Search Results

Search found 14974 results on 599 pages for 'old games'.

Page 454/599 | < Previous Page | 450 451 452 453 454 455 456 457 458 459 460 461  | Next Page >

  • Isometric screen to 3D world coordinates efficiently

    - by Justin
    Been having a difficult time transforming 2D screen coordinates to 3D isometric space. This is the situation where I am working in 3D but I have an orthographic camera. Then my camera is positioned at (100, 200, 100), Where the xz plane is flat and y is up and down. I've been able to get a sort of working solution, but I feel like there must be a better way. Here's what I'm doing: With my camera at (0, 1, 0) I can translate my screen coordinates directly to 3D coordinates by doing: mouse2D.z = (( event.clientX / window.innerWidth ) * 2 - 1) * -(window.innerWidth /2); mouse2D.x = (( event.clientY / window.innerHeight) * 2 + 1) * -(window.innerHeight); mouse2D.y = 0; Everything okay so far. Now when I change my camera back to (100, 200, 100) my 3D space has been rotated 45 degrees around the y axis and then rotated about 54 degrees around a vector Q that runs along the xz plane at a 45 degree angle between the positive z axis and the negative x axis. So what I do to find the point is first rotate my point by 45 degrees using a matrix around the y axis. Now I'm close. So then I rotate my point around the vector Q. But my point is closer to the origin than it should be, since the Y value is not 0 anymore. What I want is that after the rotation my Y value is 0. So now I exchange my X and Z coordinates of my rotated vector with the X and Z coordinates of my non-rotated vector. So basically I have my old vector but it's y value is at an appropriate rotated amount. Now I use another matrix to rotate my point around the vector Q in the opposite direction, and I end up with the point where I clicked. Is there a better way? I feel like I must be missing something. Also my method isn't completely accurate. I feel like it's within 5-10 coordinates of where I click, maybe because of rounding from many calculations. Sorry for such a long question.

    Read the article

  • Supporting users if they're not on your site

    - by Roger Hart
    Have a look at this Read Write Web article, specifically the paragraph in bold and the comments. Have a wry chuckle, or maybe weep for the future of humanity - your call. Then pause, and worry about information architecture. The short story: Read Write Web bumps up the Google rankings for "Facebook login" at the same time as Facebook makes UI changes, and a few hundred users get confused and leave comments on Read Write Web complaining about not being able to log in to their Facebook accounts.* Blindly clicking the first Google result is not a navigation behaviour I'd anticipated for folks visiting big names sites like Facebook. But then, I use Launchy and don't know where any of my files are, depend on Firefox auto-complete, view Facebook through my IM client, and don't need a map to find my backside with both hands. Not all our users behave in the same way, which means not all of our architecture is within our control, and people can get to your content in all sorts of ways. Even if the Read Write Web episode is a prank of some kind (there are, after all, plenty of folks who enjoy orchestrated trolling) it's still a useful reminder. Your users may take paths through and to your content you cannot control, and they are unlikely to deconstruct their assumptions along the way. I guess the meaningful question is: can you still support those users? If they get to you from Google instead of your front door, does what they find still make sense? Does your information architecture still work if your guests come in through the bathroom window? Ok, so here they broke into the house next door - you can't be expected to deal with that. But the rest is well worth thinking about. Other off-site interaction It's rarely going to be as funny as the comments at Read Write Web, but your users are going to do, say, and read things they think of as being about you and your products, in places you don't control. That's good. If you pay attention to it, you get data. Your users get a better experience. There are easy wins, too. Blogs, forums, social media &c. People may look for and find help with your product on blogs and forums, on Twitter, and what have you. They may learn about your brand in the same way. That's fine, it's an interaction you can be part of. It's time-consuming, certainly, but you have the option. You won't get a blogger to incorporate your site navigation just in case your users end up there, but you can be there when they do. Again, Anne Gentle, Gordon McLean and others have covered this in more depth than I could. Direct contact Sales people, customer care, support, they all talk to people. Are they sending links to your content? if so, which bits? Do they know about all of it? Do they have the content they need to support them - messaging that funnels sales, FAQ that are realistically frequent, detailed examples of things people want to do, that kind of thing. Are they sending links because users can't find the good stuff? Are they sending précis of your content, or re-writes, or brand new stuff? If so, does that mean your content isn't up to scratch, or that you've got content missing? Direct sales/care/support interactions are enormously valuable, and can help you know what content your users find useful. You can't have a table of contents or a "See also" in a phonecall, but your content strategy can support more interactions than browsing. *Passing observation about Facebook. For plenty if folks, it is  the internet. Its services are simple versions of what a lot of people use the internet for, and they're aggregated into one stop. Flickr, Vimeo, Wordpress, Twitter, LinkedIn, and all sorts of games, have Facebook doppelgangers that are not only friendlier to entry-level users, they're right there, behind only one layer of authentication. As such, it could own a lot of interaction convention. Heavy users may well not be tech-savvy, and be quite change averse. That doesn't make this episode not dumb, but I'm happy to go easy on 'em.

