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• Using MD5 to generate an encryption key from password?

  - by Charles

  I'm writing a simple program for file encryption. Mostly as an academic exercise but possibly for future serious use. All of the heavy lifting is done with third-party libraries, but putting the pieces together in a secure manner is still quite a challenge for the non-cryptographer. Basically, I've got just about everything working the way I think it should. I'm using 128-bit AES for the encryption with a 128-bit key length. I want users to be able to enter in variable-length passwords, so I decided to hash the password with MD5 and then use the hash as the key. I figured this was acceptable--the key is always supposed to be a secret, so there's no reason to worry about collision attacks. Now that I've implemented this, I ran across a couple articles indicating that this is a bad idea. My question is: why? If a good password is chosen, the cipher is supposed to be strong enough on its own to never reveal the key except via an extraordinary (read: currently infeasible) brute-force effort, right? Should I be using something like PBKDF2 to generate the key or is that just overkill for all but the most extreme cryptographic applications?

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• Make winform run away from the mouse.

  - by JACK IN THE CRACK

  Okay so I'm trying to make a little gag program that will "run away" from the mouse. So, to get the mouse coordinates for the whole screen and not just the form control I had to create a little helper: static class MouseHelper { [DllImport("user32.dll")] [return: MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.Bool)] internal static extern bool GetCursorPos(ref Point pt); public static Point GetPosition() { Point w32Mouse = new Point(); GetCursorPos(ref w32Mouse); return w32Mouse; } } Now I thought I was going to use the MouseMove event... but that doesn't work for outside the form control either so I have an auto-enabled timer on a 10ms loop called timerMouseMove. public partial class Form1 : Form { public Form1() { InitializeComponent(); } private bool CollisionCheck() { Point win32Mouse = MouseHelper.GetPosition(); if (win32Mouse.X <= Location.X || win32Mouse.X >= (Location.X + Width)) return false; if (win32Mouse.Y <= Location.Y || win32Mouse.Y >= (Location.Y + Height)) return false; return true; } private void timerMouseMove_Tick(object sender, EventArgs e) { if (CollisionCheck()) Location = new Point(Location.X + 1, Location.Y + 1); } } So this works out nicely, at least I have the collision checking working and whatnot. But now, how should I go about figuring which side of the form the mouse has collided with, so that I can update its location to move in the opposite direction the mouse collides with it? And such halp

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• Implementing Model-level caching

  - by Byron

  I was posting some comments in a related question about MVC caching and some questions about actual implementation came up. How does one implement a Model-level cache that works transparently without the developer needing to manually cache, yet still remains efficient? I would keep my caching responsibilities firmly within the model. It is none of the controller's or view's business where the model is getting data. All they care about is that when data is requested, data is provided - this is how the MVC paradigm is supposed to work. (Source: Post by Jarrod) The reason I am skeptical is because caching should usually not be done unless there is a real need, and shouldn't be done for things like search results. So somehow the Model itself has to know whether or not the SELECT statement being issued to it worthy of being cached. Wouldn't the Model have to be astronomically smart, and/or store statistics of what is being most often queried over a long period of time in order to accurately make a decision? And wouldn't the overhead of all this make the caching useless anyway? Also, how would you uniquely identify a query from another query (or more accurately, a resultset from another resultset)? What about if you're using prepared statements, with only the parameters changing according to user input? Another poster said this: I would suggest using the md5 hash of your query combined with a serialized version of your input arguments. This would require twice the number of serialization options. I was under the impression that serialization was quite expensive, and for large inputs this might be even worse than just re-querying. And is the minuscule chance of collision worth worrying about? Conceptually, caching in the Model seems like a good idea to me, but it seems in practicality the developer should have direct control over caching and write it into the controller. Thoughts/ideas? Edit: I'm using PHP and MySQL if that helps to narrow your focus.

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• How to do cleanup reliably in python?

  - by Cheery

  I have some ctypes bindings, and for each body.New I should call body.Free. The library I'm binding doesn't have allocation routines insulated out from the rest of the code (they can be called about anywhere there), and to use couple of useful features I need to make cyclic references. I think It'd solve if I'd find a reliable way to hook destructor to an object. (weakrefs would help if they'd give me the callback just before the data is dropped. So obviously this code megafails when I put in velocity_func: class Body(object): def __init__(self, mass, inertia): self._body = body.New(mass, inertia) def __del__(self): print '__del__ %r' % self if body: body.Free(self._body) ... def set_velocity_func(self, func): self._body.contents.velocity_func = ctypes_wrapping(func) I also tried to solve it through weakrefs, with those the things seem getting just worse, just only largely more unpredictable. Even if I don't put in the velocity_func, there will appear cycles at least then when I do this: class Toy(object): def __init__(self, body): self.body.owner = self ... def collision(a, b, contacts): whatever(a.body.owner) So how to make sure Structures will get garbage collected, even if they are allocated/freed by the shared library? There's repository if you are interested about more details: http://bitbucket.org/cheery/ctypes-chipmunk/

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• Password hashing, salt and storage of hashed values

  - by Jonathan Leffler

  Suppose you were at liberty to decide how hashed passwords were to be stored in a DBMS. Are there obvious weaknesses in a scheme like this one? To create the hash value stored in the DBMS, take: A value that is unique to the DBMS server instance as part of the salt, And the username as a second part of the salt, And create the concatenation of the salt with the actual password, And hash the whole string using the SHA-256 algorithm, And store the result in the DBMS. This would mean that anyone wanting to come up with a collision should have to do the work separately for each user name and each DBMS server instance separately. I'd plan to keep the actual hash mechanism somewhat flexible to allow for the use of the new NIST standard hash algorithm (SHA-3) that is still being worked on. The 'value that is unique to the DBMS server instance' need not be secret - though it wouldn't be divulged casually. The intention is to ensure that if someone uses the same password in different DBMS server instances, the recorded hashes would be different. Likewise, the user name would not be secret - just the password proper. Would there be any advantage to having the password first and the user name and 'unique value' second, or any other permutation of the three sources of data? Or what about interleaving the strings? Do I need to add (and record) a random salt value (per password) as well as the information above? (Advantage: the user can re-use a password and still, probably, get a different hash recorded in the database. Disadvantage: the salt has to be recorded. I suspect the advantage considerably outweighs the disadvantage.) There are quite a lot of related SO questions - this list is unlikely to be comprehensive: Encrypting/Hashing plain text passwords in database Secure hash and salt for PHP passwords The necessity of hiding the salt for a hash Clients-side MD5 hash with time salt Simple password encryption Salt generation and Open Source software I think that the answers to these questions support my algorithm (though if you simply use a random salt, then the 'unique value per server' and username components are less important).

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• Qt MOC Filename Collisions using multiple .pri files

  - by Skinniest Man

  In order to keep my Qt project somewhat organized (using Qt Creator), I've got one .pro file and multiple .pri files. Just recently I added a class to one of my .pri files that has the same filename as a class that already existed in a separate .pri file. The file structure and makefiles generated by qmake appear to be oblivious to the filename collision that ensues. The generated moc_* files all get thrown into the same subdirectory (either release or debug, depending) and one ends up overwriting the other. When I try to make the project, I get several warnings that look like this: Makefile.Release:318: warning: overriding commands for target `release/moc_file.cpp` And the project fails to link. Here is a simple example of what I'm talking about. Directory structure: + project_dir | + subdir1 | | - file.h | | - file.cpp | + subdir2 | | - file.h | | - file.cpp | - main.cpp | - project.pro | - subdir1.pri | - subdir2.pri Contents of project.pro: TARGET = project TEMPLATE = app include(subdir1.pri) include(subdir2.pri) SOURCES += main.cpp Contents of subdir1.pri: HEADERS += subdir1/file.h SOURCES += subdir1/file.cpp Contents of subdir2.pri: HEADERS += subdir2/file.h SOURCES += subdir2/file.cpp Is there a way to tell qmake to generate a system that puts the moc_* files from separate .pri files into separate subdirectories?

