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• Easiest, most fun way to program 2D games? Flash? XNA? Some other engine?

  - by Maxi

  Hi, this is a post detailing my search for the most enjoyable way for a hobbyist game programmer to sweeten his free time with making a game. My requirements: I looked at Flash first, I made a couple of small games but I'm doubtful of the performance. I would like to make a fairly large strategy game, with several hundred units fighting simultaneously, explosions and animations included. Also zoomable maps. I saw that Adobe has a new 3D API for Flash, but I don't know if that improves 2D performance aswell, I couldn't find anything related to that question on their MAX10 sessions. Would you say that Flash is a good technology for making large 2D games easily? I really like Actionscript, and I love how easy everything is in Flash. There are several engines available which make it even easier. I just do this for fun, and it would be even better if there were proper animation/particle editors available and if the engine I were to use, would be available for multiple platforms. (so more people can play my game once finished). I'd like to have it available on many mobile platforms aswell. (because I love touch input for some reason) I do know the XNA framework pretty well, but there are no good engines available for it, and it will only run on Windows, which is a huge turn off. Even bigger is, that you need to install the XNA redistributable each time you want to give the game to someone. If I use XNA, I would have to make all the tools myself, and I'd probably have to make them with WPF. (I'd love to make tools with Adobe AIR, but unfortunately the API's for image manipulation etc. are far worse in Flash, than they are in XNA/WPF.) Now, I'm aware that I could make my own engine that supports each of those platforms, but quite frankly, that would be too much work plowing through APIs. After all, I want to make a game, not an engine. So the question becomes: Is there maybe a cross platform (free or free to develop?) engine available that I could use for 2D development? I prefer: C#, Actionscript. I don't mind using c++ if the toolset is above average, but I highly doubt that there is something out there like that. Please prove me wrong :) So summary: I'd like to use Flash, but I don't know if it scales well enough. I'm not a scripter, I want some real APIs that I can work with inside a proper IDE. Just for information, I looked at several alternatives, I'm actually looking for a long time already. You'd help me a lot to make a decision finally. Feature-wise the Flatredball engine would be ideal. But I tried their tools, and quite frankly, they are horrible. Absolutely unusable, I'd need to make my own for sure. I didn't look at their API, but if their tools are so bad, I'm not inclined to look further. Unity3D. This one is quite nice, but I really don't need 3D, and it is quite ...a lot of work to learn. I also don't like that it is so expensive to use for different platforms and that I can only code for it through scripting. You have to buy each platform separately. The editor usability is average, the product overall is good enough for most purposes, but learning it myself would be overkill. Shiva 3D. It looks good enough, but again: I don't really need 3D. The editor usability is a little worse than Unity3D in my opinion and it wasn't clear to me how to start programming. I think it requires C++ for coding, so that's a negative too. I want to have fun, and c# is fun ;) SDL. Quite frankly, I'd still need to port to all those different SDL implementations. And I don't like OpenGL style programming, it's just plain ugly. And it needs c++, I know that there might be some wrappers available, but I don't like to use wrappers, because... Irrlicht. A lot of features, but support seems to be low and it is aimed at enthusiasts. C# bindings get dropped repeatedly. I'm not an engine enthusiast, I just want to make a game. I don't see this happening with Irrlicht. Ogre3D. Way too much work, it's just a graphics engine. Also no multiple platform support and c++. Torque2D. Costs something to use, and I didn't hear a lot of good things about support and documentation. Also costs extra for each platform.

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• Gamification = -10#/3mo

  - by erikanollwebb

  One of the purposes of gamification of anything is to see if you can modify the behavior of the user. In the enterprise, that might mean getting sales people to enter more information into a CRM system, encouraging employees to update their HR records, motivating people to participate in forums and discussions, or process invoices more quickly.  Wikipedia defines behavior modification as "the traditional term for the use of empirically demonstrated behavior change techniques to increase or decrease the frequency of behaviors, such as altering an individual's behaviors and reactions to stimuli through positive and negative reinforcement of adaptive behavior and/or the reduction of behavior through its extinction, punishment and/or satiation."  Gamification is just a way to modify someone's behavior using game mechanics. And the magic question is always whether it works. So I thought I would present my own little experiment from the last few months.  This spring, I upgraded to a Samsung Galaxy 4.  It's a pretty sweet phone in many ways, but one of the little extras I discovered was a built in app called S Health. S Health is an app that you can use to track calories, weight, exercise and it has a built in pedometer. I looked at it when I got the phone, but assumed you had to turn it on to use it so I didn't look at it much.  But sometime in July, I realized that in fact, it just ran in the background and was quietly tracking my steps, with a goal of 10,000 per day.  10,000 steps per day is this magic number recommended by the Surgeon General and the American Heart Association.  Dr. Oz pushes it as the goal for daily exercise.  It's about 5 miles of walking. I'm generally not the kind of person who always has my phone with me.  I leave it in my purse and pull it out when I need it.  But then I realized that meant I wasn't getting a good measure of my steps.  I decided to do a little experiment, and carry it with me as much as possible for a week.  That's when I discovered the gamification that changed my life over the last 3 months.  When I hit 10,000 steps, the app jingled out a little "success!" tune and I got a badge.  I was hooked.  I started carrying my phone.  I started making sure I had shoes I could walk in with me.  I started walking at lunch time, because I realized how often I sat at my desk for 8-10 hours every day without moving.  I started pestering my husband to walk with me after work because I hadn't hit my 10,000 yet, leading him at one point to say "I'm not as much a slave to that badge as you are!"  I started looking at parking lots differently.  Can't get a space up close?  No worries, just that many steps toward my 10,000.  I even tried to see if there was a second power user level at 15,000 or 20,000 (*sadly, no).  If I was close at the end of the day, I have done laps around my house until I got my badge.  I have walked around the block one more time to get my badge.  I have mentally chastised myself when I forgot to put my phone in my pocket because I don't know how many steps I got.  The badge below I got when my boss and I were in New York City and we walked around the block of our hotel just to watch the badge pop up. There are a bunch of tools out on the market now that have similar ideas for helping you to track your exercise, make it social.  There are apps (my favorite is still Zombies, Run!).  You could buy a FitBit or UP by Jawbone.   Interactive fitness makes the Expresso stationary bike with built in video games.  All designed to help you be more aware of your activity and keep you engaged and motivated.  And the idea is to help you change your behavior. I know someone who would spend extra time and work hard on the Expresso because he had built up strategies for how to kill the most dragons while he was riding to get more points.  When the machine broke down, he didn't ride a different bike because it just wasn't that interesting. But for me, just the simple jingle and badge have been all I needed.  I admit, I still giggle gleefully when I hear the tune sing out from my pocket. After a few weeks, I noticed I had dropped a few pounds.  Not a lot, just 2-3.  But then I was really hooked.  I started making a point both to eat a little less and hit 10,000 steps as much as I could.  I bemoaned that during the floods in Boulder, I wasn't hitting my 10,000 steps.  And now, a few months later, I'm almost 10 lbs lighter. All for 1 badge a day. So yes, simple gamification can increase motivation and engagement.  And that can lead to changes in behavior.  Now the job is to apply that to the enterprise space in a meaningful and engaging way. 

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• Why everybody should do Sales!

  - by FelixWehmeyer

  I speak with many business students and ask them what job they want to get into. Most of them tell me they want a job in Marketing, Management Consulting or Finance. I hardly ever hear “Sales, that is what I want to do”, and I often wonder why. I would like to start with a quote from Zig Ziglar, a successful salesman: "Nothing happens until someone sells something." But to get back to the main point, why wouldn’t you want to get in sales? When people think of sales, they picture a typical salesman in their head and think that selling is scary and all about manipulating, pressuring and pushing someone into buying something they don’t need. Are these stereotypes accurate? I don’t believe so: So why should you want to be in sales? If you think about selling as providing the solution for the problem and talking about the benefits of making a decision, then every job in this world comes out of selling. In every job you deal with coworkers that you want to convince of your ideas or convincing your boss that the project you want to work on is good for the company.  These days, consumers and businesses are very well informed about services and products. When we are talking about highly complex products, such as IT solutions, businesses don’t accept your run-of-the-mill salesman who is pushing a sale. These are often long projects where salespeople have a consulting and leading role. Salespeople need to be able to consult companies and customers with their problem and convince a client that their solution is the best fit. Next to the fact that sales, is by far, not as scary and shady as you thought, there are a few points that will make you want to consider a sales career: Negotiating skills – When you are in sales you will learn how to negotiate. Salespeople learn to listen to their customers and try to make them happy, overcoming objections and come to a final agreement that both parties are happy with. Persistence/Challenge – As a salesperson you will often hear a negative answer, in a sales role you will start to embrace this and see a ‘no’ as a challenge not as a rejection. This attitude change can help you a lot in your career, but also in your personal life. You will become more optimistic and gain a go-getter attitude. Salary – As salespeople are seen as the moneymakers for the company, companies often reward their sales teams generously. Most likely in a sales role, you will receive a good basic salary and often you get nice bonuses on top of that based on your performance. Oracle is, for instance, the company that offers the highest average commission in the world. Further you can expect many other benefits as companies know that there is a high demand for good salespeople. Teamwork – Sales is a lot like having your own business, you are responsible for your own territory or set of clients. You are the one who is responsible for the revenue coming from that territory. So in order to gain revenue you will have to work together with many departments and people to make that happen. Every (potential) client could be seen as a different project, and you are the project leader. Understanding customers and the business – From any job that you choose sales will get you the most insight in the market. Salespeople are usually well-connected, talk with different customers and learn about the market and are up-to-date about all latest changes. Even if you want to change to a different role in the long run, you have a great head start as you understand the market and customers like no one else. Job security – Look at all the job postings out there. Many of them are sales-related. So if you want to have a steady job, plenty of choice and companies willing to invest in you, sales could be something for you.  Are you interested in exploring a sales career? At Oracle we are always looking for good sales professionals and fresh graduates who want to get into sales! For many languages such as Flemish, Dutch, German, French, Swedish and Norwegian (and more) we are currently looking for graduates who want to develop their career in Oracle. Please have a look at this article for the experience of a Business Development Consultant at Oracle in Dublin. Want to learn more about this job check out this link or send an email to jessica.ebbelaar-at-oracle.com! Have a look at our website http://campus.oracle.com for all of our other latest sales and non-sales vacancies!