    Read the article

  • Super Joybox 5 HID 0925:8884 not recognized as joystick in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

    - by Tim Evans
    Problem: When using the "Super JoyBox 5" 4 port playstation 2 to USB adapter, the device is not recognized as a joystick. there is no js0 created, but instead another input eventX and mouseX are created in /dev/input. When using the directional buttons (up down left right) on a Playstation 1 controller attached to the device, the mouse cursor moves to the top, bottom, left, and right edges of the screen respectively. Buttons are unresponsive. The joypads attached to the device cannot be used in any games or other programs. Attempted remedies: Creating a symlink from the eventX to js0 does not solve the problem. Addl Info: joydev is loaded and running peroperly according to LSMOD. evtest can be run on the created eventX (sudo evtest /dev/input/event14 in my case) and the buttons and axes all register inputs. Here is a paste of EVTEST's diagnostic and the first couple button events. [code] sudo evtest /dev/input/event14 Input driver version is 1.0.1 Input device ID: bus 0x3 vendor 0x925 product 0x8884 version 0x100 Input device name: "HID 0925:8884" Supported events: Event type 0 (EV_SYN) Event type 1 (EV_KEY) Event code 288 (BTN_TRIGGER) Event code 289 (BTN_THUMB) Event code 290 (BTN_THUMB2) Event code 291 (BTN_TOP) Event code 292 (BTN_TOP2) Event code 293 (BTN_PINKIE) Event code 294 (BTN_BASE) Event code 295 (BTN_BASE2) Event code 296 (BTN_BASE3) Event code 297 (BTN_BASE4) Event code 298 (BTN_BASE5) Event code 299 (BTN_BASE6) Event code 300 (?) Event code 301 (?) Event code 302 (?) Event code 303 (BTN_DEAD) Event code 304 (BTN_A) Event code 305 (BTN_B) Event code 306 (BTN_C) Event code 307 (BTN_X) Event code 308 (BTN_Y) Event code 309 (BTN_Z) Event code 310 (BTN_TL) Event code 311 (BTN_TR) Event code 312 (BTN_TL2) Event code 313 (BTN_TR2) Event code 314 (BTN_SELECT) Event code 315 (BTN_START) Event code 316 (BTN_MODE) Event code 317 (BTN_THUMBL) Event code 318 (BTN_THUMBR) Event code 319 (?) Event code 320 (BTN_TOOL_PEN) Event code 321 (BTN_TOOL_RUBBER) Event code 322 (BTN_TOOL_BRUSH) Event code 323 (BTN_TOOL_PENCIL) Event code 324 (BTN_TOOL_AIRBRUSH) Event code 325 (BTN_TOOL_FINGER) Event code 326 (BTN_TOOL_MOUSE) Event code 327 (BTN_TOOL_LENS) Event code 328 (?) Event code 329 (?) Event code 330 (BTN_TOUCH) Event code 331 (BTN_STYLUS) Event code 332 (BTN_STYLUS2) Event code 333 (BTN_TOOL_DOUBLETAP) Event code 334 (BTN_TOOL_TRIPLETAP) Event code 335 (BTN_TOOL_QUADTAP) Event type 3 (EV_ABS) Event code 0 (ABS_X) Value 127 Min 0 Max 255 Flat 15 Event code 1 (ABS_Y) Value 127 Min 0 Max 255 Flat 15 Event code 2 (ABS_Z) Value 127 Min 0 Max 255 Flat 15 Event code 3 (ABS_RX) Value 127 Min 0 Max 255 Flat 15 Event code 4 (ABS_RY) Value 127 Min 0 Max 255 Flat 15 Event code 5 (ABS_RZ) Value 127 Min 0 Max 255 Flat 15 Event code 6 (ABS_THROTTLE) Value 127 Min 0 Max 255 Flat 15 Event code 7 (ABS_RUDDER) Value 127 Min 0 Max 255 Flat 15 Event code 8 (ABS_WHEEL) Value 127 Min 0 Max 255 Flat 15 Event code 9 (ABS_GAS) Value 127 Min 0 Max 255 Flat 15 Event code 10 (ABS_BRAKE) Value 127 Min 0 Max 255 Flat 15 Event code 11 (?) Value 127 Min 0 Max 255 Flat 15 Event code 12 (?) Value 127 Min 0 Max 255 Flat 15 Event code 13 (?) Value 127 Min 0 Max 255 Flat 15 Event code 14 (?) Value 127 Min 0 Max 255 Flat 15 Event code 15 (?) Value 127 Min 0 Max 255 Flat 15 Event code 16 (ABS_HAT0X) Value 0 Min -1 Max 1 Event code 17 (ABS_HAT0Y) Value 0 Min -1 Max 1 Event code 18 (ABS_HAT1X) Value 0 Min -1 Max 1 Event code 19 (ABS_HAT1Y) Value 0 Min -1 Max 1 Event code 20 (ABS_HAT2X) Value 0 Min -1 Max 1 Event code 21 (ABS_HAT2Y) Value 0 Min -1 Max 1 Event code 22 (ABS_HAT3X) Value 0 Min -1 Max 1 Event code 23 (ABS_HAT3Y) Value 0 Min -1 Max 1 Event type 4 (EV_MSC) Event code 4 (MSC_SCAN) Testing ... (interrupt to exit) Event: time 1351223176.126127, type 4 (EV_MSC), code 4 (MSC_SCAN), value 90001 Event: time 1351223176.126130, type 1 (EV_KEY), code 288 (BTN_TRIGGER), value 1 Event: time 1351223176.126166, -------------- SYN_REPORT ------------ Event: time 1351223178.238127, type 4 (EV_MSC), code 4 (MSC_SCAN), value 90001 Event: time 1351223178.238130, type 1 (EV_KEY), code 288 (BTN_TRIGGER), value 0 Event: time 1351223178.238167, -------------- SYN_REPORT ------------ Event: time 1351223180.422127, type 4 (EV_MSC), code 4 (MSC_SCAN), value 90002 Event: time 1351223180.422129, type 1 (EV_KEY), code 289 (BTN_THUMB), value 1 Event: time 1351223180.422163, -------------- SYN_REPORT ------------ Event: time 1351223181.558099, type 4 (EV_MSC), code 4 (MSC_SCAN), value 90002 Event: time 1351223181.558102, type 1 (EV_KEY), code 289 (BTN_THUMB), value 0 Event: time 1351223181.558137, -------------- SYN_REPORT ------------ Event: time 1351223182.486137, type 4 (EV_MSC), code 4 (MSC_SCAN), value 90003 Event: time 1351223182.486140, type 1 (EV_KEY), code 290 (BTN_THUMB2), value 1 Event: time 1351223182.486172, -------------- SYN_REPORT ------------ Event: time 1351223183.302130, type 4 (EV_MSC), code 4 (MSC_SCAN), value 90003 Event: time 1351223183.302132, type 1 (EV_KEY), code 290 (BTN_THUMB2), value 0 Event: time 1351223183.302165, -------------- SYN_REPORT ------------ Event: time 1351223184.030133, type 4 (EV_MSC), code 4 (MSC_SCAN), value 90004 Event: time 1351223184.030136, type 1 (EV_KEY), code 291 (BTN_TOP), value 1 Event: time 1351223184.030166, -------------- SYN_REPORT ------------ Event: time 1351223184.558135, type 4 (EV_MSC), code 4 (MSC_SCAN), value 90004 Event: time 1351223184.558138, type 1 (EV_KEY), code 291 (BTN_TOP), value 0 Event: time 1351223184.558168, -------------- SYN_REPORT ------------ [/code] The directional buttons on the pad are being identified as HAT0Y and HAT0X axes, thats zero, not the letter O. Aparently, this device used to work flawlessly on kernel 2.4.x systems, and even as late as ubunto 10.04. Perhaps the Joydev rules for identifying joypads has changed? Currently, this kind of bug is affecting a few different type of controller adapters, but since this is the one that i PERSONALLY have (and has been driving me my own special brand of crazy), its the one im documenting. What i think should be happening instead: The device should be registering js0 through js3, one for each port, or JS0 that will handle all of the connected devices with different numbered axes for each connected joypad. Either way, it should work as a joystick and stop controlling the mouse cursor. Please help!