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• no more hitcollision at 1 life

  - by user1449547

  So I finally got my implementation of lives fixed, and it works. Now however when I collide with a ghost when I am at 1 life, nothing happens. I can fall to my death enough times for a game over. from what i can tell the problem is that hit collision is not longer working, because it does not detect a hit, I do not fall. the question is why? update if i kill myself fast enough it works, but if i play for like 30 seconds, it stops the hit collision detection on my ghosts. platforms and springs still work. public class World { public interface WorldListener { public void jump(); public void highJump(); public void hit(); public void coin(); public void dying(); } public static final float WORLD_WIDTH = 10; public static final float WORLD_HEIGHT = 15 * 20; public static final int WORLD_STATE_RUNNING = 0; public static final int WORLD_STATE_NEXT_LEVEL = 1; public static final int WORLD_STATE_GAME_OVER = 2; public static final Vector2 gravity = new Vector2(0, -12); public Hero hero; public final List<Platform> platforms; public final List<Spring> springs; public final List<Ghost> ghosts; public final List<Coin> coins; public Castle castle; public final WorldListener listener; public final Random rand; public float heightSoFar; public int score; public int state; public int lives=3; public World(WorldListener listener) { this.hero = new Hero(5, 1); this.platforms = new ArrayList<Platform>(); this.springs = new ArrayList<Spring>(); this.ghosts = new ArrayList<Ghost>(); this.coins = new ArrayList<Coin>(); this.listener = listener; rand = new Random(); generateLevel(); this.heightSoFar = 0; this.score = 0; this.state = WORLD_STATE_RUNNING; } private void generateLevel() { float y = Platform.PLATFORM_HEIGHT / 2; float maxJumpHeight = Hero.hero_JUMP_VELOCITY * Hero.hero_JUMP_VELOCITY / (2 * -gravity.y); while (y < WORLD_HEIGHT - WORLD_WIDTH / 2) { int type = rand.nextFloat() > 0.8f ? Platform.PLATFORM_TYPE_MOVING : Platform.PLATFORM_TYPE_STATIC; float x = rand.nextFloat() * (WORLD_WIDTH - Platform.PLATFORM_WIDTH) + Platform.PLATFORM_WIDTH / 2; Platform platform = new Platform(type, x, y); platforms.add(platform); if (rand.nextFloat() > 0.9f && type != Platform.PLATFORM_TYPE_MOVING) { Spring spring = new Spring(platform.position.x, platform.position.y + Platform.PLATFORM_HEIGHT / 2 + Spring.SPRING_HEIGHT / 2); springs.add(spring); } if (rand.nextFloat() > 0.7f) { Ghost ghost = new Ghost(platform.position.x + rand.nextFloat(), platform.position.y + Ghost.GHOST_HEIGHT + rand.nextFloat() * 3); ghosts.add(ghost); } if (rand.nextFloat() > 0.6f) { Coin coin = new Coin(platform.position.x + rand.nextFloat(), platform.position.y + Coin.COIN_HEIGHT + rand.nextFloat() * 3); coins.add(coin); } y += (maxJumpHeight - 0.5f); y -= rand.nextFloat() * (maxJumpHeight / 3); } castle = new Castle(WORLD_WIDTH / 2, y); } public void update(float deltaTime, float accelX) { updatehero(deltaTime, accelX); updatePlatforms(deltaTime); updateGhosts(deltaTime); updateCoins(deltaTime); if (hero.state != Hero.hero_STATE_HIT) checkCollisions(); checkGameOver(); checkFall(); } private void updatehero(float deltaTime, float accelX) { if (hero.state != Hero.hero_STATE_HIT && hero.position.y <= 0.5f) hero.hitPlatform(); if (hero.state != Hero.hero_STATE_HIT) hero.velocity.x = -accelX / 10 * Hero.hero_MOVE_VELOCITY; hero.update(deltaTime); heightSoFar = Math.max(hero.position.y, heightSoFar); } private void updatePlatforms(float deltaTime) { int len = platforms.size(); for (int i = 0; i < len; i++) { Platform platform = platforms.get(i); platform.update(deltaTime); if (platform.state == Platform.PLATFORM_STATE_PULVERIZING && platform.stateTime > Platform.PLATFORM_PULVERIZE_TIME) { platforms.remove(platform); len = platforms.size(); } } } private void updateGhosts(float deltaTime) { int len = ghosts.size(); for (int i = 0; i < len; i++) { Ghost ghost = ghosts.get(i); ghost.update(deltaTime); if (ghost.state == Ghost.GHOST_STATE_DYING && ghost.stateTime > Ghost.GHOST_DYING_TIME) { ghosts.remove(ghost); len = ghosts.size(); } } } private void updateCoins(float deltaTime) { int len = coins.size(); for (int i = 0; i < len; i++) { Coin coin = coins.get(i); coin.update(deltaTime); } } private void checkCollisions() { checkPlatformCollisions(); checkGhostCollisions(); checkItemCollisions(); checkCastleCollisions(); } private void checkPlatformCollisions() { if (hero.velocity.y > 0) return; int len = platforms.size(); for (int i = 0; i < len; i++) { Platform platform = platforms.get(i); if (hero.position.y > platform.position.y) { if (OverlapTester .overlapRectangles(hero.bounds, platform.bounds)) { hero.hitPlatform(); listener.jump(); if (rand.nextFloat() > 0.5f) { platform.pulverize(); } break; } } } } private void checkGhostCollisions() { int len = ghosts.size(); for (int i = 0; i < len; i++) { Ghost ghost = ghosts.get(i); if (hero.position.y < ghost.position.y) { if (OverlapTester.overlapRectangles(ghost.bounds, hero.bounds)){ hero.hitGhost(); listener.hit(); } break; } else { if(hero.position.y > ghost.position.y) { if (OverlapTester.overlapRectangles(hero.bounds, ghost.bounds)){ hero.hitGhostJump(); listener.jump(); ghost.dying(); score += Ghost.GHOST_SCORE; } break; } } } } private void checkItemCollisions() { int len = coins.size(); for (int i = 0; i < len; i++) { Coin coin = coins.get(i); if (OverlapTester.overlapRectangles(hero.bounds, coin.bounds)) { coins.remove(coin); len = coins.size(); listener.coin(); score += Coin.COIN_SCORE; } } if (hero.velocity.y > 0) return; len = springs.size(); for (int i = 0; i < len; i++) { Spring spring = springs.get(i); if (hero.position.y > spring.position.y) { if (OverlapTester.overlapRectangles(hero.bounds, spring.bounds)) { hero.hitSpring(); listener.highJump(); } } } } private void checkCastleCollisions() { if (OverlapTester.overlapRectangles(castle.bounds, hero.bounds)) { state = WORLD_STATE_NEXT_LEVEL; } } private void checkFall() { if (heightSoFar - 7.5f > hero.position.y) { --lives; hero.hitSpring(); listener.highJump(); } } private void checkGameOver() { if (lives<=0) { state = WORLD_STATE_GAME_OVER; } } }

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• Effective communication in a component-based system

  - by Tesserex

  Yes, this is another question about my game engine, which is coming along very nicely, with much thanks to you guys. So, if you watched the video (or didn't), the objects in the game are composed of various components for things like position, sprites, movement, collision, sounds, health, etc. I have several message types defined for "tell" type communication between entities and components, but this only goes so far. There are plenty of times when I just need to ask for something, for example an entity's position. There are dozens of lines in my code that look like this: SomeComponent comp = (SomeComponent)entity.GetComponent(typeof(SomeComponent)); if (comp != null) comp.GetSomething(); I know this is very ugly, and I know that casting smells of improper OO design. But as complex as things are, there doesn't seem to be a better way. I could of course "hard-code" my component types and just have SomeComponent comp = entity.GetSomeComponent(); but that seems like a cop-out, and a bad one. I literally JUST REALIZED, while writing this, after having my code this way for months with no solution, that a generic will help me. SomeComponent comp = entity.GetComponent<SomeComponent>(); Amazing how that works. Anyway, this is still only a semantic improvement. My questions remain. Is this actually that bad? What's a better alternative?

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• How to handle ids and polymorphic associations in views if compound keys are not supported?

  - by duncan

  I have a Movie plan table: movie_plans (id, description) Each plan has items, which describe a sequence of movies and the duration in minutes: movie_plan_items (id, movie_plan_id, movie_id, start_minutes, end_minutes) A specific instance of that plan happens in: movie_schedules (id, movie_plan_id, start_at) However the schedule items can be calculated from the movie_plan_items and the schedule start time by adding the minutes create view movie_schedule_items as select CONCAT(p.id, '-', s.id) as id, s.id as movie_schedule_id, p.id as movie_plan_item_id, p.movie_id, p.movie_plan_id, (s.start_at + INTERVAL p.start_minutes MINUTE) as start_at, (s.start_at + INTERVAL p.end_minutes MINUTE) as end_at from movie_plan_items p, movie_schedules s where s.movie_plan_id=p.movie_plan_id; I have a model over this view (readonly), it works ok, except that the id is right now a string. I now want to add a polymorphic property (like comments) to various of the previous tables. Therefore for movie_schedule_items I need a unique and persistent numeric id. I have the following dilemma: I could avoid the id and have movie_schedule_items just use the movie_plan_id and movie_schedule_id as a compound key, as it should. But Rails sucks in this regard. I could create an id using String#hash or a md5, thus making it slower or collision prone (and IIRC String#hash is no longer persistent across processes in Ruby 1.9) Any ideas on how to handle this situation?

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• How can I define an irregular area of the screen and find the closest point to the mouse in that area?

