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• Consumer Oriented Search In Oracle Endeca Information Discovery – Part 1

  - by Bob Zurek

  Information Discovery, a core capability of Oracle Endeca Information Discovery, enables business users to rapidly search, discover and navigate through a wide variety of big data including structured, unstructured and semi-structured data. One of the key capabilities, among many, that differentiate our solution from others in the Information Discovery market is our deep support for search across this growing amount of varied big data. Our method and approach is very different than classic simple keyword search that is found in may information discovery solutions. In this first part of a series on the topic of search, I will walk you through many of the key capabilities that go beyond the simple search box that you might experience in products where search was clearly an afterthought or attempt to catch up to our core capabilities in this area. Lets explore. The core data management solution of Oracle Endeca Information Discovery is the Endeca Server, a hybrid search-analytical database that his highly scalable and column-oriented in nature. We will talk in more technical detail about the capabilities of the Endeca Server in future blog posts as this post is intended to give you a feel for the deep search capabilities that are an integral part of the Endeca Server. The Endeca Server provides best-of-breed search features aw well as a new class of features that are the first to be designed around the requirement to bridge structured, semi-structured and unstructured big data. Some of the key features of search include type a heads, automatic alphanumeric spell corrections, positional search, Booleans, wildcarding, natural language, and category search and query classification dialogs. This is just a subset of the advanced search capabilities found in Oracle Endeca Information Discovery. Search is an important feature that makes it possible for business users to explore on the diverse data sets the Endeca Server can hold at any one time. The search capabilities in the Endeca server differ from other Information Discovery products with simple “search boxes” in the following ways: The Endeca Server Supports Exploratory Search.  Enterprise data frequently requires the user to explore content through an ad hoc dialog, with guidance that helps them succeed. This has implications for how to design search features. Traditional search doesn’t assume a dialog, and so it uses relevance ranking to get its best guess to the top of the results list. It calculates many relevance factors for each query, like word frequency, distance, and meaning, and then reduces those many factors to a single score based on a proprietary “black box” formula. But how can a business users, searching, act on the information that the document is say only 38.1% relevant? In contrast, exploratory search gives users the opportunity to clarify what is relevant to them through refinements and summaries. This approach has received consumer endorsement through popular ecommerce sites where guided navigation across a broad range of products has helped consumers better discover choices that meet their, sometimes undetermined requirements. This same model exists in Oracle Endeca Information Discovery. In fact, the Endeca Server powers many of the most popular e-commerce sites in the world. The Endeca Server Supports Cascading Relevance. Traditional approaches of search reduce many relevance weights to a single score. This means that if a result with a good title match gets a similar score to one with an exact phrase match, they’ll appear next to each other in a list. But a user can’t deduce from their score why each got it’s ranking, even though that information could be valuable. Oracle Endeca Information Discovery takes a different approach. The Endeca Server stratifies results by a primary relevance strategy, and then breaks ties within a strata by ordering them with a secondary strategy, and so on. Application managers get the explicit means to compose these strategies based on their knowledge of their own domain. This approach gives both business users and managers a deterministic way to set and understand relevance. Now that you have an understanding of two of the core search capabilities in Oracle Endeca Information Discovery, our next blog post on this topic will discuss more advanced features including set search, second-order relevance as well as an understanding of faceted search mechanisms that include queries and filters.  

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• How to suggest using an ORM instead of stored procedures?

  - by Wayne M

  I work at a company that only uses stored procedures for all data access, which makes it very annoying to keep our local databases in sync as every commit we have to run new procs. I have used some basic ORMs in the past and I find the experience much better and cleaner. I'd like to suggest to the development manager and rest of the team that we look into using an ORM Of some kind for future development (the rest of the team are only familiar with stored procedures and have never used anything else). The current architecture is .NET 3.5 written like .NET 1.1, with "god classes" that use a strange implementation of ActiveRecord and return untyped DataSets which are looped over in code-behind files - the classes work something like this: class Foo { public bool LoadFoo() { bool blnResult = false; if (this.FooID == 0) { throw new Exception("FooID must be set before calling this method."); } DataSet ds = // ... call to Sproc if (ds.Tables[0].Rows.Count > 0) { foo.FooName = ds.Tables[0].Rows[0]["FooName"].ToString(); // other properties set blnResult = true; } return blnResult; } } // Consumer Foo foo = new Foo(); foo.FooID = 1234; foo.LoadFoo(); // do stuff with foo... There is pretty much no application of any design patterns. There are no tests whatsoever (nobody else knows how to write unit tests, and testing is done through manually loading up the website and poking around). Looking through our database we have: 199 tables, 13 views, a whopping 926 stored procedures and 93 functions. About 30 or so tables are used for batch jobs or external things, the remainder are used in our core application. Is it even worth pursuing a different approach in this scenario? I'm talking about moving forward only since we aren't allowed to refactor the existing code since "it works" so we cannot change the existing classes to use an ORM, but I don't know how often we add brand new modules instead of adding to/fixing current modules so I'm not sure if an ORM is the right approach (too much invested in stored procedures and DataSets). If it is the right choice, how should I present the case for using one? Off the top of my head the only benefits I can think of is having cleaner code (although it might not be, since the current architecture isn't built with ORMs in mind so we would basically be jury-rigging ORMs on to future modules but the old ones would still be using the DataSets) and less hassle to have to remember what procedure scripts have been run and which need to be run, etc. but that's it, and I don't know how compelling an argument that would be. Maintainability is another concern but one that nobody except me seems to be concerned about.

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• Isometric layer moving inside map

  - by gronzzz

  i'm created isometric map and now trying to limit layer moving. Main idea, that i have left bottom, right bottom, left top, right top points, that camera can not move outside, so player will not see map out of bounds. But i can not understand algorithm of how to do that. It's my layer scale/moving code. - (void)touchBegan:(UITouch *)touch withEvent:(UIEvent *)event { _isTouchBegin = YES; } - (void)touchMoved:(UITouch *)touch withEvent:(UIEvent *)event { NSArray *allTouches = [[event allTouches] allObjects]; UITouch *touchOne = [allTouches objectAtIndex:0]; CGPoint touchLocationOne = [touchOne locationInView: [touchOne view]]; CGPoint previousLocationOne = [touchOne previousLocationInView: [touchOne view]]; // Scaling if ([allTouches count] == 2) { _isDragging = NO; UITouch *touchTwo = [allTouches objectAtIndex:1]; CGPoint touchLocationTwo = [touchTwo locationInView: [touchTwo view]]; CGPoint previousLocationTwo = [touchTwo previousLocationInView: [touchTwo view]]; CGFloat currentDistance = sqrt( pow(touchLocationOne.x - touchLocationTwo.x, 2.0f) + pow(touchLocationOne.y - touchLocationTwo.y, 2.0f)); CGFloat previousDistance = sqrt( pow(previousLocationOne.x - previousLocationTwo.x, 2.0f) + pow(previousLocationOne.y - previousLocationTwo.y, 2.0f)); CGFloat distanceDelta = currentDistance - previousDistance; CGPoint pinchCenter = ccpMidpoint(touchLocationOne, touchLocationTwo); pinchCenter = [self convertToNodeSpace:pinchCenter]; CGFloat predictionScale = self.scale + (distanceDelta * PINCH_ZOOM_MULTIPLIER); if([self predictionScaleInBounds:predictionScale]) { [self scale:predictionScale scaleCenter:pinchCenter]; } } else { // Dragging _isDragging = YES; CGPoint previous = [[CCDirector sharedDirector] convertToGL:previousLocationOne]; CGPoint current = [[CCDirector sharedDirector] convertToGL:touchLocationOne]; CGPoint delta = ccpSub(current, previous); self.position = ccpAdd(self.position, delta); } } - (void)touchEnded:(UITouch *)touch withEvent:(UIEvent *)event { _isDragging = NO; _isTouchBegin = NO; // Check if i need to bounce _touchLoc = [touch locationInNode:self]; } #pragma mark - Update - (void)update:(CCTime)delta { CGPoint position = self.position; float scale = self.scale; static float friction = 0.92f; //0.96f; if(_isDragging && !_isScaleBounce) { _velocity = ccp((position.x - _lastPos.x)/2, (position.y - _lastPos.y)/2); _lastPos = position; } else { _velocity = ccp(_velocity.x * friction, _velocity.y *friction); position = ccpAdd(position, _velocity); self.position = position; } if (_isScaleBounce && !_isTouchBegin) { float min = fabsf(self.scale - MIN_SCALE); float max = fabsf(self.scale - MAX_SCALE); int dif = max > min ? 1 : -1; if ((scale > MAX_SCALE - SCALE_BOUNCE_AREA) || (scale < MIN_SCALE + SCALE_BOUNCE_AREA)) { CGFloat newSscale = scale + dif * (delta * friction); [self scale:newSscale scaleCenter:_touchLoc]; } else { _isScaleBounce = NO; } } }

