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• Agile development challenges

  - by Bob

  With Scrum / user story / agile development, how does one handle scheduling out-of-sync tasks that are part of a user story? We are a small gaming company working with a few remote consultants who do graphics and audio work. Typically, graphics work should be done at least a week (sometimes 2 weeks) in advance of the code so that it's ready for integration. However, since SCRUM is supposed to focus on user stories, how should I split the stories across iteration so that they still follow the user story model? Ideally, a user story should be completed by all the team members in the same iteration, I feel that splitting them in any way violates the core principle of user story driven development. Also, one front end developer can work at 2X pace of backend developers. However, that throws the scheduling out of sync as well because he is either constantly ahead of them or what we have done is to have him work on tasks that not specific to this iteration just to keep busy. Either way, it's the same issue as above, splitting up user story tasks. If someone can recommend an active Google agile development group that discusses these and other issues, that'll be great. Also, if you know of a free alternative to Pivotal Labs, let me know as well. I'm looking now at Agilo.

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• Is it possible to add your own bookmarks/tabs to a PDF file?

  - by Pure.Krome

  Hi folks, I've purchases a few e-books and love it. Some come with a massive list of bookmarks (kewl!) and some not. Regardless, is there a way i can create my OWN bookmarks so i can jump to specific pages? I don't want to mess up the current list of official bookmarks that came with the e-books (where they were provided). It's like i want to add my own sticky note tabs so i can quickly jump between pages etc, without having to remember the page number. Also, this is for Adobe reader (the free thingy). If it's available in another program (eg. Foxit, please say so also :) ) cheers!

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• Looking for 2D Cross platform suggestions based on requirements specified

  - by MannyG

  I am an intermediate developer with minor experience on enterprise mobile applications for iphone, android and blackberry looking to build my first ever mobile game. I did a google search for some game dev forums and this popped up so I thought I would try posting here as I lack luck elsewhere. If you have ever heard of the game for the iphone and android platform entitled avatar fight then you will have an idea of the graphic capabilities I require. Basically the battles which are automated one sprite attacking another doing cool animations but all in 2d. My buddy and I have two motivations, one is to jump into mobile Dev as my experience is limited as is his so we would like some trending knowledge (html5 would be nice to learn) . The other is to make some money on the side, don't expect much but polishing the game and putting our all will hopefully reward us a bit. We have looked into corona engine, however a lot of people are saying it is limited in the graphics department, we are open to learning new languages like lua, c++, python etc. Others we have looked at include phonegap, rhomobile, unity, and the list goes on. I really have no idea what the pros and cons of these are but for a basic battle sequence and some mini games we want to chose the right one. Some more things that we will be doing include things like card games, side scrolling flying object based games, maybe fishing stuff. We want to start small with these minigames and work our way up to the idea we would like to implement in the future. We only want to work in 2D. So with these requirements please help me chose a platform to work on (cross platform is what we are ideally leaning towards). Please feel free to throw in some pieces of advice you may have for newbie game developers like myself too. Thank you for reading!