  - by JonathonG

  I'm looking for a method to define an area of the screen that the mouse cannot leave. I have been directed by rob mayoff, the answerer of this question, that I can use a Quartz Event Tap to detect mouse events. This puts me part of the way to the solution to THIS question. I need to define an irregular area of the screen, not just a rectangle, that the mouse cannot leave. I have been researching this and the only idea I can come up with is using a bitmap to define the irregular area, as it will be very oddly shaped. However, I am open to solutions other than using a bitmap. Since this must be done on a Mac, I've determined that I will have to use objective C / Cocoa . I need to know how to define the area and, equally importantly, how to find the closest point in the area to the mouse (so that I can move the mouse to it if the mouse tries to move outside of the area). This is similar to what the restricted area will look like: [edit:] Okay, I've come up with part of the answer to this. If I can do a basic (light-weight) point collision detection on the image mask, I can use a simple algorithm to detect the closest point to the mouse on the black area of the image. I could do this by calculating distance between a pre-defined point (P) inside the black area of the image and the target mouse position (T), taking the midpoint (M), then checking if the midpoint is inside or outside of the shape (black or white, respectively). If M is inside the shape, then move the P to M, otherwise move T to the M, continuously recalculate this until the distance between T and P is 1 pixel or less, then move the mouse to the final calculated position. All of that being said, I still need some way to test the position of the mouse against that same position on the bitmap (assume the bitmap is the same resolution as the monitor), and check if that point is black or white. All of this needs to be done in the background, without this application actually having focus, or the bitmap being visible... is this possible?

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• Scalable way to store files on server (PHP)?

  - by Nathaniel Bennett

  I'm creating my first web application - a really simplistic online text editor. What I need to do is find the best way to store text based files - a lot of them. These text files can be past 10,000 words in size (text words not computer words.) in essence I want the text documents to be limitless in size. I was thinking about storing the text files in my MySQL database - but thought there was a better way. Instead I'm planing on storing the text files in XML based format in a directory on my server. The rows in the database define the name of the xml based text file and the user who created the text along with basic metadata. An ID is generated using a V4 GUID generator , which gives the text an id and stores the text in the "/store" directory on my server. The text definitions in my server contain this id, and the android app I'm developing gets the contents of the text file by retrieving the text definition and then downloading the text to the local device using the GUID in the text definition. I just think this is a botch job? how can I improve this system? There has been cases of GUID colliding. I don't want this to happen. A "slim" possibility isn't good enough - I need to make sure there is absolutely no chance in a GUID collision. I was planning on checking the database for texts that have the same id before storing the text with a particular id - I however believe with over 20,000 pieces of text in my database this would take an long time and produce unneeded stress on the server. How can I make GUID safe? What happens when a GUID collides? The server backend is going to be written in PHP.

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• How to implement a Linked List in Java?

  - by nbarraille

  Hello! I am trying to implement a simple HashTable in Java that uses a Linked List for collision resolution, which is pretty easy to do in C, but I don't know how to do it in Java, as you can't use pointers... First, I know that those structures are already implemented in Java, I'm not planning on using it, just training here... So I created an element, which is a string and a pointer to the next Element: public class Element{ private String s; private Element next; public Element(String s){ this.s = s; this.next = null; } public void setNext(Element e){ this.next = e; } public String getString(){ return this.s; } public Element getNext(){ return this.next; } @Override public String toString() { return "[" + s + "] => "; } } Of course, my HashTable has an array of Element to stock the data: public class CustomHashTable { private Element[] data; Here is my problem: For example I want to implement a method that adds an element AT THE END of the linked List (I know it would have been simpler and more efficient to insert the element at the beginning of the list, but again, this is only for training purposes). How do I do that without pointer? Here is my code (which could work if e was a pointer...): public void add(String s){ int index = hash(s) % data.length; System.out.println("Adding at index: " + index); Element e = this.data[index]; while(e != null){ e = e.getNext(); } e = new Element(s); } Thanks!

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• XNA Notes 006

  - by George Clingerman

  If you used to think the XNA community was small and inactive, hopefully these XNA Notes are opening your eyes. And I honestly feel like I’m still only catching the tail end of everything that’s going on. It’s a large and active community and you can be so mired down in one part of it you miss all sorts of cool stuff another part is doing. XNA is many things to a lot of people and that makes for a lot of really awesome things going on. So here’s what I saw going on this last week! Time Critical XNA New: XNA Team - Peer Review now closes for XNA 3.1 games http://blogs.msdn.com/b/xna/archive/2011/02/08/peer-review-pipeline-closed-for-new-xna-gs-3-1-games-or-updates-on-app-hub.aspx http://twitter.com/XNACommunity/statuses/34649816529256448 The XNA Team posts about a meet up with Microsoft for Creator’s going to be at GDC, March 3rd at the Lobby Bar http://on.fb.me/fZungJ XNA Team: @mklucher is busying playing the the bubblegum on WP7 made by a member of the XNA team (although reportedly made in Silverlight? Crazy! ;) ) http://twitter.com/mklucher/statuses/34645662737895426 http://bubblegum.me Shawn Hargreaves posts multiple posts (is this a sign that something new is coming from the XNA team? Usually when Shawn has time to post, something has just wrapped up…) Random Shuffle http://blogs.msdn.com/b/shawnhar/archive/2011/02/09/random-shuffle.aspx Doing the right thing: resume, rewind or skip ahead http://blogs.msdn.com/b/shawnhar/archive/2011/02/10/doing-the-right-thing-resume-rewind-or-skip-ahead.aspx XNA Developers: Andrew Russel was on .NET Rocks recently talking with Carl and Richard about developing games for Xbox, iPhone and Android http://www.dotnetrocks.com/default.aspx?ShowNum=635 Eric W. releases the Fishing Girl source code into the wild http://ericw.ca/blog/posts/fishing-girl-now-open-source/ http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/74642/454512.aspx#454512 BinaryTweedDeej reminds that XNA community that Indie City wants you involved http://twitter.com/BinaryTweedDeej/statuses/34596114028044288 http://www.indiecity.com Mike McLaughlin (@mikebmcl) releases his first two XNA articles on the TechNet wiki http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/xna-framework-overview.aspx http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/content-pipeline-overview.aspx John Watte plays around with the Content Pipeline and Music Visualization exploring just what can be done. http://www.enchantedage.com/xna-content-pipeline-fft-song-analysis http://www.enchantedage.com/fft-in-xna-content-pipeline-for-beat-detection-for-the-win Simon Stevens writes up his talk on Vector Collision Physics http://www.simonpstevens.com/News/VectorCollisionPhysics @domipheus puts together an XNA Task Manager http://www.flickr.com/photos/domipheus/5405603197/ MadNinjaSkillz releases his fork of Nick's Easy Storage component on CodePlex http://twitter.com/MadNinjaSkillz/statuses/34739039068229634 http://ezstorage.codeplex.com @ActiveNick was interviewed by Rob Cameron and discusses Windows Phone 7, Bing Maps and XNA http://twitter.com/ActiveNick/statuses/35348548526546944 http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/cc537546 Radiangames (Luke Schneider) posts about converting his games from XNA to Unity http://radiangames.com/?p=592 UberMonkey (@ElementCy) posts about a new project in the works, CubeTest a Minecraft style terrain http://www.ubergamermonkey.com/personal-projects/new-project-in-the-works/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Ubergamermonkey+%28UberGamerMonkey%29 Xbox LIVE Indie Games (XBLIG): VideoGamer Rob review Bonded Realities http://videogamerrob.wordpress.com/2011/02/05/xblig-review-bonded-realities/ XBLIG Round Up on Gamergeddon http://www.gamergeddon.com/2011/02/06/xbox-indie-game-round-up-february-6th/ Are gamers still rating Indie Games after the Xbox Dashboard update? http://www.gamemarx.com/news/2011/02/06/are-gamers-still-rating-indie-games-after-the-xbox-dashboard-update.aspx Joystiq - Xbox Live Indie Gems: Corrupted http://www.joystiq.com/2011/02/04/xbox-live-indie-gems-corrupted/ Raymond Matthews of DarkStarMatryx reviews (Almost) Total Mayhem and Aban Hawkins & the 1000 Spikes http://www.darkstarmatryx.com/?p=225 http://www.darkstarmatryx.com/?p=229 8 Bit Horse reviews Aban Hawkins & the 1000 spikes http://8bithorse.blogspot.com/2011/01/aban-hawkins-1000-spikes-xbl-indie.html 2010 wrap-up for FunInfused Games http://www.krissteele.net/blogdetails.aspx?id=245 NeoGaf roundup of January's XBLIGs http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=420528 Armless Ocotopus interviews Michael Ventnor creator of Bonded Realities http://www.armlessoctopus.com/2011/02/07/interview-michael-ventnor-of-red-crest-studios/ @recharge_media posts about the new city music for Woodvale in Sin Rising http://rechargemedia.com/2011/02/08/new-city-theme-woodvale/ @DrMisty posts some footage of YoYoYo in action http://www.mstargames.co.uk/mistryblogmain/54-yoyoyoblogs/184-video-update.html Xona Games - Decimation X3 on Reviews on the Run http://video.citytv.com/video/detail/782443063001.000000/reviews-on-the-run--february-8-2011/g4/ @benkane gives an early peek at his action RPG coming to XBLIG http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDF_PrvtwU8 Rock, Paper Shotgun talks to Zeboyd games about bringing Cthulhu Saves the World to PC http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/02/11/summoning-cthulhu-natter-with-zeboyd/ Xbox LIVE Indieverse interviews the creator of Bonded Realities http://xbl-indieverse.blogspot.com/2011/02/xbl-indieverse-interview-red-crest.html XNA Game Development: Dream-In-Code posts about an upcoming XNA Challenge/Coding contest http://www.dreamincode.net/forums/blog/1385/entry-3192-xna-challengecontest/ Sgt.Conker covers Fishing Girl and IndieFreaks Game Framework release http://www.sgtconker.com/2011/02/fishing-girl-did-not-sell-a-single-copy/ http://www.sgtconker.com/2011/02/indiefreaks-game-framework-v0-2-0-0/ @slyprid releases Transmute v0.40a with lots of new features and fixes http://twitter.com/slyprid/statuses/34125423067533312 http://twitter.com/slyprid/statuses/35326876243337216 http://forgottenstarstudios.com/ Jeff Brown writes an XNA 4.0 tutorial on Saving/Loading on the Xbox 360 http://www.robotfootgames.com/xna-tutorials/92-xna-tutorial-savingloading-on-xbox-360-40 XNA for Silverlight Developers: Part 3- Animation http://www.silverlightshow.net/items/XNA-for-Silverlight-developers-Part-3-Animation-transforms.aspx?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+xna-connection-twitter-specific-stream+%28XNA+Connection%27s+Twitter+specific+stream%29 The news from Nokia is definitely something XNA developers will want to keep their eye on http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/blog/nokia-developer-news/2011/02/11/letter-to-developers?sf1066337=1