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• SQL Azure Security: DoS Part II

  - by Herve Roggero

  Ah!  When you shoot yourself in the foot... a few times... it hurts! That's what I did on Sunday, to learn more about the behavior of the SQL Azure Denial Of Service prevention feature. This article is a short follow up to my last post on this feature. In this post, I will outline some of the lessons learned that were the result of testing the behavior of SQL Azure from two machines. From the standpoint of SQL Azure, they look like one machine since they are behind a NAT. All logins affected The first thing to note is that all the logins are affected. If you lock yourself out to a specific database, none of the logins will work on that database. In fact the database size becomes "--" in the SQL Azure Portal.   Less than 100 sessions I was able to see 50+ sessions being made in SQL Azure (by looking at sys.dm_exec_sessions) before being locked out. The the DoS feature appears to be triggered in part by the number of open sessions. I could not determine if the lockout is triggered by the speed at which connection requests are made however.   Other Databases Unaffected This was interesting... the DoS feature works at the database level. Other databases were available for me to use.   Just Wait Initially I thought that going through SQL Azure and connecting from there would reset the database and allow me to connect again. Unfortunately this doesn't seem to be the case. You will have to wait. And the more you lock yourself out, the more you will have to wait... The first time the database became available again within 30 seconds or so; the second time within 2-3 minutes and the third time... within 2-3 hours...   Successful Logins The DoS feature appears to engage only for valid logins. If you have a login failure, it doesn't seem to count. I ran a test with over 100 login failures without being locked.

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• Strings in .NET are Enumerable

  - by Scott Dorman

  It seems like there is always some confusion concerning strings in .NET. This is both from developers who are new to the Framework and those that have been working with it for quite some time. Strings in the .NET Framework are represented by the System.String class, which encapsulates the data manipulation, sorting, and searching methods you most commonly perform on string data. In the .NET Framework, you can use System.String (which is the actual type name or the language alias (for C#, string). They are equivalent so use whichever naming convention you prefer but be consistent. Common usage (and my preference) is to use the language alias (string) when referring to the data type and String (the actual type name) when accessing the static members of the class. Many mainstream programming languages (like C and C++) treat strings as a null terminated array of characters. The .NET Framework, however, treats strings as an immutable sequence of Unicode characters which cannot be modified after it has been created. Because strings are immutable, all operations which modify the string contents are actually creating new string instances and returning those. They never modify the original string data. There is one important word in the preceding paragraph which many people tend to miss: sequence. In .NET, strings are treated as a sequence…in fact, they are treated as an enumerable sequence. This can be verified if you look at the class declaration for System.String, as seen below: // Summary:// Represents text as a series of Unicode characters.public sealed class String : IEnumerable, IComparable, IComparable<string>, IEquatable<string> The first interface that String implements is IEnumerable, which has the following definition: // Summary:// Exposes the enumerator, which supports a simple iteration over a non-generic// collection.public interface IEnumerable{ // Summary: // Returns an enumerator that iterates through a collection. // // Returns: // An System.Collections.IEnumerator object that can be used to iterate through // the collection. IEnumerator GetEnumerator();} As a side note, System.Array also implements IEnumerable. Why is that important to know? Simply put, it means that any operation you can perform on an array can also be performed on a string. This allows you to write code such as the following: string s = "The quick brown fox";foreach (var c in s){ System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine(c);}for (int i = 0; i < s.Length; i++){ System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine(s[i]);} If you executed those lines of code in a running application, you would see the following output in the Visual Studio Output window: In the case of a string, these enumerable or array operations return a char (System.Char) rather than a string. That might lead you to believe that you can get around the string immutability restriction by simply treating strings as an array and assigning a new character to a specific index location inside the string, like this: string s = "The quick brown fox";s[2] = 'a';   However, if you were to write such code, the compiler will promptly tell you that you can’t do it: This preserves the notion that strings are immutable and cannot be changed once they are created. (Incidentally, there is no built in way to replace a single character like this. It can be done but it would require converting the string to a character array, changing the appropriate indexed location, and then creating a new string.)

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• How to show pending messages using WLST?

  - by lmestre

  Here are the steps: 1. . ./setDomainEnv.sh2. java weblogic.WLST3. connect('weblogic','welcome1','t3://localhost:7001')4. domainRuntime()5. cd('ServerRuntimes/MS1/JMSRuntime/MS1.jms/JMSServers/JMSServer1/Destinations/JMSModule1!Queue1')6. cursor1=cmo.getMessages('true',9999999,10)                                                 **String(selector),Integer(timeout),Integer(state)7. msgs = cmo.getNext(cursor1, 10)                  ** This step gets 10 messages, you can call again cmo.getNext(cursor1, 10) to get the next 10 msgs8. print(msgs)My assumption, is that you had created:a. Managed Server MS1.b. JMS Server JMSServer1.c. Module called JMSModule1.d. Inside of JMSModule1, a Queue called Queue1.If you read my previous post:How to get Messages Pending Count from a Queue using WLST? https://blogs.oracle.com/LuzMestre/entry/how_to_get_messages_pendingYou can see that both are very similar.  Sometimes it is difficult to get a WLST Script sample, but you can use ls() function to know about other functionalities you don't have a sample code.***Until step 5, nothing new comparing to my previous post.5. cd('ServerRuntimes/MS1/JMSRuntime/MS1.jms/JMSServers/JMSServer1/Destinations/JMSModule1!Queue1')6. ls()You will see, MessagesPendingCount, getMessages along a lot of other functionalities available in this Queue. e.g, you can see:-r-x   getMessages                                  String : String(selector),Integer(timeout),Integer(state)Here you can check the complete MBean Reference:http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E23943_01/apirefs.1111/e13951/core/index.htmlSee JMSDestinationRuntimeMBean.Enjoy!