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• .NET Security Part 4

  - by Simon Cooper

  Finally, in this series, I am going to cover some of the security issues that can trip you up when using sandboxed appdomains. DISCLAIMER: I am not a security expert, and this is by no means an exhaustive list. If you actually are writing security-critical code, then get a proper security audit of your code by a professional. The examples below are just illustrations of the sort of things that can go wrong. 1. AppDomainSetup.ApplicationBase The most obvious one is the issue covered in the MSDN documentation on creating a sandbox, in step 3 – the sandboxed appdomain has the same ApplicationBase as the controlling appdomain. So let’s explore what happens when they are the same, and an exception is thrown. In the sandboxed assembly, Sandboxed.dll (IPlugin is an interface in a partially-trusted assembly, with a single MethodToDoThings on it): public class UntrustedPlugin : MarshalByRefObject, IPlugin { // implements IPlugin.MethodToDoThings() public void MethodToDoThings() { throw new EvilException(); } } [Serializable] internal class EvilException : Exception { public override string ToString() { // show we have read access to C:\Windows // read the first 5 directories Console.WriteLine("Pwned! Mwuahahah!"); foreach (var d in Directory.EnumerateDirectories(@"C:\Windows").Take(5)) { Console.WriteLine(d.FullName); } return base.ToString(); } } And in the controlling assembly: // what can possibly go wrong? AppDomainSetup appDomainSetup = new AppDomainSetup { ApplicationBase = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.SetupInformation.ApplicationBase } // only grant permissions to execute // and to read the application base, nothing else PermissionSet restrictedPerms = new PermissionSet(PermissionState.None); restrictedPerms.AddPermission( new SecurityPermission(SecurityPermissionFlag.Execution)); restrictedPerms.AddPermission( new FileIOPermission(FileIOPermissionAccess.Read, appDomainSetup.ApplicationBase); restrictedPerms.AddPermission( new FileIOPermission(FileIOPermissionAccess.pathDiscovery, appDomainSetup.ApplicationBase); // create the sandbox AppDomain sandbox = AppDomain.CreateDomain("Sandbox", null, appDomainSetup, restrictedPerms); // execute UntrustedPlugin in the sandbox // don't crash the application if the sandbox throws an exception IPlugin o = (IPlugin)sandbox.CreateInstanceFromAndUnwrap("Sandboxed.dll", "UntrustedPlugin"); try { o.MethodToDoThings() } catch (Exception e) { Console.WriteLine(e.ToString()); } And the result? Oops. We’ve allowed a class that should be sandboxed to execute code with fully-trusted permissions! How did this happen? Well, the key is the exact meaning of the ApplicationBase property: The application base directory is where the assembly manager begins probing for assemblies. When EvilException is thrown, it propagates from the sandboxed appdomain into the controlling assembly’s appdomain (as it’s marked as Serializable). When the exception is deserialized, the CLR finds and loads the sandboxed dll into the fully-trusted appdomain. Since the controlling appdomain’s ApplicationBase directory contains the sandboxed assembly, the CLR finds and loads the assembly into a full-trust appdomain, and the evil code is executed. So the problem isn’t exactly that the sandboxed appdomain’s ApplicationBase is the same as the controlling appdomain’s, it’s that the sandboxed dll was in such a place that the controlling appdomain could find it as part of the standard assembly resolution mechanism. The sandbox then forced the assembly to load in the controlling appdomain by throwing a serializable exception that propagated outside the sandbox. The easiest fix for this is to keep the sandbox ApplicationBase well away from the ApplicationBase of the controlling appdomain, and don’t allow the sandbox permissions to access the controlling appdomain’s ApplicationBase directory. If you do this, then the sandboxed assembly can’t be accidentally loaded into the fully-trusted appdomain, and the code can’t be executed. If the plugin does try to induce the controlling appdomain to load an assembly it shouldn’t, a SerializationException will be thrown when it tries to load the assembly to deserialize the exception, and no damage will be done. 2. Loading the sandboxed dll into the application appdomain As an extension of the previous point, you shouldn’t directly reference types or methods in the sandboxed dll from your application code. That loads the assembly into the fully-trusted appdomain, and from there code in the assembly could be executed. Instead, pull out methods you want the sandboxed dll to have into an interface or class in a partially-trusted assembly you control, and execute methods via that instead (similar to the example above with the IPlugin interface). If you need to have a look at the assembly before executing it in the sandbox, either examine the assembly using reflection from within the sandbox, or load the assembly into the Reflection-only context in the application’s appdomain. The code in assemblies in the reflection-only context can’t be executed, it can only be reflected upon, thus protecting your appdomain from malicious code. 3. Incorrectly asserting permissions You should only assert permissions when you are absolutely sure they’re safe. For example, this method allows a caller read-access to any file they call this method with, including your documents, any network shares, the C:\Windows directory, etc: [SecuritySafeCritical] public static string GetFileText(string filePath) { new FileIOPermission(FileIOPermissionAccess.Read, filePath).Assert(); return File.ReadAllText(filePath); } Be careful when asserting permissions, and ensure you’re not providing a loophole sandboxed dlls can use to gain access to things they shouldn’t be able to. Conclusion Hopefully, that’s given you an idea of some of the ways it’s possible to get past the .NET security system. As I said before, this post is not exhaustive, and you certainly shouldn’t base any security-critical applications on the contents of this blog post. What this series should help with is understanding the possibilities of the security system, and what all the security attributes and classes mean and what they are used for, if you were to use the security system in the future.

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• Interfaces and Virtuals Everywhere????