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• Fixing a collision detection bug in Slick2D

  - by Jesse Prescott

  My game has a bug with collision detection. If you go against the wall and tap forward/back sometimes the game thinks the speed you travelled at is 0 and the game doesn't know how to get you out of the wall. My collision detection works by getting the speed you hit the wall at and if it is positive it moves you back, if it is negative it moves you forward. It might help if you download it: https://rapidshare.com/files/1550046269/game.zip Sorry if I explained badly, it's hard to explain. float maxSpeed = 0.3f; float minSpeed = -0.2f; float acceleration = 0.002f; float deacceleration = 0.001f; float slowdownSpeed = 0.002f; float rotateSpeed = 0.08f; static float currentSpeed = 0; boolean up = false; boolean down = false; boolean noKey = false; static float rotate = 0; //Image effect system static String locationCarNormal; static String locationCarFront; static String locationCarBack; static String locationCarBoth; static boolean carFront = false; static boolean carBack = false; static String imageRef; boolean collision = false; public ComponentPlayerMovement(String id, String ScarNormal, String ScarFront, String ScarBack, String ScarBoth) { this.id = id; playerBody = new Rectangle(900/2-16, 700/2-16, 32, 32); locationCarNormal = ScarNormal; locationCarFront = ScarFront; locationCarBack = ScarBack; locationCarBoth = ScarBoth; imageRef = locationCarNormal; } @Override public void update(GameContainer gc, StateBasedGame sbg, int delta) throws SlickException { Input input = gc.getInput(); playerBody.transform(Transform.createRotateTransform(2)); float hip = currentSpeed * delta; float unstuckspeed = 0.05f * delta; if(carBack && !carFront) { imageRef = locationCarBack; ComponentImageRender.updateImage(); } else if(carFront && !carBack) { imageRef = locationCarFront; ComponentImageRender.updateImage(); } else if(carFront && carBack) { imageRef = locationCarBoth; ComponentImageRender.updateImage(); } if(input.isKeyDown(Input.KEY_RIGHT)) { rotate += rotateSpeed * delta; owner.setRotation(rotate); } if(input.isKeyDown(Input.KEY_LEFT)) { rotate -= rotateSpeed * delta; owner.setRotation(rotate); } if(input.isKeyDown(Input.KEY_UP)) { if(!collision) { up = true; noKey = false; if(currentSpeed < maxSpeed) { currentSpeed += acceleration; } MapCoordStorage.mapX += hip * Math.sin(Math.toRadians(rotate)); MapCoordStorage.mapY -= hip * Math.cos(Math.toRadians(rotate)); } else { currentSpeed = 1; } } else if(input.isKeyDown(Input.KEY_DOWN) && !collision) { down = true; noKey = false; if(currentSpeed > minSpeed) { currentSpeed -= slowdownSpeed; } MapCoordStorage.mapX += hip * Math.sin(Math.toRadians(rotate)); MapCoordStorage.mapY -= hip * Math.cos(Math.toRadians(rotate)); } else { noKey = true; if(currentSpeed > 0) { currentSpeed -= deacceleration; } else if(currentSpeed < 0) { currentSpeed += acceleration; } MapCoordStorage.mapX += hip * Math.sin(Math.toRadians(rotate)); MapCoordStorage.mapY -= hip * Math.cos(Math.toRadians(rotate)); } if(entityCollisionWith()) { collision = true; if(currentSpeed > 0 || up) { up = true; currentSpeed = 0; carFront = true; MapCoordStorage.mapX += unstuckspeed * Math.sin(Math.toRadians(rotate-180)); MapCoordStorage.mapY -= unstuckspeed * Math.cos(Math.toRadians(rotate-180)); } else if(currentSpeed < 0 || down) { down = true; currentSpeed = 0; carBack = true; MapCoordStorage.mapX += unstuckspeed * Math.sin(Math.toRadians(rotate)); MapCoordStorage.mapY -= unstuckspeed * Math.cos(Math.toRadians(rotate)); } else { currentSpeed = 0; } } else { collision = false; up = false; down = false; } if(currentSpeed >= -0.01f && currentSpeed <= 0.01f && noKey && !collision) { currentSpeed = 0; } } public static boolean entityCollisionWith() throws SlickException { for (int i = 0; i < BlockMap.entities.size(); i++) { Block entity1 = (Block) BlockMap.entities.get(i); if (playerBody.intersects(entity1.poly)) { return true; } } return false; } }

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• Mousin' down the PathListBox

  - by T

  While modifying the standard media player with a new look and feel for Ineta Live I saw a unique opportunity to use their logo with a dotted I with and attached arc as the scrub control. So I created a PathListBox that I wanted an object to follow when a user did a click and drag action.  Below is how I solved the problem.  Please let me know if you have improvements or know of a completely different way.  I am always eager to learn. First, I created a path using the pen tool in Expression Blend (see the yellow line in image below).  Then I right clicked that path and chose [Path] --> [Make Layout Path].   That created a new PathListBox.  Then I chose the object I want to move down the new PathListBox and Placed it as a child in the Objects and Timeline window (see image below).  If the child object (the thing the user will click and drag) is XAML, it will move much smoother than images. Just as another side note, I wanted there to be no highlight when the user selects the “ball” to drag and drop.  This is done by editing the ItemContainerStyle under Additional Templates on the PathListBox.  Post a question if you need help on this and I will expand my explanation. Here is a pic of the object and the path I wanted it to follow.  I gave the path a yellow solid brush here so you could see it but when I lay this over another object, I will make the path transparent.   To animate this object down the path, the trick is to animate the Start number for the LayoutPath.  Not the StartItemIndex, the Start above Span. In order to enable animation when a user clicks and drags, I put in the following code snippets in the code behind. the DependencyProperties are not necessary for the Drag control.   namespace InetaPlayer { public partial class PositionControl : UserControl { private bool _mouseDown; private double _maxPlayTime; public PositionControl() { // Required to initialize variables InitializeComponent(); //mouse events for scrub control positionThumb.MouseLeftButtonDown += new MouseButtonEventHandler(ValueThumb_MouseLeftButtonDown); positionThumb.MouseLeftButtonUp += new MouseButtonEventHandler(ValueThumb_MouseLeftButtonUp); positionThumb.MouseMove += new MouseEventHandler(ValueThumb_MouseMove); positionThumb.LostMouseCapture += new MouseEventHandler(ValueThumb_LostMouseCapture); } // exposed for binding to real slider using a DependencyProperty enables animation, styling, binding, etc.... public double MaxPlayTime { get { return (double)GetValue(MaxPlayTimeProperty); } set { SetValue(MaxPlayTimeProperty, value); } } public static readonly DependencyProperty MaxPlayTimeProperty = DependencyProperty.Register("MaxPlayTime", typeof(double), typeof(PositionControl), null);   // exposed for binding to real slider using a DependencyProperty enables animation, styling, binding, etc....   public double CurrSliderValue { get { return (double)GetValue(CurrSliderValueProperty); } set { SetValue(CurrSliderValueProperty, value); } }   public static readonly DependencyProperty CurrSliderValueProperty = DependencyProperty.Register("CurrSliderValue", typeof(double), typeof(PositionControl), new PropertyMetadata(0.0, OnCurrSliderValuePropertyChanged));   private static void OnCurrSliderValuePropertyChanged(DependencyObject d, DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e) { PositionControl control = d as PositionControl; control.OnCurrSliderValueChanged((double)e.OldValue, (double)e.NewValue); }   private void OnCurrSliderValueChanged(double oldValue, double newValue) { _maxPlayTime = (double) GetValue(MaxPlayTimeProperty); if (!_mouseDown) if (_maxPlayTime!=0) sliderPathListBox.LayoutPaths[0].Start = newValue / _maxPlayTime; else sliderPathListBox.LayoutPaths[0].Start = 0; }   //mouse control   void ValueThumb_MouseMove(object sender, MouseEventArgs e) { if (!_mouseDown) return; //get the offset of how far the drag has been //direction is handled automatically (offset will be negative for left move and positive for right move) Point mouseOff = e.GetPosition(positionThumb); //Divide the offset by 1000 for a smooth transition sliderPathListBox.LayoutPaths[0].Start +=mouseOff.X/1000; _maxPlayTime = (double)GetValue(MaxPlayTimeProperty); SetValue(CurrSliderValueProperty ,sliderPathListBox.LayoutPaths[0].Start*_maxPlayTime); }   void ValueThumb_MouseLeftButtonUp(object sender, MouseButtonEventArgs e) { _mouseDown = false; } void ValueThumb_LostMouseCapture(object sender, MouseEventArgs e) { _mouseDown = false; } void ValueThumb_MouseLeftButtonDown(object sender, MouseButtonEventArgs e) { _mouseDown = true; ((UIElement)positionThumb).CaptureMouse(); }   } }   I made this into a user control and exposed a couple of DependencyProperties in order to bind it to a standard Slider in the overall project.  This control is embedded into the standard Expression media player template and is used to replace the standard scrub bar.  When the player goes live, I will put a link here.

