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  • Is donationware a good monetization model for developers?

    - by Nathan Campos
    I've been developing for Android for about 2 years (and ~1 year for iOS), releasing freeware and open source applications (mostly because my AdSense account was disabled in 2010), but recently I had an idea for a great app that I wanted to get some money, since it would take some effort to develop and also I would like to test this "commercial" model to know if this could make me invest more time improving and making my apps better. Since my AdSense account was disabled and then I'll not be about to sell it on the Google Play Store, I thought about making it a donationware so I would distribute it for free (and probably open source too) and users that really liked the app and wanted to give me a thanks and a incentive to continue developing it could donate any amount of money. So, what's your experience with donationware? Is it worth compared to paid apps?

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  • Using the ASP.NET Cache to cache data in a Model or Business Object layer, without a dependency on System.Web in the layer - Part One.

    - by Rhames
    ASP.NET applications can make use of the System.Web.Caching.Cache object to cache data and prevent repeated expensive calls to a database or other store. However, ideally an application should make use of caching at the point where data is retrieved from the database, which typically is inside a Business Objects or Model layer. One of the key features of using a UI pattern such as Model-View-Presenter (MVP) or Model-View-Controller (MVC) is that the Model and Presenter (or Controller) layers are developed without any knowledge of the UI layer. Introducing a dependency on System.Web into the Model layer would break this independence of the Model from the View. This article gives a solution to this problem, using dependency injection to inject the caching implementation into the Model layer at runtime. This allows caching to be used within the Model layer, without any knowledge of the actual caching mechanism that will be used. Create a sample application to use the caching solution Create a test SQL Server database This solution uses a SQL Server database with the same Sales data used in my previous post on calculating running totals. The advantage of using this data is that it gives nice slow queries that will exaggerate the effect of using caching! To create the data, first create a new SQL database called CacheSample. Next run the following script to create the Sale table and populate it: USE CacheSample GO   CREATE TABLE Sale(DayCount smallint, Sales money) CREATE CLUSTERED INDEX ndx_DayCount ON Sale(DayCount) go INSERT Sale VALUES (1,120) INSERT Sale VALUES (2,60) INSERT Sale VALUES (3,125) INSERT Sale VALUES (4,40)   DECLARE @DayCount smallint, @Sales money SET @DayCount = 5 SET @Sales = 10   WHILE @DayCount < 5000  BEGIN  INSERT Sale VALUES (@DayCount,@Sales)  SET @DayCount = @DayCount + 1  SET @Sales = @Sales + 15  END Next create a stored procedure to calculate the running total, and return a specified number of rows from the Sale table, using the following script: USE [CacheSample] GO   SET ANSI_NULLS ON GO   SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON GO   -- ============================================= -- Author:        Robin -- Create date: -- Description:   -- ============================================= CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[spGetRunningTotals]       -- Add the parameters for the stored procedure here       @HighestDayCount smallint = null AS BEGIN       -- SET NOCOUNT ON added to prevent extra result sets from       -- interfering with SELECT statements.       SET NOCOUNT ON;         IF @HighestDayCount IS NULL             SELECT @HighestDayCount = MAX(DayCount) FROM dbo.Sale                   DECLARE @SaleTbl TABLE (DayCount smallint, Sales money, RunningTotal money)         DECLARE @DayCount smallint,                   @Sales money,                   @RunningTotal money         SET @RunningTotal = 0       SET @DayCount = 0         DECLARE rt_cursor CURSOR       FOR       SELECT DayCount, Sales       FROM Sale       ORDER BY DayCount         OPEN rt_cursor         FETCH NEXT FROM rt_cursor INTO @DayCount,@Sales         WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0 AND @DayCount <= @HighestDayCount        BEGIN        SET @RunningTotal = @RunningTotal + @Sales        INSERT @SaleTbl VALUES (@DayCount,@Sales,@RunningTotal)        FETCH NEXT FROM rt_cursor INTO @DayCount,@Sales        END         CLOSE rt_cursor       DEALLOCATE rt_cursor         SELECT DayCount, Sales, RunningTotal       FROM @SaleTbl   END   GO   Create the Sample ASP.NET application In Visual Studio create a new solution and add a class library project called CacheSample.BusinessObjects and an ASP.NET web application called CacheSample.UI. The CacheSample.BusinessObjects project will contain a single class to represent a Sale data item, with all the code to retrieve the sales from the database included in it for simplicity (normally I would at least have a separate Repository or other object that is responsible for retrieving data, and probably a data access layer as well, but for this sample I want to keep it simple). The C# code for the Sale class is shown below: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Data; using System.Data.SqlClient;   namespace CacheSample.BusinessObjects {     public class Sale     {         public Int16 DayCount { get; set; }         public decimal Sales { get; set; }         public decimal RunningTotal { get; set; }           public static IEnumerable<Sale> GetSales(int? highestDayCount)         {             List<Sale> sales = new List<Sale>();               SqlParameter highestDayCountParameter = new SqlParameter("@HighestDayCount", SqlDbType.SmallInt);             if (highestDayCount.HasValue)                 highestDayCountParameter.Value = highestDayCount;             else                 highestDayCountParameter.Value = DBNull.Value;               string connectionStr = System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager .ConnectionStrings["CacheSample"].ConnectionString;               using(SqlConnection sqlConn = new SqlConnection(connectionStr))             using (SqlCommand sqlCmd = sqlConn.CreateCommand())             {                 sqlCmd.CommandText = "spGetRunningTotals";                 sqlCmd.CommandType = CommandType.StoredProcedure;                 sqlCmd.Parameters.Add(highestDayCountParameter);                   sqlConn.Open();                   using (SqlDataReader dr = sqlCmd.ExecuteReader())                 {                     while (dr.Read())                     {                         Sale newSale = new Sale();                         newSale.DayCount = dr.GetInt16(0);                         newSale.Sales = dr.GetDecimal(1);                         newSale.RunningTotal = dr.GetDecimal(2);                           sales.Add(newSale);                     }                 }             }               return sales;         }     } }   The static GetSale() method makes a call to the spGetRunningTotals stored procedure and then reads each row from the returned SqlDataReader into an instance of the Sale class, it then returns a List of the Sale objects, as IEnnumerable<Sale>. A reference to System.Configuration needs to be added to the CacheSample.BusinessObjects project so that the connection string can be read from the web.config file. In the CacheSample.UI ASP.NET project, create a single web page called ShowSales.aspx, and make this the default start up page. This page will contain a single button to call the GetSales() method and a label to display the results. The html mark up and the C# code behind are shown below: ShowSales.aspx <%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="ShowSales.aspx.cs" Inherits="CacheSample.UI.ShowSales" %>   <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">   <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head runat="server">     <title>Cache Sample - Show All Sales</title> </head> <body>     <form id="form1" runat="server">     <div>         <asp:Button ID="btnTest1" runat="server" onclick="btnTest1_Click"             Text="Get All Sales" />         &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;         <asp:Label ID="lblResults" runat="server"></asp:Label>         </div>     </form> </body> </html>   ShowSales.aspx.cs using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Web; using System.Web.UI; using System.Web.UI.WebControls;   using CacheSample.BusinessObjects;   namespace CacheSample.UI {     public partial class ShowSales : System.Web.UI.Page     {         protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)         {         }           protected void btnTest1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)         {             System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch stopWatch = new System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch();             stopWatch.Start();               var sales = Sale.GetSales(null);               var lastSales = sales.Last();               stopWatch.Stop();               lblResults.Text = string.Format( "Count of Sales: {0}, Last DayCount: {1}, Total Sales: {2}. Query took {3} ms", sales.Count(), lastSales.DayCount, lastSales.RunningTotal, stopWatch.ElapsedMilliseconds);         }       } }   Finally we need to add a connection string to the CacheSample SQL Server database, called CacheSample, to the web.config file: <?xmlversion="1.0"?>   <configuration>    <connectionStrings>     <addname="CacheSample"          connectionString="data source=.\SQLEXPRESS;Integrated Security=SSPI;Initial Catalog=CacheSample"          providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />  </connectionStrings>    <system.web>     <compilationdebug="true"targetFramework="4.0" />  </system.web>   </configuration>   Run the application and click the button a few times to see how long each call to the database takes. On my system, each query takes about 450ms. Next I shall look at a solution to use the ASP.NET caching to cache the data returned by the query, so that subsequent requests to the GetSales() method are much faster. Adding Data Caching Support I am going to create my caching support in a separate project called CacheSample.Caching, so the next step is to add a class library to the solution. We shall be using the application configuration to define the implementation of our caching system, so we need a reference to System.Configuration adding to the project. ICacheProvider<T> Interface The first step in adding caching to our application is to define an interface, called ICacheProvider, in the CacheSample.Caching project, with methods to retrieve any data from the cache or to retrieve the data from the data source if it is not present in the cache. Dependency Injection will then be used to inject an implementation of this interface at runtime, allowing the users of the interface (i.e. the CacheSample.BusinessObjects project) to be completely unaware of how the caching is actually implemented. As data of any type maybe retrieved from the data source, it makes sense to use generics in the interface, with a generic type parameter defining the data type associated with a particular instance of the cache interface implementation. The C# code for the ICacheProvider interface is shown below: using System; using System.Collections.Generic;   namespace CacheSample.Caching {     public interface ICacheProvider     {     }       public interface ICacheProvider<T> : ICacheProvider     {         T Fetch(string key, Func<T> retrieveData, DateTime? absoluteExpiry, TimeSpan? relativeExpiry);           IEnumerable<T> Fetch(string key, Func<IEnumerable<T>> retrieveData, DateTime? absoluteExpiry, TimeSpan? relativeExpiry);     } }   The empty non-generic interface will be used as a type in a Dictionary generic collection later to store instances of the ICacheProvider<T> implementation for reuse, I prefer to use a base interface when doing this, as I think the alternative of using object makes for less clear code. The ICacheProvider<T> interface defines two overloaded Fetch methods, the difference between these is that one will return a single instance of the type T and the other will return an IEnumerable<T>, providing support for easy caching of collections of data items. Both methods will take a key parameter, which will uniquely identify the cached data, a delegate of type Func<T> or Func<IEnumerable<T>> which will provide the code to retrieve the data from the store if it is not present in the cache, and absolute or relative expiry policies to define when a cached item should expire. Note that at present there is no support for cache dependencies, but I shall be showing a method of adding this in part two of this article. CacheProviderFactory Class We need a mechanism of creating instances of our ICacheProvider<T> interface, using Dependency Injection to get the implementation of the interface. To do this we shall create a CacheProviderFactory static class in the CacheSample.Caching project. This factory will provide a generic static method called GetCacheProvider<T>(), which shall return instances of ICacheProvider<T>. We can then call this factory method with the relevant data type (for example the Sale class in the CacheSample.BusinessObject project) to get a instance of ICacheProvider for that type (e.g. call CacheProviderFactory.GetCacheProvider<Sale>() to get the ICacheProvider<Sale> implementation). The C# code for the CacheProviderFactory is shown below: using System; using System.Collections.Generic;   using CacheSample.Caching.Configuration;   namespace CacheSample.Caching {     public static class CacheProviderFactory     {         private static Dictionary<Type, ICacheProvider> cacheProviders = new Dictionary<Type, ICacheProvider>();         private static object syncRoot = new object();           ///<summary>         /// Factory method to create or retrieve an implementation of the  /// ICacheProvider interface for type <typeparamref name="T"/>.         ///</summary>         ///<typeparam name="T">  /// The type that this cache provider instance will work with  ///</typeparam>         ///<returns>An instance of the implementation of ICacheProvider for type  ///<typeparamref name="T"/>, as specified by the application  /// configuration</returns>         public static ICacheProvider<T> GetCacheProvider<T>()         {             ICacheProvider<T> cacheProvider = null;             // Get the Type reference for the type parameter T             Type typeOfT = typeof(T);               // Lock the access to the cacheProviders dictionary             // so multiple threads can work with it             lock (syncRoot)             {                 // First check if an instance of the ICacheProvider implementation  // already exists in the cacheProviders dictionary for the type T                 if (cacheProviders.ContainsKey(typeOfT))                     cacheProvider = (ICacheProvider<T>)cacheProviders[typeOfT];                 else                 {                     // There is not already an instance of the ICacheProvider in       // cacheProviders for the type T                     // so we need to create one                       // Get the Type reference for the application's implementation of       // ICacheProvider from the configuration                     Type cacheProviderType = Type.GetType(CacheProviderConfigurationSection.Current. CacheProviderType);                     if (cacheProviderType != null)                     {                         // Now get a Type reference for the Cache Provider with the                         // type T generic parameter                         Type typeOfCacheProviderTypeForT = cacheProviderType.MakeGenericType(new Type[] { typeOfT });                         if (typeOfCacheProviderTypeForT != null)                         {                             // Create the instance of the Cache Provider and add it to // the cacheProviders dictionary for future use                             cacheProvider = (ICacheProvider<T>)Activator. CreateInstance(typeOfCacheProviderTypeForT);                             cacheProviders.Add(typeOfT, cacheProvider);                         }                     }                 }             }               return cacheProvider;                 }     } }   As this code uses Activator.CreateInstance() to create instances of the ICacheProvider<T> implementation, which is a slow process, the factory class maintains a Dictionary of the previously created instances so that a cache provider needs to be created only once for each type. The type of the implementation of ICacheProvider<T> is read from a custom configuration section in the application configuration file, via the CacheProviderConfigurationSection class, which is described below. CacheProviderConfigurationSection Class The implementation of ICacheProvider<T> will be specified in a custom configuration section in the application’s configuration. To handle this create a folder in the CacheSample.Caching project called Configuration, and add a class called CacheProviderConfigurationSection to this folder. This class will extend the System.Configuration.ConfigurationSection class, and will contain a single string property called CacheProviderType. The C# code for this class is shown below: using System; using System.Configuration;   namespace CacheSample.Caching.Configuration {     internal class CacheProviderConfigurationSection : ConfigurationSection     {         public static CacheProviderConfigurationSection Current         {             get             {                 return (CacheProviderConfigurationSection) ConfigurationManager.GetSection("cacheProvider");             }         }           [ConfigurationProperty("type", IsRequired=true)]         public string CacheProviderType         {             get             {                 return (string)this["type"];             }         }     } }   Adding Data Caching to the Sales Class We now have enough code in place to add caching to the GetSales() method in the CacheSample.BusinessObjects.Sale class, even though we do not yet have an implementation of the ICacheProvider<T> interface. We need to add a reference to the CacheSample.Caching project to CacheSample.BusinessObjects so that we can use the ICacheProvider<T> interface within the GetSales() method. Once the reference is added, we can first create a unique string key based on the method name and the parameter value, so that the same cache key is used for repeated calls to the method with the same parameter values. Then we get an instance of the cache provider for the Sales type, using the CacheProviderFactory, and pass the existing code to retrieve the data from the database as the retrievalMethod delegate in a call to the Cache Provider Fetch() method. The C# code for the modified GetSales() method is shown below: public static IEnumerable<Sale> GetSales(int? highestDayCount) {     string cacheKey = string.Format("CacheSample.BusinessObjects.GetSalesWithCache({0})", highestDayCount);       return CacheSample.Caching.CacheProviderFactory. GetCacheProvider<Sale>().Fetch(cacheKey,         delegate()         {             List<Sale> sales = new List<Sale>();               SqlParameter highestDayCountParameter = new SqlParameter("@HighestDayCount", SqlDbType.SmallInt);             if (highestDayCount.HasValue)                 highestDayCountParameter.Value = highestDayCount;             else                 highestDayCountParameter.Value = DBNull.Value;               string connectionStr = System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager. ConnectionStrings["CacheSample"].ConnectionString;               using (SqlConnection sqlConn = new SqlConnection(connectionStr))             using (SqlCommand sqlCmd = sqlConn.CreateCommand())             {                 sqlCmd.CommandText = "spGetRunningTotals";                 sqlCmd.CommandType = CommandType.StoredProcedure;                 sqlCmd.Parameters.Add(highestDayCountParameter);                   sqlConn.Open();                   using (SqlDataReader dr = sqlCmd.ExecuteReader())                 {                     while (dr.Read())                     {                         Sale newSale = new Sale();                         newSale.DayCount = dr.GetInt16(0);                         newSale.Sales = dr.GetDecimal(1);                         newSale.RunningTotal = dr.GetDecimal(2);                           sales.Add(newSale);                     }                 }             }               return sales;         },         null,         new TimeSpan(0, 10, 0)); }     This example passes the code to retrieve the Sales data from the database to the Cache Provider as an anonymous method, however it could also