing GC. GC ergonomics is meant to be simple because it is meant to be used by anyone. It was not meant to be mysterious and so this output was added. If you don't like what GC ergonomics is doing, you can turn it off with -XX:-UseAdaptiveSizePolicy, but be pre-warned that you have to manage the size of the generations explicitly. If UseAdaptiveSizePolicy is turned off, the heap does not grow. The size of the heap (and the generations) at the start of execution is always the size of the heap. I don't like that and tried to fix it once (with some help from an OpenJDK contributor) but it unfortunately never made it out the door. I still have hope though. Just a side note. With the default throughput goal of 98% the heap often grows to it's maximum value and stays there. Definitely reduce the throughput goal if footprint is important. Start with -XX:GCTimeRatio=4 for a more modest throughput goal (%20 of the time spent in GC). A higher value means a smaller amount of time in GC (as the throughput goal).

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  • Junior developer support

    - by lady_killer
    I am a junior developer in my first work experience after university. I joined the company as PHP developer but I ended up developing using C# and ASP.NET. Right from the start I did not receive any training in C# and I was assigned with ASP projects with quite tight deadlines scoped by Senior developers. The few project hand overs I had from other developers were brief and it looked like I had to discover the system myself, in really short time. This is my first job as web developer and I wonder whether it is normal not to have a kind of mentor to show me how to do things, especially because I am completely new to the technology. Also, do you have idea how to tackle this? As you can imagine, it gets really frustrating! Thank you!

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  • Searching for the Perfect Developer&rsquo;s Laptop.

    - by mbcrump
    I have been in the market for a new computer for several months. I set out with a budget of around $1200. I knew up front that the machine would be used for developing applications and maybe some light gaming. I kept switching between buying a laptop or a desktop but the laptop won because: With a Laptop, I can carry it everywhere and with a desktop I can’t. I searched for about 2 weeks and narrowed it down to a list of must-have’s : i7 Processor (I wasn’t going to settle for an i5 or AMD. I wanted a true Quad-core machine, not 2 dual-core fused together). 15.6” monitor SSD 128GB or Larger. – It’s almost 2011 and I don’t want an old standard HDD in this machine. 8GB of DDR3 Ram. – The more the better, right? 1GB Video Card (Prefer NVidia) – I might want to play games with this. HDMI Port – Almost a standard on new Machines. This would be used when I am on the road and want to stream Netflix to the HDTV in the Hotel room. Webcam Built-in – This would be to video chat with the wife and kids if I am on the road. 6-Cell Battery. – I’ve read that an i7 in a laptop really kills the battery. A 6-cell or 9-cell is even better. That is a pretty long list for a budget of around $1200. I searched around the internet and could not buy this machine prebuilt for under $1200. That was even with coupons and my company’s 10% Dell discount. The only way that I would get a machine like this was to buy a prebuilt and replace parts. I chose the  Lenovo Y560 on Newegg to start as my base. Below is a top-down picture of it.   