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• 2012&ndash;The End Of The World Review

  - by Tim Murphy

  The end of the world must be coming.  Not because the Mayan calendar says so, but because Microsoft is innovating more than Apple.  It has been a crazy year, with pundits declaring not that the end of the world is coming, but that the end of Microsoft is coming.  Let’s take a look at what 2012 has brought us. The beginning of year is a blur.  I managed to get to TechEd in June which was the first time that I got to take a deep dive into Windows 8 and many other things that had been announced in 2011.  The promise I saw in these products was really encouraging.  The thought of being able to run Windows 8 from a thumb drive or have Hyper-V native to the OS told me that at least for developers good things were coming. I finally got my feet wet with Windows 8 with the developer preview just prior to the RTM.  While the initial experience was a bit of a culture shock I quickly grew to love it.  The media still seems to hold little love for the “reimagined” platform, but I think that once people spend some time with it they will enjoy the experience and what the FUD mongers say will fade into the background.  With the launch of the OS we finally got a look at the Surface.  I think this is a bold entry into the tablet market.  While I wish it was a little more affordable I am already starting to see them in the wild being used by non-techies. I was waiting for Windows Phone 8 at least as much as Windows 8, probably more.  The new hardware, better marketing and new OS features I think are going to finally push us to the point of having a real presence in the smartphone market.  I am seeing a number of iPhone users picking up a Nokia Lumia 920 and getting rid of their brand new iPhone 5.  The only real debacle that I saw around the launch was when they held back the SDK from general developers. Shortly after the launch events came Build 2012.  I was extremely disappointed that I didn’t make it to this year’s Build.  Even if they weren’t handing out Surface and Lumia devices I think the atmosphere and content were something that really needed to be experience in person.  Hopefully there will be a Build next year and it’s schedule will be announced soon.  As you would expect Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 development were the mainstay of the conference, but improvements in Azure also played a key role.  This movement of services to the cloud will continue and we need to understand where it best fits into the solutions we build. Lower on the radar this year were Office 2013, SQL Server 2012, and Windows Server 2012.  Their glory stolen by the consumer OS and hardware announcements, these new releases are no less important.  Companies will see significant improvements in performance and capabilities if they upgrade.  At TechEd they had shown some of the new features of Windows Server 2012 around hardware integration and Hyper-V performance which absolutely blew me away.  It is our job to bring these important improvements to our company’s attention so that they can be leveraged. Personally, the consulting business in 2012 was the busiest it has been in a long time.  More companies were ready to attack new projects after several years of putting them on the back burner.  I also worked to bring back momentum to the Chicago Information Technology Architects Group.  Both the community and clients are excited about the new technologies that have come out in 2012 and now it is time to deliver. What does 2013 have in store.  I don’t see it be quite as exciting as 2012.  Microsoft will be releasing the Surface Pro in January and it seems that we will see more frequent OS update for Windows.  There are rumors that we may see a Surface phone in 2013.  It has also been announced that there will finally be a rework of the XBox next fall.  The new year will also be a time for us in the development community to take advantage of these new tools and devices.  After all, it is what we build on top of these platforms that will attract more consumers and corporations to using them. Just as I am 99.999% sure that the world is not going to end this year, I am also sure that Microsoft will move on and that most of this negative backlash from the media is actually fear and jealousy.  In the end I think we have a promising year ahead of us. del.icio.us Tags: Microsoft,Pundits,Mayans,Windows 8,Windows Phone 8,Surface

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• What are the industry metrics for average spend on dev hardware and software? [on hold]

  - by RationalGeek

  I'm trying to budget for my dev shop and compare our budget items to industry expectations. I'm hoping to find some information on what percentage of a dev's salary is generally spent on tooling, both hardware and software. Where can I find such information? If instead there is a source that looks at raw dollars that is useful, too. I can extrapolate what I need from that. NOTE: Your anecdotal evidence from your own job will not be very helpful. I'm looking for industry average statistics from a credible source. EDIT: I'm reluctant to even keep this question going based on the passionate negative responses of commenters, but I do think this is valuable information (assuming anyone will care to answer) so let me make one attempt to clarify why I'm looking for this information, and then leave it at that. I'm not sure why understanding and validating my motives is a necessary step to providing the information, but apparently that is the case, so I will do my best. Firstly, let me respond to the idea that us "management types" shouldn't use these types of metrics to evaluate budgets. I agree in part. Ideally, you should spend whatever is necessary on developers in order to keep them fully happy and productive. And this is true of all employees. However, companies operate in a world of limited resources, and every dollar spent in one area means a dollar not spent in another. So it is not enough to simply say "I need to spend $10,000 per developer next year" without having some way to justify that position. One way to help justify it is to compare yourself against the industry. If it is the case that on average a software shops spends 5% (making up that number) of their total development budget (salaries being the large portion of the other 95%, for arguments sake), and I'm only spending 3%, it helps in the justification process. So, it is not my intent to use this information to limit what I spend on developers, but rather to arm myself with the necessary justification to spend what I need to spend on developers to give them the best tools I can. I have been a developer for many years and I understand the need for proper tooling. Next, let's examine the idea that even considering the relationship between a spend on developer salaries and developer tooling is ludicrous and should be banned from budgetary thinking. As Jimmy Hoffa put it in their comment, it's like saying "I'm going to spend no more than 10% of median employee salary on light bulbs and coffee from now on.". Well, yes, it is like saying that, and from a budgeting perspective, this is a useful way to look at things. If you know that, on average, an employee consumes X dollars of coffee a year, then you can project a coffee budget based on that. And you can compare it to an industry metric to understand where you fall: do you spend more on coffee than other companies or less? Why might this be? If you are a coffee supply manager, that seems like a useful thought process. The same seems to hold true for developers. Now, on to the idea that I need to compare "apples to apples" and only look at other shops that are in the same place geographically, the same business, the same application architecture, and the same development frameworks. I guess if I could find such a statistic that said "a shop that is exactly identical to yours spends X on developer tooling" it would be wonderful. But there is plenty of value in an average statistic. Here's an analogy: let's say you are working on a household budget and need to decide how much to spend on groceries. Is it enough to know that the average consumer spends 15% on groceries and therefore decide that you will budget exactly 15%? No. You have to tweak your budget based on your individual needs and situation. But the generalized statistic does help in this evaluation. You can know if your budget is grossly off from what others are doing, and this can help you figure out why this is. So, I will concede the point that it would be better to find statistics that align to my shop, though I think any statistics I could find would be useful for what I'm doing. In that light, let's say that my shop is mostly focused on ASP.NET web applications. That doesn't map perfectly to reality because large enterprises have very heterogenous IT environments. But if I was going to pick one technology that is our focus that would be it. But, if you were to point me at some statistics that are related to a Linux shop doing embedded Java applications, I would still find it useful as a point of comparison. SUMMARY: Let me try to rephrase my question. I'm trying to find industry metrics on how much dev shops spend on developer tooling, both hardware and software. I don't so much care whether it is expressed as a percentage of total budget or as X dollars per dev or as Y percentage of salary. Any metric would be useful. If there are metrics that are specific to ASP.NET dev shops in the Northeast US, all the better, but I would be happy to find anything.

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• How do I dig myself out of this DEEP hole? [closed]