    Read the article

  • Going Metro

    - by Tony Davis
    When it was announced, I confess was somewhat surprised by the striking new "Metro" User Interface for Windows 8, based on Swiss typography, Bauhaus design, tiles, touches and gestures, and the new Windows Runtime (WinRT) API on which Metro apps were to be built. It all seemed to have come out of nowhere, like field mushrooms in the night and seemed quite out-of-character for a company like Microsoft, which has hung on determinedly for over twenty years to its quaint Windowing system. Many were initially puzzled by the lack of support for plug-ins in the "Metro" version of IE10, which ships with Win8, and the apparent demise of Silverlight, Microsoft's previous 'radical new framework'. Win8 signals the end of the road for Silverlight apps in the browser, but then its importance here has been waning for some time, anyway, now that HTML5 has usurped its most compelling use case, streaming video. As Shawn Wildermuth and others have noted, if you're doing enterprise, desktop development with Silverlight then nothing much changes immediately, though it seems clear that ultimately Silverlight will die off in favor of a single WPF/XAML framework that supports those technologies that were pioneered on the phones and tablets. There is a mystery here. Is Silverlight dead, or merely repurposed? The more you look at Metro, the more it seems to resemble Silverlight. A lot of the philosophies underpinning Silverlight applications, such as the fundamentally asynchronous nature of the design, have moved wholesale into Metro, along with most the Microsoft Silverlight dev team. As Simon Cooper points out, "Silverlight developers, already used to all the principles of sandboxing and separation, will have a much easier time writing Metro apps than desktop developers". Metro certainly has given the framework formerly known as Silverlight a new purpose. It has enabled Microsoft to bestow on Windows 8 a new "duality", as both a traditional desktop OS supporting 'legacy' Windows applications, and an OS that supports a new breed of application that can share functionality such as search, that understands, and can react to, the full range of gestures and screen-sizes, and has location-awareness. It's clear that Win8 is developed in the knowledge that the 'desktop computer' will soon be a very large, tilted, touch-screen monitor. Windows owes its new-found versatility to the lessons learned from Windows Phone, but it's developed for the big screen, and with full support for familiar .NET desktop apps as well as the new Metro apps. But the old mouse-driven Windows applications will soon look very passé, just as MSDOS character-mode applications did in the nineties. Cheers, Tony.