be written as a lambda. The main advantage of using an anonymous function (method or lambda) is that the code inside the anonymous function can access the parameters passed to the GetSales() method. Finally the absolute expiry is set to null, and the relative expiry set to 10 minutes, to indicate that the cache entry should be removed 10 minutes after the last request for the data. As the ICacheProvider<T> has a Fetch() method that returns IEnumerable<T>, we can simply return the results of the Fetch() method to the caller of the GetSales() method. This should be all that is needed for the GetSales() method to now retrieve data from a cache after the first time the data has be retrieved from the database. Implementing a ASP.NET Cache Provider The final step is to actually implement the ICacheProvider<T> interface, and add the implementation details to the web.config file for the dependency injection. The cache provider implementation needs to have access to System.Web. Therefore it could be placed in the CacheSample.UI project, or in its own project that has a reference to System.Web. Implementing the Cache Provider in a separate project is my favoured approach. Create a new project inside the solution called CacheSample.CacheProvider, and add references to System.Web and CacheSample.Caching to this project. Add a class to the project called AspNetCacheProvider. Make the class a generic class by adding the generic parameter <T> and indicate that the class implements ICacheProvider<T>. The C# code for the AspNetCacheProvider class is shown below: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Web; using System.Web.Caching;   using CacheSample.Caching;   namespace CacheSample.CacheProvider {     public class AspNetCacheProvider<T> : ICacheProvider<T>     {         #region ICacheProvider<T> Members           public T Fetch(string key, Func<T> retrieveData, DateTime? absoluteExpiry, TimeSpan? relativeExpiry)         {             return FetchAndCache<T>(key, retrieveData, absoluteExpiry, relativeExpiry);         }           public IEnumerable<T> Fetch(string key, Func<IEnumerable<T>> retrieveData, DateTime? absoluteExpiry, TimeSpan? relativeExpiry)         {             return FetchAndCache<IEnumerable<T>>(key, retrieveData, absoluteExpiry, relativeExpiry);         }           #endregion           #region Helper Methods           private U FetchAndCache<U>(string key, Func<U> retrieveData, DateTime? absoluteExpiry, TimeSpan? relativeExpiry)         {             U value;             if (!TryGetValue<U>(key, out value))             {                 value = retrieveData();                 if (!absoluteExpiry.HasValue)                     absoluteExpiry = Cache.NoAbsoluteExpiration;                   if (!relativeExpiry.HasValue)                     relativeExpiry = Cache.NoSlidingExpiration;                   HttpContext.Current.Cache.Insert(key, value, null, absoluteExpiry.Value, relativeExpiry.Value);             }             return value;         }           private bool TryGetValue<U>(string key, out U value)         {             object cachedValue = HttpContext.Current.Cache.Get(key);             if (cachedValue == null)             {                 value = default(U);                 return false;             }             else             {                 try                 {                     value = (U)cachedValue;                     return true;                 }                 catch                 {                     value = default(U);                     return false;                 }             }         }           #endregion       } }   The two interface Fetch() methods call a private method called FetchAndCache(). This method first checks for a element in the HttpContext.Current.Cache with the specified cache key, and if so tries to cast this to the specified type (either T or IEnumerable<T>). If the cached element is found, the FetchAndCache() method simply returns it. If it is not found in the cache, the method calls the retrievalMethod delegate to get the data from the data source, and then adds this to the HttpContext.Current.Cache. The final step is to add the AspNetCacheProvider class to the relevant custom configuration section in the CacheSample.UI.Web.Config file. To do this there needs to be a <configSections> element added as the first element in <configuration>. This will match a custom section called <cacheProvider> with the CacheProviderConfigurationSection. Then we add a <cacheProvider> element, with a type property set to the fully qualified assembly name of the AspNetCacheProvider class, as shown below: <?xmlversion="1.0"?>   <configuration>  <configSections>     <sectionname="cacheProvider" type="CacheSample.Base.Configuration.CacheProviderConfigurationSection, CacheSample.Base" />  </configSections>    <connectionStrings>     <addname="CacheSample"          connectionString="data source=.\SQLEXPRESS;Integrated Security=SSPI;Initial Catalog=CacheSample"          providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />  </connectionStrings>    <cacheProvidertype="CacheSample.CacheProvider.AspNetCacheProvider`1, CacheSample.CacheProvider, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null">  </cacheProvider>    <system.web>     <compilationdebug="true"targetFramework="4.0" />  </system.web>   </configuration>   One point to note is that the fully qualified assembly name of the AspNetCacheProvider class includes the notation `1 after the class name, which indicates that it is a generic class with a single generic type parameter. The CacheSample.UI project needs to have references added to CacheSample.Caching and CacheSample.CacheProvider so that the actual application is aware of the relevant cache provider implementation. Conclusion After implementing this solution, you should have a working cache provider mechanism, that will allow the middle and data access layers to implement caching support when retrieving data, without any knowledge of the actually caching implementation. If the UI is not ASP.NET based, if for example it is Winforms or WPF, the implementation of ICacheProvider<T> would be written around whatever technology is available. It could even be a standalone caching system that takes full responsibility for adding and removing items from a global store. The next part of this article will show how this caching mechanism may be extended to provide support for cache dependencies, such as the System.Web.Caching.SqlCacheDependency. Another possible extension would be to cache the cache provider implementations instead of storing them in a static Dictionary in the CacheProviderFactory. This would prevent a build up of seldom used cache providers in the application memory, as they could be removed from the cache if not used often enough, although in reality there are probably unlikely to be vast numbers of cache provider implementation instances, as most applications do not have a massive number of business object or model types.