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• C# 4.0: Named And Optional Arguments

  - by Paulo Morgado

  As part of the co-evolution effort of C# and Visual Basic, C# 4.0 introduces Named and Optional Arguments. First of all, let’s clarify what are arguments and parameters: Method definition parameters are the input variables of the method. Method call arguments are the values provided to the method parameters. In fact, the C# Language Specification states the following on §7.5: The argument list (§7.5.1) of a function member invocation provides actual values or variable references for the parameters of the function member. Given the above definitions, we can state that: Parameters have always been named and still are. Parameters have never been optional and still aren’t. Named Arguments Until now, the way the C# compiler matched method call definition arguments with method parameters was by position. The first argument provides the value for the first parameter, the second argument provides the value for the second parameter, and so on and so on, regardless of the name of the parameters. If a parameter was missing a corresponding argument to provide its value, the compiler would emit a compilation error. For this call: Greeting("Mr.", "Morgado", 42); this method: public void Greeting(string title, string name, int age) will receive as parameters: title: “Mr.” name: “Morgado” age: 42 What this new feature allows is to use the names of the parameters to identify the corresponding arguments in the form: name:value Not all arguments in the argument list must be named. However, all named arguments must be at the end of the argument list. The matching between arguments (and the evaluation of its value) and parameters will be done first by name for the named arguments and than by position for the unnamed arguments. This means that, for this method definition: public static void Method(int first, int second, int third) this call declaration: int i = 0; Method(i, third: i++, second: ++i); will have this code generated by the compiler: int i = 0; int CS$0$0000 = i++; int CS$0$0001 = ++i; Method(i, CS$0$0001, CS$0$0000); which will give the method the following parameter values: first: 2 second: 2 third: 0 Notice the variable names. Although invalid being invalid C# identifiers, they are valid .NET identifiers and thus avoiding collision between user written and compiler generated code. Besides allowing to re-order of the argument list, this feature is very useful for auto-documenting the code, for example, when the argument list is very long or not clear, from the call site, what the arguments are. Optional Arguments Parameters can now have default values: public static void Method(int first, int second = 2, int third = 3) Parameters with default values must be the last in the parameter list and its value is used as the value of the parameter if the corresponding argument is missing from the method call declaration. For this call declaration: int i = 0; Method(i, third: ++i); will have this code generated by the compiler: int i = 0; int CS$0$0000 = ++i; Method(i, 2, CS$0$0000); which will give the method the following parameter values: first: 1 second: 2 third: 1 Because, when method parameters have default values, arguments can be omitted from the call declaration, this might seem like method overloading or a good replacement for it, but it isn’t. Although methods like this: public static StreamReader OpenTextFile( string path, Encoding encoding = null, bool detectEncoding = true, int bufferSize = 1024) allow to have its calls written like this: OpenTextFile("foo.txt", Encoding.UTF8); OpenTextFile("foo.txt", Encoding.UTF8, bufferSize: 4096); OpenTextFile( bufferSize: 4096, path: "foo.txt", detectEncoding: false); The complier handles default values like constant fields taking the value and useing it instead of a reference to the value. So, like with constant fields, methods with parameters with default values are exposed publicly (and remember that internal members might be publicly accessible – InternalsVisibleToAttribute). If such methods are publicly accessible and used by another assembly, those values will be hard coded in the calling code and, if the called assembly has its default values changed, they won’t be assumed by already compiled code. At the first glance, I though that using optional arguments for “bad” written code was great, but the ability to write code like that was just pure evil. But than I realized that, since I use private constant fields, it’s OK to use default parameter values on privately accessed methods.

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• Day 4 - Game Sprites In Action

  - by dapostolov

  Yesterday I drew an image on the screen. Most exciting, but ... I spent more time blogging about it then actual coding. So this next little while I'm going to streamline my game and research and simply post key notes. Quick notes on the last session: The most important thing I wanted to point out were the following methods:           spriteBatch.Begin(SpriteBlendMode.AlphaBlend);           spriteBatch.Draw(sprite, position, Color.White);           spriteBatch.End(); The spriteBatch object is used to draw Textures and a 2D texture is called a Sprite A texture is generally an image, which is called an Asset in XNA The Draw Method in the Game1.cs is looped (until exit) and utilises the spriteBatch object to draw a Scene To begin drawing a Scene you call the Begin Method. To end a Scene you call the End Method. And to place an image on the Scene you call the Draw method. The most simple implementation of the draw method is:           spriteBatch.Draw(sprite, position, Color.White); 1) sprite - the 2D texture you loaded to draw 2) position - the 2d vector, a set of x & y coordinates 3) Color.White - the tint to apply to the texture, in this case, white light = nothing, nada, no tint. Game Sprites In Action! Today, I played around with Draw methods to get comfortable with their "quirks". The following is an example of the above draw method, but with more parameters available for us to use. Let's investigate!             spriteBatch.Draw(sprite, position2, null, Color.White, MathHelper.ToRadians(45.0f), new Vector2(sprite.Width / 2, sprite.Height / 2), 1.0F, SpriteEffects.None, 0.0F); The parameters (in order): 1) sprite  the texture to display 2) position2 the position on the screen / scene this can also be a rectangle 3) null the portion of the image to display within an image null = display full image this is generally used for animation strips / grids (more on this below) 4) Color.White Texture tinting White = no tint 5) MathHelper.ToRadians(45.0f) rotation of the object, in this case 45 degrees rotates from the set plotting point. 6) new Vector(0,0) the plotting point in this case the top left corner the image will rotate from the top left of the texture in the code above, the point is set to the middle of the image. 7) 1.0f Image scaling (1x) 8) SpriteEffects.None you can flip the image horizontally or vertically 9) 0.0f The z index of the image. 0 = closer, 1 behind? And playing around with different combinations I was able to come up with the following whacky display:   Checking off Yesterdays Intention List: learn game development terminology (in progress) - We learned sprite, scene, texture, and asset. how to place and position (rotate) a static image on the screen (completed) - The thing to note was, it's was in radians and I found a cool helper method to convert degrees into radians. Also, the image rotates from it's specified point. how to layer static images on the screen (completed) - I couldn't seem to get the zIndex working, but one things for sure, the order you draw the image in also determines how it is rendered on the screen. understand image scaling (in progress) - I'm not sure I have this fully covered, but for the most part plug a number in the scaling field and the image grows / shrinks accordingly. can we reuse images? (completed) - yes, I loaded one image and plotted the bugger all over the screen. understand how framerate is handled in XNA (in progress) - I hacked together some code to display the framerate each second. A framerate of 60 appears to be the standard. Interesting to note, the GameTime object does provide you with some cool timing capabilities, such as...is the game running slow? Need to investigate this down the road. how to display text , basic shapes, and colors on the screen (in progress) - i got text rendered on the screen, and i understand containing rectangles. However, I didn't display "shapes" & "colors" how to interact with an image (collision of user input?) (todo) how to animate an image and understand basic animation techniques (in progress) - I was able to create a stripe animation of numbers ranging from 1 - 4, each block was 40 x 40 pixles for a total stripe size of 160 x 40. Using the portion (source Rectangle) parameter, i limited this display to each section at varying intervals. It was interesting to note my first implementation animated at rocket speed. I then tried to create a smoother animation by limiting the redraw capacity, which seemed to work. I guess a little more research will have to be put into this for animating characters / scenes. how to detect colliding images or screen edges (todo) - but the rectangle object can detect collisions I believe. how to manipulate the image, lets say colors, stretching (in progress) - I haven't figured out how to modify a specific color to be another color, but the tinting parameter definately could be used. As for stretching, use the rectangle object as the positioning and the image will stretch to fit! how to focus on a segment of an image...like only displaying a frame on a film reel (completed) - as per basic animation techniques what's the best way to manage images (compression, storage, location, prevent artwork theft, etc.) (todo) Tomorrows Intention Tomorrow I am going to take a stab at rendering a game menu and from there I'm going to investigate how I can improve upon the code and techniques. Intention List: Render a menu, fancy or not Show the mouse cursor Hook up click event A basic animation of somesort Investigate image / menu techniques D.