  - by David V. Corbin

  First a disclaimer; this post is about micro-optimization of C# programs and does not apply to most common scenarios - but when it does, it is important to know. Many developers are in the habit of declaring member virtual to allow for future expansion or using interface based designs1. Few of these developers think about what the runtime performance impact of this decision is. A simple test will show that this decision can have a serious impact. For our purposes, we used a simple loop to time the execution of 1 billion calls to both non-virtual and virtual implementations of a method that took no parameters and had a void return type: Direct Call:     1.5uS Virtual Call:   13.0uS The overhead of the call increased by nearly an order of magnitude! Once again, it is important to realize that if the method does anything of significance then this ratio drops quite quickly. If the method does just 1mS of work, then the differential only accounts for a 1% decrease in performance. Additionally the method in question must be called thousands of times in order to produce a meaqsurable impact at the application level. Yet let us consider a situation such as the per-pixel processing of a graphics processing application. Here we may have a method which is called millions of times and even the slightest increase in overhead can have significant ramification. In this case using either explicit virtuals or interface based constructs is likely to be a mistake. In conclusion, good design principles should always be the driving force behind descisions such as these; but remember that these decisions do not come for free.   1) When a concrete class member implements an interface it does not need to be explicitly marked as virtual (unless, of course, it is to be overriden in a derived concerete class). Nevertheless, when accessed via the interface it behaves exactly as if it had been marked as virtual.

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• Virtually the fastest way to try Solaris 11 (and Solaris 10 zones)

  - by dminer

  If you're looking to try out Solaris 11, there are the standard ISO and USB image downloads on the main page.  Those are great if you're looking to install Solaris 11 on hardware, and we hope you will.  But if you take the time to look down the page, you'll find a link off to the Oracle Solaris 11 Virtual Machine downloads.  There are two downloads there:A pre-built Solaris 10 zoneA pre-built Solaris 11 VM for use with VirtualBoxIf you're looking to try Solaris 11 on x86, the second one is what you want.  Of course, this assumes you have VirtualBox already (and if you don't, now's the time to try it, it's a terrific free desktop virtualization product).  Once you complete the 1.8 GB download, it's a simple matter of unzipping the archive and a few quick clicks in VirtualBox to get a Solaris 11 desktop booted.  While it's booting, you'll get to run through the new system configuration tool (that'll be the subject of a future posting here) to configure networking, a user account, and so on.So what about that pre-built Solaris 10 zone download?  It's a really simple way to get yourself acquainted with the Solaris 10 zones feature, which you may well find indispensible in transitioning an existing Solaris 10 infrastructure to Solaris 11.  Once you've downloaded the file, it's a self-extracting executable that'll configure the zone for you, all you have to supply is an IP address for the zone.  It's really quite slick!I expect we'll do a lot more pre-built VM's and zones going forward, as that's a big part of being a cloud OS; if there's one that would be really useful for you, let us know.

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• Word 2007 Smart Arts - how deep can I go?

  - by Franz

  In Office Word 2007, I want to use a Smart Art to create a hierarchical diagram for an organization. I want to use the one called "simple radial" (at least that's my word-to-word translation from German - it's the one with the circle in the middle and other circles around it, attached by lines). However, it seems to only support one level of depth (at least for circles). Everything else just becomes a bulleted list inside of the circle. Is there any way to accomplish this in Word 2007? Else: are there any other free tools to do this? I also want to add some other shapes. Again: I want to accomplish a star-like structure with a total of 4 depth levels. Thanks for your responses in advance!

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• Is there a way to legally create a game mod?

  - by Rodrigo Guedes

  Some questions about it: If I create a funny version of a copyrighted game and sell it (crediting the original developers) would it be considered a parody or would I need to pay royalties? If I create a game mod for my own personal use would it be legal? What if I gave it for free to a friend? Is there a general rule about it or it depends on the developer will? P.S.: I'm not talking about cloning games like this question. It's all about a game clearly based on another. Something like "GTA Gotham City" ;) EDIT: This picture that I found over the internet illustrate what I'm talking about: Just in case I was not clear: I never created a mod game. I was just wondering if it would be legally possible before trying to do it. I'm not apologizing piracy. I pay dearly for my games (you guys have no idea how expensive games are in Brazil due to taxes). Once more I say that the question is not about cloning. Cloning is copy something and try to make your version look like a brand new product. Mods are intended to make reference to one or more of its source. I'm not sure if it can be done legally (if I knew I wasn't asking) but I'm sure this question is not a duplicate. Even so, I trust in the moderators and if they close my question I will not be offended - at least I had an opportunity to explain myself and got 1 good answer (by the time I write this, maybe some more will be given later).

