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• Purple Cows, Copernicus, and Shampoo – Lessons in Customer Experience

  - by Christina McKeon

  What makes a great customer experience? And, why should you or your organization care? These are the questions that set the stage for the Oracle Customer Experience Summit, which kicked off yesterday in San Francisco. Day 1: The first day was filled with demos and insights from customer experience experts and Oracle customers sharing what it takes to deliver great customer experiences. Author Seth Godin delivered an entertaining presentation that included an in-depth exploration of the always-connected, always-sharing experience revolution that we are witnessing and yes, talked about the purple cow. It turns out that customer experience is your way to be the purple cow. Before everyone headed out to see Pearl Jam and Kings of Leon at the Oracle customer appreciation event, the day wrapped up with a discussion around building a customer-centric culture. Where do you start? Whom does it involve? What are some pitfalls to avoid? Day 2: The second day addressed the details behind all the questions brought up at the end of Day 1. Before you start on a customer experience initiative, Paul Hagen noted that you must understand you will forge a path similar to Copernicus. You will be proposing ideas and approaches that challenge current thinking in your organization. Just as Copernicus' heliocentric theory started a scientific revolution, your customer-centric efforts will start an experience revolution. If you think customer experience is like a traditional marketing approach, think again. It’s not about controlling your customers and leading them where you want them to go. It might sound like heresy to some, but your customers are already in control, whether or not your company realizes and acknowledges it. And, to survive and thrive, you'll have to focus on customers by thinking outside-in and working towards a brand that is better and more authentic. We learned how Vail Resorts takes this customer-centric approach. Employees must experience the mountain themselves and understand the experience from the guest’s standpoint. This has created a culture where employees do things for guests that are not expected. We also learned a valuable lesson in designing and innovating customer-centered experiences from Kerry Bodine. First you make the thing, and then you make the thing right. In this case, the thing is customer experience. Getting customer experience right means iterative prototyping and testing of your ideas. This is where shampoo comes in—think lather, rinse, repeat. Be prepared to keep repeating until the customer experience is right. Many of these sessions will be posted to YouTube in the coming weeks so be sure to subscribe to our CX channel.

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• In an Entity-Component-System Engine, How do I deal with groups of dependent entities?

  - by John Daniels

  After going over a few game design patterns, I have settle with Entity-Component-System (ES System) for my game engine. I've reading articles (mainly T=Machine) and review some source code and I think I got enough to get started. There is just one basic idea I am struggling with. How do I deal with groups of entities that are dependent on each other? Let me use an example: Assume I am making a standard overhead shooter (think Jamestown) and I want to construct a "boss entity" with multiple distinct but connected parts. The break down might look like something like this: Ship body: Movement, Rendering Cannon: Position (locked relative to the Ship body), Tracking\Fire at hero, Taking Damage until disabled Core: Position (locked relative to the Ship body), Tracking\Fire at hero, Taking Damage until disabled, Disabling (er...destroying) all other entities in the ship group My goal would be something that would be identified (and manipulated) as a distinct game element without having to rewrite subsystem form the ground up every time I want to build a new aggregate Element. How do I implement this kind of design in ES System? Do I implement some kind of parent-child entity relationship (entities can have children)? This seems to contradict the methodology that Entities are just empty container and makes it feel more OOP. Do I implement them as separate entities, with some kind of connecting Component (BossComponent) and related system (BossSubSystem)? I can't help but think that this will be hard to implement since how components communicate seem to be a big bear trap. Do I implement them as one Entity, with a collection of components (ShipComponent, CannonComponents, CoreComponent)? This one seems to veer way of the ES System intent (components here seem too much like heavy weight entities), but I'm know to this so I figured I would put that out there. Do I implement them as something else I have mentioned? I know that this can be implemented very easily in OOP, but my choosing ES over OOP is one that I will stick with. If I need to break with pure ES theory to implement this design I will (not like I haven't had to compromise pure design before), but I would prefer to do that for performance reason rather than start with bad design. For extra credit, think of the same design but, each of the "boss entities" were actually connected to a larger "BigBoss entity" made of a main body, main core and 3 "Boss Entities". This would let me see a solution for at least 3 dimensions (grandparent-parent-child)...which should be more than enough for me. Links to articles or example code would be appreciated. Thanks for your time.

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• Multiple country-specific domains or one global domain [closed]

  - by CJM

  Possible Duplicate: How should I structure my urls for both SEO and localization? My company currently has its main (English) site on a .com domain with a .co.uk alias. In addition, we have separate sites for certain other countries - these are also hosted in the UK but are distinct sites with a country-specific domain names (.de, .fr, .se, .es), and the sites have differing amounts of distinct but overlapping content, For example, the .es site is entirely in Spanish and has a page for every section of the UK site but little else. Whereas the .de site has much more content (but still less than the UK site), in German, and geared towards our business focus in that country. The main point is that the content in the additional sites is a subset of the UK, is translated into the local language, and although sometimes is simply only a translated version of UK content, it is usually 'tweaked' for the local market, and in certain areas, contains unique content. The other sites get a fraction of the traffic of the UK site. This is perfectly understandable since the biggest chunk of work comes from the UK, and we've been established here for over 30 years. However, we are wanting to build up our overseas business and part of that is building up our websites to support this. The Question: I posed a suggestion to the business that we might consider consolidating all our websites onto the .com domain but with /en/de/fr/se/etc sections, as plenty of other companies seem to do. The theory was that the non-english sites would benefit from the greater reputation of the parent .com domain, and that all the content would be mutually supporting - my fear is that the child domains on their own are too small to compete on their own compared to competitors who are established in these countries. Speaking to an SEO consultant from my hosting company, he feels that this move would have some benefit (for the reasons mentioned), but they would likely be significantly outweighed by the loss of the benefits of localised domains. Specifically, he said that since the Panda update, and particularly the two sets of changes this year, that we would lose more than we would gain. Having done some Panda research since, I've had my eyes opened on many issues, but curiously I haven't come across much that mentions localised domain names, though I do question whether Google would see it as duplicated content. It's not that I disagree with the consultant, I just want to know more before I make recommendations to my company. What is the prevailing opinion in this case? Would I gain anything from consolidating country-specific content onto one domain? Would Google see this as duplicate content? Would there be an even greater penalty from the loss of country-specific domains? And is there anything else I can do to help support the smaller, country-specific domains?