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• JavaOne Latin America Opening Keynotes

  - by Tori Wieldt

  Originally published on blogs.oracle.com/javaone It was a great first day at JavaOne Brazil, which included the Java Strategy and Java Technical keynotes. Henrik Stahl, Senior Director, Product Management for Java opened the keynotes by saying that this is the third year for JavaOne Latin America. He explained, "You know what they say, the first time doesn't count, the second time is a habit and the third time it's a tradition!" He mentioned that he was thrilled that this is largest JavaOne in Brazil to date, and he wants next year to be larger. He said that Oracle knows Latin America is an important hub for development.  "We continually come back to Latin America because of the dedication the community has with driving the continued innovation for Java," he said. Stahl explained that Oracle and the Java community must continue to innovate and Make the Future Java together. The success of Java depends on three important factors: technological innovation, Oracle as a strong steward of Java, and community participation. "The Latin American Java Community (especially in Brazil) is a shining example of how to be positive contributor to Java," Stahl said. Next, George Saab, VP software dev, Java Platform Group at Oracle, discussed some of the recent and upcoming changes to Java. "In addition to the incremental improvements to Java 7, we have also increased the set of platforms supported by Oracle from Linux, Windows, and Solaris to now also include Mac OS X and Linux/ARM for ARM-based PCs such as the Raspberry Pi and emerging ARM based microservers."  Saab announced that EA builds for Linux ARM Hard Float ABI will be available by the end of the year.  Staffan Friberg, Product Manager, Java Platform Group, provided an overview of some of the language coming in Java 8, including Lambda, remove of PermGen, improved data and time APIs and improved security, Java 8 development is moving along. He reminded the audience that they can go to OpenJDK to see this development being done in real-time, and that there are weekly early access builds of OracleJDK 8 that developers can download and try today. Judson Althoff, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Alliances and Channels and Embedded Sales, was invited to the stage, and the audience was told that "even though he is wearing a suit, he is still pretty technical." Althoff started off with a bang: "The Internet of Things is on a collision course with big data and this is a huge opportunity for developers."  For example, Althoff said, today cars are more a data device than a mechanical device. A car embedded with sensors for fuel efficiency, temperature, tire pressure, etc. can generate a petabyte of data A DAY. There are similar examples in healthcare (patient monitoring and privacy requirements creates a complex data problem) and transportation management (sending a package around the world with sensors for humidity, temperature and light). Althoff then brought on stage representatives from three companies that are successful with Java today, first Axel Hansmann, VP Strategy & Marketing Communications, Cinterion. Mr. Hansmann explained that Cinterion, a market leader in Latin America, enables M2M services with Java. At JavaOne San Francisco, Cinterion launched the EHS5, the smallest 3g solderable module, with Java installed on it. This provides Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) with a cost effective, flexible platform for bringing advanced M2M technology to market.Next, Steve Nelson, Director of Marketing for the Americas, at Freescale explained that Freescale is #1 in Embedded Processors in Wired and Wireless Communications, and #1 in Automotive Semiconductors in the Americas. He said that Java provides a mature, proven platform that is uniquely suited to meet the requirements of almost any type of embedded device. He encouraged University students to get involved in the Freescale Cup, a global competition where student teams build, program, and race a model car around a track for speed.Roberto Franco, SBTVD Forum President, SBTVD, talked about Ginga, a Java-based standard for television in Brazil. He said there are 4 million Ginga TV sets in Brazil, and they expect over 20 million TV sets to be sold by the end of 2014. Ginga is also being adopted in other 11 countries in Latin America. Ginga brings interactive services not only at TV set, but also on other devices such as tablets,  PCs or smartphones, as the main or second screen. "Interactive services is already a reality," he said, ' but in a near future, we foresee interactivity enhanced TV content, convergence with OTT services and a big participation from the audience,  all integrated on TV, tablets, smartphones and second screen devices."Before he left the stage, Nandini Ramani thanked Judson for being part of the Java community and invited him to the next Geek Bike Ride in Brazil. She presented him an official geek bike ride jersey.For the Technical Keynote, a "blue screen of death" appeared. With mock concern, Stephin Chin asked the rest of the presenters if they could go on without slides. What followed was a interesting collection of demos, including JavaFX on a tablet, a look at Project Easel in NetBeans, and even Simon Ritter controlling legos with his brainwaves! Stay tuned for more dispatches.

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• JavaOne Latin America Opening Keynotes

  - by Tori Wieldt

  It was a great first day at JavaOne Brazil, which included the Java Strategy and Java Technical keynotes. Henrik Stahl, Senior Director, Product Management for Java opened the keynotes by saying that this is the third year for JavaOne Latin America. He explained, "You know what they say, the first time doesn't count, the second time is a habit and the third time it's a tradition!" He mentioned that he was thrilled that this is largest JavaOne in Brazil to date, and he wants next year to be larger. He said that Oracle knows Latin America is an important hub for development.  "We continually come back to Latin America because of the dedication the community has with driving the continued innovation for Java," he said. Stahl explained that Oracle and the Java community must continue to innovate and Make the Future Java together. The success of Java depends on three important factors: technological innovation, Oracle as a strong steward of Java, and community participation. "The Latin American Java Community (especially in Brazil) is a shining example of how to be positive contributor to Java," Stahl said. Next, George Saab, VP software dev, Java Platform Group at Oracle, discussed some of the recent and upcoming changes to Java. "In addition to the incremental improvements to Java 7, we have also increased the set of platforms supported by Oracle from Linux, Windows, and Solaris to now also include Mac OS X and Linux/ARM for ARM-based PCs such as the Raspberry Pi and emerging ARM based microservers."  Saab announced that EA builds for Linux ARM Hard Float ABI will be available by the end of the year.  Staffan Friberg, Product Manager, Java Platform Group, provided an overview of some of the language coming in Java 8, including Lambda, remove of PermGen, improved data and time APIs and improved security, Java 8 development is moving along. He reminded the audience that they can go to OpenJDK to see this development being done in real-time, and that there are weekly early access builds of OracleJDK 8 that developers can download and try today. Judson Althoff, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Alliances and Channels and Embedded Sales, was invited to the stage, and the audience was told that "even though he is wearing a suit, he is still pretty technical." Althoff started off with a bang: "The Internet of Things is on a collision course with big data and this is a huge opportunity for developers."  For example, Althoff said, today cars are more a data device than a mechanical device. A car embedded with sensors for fuel efficiency, temperature, tire pressure, etc. can generate a petabyte of data A DAY. There are similar examples in healthcare (patient monitoring and privacy requirements creates a complex data problem) and transportation management (sending a package around the world with sensors for humidity, temperature and light). Althoff then brought on stage representatives from three companies that are successful with Java today, first Axel Hansmann, VP Strategy & Marketing Communications, Cinterion. Mr. Hansmann explained that Cinterion, a market leader in Latin America, enables M2M services with Java. At JavaOne San Francisco, Cinterion launched the EHS5, the smallest 3g solderable module, with Java installed on it. This provides Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) with a cost effective, flexible platform for bringing advanced M2M technology to market.Next, Steve Nelson, Director of Marketing for the Americas, at Freescale explained that Freescale is #1 in Embedded Processors in Wired and Wireless Communications, and #1 in Automotive Semiconductors in the Americas. He said that Java provides a mature, proven platform that is uniquely suited to meet the requirements of almost any type of embedded device. He encouraged University students to get involved in the Freescale Cup, a global competition where student teams build, program, and race a model car around a track for speed.Roberto Franco, SBTVD Forum President, SBTVD, talked about Ginga, a Java-based standard for television in Brazil. He said there are 4 million Ginga TV sets in Brazil, and they expect over 20 million TV sets to be sold by the end of 2014. Ginga is also being adopted in other 11 countries in Latin America. Ginga brings interactive services not only at TV set, but also on other devices such as tablets,  PCs or smartphones, as the main or second screen. "Interactive services is already a reality," he said, ' but in a near future, we foresee interactivity enhanced TV content, convergence with OTT services and a big participation from the audience,  all integrated on TV, tablets, smartphones and second screen devices."Before he left the stage, Nandini Ramani thanked Judson for being part of the Java community and invited him to the next Geek Bike Ride in Brazil. She presented him an official geek bike ride jersey.For the Technical Keynote, a "blue screen of death" appeared. With mock concern, Stephin Chin asked the rest of the presenters if they could go on without slides. What followed was a interesting collection of demos, including JavaFX on a tablet, a look at Project Easel in NetBeans, and even Simon Ritter controlling legos with his brainwaves! Stay tuned for more dispatches.