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• How are Reads Distributed in a Workload

  - by Bill Graziano

  People have uploaded nearly one millions rows of trace data to TraceTune.  That’s enough data to start to look at the results in aggregate.  The first thing I want to look at is logical reads.  This is the easiest metric to identify and fix. When you upload a trace, I rank each statement based on the total number of logical reads.  I also calculate each statement’s percentage of the total logical reads.  I do the same thing for CPU, duration and logical writes.  When you view a statement you can see all the details like this: This single statement consumed 61.4% of the total logical reads on the system while we were tracing it.  I also wanted to see the distribution of reads across statements.  That graph looks like this: On average, the highest ranked statement consumed just under 50% of the reads on the system.  When I tune a system, I’m usually starting in one of two modes: this “piece” is slow or the whole system is slow.  If a given piece (screen, report, query, etc.) is slow you can usually find the specific statements behind it and tune it.  You can make that individual piece faster but you may not affect the whole system. When you’re trying to speed up an entire server you need to identity those queries that are using the most disk resources in aggregate.  Fixing those will make them faster and it will leave more disk throughput for the rest of the queries. Here are some of the things I’ve learned querying this data: The highest ranked query averages just under 50% of the total reads on the system. The top 3 ranked queries average 73% of the total reads on the system. The top 10 ranked queries average 91% of the total reads on the system. Remember these are averages across all the traces that have been uploaded.  And I’m guessing that people mainly upload traces where there are performance problems so your mileage may vary. I also learned that slow queries aren’t the problem.  Before I wrote ClearTrace I used to identify queries by filtering on high logical reads using Profiler.  That picked out individual queries but those rarely ran often enough to put a large load on the system. If you look at the execution count by rank you’d see that the highest ranked queries also have the highest execution counts.  The graph would look very similar to the one above but flatter.  These queries don’t look that bad individually but run so often that they hog the disk capacity. The take away from all this is that you really should be tuning the top 10 queries if you want to make your system faster.  Tuning individually slow queries will help those specific queries but won’t have much impact on the system as a whole.

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• How to refactor my design, if it seems to require multiple inheritance?

  - by Omega

  Recently I made a question about Java classes implementing methods from two sources (kinda like multiple inheritance). However, it was pointed out that this sort of need may be a sign of a design flaw. Hence, it is probably better to address my current design rather than trying to simulate multiple inheritance. Before tackling the actual problem, some background info about a particular mechanic in this framework: It is a simple game development framework. Several components allocate some memory (like pixel data), and it is necessary to get rid of it as soon as you don't need it. Sprites are an example of this. Anyway, I decided to implement something ala Manual-Reference-Counting from Objective-C. Certain classes, like Sprites, contain an internal counter, which is increased when you call retain(), and decreased on release(). Thus the Resource abstract class was created. Any subclass of this will obtain the retain() and release() implementations for free. When its count hits 0 (nobody is using this class), it will call the destroy() method. The subclass needs only to implement destroy(). This is because I don't want to rely on the Garbage Collector to get rid of unused pixel data. Game objects are all subclasses of the Node class - which is the main construction block, as it provides info such as position, size, rotation, etc. See, two classes are used often in my game. Sprites and Labels. Ah... but wait. Sprites contain pixel data, remember? And as such, they need to extend Resource. But this, of course, can't be done. Sprites ARE nodes, hence they must subclass Node. But heck, they are resources too. Why not making Resource an interface? Because I'd have to re-implement retain() and release(). I am avoiding this in virtue of not writing the same code over and over (remember that there are multiple classes that need this memory-management system). Why not composition? Because I'd still have to implement methods in Sprite (and similar classes) that essentially call the methods of Resource. I'd still be writing the same code over and over! What is your advice in this situation, then?

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• The Internet Key Wave MW833UP is not recognized in Ubuntu

  - by gio900

  I can't use my Onda MW833UP... :( Any advice? Here is something that someone else may understand: ~$: lsb_release -a No LSB modules are available. Distributor ID: Ubuntu Description: Ubuntu 11.10 Release: 11.10 Codename: oneiric ~$: lsusb Bus 001 Device 005: ID 1ee8:0012 ~$: dmesg [ 22.709475] cdc_acm 1-1:1.0: ttyACM0: USB ACM device [ 22.714856] usbcore: registered new interface driver cdc_acm [ 22.714866] cdc_acm: USB Abstract Control Model driver for USB modems and ISDN adapters [ 23.520490] ieee80211 phy0: wl_ops_bss_info_changed: arp filtering: enabled true, count 1 (implement) [ 24.244530] usbcore: registered new interface driver usbserial [ 24.244575] USB Serial support registered for generic [ 24.244673] usbcore: registered new interface driver usbserial_generic [ 24.244681] usbserial: USB Serial Driver core [ 24.265879] USB Serial support registered for GSM modem (1-port) [ 24.285680] usbcore: registered new interface driver option [ 24.285691] option: v0.7.2:USB Driver for GSM modems [ 24.425878] EXT4-fs (sda9): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro,commit=600 [ 24.736540] EXT4-fs (sda8): re-mounted. Opts: commit=600 [ 35.705796] Easy slow down manager: checking for SABI support. [ 35.706002] Easy slow down manager: SABI is supported (f5189) [ 36.060099] usbcore: deregistering interface driver uvcvideo [ 139.508061] CE: hpet increased min_delta_ns to 20113 nsec [ 6798.378917] usb 1-1: USB disconnect, device number 5 [ 6809.108232] usb 1-1: new high speed USB device number 6 using ehci_hcd [ 6809.242692] scsi5 : usb-storage 1-1:1.0 [ 6810.241257] scsi 5:0:0:0: CD-ROM Onda Datacard CD-ROM 0001 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0 [ 6810.241841] scsi 5:0:0:1: Direct-Access Onda Storage 0001 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0 [ 6810.271410] sr0: scsi3-mmc drive: 0x/0x caddy [ 6810.272099] sr 5:0:0:0: Attached scsi CD-ROM sr0 [ 6810.272852] sr 5:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg1 type 5 [ 6810.279954] sd 5:0:0:1: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk [ 6810.281210] sd 5:0:0:1: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0 [ 6810.380591] sr0: CDROM (ioctl) error, command: Xpwrite, Read disk info 51 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 [ 6810.380617] sr: Sense Key : Hardware Error [current] [ 6810.380625] sr: Add. Sense: No additional sense information [ 6810.613937] sr0: CDROM (ioctl) error, command: Xpwrite, Read disk info 51 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 [ 6810.613972] sr: Sense Key : Hardware Error [current] [ 6810.613984] sr: Add. Sense: No additional sense information [ 6810.673716] usb 1-1: USB disconnect, device number 6 [ 6815.572142] usb 1-1: new high speed USB device number 7 using ehci_hcd [ 6815.706828] cdc_acm 1-1:1.0: ttyACM0: USB ACM device The last 3 lines are where I inserted the Internet key, then reconnected it. usb-device T: Bus=01 Lev=01 Prnt=01 Port=00 Cnt=01 Dev#= 7 Spd=480 MxCh= 0 D: Ver= 2.00 Cls=ef(misc ) Sub=02 Prot=01 MxPS=64 #Cfgs= 1 P: Vendor=1ee8 ProdID=0012 Rev=00.01 S: Manufacturer=Onda S: Product=MW833UP S: SerialNumber=9230B35D870F9CB7AE684EACC5C12BE5EC33B26E C: #Ifs= 2 Cfg#= 1 Atr=a0 MxPwr=500mA I: If#= 0 Alt= 0 #EPs= 1 Cls=02(commc) Sub=02 Prot=01 Driver=cdc_acm I: If#= 1 Alt= 0 #EPs= 2 Cls=0a(data ) Sub=00 Prot=00 Driver=cdc_acm Then there is /dev/ttyACM0. When the key is connected to the USB port, everything that will meant...