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• Integration error in high velocity

  - by Elektito

  I've implemented a simple simulation of two planets (simple 2D disks really) in which the only force is gravity and there is also collision detection/response (collisions are completely elastic). I can launch one planet into orbit of the other just fine. The collision detection code though does not work so well. I noticed that when one planet hits the other in a free fall it speeds backward and goes much higher than its original position. Some poking around convinced me that the simplistic Euler integration is causing the error. Consider this case. One object has a mass of 1kg and the other has a mass equal to earth. Say the object is 10 meters above ground. Assume that our dt (delta t) is 1 second. The object goes to the height of 9 meters at the end of the first iteration, 7 at the end of the second, 4 at the end of the third and 0 at the end of the fourth iteration. At this points it hits the ground and bounces back with the speed of 10 meters per second. The problem is with dt=1, on the first iteration it bounces back to a height of 10. It takes several more steps to make the object change its course. So my question is, what integration method can I use which fixes this problem. Should I split dt to smaller pieces when velocity is high? Or should I use another method altogether? What method do you suggest? EDIT: You can see the source code here at github:https://github.com/elektito/diskworld/

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

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

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• Webserver security, intrusion detection, and file intregrity

  - by enfield

  I would like to add some type of tracking / alerting on some linux webservers running PHP and Apache. In doing searches I have come across a lot of info from 2006-2009. Would like to revisit things and see what others are doing now. The main purpose here is to track when any files are changed and if so alert me somehow. The same goes for IDS and hopefully something that can reside on same server? Since some of these are small scale projects I would prefer opensource/free solutions that are really effective. Although I would still like to hear of other alternatives if someone has the experience and the cost can be justified.

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• Which software to keep track of my project?

  - by Exa

  I'm about to start the first real phase of my game development which will consist of the acquisition of information, resources and the definition of where I want to go and what I will need for that. I just want to make sure that I'm prepared as best as possible before I actually start development. I don't like the thought of using Microsoft Word or Excel for my project management... I already worked with MS Project but I don't think it fits my needs. I need a software where I can easily maintain project steps, milestones, important issues, information about technologies and engines I use, as well as simple notes and thoughts I just want to write down. I usually prefer a whiteboard for stuff like that but unfortunately it's not a persistent way of storing. ;) Also writing it down the old-school way is something I can think of, but only for quick notes... Which software do you use for that? Are there commonly used programs? Is there any free software at all?

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• External table and preprocessor for loading LOBs

  - by David Allan

  I was using the COLUMN TRANSFORMS syntax to load LOBs into Oracle using the Oracle external which is a handy way of doing several stuff - from loading LOBs from the filesystem to having constants as fields. In OWB you can use unbound external tables to define an external table using your own arbitrary access parameters - I blogged a while back on this for doing preprocessing before it was added into OWB 11gR2. For loading LOBs using the COLUMN TRANSFORMS syntax have a read through this post on loading CLOB, BLOB or any LOB, the files to load can be specified as a field that is a filename field, the content of this file will be the LOB data. So using the example from the linked post, you can define the columns; Then define the access parameters - if you go the unbound external table route you can can put whatever you want in here (your external table get out of jail free card); This will let you read the LOB files fromn the filesystem and use the external table in a mapping. Pushing the envelope a little further I then thought about marrying together the preprocessor with the COLUMN TRANSFORMS, this would have let me have a shell script for example as the preprocessor which listed the contents of a directory and let me read the files as LOBs via an external table. Unfortunately that doesn't quote work - there is now a bug/enhancement logged, so one day maybe. So I'm afraid my blog title was a little bit of a teaser....

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• SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #004