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• Oracle NoSQL Database Exceeds 1 Million Mixed YCSB Ops/Sec

  - by Charles Lamb

  We ran a set of YCSB performance tests on Oracle NoSQL Database using SSD cards and Intel Xeon E5-2690 CPUs with the goal of achieving 1M mixed ops/sec on a 95% read / 5% update workload. We used the standard YCSB parameters: 13 byte keys and 1KB data size (1,102 bytes after serialization). The maximum database size was 2 billion records, or approximately 2 TB of data. We sized the shards to ensure that this was not an "in-memory" test (i.e. the data portion of the B-Trees did not fit into memory). All updates were durable and used the "simple majority" replica ack policy, effectively 'committing to the network'. All read operations used the Consistency.NONE_REQUIRED parameter allowing reads to be performed on any replica. In the past we have achieved 100K ops/sec using SSD cards on a single shard cluster (replication factor 3) so for this test we used 10 shards on 15 Storage Nodes with each SN carrying 2 Rep Nodes and each RN assigned to its own SSD card. After correcting a scaling problem in YCSB, we blew past the 1M ops/sec mark with 8 shards and proceeded to hit 1.2M ops/sec with 10 shards.  Hardware Configuration We used 15 servers, each configured with two 335 GB SSD cards. We did not have homogeneous CPUs across all 15 servers available to us so 12 of the 15 were Xeon E5-2690, 2.9 GHz, 2 sockets, 32 threads, 193 GB RAM, and the other 3 were Xeon E5-2680, 2.7 GHz, 2 sockets, 32 threads, 193 GB RAM.  There might have been some upside in having all 15 machines configured with the faster CPU, but since CPU was not the limiting factor we don't believe the improvement would be significant. The client machines were Xeon X5670, 2.93 GHz, 2 sockets, 24 threads, 96 GB RAM. Although the clients had 96 GB of RAM, neither the NoSQL Database or YCSB clients require anywhere near that amount of memory and the test could have just easily been run with much less. Networking was all 10GigE. YCSB Scaling Problem We made three modifications to the YCSB benchmark. The first was to allow the test to accommodate more than 2 billion records (effectively int's vs long's). To keep the key size constant, we changed the code to use base 32 for the user ids. The second change involved to the way we run the YCSB client in order to make the test itself horizontally scalable.The basic problem has to do with the way the YCSB test creates its Zipfian distribution of keys which is intended to model "real" loads by generating clusters of key collisions. Unfortunately, the percentage of collisions on the most contentious keys remains the same even as the number of keys in the database increases. As we scale up the load, the number of collisions on those keys increases as well, eventually exceeding the capacity of the single server used for a given key.This is not a workload that is realistic or amenable to horizontal scaling. YCSB does provide alternate key distribution algorithms so this is not a shortcoming of YCSB in general. We decided that a better model would be for the key collisions to be limited to a given YCSB client process. That way, as additional YCSB client processes (i.e. additional load) are added, they each maintain the same number of collisions they encounter themselves, but do not increase the number of collisions on a single key in the entire store. We added client processes proportionally to the number of records in the database (and therefore the number of shards). This change to the use of YCSB better models a use case where new groups of users are likely to access either just their own entries, or entries within their own subgroups, rather than all users showing the same interest in a single global collection of keys. If an application finds every user having the same likelihood of wanting to modify a single global key, that application has no real hope of getting horizontal scaling. Finally, we used read/modify/write (also known as "Compare And Set") style updates during the mixed phase. This uses versioned operations to make sure that no updates are lost. This mode of operation provides better application behavior than the way we have typically run YCSB in the past, and is only practical at scale because we eliminated the shared key collision hotspots.It is also a more realistic testing scenario. To reiterate, all updates used a simple majority replica ack policy making them durable. Scalability Results In the table below, the "KVS Size" column is the number of records with the number of shards and the replication factor. Hence, the first row indicates 400m total records in the NoSQL Database (KV Store), 2 shards, and a replication factor of 3. The "Clients" column indicates the number of YCSB client processes. "Threads" is the number of threads per process with the total number of threads. Hence, 90 threads per YCSB process for a total of 360 threads. The client processes were distributed across 10 client machines. Shards KVS Size Clients Mixed (records) Threads OverallThroughput(ops/sec) Read Latencyav/95%/99%(ms) Write Latencyav/95%/99%(ms) 2 400m(2x3) 4 90(360) 302,152 0.76/1/3 3.08/8/35 4 800m(4x3) 8 90(720) 558,569 0.79/1/4 3.82/16/45 8 1600m(8x3) 16 90(1440) 1,028,868 0.85/2/5 4.29/21/51 10 2000m(10x3) 20 90(1800) 1,244,550 0.88/2/6 4.47/23/53

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• Increasing efficiency of N-Body gravity simulation

  - by Postman

  I'm making a space exploration type game, it will have many planets and other objects that will all have realistic gravity. I currently have a system in place that works, but if the number of planets goes above 70, the FPS decreases an practically exponential rates. I'm making it in C# and XNA. My guess is that I should be able to do gravity calculations between 100 objects without this kind of strain, so clearly my method is not as efficient as it should be. I have two files, Gravity.cs and EntityEngine.cs. Gravity manages JUST the gravity calculations, EntityEngine creates an instance of Gravity and runs it, along with other entity related methods. EntityEngine.cs public void Update() { foreach (KeyValuePair<string, Entity> e in Entities) { e.Value.Update(); } gravity.Update(); } (Only relevant piece of code from EntityEngine, self explanatory. When an instance of Gravity is made in entityEngine, it passes itself (this) into it, so that gravity can have access to entityEngine.Entities (a dictionary of all planet objects)) Gravity.cs namespace ExplorationEngine { public class Gravity { private EntityEngine entityEngine; private Vector2 Force; private Vector2 VecForce; private float distance; private float mult; public Gravity(EntityEngine e) { entityEngine = e; } public void Update() { //First loop foreach (KeyValuePair<string, Entity> e in entityEngine.Entities) { //Reset the force vector Force = new Vector2(); //Second loop foreach (KeyValuePair<string, Entity> e2 in entityEngine.Entities) { //Make sure the second value is not the current value from the first loop if (e2.Value != e.Value ) { //Find the distance between the two objects. Because Fg = G * ((M1 * M2) / r^2), using Vector2.Distance() and then squaring it //is pointless and inefficient because distance uses a sqrt, squaring the result simple cancels that sqrt. distance = Vector2.DistanceSquared(e2.Value.Position, e.Value.Position); //This makes sure that two planets do not attract eachother if they are touching, completely unnecessary when I add collision, //For now it just makes it so that the planets are not glitchy, performance is not significantly improved by removing this IF if (Math.Sqrt(distance) > (e.Value.Texture.Width / 2 + e2.Value.Texture.Width / 2)) { //Calculate the magnitude of Fg (I'm using my own gravitational constant (G) for the sake of time (I know it's 1 at the moment, but I've been changing it) mult = 1.0f * ((e.Value.Mass * e2.Value.Mass) / distance); //Calculate the direction of the force, simply subtracting the positions and normalizing works, this fixes diagonal vectors //from having a larger value, and basically makes VecForce a direction. VecForce = e2.Value.Position - e.Value.Position; VecForce.Normalize(); //Add the vector for each planet in the second loop to a force var. Force = Vector2.Add(Force, VecForce * mult); //I have tried Force += VecForce * mult, and have not noticed much of an increase in speed. } } } //Add that force to the first loop's planet's position (later on I'll instead add to acceleration, to account for inertia) e.Value.Position += Force; } } } } I have used various tips (about gravity optimizing, not threading) from THIS question (that I made yesterday). I've made this gravity method (Gravity.Update) as efficient as I know how to make it. This O(N^2) algorithm still seems to be eating up all of my CPU power though. Here is a LINK (google drive, go to File download, keep .Exe with the content folder, you will need XNA Framework 4.0 Redist. if you don't already have it) to the current version of my game. Left click makes a planet, right click removes the last planet. Mouse moves the camera, scroll wheel zooms in and out. Watch the FPS and Planet Count to see what I mean about performance issues past 70 planets. (ALL 70 planets must be moving, I've had 100 stationary planets and only 5 or so moving ones while still having 300 fps, the issue arises when 70+ are moving around) After 70 planets are made, performance tanks exponentially. With < 70 planets, I get 330 fps (I have it capped at 300). At 90 planets, the FPS is about 2, more than that and it sticks around at 0 FPS. Strangely enough, when all planets are stationary, the FPS climbs back up to around 300, but as soon as something moves, it goes right back down to what it was, I have no systems in place to make this happen, it just does. I considered multithreading, but that previous question I asked taught me a thing or two, and I see now that that's not a viable option. I've also thought maybe I could do the calculations on my GPU instead, though I don't think it should be necessary. I also do not know how to do this, it is not a simple concept and I want to avoid it unless someone knows a really noob friendly simple way to do it that will work for an n-body gravity calculation. (I have an NVidia gtx 660) Lastly I've considered using a quadtree type system. (Barnes Hut simulation) I've been told (in the previous question) that this is a good method that is commonly used, and it seems logical and straightforward, however the implementation is way over my head and I haven't found a good tutorial for C# yet that explains it in a way I can understand, or uses code I can eventually figure out. So my question is this: How can I make my gravity method more efficient, allowing me to use more than 100 objects (I can render 1000 planets with constant 300+ FPS without gravity calculations), and if I can't do much to improve performance (including some kind of quadtree system), could I use my GPU to do the calculations?