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• Can't save data for a member in a data form

  - by RahulS

  Implied sharing is an old thing everyone knows the reasons and solutions of that, still little theory about that: With Essbase implied sharing, some members are shared even if you do not explicitly set them as shared. These members are implied shared members. When an implied share relationship is created, each implied member assumes the other member’s value. Essbase assumes (or implies) a shared member relationship in these situations: 1. A parent has only one child 2. A parent has only one child that consolidates to the parent In a Planning form that contains members with an implied sharing relationship, when a value is added for the parent, the child assumes the same value after the form is saved. Likewise, if a value is added for the child, the parent usually assumes the same value after a form is saved.For example, when a calculation script or load rule populates an implied share member, the other implied share member assumes the value of the member populated by the calculation script or load rule. The last value calculated or imported takes precedence. The result is the same whether you refer to the parent or the child as a variable in a calculation script. For more information have a look at: http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E17236_01/epm.1112/hp_admin_11122/ch14s11.html Now the issue which we are going to talk about is We loose data on save even when the parent is dynamic calc and has a single child. A dynamic calc parent to a single child:  If we design the form with following selection: In the data form we will find parent below the member and this is by design whenever you make a selection using commands to select all the member below parent, always children will appear before the parent: Lets try to enter data, Save it Now, try to change the way we selected members Here we go: Now the question again why this behavior: 1. Data from Planning data form passes to Essbase row by row, 2. Because in data form the child member appears before the parent, 3. First, data goes to Essbase for child (SingleStoreChild), 4. Then when Planning passes the data for parent there was #Missing or No data,  5. Over writes the data to #missing. PS: As we know that dynamic calc members are calculated on the fly they are not allocated with any memory in the Essbase, here the parent was dynamic calc and it was pointing to same memory as child in the background, when Planning was passing data to Essbase for second row it has updated the child with missing data.(Little confusing, let me know if you need more explanation) 6. As one of the solutions just change the order of appearance of parent and child. Cheers..!!! Rahul S. https://www.facebook.com/pages/HyperionPlanning/117320818374228

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• Why is multithreading often preferred for improving performance?

  - by user1849534

  I have a question, it's about why programmers seems to love concurrency and multi-threaded programs in general. I'm considering 2 main approaches here: an async approach basically based on signals, or just an async approach as called by many papers and languages like the new C# 5.0 for example, and a "companion thread" that manages the policy of your pipeline a concurrent approach or multi-threading approach I will just say that I'm thinking about the hardware here and the worst case scenario, and I have tested this 2 paradigms myself, the async paradigm is a winner at the point that I don't get why people 90% of the time talk about multi-threading when they want to speed up things or make a good use of their resources. I have tested multi-threaded programs and async program on an old machine with an Intel quad-core that doesn't offer a memory controller inside the CPU, the memory is managed entirely by the motherboard, well in this case performances are horrible with a multi-threaded application, even a relatively low number of threads like 3-4-5 can be a problem, the application is unresponsive and is just slow and unpleasant. A good async approach is, on the other hand, probably not faster but it's not worst either, my application just waits for the result and doesn't hangs, it's responsive and there is a much better scaling going on. I have also discovered that a context change in the threading world it's not that cheap in real world scenario, it's in fact quite expensive especially when you have more than 2 threads that need to cycle and swap among each other to be computed. On modern CPUs the situation it's not really that different, the memory controller it's integrated but my point is that an x86 CPUs is basically a serial machine and the memory controller works the same way as with the old machine with an external memory controller on the motherboard. The context switch is still a relevant cost in my application and the fact that the memory controller it's integrated or that the newer CPU have more than 2 core it's not bargain for me. For what i have experienced the concurrent approach is good in theory but not that good in practice, with the memory model imposed by the hardware, it's hard to make a good use of this paradigm, also it introduces a lot of issues ranging from the use of my data structures to the join of multiple threads. Also both paradigms do not offer any security abut when the task or the job will be done in a certain point in time, making them really similar from a functional point of view. According to the X86 memory model, why the majority of people suggest to use concurrency with C++ and not just an async approach ? Also why not considering the worst case scenario of a computer where the context switch is probably more expensive than the computation itself ?

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• What economic books would you suggest for learning about economic valuation of goods and simulations thereof?

  - by Rushyo

  I'm looking to create an economic model for a game based on goods created procedurally. Every natural resource and produced good would be procedurally generated, with certain goods being assigned certain uses. Fakesium might be used for the production of Weapon A and produced from Fakesium factories which use Dilithium and Widgets as reagents, where Widgets are also the product of Foo and Bar The problem is not creating the resources and their various production utlities - but getting the game's AI empires and merchants to (Addendum: somewhat) correctly value the goods according to their scarcity, utility and production costs. I need to create a simulation of goods which allows the various game factions to assign a common value denominator (credits) to each resource, depending on how much its worth to that empire. I see the simulation being something like: "I have a high requirement for Weapon A. Since I don't have much of Fakesium, which is needed for Weapon A - I must have a high demand for Fakesium. If I can acquire Fakesium, devalue it. If not, increase its value - and also increase demand for Dilithium and Widgets too." This is very naive - because it may be much much cheaper for the empire to simply purchase Dilithium and Widgets directly rather than purchasing Fakesium, for example. Another example is two resources might allow the creation of Weapon A (Fakesium and Lieron), so we'd need to consider that. I've been scratching my head over the problem and it keeps growing. By the time the player joins the world, I'd expect enough iterations of this process to have occurred that prices would have largely normalised - and would then only trigger rarely to compensate for major changes (eg. if the player blows up the world's only Foo mine!) Could anyone suggest resources (books, largely) which outline this style of modelling, preferably in the context of simulations? Since this problem would never occur outside fantasy worlds, I figured this is probably the most likely place to find people who have encountered similar problems and I'm sure there's people who know of good places for Games Developers to start looking at less specific economic theory too. Additionally, does anyone know of any developers with blogs whose games or research applications perform similar modelling? EDIT: I think I should underline that I'm not looking for optimal solutions. I'm looking to make the actors impulsive - making rudimentary decisions based on fuzzy inputs about what they care about or don't. I'm aiming to understand the problem area better not derive answers. All the textbooks I've found seem to be about real-world economics or how to solve complex theoretical problems, neither of which are terribly relevant to the actor's decision making.