  - by pinaldave

  Here is the list of curetted articles of SQLAuthority.com across all these years. Instead of just listing all the articles I have selected a few of my most favorite articles and have listed them here with additional notes below it. Let me know which one of the following is your favorite article from memory lane. 2006 Auto Generate Script to Delete Deprecated Fields in Current Database In early career everytime I have to drop a column, I had hard time doing it because I was scared what if that column was needed somewhere in the code. Due to this fear I never dropped any column. I just renamed the column. If the column which I renamed was needed afterwards it was very easy to rename it back again. However, it is not recommended to keep the deleted column renamed in the database. At every interval I used to drop the columns which was prefixed with specific word. This script is 6 years old but still works. Give it a look, I am open for improvements. 2007 Shrinking Truncate Log File – Log Full – Part 2 Shrinking database or mdf file is indeed bad thing and it creates lots of problems. However, once in a while there is legit requirement to shrink the log file – a very rare one. In the rare occasion shrinking or truncating the log file may be the only solution. However, one should make sure to take backup before and after the truncate or shrink as in case of a disaster they can be very useful. Remember that truncating log file will break the log chain and while restore it can create major issue. Anyway, use this feature with caution. 2008 Simple Use of Cursor to Print All Stored Procedures of Database Including Schema This is a very interesting requirement I used to face in my early career days, I needed to print all the Stored procedures of my database. Interesting enough I had written a cursor to do so. Today when I look back at this stored procedure, I believe there will be a much cleaner way to do the same task, however, I still use this SP quite often when I have to document all the stored procedures of my database. Interesting Observation about Order of Resultset without ORDER BY In industry many developers avoid using ORDER BY clause to display the result in particular order thinking that Index is enforcing the order. In this interesting example, I demonstrate that without using ORDER BY, same table and similar query can return different results. Query optimizer always returns results using any method which is optimized for performance. The learning is There is no order unless ORDER BY is used. 2009 Size of Index Table – A Puzzle to Find Index Size for Each Index on Table I asked this puzzle earlier where I asked how to find the Index size for each of the tables. The puzzle was very well received and lots of interesting answers were received. To answer this question I have written following blog posts. I suggest this weekend you try to solve this problem and see if you can come up with a better solution. If not, well here are the solutions. Solution 1 | Solution 2 | Solution 3 Understanding Table Hints with Examples Hints are options and strong suggestions specified for enforcement by the SQL Server query processor on DML statements. The hints override any execution plan the query optimizer might select for a query. The SQL Server Query optimizer is a very smart tool and it makes a better selection of execution plan. Suggesting hints to the Query Optimizer should be attempted when absolutely necessary and by experienced developers who know exactly what they are doing (or in development as a way to experiment and learn). Interesting Observation – TOP 100 PERCENT and ORDER BY I have seen developers and DBAs using TOP very causally when they have to use the ORDER BY clause. Theoretically, there is no need of ORDER BY in the view at all. All the ordering should be done outside the view and view should just have the SELECT statement in it. It was quite common that to save this extra typing by including ordering inside of the view. At several instances developers want a complete resultset and for the same they include TOP 100 PERCENT along with ORDER BY, assuming that this will simulate the SELECT statement with ORDER BY. 2010 SQLPASS Nov 8-11, 2010-Seattle – An Alternative Look at Experience In year 2010 I attended most prestigious SQL Server event SQLPASS between Nov 8-11, 2010 at Seattle. I have only one expression for the event - Best Summit Ever. Instead of writing about my usual routine or the event, I wrote about the interesting things I did and how I felt about it! When I go back and read it, I feel that this is the best event I attended in year 2010. Change Database Access to Single User Mode Using SSMS Image says all. 2011 SQL Server 2012 has introduced new analytic functions. These functions were long awaited and I am glad that they are now here. Before when any of this function was needed, people used to write long T-SQL code to simulate these functions. But now there’s no need of doing so. Having available native function also helps performance as well readability. Function SQLAuthority MSDN CUME_DIST CUME_DIST CUME_DIST FIRST_VALUE FIRST_VALUE FIRST_VALUE LAST_VALUE LAST_VALUE LAST_VALUE LEAD LEAD LEAD LAG LAG LAG PERCENTILE_CONT PERCENTILE_CONT PERCENTILE_CONT PERCENTILE_DISC PERCENTILE_DISC PERCENTILE_DISC PERCENT_RANK PERCENT_RANK PERCENT_RANK Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Memory Lane, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Making a perfect map (not tile-based)

  - by Sri Harsha Chilakapati

  I would like to make a map system as in the GameMaker and the latest code is here. I've searched a lot in google and all of them resulted in tutorials about tile-maps. As tile maps do not fit for every type of game and GameMaker uses tiles for a different purpose, I want to make a "Sprite Based" map. The major problem I had experienced was collision detection being slow for large maps. So I wrote a QuadTree class here and the collision detection is fine upto 50000 objects in the map without PixelPerfect collision detection and 30000 objects with PixelPerferct collisions enabled. Now I need to implement the method "isObjectCollisionFree(float x, float y, boolean solid, GObject obj)". The existing implementation is becoming slow in Platformer games and I need suggestions on improvement. The current Implementation: /** * Checks if a specific position is collision free in the map. * * @param x The x-position of the object * @param y The y-position of the object * @param solid Whether to check only for solid object * @param object The object ( used for width and height ) * @return True if no-collision and false if it collides. */ public static boolean isObjectCollisionFree(float x, float y, boolean solid, GObject object){ boolean bool = true; Rectangle bounds = new Rectangle(Math.round(x), Math.round(y), object.getWidth(), object.getHeight()); ArrayList<GObject> collidables = quad.retrieve(bounds); for (int i=0; i<collidables.size(); i++){ GObject obj = collidables.get(i); if (obj.isSolid()==solid && obj != object){ if (obj.isAlive()){ if (bounds.intersects(obj.getBounds())){ bool = false; if (Global.USE_PIXELPERFECT_COLLISION){ bool = !GUtil.isPixelPerfectCollision(x, y, object.getAnimation().getBufferedImage(), obj.getX(), obj.getY(), obj.getAnimation().getBufferedImage()); } break; } } } } return bool; } Thanks.