    Read the article

  • Roll your own free .NET technical conference

    - by Brian Schroer
    If you can’t get to a conference, let the conference come to you! There are a ton of free recorded conference presentations online… Microsoft TechEd Let’s start with the proverbial 800 pound gorilla. Recent TechEds have recorded the majority of presentations and made them available online the next day. Check out presentations from last month’s TechEd North America 2012 or last week’s TechEd Europe 2012. If you start at http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd, you can also drill down to presentations from prior years or from other regional TechEds (Australia, New Zealand, etc.) The top presentations from my “View Queue”: Damian Edwards: Microsoft ASP.NET and the Realtime Web (SignalR) Jennifer Smith: Design for Non-Designers Scott Hunter: ASP.NET Roadmap: One ASP.NET – Web Forms, MVC, Web API, and more Daniel Roth: Building HTTP Services with ASP.NET Web API Benjamin Day: Scrum Under a Waterfall NDC The Norwegian Developer Conference site has the most interesting presentations, in my opinion. You can find the videos from the June 2012 conference at that link. The 2011 and 2010 pages have a lot of presentations that are still relevant also. My View Queue Top 5: Shay Friedman: Roslyn... hmmmm... what? Hadi Hariri: Just ‘cause it’s JavaScript, doesn’t give you a license to write rubbish Paul Betts: Introduction to Rx Greg Young: How to get productive in a project in 24 hours Michael Feathers: Deep Design Lessons ØREDEV Travelling on from Norway to Sweden... I don’t know why, but the Scandinavians seem to have this conference thing figured out. ØREDEV happens each November, and you can find videos here and here. My View Queue Top 5: Marc Gravell: Web Performance Triage Robby Ingebretsen: Fonts, Form and Function: A Primer on Digital Typography Jon Skeet: Async 101 Chris Patterson: Hacking Developer Productivity Gary Short: .NET Collections Deep Dive aspConf - The Virtual ASP.NET Conference Formerly known as “mvcConf”, this one’s a little different. It’s a conference that takes place completely on the web. The next one’s happening July 17-18, and it’s not too late to register (It’s free!). Check out the recordings from February 2011 and July 2010. It’s two years old and talks about ASP.NET MVC2, but most of it is still applicable, and Jimmy Bogard’s Put Your Controllers On a Diet presentation is the most useful technical talk I have ever seen. CodeStock Videos from the 2011 edition of this Tennessee conference are available. Presentations from last month’s 2012 conference should be available soon here. I’m looking forward to watching Matt Honeycutt’s Build Your Own Application Framework with ASP.NET MVC 3. UserGroup.tv User Group.tv was founded in January of 2011 by Shawn Weisfeld, with the mission of providing User Group content online for free. You can search by date, group, speaker and category tags. My View Queue Top 5: Sergey Rathon & Ian Henehan: UI Test Automation with Selenium Rob Vettor: The Repository Pattern Latish Seghal: The .NET Ninja’s Toolbelt Amir Rajan: Get Things Done With Dynamic ASP.NET MVC Jeffrey Richter: .NET Nuggets – Houston TechFest Keynote

    Read the article

  • How can fix HDMI HDTV overscan when I my TV has no aspect ratio setting?

    - by Colin Dean
    I have a 32" Vizio HDTV. It's a few years old, but running well. I just connected a new nettop to it using HDMI out. It's the Intel 3x00 graphics chipset. I'm seeing overscan, where the resolution in Ubuntu is set to 1280x720, but the TV itself is 1366x768. When I go into the Monitors control applet, I cannot change the resolution to anything other than the current or 640x480. A user had a similar overscan problem, but fixed the overscan by adjusting his TV's aspect ratio settings. I do not have that luxury. Is there a way I can do this without having to delve into xorg.conf or other command-line craziness? I'm more than comfortable doing so, but there must be a cleaner way. I'm running Ubuntu Natty, keeping up with updates and such. Here's the output of lspci: colin@bricktop:~$ lspci 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor DRAM Controller (rev 12) 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 12) 00:04.0 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Core Processor Thermal Management Controller (rev 12) 00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset HECI Controller (rev 06) 00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB2 Enhanced Host Controller (rev 06) 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset High Definition Audio (rev 06) 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev 06) 00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 2 (rev 06) 00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 3 (rev 06) 00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB2 Enhanced Host Controller (rev 06) 00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev a6) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 5 Series Chipset LPC Interface Controller (rev 06) 00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset 4 port SATA AHCI Controller (rev 06) 00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset SMBus Controller (rev 06) 00:1f.6 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset Thermal Subsystem (rev 06) 01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 06) 02:00.0 USB Controller: NEC Corporation uPD720200 USB 3.0 Host Controller (rev 03) 03:00.0 Network controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR9287 Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) (rev 01)

    Read the article

  • ASP.NET 4.0- Menu control enhancement.

    - by Jalpesh P. Vadgama
    Till asp.net 3.5 asp.net menu control was rendered through table. And we all know that it is very hard to have CSS applied to table. For a professional look of our website a CSS is must required thing. But in asp.net 4.0 Menu control is table less it will loaded with UL and LI tags which is easier to manage through CSS. Another problem with table is it will create a large html which will increase your asp.net page KB and decrease your performance. While with UL and LI Tags its very easy very short. So You page KB Size will also be down. Let’s take a simple example. Let’s Create a menu control in asp.net with four menu item like following. <asp:Menu ID="myCustomMenu" runat="server" > <Items> <asp:MenuItem Text="Menu1" Value="Menu1"></asp:MenuItem> <asp:MenuItem Text="Menu2" Value="Menu2"></asp:MenuItem> <asp:MenuItem Text="Menu3" Value="Menu3"></asp:MenuItem> <asp:MenuItem Text="Menu4" Value="Menu4"></asp:MenuItem> </Items></asp:Menu> It will render menu in browser like following. Now If we render this menu control with tables then HTML as you can see via view page source like following.   Now If in asp.net 4.0 It will be loaded with UL and LI tags and if you now see page source then it will look like following. Which will have must lesser HTML then it was earlier like following. So isn’t that great performance enhancement?.. It’s very cool. If you still like old way doing with tables then in asp.net 4.0 there is property called ‘RenderingMode’ is given. So you can set RenderingMode=Table then it will load menu control with table otherwise it will load menu control with UL and LI Tags. That’s it..Stay tuned for more..Happy programming.. Technorati Tags: Menu,Asp.NET 4.0