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• What is a good design model for my new class?

  - by user66662

  I am a beginning programmer who, after trying to manage over 2000 lines of procedural php code, now has discovered the value of OOP. I have read a few books to get me up to speed on the beginning theory, but would like some advice on practical application. So,for example, let's say there are two types of content objects - an ad and a calendar event. what my application does is scan different websites (a predefined list), and, when it finds an ad or an event, it extracts the data and saves it to a database. All of my objects will share a $title and $description. However, the Ad object will have a $price and the Event object will have $startDate. Should I have two separate classes, one for each object? Should I have a 'superclass' with the $title and $description with two other Ad and Event classes with their own properties? The latter is at least the direction I am on now. My second question about this design is how to handle the logic that extracts the data for $title, $description, $price, and $date. For each website in my predefined list, there is a specific regex that returns the desired value for each property. Currently, I have an extremely large switch statement in my constructor which determines what website I am own, sets the regex variables accordingly, and continues on. Not only that, but now I have to repeat the logic to determine what site I am on in the constructor of each class. This doesn't feel right. Should I create another class Algorithms and store the logic there for each site? Should the functions of to handle that logic be in this class? or specific to the classes whos properties they set? I want to take into account in my design two things: 1) I will add different content objects in the future that share $title and $description, but will have their own properties, so, I want to be able to easily grow these as needed. 2) I will add more websites constantly (each with their own algorithms for data extraction) so I would like to plan efficienty managing and working with these now. I thought about extending the Ad or Event class with 'websiteX' class and store its functions there. But, this didn't feel right either as now I have to manage 100s of little website specific class files. Note, I didn't know if this was the correct site or stackoverflow was the better choice. If so, let me know and I'll post there.

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• How is fundamental mathematics efficiently evaluated by programming languages?

  - by Korvin Szanto

  As I get more and more involved with the theory behind programming, I find myself fascinated and dumbfounded by seemingly simple things.. I realize that my understanding of the majority of fundamental processes is justified through circular logic Q: How does this work? A: Because it does! I hate this realization! I love knowledge, and on top of that I love learning, which leads me to my question (albeit it's a broad one). Question: How are fundamental mathematical operators assessed with programming languages? How have current methods been improved? Example var = 5 * 5; My interpretation: $num1 = 5; $num2 = 5; $num3 = 0; while ($num2 > 0) { $num3 = $num3 + $num1; $num2 = $num2 - 1; } echo $num3; This seems to be highly inefficient. With Higher factors, this method is very slow while the standard built in method is instantanious. How would you simulate multiplication without iterating addition? var = 5 / 5; How is this even done? I can't think of a way to literally split it 5 into 5 equal parts. var = 5 ^ 5; Iterations of iterations of addition? My interpretation: $base = 5; $mod = 5; $num1 = $base; while ($mod > 1) { $num2 = 5; $num3 = 0; while ($num2 > 0) { $num3 = $num3 + $num1; $num2 = $num2 - 1; } $num1 = $num3; $mod -=1; } echo $num3; Again, this is EXTREMELY inefficient, yet I can't think of another way to do this. This same question extends to all mathematical related functions that are handled automagically.

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• Strategy to use two different measurement systems in software

  - by Dennis

  I have an application that needs to accept and output values in both US Custom Units and Metric system. Right now the conversion and input and output is a mess. You can only enter in US system, but you can choose the output to be US or Metric, and the code to do the conversions is everywhere. So I want to organize this and put together some simple rules. So I came up with this: Rules user can enter values in either US or Metric, and User Interface will take care of marking this properly All units internally will be stored as US, since the majority of the system already has most of the data stored like that and depends on this. It shouldn't matter I suppose as long as you don't mix unit. All output will be in US or Metric, depending on user selection/choice/preference. In theory this sounds great and seems like a solution. However, one little problem I came across is this: There is some data stored in code or in the database that already returns data like this: 4 x 13/16" screws, which means "four times screws". I need the to be in either US or Metric. Where exactly do I put the conversion code for doing the conversion for this unit? The above already mixing presentation and data, but the data for the field I need to populate is that whole string. I can certainly split it up into the number 4, the 13/16", and the " x " and the " screws", but the question remains... where do I put the conversion code? Different Locations for Conversion Routines 1) Right now the string is in a class where it's produced. I can put conversion code right into that class and it may be a good solution. Except then, I want to be consistent so I will be putting conversion procedures everywhere in the code at-data-source, or right after reading it from the database. The problem though is I think that my code will have to deal with two systems, all throughout the codebase after this, should I do this. 2) According to the rules, my idea was to put it in the view script, aka last change to modify it before it is shown to the user. And it may be the right thing to do, but then it strikes me it may not always be the best solution. (First, it complicates the view script a tad, second, I need to do more work on the data side to split things up more, or do extra parsing, such as in my case above). 3) Another solution is to do this somewhere in the data prep step before the view, aka somewhere in the middle, before the view, but after the data-source. This strikes me as messy and that could be the reason why my codebase is in such a mess right now. It seems that there is no best solution. What do I do?

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• How to appear very professional on my first freelance project?