  - by user74847

  I may be a bit bias in the way i word this but any opinions and suggestions are welcome. I should start by saying i have a MSc in CS and a degree in new media +6 years expereince and im probably around a middleweight developer. I started a web development company with my friend from uni a year ago, there was a 4 month gap in the middle where i went miles away work on a big project. Ive since returned and picked up where we left off. A year on though i find im still staying up til 5am and getting up at 9 sometimes 2-3 days without sleep. While i was away i was working 9-5 and struggling to keep up with doing stuff for my clients 8 hours ahead, after work, so things stagnated. We currently have about 12 active projects, with one other part time developer and a full time freelancer who is dealing with one of our major projects. I am solely responsible for concurrently developing 2 big sites similar to gumtree in functionality, at the same time as about 5-6+ small WordPress based 5-10page sites. a lot of the content isnt in yet or the client is delaying so i chop and change project every other day which does my head in. Is it reasonable to expect myself to remember the intricate details of each project when i come back to it a week later? and remember the details of a task which hasnt been written down? my business partner seems to think so. or am i just forgetful? Im particularly bad at estimating timescales which doesnt help, added to that a lot of the technologies im am using are new to me (a magento site took weeks to theme rather than days and was full of bugs, even after 1000's of google searches and hours reading forums) im still trying to learn and find the best CMS for us to use and getting my head around the likes of Bootstrap and jquery, Cpanel / Linux (we just got a blank vps for me to set up with no experience) even installing an SSL certificate caused everyone's mail clients to go down which was more stress for me to sort out. I find the pressure of the workload and timescales and trying to learn this stuff so fast is beginning to turn me against my career path. The fact that i never seem to get anything done really winds up my business partner and iv come to associate him with the stress and pain of the whole situation especially when I get berated or a look that says "oh you retard" when I forget something. Even today i spent hours learning how a particular themeforest theme worked with wordpress and how i could twist it to work for our partiuclar needs, on the surface had done no work, that triggered a 30 minute tirade of anger and stress and questioning what i had done from my business partner. had i taken too long to work on that? shoudl i have done it in 2 hours instead of 6? i told him i would take 2 hours. i was wrong. I feel like im running myself into the ground. My sleeping pattern has got so bad that when im working im half asleep and making mistakes, my eyes are constantly purple underneath, i literally fall asleep at my desk, its affecting my social life too, ive not slept more than lightly for the last year and grind through impossible code puzzles in my half sleep wich keeps me awake, when im already exhausted. plus the work is rushed and buggy when it does get done so drags on into the next project. I also procrastinate quite badly, pacing the livingroom, looking out the window when Im alone for three days straight in the flat and start to get cabin fever which means i do even less work and the negative feedback loop continues. I get told im the only one with the problem when i say that i cant work from home any more, and examples of other freelancers get brought up. an office wouldnt bring any extra cash in to the company but im convinced having that moving more than 2 meters away from my bed to go to "work" would get me working, at the moment i feel guilty like i should be working 24-7. It is important that we do all this work to raise enough cash to get our business to the next level but every month still feels like a struggle to pay the rent (there is about £20K coming in by Jan) and i have to borrow money from friends often to buy food or get a taxi to a meeting, so it is vital the money keeps coming in. (im also 20 mins late for nearly all meetings but thats a different issue) have you experienced anything similar? how can i deal with the issues ive raised? is it realistic to develop 10 sites at once? how can i improve my relationship with my business partner? do you struggle to work at home? how do you deal with that? i think if i dont get my life on track by feb i will seriously consider giving it all up, but that seems like such a waste. any ideas!!? i need help! Thanks.

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• Determining the angle to fire a shot when target and shooter moves, and bullet moves with shooter velocity added in

  - by Azaral

  I saw this question: Predicting enemy position in order to have an object lead its target and followed the link in the answer to stack overflow. In the stack overflow page I used the 2nd answer, the one that is a large mathematical derivation. My situation is a little different though. My first question though is will the answer provided in the stack overflow page even work to begin with, assuming the original circumstances of moving target and stationary shooter. My situation is a little different than that situation. My target moves, the shooter moves, and the bullets from the shooter start off with the velocities in x and y added to the bullets' x and y velocities. If you are sliding to the right, the bullets will remain in front of you as you move so as long as your velocity remains constant. What I'm trying to do is to get the enemy to be able to determine where they need to shoot in order to hit the player. Unless the player and enemy is stationary, the velocity from the ship adding to the velocity of the bullets will cause a miss. I'd rather like to prevent that. I used the formula in the stack overflow answer and did what I thought were the appropriate adjustments. I've been banging at this for the last four hours and I just can't make it click. It is probably something really simple and boneheaded that I am missing (that seems to be a lot of my problems lately). Here is the solution presented from the stack overflow answer: It boils down to solving a quadratic equation of the form: a * sqr(x) + b * x + c == 0 Note that by sqr I mean square, as opposed to square root. Use the following values: a := sqr(target.velocityX) + sqr(target.velocityY) - sqr(projectile_speed) b := 2 * (target.velocityX * (target.startX - cannon.X) + target.velocityY * (target.startY - cannon.Y)) c := sqr(target.startX - cannon.X) + sqr(target.startY - cannon.Y) Now we can look at the discriminant to determine if we have a possible solution. disc := sqr(b) - 4 * a * c If the discriminant is less than 0, forget about hitting your target -- your projectile can never get there in time. Otherwise, look at two candidate solutions: t1 := (-b + sqrt(disc)) / (2 * a) t2 := (-b - sqrt(disc)) / (2 * a) Note that if disc == 0 then t1 and t2 are equal. If there are no other considerations such as intervening obstacles, simply choose the smaller positive value. (Negative t values would require firing backward in time to use!) Substitute the chosen t value back into the target's position equations to get the coordinates of the leading point you should be aiming at: aim.X := t * target.velocityX + target.startX aim.Y := t * target.velocityY + target.startY Here is my code, after being corrected by Sam Hocevar (thank you again for your help!). It still doesn't work. For some reason it never enters the section of code inside the if(disc = 0) (obviously because it is always less than zero but...). However, if I plug the numbers from my game log on the enemy and player positions and velocities it outputs a valid firing solution. I have looked at the code side by side a couple of times now and I can't find any differences. There has got to be something simple I'm missing here. If someone else could look at this code and determine what is going on here I'd appreciate it. I know it's not going through that section because if it were, shouldShoot would become true and the enemy would be blasting away at the player. This section calls the function in question, CalculateShootHeading() if(shouldMove) { UseEngines(); } x += xVelocity; y += yVelocity; CalculateShootHeading(); if(shouldShoot) { ShootWeapons(); } UpdateWeapons(); This is CalculateShootHeading(). This is inside the enemy class so x and y are the enemy's x and y and the same with velocity. One output from my game log gives Player X = 2108, Player Y = -180.956, Player X velocity = 10.9949, Player Y Velocity = -6.26017, Enemy X = 1988.31, Enemy Y = -339.051, Enemy X velocity = 1.81666, Enemy Y velocity = -9.67762, 0 enemy projectiles. The output from the console tester is Bullet position = 2210.49, -239.313 and Player Position = 2210.49, -239.313. This doesn't make any sense. The only thing that could be different is the code or the input into my function in the game and I've checked that and I don't think that it is wrong as it's updated before this and never changed. float const bulletSpeed = 30.f; float const dx = playerX - x; float const dy = playerY - y; float const vx = playerXVelocity - xVelocity; float const vy = playerYVelocity - yVelocity; float const a = vx * vx + vy * vy - bulletSpeed * bulletSpeed; float const b = 2.f * (vx * dx + vy * dy); float const c = dx * dx + dy * dy; float const disc = b * b - 4.f * a * c; shouldShoot = false; if (disc >= 0.f) { float t0 = (-b - std::sqrt(disc)) / (2.f * a); float t1 = (-b + std::sqrt(disc)) / (2.f * a); if (t0 < 0.f || (t1 < t0 && t1 >= 0.f)) { t0 = t1; } if (t0 >= 0.f) { float shootx = vx + dx / t0; float shooty = vy + dy / t0; heading = std::atan2(shooty, shootx) * RAD2DEGREE; } shouldShoot = true; }

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• Mousin' down the PathListBox

  - by T

  While modifying the standard media player with a new look and feel for Ineta Live I saw a unique opportunity to use their logo with a dotted I with and attached arc as the scrub control. So I created a PathListBox that I wanted an object to follow when a user did a click and drag action.  Below is how I solved the problem.  Please let me know if you have improvements or know of a completely different way.  I am always eager to learn. First, I created a path using the pen tool in Expression Blend (see the yellow line in image below).  Then I right clicked that path and chose [Path] --> [Make Layout Path].   That created a new PathListBox.  Then I chose the object I want to move down the new PathListBox and Placed it as a child in the Objects and Timeline window (see image below).  If the child object (the thing the user will click and drag) is XAML, it will move much smoother than images. Just as another side note, I wanted there to be no highlight when the user selects the “ball” to drag and drop.  This is done by editing the ItemContainerStyle under Additional Templates on the PathListBox.  Post a question if you need help on this and I will expand my explanation. Here is a pic of the object and the path I wanted it to follow.  I gave the path a yellow solid brush here so you could see it but when I lay this over another object, I will make the path transparent.   To animate this object down the path, the trick is to animate the Start number for the LayoutPath.  Not the StartItemIndex, the Start above Span. In order to enable animation when a user clicks and drags, I put in the following code snippets in the code behind. the DependencyProperties are not necessary for the Drag control. namespace InetaPlayer{ public partial class PositionControl : UserControl { private bool _mouseDown; private double _maxPlayTime; public PositionControl() { // Required to initialize variables InitializeComponent(); //mouse events for scrub control positionThumb.MouseLeftButtonDown += new MouseButtonEventHandler(ValueThumb_MouseLeftButtonDown); positionThumb.MouseLeftButtonUp += new MouseButtonEventHandler(ValueThumb_MouseLeftButtonUp); positionThumb.MouseMove += new MouseEventHandler(ValueThumb_MouseMove); positionThumb.LostMouseCapture += new MouseEventHandler(ValueThumb_LostMouseCapture); } // exposed for binding to real slider using a DependencyProperty enables animation, styling, binding, etc.... public double MaxPlayTime { get { return (double)GetValue(MaxPlayTimeProperty); } set { SetValue(MaxPlayTimeProperty, value); } } public static readonly DependencyProperty MaxPlayTimeProperty = DependencyProperty.Register("MaxPlayTime", typeof(double), typeof(PositionControl), null);   // exposed for binding to real slider using a DependencyProperty enables animation, styling, binding, etc....   public double CurrSliderValue { get { return (double)GetValue(CurrSliderValueProperty); } set { SetValue(CurrSliderValueProperty, value); } }   public static readonly DependencyProperty CurrSliderValueProperty = DependencyProperty.Register("CurrSliderValue", typeof(double), typeof(PositionControl), new PropertyMetadata(0.0, OnCurrSliderValuePropertyChanged));   private static void OnCurrSliderValuePropertyChanged(DependencyObject d, DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e) { PositionControl control = d as PositionControl; control.OnCurrSliderValueChanged((double)e.OldValue, (double)e.NewValue); }   private void OnCurrSliderValueChanged(double oldValue, double newValue) { _maxPlayTime = (double) GetValue(MaxPlayTimeProperty); if (!_mouseDown) if (_maxPlayTime!=0) sliderPathListBox.LayoutPaths[0].Start = newValue / _maxPlayTime; else sliderPathListBox.LayoutPaths[0].Start = 0; }  //mouse control   void ValueThumb_MouseMove(object sender, MouseEventArgs e) { if (!_mouseDown) return; //get the offset of how far the drag has been //direction is handled automatically (offset will be negative for left move and positive for right move) Point mouseOff = e.GetPosition(positionThumb); //Divide the offset by 1000 for a smooth transition sliderPathListBox.LayoutPaths[0].Start +=mouseOff.X/1000; _maxPlayTime = (double)GetValue(MaxPlayTimeProperty); SetValue(CurrSliderValueProperty ,sliderPathListBox.LayoutPaths[0].Start*_maxPlayTime); }   void ValueThumb_MouseLeftButtonUp(object sender, MouseButtonEventArgs e) { _mouseDown = false; } void ValueThumb_LostMouseCapture(object sender, MouseEventArgs e) { _mouseDown = false; } void ValueThumb_MouseLeftButtonDown(object sender, MouseButtonEventArgs e) { _mouseDown = true; ((UIElement)positionThumb).CaptureMouse(); }   }}  I made this into a user control and exposed a couple of DependencyProperties in order to bind it to a standard Slider in the overall project.  This control is embedded into the standard Expression media player template and is used to replace the standard scrub bar.  When the player goes live, I will put a link here.