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• Hosting discussion forums on Windows 2008 Server / IIS, what software to use?

  - by Lasse V. Karlsen

  A plan to look into hosting discussion forums related to our product, on our own servers, has arisen, and I can't seem to find any pure .NET or Windows-based discussion forums. Since we're a pure Windows-based company, installing something that requires MySQL or Linux is going to require administration knowledge we don't currently have. What are our options? Every site I find that shows how to set up discussion forums on IIS involves just taking one of the many LAMP-based ones and tweaking IIS to run PHP or similar to run it. Isn't there a .NET-based discussion forum software? Free or not doesn't matter at this stage, right now we're just looking for options.

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• Is there any viable alternative to using a linux/unix/BSD firewall/router/vpn?

  - by ObligatoryMoniker

  I am trying to purchase something to replace our Vyatta router that is running in a virtual machine on Hyper V (having the whole network go down when the host has to reboot is not convenient and I am getting the sense that this configuration may not be stable). Most posts on this topic suggest using Linux/OpenBSD/FreeBSD/etc with some recommendations to use appliances from vendors for specific purposes like firewall and VPN. We are a windows shop and it has been a stretch for us to make use of Vyatta but since it was free and straightforward to use we decided to use it. Now we need something that is easier for our team to (re)deploy and manage. I would rather purchase something windows based or an appliance that can do all of the following things: DHCP server (reservations, specified gateway, dns, etc) Static Routes that route traffic across three interfaces Easily Reproducible (Powershell script, Puppet, Chef, etc) Intuitive interface (Decent web interface would be fine but I don't want them to have to go to CLI) Does any one have any recommendations on what I should be looking at that might meet our needs?

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• The Sound of Two Toilets Flushing: Constructive Criticism for Virgin Atlantic Complaints Department

  - by Geertjan

  I recently had the experience of flying from London to Johannesburg and back with Virgin Atlantic. The good news was that it was the cheapest flight available and that the take off and landing were absolutely perfect. Hence I really have no reason to complain. Instead, I'd like to offer some constructive criticism which hopefully Richard Branson will find sometime while googling his name. Or maybe someone from the Virgin Atlantic Complaints Department will find it, whatever, just want to put this information out there. Arrangement of restroom facilities. Maybe next time you design an airplane, consider not putting your toilets at a right angle right next to your rows of seats. Being able to reach, without even needing to stretch your arm, from your seat to close, yet again, a toilet door that someone, someone obviously sitting very far from the toilets, carelessly forgot to close is not an indicator of quality interior design. Have you noticed how all other airplanes have their toilets in a cubicle separated from the rows of seats? On those airplanes, people sitting in the seats near the toilets are not constantly being woken up throughout the night whenever someone enters/exits the toilet, whenever the light in the toilet is suddenly switched on, and whenever one of the toilets flushes. Bonus points for Virgin Atlantic passengers in the seats adjoining the toilets is when multiple toilets are flushed simultaneously and multiple passengers enter/exit them at the same time, a bit like an unasked for low budget musical of suddenly illuminated grumpy people in crumpled clothes. What joy that brings at 3 AM is hard to describe. Seats with extra leg room. You know how other airplanes have the seats with the extra leg room? You know what those seats tend to have? Extra leg room. It's really interesting how Virgin Atlantic's seats with extra leg room actually have no extra leg room at all. It should have been a give away, the fact that these special seats are found in the same rows as the standard seats, rather than on the cusp of real glory which is where most airlines put their extra leg room seats, with the only actual difference being that they have a slightly different color. Had you called them "seats with a different color" (i.e., almost not quite green, rather than something vaguely hinting at blue), at least I'd have known what I was getting. Picture the joy at 3 AM, rudely awakened from nightmarish slumber, partly grateful to have been released from a grayish dream of faceless zombies resembling one or two of those in a recent toilet line, by multiple adjoining toilets flushing simultaneously, while you're sitting in a seat with extra leg room that has exactly as much leg room as the seats in neighboring rows. You then have a choice of things to be sincerely annoyed about. Food from the '80's. In the '80's, airplane food came in soggy containers and even breakfast, the most important meal of the day, was a sad heap of vaguely gray colors. The culinary highlight tended to be a squashed tomato, which must have been mashed to a pulp with a brick prior to being regurgitated by a small furry animal, and there was also always a piece of immensely horrid pumpkin, as well as a slice of spongy something you'd never seen before. Sausages and mash at 6 AM on an airplane was always a heavy lump of horribleness. Thankfully, all airlines throughout the world changed from this puke inducing strategy around 1987 sometime. Not Virgin Atlantic, of course. The fatty sausages and mash are still there, bringing you flashbacks to Duran Duran, which is what you were listening to (on your walkman) the last time you saw it in an airplane. Even the golden oldie "squashed tomato attached by slime to three wet peas" is on the menu. How wonderful to have all this in a cramped seat with a long row of early morning bleariness lined up for the toilets, right at your side, bumping into your elbow, groggily, one by one, one after another, more and more, fumble-open-door-silence-flush-fumble-open-door, and on and on, while you tentatively push your fork through a soggy pile of colorless mush, fighting the urge to throw up on the stinky socks of whatever nightmarish zombie is bumping into your elbow at the time. But, then again, the plane landed without a hitch, in fact, extremely smoothly, so I'm certainly not blaming the pilots.