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  • What's the future of online gamedev. FLASH or UNITY?

    - by Cpucpu
    Currently, i develop for flash, not much ago i discovered unity, not yet played with it, but i have seen so far was cool. Here are my thoughts: Flash is more casual, start with cost less, in time and money. In unity you'd likely have to go more bussines-serious (real money). There are proven bussines models in flash, like adver-gaming, ads, micro-transactions. Have not seen much movement in this in Unity, too soon maybe. Flash is too heavy. By its nature(making games) Unity is way faster. Flash is 2d, doing something 3d with it turns weird and slow. Unity is natively 3d, not optimized for 2d though, it is likely feasible as well. I am overlooking the plug-in widespread, that gap will get closed over the time.

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  • Save match details to SQLite or XML?

    - by trizz
    I'm making a (conceptual) system to simulate any kind of sports match (like soccer,basketball,etc) with actions (for example pass,pass,out,pass,score) so it will be like a real report. The main statistics (play time, number of actions etc.) I'm saving to a MySQL database, but the report itself, can contain more than 1000 actions per match. To avoid millions of records in my database I'm thinking of saving the detailled report in a SQLite database or a XML file. For every match played, a file will be created. When a user request the match details, I read the file for details. What is the best choice for this purpose? SQLite or XML?

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  • Mobile apps suck time with the help of Java ME tech

    - by hinkmond
    Here's a new Flurry Mobile report on how Mobile Apps are sucking up more of our precious minutes in a day, even more than the Mobile Web. See: Mobile Apps suck more than Web Here's a quote: Flurry tracked 85,000 apps on [blah-blah-blah], BlackBerry, [yadda-yadda-yadda] and J2ME mobile devices, and their report includes a breakdown on how users spend their time. Greeeaaaaat... People are spending more time on mobile games and doing more Facebook and Twitter from their cell phones. Just what the world needed. Well, you know what they say: "Time == Money". So, the more time you spend, the more money someone, somewhere is getting... Hinkmond

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  • Got a contract to hire offer

    - by user23838
    I just got a contract to hire position with a local company. They are paying 28/hour. I just graduated from college. They said they will take me in full-time after 6 months. Should I ask for more money? I wanted somewhere between 60-70k. But this offer has no benefits, no paid holidays. They said they hired couple of entry level people for the same amount of money. So, they want to keep the rate the same. Should I negotiate with the recruiter harder? Thanks

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  • SQL Table stored as a Heap - the dangers within

    - by MikeD
    Nearly all of the time I create a table, I include a primary key, and often that PK is implemented as a clustered index. Those two don't always have to go together, but in my world they almost always do. On a recent project, I was working on a data warehouse and a set of SSIS packages to import data from an OLTP database into my data warehouse. The data I was importing from the business database into the warehouse was mostly new rows, sometimes updates to existing rows, and sometimes deletes. I decided to use the MERGE statement to implement the insert, update or delete in the data warehouse, I found it quite performant to have a stored procedure that extracted all the new, updated, and deleted rows from the source database and dump it into a working table in my data warehouse, then run a stored proc in the warehouse that was the MERGE statement that took the rows from the working table and updated the real fact table. Use Warehouse CREATE TABLE Integration.MergePolicy (PolicyId int, PolicyTypeKey int, Premium money, Deductible money, EffectiveDate date, Operation varchar(5)) CREATE TABLE fact.Policy (PolicyKey int identity primary key, PolicyId int, PolicyTypeKey int, Premium money, Deductible money, EffectiveDate date) CREATE PROC Integration.MergePolicy as begin begin tran Merge fact.Policy as tgtUsing Integration.MergePolicy as SrcOn (tgt.PolicyId = Src.PolicyId) When not matched by Target then Insert (PolicyId, PolicyTypeKey, Premium, Deductible, EffectiveDate)values (src.PolicyId, src.PolicyTypeKey, src.Premium, src.Deductible, src.EffectiveDate) When matched and src.Operation = 'U' then Update set PolicyTypeKey = src.PolicyTypeKey,Premium = src.Premium,Deductible = src.Deductible,EffectiveDate = src.EffectiveDate When matched and src.Operation = 'D' then Delete ;delete from Integration.WorkPolicy commit end Notice that my worktable (Integration.MergePolicy) doesn't have any primary key or clustered index. I didn't think this would be a problem, since it was relatively small table and was empty after each time I ran the stored proc. For one of the work tables, during the initial loads of the warehouse, it was getting about 1.5 million rows inserted, processed, then deleted. Also, because of a bug in the extraction process, the same 1.5 million rows (plus a few hundred more each time) was getting inserted, processed, and deleted. This was being sone on a fairly hefty server that was otherwise unused, and no one was paying any attention to the time it was taking. This week I received a backup of this database and loaded it on my laptop to troubleshoot the problem, and of course it took a good ten minutes or more to run the process. However, what seemed strange to me was that after I fixed the problem and happened to run the merge sproc when the work table was completely empty, it still took almost ten minutes to complete. I immediately looked back at the MERGE statement to see if I had some sort of outer join that meant it would be scanning the target table (which had about 2 million rows in it), then turned on the execution plan output to see what was happening under the hood. Running the stored procedure again took a long time, and the plan output didn't show me much - 55% on the MERGE statement, and 45% on the DELETE statement, and table scans on the work table in both places. I was surprised at the relative cost of the DELETE statement, because there were really 0 rows to delete, but I was expecting to see the table scans. (I was beginning now to suspect that my problem was because the work table was being stored as a heap.) Then I turned on STATS_IO and ran the sproc again. The output was quite interesting.Table 'Worktable'. Scan count 0, logical reads 0, physical reads 0, read-ahead reads 0, lob logical reads 0, lob physical reads 0, lob read-ahead reads 0.Table 'Policy'. Scan count 0, logical reads 0, physical reads 0, read-ahead reads 0, lob logical reads 0, lob physical reads 0, lob read-ahead reads 0.Table 'MergePolicy'. Scan count 1, logical reads 433276, physical reads 60, read-ahead reads 0, lob logical reads 0, lob physical reads 0, lob read-ahead reads 0. I've reproduced the above from memory, the details aren't exact, but the essential bit was the very high number of logical reads on the table stored as a heap. Even just doing a SELECT Count(*) from Integration.MergePolicy incurred that sort of output, even though the result was always 0. I suppose I should research more on the allocation and deallocation of pages to tables stored as a heap, but I haven't, and my original assumption that a table stored as a heap with no rows would only need to read one page to answer any query was definitely proven wrong. It's likely that some sort of physical defragmentation of the table may have cleaned that up, but it seemed that the easiest answer was to put a clustered index on the table. After doing so, the execution plan showed a cluster index scan, and the IO stats showed only a single page read. (I aborted my first attempt at adding a clustered index on the table because it was taking too long - instead I ran TRUNCATE TABLE Integration.MergePolicy first and added the clustered index, both of which took very little time). I suspect I may not have noticed this if I had used TRUNCATE TABLE Integration.MergePolicy instead of DELETE FROM Integration.MergePolicy, since I'm guessing that the truncate operation does some rather quick releasing of pages allocated to the heap table. In the future, I will likely be much more careful to have a clustered index on every table I use, even the working tables. Mike  