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• PostgreSQL to Data-Warehouse: Best approach for near-real-time ETL / extraction of data

  - by belvoir

  Background: I have a PostgreSQL (v8.3) database that is heavily optimized for OLTP. I need to extract data from it on a semi real-time basis (some-one is bound to ask what semi real-time means and the answer is as frequently as I reasonably can but I will be pragmatic, as a benchmark lets say we are hoping for every 15min) and feed it into a data-warehouse. How much data? At peak times we are talking approx 80-100k rows per min hitting the OLTP side, off-peak this will drop significantly to 15-20k. The most frequently updated rows are ~64 bytes each but there are various tables etc so the data is quite diverse and can range up to 4000 bytes per row. The OLTP is active 24x5.5. Best Solution? From what I can piece together the most practical solution is as follows: Create a TRIGGER to write all DML activity to a rotating CSV log file Perform whatever transformations are required Use the native DW data pump tool to efficiently pump the transformed CSV into the DW Why this approach? TRIGGERS allow selective tables to be targeted rather than being system wide + output is configurable (i.e. into a CSV) and are relatively easy to write and deploy. SLONY uses similar approach and overhead is acceptable CSV easy and fast to transform Easy to pump CSV into the DW Alternatives considered .... Using native logging (http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.3/static/runtime-config-logging.html). Problem with this is it looked very verbose relative to what I needed and was a little trickier to parse and transform. However it could be faster as I presume there is less overhead compared to a TRIGGER. Certainly it would make the admin easier as it is system wide but again, I don't need some of the tables (some are used for persistent storage of JMS messages which I do not want to log) Querying the data directly via an ETL tool such as Talend and pumping it into the DW ... problem is the OLTP schema would need tweaked to support this and that has many negative side-effects Using a tweaked/hacked SLONY - SLONY does a good job of logging and migrating changes to a slave so the conceptual framework is there but the proposed solution just seems easier and cleaner Using the WAL Has anyone done this before? Want to share your thoughts?

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• SIFR 3.0 - Font Size

  - by Nick

  I have been working with SIFR 3.0 for some time now and the font-size never seems to work correctly. I understand the most basic concepts behind SIFR. SIFR runs when you load the page. It does some calculations one the size of the HTML rendered font and then replaces it with a flash movie that is roughly equal to that size. Because of this, you want to style your HTML font to match the size of your SIFR font as close as possible. My problem always comes up when trying to style these two font sizes to match. Let's say I want to use a SIFR font of Helvetica Neue Lt at about 32px. The HTML equivalent is something like Arial Narrow at about 36px with some negative letter spacing. So here is what I do. In sifr.css I'll write: @media screen { .sIFR-active h1 { visibility: hidden; z-index: 0 !important; font-size: 36px; } } Great, that gets the default HTML font the size I need. Now I need to update the flash SIFR font size. So I go into sifr-config.js and write something like this: sIFR.replace(HelveticaNeueThinCond, { selector: 'h1', css: '.sIFR-root { color: #762123; font-size: 32px; line-height: 1em; }', transparent: true }); So right now everything is working great. That is until my h1 text wraps more than one line. For some reason, when the text wraps it only shows the first line. It seems calculates the height wrong. This is very weird because I ran some tests. I took "visibility: hidden" off of "sIFR-active h1" to make sure that the HTML rendered text was the right size. It is, it takes up two lines. However, when the Flash replaces this text it gives it a min-height of one line of text. Odd. The only way I could find to fix this wrapping problem was to remove "font-size: 32px;" from "sIFR.replace(HelveticaNeueThinCond" in sifr-config. The problem I run into then is that it inherits the font-size set in sifr.css. Now the problem is that my HTML text is bigger then the SIFR text. So occasional my HTML text will wrap to a new line before my SIFR text leaving a big white space. So, how do I set two different font-size (one for my HTML text and one for my SIFR) without losing the wrapping. The only time I have been able to use the successfully is when I have a SIFR font that is so similar to a web safe font that they can share the same font-size attribute. Thanks

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• Memory allocation problem with SVMs in OpenCV

  - by worksintheory

  Hi, I've been using OpenCV happily for a while, but now I have a problem which has bugged me for quite some time. The following code is reasonably minimal example of my problem: #include <cv.h> #include <ml.h> using namespace cv; int main(int argc, char **argv) { int sampleCountForTesting = 2731; //BROKEN: Breaks svm.train_auto(...) for values of 2731 or greater! Mat trainingData( sampleCountForTesting, 1, CV_32FC1, Scalar::all(0.0) ); Mat trainingResponses( sampleCountForTesting, 1, CV_32FC1, Scalar::all(0.0) ); for(int j = 0; j < 6; j++) { trainingData.at<float>( j, 0 ) = (float) (j%2); trainingResponses.at<float>( j, 0 ) = (float) (j%2); //Setting a few values so I don't get a "single class" error } CvSVMParams svmParams( 100, //100 is CvSVM::C_SVC, 2, //2 is CvSVM::RBF, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, NULL, TermCriteria( TermCriteria::MAX_ITER | TermCriteria::EPS, 2, 1.0 ) ); CvSVM svm = CvSVM(); svm.train_auto( trainingData, trainingResponses, Mat(), Mat(), svmParams ); return 0; } I just create matrices to hold the training data and responses, then set a few entries to some value other than zero, then run the SVM. But it breaks whenever there are 2731 rows or more: OpenCV Error: One of arguments' values is out of range (requested size is negative or too big) in cvMemStorageAlloc, file [omitted]/opencv/OpenCV-2.2.0/modules/core/src/datastructs.cpp, line 332 With fewer rows, it seems to be fine and a classifier trained in a similar manner to the above seems to be giving reasonable output. Am I doing something wrong? I'm pretty sure it's not actually anything to do with lack of memory, as I've got 6GB and also the code works fine when the data has 2730 rows and 10000 columns, which is a much bigger allocation. I'm running OpenCV 2.2 on OSX 10.6 and initially I thought the problem might be related to this bug if for some reason the fix wasn't included in the MacPorts version. Now I've also tried downloading the most recent stable version from the OpenCV site and building with cmake and using that, but I still get the same error, and the fix is definitely included in that version. Any help would be much appreciated! Thanks,

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• WinForms Menu Toolstrip Get Status