  - by iamserious

  I need some help on appearing very professional on my first freelance project. How / What should you do to achieve this? Background: I started as a full time web developer 18 months ago, two promotions later I am now a senior software engineer. I've never had any problems with designing / developing / coding a complicated system. I thought I could use some help for Christmas and I started bidding for a project and now I have one - from a very reputable lawyers association in London. I have no problem dealing with the actual implementation of the system, but I have no idea how to appear professional throughout the whole process. About the project: This lawyers association are starting a distant training courses and in addition to having a website to show off all their clients etc, they want a students area where their students would log in, download course materials allocated to them etc.. and an admin section where they assign courses to students / create new ones / upload materials etc.. Questions breakdown: 1) How should I start with the requirement gathering? Is using scrum a good idea, or should I use something like Volere Template - and what should I do with it? should I submit a copy to the client etc.. 2) How often should I meet the client? Would once a fortnight would be good? 3) What are the processes / protocols that I need to follow so that they would be satisfied with me and think that I am very professional 4) How much should I charge for the product? 5) How should I get a quote / contract / receipt for the whole project? 6) What are the steps that professional freelancers go through, during the life cycle of a project? My Research so far Looking at How much should I charge doesn't help.. I live in London, zone 1, though I have no idea how much a project of this size would cost. Help on this would be appreciated. How to be professional articles talks about the work / time management etc and not the actual process, what would real people do etc.. it's like academia theory, but not practical. If this needs revising, please let me know, do not close it because of whatever reason, I will edit the question or details to fit the needs. Thanks for reading a lengthy question.

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• How to be successful at BDD Specifications Workshops?

  - by sigo

  Today we tried to introduce BDD in our software development process by having a specification workshop. For this workshop we had 2 developers, 1 tester and 1 business analyst. The workshop lasted 1h30 and by the end of it we managed to figure out some BDD scenarios for our new feature. We tried to focus on finding the scenarios that we could miss, and the difficult ones. At the end of the workshop some people were actually unhappy with the workshop. One developer felt he wasted his time as he was used to be given out the scenarios directly by the business analyst and review them with her. The business analyst didn't feel confident with our scenario coverage (Had a feeling that we could have missed out other important stuff) but more importantly felt that this workshop was also a waste of time as she could have figured out all these scenarios by herself and in a shorter period of time. So my question is how that kind of workshop can actually work. In the theory, given you have a new feature to develop, you put the tree 'amigos' (dev/tester/ba) in the same room so that they can collaborate together on writing the differents requirements for the new feature using examples. I can see all the benefits from that. Specially in term of knowledge sharing and common product/end goal/done vision. But in practice, we still think it is more cost effective to first have a BA to work on his own on the examples and only then to have the scenarios to be reviewed/reworked by the 3 'amigos'. By having the BA to work on his own, we actually feel more confident that we are less going to miss out stuff + we still get to review the scenarios afterward to double check. We don't think than simple brainstorming/deliberate discovery is actually enought to seriously cover all the requirement for a feature. The business analyst is actually the best person for that kind of stuff. The thing we just do is to review what she wrote and see if then we have a common understanding (which could then lead to rewrite some of her scenarios or add new ones she could have missed). This workshop lasted 1h30, and by the end of it, we didn't feel confident enought about wha we did...sure we could have spent more time on it but honestly most people get exhausted after 1h30 of brainstorming. So how can you get that to work effectively in practice ?

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• Is my JavaScript/jQuery methodology good? [migrated]

  - by absentx

  I am seeking critique on what has become my normal methodology of writing JavaScript code. I have become heavily reliant on the jQuery library, but I think this has helped me learn the native language better also. Anyway, please critique the following style of JavaScript coding... Buried are a lot of questions of scope; if you could point out the strengths and weaknesses of this style I would appreciate it. var critique ={ start: function(){ globalness = 'GLOBAL-GLOBAL'; //Available to all critique's methods var notglobalness = 'LOCAL-LOCAL'; // Only available to critiques start method //Am I using the "method" teminology properly here?? $('#stuff').on('click','a.closer-target',function(){ $target = $(this); if($target.hasClass('active')){ $target.removeClass('active'); } else{ $target.addClass('active'); critique.madness($target); } }) console.log(notglobalness+': at least I am useful at home'); console.log('note here that: '+notglobalness+' is no longer available after this point, lets continue on:'); critique.madness(notglobalness); }, madness: function($e){ //Do a bunch of awesomeness with $e, //but continue to keep it seperate because you think its best to keep things isolated. //Send to the next function when complete here console.log('Here is globalness, which is still available from the start method of critique!! ' + globalness); console.log('Let us see if the globalness carries on to a new var object!!'); console.log('The locally isolated variable of NOTGLOBALNESS is available here, because it was passed to this method. Let us show it:'+$e); carryOn.start(); } } //end critique var carryOn={ start: function(){ console.log('any chance critique.globalness will work here??? lets see: ' +globalness); console.log('it absolutely does'); } } $(document).ready(critique.start); (I always struggle with which of the Stack Exchange sites is best to post "questions of theory" like this, but I think Programmers is the best, if not, as usual a mod will move it, etc...)

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• 3D collision physics. Response when hitting wall, floor or roof

  - by GlamCasvaluir

  I am having problem with the most basic physic response when the player collide with static wall, floor or roof. I have a simple 3D maze, true means solid while false means air: bool bMap[100][100][100]; The player is a sphere. I have keys for moving x++, x--, y++, y-- and diagonal at speed 0.1f (0.1 * ftime). The player can also jump. And there is gravity pulling the player down. Relative movement is saved in: relx, rely and relz. One solid cube on the map is exactly 1.0f width, height and depth. The problem I have is to adjust the player position when colliding with solids, I don't want it to bounce or anything like that, just stop. But if moving diagonal left/up and hitting solid up, the player should continue moving left, sliding along the wall. Before moving the player I save the old player position: oxpos = xpos; oypos = ypos; ozpos = zpos; vec3 direction; direction = vec3(relx, rely, relz); xpos += direction.x*ftime; ypos += direction.y*ftime; zpos += direction.z*ftime; gx = floor(xpos+0.25); gy = floor(ypos+0.25); gz = floor(zpos+0.25); if (bMap[gx][gy][gz] == true) { vec3 normal = vec3(0.0, 0.0, 1.0); // <- Problem. vec3 invNormal = vec3(-normal.x, -normal.y, -normal.z) * length(direction * normal); vec3 wallDir = direction - invNormal; xpos = oxpos + wallDir.x; ypos = oypos + wallDir.y; zpos = ozpos + wallDir.z; } The problem with my version is that I do not know how to chose the correct normal for the cube side. I only have the bool array to look at, nothing else. One theory I have is to use old values of gx, gy and gz, but I do not know have to use them to calculate the correct cube side normal.