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  • Help, i cant reference my vars!

    - by SystemNetworks
    I have a sub-class(let's call it sub) and it contains all the function of an object in my game. In my main class(Let's call it main), i connect my sub to main. (Example sub Code: s = new sub(); Then I put my sub function at the update method. Code: s.myFunc(); Becuase in my sub, i have booleans, integers, float and more. The problem is that I don't want to connect my main class to use my main's int, booleans and others. If i connect it, it will have a stack overflow. This is what I put in my sub: Code: package javagame; import org.newdawn.slick.GameContainer; import org.newdawn.slick.Graphics; import org.newdawn.slick.Input; import org.newdawn.slick.state.StateBasedGame; public class Armory { package javagame; import org.newdawn.slick.GameContainer; import org.newdawn.slick.Graphics; import org.newdawn.slick.Input; import org.newdawn.slick.state.StateBasedGame; public class Store { public Integer wood; public Float probePositionX; public Float probePositionY; public Boolean StoreOn; public Boolean darkBought; public Integer money; public Integer darkEnergy; public Integer lifeLeft; public Integer powerLeft; public void darkStores(GameContainer gc, StateBasedGame sbg, GameContainer gc2) { Input input1 = gc.getInput(); //Player need wood to enter(200) If not there will be an error. if(wood>=200) { //Enter Store! if(input1.isKeyDown(Input.KEY_Q)) { //Player must be in this cord! if((probePositionX>393 && probePositionX<555) && (probePositionY< 271 && probePositionY>171)) { //The Store is On StoreOn=true; } } } } } In my main (update function) I put: Code: s.darkBought = darkBought; s.darkEnergy = darkEnergy; s.lifeLeft = lifeLeft; s.money = money; s.powerLeft = powerLeft; s.probePositionX = probePositionX; s.probePositionY = probePositionY; s.StoreOn = StoreOn; s.wood = wood; s.darkStores(gc, sbg, gc); The problem is when I go to the place, and I press q, nothing shows up. It should show another image. Is there anything wrong???

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  • What are the IEEE and ACM good for?

    - by Joshua Fox
    Membership in the IEEE and ACM is sometimes portrayed as a sign of professionalism. But all that is involved, as far as I can tell, is sending them your money. In return, besides the potential resume line, these organizations sponsor conferences and journals. I can always attend a conference or subscribe to or submit a paper to a journal, whether I am a member or not. If being a member makes some of that cheaper, or is a prerequisite for admission then OK, but I still don't see the purpose of these organizations. The answer, as far as I can gather, is that their most important value is to provide some reading material. I'd suggest that this is not worth the money given the wide availability of other valuable reading materials.

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  • Architecture: Bringing Value to the Table

    - by Bob Rhubart
    A recent TechTarget article features an interview with Business Architecture expert William Ulrich (Take a business-driven approach to application modernization ). In that article Ulrich offers this advice: "Moving from one technical architecture might be perfectly viable on a project by project basis, but when you're looking at the big picture and you want to really understand how to drive business value so that the business is pushing money into IT instead of IT pulling money back, you have to understand the business architecture. When we do that we're going to really be able to start bringing value to the table." In many respects that big picture view is what software architecture is all about. As an architect, your technical skills must be top-notch. But if you don't apply that technical knowledge within the larger context of moving the business forward, what are you accomplishing? If you're interested in more insight from William Ulrich, you can listen to the ArchBeat Podcast interview he did last year, in which he and co-author Neal McWhorter talked about their book, Business Architecture: The Art and Practice of Business Transformation.