  - by Yeti

  So I have a project where there is some automatic initialization going on through some classes that are created automatically as global variables (yeah they are static instances). At a point inside this (it has no relation with the C# GUI for the user, so it isn't derived from any C# class) I need to see if a flag is set or not. I use toolstrip menu with checked and unchecked status in order to set or unset the flag. The problem is that I have difficulties to see if the flag is checked or not from this static class. My class is inside a different project/namespace and a DLL is created what later is linked to the GUI of the application. The GUI depends from this Manager class so making the Manager class to depend from the GUI is not an option. Nevertheless, I should be able to see its state knowing its name or through some other means. I have tried the following: if(Application.OpenForms[1].Owner.Controls["useLocalImageForInitToolStripMenuItem"].Enabled) { }; Now the problem is that on the upper code snippet I get a nasty error. So how do I do this? The toolstrip menu: The error: See the end of this message for details on invoking just-in-time (JIT) debugging instead of this dialog box. ***** Exception Text ******* System.ArgumentOutOfRangeException: Index was out of range. Must be non-negative and less than the size of the collection. Parameter name: index at System.Collections.ArrayList.get_Item(Int32 index) at System.Windows.Forms.FormCollection.get_Item(Int32 index) at Manager.MyMainManager.MyMainManager.RealTimeInit() in C:\Dropbox\My Dropbox\Public\Program Code\RoboCup\Manager\MyMainManager\MyMainManager.cs:line 494 at mainApp.MainForm.ButtonInitClick(Object sender, EventArgs e) in C:\Dropbox\My Dropbox\Public\Program Code\RoboCup\mainApp\MainForm.cs:line 389 at System.Windows.Forms.Control.OnClick(EventArgs e) at System.Windows.Forms.Button.OnClick(EventArgs e) at System.Windows.Forms.Button.OnMouseUp(MouseEventArgs mevent) at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WmMouseUp(Message& m, MouseButtons button, Int32 clicks) at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WndProc(Message& m) at System.Windows.Forms.ButtonBase.WndProc(Message& m) at System.Windows.Forms.Button.WndProc(Message& m) at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.OnMessage(Message& m) at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.WndProc(Message& m) at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam)

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• spoj: runlength

  - by user285825

  For RLM problem of SPOJ: This is the problem: "Run-length encoding of a number replaces a run of digits (that is, a sequence of consecutive equivalent digits) with the number of digits followed by the digit itself. For example, 44455 would become 3425 (three fours, two fives). Note that run-length encoding does not necessarily shorten the length of the data: 11 becomes 21, and 42 becomes 1412. If a number has more than nine consecutive digits of the same type, the encoding is done greedily: each run grabs as many digits as it can, so 111111111111111 is encoded as 9161. Implement an integer arithmetic calculator that takes operands and gives results in run-length format. You should support addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. You won't have to divide by zero or deal with negative numbers. Input/Output The input will consist of several test cases, one per line. For each test case, compute the run-length mathematics expression and output the original expression and the result, as shown in the examples. The (decimal) representation of all operands and results will fit in signed 64-bit integers." These are my testcases: input: 11 + 11 988726 - 978625 12 * 41 1124 / 1112 13 * 33 15 / 16 19222317121013161815142715181017 + 10 10 + 19222317121013161815142715181017 19222317121013161815142715181017 / 19222317121013161815142715181017 19222317121013161815142715181017 / 11 11 / 19222317121013161815142715181017 19222317121013161815142715181017 / 12 12 / 19222317121013161815142715181017 19222317121013161815142715181017 / 141621161816101118141217131817191014 141621161816101118141217131817191014 / 19222317121013161815142715181017 19222317121013161815142715181017 / 141621161816101118141217131817191013 141621161816101118141217131817191013 / 19222317121013161815142715181017 19222317121013161815142715181017 * 11 11 * 19222317121013161815142715181017 19222317121013161815142715181017 * 10 10 * 19222317121013161815142715181017 19222317121013161815142715181017 - 10 19222317121013161815142715181017 - 19222317121013161815142715181017 19222317121013161815142715181017 - 141621161816101118141217131817191014 19222317121013161815142715181017 - 141621161816101118141217131817191013 141621161816101118141217131817191013 + 141621161816101118141217131817191013 141621161816101118141217131817191013 + 141621161816101118141217131817191014 141621161816101118141217131817191014 + 141621161816101118141217131817191013 141621161816101118141217131817191014 + 10 10 + 141621161816101118141217131817191013 141621161816101118141217131817191013 + 11 11 + 141621161816101118141217131817191013 141621161816101118141217131817191013 * 12 12 * 141621161816101118141217131817191013 141621161816101118141217131817191014 - 141621161816101118141217131817191014 141621161816101118141217131817191013 - 141621161816101118141217131817191013 141621161816101118141217131817191013 - 10 141621161816101118141217131817191014 - 11 141621161816101118141217131817191014 - 141621161816101118141217131817191013 141621161816101118141217131817191014 / 141621161816101118141217131817191014 141621161816101118141217131817191014 / 141621161816101118141217131817191013 141621161816101118141217131817191013 / 141621161816101118141217131817191014 141621161816101118141217131817191013 / 141621161816101118141217131817191013 141621161816101118141217131817191014 * 11 11 * 141621161816101118141217131817191014 141621161816101118141217131817191014 / 11 11 / 141621161816101118141217131817191014 10 + 10 10 + 11 10 + 15 15 + 10 11 + 10 11 + 10 10 - 10 15 - 10 10 * 10 10 * 15 15 * 10 10 / 111213 output: 11 + 11 = 12 988726 - 978625 = 919111 12 * 41 = 42 1124 / 1112 = 1112 13 * 33 = 39 15 / 16 = 10 19222317121013161815142715181017 + 10 = 19222317121013161815142715181017 10 + 19222317121013161815142715181017 = 19222317121013161815142715181017 19222317121013161815142715181017 / 19222317121013161815142715181017 = 11 19222317121013161815142715181017 / 11 = 19222317121013161815142715181017 11 / 19222317121013161815142715181017 = 10 19222317121013161815142715181017 / 12 = 141621161816101118141217131817191013 12 / 19222317121013161815142715181017 = 10 19222317121013161815142715181017 / 141621161816101118141217131817191014 = 11 141621161816101118141217131817191014 / 19222317121013161815142715181017 = 10 19222317121013161815142715181017 / 141621161816101118141217131817191013 = 12 141621161816101118141217131817191013 / 19222317121013161815142715181017 = 10 19222317121013161815142715181017 * 11 = 19222317121013161815142715181017 11 * 19222317121013161815142715181017 = 19222317121013161815142715181017 19222317121013161815142715181017 * 10 = 10 10 * 19222317121013161815142715181017 = 10 19222317121013161815142715181017 - 10 = 19222317121013161815142715181017 19222317121013161815142715181017 - 19222317121013161815142715181017 = 10 19222317121013161815142715181017 - 141621161816101118141217131817191014 = 141621161816101118141217131817191013 19222317121013161815142715181017 - 141621161816101118141217131817191013 = 141621161816101118141217131817191014 141621161816101118141217131817191013 + 141621161816101118141217131817191013 = 19222317121013161815142715181016 141621161816101118141217131817191013 + 141621161816101118141217131817191014 = 19222317121013161815142715181017 141621161816101118141217131817191014 + 141621161816101118141217131817191013 = 19222317121013161815142715181017 141621161816101118141217131817191014 + 10 = 141621161816101118141217131817191014 10 + 141621161816101118141217131817191013 = 141621161816101118141217131817191013 141621161816101118141217131817191013 + 11 = 141621161816101118141217131817191014 11 + 141621161816101118141217131817191013 = 141621161816101118141217131817191014 141621161816101118141217131817191013 * 12 = 19222317121013161815142715181016 12 * 141621161816101118141217131817191013 = 19222317121013161815142715181016 141621161816101118141217131817191014 - 141621161816101118141217131817191014 = 10 141621161816101118141217131817191013 - 141621161816101118141217131817191013 = 10 141621161816101118141217131817191013 - 10 = 141621161816101118141217131817191013 141621161816101118141217131817191014 - 11 = 141621161816101118141217131817191013 141621161816101118141217131817191014 - 141621161816101118141217131817191013 = 11 141621161816101118141217131817191014 / 141621161816101118141217131817191014 = 11 141621161816101118141217131817191014 / 141621161816101118141217131817191013 = 11 141621161816101118141217131817191013 / 141621161816101118141217131817191014 = 10 141621161816101118141217131817191013 / 141621161816101118141217131817191013 = 11 141621161816101118141217131817191014 * 11 = 141621161816101118141217131817191014 11 * 141621161816101118141217131817191014 = 141621161816101118141217131817191014 141621161816101118141217131817191014 / 11 = 141621161816101118141217131817191014 11 / 141621161816101118141217131817191014 = 10 10 + 10 = 10 10 + 11 = 11 10 + 15 = 15 15 + 10 = 15 11 + 10 = 11 11 + 10 = 11 10 - 10 = 10 15 - 10 = 15 10 * 10 = 10 10 * 15 = 10 15 * 10 = 10 10 / 111213 = 10 I am getting consistently wrong answer. I generated the above testcases trying to make them as representative as possible (boundary conditions, etc). I am not sure how to test it further. Some guidline would be really appreciated.