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• How to deal with overly aggressive "Link Take Down Demands"?

  - by Eoin

  I've been receiving a large number of emails recently requesting I clean from link spam from my forum. Initially the emails were very polite and professional, and I was happy to remove the links. Recently the email have gotten very abrasive, here is a particularly rude example: From: [email protected] To: [email protected] Hi, This is the second time we are reaching out to you regarding your link to our site hxxp://www.company-two.com from hxxp://www.my-forum.com/some-topic-id. We really do need to remove this link. We have to report to Google any link we were unable to remove, and I wouldn't want to have to include your site in the list. Could you please remove our link from this page and any other page on your site? Thank You, Name Changed Behind the superficial pleasantries I feel there is some very real maliciousness. Note the email address, DMCA Violations, I don't see how the DMCA is involved here, except as a word which tends to strike fear in many people. Also relating to the email address, it doesn't match the company being linked to at all. How am I to trust they are truely operating on behalf of company-two when they don't even use one of it's email addresses. My email is hidden by privacypost. While a service with legitimate uses, I feel it's highly unprofessional for communications between to companies. The claim "This is the second time..." Every email I've received has started like this, but a check of my spam filters has never revealed a 1st mail. Initially I gave them the benefit of the doubt, by now though it's clear this is a cheap ploy to start me off on the defensive. And finally worst of all- the threats of reporting me to Google if I don't do everything they ask. I sent a polite reply asking for more information. I have no idea if the email address was even valid but I never received any response. Much later I got this followup mail From: [email protected] To: [email protected] Hi, This is the final time we are reaching out to you regarding your link to our site hxxp://www.company-two.com from hxxp://www.my-forum.com/some-topic-id. We will soon be reporting to Google any link we were unable to remove, and currently your site will have to be on the list. Could you please remove our link from this page and any other page on your site? I appreciate your urgent attention to this matter. Thank You, Name Changed This time the from address was more personal, though still not obviously connected to the spammed company. Lets be honest, I don't for one second believe that the companies were the victim of a 3rd party spammer as they claim. The links in questions were generated well over a year ago, and I firmly believe the companies were directly responsible for the spam links in question, a type of spam that has plagued my forum. Now they have the audacity to demand I spend my time cleaning up their mess, using threats to ensure they get their way. Have recent changes in Googles algorithms meant all the cash they spent spamming the web has now turned into a liability? If so I can see why these companies are all of a sudden running scared. Frankly, cleaning up my forum is a good things, but the threats they are using sickens me. So my question here is specifically about the threats: Are they vaild, and would such reports to Google destroy my page rankings? Is there a way I can report this abusive behaviour to Google?

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• Profiling Startup Of VS2012 &ndash; Ants Profiler

  - by Alois Kraus

  I just downloaded ANTS Profiler 7.4 to check how fast it is and how deep I can analyze the startup of Visual Studio 2012. The Pro version which is useful does cost 445€ which is ok. To measure a complex system I decided to simply profile VS2012 (Update 1) on my older Intel 6600 2,4GHz with 3 GB RAM and a 32 bit Windows 7. Ants Profiler is really easy to use. So lets try it out. The Ants Profiler does want to start the profiled application by its own which seems to be rather common. I did choose Method Level timing of all managed methods. In the configuration menu I did want to get all call stacks to get full details. Once this is configured you are ready to go.   After that you can select the Method Grid to view Wall Clock Time in ms. I hate percentages which are on by default because I do want to look where absolute time is spent and not something else.   From the Method Grid I can drill down to see where time is spent in a nice and I can look at the decompiled methods where the time is spent. This does really look nice. But did you see the size of the scroll bar in the method grid? Although I wanted all call stacks I do get only about 4 pages of methods to drill down. From the scroll bar count I would guess that the profiler does show me about 150 methods for the complete VS startup. This is nonsense. I will never find a bottleneck in VS when I am presented only a fraction of the methods that were actually executed. I have also tried in the configuration window to also profile the extremely trivial functions but there was no noticeable difference. It seems that the Ants Profiler does filter away way too many details to be useful for bigger systems. If you want to optimize a CPU bound operation inside NUnit then Ants Profiler is with its line level timings a very nice tool to work with. But for bigger stuff it is certainly not usable. I also do not like that I must start the profiled application from the profiler UI. This makes it hard to profile processes which are started by some other process. Next: JetBrains dotTrace

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• Make the Time

  - by WonderOfItAll

  Took the little one to the pool tonight for swim lessons. Okay, Okay. They're not really lessons so much as they are "Hey, here's a few bucks, let me rent out a small section of your pool to swim around with my little one" Saw a dad at the pool. Bluetooth on, iPad in hand, and two year old somewhere around there. Saw a mom at the pool. Arguing with her five year old to NOT take a shower after swimming. Bluetooth on, iPad in hand, work laptop open on stadium seats. Her reasoning for not wanting the child to shower "Look, I have to get this stuff to the office by 6:30, we don't have time for you to shower. Let's go" Wait, isn't the whole point of this little experience called Mommy and Me (or, as in my case, Daddy and Me). Wherein Mommy/Daddy is supposed to spend time with little one. Not with the Bluetooth. Not with the work laptop. Dad (yeah, the same dad from earlier), in the pool. Bluetooth off (it's not waterproof or I'm sure he would've had it on), two year old in hand and iPad somewhere put away. Getting frustrated with kid because he won't 'perform' on command. Here's a little exchange Kid: "I don't wanna get in the water" Dad: "Well, we're here for 30 minutes, get in the water" Kid: "No, don't wanna" Dad: "Fine, I'm getting in" and, true to his word, in he goes, off to swim. Kid: Crying Dad: "Well, c'mon" Kid: Walking to stands Dad: Ignoring kid Kid: At stands Dad: Out of pool, drying off. Frustrated. Grabs bag, grabs kid, leaves How sad. It really seems like I am living in a generation of parents who view their children as one big scheduled distraction to another. It's almost like the dad was saying "Look, little 2 year old boy, I have a busy scheduled. Right now my Outlook Calendar tells me that I have 30 mins to spend with you, so, let's go kid: PERFORM because I have the time" Really? Can someone please tell me when the hell this happened? When did spending time with your kid, spending time with your family, spending time with your spouse, etc... become a distraction? I've seen people at work all day Tweeting throughout the day, checked in with Four Square, IM up and running constantly so they can 'stay in touch' only to see these same folks come home and be irritated because their kids or their spouse wants to connect with the. I've seen these very same people leave the house, go to the corner bar/store/you-name-the-place to be 'alone' only to find them there, plugged in, tweeting away, etc, etc, etc I LOVE technology. I love working with technology. But I also know that I am a human being. A person who, by very definition, is a social being. I needed social interactions and contact--and, no, I'm not talking about the Social Graph kind of connections, I'm talking about those interactions which, *GASP* involve eye to eye contact and human contact. A recent study found that the number one complaint of kids is that they feel they have to compete with technology for their parents time and attention. The number one wish from high school kids? That there parents would turn off the computer/tv/cell phone at dinner. This, coming from high school kids. Shouldn't that tell you a whole helluva lot? So, do yourself a favor tomorrow. Plug into technology all day. Throw yourself into it. Be passionate about what you do. When you walk through the door to your family, turn it all off for 30 mins and be there with your loved ones. If you can manage to play Angry Birds, I'm sure you can handle being disconnected for 30 minutes. Make the time

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• Consumer Oriented Search In Oracle Endeca Information Discovery - Part 2