    Read the article

  • Ranking - an Introduction

    - by PointsToShare
    © 2011 By: Dov Trietsch. All rights reserved Ranking Ranking is quite common in the internet. Readers are asked to rank their latest reading by clicking on one of 5 (sometimes 10) stars. The number of stars is then converted to a number and the average number of stars as selected by all the readers is proudly (or shamefully) displayed for future readers. SharePoint 2007 lacked this feature altogether. SharePoint 2010 allows the users to rank items in a list or documents in a library (the two are actually the same because a library is actually a list). But in SP2010 the computation of the average is done later on a timer rather than on-the-spot as it should be. I suspect that the reason for this shortcoming is that they did not involve a mathematician! Let me explain. Ranking is kept in a related list. When a user rates a document the rank-list is added an item with the item id, the user name, and his number of stars. The fact that a user already ranked an item prevents him from ranking it again. This prevents the creator of the item from asking his mother to rank it a 5 and do it 753 times, thus stacking the ballot. Some systems will allow a user to change his rating and this will be done by updating the rank-list item. Now, when the timer kicks off, the list is spanned and for each item the rank-list items containing this id are summed up and divided by the number of votes thus yielding the new average. This is obviously very time consuming and very server intensive. In the 18th century an early actuary named James Dodson used what the great Augustus De Morgan (of De Morgan’s law) later named Commutation tables. The labor involved in computing a life insurance premium was staggering and also very error prone. Clerks with pencil and paper would multiply and add mountains of numbers to do the task. The more steps the greater the probability of error and the more expensive the process. Commutation tables created a “summary” of many steps and reduced the work 100 fold. So had Microsoft taken a lesson in the history of computation, they would have developed a much faster way for rating that may be done in real-time and is also 100 times faster and less CPU intensive. How do we do this? We use a form of commutation. We always keep the number of votes and the total of stars. One simple division gives us the average. So we write an event receiver. When a vote is added, we just add the stars to the total-stars and 1 to the number of votes. We then recomputed the average. When a vote is updated, we reduce the total by the old vote, increase it by the new vote and leave the number of votes the same. Again we do the division to get the new average. When a vote is deleted (highly unlikely and maybe even prohibited), we reduce the total by that vote and reduce the number of votes by 1… Gone are the days of spanning lists, counting items, and tallying votes and we have no need for a timer process to run it all. This is the first of a few treatises on ranking. Even though I discussed the math and the history thereof, in here I am only going to solve the presentation issue. I wanted to create the CSS and Jscript needed to display the stars, create the various effects like hovering and clicking (onmouseover, onmouseout, onclick, etc.) and I wanted to create a general solution with any number of stars. When I had it all done, I created the ranking game so that I could test it. The game is interesting in and on itself, so here it is (or go to the games page and select “rank the stars”). BTW, when you play it, look at the source code and see how it was all done.  Next, how the 5 stars are displayed in the New and Update forms. When the whole set of articles will be done, you’ll be able to create the complete solution. That’s all folks!

    Read the article

  • Computer Visionaries 2014 Kinect Hackathon

    - by T
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/tburger/archive/2014/08/08/computer-visionaries-2014-kinect-hackathon.aspxA big thank you to Computer Vision Dallas and Microsoft for putting together the Computer Visionaries 2014 Kinect Hackathon that took place July 18th and 19th 2014.  Our team had a great time and learned a lot from the Kinect MVP's and Microsoft team.  The Dallas Entrepreneur Center was a fantastic venue. In total, 114 people showed up to form 15 teams. Burger ITS & Friends team members with Ben Lower:  Shawn Weisfeld, Teresa Burger, Robert Burger, Harold Pulcher, Taylor Woolley, Cori Drew (not pictured), and Katlyn Drew (not pictured) We arrived Friday after a long day of work/driving.  Originally, our idea was to make a learning game for kids.  It was intended to be multi-simultaneous players dragging and dropping tiles into a canvas area for kids around 5 years old. We quickly learned that we were limited to two simultaneous players. After working on the game for the rest of the evening and into the next morning we decided that a fast multi-player game with hand gestures was not going to happen without going beyond what was provided with the API. If we were going to have something to show, it was time to switch gears. The next idea on the table was the Photo Anywhere Kiosk. The user can use voice and hand gestures to pick a place they would like to be.  After the user says a place (or anything they want) and then the word "search", the app uses Bing to display a bunch of images for him/her to choose from. With the use of hand gesture (grab and slide to move back and forth and push/pull to select an image) the user can get the perfect image to pose with. I couldn't get a snippet with the hand but when a the app is in use, a hand shows up to cue the user to use their hand to control it's movement. Once they chose an image, we use the Kinect background removal feature to super impose the user on that image. When they are in the perfect position, they say "save" to save the image. Currently, the image is saved in the images folder on the users account but there are many possibilities such as emailing it, posting to social media, etc.. The competition was great and we were honored to be recognized for third place. Other related posts: http://jasongfox.com/computer-visionaries-2014-incredible-success/ A couple of us are continuing to work on the kid's game and are going to make it a Windows 8 multi-player game without Kinect functionality. Stay tuned for more updates.

    Read the article

  • Ghost team foundation build controllers

    - by Martin Hinshelwood
    Quite often after an upgrade there are things left over. Most of the time they are easy to delete, but sometimes it takes a little effort. Even rarer are those times when something just will not go away no matter how much you try. We have had a ghost team build controller hanging around for a while now, and it had defeated my best efforts to get rid of it. The build controller was from our old TFS server from before our TFS 2010 beta 2 upgrade and was really starting to annoy me. Every time I try to delete it I get the message: Controller cannot be deleted because there are build in progress -Manage Build Controller dialog   Figure: Deleting a ghost controller does not always work. I ended up checking all of our 172 Team Projects for the build that was queued, but did not find anything. Jim Lamb pointed me to the “tbl_BuildQueue” table in the team Project Collection database and sure enough there was the nasty little beggar. Figure: The ghost build was easily spotted Adam Cogan asked me: “Why did you suspect this one?” Well, there are a number of things that led me to suspect it: QueueId is very low: Look at the other items, they are in the thousands not single digits ControllerId: I know there is only one legitimate controller, and I am assuming that 6 relates to “zzUnicorn” DefinitionId: This is a very low number and I looked it up in “tbl_BuildDefinition” and it did not exist QueueTime: As we did not upgrade to TFS 2010 until late 2009 a date of 2008 for a queued build is very suspect Status: A status of 2 means that it is still queued This build must have been queued long ago when we were using TFS 2008, probably a beta, and it never got cleaned up. As controllers are new in TFS 2010 it would have created the “zzUnicorn” controller to handle any build servers that already exist. I had previously deleted the Agent, but leaving the controller just looks untidy. Now that the ghost build has been identified there are two options: Delete the row I would not recommend ever deleting anything from the database to achieve something in TFS. It is really not supported. Set the Status to cancelled (Recommended) This is the best option as TFS will then clean it up itself So I set the Status of this build to 2 (cancelled) and sure enough it disappeared after a couple of minutes and I was then able to then delete the “zzUnicorn” controller. Figure: Almost completely clean Now all I have to do is get rid of that untidy “zzBunyip” agent, but that will require rewriting one of our build scripts which will have to wait for now.   Technorati Tags: ALM,TFBS,TFS 2010