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• Jquery Cycle Plugin Question - turning off relative links to photos so it goes to a URL

  - by alpdog14

  I am using Jquery Cycle Plugin and it has a side panel that highlights as the photos change and currently when I click on the text the associated photo pulls up then I have to click on the photo to go to the URL but I would like the text itself to link to the URL. I have looked at the fn.cycle.defaults but not sure what to change and I tried a few things but nothing works. If anyone can help me figure this out it would be most helpful. Here are the fn.cycle.defaults: fx: 'fade', // one of: fade, shuffle, zoom, scrollLeft, etc timeout: 4000, // milliseconds between slide transitions (0 to disable auto advance) continuous: 0, // true to start next transition immediately after current one completes speed: 1000, // speed of the transition (any valid fx speed value) speedIn: null, // speed of the 'in' transition speedOut: null, // speed of the 'out' transition next: null, // id of element to use as click trigger for next slide prev: null, // id of element to use as click trigger for previous slide prevNextClick: null, // callback fn for prev/next clicks: function(isNext, zeroBasedSlideIndex, slideElement) pager: null, // id of element to use as pager container pagerClick: null, // callback fn for pager clicks: function(zeroBasedSlideIndex, slideElement) pagerEvent: null, // event which drives the pager navigation pagerAnchorBuilder: null, // callback fn for building anchor links before: null, // transition callback (scope set to element to be shown) after: null, // transition callback (scope set to element that was shown) end: null, // callback invoked when the slideshow terminates (use with autostop or nowrap options) easing: null, // easing method for both in and out transitions easeIn: null, // easing for "in" transition easeOut: null, // easing for "out" transition shuffle: null, // coords for shuffle animation, ex: { top:15, left: 200 } animIn: null, // properties that define how the slide animates in animOut: null, // properties that define how the slide animates out cssBefore: null, // properties that define the initial state of the slide before transitioning in cssAfter: null, // properties that defined the state of the slide after transitioning out fxFn: null, // function used to control the transition height: 'auto', // container height startingSlide: 0, // zero-based index of the first slide to be displayed sync: 1, // true if in/out transitions should occur simultaneously random: 0, // true for random, false for sequence (not applicable to shuffle fx) fit: 0, // force slides to fit container pause: true, // true to enable "pause on hover" autostop: 0, // true to end slideshow after X transitions (where X == slide count) autostopCount: 0, // number of transitions (optionally used with autostop to define X) delay: 0, // additional delay (in ms) for first transition (hint: can be negative) slideExpr: null, // expression for selecting slides (if something other than all children is required) cleartype: 0, // true if clearType corrections should be applied (for IE) nowrap: 0 // true to prevent slideshow from wrapping }; I have tried changing the pageClick and pagerEvent but nothing seems to be working. Please help!!!

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• Using commit monitors as a form of code review

  - by Jeff Dege

  I'm working in a small company - four developers, working on a variety of projects. We've been looking at what we can do as cost-effective methods of process improvement, and an idea came up. Given what we do, we often have single developers working on parts of a system, independently of the other developers. This can have a number of negative affects: A developer might not be fully aware of the context in which a change is being implemented, and make the change in a way that will meet the current customer's needs, but will break functionality that other customers depend on. A developer might make a change that breaks the current architectural design, introducing a dependency that will cause problems in future development. Other developers might not be aware of how the system has changed, in areas that they have not worked on. We've talked about doing code reviews, as a way of dealing with these issues. But we've not had much success when we tried. It takes a lot of time to prepare a change for a code review, and it takes everybody out of production while the review is being performed. And the benefits of any review we've tried has been minimal. We're using Subversion (with TortioseSVN) as our VCS. I've been looking at the SubVersion CommitMonitor tool, and wondering whether it might work as a sort of poor-man's code review. It lists every commit made on the repository, allowing someone to see the changes that have been made, the log messages made for that change, the files that were included in the change, and the specific lines in each file that were changed. Rather than scheduling a meeting, trying to get everybody together to review every change, we could just have every developer review every other developer's commits, at whatever time was convenient. This would keep every developer abreast of what changes were being made elsewhere in the system, and would have every change reviewed for customer conflicts and design consistency, at a fairly low cost. If someone saw a problem with the code that was being checked in, he could discuss it with the developer who did the commit, or more likely, schedule a meeting to discuss how the new feature could be implemented in a way that would not impact other users or screw up the architecture. Anyone else doing anything like this, using commit monitors for such a purpose?

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• Sticky Footer Dilemma - so close

  - by fmz

  I have an effective sticky footer solution, but I have a slight conflict because of the need for a background image in addition to the repeating banner image across the top. In order to make the large watermark type image show up on this site I added the following div: <div id="body-outer"> The only problem is that once I add this div tag, the footer climbs up the page, overriding all content in its path. If I remove that div, the footer is as sticky as one could hope. Is there some way to have the background image and the sticky footer too? Here is the basic html structure: <body class="home"> <div id="body-outer"> <div id="container"> <div id="header"> ... <div id="footer"> <p>Placeholder for footer content</p> </div> Here is the css for the sticky footer and the background image: #body-outer { background: url(../_images/bg_body.jpg) no-repeat center top; height: 100%; } body { width: 100%; background: url(../_images/bg_html.jpg) repeat-x left top; } #container { width: 960px; margin: 0 auto; } html, body, #container { height: 100%; } body > #container { height: auto; min-height: 100%; padding-bottom: 140px; } #main { padding-bottom: 0; } #footer { position: relative; width: 100%; background-color: #4e8997; margin-top: ; /* negative value of footer height */ height: 140px; clear:both; } .clearfix:after { content: "."; display: block; height: 0; clear: both; visibility: hidden; } .clearfix {display: inline-block;} * html .clearfix { height: 1%;} Any assistance in sorting this out would be greatly appreciated. thanks.

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• How do I prevent the concurrent execution of a javascript function?

  - by RyanV

  I am making a ticker similar to the "From the AP" one at The Huffington Post, using jQuery. The ticker rotates through a ul, either by user command (clicking an arrow) or by an auto-scroll. Each list-item is display:none by default. It is revealed by the addition of a "showHeadline" class which is display:list-item. HTML for the UL Looks like this: <ul class="news" id="news"> <li class="tickerTitle showHeadline">Test Entry</li> <li class="tickerTitle">Test Entry2</li> <li class="tickerTitle">Test Entry3</li> </ul> When the user clicks the right arrow, or the auto-scroll setTimeout goes off, it runs a tickForward() function: function tickForward(){ var $active = $('#news li.showHeadline'); var $next = $active.next(); if($next.length==0) $next = $('#news li:first'); $active.stop(true, true); $active.fadeOut('slow', function() {$active.removeClass('showHeadline');}); setTimeout(function(){$next.fadeIn('slow', function(){$next.addClass('showHeadline');})}, 1000); if(isPaused == true){ } else{ startScroll() } }; This is heavily inspired by Jon Raasch's A Simple jQuery Slideshow. Basically, find what's visible, what should be visible next, make the visible thing fade and remove the class that marks it as visible, then fade in the next thing and add the class that makes it visible. Now, everything is hunky-dory if the auto-scroll is running, kicking off tickForward() once every three seconds. But if the user clicks the arrow button repeatedly, it creates two negative conditions: Rather than advance quickly through the list for just the number of clicks made, it continues scrolling at a faster-than-normal rate indefinitely. It can produce a situation where two (or more) list items are given the .showHeadline class, so there's overlap on the list. I can see these happening (especially #2) because the tickForward() function can run concurrently with itself, producing different sets of $active and $next. So I think my question is: What would be the best way to prevent concurrent execution of the tickForward() method? Some things I have tried or considered: Setting a Flag: When tickForward() runs, it sets an isRunning flag to true, and sets it back to false right before it ends. The logic for the event handler is set to only call tickForward() if isRunning is false. I tried a simple implementation of this, and isRunning never appeared to be changed. The jQuery queue(): I think it would be useful to queue up the tickForward() commands, so if you clicked it five times quickly, it would still run as commanded but wouldn't run concurrently. However, in my cursory reading on the subject, it appears that a queue has to be attached to the object its queue applies to, and since my tickForward() method affects multiple lis, I don't know where I'd attach it.

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• Using in app purchase to unlock features vs. using free & paid app versions for iPhone

  - by yabada

  I have an app that I was going to release as a free (lite) version with some of the total functionality and a paid full version with advanced functionality. Now, with in app purchase for free apps I am thinking of going that route with the ability to unlock features as needed. I'm not talking about a trial version that expires.I want people to be able to try out the app and get an idea of the interface and functionality before deciding to purchase the full functionality of each major section of the app, basically. Here's an analogy of what my app would be like. Let's say you have a cooking app that teaches you to cook in different styles. There could be major section for French, Italian, and Chinese. Each section could have some rudiments unlocked in the free app so users can see the UI and basics of the functionality. Then, the user could decide to purchase each major section (or not) individually with in app purchase or buy the full versioned app (with the free/paid model). One concern I have with offering a free app with in app purchase would be with feedback. I would be very clear in my description in the app store that there is in app purchase for full features but I'm worried that less serious users could/would leave negative feedback. I suppose that's always a risk but curious about any experience with this. It also seems that it could be a whole lot more complicated keeping track of what portions of the app are locked and unlocked with in app purchase. I know I'd have to have all the code for the full functionality and "lock" the portions that haven't been purchased. How do people usually lock portions of their code? I'm not talking about the process of purchasing (I've read the In App Purchase Programming Guide) but after the purchase has been made. Would I just keep track of what the user has purchased and put conditionals on the sections that are initially locked? Or is there another way to do this as well? My instinct is for the in app purchase (particularly since users could purchase the major sections that they want individually).