  - by Bob Zurek

  As discussed in my last blog posting on this topic, Information Discovery, a core capability of the Oracle Endeca Information Discovery solution enables businesses to search, discover and navigate through a wide variety of big data including structured, unstructured and semi-structured data. With search as a core advanced capabilities of our product it is important to understand some of the key differences and capabilities in the underlying data store of Oracle Endeca Information Discovery and that is our Endeca Server. In the last post on this subject, we talked about Exploratory Search capabilities along with support for cascading relevance. Additional search capabilities in the Endeca Server, which differentiate from simple keyword based "search boxes" in other Information Discovery products also include: The Endeca Server Supports Set Search.  The Endeca Server is organized around set retrieval, which means that it looks at groups of results (all the documents that match a search), as well as the relationship of each individual result to the set. Other approaches only compute the relevance of a document by comparing the document to the search query – not by comparing the document to all the others. For example, a search for “U.S.” in another approach might match to the title of a document and get a high ranking. But what if it were a collection of government documents in which “U.S.” appeared in many titles, making that clue less meaningful? A set analysis would reveal this and be used to adjust relevance accordingly. The Endeca Server Supports Second-Order Relvance. Unlike simple search interfaces in traditional BI tools, which provide limited relevance ranking, such as a list of results based on key word matching, Endeca enables users to determine the most salient terms to divide up the result. Determining this second-order relevance is the key to providing effective guidance. Support for Queries and Filters. Search is the most common query type, but hardly complete, and users need to express a wide range of queries. Oracle Endeca Information Discovery also includes navigation, interactive visualizations, analytics, range filters, geospatial filters, and other query types that are more commonly associated with BI tools. Unlike other approaches, these queries operate across structured, semi-structured and unstructured content stored in the Endeca Server. Furthermore, this set is easily extensible because the core engine allows for pluggable features to be added. Like a search engine, queries are answered with a results list, ranked to put the most likely matches first. Unlike “black box” relevance solutions, which generalize one strategy for everyone, we believe that optimal relevance strategies vary across domains. Therefore, it provides line-of-business owners with a set of relevance modules that let them tune the best results based on their content. The Endeca Server query result sets are summarized, which gives users guidance on how to refine and explore further. Summaries include Guided Navigation® (a form of faceted search), maps, charts, graphs, tag clouds, concept clusters, and clarification dialogs. Users don’t explicitly ask for these summaries; Oracle Endeca Information Discovery analytic applications provide the right ones, based on configurable controls and rules. For example, the analytic application might guide a procurement agent filtering for in-stock parts by visualizing the results on a map and calculating their average fulfillment time. Furthermore, the user can interact with summaries and filters without resorting to writing complex SQL queries. The user can simply just click to add filters. Within Oracle Endeca Information Discovery, all parts of the summaries are clickable and searchable. We are living in a search driven society where business users really seem to enjoy entering information into a search box. We do this everyday as consumers and therefore, we have gotten used to looking for that box. However, the key to getting the right results is to guide that user in a way that provides additional Discovery, beyond what they may have anticipated. This is why these important and advanced features of search inside the Endeca Server have been so important. They have helped to guide our great customers to success. 

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• How to get better at solving Dynamic programming problems

  - by newbie

  I recently came across this question: "You are given a boolean expression consisting of a string of the symbols 'true', 'false', 'and', 'or', and 'xor'. Count the number of ways to parenthesize the expression such that it will evaluate to true. For example, there is only 1 way to parenthesize 'true and false xor true' such that it evaluates to true." I knew it is a dynamic programming problem so i tried to come up with a solution on my own which is as follows. Suppose we have a expression as A.B.C.....D where '.' represents any of the operations and, or, xor and the capital letters represent true or false. Lets say the number of ways for this expression of size K to produce a true is N. when a new boolean value E is added to this expression there are 2 ways to parenthesize this new expression 1. ((A.B.C.....D).E) ie. with all possible parenthesizations of A.B.C.....D we add E at the end. 2. (A.B.C.(D.E)) ie. evaluate D.E first and then find the number of ways this expression of size K can produce true. suppose T[K] is the number of ways the expression with size K produces true then T[k]=val1+val2+val3 where val1,val2,val3 are calculated as follows. 1)when E is grouped with D. i)It does not change the value of D ii)it inverses the value of D in the first case val1=T[K]=N.( As this reduces to the initial A.B.C....D expression ). In the second case re-evaluate dp[K] with value of D reversed and that is val1. 2)when E is grouped with the whole expression. //val2 contains the number of 'true' E will produce with expressions which gave 'true' among all parenthesized instances of A.B.C.......D i) if true.E = true then val2 = N ii) if true.E = false then val2 = 0 //val3 contains the number of 'true' E will produce with expressions which gave 'false' among all parenthesized instances of A.B.C.......D iii) if false.E=true then val3=( 2^(K-2) - N ) = M ie. number of ways the expression with size K produces a false [ 2^(K-2) is the number of ways to parenthesize an expression of size K ]. iv) if false.E=false then val3 = 0 This is the basic idea i had in mind but when i checked for its solution http://people.csail.mit.edu/bdean/6.046/dp/dp_9.swf the approach there was completely different. Can someone tell me what am I doing wrong and how can i get better at solving DP so that I can come up with solutions like the one given above myself. Thanks in advance.

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• SEO effects of intermix of WP blog, custom PHP site and FB app game

  - by melbournetechlover

  We're a melbourne tech company in the process of building a custom site in PHP. We plan to launch a "pre-launch" page which is also custom coded (CSS3 on twitter bootstrap framework + HTML5 front end and PHP back end). On that site will be a link to a blog - the idea behind this is to build up ranking for a variety of relevant keywords prior to the full site going live (given the majority of the site is a member only community anyway so the blog is really the main way we'll be able to execute on-site SEO. Ideally, we would like to install wordpress in a subdirectory on our servers and just customise the header to look the same as the landing page of the website. But some questions and concerns... Is there any detrimental effect on SEO efforts in having two separate systems (one custom PHP, the other an installation of wordpress) to manage the blog vs the rest of the site? Are there any benefits or detriments to installing on a sub domain such as blog.sitename.com vs. sitename.com/blog. My preference would be sitename.com/blog as it feels neater - but open to suggestions based on knowledge of Google preferences. Separately, we are building a Facebook app which is under another site name. Again because we are launching this app first, from an SEO perspective, would it actually be better to run it from a sub domain on the main site - e.g. gamename.mainsitename.com instead of on app.gamename.com? Currently we have it on app.gamename.com, but if there are SEO benefits to moving it to the other domain and server then we'll do it. Basically we don't want to have our SEO efforts divided - will Google algorithms prefer two sites heavily referring traffic, or is it better to focus our efforts on one. I guess that's the crux of the issue. But the other one is - does Google care about traffic accessing a page built for the Facebook app iFrame - does that count toward rankings? Sorry I hope these questions aren't too complex - but we're in the tech world every day and still can't seem to find a good answer to these ones...hence I'm taking to the forums!! Free beer for whoever can give me a solid answer!

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• Identifying which pattern fits better.