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• StringBuffer behavior in LWJGL

  - by Michael Oberlin

  Okay, I've been programming in Java for about ten years, but am entirely new to LWJGL. I have a specific problem whilst attempting to create a text console. I have built a class meant to abstract input polling to it, which (in theory) captures key presses from the Keyboard object and appends them to a StringBuilder/StringBuffer, then retrieves the completed string after receiving the ENTER key. The problem is, after I trigger the String return (currently with ESCAPE), and attempt to print it to System.out, I consistently get a blank line. I can get an appropriate string length, and I can even sample a single character out of it and get complete accuracy, but it never prints the actual string. I could swear that LWJGL slipped some kind of thread-safety trick in while I wasn't looking. Here's my code: static volatile StringBuffer command = new StringBuffer(); @Override public void chain(InputPoller poller) { this.chain = poller; } @Override public synchronized void poll() { //basic testing for modifier keys, to be used later on boolean shift = false, alt = false, control = false, superkey = false; if(Keyboard.isKeyDown(Keyboard.KEY_LSHIFT) || Keyboard.isKeyDown(Keyboard.KEY_RSHIFT)) shift = true; if(Keyboard.isKeyDown(Keyboard.KEY_LMENU) || Keyboard.isKeyDown(Keyboard.KEY_RMENU)) alt = true; if(Keyboard.isKeyDown(Keyboard.KEY_LCONTROL) || Keyboard.isKeyDown(Keyboard.KEY_RCONTROL)) control = true; if(Keyboard.isKeyDown(Keyboard.KEY_LMETA) || Keyboard.isKeyDown(Keyboard.KEY_RMETA)) superkey = true; while(Keyboard.next()) if(Keyboard.getEventKeyState()) { command.append(Keyboard.getEventCharacter()); } if (Framework.isConsoleEnabled() && Keyboard.isKeyDown(Keyboard.KEY_ESCAPE)) { System.out.println("Escape down"); System.out.println(command.length() + " characters polled"); //works System.out.println(command.toString().length()); //works System.out.println(command.toString().charAt(4)); //works System.out.println(command.toString().toCharArray()); //blank line! System.out.println(command.toString()); //blank line! Framework.disableConsole(); } //TODO: Add command construction and console management after that } } Maybe the answer's obvious and I'm just feeling tired, but I need to walk away from this for a while. If anyone sees the issue, please let me know. This machine is running the latest release of Java 7 on Ubuntu 12.04, Mate desktop environment. Many thanks.

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• Are these non-standard applications of rendering practical in games?

  - by maul

  I've recently got into 3D and I came up with a few different "tricky" rendering techniques. Unfortunately I don't have the time to work on this myself, but I'd like to know if these are known methods and if they can be used in practice. Hybrid rendering Now I know that ray-tracing is still not fast enough for real-time rendering, at least on home computers. I also know that hybrid rendering (a combination of rasterization and ray-tracing) is a well known theory. However I had the following idea: one could separate a scene into "important" and "not important" objects. First you render the "not important" objects using traditional rasterization. In this pass you also render the "important" objects using a special shader that simply marks these parts on the image using a special color, or some stencil/depth buffer trickery. Then in the second pass you read back the results of the first pass and start ray tracing, but only from the pixels that were marked by the "important" object's shader. This would allow you to only ray-trace exactly what you need to. Could this be fast enough for real-time effects? Rendered physics I'm specifically talking about bullet physics - intersection of a very small object (point/bullet) that travels across a straight line with other, relatively slow-moving, fairly constant objects. More specifically: hit detection. My idea is that you could render the scene from the point of view of the gun (or the bullet). Every object in the scene would draw a different color. You only need to render a 1x1 pixel window - the center of the screen (again, from the gun's point of view). Then you simply check that central pixel and the color tells you what you hit. This is pixel-perfect hit detection based on the graphical representation of objects, which is not common in games. Afaik traditional OpenGL "picking" is a similar method. This could be extended in a few ways: For larger (non-bullet) objects you render a larger portion of the screen. If you put a special-colored plane in the middle of the scene (exactly where the bullet will be after the current frame) you get a method that works as the traditional slow-moving iterative physics test as well. You could simulate objects that the bullet can pass through (with decreased velocity) using alpha blending or some similar trick. So are these techniques in use anywhere, and/or are they practical at all?

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• How are OpenGL ES 1 framebuffers and textures sized?