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• Code Golf: Evaluating Mathematical Expressions

  - by Noldorin

  Challenge Here is the challenge (of my own invention, though I wouldn't be surprised if it has previously appeared elsewhere on the web). Write a function that takes a single argument that is a string representation of a simple mathematical expression and evaluates it as a floating point value. A "simple expression" may include any of the following: positive or negative decimal numbers, +, -, *, /, (, ). Expressions use (normal) infix notation. Operators should be evaluated in the order they appear, i.e. not as in BODMAS, though brackets should be correctly observed, of course. The function should return the correct result for any possible expression of this form. However, the function does not have to handle malformed expressions (i.e. ones with bad syntax). Examples of expressions: 1 + 3 / -8 = -0.5 (No BODMAS) 2*3*4*5+99 = 219 4 * (9 - 4) / (2 * 6 - 2) + 8 = 10 1 + ((123 * 3 - 69) / 100) = 4 2.45/8.5*9.27+(5*0.0023) = 2.68... Rules I anticipate some form of "cheating"/craftiness here, so please let me forewarn against it! By cheating, I refer to the use of the eval or equivalent function in dynamic languages such as JavaScript or PHP, or equally compiling and executing code on the fly. (I think my specification of "no BODMAS" has pretty much guaranteed this however.) Apart from that, there are no restrictions. I anticipate a few Regex solutions here, but it would be nice to see more than just that. Now, I'm mainly interested in a C#/.NET solution here, but any other language would be perfectly acceptable too (in particular, F# and Python for the functional/mixed approaches). I haven't yet decided whether I'm going to accept the shortest or most ingenious solution (at least for the language) as the answer, but I would welcome any form of solution in any language, except what I've just prohibited above! My Solution I've now posted my C# solution here (403 chars). Update: My new solution has beaten the old one significantly at 294 chars, with the help of a bit of lovely regex! I suspected that this will get easily beaten by some of the languages out there with lighter syntax (particularly the funcional/dynamic ones), and have been proved right, but I'd be curious if someone could beat this in C# still. Update I've seen some very crafty solutions already. Thanks to everyone who has posted one. Although I haven't tested any of them yet, I'm going to trust people and assume they at least work with all of the given examples. Just for the note, re-entrancy (i.e. thread-safety) is not a requirement for the function, though it is a bonus. Format Please post all answers in the following format for the purpose of easy comparison: Language Number of characters: ??? Fully obfuscated function: (code here) Clear/semi-obfuscated function: (code here) Any notes on the algorithm/clever shortcuts it takes.

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• Using XStream to deserialize an XML response with separate "success" and "failure" forms?

  - by Chris Markle

  I am planning on using XStream with Java to convert between objects and XML requests and XML responses and objects, where the XML is flowing over HTTP/HTTPS. On the response side, I can get a "successful" response, which seems like it would map to one Java class, or a "failure" response, which seems like it would map to another Java class. For example, for a "file list" request, I could get an affirmative response e.g., <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <response> <success>true</success> <files> <file>[...]</file> <file>[...]</file> <file>[...]</file> </files> </response> or I could get a negative response e.g., <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <response> <success>false</success> <error> <errorCode>-502</errorCode> <systemMessage>[...]AuthenticationException</systemMessage> <userMessage>Not authenticated</userMessage> </error> </response> To handle this, should I include fields in one class for both cases or should I somehow use XStream to "conditionally" create one of the two potential classes? The case with fields from both response cases in the same object would look something like this: Class Response { boolean success; ArrayList<File> files; ResponseError error; [...] } Class File { String name; long size; [...] } Class ResponseError { int errorCode; String systemMessage; String userMessage; [...] } I don't know what the "use XStream and create different objects in case of success or error" looks like. Is it possible to do that somehow? Is it better or worse way to go? Anyway, any advice on how to handle using XStream to deal with this success vs. failure response case would be appreciated. Thanks in advance!

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• How can I turn a string of text into a BigInteger representation for use in an El Gamal cryptosystem

  - by angstrom91

  I'm playing with the El Gamal cryptosystem, and my goal is to be able to encipher and decipher long sequences of text. I have come up with a method that works for short sequences, but does not work for long sequences, and I cannot figure out why. El Gamal requires the plaintext to be an integer. I have turned my string into a byte[] using the .getBytes() method for Strings, and then created a BigInteger out of the byte[]. After encryption/decryption, I turn the BigInteger into a byte[] using the .toByteArray() method for BigIntegers, and then create a new String object from the byte[]. This works perfectly when i call ElGamalEncipher with strings up to 129 characters. With 130 or more characters, the output produced is garbled. Can someone suggest how to solve this issue? Is this an issue with my method of turning the string into a BigInteger? If so, is there a better way to turn my string of text into a BigInteger and back? Below is my encipher/decipher code. public static BigInteger[] ElGamalEncipher(String plaintext, BigInteger p, BigInteger g, BigInteger r) { // returns a BigInteger[] cipherText // cipherText[0] is c // cipherText[1] is d BigInteger[] cipherText = new BigInteger[2]; BigInteger pText = new BigInteger(plaintext.getBytes()); // 1: select a random integer k such that 1 <= k <= p-2 BigInteger k = new BigInteger(p.bitLength() - 2, sr); // 2: Compute c = g^k(mod p) BigInteger c = g.modPow(k, p); // 3: Compute d= P*r^k = P(g^a)^k(mod p) BigInteger d = pText.multiply(r.modPow(k, p)).mod(p); // C =(c,d) is the ciphertext cipherText[0] = c; cipherText[1] = d; return cipherText; } public static String ElGamalDecipher(BigInteger c, BigInteger d, BigInteger a, BigInteger p) { //returns the plaintext enciphered as (c,d) // 1: use the private key a to compute the least non-negative residue // of an inverse of (c^a)' (mod p) BigInteger z = c.modPow(a, p).modInverse(p); BigInteger P = z.multiply(d).mod(p); byte[] plainTextArray = P.toByteArray(); String output = null; try { output = new String(plainTextArray, "UTF8"); } catch (Exception e) { } return output; }

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• Understanding PTS and DTS in video frames

  - by theateist

  I had fps issues when transcoding from avi to mp4(x264). Eventually the problem was in PTS and DTS values, so lines 12-15 where added before av_interleaved_write_frame function: 1. AVFormatContext* outContainer = NULL; 2. avformat_alloc_output_context2(&outContainer, NULL, "mp4", "c:\\test.mp4"; 3. AVCodec *encoder = avcodec_find_encoder(AV_CODEC_ID_H264); 4. AVStream *outStream = avformat_new_stream(outContainer, encoder); 5. // outStream->codec initiation 6. // ... 7. avformat_write_header(outContainer, NULL); 8. // reading and decoding packet 9. // ... 10. avcodec_encode_video2(outStream->codec, &encodedPacket, decodedFrame, &got_frame) 11. 12. if (encodedPacket.pts != AV_NOPTS_VALUE) 13. encodedPacket.pts = av_rescale_q(encodedPacket.pts, outStream->codec->time_base, outStream->time_base); 14. if (encodedPacket.dts != AV_NOPTS_VALUE) 15. encodedPacket.dts = av_rescale_q(encodedPacket.dts, outStream->codec->time_base, outStream->time_base); 16. 17. av_interleaved_write_frame(outContainer, &encodedPacket) After reading many posts I still do not understand: outStream->codec->time_base = 1/25 and outStream->time_base = 1/12800. The 1st one was set by me but I cannot figure out why and who set 12800? I noticed that before line (7) outStream->time_base = 1/90000 and right after it it changes to 1/12800, why? When I transcode from avi to avi, meaning changing the line (2) to avformat_alloc_output_context2(&outContainer, NULL, "avi", "c:\\test.avi"; , so before and after line (7) outStream->time_base remains always 1/25 and not like in mp4 case, why? What is the difference between time_base of outStream->codec and outStream? To calc the pts av_rescale_q does: takes 2 time_base, multiplies their fractions in cross and then compute the pts. Why it does this in this way? As I debugged, the encodedPacket.pts has value incremental by 1, so why changing it if it does has value? At the beginning the dts value is -2 and after each rescaling it still has negative number, but despite this the video played correctly! Shouldn't it be positive?

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• jquery anchor to html extract

  - by Benjamin Ortuzar

  I would like to implement something similar to the Google quick scroll extension with jquery for the extracts of a search result, so when the full document is opened (within the same website) it gives the user the opportunity to go straight to the extract location. Here is a sample of what I get returned from the search engine when I search for 'food'. <doc> <docid>129305</docid> <title><span class='highlighted'>Food</span></title> <summary> <summarytext>Papers subject to Negative Resolution: 4 <span class='highlighted'>Food</span> <span class='highlighted'>Food</span> Irradiation (England) Regulations 2009 (S.I., 2009, No. 1584), dated 24 June 2009 (by Act), </summarytext> </summary> <paras> <paraitemcount>2</paraitemcount> <para> <paraitem>1</paraitem> <paraid>42</paraid> <pararelevance>100</pararelevance> <paraweights>50</paraweights> <paratext>4 <span class='highlighted'>Food</span></paratext> </para> <para> <paraitem>2</paraitem> <paraid>54</paraid> <pararelevance>100</pararelevance> <paraweights>50</paraweights> <paratext><span class='highlighted'>Food</span> Irradiation (England) Regulations 2009 (S.I., 2009, No. 1584), dated 24 June 2009 (by Act), with an Explanatory Memorandum and an Impact Assessment (</paratext> </para> </paras> </doc> As you see the search engine has returned a document that contains one summary and two extracts. So let's say the user clicks on the second extract in the search resutls page, the browser would open the detailed document in the same website, and would offer the user the possibility to go to the extract as the Google quick scroll extension does. Is there an existing jquery script for this? If not, can you suggest any jquery/javascript code that would simplify my task to implement this. Notes: I can access the extracts from the document details page. I'm aware that the HTML in some cases could be slightly different in the extract than in the details page, finding no match. The search engine does not return where the extract was located. At the moment I'm trying to understand the JS code that the extension uses.

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