  - by Daniel Grillo

  I'm developing a software to program a device. I have some commands like Reset, Read_Version, Read_memory, Write_memory, Erase_memory. Reset and Read_Version are fixed. They don't need parameters. Read_memory and Erase_memory need the same parameters that are Length and Address. Write_memory needs Lenght, Address and Data. For each command, I have the same steps in sequence, that are something like this sendCommand, waitForResponse, treatResponse. I'm having difficulty to identify which pattern should I use. Factory, Template Method, Strategy or other pattern. Edit I'll try to explain better taking in count the given comments and answers. I've already done this software and now I'm trying to refactoring it. I'm trying to use patterns, even if it is not necessary because I'm taking advantage of this little software to learn about some patterns. Despite I think that one (or more) pattern fits here and it could improve my code. When I want to read version of the software of my device, I don't have to assembly the command with parameters. It is fixed. So I have to send it. After wait for response. If there is a response, treat (or parse) it and returns. To read a portion of the memory (maximum of 256 bytes), I have to assembly the command using the parameters Len and Address. So I have to send it. After wait for response. If there is a response, treat (or parse) it and returns. To write a portion in the memory (maximum of 256 bytes), I have to assembly the command using the parameters Len, Address and Data. So I have to send it. After wait for response. If there is a response, treat (or parse) it and returns. I think that I could use Template Method because I have almost the same algorithm for all. But the problem is some commands are fixes, others have 2 or 3 parameters. I think that parameters should be passed on the constructor of the class. But each class will have a constructor overriding the abstract class constructor. Is this a problem for the template method? Should I use other pattern?

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• Creating an object that is ready to be used & unset properties - with IoC

  - by GetFuzzy

  I have a question regarding the specifics of object creation and the usage of properties. A best practice is to put all the properties into a state such that the object is useful when its created. Object constructors help ensure that required dependencies are created. I've found myself following a pattern lately, and then questioning its appropriateness. The pattern looks like this... public class ThingProcesser { public List<Thing> CalculatedThings { get; set; } public ThingProcesser() { CalculatedThings = new List<Thing>(); } public double FindCertainThing() { CheckForException(); foreach (var thing in CalculatedThings) { //do some stuff with things... } } public double FindOtherThing() { CheckForException(); foreach (var thing in CalculatedThings) { //do some stuff with things... } } private void CheckForException() { if (CalculatedThings.Count < 2) throw new InvalidOperationException("Calculated things must have more than 2 items"); } } The list of items is not being changed, just looked through by the methods. There are several methods on the class, and to avoid having to pass the list of things to each function as a method parameter, I set it once on the class. While this works, does it violate the principle of least astonishment? Since starting to use IoC I find myself not sticking things into the constructor, to avoid having to use a factory pattern. For example, I can argue with myself and say well the ThingProcessor really needs a List to work, so the object should be constructed like this. public class ThingProcesser { public List<Thing> CalculatedThings { get; set; } public ThingProcesser(List<Thing> calculatedThings) { CalculatedThings = calculatedThings; } } However, if I did this, it would complicate things for IoC, and this scenario hardly seems appropriate for something like the factory pattern. So in summary, are there some good guidelines for when something should be part of the object state, vs. passed as a method parameter? When using IoC, is the factory pattern the best way to deal with objects that need created with state? If something has to be passed to multiple methods in a class, does that render it a good candidate to be part of the objects state?

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• The long road to bug-free software

  - by Tony Davis

  The past decade has seen a burgeoning interest in functional programming languages such as Haskell or, in the Microsoft world, F#. Though still on the periphery of mainstream programming, functional programming concepts are gradually seeping into the imperative C# language (for example, Lambda expressions have their root in functional programming). One of the more interesting concepts from functional programming languages is the use of formal methods, the lofty ideal behind which is bug-free software. The idea is that we write a specification that describes exactly how our function (say) should behave. We then prove that our function conforms to it, and in doing so have proved beyond any doubt that it is free from bugs. All programmers already use one form of specification, specifically their programming language's type system. If a value has a specific type then, in a type-safe language, the compiler guarantees that value cannot be an instance of a different type. Many extensions to existing type systems, such as generics in Java and .NET, extend the range of programs that can be type-checked. Unfortunately, type systems can only prevent some bugs. To take a classic problem of retrieving an index value from an array, since the type system doesn't specify the length of the array, the compiler has no way of knowing that a request for the "value of index 4" from an array of only two elements is "unsafe". We restore safety via exception handling, but the ideal type system will prevent us from doing anything that is unsafe in the first place and this is where we start to borrow ideas from a language such as Haskell, with its concept of "dependent types". If the type of an array includes its length, we can ensure that any index accesses into the array are valid. The problem is that we now need to carry around the length of arrays and the values of indices throughout our code so that it can be type-checked. In general, writing the specification to prove a positive property, even for a problem very amenable to specification, such as a simple sorting algorithm, turns out to be very hard and the specification will be different for every program. Extend this to writing a specification for, say, Microsoft Word and we can see that the specification would end up being no simpler, and therefore no less buggy, than the implementation. Fortunately, it is easier to write a specification that proves that a program doesn't have certain, specific and undesirable properties, such as infinite loops or accesses to the wrong bit of memory. If we can write the specifications to prove that a program is immune to such problems, we could reuse them in many places. The problem is the lack of specification "provers" that can do this without a lot of manual intervention (i.e. hints from the programmer). All this might feel a very long way off, but computing power and our understanding of the theory of "provers" advances quickly, and Microsoft is doing some of it already. Via their Terminator research project they have started to prove that their device drivers will always terminate, and in so doing have suddenly eliminated a vast range of possible bugs. This is a huge step forward from saying, "we've tested it lots and it seems fine". What do you think? What might be good targets for specification and verification? SQL could be one: the cost of a bug in SQL Server is quite high given how many important systems rely on it, so there's a good incentive to eliminate bugs, even at high initial cost. [Many thanks to Mike Williamson for guidance and useful conversations during the writing of this piece] Cheers, Tony.

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• Bowing to User Experience

  As a consumer of geeky news it is hard to check my Google Reader without running into two or three posts about Apples iPad and in particular the changes to the developer guidelines which seemingly restrict developers to using Apples Xcode tool and Objective-C language for iPad apps. One of the alternatives to Objective-C affected, is MonoTouch, an option with some appeal to me as it is based on the Mono implementation of C#. Seemingly restricted is the key word here, as far as I can tell, no official announcement has been made about its fate. For more details around MonoTouch for iPhone OS, check out Miguel de Icazas post: http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2010/Apr-28.html. These restrictions have provoked some outrage as the perception is that Apple is arrogantly restricting developers freedom to create applications as they choose and perhaps unwittingly shortchanging iPhone/iPad users who wont benefit from these now never-to-be-made great applications. Apples response has mostly been to say they are concentrating on providing a certain user experience to their customers, and to do this, they insist everyone uses the tools they approve. Which isnt a surprising line of reasoning given Apple restricts the hardware used and content of the apps already. The vogue term for this approach is curated, as in a benevolent museum director selecting only the finest artifacts for display or a wise gardener arranging the plants in a garden just so. If this is what a curated experience is like it is hard to argue that consumers are not responding. My iPhone is probably the most satisfying piece of technology I own. Coming from the Razr, it really was an revolution in how the form factor, interface and user experience all tied together. While the curated approach reinvented the smart phone genre, it is easy to forget that this is not a new approach for Apple. Macbooks and Macs are Apple hardware that run Apple software. And theyve been successful, but not quite in the same way as the iPhone or iPad (based on early indications). Why not? Well a curated approach can only be wildly successful if the curator a) makes the right choices and b) offers choices that no one else has. Although its advantages are eroding, the iPhone was different from other phones, a unique, focused, touch-centric experience. The iPad is an attempt to define another category of computing. Macs and Macbooks are great devices, but are not fundamentally a different user experience than a PC, you still have windows, file folders, mouse and keyboard, and similar applications. So the big question for Apple is can they hold on to their market advantage, continuing innovating in user experience and stay on top? Or are they going be like Xerox, and the rest of the world says thank you for the windows metaphor, now let me implement that better? It will be exciting to watch, with Android already a viable competitor and Microsoft readying Windows Phone 7. And to close the loop back to the restrictions on developing for iPhone OS. At this point the main target appears to be Adobe and Adobe Flash. Apples calculation is that a) they dont need those developers or b) the developers they want will learn Apples stuff anyway. My guess is that they are correct; that as much as I like the idea of developers having more options, I am not going to buy a competitors product to spite Apple unless that product is just as usable. For a non-technical consumer, I dont know that this conversation even factors into the buying decision. If it did, wed be talking about how Microsoft is trying to retake a slice of market share from the behemoth that is Linux.Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Delay command execution over sockets