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• Simple issue tracker for 1-2 developers

  - by devoured elysium

  (I'm not sure whether this pertains to the realm of programmers@se or so@se) I'm currently working mostly alone on a project (in Java). I'm mostly alone as I have an advisor that gives me high level instructions on what to do, and will seldom make any code contribution. She will code in a couple of acceptance tests from time to time, though. I've never used an Issue Tracker before, and was thinking about starting to use one now, as I'd like to have a place where I can log possible bugs I find and keep track of them in a centralized manner. Would it be possible to integrate the issue tracker with Eclipse, better yet. So here are the constraints: It's NOT a open-source project. Our code is not to be shared with anyone! we are and will be using Subversion; we have our own Subversion server and we will keep using this same Subversion server; it must be free; it must allow at least 2 users. What is your advice on what to pick? I'm looking for the simplest solution available!

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• Texture and Pattern Generator

  - by Ara

  I use Adobe Fireworks for its Texture and Pattern tools to make things like this: http://i.imgur.com/sci7Roc.png and then i copy-paste it to Flash Professional (Adobe) to use there. but fireworks is so slow and buggy is there a free or commercial software to do this simple Texture / Pattern thing easily? Texture (like the second image above) Patter and Texture (like the first one) Transparent Texture, so the background color would be visible instead of the white lines in second image The ability to copy and paste it (as PNG 32 or any alpha transparent image) so i don't have to save it first and then import it to flash * I Use Mac OS X 10.8.4 *

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• Exclusive use of a Jini server during long-running call

  - by Matthew Flint

  I'm trying to use Jini, in a "Masters/Workers" arrangement, but the Worker jobs may be long running. In addition, each worker needs to have exclusive access to a singleton resource on that machine. As it stands, if a Worker receives another request while a previous request is running, then the new request is accepted and executed in a second thread. Are there any best-practices to ensure that a Worker accepts no further jobs until the current job is complete? Things I've considered: synchronize the job on the server, with a lock on the singleton resource. This would work, but is far from ideal. A call from a Master would block until the current Worker thread completes, even if other Workers become free in the meantime unregister the Worker from the registry while the job is running, then re-register when it completes. Might work OK, but something doesn't smell right with this idea... Of course, I'm quite happy to be told that there are more appropriate technologies than Jini... but I wouldn't want anything too heavyweight, like rolling out EJB containers all over the place.

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• SharePoint 2010 PowerShell Script to Find All SPShellAdmins with Database Name