Part 1: The Hardware The Specs for this machine: Color :  GrayOperating System : Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bitCPU Type : Intel Core i7-740QM(1.73GHz)Screen : 15.6" WXGAMemory Size : 4GB DDR3Hard Disk : 500GBOptical Drive : DVD±R/RWGraphics Card : ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5730Video Memory : 1GBCommunication : Gigabit LAN and WLANCard slot : 1 x Express Card/34Battery Life : Up to 3.5 hoursDimensions : 15.20" x 10.00" x 0.80" - 1.30"Weight : 5.95 lbs. This computer met most of the requirements above except that it didn’t come with an SSD or have 8GB of DDR3 Memory. So, I needed to start shopping except this time for an SSD. I asked around on twitter and other hardware forums and everyone pointed me to the Crucial C300 SSD. After checking prices of the drive, it was going to cost an extra $275 bucks and I was going from a spacious 500GB drive to 128GB. After watching some of the SSD videos on YouTube I started feeling better. Below is a pic of the Crucial C300 SSD. The second thing that I needed to upgrade was the RAM. It came with 4GB of DDR3 RAM, but it was slow. I decided to buy the Crucial 8GB (4GB x 2) Kit from Newegg. This RAM cost an extra $120 and had a CAS Latency of 7. In the end this machine delivered everything that I wanted and it cost around $1300. You are probably saying, well your budget was $1200. I have spare parts that I’m planning on selling on eBay or Anandtech.  =) If you are interested then shoot me an email and I will give you a great deal mbcrump[at]gmail[dot]com. 500GB Laptop 7200RPM HDD 4GB of DDR3 RAM (2GB x 2) faceVision HD 720p Camera – Unopened In the end my Windows Experience Rating of the SSD was 7.7 and the CPU 7.1. The max that you can get is a 7.9. Part 2: The Software I’m very lucky that I get a lot of software for free. When choosing a laptop, the OS really doesn’t matter because I would never keep the bloatware pre-installed or Windows 7 Home Premium on my main development machine. Matter of fact, as soon as I got the laptop, I immediately took out the old HDD without booting into it. After I got the SSD into the machine, I installed Windows 7 Ultimate 64-Bit. The BIOS was out of date, so I updated that to the latest version and started downloading drivers off of Lenovo’s site. I had to download the Wireless Networking Drivers to a USB-Key before I could get my machine on my wireless network. I also discovered that if the date on your computer is off then you cannot join the Windows 7 Homegroup until you fix it. I’m aware that most people like peeking into what programs other software developers use and I went ahead and listed my “essentials” of a fresh build. I am a big Silverlight guy, so naturally some of the software listed below is specific to Silverlight. You should also check out my master list of Tools and Utilities for the .NET Developer. See a killer app that I’m missing? Feel free to leave it in the comments below. My Software Essential List. CPU-Z Dropbox Everything Search Tool Expression Encoder Update Expression Studio 4 Ultimate Foxit Reader Google Chrome Infragistics NetAdvantage Ultimate Edition Keepass Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 Microsoft Security Essentials 2  Mindscape Silverlight Elements Notepad 2 (with shell extension) Precode Code Snippet Manager RealVNC Reflector ReSharper v5.1.1753.4 Silverlight 4 Toolkit Silverlight Spy Snagit 10 SyncFusion Reporting Controls for Silverlight Telerik Silverlight RadControls TweetDeck Virtual Clone Drive Visual Studio 2010 Feature Pack 2 Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate VS KB2403277 Update to get Feature Pack 2 to work. Windows 7 Ultimate 64-Bit Windows Live Essentials 2011 Windows Live Writer Backup. Windows Phone Development Tools That is pretty much it, I have a new laptop and am happy with the purchase. If you have any questions then feel free to leave a comment below.  Subscribe to my feed