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  • How much a website like bytes.com earning

    - by robin das
    i am running a website similar to bytes.com (IT QnA site) my site attract 600 unique visitors daily. we are planning our self as bytes.com. Atleast any one can tell me that whether we can earn some serious money with this kind of website. websiteoutlook estimate Daily Pageview - 700636 to bytes.com and its using google ads. Can any one please let me know what kind of earning we can expect for dotcom like bytes.com. Please give some light on this topic as a lot of energy, time and money goes in building this kind of website thanks robin Das

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  • sorting dynamic table created by form inputs [migrated]

    - by mille
    i am having problems with sorting can someone help to sort this table not just by its form entry id but onclick with some other columns i tried a lot of plugins but cant get anything to work and i dont know what to do i am new at this i sorry for my english thanks. here is the js: var Animals ={ index: window.localStorage.getItem("Animals:index"), $table: document.getElementById("animals-table"), $form: document.getElementById("animals-form"), $button_save: document.getElementById("animals-save"), $button_discard: document.getElementById("animals-discard"), init: function() { if (!Animals.index) { window.localStorage.setItem("Animals:index", Animals.index = 1); } Animals.$form.reset(); Animals.$button_discard.addEventListener("click", function(event) { Animals.$form.reset(); Animals.$form.id_entry.value = 0; }, true); Animals.$form.addEventListener("submit", function(event) { var entry = { id: parseInt(this.id_entry.value), animal_id:this.animal_id.value, animal_name: this.animal_name.value, animal_type: this.animal_type.value, bday: this.bday.value, animal_sex: this.animal_sex.value, mother_name: this.mother_name.value, farm_name: this.farm_name.value, money: this.money.value, weight: this.weight.value, purchase_partner: this.purchase_partner.value }; if (entry.id === 0) { Animals.storeAdd(entry); Animals.tableAdd(entry); } else { // edit Animals.storeEdit(entry); Animals.tableEdit(entry); } this.reset(); this.id_entry.value = 0; event.preventDefault(); }, true); if (window.localStorage.length - 1) { var animals_list = [], i, key; for (i = 0; i < window.localStorage.length; i++) { key = window.localStorage.key(i); if (/Animals:\d+/.test(key)) { animals_list.push(JSON.parse(window.localStorage.getItem(key))); } } if (animals_list.length) { animals_list.sort(function(a, b) {return a.id < b.id ? -1 : (a.id > b.id ? 1 : 0);}) .forEach(Animals.tableAdd);} Animals.$table.addEventListener("click", function(event) { var op = event.target.getAttribute("data-op"); if (/edit|remove/.test(op)) { var entry = JSON.parse(window.localStorage.getItem("Animals:"+ event.target.getAttribute("data- id"))); if (op == "edit") { Animals.$form.id_entry.value = entry.id; Animals.$form.animal_id.value = entry.animal_id; Animals.$form.animal_name.value = entry.animal_name; Animals.$form.animal_type.value = entry.animal_type; Animals.$form.bday.value = entry.bday; Animals.$form.animal_sex.value = entry.animal_sex; Animals.$form.mother_name.value = entry.mother_name; Animals.$form.farm_name.value = entry.farm_name; Animals.$form.money.value = entry.money; Animals.$form.weight.value = entry.weight; Animals.$form.purchase_partner.value = entry.purchase_partner; } else if (op == "remove") { if (confirm('Are you sure you want to remove this animal from your list?' )) { Animals.storeRemove(entry); Animals.tableRemove(entry); } } event.preventDefault(); } }, true); }, storeAdd: function(entry) { entry.id = Animals.index; window.localStorage.setItem("Animals:index", ++Animals.index); window.localStorage.setItem("Animals:"+ entry.id, JSON.stringify(entry)); }, storeEdit: function(entry) { window.localStorage.setItem("Animals:"+ entry.id, JSON.stringify(entry)); }, storeRemove: function(entry) { window.localStorage.removeItem("Animals:"+ entry.id); }, tableAdd: function(entry) { var $tr = document.createElement("tr"), $td, key; for (key in entry) { if (entry.hasOwnProperty(key)) { $td = document.createElement("td"); $td.appendChild(document.createTextNode(entry[key])); $tr.appendChild($td); } } $td = document.createElement("td"); $td.innerHTML = '<a data-op="edit" data-id="'+ entry.id +'">Edit</a> | <a data-op="remove" data-id="'+ entry.id +'">Remove</a>'; $tr.appendChild($td); $tr.setAttribute("id", "entry-"+ entry.id); Animals.$table.appendChild($tr); }, tableEdit: function(entry) { var $tr = document.getElementById("entry-"+ entry.id), $td, key; $tr.innerHTML = ""; for (key in entry) { if (entry.hasOwnProperty(key)) { $td = document.createElement("td"); $td.appendChild(document.createTextNode(entry[key])); $tr.appendChild($td); } } $td = document.createElement("td"); $td.innerHTML = '<a data-op="edit" data-id="'+ entry.id +'">Edit</a> | <a data-op="remove" data-id="'+ entry.id +'">Remove</a>'; $tr.appendChild($td); }, tableRemove: function(entry) { Animals.$table.removeChild(document.getElementById("entry-"+ entry.id)); } }; Animals.init();

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  • .NET Libraries Cost More Than Windows?