  - by Brian Jackett

  Problem     Yesterday on Twitter my friend @cacallahan asked for some help on how she could get all SharePoint 2010 SPShellAdmin users and the associated database name.  I spent a few minutes and wrote up a script that gets this information and decided I’d post it here for others to enjoy.     Background     The Get-SPShellAdmin commandlet returns a listing of SPShellAdmins for the given database Id you pass in, or the farm configuration database by default.  For those unfamiliar, SPShellAdmin access is necessary for non-admin users to run PowerShell commands against a SharePoint 2010 farm (content and configuration databases specifically).  Click here to read an excellent guest post article my friend John Ferringer (twitter) wrote on the Hey Scripting Guy! blog regarding granting SPShellAdmin access.  Solution     Below is the script I wrote (formatted for space and to include comments) to provide the information needed. Click here to download the script.   # declare a hashtable to store results $results = @{}   # fetch databases (only configuration and content DBs are needed) $databasesToQuery = Get-SPDatabase | Where {$_.Type -eq 'Configuration Database' -or $_.Type -eq 'Content Database'}   # for each database get spshelladmins and add db name and username to result $databasesToQuery | ForEach-Object {$dbName = $_.Name; Get-SPShellAdmin -database $_.id | ForEach-Object {$results.Add($dbName, $_.username)}}   # sort results by db name and pipe to table with auto sizing of col width $results.GetEnumerator() | Sort-Object -Property Name | ft -AutoSize     Conclusion     In this post I provided a script that outputs all of the SPShellAdmin users and the associated database names in a SharePoint 2010 farm.  Funny enough it actually took me longer to boot up my dev VM and PowerShell (~3 mins) than it did to write the first working draft of the script (~2 mins).  Feel free to use this script and modify as needed, just be sure to give credit back to the original author.  Let me know if you have any questions or comments.  Enjoy!         -Frog Out   Links PowerShell Hashtables http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee692803.aspx SPShellAdmin Access Explained http://blogs.technet.com/b/heyscriptingguy/archive/2010/07/06/hey-scripting-guy-tell-me-about-permissions-for-using-windows-powershell-2-0-cmdlets-with-sharepoint-2010.aspx

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• what damage can be caused if scandisk is not run before defrag

  - by Justin Gregoire

  Hello, I would like to know what the damage to a drive can be if a scandisk is not performed before a disk defrag. I have looked up some sites that say a scandisk should be run to correct any issues that may be apparent on the system, making sure that the drive is free of errors before a disk defrag is done. I have to perform a defrag on a computer without having physical access to it (using remote connection). I know that the scandisk requires a reboot to the system (causing me to lose my connection) which would be difficult to restart physically if the system does not come back on by itself once rebooted (this has happened before). Any suggestions? Thank you.

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• Solaris 11 Customer Maintenance Lifecycle

  - by user12244672

  Hi Folks, Welcome to my new blog, http://blogs.oracle.com/Solaris11Life , which is all about the Customer Maintenance Lifecycle for Image Packaging System (IPS) based Solaris releases, such as Solaris 11. It'll include policies, best practices, clarifications, and lots of other stuff which I hope you'll find useful as you get up to speed with Solaris 11 and IPS.   Let's start with a version of my Solaris 11 Customer Maintenance Lifecycle presentation which I gave at this year's Oracle Open World and at the recent Deutsche Oracle Anwendergruppe (DOAG - German Oracle Users Group) conference in Nürnberg. Some of you may be familiar with my Patch Corner blog, http://blogs.oracle.com/patch , which fulfilled a similar purpose for System V [five] Release 4 (SVR4) based Solaris releases, such as Solaris 10 and below. Since maintaining a Solaris 11 system is quite different to maintaining a Solaris 10 system, I thought it prudent to start this 2nd parallel blog for Solaris 11. Actually, I have an ulterior motive for starting this separate blog.  Since IPS is a single tier packaging architecture, it doesn't have any patches, only package updates.  I've therefore banned the word "patch" in Solaris 11 and introduced a swear box to which my colleagues must contribute a quarter [$0.25] every time they use the word "patch" in a public forum.  From their Oracle Open World presentations, John Fowler owes 50 cents, Liane Preza owes $1.25, and Bart Smaalders owes 75 cents.  Since I'm stinging my colleagues in what could be a lucrative enterprise, I couldn't very well discuss IPS best practices on a blog called "Patch Corner" with a URI of http://blogs.oracle.com/patch.  I simply couldn't afford all those contributions to the "patch" swear box. :) Feel free to let me know what topics you'd like covered - just post a comment in the comment box on the blog. Best Wishes, Gerry.

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• *nix OS that is easy to update to latest software

  - by rjstelling

  I need to configure a server (*nix) that runs our (bespoke) CMS and Applications. In the past I have defaulted to using Cent OS 5, but I find this outdated difficult to upgrade the software to the versions we require. For example, we need PHP 5.3, but CentOS 5 has 5.2. Updating is fine but breaks something else (normally MySQL support in PHP). Eventually it will get to a situation where I can't upgrade because of missing dependancies and incompatible versions. Error: Missing Dependency: httpd = 2.2.3-43.el5.centos.3 is needed by package httpd-devel-2.2.3-43.el5.centos.3.i386 (updates) Is there a better alternative OS for hassle free updates, I need: Apache 2.2.17 (the development version for apxs) MySQL 5.5.8 PHP 5.3.5

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