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• Deep Cloning C++ class that inherits CCNode in Cocos2dx

  - by A Devanney

  I stuck with something in Cocos2dx ... I'm trying to deep clone one of my classes that inherits CCNode. Basically i have.... GameItem* pTemp = new GameItem(*_actualItem); // loops through all the blocks in gameitem and updates their position pTemp->moveDown(); // if in boundary or collision etc... if (_gameBoard->isValidMove(pTemp)) { _actualItem = pTemp; // display the position CCLog("pos (1) --- (X : %d,Y : %d)", _actualItem->getGridX(),_actualItem->getGridY()); } Then doesn't work, because the gameitem inherits CCNode and has the collection of another class that also inherits CCNode. its just creating a shallow copy and when you look at children of the gameitem node in the copy, just point to the original? class GameItem : public CCNode { // maps to the actual grid position of the shape CCPoint* _rawPosition; // tracks the current grid position int _gridX, _gridY; // tracks the change if the item has moved CCPoint _offset; public: //constructors GameItem& operator=(const GameItem& item); GameItem(Shape shape); ... } then in the implementation.... GameItem& GameItem::operator=(const GameItem& item) { _gridX = item.getGridX(); _gridY = item.getGridY(); _offset = item.getOffSet(); _rawPosition = item.getRawPosition(); // how do i copy the node? return *this; } // shape contains an array of position for the game character GameItem::GameItem(Shape shape) { _rawPosition = shape.getShapePositions(); //loop through all blocks in position for (int i = 0; i < 7; i++) { // get the position of the first block in the shape and add to the position of the first block int x = (int) (getRawPosition()[i].x + getGridX()); int y = (int) (getRawPosition()[i].y + getGridY()); //instantiate a block with the position and type Block* block = Block::blockWithFile(x,y,(i+1), shape); // add the block to the this node this->addChild(block); } } And for clarity here is the block class class Block : public CCNode{ private: // using composition over inheritance CCSprite* _sprite; // tracks the current grid position int _gridX, _gridY; // used to store actual image number int _blockNo; public: Block(void); Block(int gridX, int gridY, int blockNo); Block& operator=(const Block& block); // static constructor for the creation of a block static Block* blockWithFile(int gridX, int gridY,int blockNo, Shape shape); ... } The blocks implementation..... Block& Block::operator=(const Block& block) { _sprite = new CCSprite(*block._sprite); _gridX = block._gridX; _gridY = block._gridY; _blockNo = block._blockNo; //again how to clone CCNode? return *this; } Block* Block::blockWithFile(int gridX, int gridY,int blockNo, Shape shape) { Block* block = new Block(); if (block && block->initBlockWithFile(gridX, gridY,blockNo, shape)) { block->autorelease(); return block; } CC_SAFE_DELETE(block); return NULL; } bool Block::initBlockWithFile(int gridX, int gridY,int blockNo, Shape shape) { setGridX(gridX); setGridY(gridY); setBlockNo(blockNo); const char* characterImg = helperFunctions::Format(shape.getFileName(),blockNo); // add to the spritesheet CCTexture2D* gameArtTexture = CCTextureCache::sharedTextureCache()->addImage("Character.pvr.ccz"); CCSpriteBatchNode::createWithTexture(gameArtTexture); // block settings _sprite = CCSprite::createWithSpriteFrameName(characterImg); // set the position of the block and add it to the layer this->setPosition(CONVERTGRIDTOACTUALPOS_X_Y(gridX,gridY)); this->addChild(_sprite); return true; } Any ideas are welcome at this point!! thanks

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• Enemies don't shoot. What is wrong? [closed]

  - by Bryan

  I want that every enemy shoots independently bullets. If an enemy’s bullet left the screen, the enemy can shoot a new bullet. Not earlier. But for the moment, the enemies don't shoot. Not a single bullet. I guess their is something wrong with my Enemy class, but I can't find a bug and I get no error message. What is wrong? public class Map { Texture2D myEnemy, myBullet ; Player Player; List<Enemy> enemieslist = new List<Enemy>(); List<Bullet> bulletslist = new List<Bullet>(); float fNextEnemy = 0.0f; float fEnemyFreq = 3.0f; int fMaxEnemy = 3 ; Vector2 Startposition = new Vector2(200, 200); GraphicsDeviceManager graphicsDevice; public Map(GraphicsDeviceManager device) { graphicsDevice = device; } public void Load(ContentManager content) { myEnemy = content.Load<Texture2D>("enemy"); myBullet = content.Load<Texture2D>("bullet"); Player = new Player(graphicsDevice); Player.Load(content); } public void Update(GameTime gameTime) { Player.Update(gameTime); float delta = (float)gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalSeconds; for(int i = enemieslist.Count - 1; i >= 0; i--) { // Update Enemy Enemy enemy = enemieslist[i]; enemy.Update(gameTime, this.graphicsDevice, Player.playershape.Position, delta); // Try to remove an enemy if (enemy.Remove == true) { enemieslist.Remove(enemy); enemy.Remove = false; } } this.fNextEnemy += delta; //New enemy if (fMaxEnemy > 0) { if ((this.fNextEnemy >= fEnemyFreq) && (enemieslist.Count < 3)) { Vector2 enemyDirection = Vector2.Normalize(Player.playershape.Position - Startposition) * 100f; enemieslist.Add(new Enemy(Startposition, enemyDirection, Player.playershape.Position)); fMaxEnemy -= 1; fNextEnemy -= fEnemyFreq; } } } public void Draw(SpriteBatch batch) { Player.Draw(batch); foreach (Enemy enemies in enemieslist) { enemies.Draw(batch, myEnemy); } foreach (Bullet bullets in bulletslist) { bullets.Draw(batch, myBullet); } } } public class Enemy { List<Bullet> bulletslist = new List<Bullet>(); private float nextShot = 0; private float shotFrequency = 2.0f; Vector2 vPos; Vector2 vMove; Vector2 vPlayer; public bool Remove; public bool Shot; public Enemy(Vector2 Pos, Vector2 Move, Vector2 Player) { this.vPos = Pos; this.vMove = Move; this.vPlayer = Player; this.Remove = false; this.Shot = false; } public void Update(GameTime gameTime, GraphicsDeviceManager graphics, Vector2 PlayerPos, float delta) { nextShot += delta; for (int i = bulletslist.Count - 1; i >= 0; i--) { // Update Bullet Bullet bullets = bulletslist[i]; bullets.Update(gameTime, graphics, delta); // Try to remove a bullet... Collision, hit, or outside screen. if (bullets.Remove == true) { bulletslist.Remove(bullets); bullets.Remove = false; } } if (nextShot >= shotFrequency) { this.Shot = true; nextShot -= shotFrequency; } // Does the enemy shot? if ((Shot == true) && (bulletslist.Count < 1)) // New bullet { Vector2 bulletDirection = Vector2.Normalize(PlayerPos - this.vPos) * 200f; bulletslist.Add(new Bullet(this.vPos, bulletDirection, PlayerPos)); Shot = false; } if (!Remove) { this.vMove = Vector2.Normalize(PlayerPos - this.vPos) * 100f; this.vPos += this.vMove * delta; if (this.vPos.X > graphics.PreferredBackBufferWidth + 1) { this.Remove = true; } else if (this.vPos.X < -20) { this.Remove = true; } if (this.vPos.Y > graphics.PreferredBackBufferHeight + 1) { this.Remove = true; } else if (this.vPos.Y < -20) { this.Remove = true; } } } public void Draw(SpriteBatch batch, Texture2D myTexture) { if (!Remove) { batch.Draw(myTexture, this.vPos, Color.White); } } } public class Bullet { Vector2 vPos; Vector2 vMove; Vector2 vPlayer; public bool Remove; public Bullet(Vector2 Pos, Vector2 Move, Vector2 Player) { this.Remove = false; this.vPos = Pos; this.vMove = Move; this.vPlayer = Player; } public void Update(GameTime gameTime, GraphicsDeviceManager graphics, float delta) { if (!Remove) { this.vPos += this.vMove * delta; if (this.vPos.X > graphics.PreferredBackBufferWidth +1) { this.Remove = true; } else if (this.vPos.X < -20) { this.Remove = true; } if (this.vPos.Y > graphics.PreferredBackBufferHeight +1) { this.Remove = true; } else if (this.vPos.Y < -20) { this.Remove = true; } } } public void Draw(SpriteBatch spriteBatch, Texture2D myTexture) { if (!Remove) { spriteBatch.Draw(myTexture, this.vPos, Color.White); } } }