  - by jens

  I am trying to draw to a texture using a framebuffer using OpenGL ES 1.1 on Android, Java. Afterwords I want to overlay this texture full-screen over my game. In theory, this works like a charm, but somehow the coordinates are off. For testing I drew something at (0,0) with width and height 200, and it partly is off-screen. This is how I create the framebuffer: fb = new int[1]; depthRb = new int[1]; renderTex = new int[1]; gl11ep.glGenFramebuffersOES(1, fb, 0); gl11ep.glGenRenderbuffersOES(1, depthRb, 0); // the depth buffer gl.glGenTextures(1, renderTex, 0);// generate texture gl.glBindTexture(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D, renderTex[0]); gl.glTexParameterf(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL10.GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, GL10.GL_LINEAR); gl.glTexParameterf(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL10.GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, GL10.GL_LINEAR); gl.glTexParameterf(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL10.GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_S, GL10.GL_REPEAT); gl.glTexParameterf(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL10.GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_T, GL10.GL_REPEAT); texBuffer = ByteBuffer.allocateDirect(buf.length*4).order(ByteOrder.nativeOrder()).asIntBuffer(); gl.glTexImage2D(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0, GL10.GL_LUMINANCE, texW, texH, 0, GL10.GL_LUMINANCE, GL10.GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, texBuffer); gl11ep.glBindRenderbufferOES(GL11ExtensionPack.GL_RENDERBUFFER_OES, depthRb[0]); gl11ep.glRenderbufferStorageOES(GL11ExtensionPack.GL_RENDERBUFFER_OES, GL11ExtensionPack.GL_DEPTH_COMPONENT16, texW, texH); Before I draw, I do this: gl11ep.glBindFramebufferOES(GL11ExtensionPack.GL_FRAMEBUFFER_OES, fb[0]); gl.glClearColor(0f, 0f, 0f, 0f); // specify texture as color attachment gl11ep.glFramebufferTexture2DOES(GL11ExtensionPack.GL_FRAMEBUFFER_OES, GL11ExtensionPack.GL_COLOR_ATTACHMENT0_OES, GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D, renderTex[0], 0); // attach render buffer as depth buffer gl11ep.glFramebufferRenderbufferOES(GL11ExtensionPack.GL_FRAMEBUFFER_OES, GL11ExtensionPack.GL_DEPTH_ATTACHMENT_OES, GL11ExtensionPack.GL_RENDERBUFFER_OES, depthRb[0]); I set texW = 1024 and texH = 512. When rendering this texture fullscreen, with a lightmask (size 200x200) placed at (0, 0) and (texW/2, texH/2). You can see that it seems like the coordinate system doesnt start at (0,0) as that light overlaps the screen and the images are not drawn as squares (my lightcone-texture is a circle, not an ellipse). So, how is the coordinate system of this offscreen-drawn texture defined? Thanks

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• How to be successfull at BDD Specifications Workshops?

  - by sigo

  Today we tried to introduce BDD in our software development process by having a specification workshop. For this workshop we had 2 developers, 1 tester and 1 business analyst. The workshop lasted 1h30 and by the end of it we managed to figure out some BDD scenarios for our new feature. We tried to focus on finding the scenarios that we could miss, and the difficult ones. At the end of the workshop some people were actually unhappy with the workshop. One developer felt he wasted his time as he was used to be given out the scenarios directly by the business analyst and review them with her. The business analyst didn't feel confident with our scenario coverage (Had a feeling that we could have missed out other important stuff) but more importantly felt that this workshop was also a waste of time as she could have figured out all these scenarios by herself and in a shorter period of time. So my question is how that kind of workshop can actually work. In the theory, given you have a new feature to develop, you put the tree 'amigos' (dev/tester/ba) in the same room so that they can collaborate together on writing the differents requirements for the new feature using examples. I can see all the benefits from that. Specially in term of knowledge sharing and common product/end goal/done vision. But in practice, we still think it is more cost effective to first have a BA to work on his own on the examples and only then to have the scenarios to be reviewed/reworked by the 3 'amigos'. By having the BA to work on his own, we actually feel more confident that we are less going to miss out stuff + we still get to review the scenarios afterward to double check. We don't think than simple brainstorming/deliberate discovery is actually enought to seriously cover all the requirement for a feature. The business analyst is actually the best person for that kind of stuff. The thing we just do is to review what she wrote and see if then we have a common understanding (which could then lead to rewrite some of her scenarios or add new ones she could have missed). This workshop lasted 1h30, and by the end of it, we didn't feel confident enought about wha we did...sure we could have spent more time on it but honestly most people get exhausted after 1h30 of brainstorming. So how can you get that to work effectively in practice ?

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• 2d, Top-down map with different levels

  - by Ktash

  So, I'm creating a 2d, top down, sprite based (tiled) game, and right now I'm working on maps (well, a map editor at the moment, but it will be creating my maps, so basically the same thing). The scenario So, I'm thinking about efficiency and creating a map in pieces. In each piece, I plan on having 'layers'. Basically, I plan on rendering it down to a 'below hero' level, and an 'above hero' level, with the hero rendered in between obviously. There will likely also be a 'on level with hero' layer, but I'm not quite there yet. Not even worrying about events or interaction yet. Just looking to get a hero on the screen. Now for movement, I obviously need to know what tiles can be moved and in what direction. My plan at the moment is each tile getting 8 bits (4 'can enter in direction' bits, 4 'can leave in direction'). This will allow me to limit movement and even allow one way directional movement. The dilemma This works great for a lot of scenarios. It will allow me to store a map in essentially 3 layers, a string, and gives me flexibility going forward. However, I can't create maps that themselves have layers. A good example is a bridge where the user can go under or over the bridge without invalid moves being allowed. I can't create a platform and allow movement underneath. These are things I would like to be able to include in my game. My idea In theory, I could allow multiple hero layers and then allow multiple sets of 'below' and 'above' layers (or sandwich layers). But this complicates my system, and makes movement between maps potentially tricky (If the hero is on the third layer at the edge of a map, but that corresponds to the second layer on the other map, how can I allow or disallow movement). My question Is there a better way to manage multiple maps with multiple levels like this where a users level may be 'connected' on different levels on different maps? Or even... Am I doing this the hard way? Is there a more standard way to handle top-down 2d tiled maps that I am just not aware of? Things to note or that might be helpful This will be done in Javascript (transferred around in JSON) State will need to be transferred quickly, so a map-id and x/y/direction should be enough to get me a boolean 'can move' value Maps will not be standard sized (though they will be in a certain number of tiles) Making an editor tool so that I can have others help, so something that I can create in a tool would be helpful 'Teleportation' locations will likely need to exist to get into building maps and to and from different map sets (which will not necessarily be connected), but have not been created yet (lumping in with events at the moment).

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• (Android) How are OpenGL ES 1 framebuffers and textures sized?