    - by Kevin Mark
    When looking into libraries to make my programming life a little bit easier I've (almost) always been disappointed by the prices offered. For instance, Actipro's WPF Studio is $650. I suppose that's worth it if you plan to make money from the use of those controls. But take a look at, say, Windows. Windows 7 Ultimate is just about $220. I consider Windows to be a far more complex and "worth-it" product/purchase than a library that runs on it. Why the significant difference in pricing? Do libraries really need to be so expensive, or do they need to charge more in order to make a decent some of money?

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  • Splitting up revenue among development team members on Apple's app store

    - by itaiferber
    A friend and I have started developing an app to put on Apple's app store. Development is going fine, but thinking ahead, we're trying to come up with an easy way to share any revenue coming from our efforts. The app store allows you to deposit your revenue into a single bank account, but there's no easy way to split revenue among several people. How do (small) dev teams split up revenue on their products, on, and off the app store? As far as I can tell, banks don't offer an easy way to automatically split the balance on an account 50-50 (or any other percentage, for that matter), especially on a regular basis. So how do teams deal with this? We're not incorporated, and we don't have an official business set up. We're considering depositing all the money into one of our accounts and manually transferring half the money to the other person, but this isn't sustainable over long periods of time. Is there a low-cost, sustainable, automatic process for handling these finances?

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  • If PHP websites represnt 70% of websites in my country then should I learn it?

    - by Fadi Tiwari
    In my country most of the sites are built using PHP and MySQL. Half of those sites use vbulletin and Wordpress. When it comes to companies, ministries and universities they use ASP.NET. I am not sure what should I learn to get more money as freelacer? Should I learn ASP.NET and focus my area to build companies and universities' sites? (And the question if they will know me one day and ask me to build any of their sites or not?) Or should I learn PHP and focus my business on people's sites and maybe some small formal sites? Which option will give me more money?

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  • How much a website like bytes.com earn

    - by robin das
    i am running a website similar to bytes.com (IT QnA site) my site attract 600 unique visitors daily. we are planning our self as bytes.com. Atleast any one can tell me that whether we can earn some serious money with this kind of website. websiteoutlook estimate Daily Pageview - 700636 to bytes.com Can any one please let me know what kind of earning we can expect for dotcom like bytes.com. Please give some light on this topic as a lot of energy, time and money goes in building this kind of website thanks robin Das

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  • Pay in the future should make you think in the present

    - by BuckWoody
    Distributed Computing - and more importantly “-as-a-Service” models of computing have a different cost model. This is something that sounds obvious on the surface but it’s often forgotten during the design and coding phase of a project. In on-premises computing, we’re used to purchasing a server and all of the hardware infrastructure and software licenses needed not only for one project, but several. This is an up-front or “sunk” cost that we consume by running code the organization needs to perform its function. Using a direct connection over wires you’ve already paid for, we don’t often have to think about bandwidth, hits on the data store or the amount of compute we use - we just know more is better. In a pay-as-you-go model, however, each of these architecture decisions has a potential cost impact. The amount of data you store, the number of times you access it, and the amount you send back all come with a charge. The offset is that you don’t buy anything at all up-front, so that sunk cost is freed up. And financial professionals know that money now is worth more than money later. Saving that up-front cost allows you to invest it in other things. It’s not just that you’re using things that now cost money - it’s that the design itself in distributed computing has a cost impact. That can be a really good thing, such as when you dynamically add capacity for paying customers. If you can tie back the cost of a series of clicks to what a user will pay to do so, you can set a profit margin that is easy to track. Here’s a case in point: Assume you are using a large instance in Windows Azure to compute some data that you retrieve from a SQL Azure database. If you don’t monitor the path of the application, you may not know what you are really using. Since you’re paying by the size of the instance, it’s best to maximize it all the time. Recently I evaluated just this situation, and found that downsizing the instance and adding another one where needed, adding a caching function to the application, moving part of the data into Windows Azure tables not only increased the speed of the application, but reduced the cost and more closely tied the cost to the profit. The key is this: from the very outset - the design - make sure you include metrics to measure for the cost/performance (sometimes these are the same) for your application. Windows Azure opens up awesome new ways of doing things, so make sure you study distributed systems architecture before you try and force in the application design you have on premises into your new application structure.

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  • How can I implement an escrow payment system in my website?

    - by BeachRunnerJoe
    Hello. I'd like to build a web service similar to kickstarter that allows users to pledge money to an idea, tho I'm unsure how I can implement this kind of payment system. If the the idea receives a specified amount of money, then the donors are charged. If it doesn't, the donors are not charged. I've done some preliminary research and have found Amazon Payments to be a possible solution provider for this, but I'm still unsure where to start with this and was hoping someone could point me in some right directions for how I can go about implementing this kind of payment structure in my web site. I should also note that this is primarily a prototype I'm building, so it's ok if the solution is limited to U.S. customers only. Also, I plan to build the site using Ruby on Rails. Thanks so much for your wisdom!

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  • Whats a good structure to save and retrieve locations of images?

    - by Goot
    I got a java-ee application, where I collect informations about movies. Im my backend I provide data like the name, description, genre and a random uuid. I also got lots of related files, which are stored on a file server. Including some screenshots, the dvd or bluRay cover and video trailers. My current approach is: When saving the files to the fileserver, I retrieve the movies random uuid (which is the primary key btw.). I then rename the files screenshot_[UUID]_1, screenshot_[UUID]_2 ... etc. Now, there are lots of other ways to handle this, like saving all filenames in a database or creating a dir structure on the fileserver for every uuid and, e.g., return all images in the "[uuid]/screenshots" folder via REST. I expect about 30k requests a day, so the service has to be pretty performant. Whats the best way to solve this?

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