    Read the article

  • on coding style

    - by user12607414
    I vastly prefer coding to discussing coding style, just as I would prefer to write poetry instead of talking about how it should be written. Sometimes the topic cannot be put off, either because some individual coder is messing up a shared code base and needs to be corrected, or (worse) because some officious soul has decided, "what we really need around here are some strongly enforced style rules!" Neither is the case at the moment, and yet I will venture a post on the subject. The following are not rules, but suggested etiquette. The idea is to allow a coherent style of coding to flourish safely and sanely, as a humane, inductive, social process. Maxim M1: Observe, respect, and imitate the largest-scale precedents available. (Preserve styles of whitespace, capitalization, punctuation, abbreviation, name choice, code block size, factorization, type of comments, class organization, file naming, etc., etc., etc.) Maxim M2: Don't add weight to small-scale variations. (Realize that Maxim M1 has been broken many times, but don't take that as license to create further irregularities.) Maxim M3: Listen to and rely on your reviewers to help you perceive your own coding quirks. (When you review, help the coder do this.) Maxim M4: When you touch some code, try to leave it more readable than you found it. (When you review such changes, thank the coder for the cleanup. When you plan changes, plan for cleanups.) On the Hotspot project, which is almost 1.5 decades old, we have often practiced and benefited from such etiquette. The process is, and should be, inductive, not prescriptive. An ounce of neighborliness is better than a pound of police-work. Reality check: If you actually look at (or live in) the Hotspot code base, you will find we have accumulated many annoying irregularities in our source base. I suppose this is the normal condition of a lived-in space. Unless you want to spend all your time polishing and tidying, you can't live without some smudge and clutter, can you? Final digression: Grammars and dictionaries and other prescriptive rule books are sometimes useful, but we humans learn and maintain our language by example not grammar. The same applies to style rules. Actually, I think the process of maintaining a clean and pleasant working code base is an instance of a community maintaining its common linguistic identity. BTW, I've been reading and listening to John McWhorter lately with great pleasure. (If you end with a digression, is it a tail-digression?)

    Read the article

  • JavaScript Sucks.

    - by Matt Watson
    JavaScript Sucks. Yes, I said it. Microsoft's announcement of TypeScript got me thinking today. Is this a step in the right direction? It sounds like it fixes a lot of problems with JavaScript development. But is it really just duct tape and super glue for a programming model that needs to be replaced?I have had a love hate relationship with JavaScript, like most developers who would prefer avoiding client side code. I started doing web development over 10 years ago and I have done some pretty cool stuff with JavaScript. It has came a long ways and is the universal standard these days for client side scripting in the web browser. Over the years the browsers have become much faster at processing JavaScript. Now people are even trying to use it on the server side via node.js. OK, so why do I think JavaScript sucks?Well first off, as an enterprise web application developer, I don't like any scripting or dynamic languages. I like code that compiles for lots of obvious reasons. It is messy to code with and lacks all kinds of modern programming features. We spend a lot of time trying to hack it to do things it was never really designed for.Ever try to use different jQuery based plugins that require conflicting jQuery versions? Yeah, that sucks.How about trying to figure out how to make 20 javascript include files load quicker as one request? Yeah that sucks too.Performance? Let me just point to the old Facebook mobile app made with JS & HTML5. It sucked. Enough said.How about unit testing JavaScript? I've never tried it, but it sure sounds like fun.My biggest problem with JavaScript is code security. If I make some awesome product, there is no way to protect my code. How can we expect game makers to write apps in 100% JavaScript and HTML5 if they can't protect their intellectual property?There are compiling tools like Closure, unit test frameworks, minify, coffee script, TypeScript and a bunch of other tools. But to me, they all try to make up for the weaknesses and problems with JavaScript. JavaScript is a mess and we spend a lot of time trying to work around all of it's problems. It is possible to program in Silverlight, Java or Flash and run that in the browser instead of JavaScript, but they all have their own problems and lack universal mobile support. I believe Microsoft's new TypeScript is a step forward for JavaScript, but I think we need to start planning to go a whole different direction. We need a new universal client side programming model, because JavaScript sucks.