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  • Logical and Physical Modeling for Analytical Applications

    - by Dejan Sarka
    I am proud to announce that my first course for Pluralsight is released. The course title is Logical and Physical Modeling for Analytical Applications. Here is the description of the course. A bad data model leads to an application that does not perform well. Therefore, when developing an application, you should create a good data model from the start. However, even the best logical model can’t help when the physical implementation is bad. It is also important to know how SQL Server stores and accesses data, and how to optimize the data access. Database optimization starts by splitting transactional and analytical applications. In this course, you learn how to support analytical applications with logical design, get understanding of the problems with data access for queries that deal with large amounts of data, and learn about SQL Server optimizations that help solving these problems. Enjoy the course!

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  • Memory Efficient Windows SOA Server

    - by Antony Reynolds
    Installing a Memory Efficient SOA Suite 11.1.1.6 on Windows Server Well 11.1.1.6 is now available for download so I thought I would build a Windows Server environment to run it.  I will minimize the memory footprint of the installation by putting all functionality into the Admin Server of the SOA Suite domain. Required Software 64-bit JDK SOA Suite If you want 64-bit then choose “Generic” rather than “Microsoft Windows 32bit JVM” or “Linux 32bit JVM” This has links to all the required software. If you choose “Generic” then the Repository Creation Utility link does not show, you still need this so change the platform to “Microsoft Windows 32bit JVM” or “Linux 32bit JVM” to get the software. Similarly if you need a database then you need to change the platform to get the link to XE for Windows or Linux. If possible I recommend installing a 64-bit JDK as this allows you to assign more memory to individual JVMs. Windows XE will work, but it is better if you can use a full Oracle database because of the limitations on XE that sometimes cause it to run out of space with large or multiple SOA deployments. Installation Steps The following flow chart outlines the steps required in installing and configuring SOA Suite. The steps in the diagram are explained below. 64-bit? Is a 64-bit installation required?  The Windows & Linux installers will install 32-bit versions of the Sun JDK and JRockit.  A separate JDK must be installed for 64-bit. Install 64-bit JDK The 64-bit JDK can be either Hotspot or JRockit.  You can choose either JDK 1.7 or 1.6. Install WebLogic If you are using 64-bit then install WebLogic using “java –jar wls1036_generic.jar”.  Make sure you include Coherence in the installation, the easiest way to do this is to accept the “Typical” installation. SOA Suite Required? If you are not installing SOA Suite then you can jump straight ahead and create a WebLogic domain. Install SOA Suite Run the SOA Suite installer and point it at the existing Middleware Home created for WebLogic.  Note to run the SOA installer on Windows the user must have admin privileges.  I also found that on Windows Server 2008R2 I had to start the installer from a command prompt with administrative privileges, granting it privileges when it ran caused it to ignore the jreLoc parameter. Database Available? Do you have access to a database into which you can install the SOA schema.  SOA Suite requires access to an Oracle database (it is supported on other databases but I would always use an oracle database). Install Database I use an 11gR2 Oracle database to avoid XE limitations.  Make sure that you set the database character set to be unicode (AL32UTF8).  I also disabled the new security settings because they get in the way for a developer database.  Don’t forget to check that number of processes is at least 150 and number of sessions is not set, or is set to at least 200 (in the DB init parameters). Run RCU The SOA Suite database schemas are created by running the Repository Creation Utility.  Install the “SOA and BPM Infrastructure” component to support SOA Suite.  If you keep the schema prefix as “DEV” then the config wizard is easier to complete. Run Config Wizard The Config wizard creates the domain which hosts the WebLogic server instances.  To get a minimum footprint SOA installation choose the “Oracle Enterprise Manager” and “Oracle SOA Suite for developers” products.  All other required products will be automatically selected. The “for developers” installs target the appropriate components at the AdminServer rather than creating a separate managed server to house them.  This reduces the number of JVMs required to run the system and hence the amount of memory required.  This is not suitable for anything other than a developer environment as it mixes the admin and runtime functions together in a single server.  It also takes a long time to load all the required modules, making start up a slow process. If it exists I would recommend running the config wizard found in the “oracle_common/common/bin” directory under the middleware home.  This should have access to all the templates, including SOA. If you also want to run BAM in the same JVM as everything else then you need to “Select Optional Configuration” for “Managed Servers, Clusters and Machines”. To target BAM at the AdminServer delete the “bam_server1” managed server that is created by default.  This will result in BAM being targeted at the AdminServer. Installation Issues I had a few problems when I came to test everything in my mega-JVM. Following applications were not targeted and so I needed to target them at the AdminServer: b2bui composer Healthcare UI FMW Welcome Page Application (11.1.0.0.0) How Memory Efficient is It? On a Windows 2008R2 Server running under VirtualBox I was able to bring up both the 11gR2 database and SOA/BPM/BAM in 3G memory.  I allocated a minimum 512M to the PermGen and a minimum of 1.5G for the heap.  The setting from setSOADomainEnv are shown below: set DEFAULT_MEM_ARGS=-Xms1536m -Xmx2048m set PORT_MEM_ARGS=-Xms1536m -Xmx2048m set DEFAULT_MEM_ARGS=%DEFAULT_MEM_ARGS% -XX:PermSize=512m -XX:MaxPermSize=768m set PORT_MEM_ARGS=%PORT_MEM_ARGS% -XX:PermSize=512m -XX:MaxPermSize=768m I arrived at these numbers by monitoring JVM memory usage in JConsole. Task Manager showed total system memory usage at 2.9G – just below the 3G I allocated to the VM. Performance is not stellar but it runs and I could run JDeveloper alongside it on my 8G laptop, so in that sense it was a result!

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  • How to achieve highly accurate car physics such as Liveforspeed?

    - by Kim Jong Woo
    Liveforspeed is a racing simulator, there is amazing amount of realistic physics. for example, tires get warm, tire actually deforms when you turn corners. You need to play this game with a mouse at the minimum because it almost drives like the real thing. Anyhow, how does one achieve that level of physics simulation? Are there off-the-shelf solutions out there? If not, how does one start with simulating real world physics as close as possible. I would love to be able to work on an opensource car physics focused game. Imagine, more passionate developers, it could keep things going.

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