  - by jens

  I am trying to draw to a texture using a framebuffer using OpenGL ES 1.1 on Android, Java. Afterwords I want to overlay this texture full-screen over my game. In theory, this works like a charm, but somehow the coordinates are off. For testing I drew something at (0,0) with width and height 200, and it partly is off-screen. This is how I create the framebuffer: fb = new int[1]; depthRb = new int[1]; renderTex = new int[1]; gl11ep.glGenFramebuffersOES(1, fb, 0); gl11ep.glGenRenderbuffersOES(1, depthRb, 0); // the depth buffer gl.glGenTextures(1, renderTex, 0);// generate texture gl.glBindTexture(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D, renderTex[0]); gl.glTexParameterf(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL10.GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, GL10.GL_LINEAR); gl.glTexParameterf(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL10.GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, GL10.GL_LINEAR); gl.glTexParameterf(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL10.GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_S, GL10.GL_REPEAT); gl.glTexParameterf(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL10.GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_T, GL10.GL_REPEAT); texBuffer = ByteBuffer.allocateDirect(buf.length*4).order(ByteOrder.nativeOrder()).asIntBuffer(); gl.glTexImage2D(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0, GL10.GL_LUMINANCE, texW, texH, 0, GL10.GL_LUMINANCE, GL10.GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, texBuffer); gl11ep.glBindRenderbufferOES(GL11ExtensionPack.GL_RENDERBUFFER_OES, depthRb[0]); gl11ep.glRenderbufferStorageOES(GL11ExtensionPack.GL_RENDERBUFFER_OES, GL11ExtensionPack.GL_DEPTH_COMPONENT16, texW, texH); Before I draw, I do this: gl11ep.glBindFramebufferOES(GL11ExtensionPack.GL_FRAMEBUFFER_OES, fb[0]); gl.glClearColor(0f, 0f, 0f, 0f); // specify texture as color attachment gl11ep.glFramebufferTexture2DOES(GL11ExtensionPack.GL_FRAMEBUFFER_OES, GL11ExtensionPack.GL_COLOR_ATTACHMENT0_OES, GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D, renderTex[0], 0); // attach render buffer as depth buffer gl11ep.glFramebufferRenderbufferOES(GL11ExtensionPack.GL_FRAMEBUFFER_OES, GL11ExtensionPack.GL_DEPTH_ATTACHMENT_OES, GL11ExtensionPack.GL_RENDERBUFFER_OES, depthRb[0]); I set texW = 1024 and texH = 512. When rendering this texture fullscreen, with a lightmask (size 200x200) placed at (0, 0) and (texW/2, texH/2). You can see that it seems like the coordinate system doesnt start at (0,0) as that light overlaps the screen and the images are not drawn as squares (my lightcone-texture is a circle, not an ellipse). So, how is the coordinate system of this offscreen-drawn texture defined? Thanks

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• Why C++ people loves multithreading when it comes to performances?

  - by user1849534

  I have a question, it's about why programmers seems to love concurrency and multi-threaded programs in general. I'm considering 2 main approach here: an async approach basically based on signals, or just an async approach as called by many papers and languages like the new C# 5.0 for example, and a "companion thread" that maanges the policy of your pipeline a concurrent approach or multi-threading approach I will just say that I'm thinking about the hardware here and the worst case scenario, and I have tested this 2 paradigms myself, the async paradigm is a winner at the point that I don't get why people 90% of the time talk about concurrency when they wont to speed up things or make a good use of their resources. I have tested multi-threaded programs and async program on an old machine with an Intel quad-core that doesn't offer a memory controller inside the CPU, the memory is managed entirely by the motherboard, well in this case performances are horrible with a multi-threaded application, even a relatively low number of threads like 3-4-5 can be a problem, the application is unresponsive and is just slow and unpleasant. A good async approach is, on the other hand, probably not faster but it's not worst either, my application just waits for the result and doesn't hangs, it's responsive and there is a much better scaling going on. I have also discovered that a context change in the threading world it's not that cheap in real world scenario, it's infact quite expensive especially when you have more than 2 threads that need to cycle and swap among each other to be computed. On modern CPUs the situation it's not really that different, the memory controller it's integrated but my point is that an x86 CPUs is basically a serial machine and the memory controller works the same way as with the old machine with an external memory controller on the motherboard. The context switch is still a relevant cost in my application and the fact that the memory controller it's integrated or that the newer CPU have more than 2 core it's not bargain for me. For what i have experienced the concurrent approach is good in theory but not that good in practice, with the memory model imposed by the hardware, it's hard to make a good use of this paradigm, also it introduces a lot of issues ranging from the use of my data structures to the join of multiple threads. Also both paradigms do not offer any security abut when the task or the job will be done in a certain point in time, making them really similar from a functional point of view. According to the X86 memory model, why the majority of people suggest to use concurrency with C++ and not just an async aproach ? Also why not considering the worst case scenario of a computer where the context switch is probably more expensive than the computation itself ?

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• Strangling the life out of Software Testing

  - by MarkPearl

  I recently did a course at the local university on Software Engineering. At the beginning of the course I looked over the outline of the subject and there seemed to be some really good content. It covered traditional & agile project methodologies, some general communication and modelling chapters and finished off with testing. I was particularly excited to see the section on testing as this was something I learnt on my own and see great value in. The course has now just ended and I am very disappointed. I now know one of the reasons why so few people i.e. in my region do Test Driven Development, or perform even basic testing methodologies. The topic was to academic! Yes, you might be able to list 4 different types of black box test approaches vs. white box test approaches and describe the characteristics of Smoke Tests, but never during course did we see an example of an actual test or how it might be implemented! In fact, if I did not have personal experience of applying testing in actual projects, I wouldn’t even know what a unit test looked like. Now, what worries me is the following… It took us 6 months to cover the course material, other students more than likely came out of that course with little appreciation of the subject – in fact they now have a very complex view of what a test is – so complex that I think most of them will never attempt it again on their own. Secondly, imagine studying to be a dentist without ever actually seeing a tooth? Yes, you might be able to describe a tooth, and know what it is made out of – but nobody would want a dentist who has never seen a tooth to operate on them. Yet somehow we expect people studying software engineering to do the same? This is not right. Now, before I finish my rant let me say that I know this is not the same everywhere in the world, and that there needs to be a balance on practical implementation and academic understanding – I am just disappointed that this does not seem to be happening at the institution that I am currently studying at ;-( Please, if you happen to be a lecturer or teacher reading this post – a combination of theory and practical's goes a long way. We need to up the quality of software being produced and that starts at learner level!