    Read the article

  • Ubuntu 11.10 running in windows 7 (wubi) AND on a separate partition

    - by Pareen
    I am in a very strange situation and need some help: I installed Ubuntu 11.10 through Wubi a while back so that I can use it alongside Windows 7. I was running out of space on my disk when trying to install applications. Without understanding how Wubi worked, I partitioned my C drive (creating a new 90 GB partition) in Windows, booted from the Ubuntu 11.10 install/live disk, and used the "something else" option to create a ext4 (setting the mount point to root) and swap space partitions (/sda5 and /sda6). After the install, my computer no longer boots with the previous Wubi menu and is now using the Linux grub. The options I have are /sda2, which boots Windows 7; /sda1, which doesn't do anything and reloads the same menu, and the run Linux options. So I now have Ubuntu running on a separate partition, as well as the original Wubi install. I want to delete the seperate partition and go back to running Ubuntu on Wubi...if I remove the partition will I need the Windows 7 disk to restore the boot loader? I dont have the Windows 7 disk on me so what is the best way to clean this up so I get rid of the seperate partition? -------------------------------------------------UPDATE----------------------------------------------------- ============================================================================================================ thank you so much for your response. Actually, it would be fantastic if I could migrate my Wubi install into the new partition because I had downloaded the AOSP on the Wubi install (as well as other files) and would love to preserve them. If i can do that and work on the new partition with the old files than that would be great, and I can worry about wiping out the partition completely later on i.e. when I have the windows disk or something. Can you tell me how to do this migration?? So when I select the /sda2, it loads up my Windows. If i click on the Linux, it loads up the newly install Linux (my files that were on the Wubi install aren't there) fine. If I click on the /sda1 (SYSTEM_DRIVE... this is what the Wubi was using to boot the menu that let me select Windows 7 or Ubuntu)... it fails and just reloads the original menu. Here is the link to my boot info script http://pastebin.com/dMrY0NL3

    Read the article

  • ATI Radeon HD 4650 AGP Video card not recognized properly

    - by PastorLarry
    I have an ASUS ATI Radeon HD 4650 AGP in this system (yeah, I know how old it is). I've been on Ubuntu since 10.04, and the system has never properly recognized the card. I have always had the VESA drivers installed. Now that I have the time to address the problem, 12.04 was listing the card as "Unknown" under the System Settings. Meanwhile, Sysinfo recognizes the card as: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI RV730 Pro AGP [Radeon HD 4600 Series] (prog-if 00 [VGA controller]) Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 0028 So I know that this card should be using the radeon driver (or even the radeonhd driver). However, when I installed the mesa-utils package, the card is suddenly reported as: Gallium 0.4 on llvmpipe (LLVM 0x300) So now, I'm completely at a loss. It seems that the llvmpipe stuff has to do with OpenGL, but it still appears that I don't have the proper video driver installed. That being said, anyone know what I can do to force the system to recognize the card and use the radeon driver? [EDIT 05.28] I did look at some other information, including glxinfo and a couple of other commands (it was REALLY late, so I don't remember the other commands) and I got these: glxinfo | grep vendor: server glx vendor string: SGI client glx vendor string: Mesa Project and SGI OpenGL vendor string: X.org glxinfo | grep renderer: OpenGL renderer string: Gallium 0.4 on AMD RV730 One of the other commands gave a whole lot of info and near the end stated that the activation string for the radeon driver was "modprobe radeon". I've tried that from sudo and as root, but it doesn't seem to change anything. I'm at a complete loss. I've even added the xorg-edgers ppa to my Software Sources and updated and rebooted the system, but nothing has changed. Most of all, I can't seem to find any documentation on this issue, as it seems that it's assumed that the radeon driver will install automatically, no questions asked. I feel like such a newbie. Does anyone have any ideas on this? [edit 05.28] results of lsmod | grep radeon (in a more readable format than the comment below): radeon 733693 3 ttm 65344 1 radeon drm_kms_helper 45466 1 radeon drm 197692 5 radeon,ttm,drm_kms_helper i2c_algo_bit 13199 1 radeon [edit 05.29] This is my /etc/X11/xorg.conf: Section "ServerLayout" Identifier "aticonfig Layout" Screen 0 "aticonfig-Screen[0]-0" 0 0 EndSection Section "Module" EndSection Section "Monitor" Identifier "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-0" Option "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver" Option "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor" Option "DPMS" "true" EndSection Section "Device" Identifier "aticonfig-Device[0]-0" Driver "fglrx" BusID "PCI:1:0:0" EndSection Section "Screen" Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[0]-0" So here is my question. Can I simply change the name of the driver in the device section to "radeon" instead of "fglrx" and have the radeon driver work? Or is ther a way to use this as a tmeplate and change the appropriate lines and activate the radeon driver through this file?

    Read the article

  • Installing Forms and Reports on a development system

    - by Duncan Mills
    By popular demand I've resurrected / updated one of the old blog postings from Jan Carlin's Blog on GroundSide here. A recent (lengthy) post on the Forms forums chronicles the problems some of you have had installing F&R on a development machine. See the link in the headline of this post for the main one. When installing, here are some points to bear in mind: Download and install Weblogic Server first. http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/middleware/index.htmlFind the Forms and Reports (and Disco and Portal) zip files here. Download them to the desktop (or some other temporary directory of your choosing). Unzip both of the two zip files into the same new directory (maybe called 'stage') and check that you have 4 directories in the stage dir when you are finished unzipping: 'Disk1', 'Disk2', 'Disk3' and 'Disk4'. These folders are specified in the zip file structure and must be preserved for the setup executable to work. If you use WinZip and have a right click menu option that say "Extract to here", use that by right click-dragging the zip file onto the newly created directory. Don't use the "Extract to folder %HOME%\Desktop\ofm_pfrd...disk_1of2" option. That will get you into the trouble that was reported early in this thread. Free up as much memory as you can. Stop services and background processes and virus scanners and databases (you don't need a DB to install Forms) and other things lurking about on your machine. You can restart them when the install is done. Around 1.5 GB free real memory should do it. If it doesn't, free up more if you can. Don't change the swap space unless you know what you are doing. Let Windows handle it. A 1 GB machine will likely not be enough. You will likely need at least 2GB of RAM.Start the install with setup.exe from the 'Disk1' directoryChoose the Install and Configure option unless you have a good reason not to.Choose a unique instance name even if you deinstalled and removed the last install. I suggest using 'asinst_20090722_1' (today's date in ISO format with a running incremented number at the end if you install more than two times on a particular day).Unselect Portal and Discoverer and select the Builders you want.Unselect WebCacheUnselect OHS.Unselect the single sign-on option Check for any failures and choose the retry option if any occur. If that doesn't fix the problem, call Oracle Customer Support .