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• Speed Problem with Wireless Connectivity on Cisco 877w

  - by Carl Crawley

  Having a bit of a weird one with my local LAN setup. I recently installed a Cisco 877W router on my DSL2+ connection and all is working really well.. Upgraded the IOS to 12.4 and my wired clients are streaming connectivity superfast at 1.3mb/s. However, there seems to be an issue with my wireless clients - I can't seem to stream any data across the local wireless connection (LAN) and using the Internet, whilst responsive enough isn't really comparable with the wired connection speed. For example, all devices are connected to an 8 Port Gb switch on FE0 from the Router with a NAS disk and on my wired clients, I can transfer/stream etc absolutely fine - however, transferring a local 700Mb file on my local LAN estimates 7-8 hours to transfer :( The Wireless config is as follows : interface Dot11Radio0 description WIRELESS INTERFACE no ip address ! encryption mode ciphers tkip ! ssid [MySSID] ! speed basic-1.0 basic-2.0 basic-5.5 6.0 9.0 basic-11.0 channel 2462 station-role root rts threshold 2312 world-mode dot11d country GB indoor bridge-group 1 bridge-group 1 subscriber-loop-control bridge-group 1 spanning-disabled bridge-group 1 block-unknown-source no bridge-group 1 source-learning no bridge-group 1 unicast-flooding All devices are connected to the Gb Switch which is connected to FE0 with the following: Hardware is Fast Ethernet, address is 0021.a03e.6519 (bia 0021.a03e.6519) Description: Uplink to Switch MTU 1500 bytes, BW 100000 Kbit/sec, DLY 100 usec, reliability 255/255, txload 1/255, rxload 1/255 Encapsulation ARPA, loopback not set Keepalive set (10 sec) Full-duplex, 100Mb/s ARP type: ARPA, ARP Timeout 04:00:00 Last input never, output never, output hang never Last clearing of "show interface" counters never Input queue: 0/75/0/0 (size/max/drops/flushes); Total output drops: 0 Queueing strategy: fifo Output queue: 0/40 (size/max) 5 minute input rate 14000 bits/sec, 19 packets/sec 5 minute output rate 167000 bits/sec, 23 packets/sec 177365 packets input, 52089562 bytes, 0 no buffer Received 919 broadcasts, 0 runts, 0 giants, 0 throttles 260 input errors, 260 CRC, 0 frame, 0 overrun, 0 ignored 0 input packets with dribble condition detected 156673 packets output, 106218222 bytes, 0 underruns 0 output errors, 0 collisions, 2 interface resets 0 babbles, 0 late collision, 0 deferred 0 lost carrier, 0 no carrier 0 output buffer failures, 0 output buffers swapped out Not sure why I'm having problems on the wireless and I've reached the end of my Cisco knowledge... Thanks for any pointers! Carl

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• SharedObject (Flex 3.2) behaving unexpectedly when query string present in URL

  - by rhtx

  Summary: The behavior detailed below seems to indicate that if your app at www.someplace.com sets/retrieves data via a SharedObject, there is some sort of .sol collision if the user hits your app at someplace.com, and then later at someplace.com?name=value. Can anyone confirm or refute this? I'm working on a Flex web app that presents the user with a login page. When the user has logged in, he/she is presented with a 'room' which is associated with a 'group'. We store the last-visited room/group combination in a SharedObject - so when a given user logs in, they are taken into the most recent room in which they were active. That works fine, but we also have an auto-login system which involves the user clicking on a link to the app url with a query string attached. There are two types of these links. 1) the query string includes username, groupId, and roomId 2) the query string includes only the username Because we are working fast and have only a few developers, the auto-login system is built on the last-vist system. During the auto-login process, the url is inspected and if groupId and roomId values are found in the query string, the SharedObject is opened and the last-visit group/room id values are overwritten by the param values. That works fine, also, when the app is hit with a query string of the second type (no groupId and roomId params), the app goes to the SharedObject to get the stored room and group id values, as it normally would. And here's the problem: The values it comes back with are whatever the last room/group param values were, not whatever the last last-visit room/group values are. And if the given user has never hit the app with query string that included group and room id values, the app gets null values from the SharedObject. It took some digging around, but what it looks like is happening is that a second set of data is being stored/expected in the SharedObject if a query string is present in the URL. Looking at the .sol file in a text editor I see more untranslated code, and additional group and room values, once I've hit the app with URLs that contain query strings. I'm not finding anything on the web about this, but that may just be due to a lack of necessary search skills. Has anyone else run into anything similar? Or do you know how to address this? I've tried setting Security.exactSettings to false, already - was really hoping that was going to work.

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• Can my loop be optimized any more? (C++)

  - by Sagekilla

  Below is one of my inner loops that's run several thousand times, with input sizes of 20 - 1000 or more. Is there anything I can do to help squeeze any more performance out of this? I'm not looking to move this code to something like using tree codes (Barnes-Hut), but towards optimizing the actual calculations happening inside, since the same calculations occur in the Barnes-Hut algorithm. Any help is appreciated! typedef double real; struct Particle { Vector pos, vel, acc, jerk; Vector oldPos, oldVel, oldAcc, oldJerk; real mass; }; class Vector { private: real vec[3]; public: // Operators defined here }; real Gravity::interact(Particle *p, size_t numParticles) { PROFILE_FUNC(); real tau_q = 1e300; for (size_t i = 0; i < numParticles; i++) { p[i].jerk = 0; p[i].acc = 0; } for (size_t i = 0; i < numParticles; i++) { for (size_t j = i+1; j < numParticles; j++) { Vector r = p[j].pos - p[i].pos; Vector v = p[j].vel - p[i].vel; real r2 = lengthsq(r); real v2 = lengthsq(v); // Calculate inverse of |r|^3 real r3i = Constants::G * pow(r2, -1.5); // da = r / |r|^3 // dj = (v / |r|^3 - 3 * (r . v) * r / |r|^5 Vector da = r * r3i; Vector dj = (v - r * (3 * dot(r, v) / r2)) * r3i; // Calculate new acceleration and jerk p[i].acc += da * p[j].mass; p[i].jerk += dj * p[j].mass; p[j].acc -= da * p[i].mass; p[j].jerk -= dj * p[i].mass; // Collision estimation // Metric 1) tau = |r|^2 / |a(j) - a(i)| // Metric 2) tau = |r|^4 / |v|^4 real mij = p[i].mass + p[j].mass; real tau_est_q1 = r2 / (lengthsq(da) * mij * mij); real tau_est_q2 = (r2*r2) / (v2*v2); if (tau_est_q1 < tau_q) tau_q = tau_est_q1; if (tau_est_q2 < tau_q) tau_q = tau_est_q2; } } return sqrt(sqrt(tau_q)); }

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• Casting to derived type problem in C++

  - by GONeale

  Hey there everyone, I am quite new to C++, but have worked with C# for years, however it is not helping me here! :) My problem: I have an Actor class which Ball and Peg both derive from on an objective-c iphone game I am working on. As I am testing for collision, I wish to set an instance of Ball and Peg appropriately depending on the actual runtime type of actorA or actorB. My code that tests this as follows: // Actors that collided Actor *actorA = (Actor*) bodyA->GetUserData(); Actor *actorB = (Actor*) bodyB->GetUserData(); Ball* ball; Peg* peg; if (static_cast<Ball*> (actorA)) { // true ball = static_cast<Ball*> (actorA); } else if (static_cast<Ball*> (actorB)) { ball = static_cast<Ball*> (actorB); } if (static_cast<Peg*> (actorA)) { // also true?! peg = static_cast<Peg*> (actorA); } else if (static_cast<Peg*> (actorB)) { peg = static_cast<Peg*> (actorB); } if (peg != NULL) { [peg hitByBall]; } Once ball and peg are set, I then proceed to run the hitByBall method (objective c). Where my problem really lies is in the casting procedurel Ball casts fine from actorA; the first if (static_cast<>) statement steps in and sets the ball pointer appropriately. The second step is to assign the appropriate type to peg. I know peg should be a Peg type and I previously know it will be actorB, however at runtime, detecting the types, I was surprised to find actually the third if (static_cast<>) statement stepped in and set this, this if statement was to check if actorA was a Peg, which we already know actorA is a Ball! Why would it have stepped here and not in the fourth if statement? The only thing I can assume is how casting works differently from c# and that is it finds that actorA which is actually of type Ball derives from Actor and then it found when static_cast<Peg*> (actorA) is performed it found Peg derives from Actor too, so this is a valid test? This could all come down to how I have misunderstood the use of static_cast. How can I achieve what I need? :) I'm really uneasy about what feels to me like a long winded brute-casting attempt here with a ton of ridiculous if statements. I'm sure there is a more elegant way to achieve a simple cast to Peg and cast to Ball dependent on actual type held in actorA and actorB. Hope someone out there can help! :) Thanks a lot.

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