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• Are we queueing and serializing properly?

  - by insta

  We process messages through a variety of services (one message will touch probably 9 services before it's done, each doing a specific IO-related function). Right now we have a combination of the worst-case (XML data contract serialization) and best-case (in-memory MSMQ) for performance. The nature of the message means that our serialized data ends up about 12-15 kilobytes, and we process about 4 million messages per week. Persistent messages in MSMQ were too slow for us, and as the data grows we are feeling the pressure from MSMQ's memory-mapped files. The server is at 16GB of memory usage and growing, just for queueing. Performance also suffers when the memory usage is high, as the machine starts swapping. We're already doing the MSMQ self-cleanup behavior. I feel like there's a part we're doing wrong here. I tried using RavenDB to persist the messages and just queueing an identifier, but the performance there was very slow (1000 messages per minute, at best). I'm not sure if that's a result of using the development version or what, but we definitely need a higher throughput[1]. The concept worked very well in theory but performance was not up to the task. The usage pattern has one service acting as a router, which does all reads. The other services will attach information based on their 3rd party hook, and forward back to the router. Most objects are touched 9-12 times, although about 10% are forced to loop around in this system for awhile until the 3rd parties respond appropriately. The services right now account for this and have appropriate sleeping behaviors, as we utilize the priority field of the message for this reason. So, my question, is what is an ideal stack for message passing between discrete-but-LAN'ed machines in a C#/Windows environment? I would normally start with BinaryFormatter instead of XML serialization, but that's a rabbit hole if a better way is to offload serialization to a document store. Hence, my question. [1]: The nature of our business means the sooner we process messages, the more money we make. We've empirically proven that processing a message later in the week means we are less likely to make that money. While performance of "1000 per minute" sounds plenty fast, we really need that number upwards of 10k/minute. Just because I'm giving numbers in messages per week doesn't mean we have a whole week to process those messages.

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• Have I bricked my Sun V20z?

  - by David Mackintosh

  I have a small pile of Sun V20z computers. I was trying to update the SP and BIOS firmwares in order to bring them all up to the same standard -- mostly to get the updated (ie actually useful) SP functionality, and figured that I would just do the BIOS while I was at it. For three of the four computers, it worked perfectly. However after the BIOS update, the fourth system won't boot. I did this: batch05-mgmt $ sp get mounts Local Remote /mnt 10.16.0.8:/export/v20z batch05-mgmt $ platform set os state update-bios /mnt/sw_images/platform/firmware/bios/V1.35.3.2/bios.sp This command may take several minutes. Please be patient. Bios started Bios Flash Transmit Started Bios Flash Transmit Complete Bios Flash update Progress: 7 Bios Flash update Progress: 6 Bios Flash update Progress: 5 Bios Flash update Progress: 4 Bios Flash update Progress: 3 Bios Flash update Progress: 2 Bios Flash update Progress: 1 Bios Flash update complete batch05-mgmt $ platform set power state on This command may take several minutes. Please be patient. After an hour of waiting, it still won't start. The chassis powers on, but beyond the fans spinning up and the hardware POST of the drives, nothing appears to happen. So if I try to re-flash the BIOS (on the theory that maybe something went wrong): batch05-mgmt $ platform set os state update-bios /mnt/sw_images/platform/firmware/bios/V1.35.3.2/bios.sp This command may take several minutes. Please be patient. Bios started Error. The operation timed out. Have I bricked it?

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• Why does my Intel HDA onboard sound card not have a "Mix" device / channel?

  - by Hanno Fietz

  I want to be able to record what my sound card outputs on the speakers / headphones. This question is all over the interwebs again and again, and there seem to be two outcomes: in your selection of audio input devices, there's a device called "Stereo Mix", or similar, which is the "loopback" device for audio. Choose that in your recording tool and you're done. there's no such device and only speculative posts about why that may be. Now, I'm using ALSA and an Intel HDA chipset on my mainboard under Kubuntu Karmic. I have some 5-10 output channels and "Mic", "Front Mic" and "Line" for input. All of those are available in KMix, Audacity and other software. No "loopback" / "Mix" / whatever. Do I have to get some driver / kernel module set up ALSA in some way set up my system configuration in some way use a software solution (such as JACK) I had a look at JACK, and found it rather hard to understand, it's either an expert tool or just clumsy, I couldn't say. At least, I wasn't able to figure out how to achieve what I wanted. One of my problems seems to be that I don't understand where and how the mixing happens. Are there sound cards which just aren't able to do it? Why does the sound card matter at all, since I could in theory grab the data stream at some point before it goes to the hardware, right?

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• Tasks not appearing in Mac Outlook 2011

  - by Tama

  My current workplace uses Macs and my old workplaces used Windows. In my old workplaces I heavily used Outlook's Task functionality to manage my workload. I understand that the Task functionality in Outlook 2011 for Mac is heavily limited so I was very pleased to find this useful "how-to" on making the most of Tasks. My problem is that my tasks don't appear in the Task folder, or anywhere else for that matter. Even if I search for a the title of a task I've recently found I still can't find them. After some Googling I found this forum thread that suggests it may be a problem with the Outlook database, which points to a Microsoft KB. So I went through all of the recommended steps on rebuilding/ adding a new identity using the "Microsoft Database Utility" - the theory being that if I create a new identity I can test the task creation using a "blank slate" identity. When I change the default identity to my newly created identity using the Microsoft Database Utility (have to restart the computer) Task creation still doesn't work. Any ideas appreciated, I really miss the task functionality in Outlook 2010 for Windows.

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