  - by David

  I've been trying to fix the game loop in a real time (tick delay) MUD. I realized using Thread.Sleep would seem clunky when the user spammed commands through their choice of client (Zmud, etc) e.g. east;south;southwest would wait three move ticks and then output everything from the past couple rooms. The game loop basically calls a Flush and Fill method for each socket during each tick (50ms) private void DoLoop() { Stopwatch stopWatch = new Stopwatch(); stopWatch.Start(); while (running) { // for each socket, flush and fill ConnectionMonitor.Update(); stopWatch.Stop(); WaitIfNeeded(stopWatch.ElapsedMilliseconds); stopWatch.Reset(); } } The Fill method fires the command events, but as mentioned before, they currently block using Thread.Sleep. I tried adding a "ready" flag to the state object that attempts to execute the command along with a queue of spammed commands, but it ends up executing one command and queuing up the rest i.e. each subsequent command executes something that got queued up that should've been executed before. I must be missing something about the timer. private readonly Queue<SpammedCommand> queuedCommands = new Queue<SpammedCommand>(); private bool ready = true; private void TryExecuteCommand(string input) { var commandContext = CommandContext.Create(input); var player = Server.Current.Database.Get<Player>(Session.Player.Key); var commandInfo = Server.Current.CommandLookup .FindCommand(commandContext.CommandName, player.IsAdmin); if (commandInfo != null) { if (!ready) { // queue command queuedCommands.Enqueue(new SpammedCommand() { Context = commandContext, Info = commandInfo }); return; } if (queuedCommands.Count > 0) { // queue the incoming command queuedCommands.Enqueue(new SpammedCommand() { Context = commandContext, Info = commandInfo, }); // dequeue and execute var command = queuedCommands.Dequeue(); command.Info.Command.Execute(Session, command.Context); setTimeout(command.Info.TickLength); return; } commandInfo.Command.Execute(Session, commandContext); setTimeout(commandInfo.TickLength); } else { Session.WriteLine("Command not recognized"); } } Finally, setTimeout was supposed to set the execution delay (TickLength) for that command, and makeReady just sets the ready flag on the state object to true. private void setTimeout(TickDelay tickDelay) { ready = false; var t = new System.Timers.Timer() { Interval = (long) tickDelay, AutoReset = false, }; t.Elapsed += makeReady; t.Start(); // fire this in tickDelay ms } // MAKE READYYYYY!!!! private void makeReady(object sender, System.Timers.ElapsedEventArgs e) { ready = true; } Am I missing something about the System.Timers.Timer created in setTimeout? How can I execute (and output) spammed commands per TickLength without using Thread.Sleep?

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• LINQ to Twitter v2.1.09 Released

  - by Joe Mayo

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/WinAZ/archive/2013/10/15/linq-to-twitter-v2.1.09-released.aspxToday, I released LINQ to Twitter v2.1.09. Here are important new changes. Bug Fixes This is primarily a bug fix release. Most notably, there were authentication problems in WinRT apps. This is now fixed. New Features One new feature is the addition of ApplicationOnlyAuthentication for WinRT. It is fully async.  Here’s how it works: var auth = new WinRtApplicationOnlyAuthorizer { Credentials = new InMemoryCredentials { ConsumerKey = "", ConsumerSecret = "" } }; if (auth == null || !auth.IsAuthorized) { await auth.AuthorizeAsync(); } var twitterCtx = new TwitterContext(auth); (from search in twitterCtx.Search where search.Type == SearchType.Search && search.Query == SearchTextBox.Text select search) .MaterializedAsyncCallback( async response => await Dispatcher.RunAsync( CoreDispatcherPriority.Normal, async () => { Search searchResponse = response.State.Single(); string message = string.Format( "Search returned {0} statuses", searchResponse.Statuses.Count); await new MessageDialog(message, "Search Complete").ShowAsync(); })); It’s called the WinRtApplicationOnlyAuthorizer. You only need two tokens, ConsumerKey and ConsumerSecret, which come from your Twitter API application settings page. Note: You need a Twitter Application, which you can create at https://dev.twitter.com/. The MaterializedAsyncCallback materializes your query and handles the response. I put everything together in a lambda for demonstration purposes, but you can always replace the callback with a handler of type Action<TwitterAsyncResponse<IEnumerable<T>>>, where T is Search for this example. On the Horizon The next version of LINQ to Twitter is in development. I discussed it at LINQ to Twitter Async. This isn’t complete, but you can download the source code at the LINQ to Twitter site on CodePlex. I’ve competed all the spikes for what I thought would be the hard parts and now have prototypes of queries and commands working. This would be a good time to provide feedback if there are features in the current version that you think could be improved. The current driving forces for the next version will be async and PCL.   @JoeMayo

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• D&rsquo;Arcy&rsquo;s Book Club - The New Strategic Selling

  - by D'Arcy Lussier

  The New Strategic Selling Miller and Heiman Amazon.ca Amazon.com Chapters Everybody is a salesmen. Every day, without knowing it, we sell something to someone. Now, the typical vision people think of when they hear the word “sales” is the sleazy used car salesperson who does whatever they can to get you to buy the clunker on their lot. But selling is not an action tied to money and products. Selling is about convincing people to see your point of view and act on it. If you want your company to cover a trip to a conference, you may have to sell the idea to your boss. If you want to buy that new big screen TV, you have to sell the idea to your significant other. If you want to go on a weekend fishing trip with the boys you might be called in to help sell the idea to your buddies wife. We all sell, but we don’t all sell very well. So enter The New Strategic Selling, a book based on the sales course put on by the Miller-Heiman group. In fact, this isn’t really a “New” strategy to selling as its been around for a number of years. But the concepts they present, the ideas about selling, these are still very radical based on what most of us have experienced. Gone are the high pressure, win at all cost, GlenGarry-GlenRoss style of sales…instead the book presents a framework to switch to need-based selling. It’s the idea that instead of going in raving about a product or service, you build a relationship where the buyer expresses what their needs are and your response is to present a solution that best fits that need. Instead of focussing on the amount of money you can squeeze out of a client, you focus on whether everyone wins, that they receive win-results from the engagement, that repeat business is developed over time delivering value over and over again. The great thing about the book is that what it teaches…things like how to identify different buying influencers, how to prepare for meetings, techniques to solicit information about what the buyer is really thinking/feeling…these things are entirely applicable in *any* situation that you need to sell to someone…and remember: selling is convincing people to see your point of view and act on it. So that new big screen TV you want to buy but need to convince your wife on? This book can help you. That training opportunity you want your company to send you on? This book can help you. The upgrade to your community park that you want to lobby the local civic authorities for? This book can help you. The book is a bit wordy. I found that the length could have been reduced and the points still have gotten across. That’s really the only knock that I have though; the insight that it provides is so worthwhile that having to chew through extra words is well worth it. You definitely don’t have to be a professional salesperson to benefit from this book. Rating: 4/5

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• Admin Panel like Custom Framework

  - by bhuvin

  I want to Create a Framework , like Admin panel , which can rule almost all the aspects of what is shown on the frontend. For an (most basic) example: If suppose the links which are to be shown in a navigation area is passed from the server, with the order and the url , etc. The whole aim is to save the time on the tedious tasks. You can just start creating menus and start assigning pages to it. Give a url, actual files which are to be rendered (in case of static files.), in case of dynamic files, giving the file accordingly. And all this is fully server side manageable using different portlets, sort of things. So basic Roadmap is having : Areas like: Header Area - Which can contain logos, links etc. Navigation Area - Which can contains links and submenus. Content Area - Now this is where the tricky part is that that it has zones like: left, center & right. It contains Order in which it has to be displayed. So, when someday we want to change the way the articles appear on the page, we can do so easily, without any deployments. Now these zones can have n number of internal elements, like the word cloud, or the advertisement area. Footer Area: Again similar as Header Area. Currently there is a preexisting custom framework, which uses XSLT files for pulling out data from the server side. And it has the above capabilities. For example: If there's a grid it will be having a <table> tag embedded in the XSLT file. Now whatever might be the source of the data, we serialize this as XML and give it to the XSLT file and the html is derived from this and is appended to the layer in a page. The problem with this approach is: The XSLT conversion is occurring on the server side, so the server is responsible for getting the data, running XSLT transform, and append the html generated to the layer div. So, according to me, firstly this isn't the server's concern to do so. Secondly for larger applications this might be slower. Debugging isn't possible for XSLT transformation. So, whenever we face problems with data its always a bit of a trial & error method. Maintaining it is a bit of an eerie job i.e. styling changes, and other stuff. Adding dynamic values. Like JavaScript can't actually be very easily used in this. Secondly, we can't use JQuery or any other libraries with this since this is all occurring on the server. For now what I have thought about is using Templating - Javascript - JSON combination in place of XSLT, this will be offloaded to the client and the rendering will take place accordingly. This could solve the above problems and also could add mobile support for the same. Only problem which I could think of is that: It is much work and adding new portlets on the go needs to be looked into. What could be the alternatives for this? What kind of problems are there with the JavaScript approach? What are the different ways to implement the same? Are there any existing frameworks for similar usage?

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• Weird appearance for a 3D XNA ground

  - by Belos

  I wanted to add a ground so I can know the position of a helicopter in the world. But the ground appeared in a weird way: http://i.stack.imgur.com/yTSuW.jpg The ground had the following texture: http://i.stack.imgur.com/pdpxB.png EDIT: Sorry, I forgot to post the code: public class ImportModel { public Vector3 Position { get; set; } public Vector3 Rotation { get; set; } public Vector3 Scale { get; set; } Model Model; Matrix[] modeltransforms; GraphicsDevice GraphicDevice; ContentManager Content; BoundingSphere sphere; bool boundingimplemented = false; public ImportModel(string model, GraphicsDevice gd, ContentManager cm, Vector3 position, Vector3 rot, Vector3 sca) { GraphicDevice = gd; Content = cm; Position = position; Rotation = rot; Scale = sca; Model = Content.Load<Model>(model); modeltransforms = new Matrix[Model.Bones.Count]; Model.CopyAbsoluteBoneTransformsTo(modeltransforms); } public void Draw(Camera camera) { Matrix baseworld = Matrix.CreateScale(Scale) * Matrix.CreateFromYawPitchRoll(Rotation.Y, Rotation.X, Rotation.Z) * Matrix.CreateTranslation(Position); foreach (ModelMesh mesh in Model.Meshes) { Matrix localworld = modeltransforms[mesh.ParentBone.Index] * baseworld; foreach (ModelMeshPart meshpart in mesh.MeshParts) { BasicEffect effect = (BasicEffect)meshpart.Effect; effect.World = localworld; effect.View = camera.View; effect.Projection = camera.Projection; effect.EnableDefaultLighting(); } mesh.Draw(); } } public BoundingSphere BoundingSphere { get { if (!boundingimplemented) { foreach (ModelMesh mesh in Model.Meshes) { BoundingSphere transformed = mesh.BoundingSphere.Transform( modeltransforms[mesh.ParentBone.Index]); sphere = BoundingSphere.CreateMerged(sphere, transformed); } Matrix worldTransform = Matrix.CreateScale(Scale) * Matrix.CreateTranslation(Position); BoundingSphere transforme = sphere; transforme = transforme.Transform(worldTransform); return transforme; } else { Matrix worldTransform = Matrix.CreateScale(Scale) * Matrix.CreateTranslation(Position); BoundingSphere transformed = sphere; transformed = transformed.Transform(worldTransform); return transformed; } } } } Then I call the class from the Game1 class: ImportModel ground = new ImportModel("ground", GraphicsDevice, Content, Vector3.Zero, Vector3.Zero, new Vector3(20f)); EDIT2:This is how the scene looks from top: i.stack.imgur.com/Hs983.jpg

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• How do I randomly generate a top-down 2D level with separate sections and is infinite?

  - by Bagofsheep

  I've read many other questions/answers about random level generation but most of them deal with either randomly/proceduraly generating 2D levels viewed from the side or 3D levels. What I'm trying to achieve is sort of like you were looking straight down on a Minecraft map. There is no height, but the borders of each "biome" or "section" of the map are random and varied. I already have basic code that can generate a perfectly square level with the same tileset (randomly picking segments from the tileset image), but I've encountered a major issue for wanting the level to be infinite: Beyond a certain point, the tiles' positions become negative on one or both of the axis. The code I use to only draw tiles the player can see relies on taking the tiles position and converting it to the index number that represents it in the array. As you well know, arrays cannot have a negative index. Here is some of my code: This generates the square (or rectangle) of tiles: //Scale is in tiles public void Generate(int sX, int sY) { scaleX = sX; scaleY = sY; for (int y = 0; y <= scaleY; y++) { tiles.Add(new List<Tile>()); for (int x = 0; x <= scaleX; x++) { tiles[tiles.Count - 1].Add(tileset.randomTile(x * tileset.TileSize, y * tileset.TileSize)); } } } Before I changed the code after realizing an array index couldn't be negative my for loops looked something like this to center the map around (0, 0): for (int y = -scaleY / 2; y <= scaleY / 2; y++) for (int x = -scaleX / 2; x <= scaleX / 2; x++) Here is the code that draws the tiles: int startX = (int)Math.Floor((player.Position.X - (graphics.Viewport.Width) - tileset.TileSize) / tileset.TileSize); int endX = (int)Math.Ceiling((player.Position.X + (graphics.Viewport.Width) + tileset.TileSize) / tileset.TileSize); int startY = (int)Math.Floor((player.Position.Y - (graphics.Viewport.Height) - tileset.TileSize) / tileset.TileSize); int endY = (int)Math.Ceiling((player.Position.Y + (graphics.Viewport.Height) + tileset.TileSize) / tileset.TileSize); for (int y = startY; y < endY; y++) { for (int x = startX; x < endX; x++) { if (x >= 0 && y >= 0 && x <= scaleX && y <= scaleY) tiles[y][x].Draw(spriteBatch); } } So to summarize what I'm asking: First, how do I randomly generate a top-down 2D map with different sections (not chunks per se, but areas with different tile sets) and second, how do I get past this negative array index issue?

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