    Read the article

  • SQL SERVER – Preserve Leading Zero While Coping to Excel from SSMS

    - by pinaldave
    Earlier I wrote two articles about how to efficiently copy data from SSMS to Excel. Since I wrote that post there are plenty of interest generated on this subject. There are a few questions I keep on getting over this subject. One of the question is how to get the leading zero preserved while copying the data from SSMS to Excel. Well it is almost the same way as my earlier post SQL SERVER – Excel Losing Decimal Values When Value Pasted from SSMS ResultSet. The key here is in EXCEL and not in SQL Server. The step here is to change the format of Excel Cell to Text from Numbers and that will preserve the value of the with leading or trailing Zeros in Excel. However, I assume this is done for display purpose only because once you convert column to Text you may find it difficult to do numeric operations over the column for example Aggregation, Average etc. If you need to do the same you should either convert the columns back to Numeric in Excel or do the process in Database and export the same value as along with it as well. However, I have seen in requirement in the real world where the user has to have a numeric value with leading Zero values in it for display purpose. Here is my suggestion, instead of manipulating numeric value in the database and converting it to character value the ideal thing to do is to store it as a numeric value only in the database. Whatever changes you want to do for display purpose should be handled at the time of the display using the format function of SQL or Application Language. Honestly, database is data layer and presentation is presentation layer – they are two different things and if possible they should not be mixed. If due to any reason you cannot follow above advise and you need is to have append leading zeros in the database only here are two of my previous articles I suggest you to refer them. I am open to learn new tricks as these articles are almost three years old. Please share your opinion and suggestions in the comments area. SQL SERVER – Pad Ride Side of Number with 0 – Fixed Width Number Display SQL SERVER – UDF – Pad Ride Side of Number with 0 – Fixed Width Number Display Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Function, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Excel

    Read the article

  • Should I choose Doctrine 2 or Propel 1.5/1.6, and why?

    - by Billy ONeal
    I'd like to hear from those who have used Doctrine 2 (or later) and Propel 1.5 (or later). Most comparisons between these two object relational mappers are based on old versions -- Doctrine 1 versus Propel 1.3/1.4, and both ORMs went through significant redesigns in their recent revisions. For example, most of the criticism of Propel seems to center around the "ModelName Peer" classes, which are deprecated in 1.5 in any case. Here's what I've accumulated so far (And I've tried to make this list as balanced as possible...): Propel Pros Extremely IDE friendly, because actual code is generated, instead of relying on PHP magic methods. This means IDE features like code completion are actually helpful. Fast (In terms of database usage -- no runtime introspection is done on the database) Clean migration between schema versions (at least in the 1.6 beta) Can generate PHP 5.3 models (i.e. namespaces) Easy to chain a lot of things into a single database query with things like useXxx methods. (See the "code completion" video above) Cons Requires an extra build step, namely building the model classes. Generated code needs rebuilt whenever Propel version is changed, a setting is changed, or the schema changes. This might be unintuitive to some and custom methods applied to the model are lost. (I think?) Some useful features (i.e. version behavior, schema migrations) are in beta status. Doctrine Pros More popular Doctrine Query Language can express potentially more complicated relationships between data than easily possible with Propel's ActiveRecord strategy. Easier to add reusable behaviors when compared with Propel. DocBlock based commenting for building the schema is embedded in the actual PHP instead of a separate XML file. Uses PHP 5.3 Namespaces everywhere Cons Requires learning an entirely new programming language (Doctrine Query Language) Implemented in terms of "magic methods" in several places, making IDE autocomplete worthless. Requires database introspection and thus is slightly slower than Propel by default; caching can remove this but the caching adds considerable complexity. Fewer behaviors are included in the core codebase. Several features Propel provides out of the box (such as Nested Set) are available only through extensions. Freakin' HUGE :) This I have gleaned though only through reading the documentation available for both tools -- I've not actually built anything yet. I'd like to hear from those who have used both tools though, to share their experience on pros/cons of each library, and what their recommendation is at this point :)

    Read the article

  • &ldquo;Our Users are Doing Something Surprising&rdquo;&hellip; but what?

    - by antonio romero
    I’ve just started a discussion on the OWB Linkedin Group based on a blog post from Laura Klein’s “Users Know” blog, entitled “Your Users are Doing Something Surprising”… As a PM I found the post thought-provoking and a good reminder to learn from our customers: ...You may have written user stories and work flows... But you know who didn’t read your user stories? That’s right: your users. The result? Somewhere out there, a whole lot of your users are doing something totally unexpected with your product.... Your customers want to do something with your product so badly that they’re going out of their way to come up with clever ways to do it on their own. There are three excellent reasons for you to know what your customers are actually doing with your product: So you know if you are missing an opportunity to pivot your product or marketing So you know if you are missing an important feature So you don’t accidentally destroy a commonly used workaround or "unplanned feature" Truer words were rarely blogged. In fact just in the last few weeks I have had several "users" (some customers, and some internal to Oracle, in fact) turn up having built unexpected but powerful things around OWB, because it has such extensibility mechanisms built into it: OMB*Plus, the old Java APIs back before 10.2, and now the code template/knowledge module framework OWB shares with ODI. Some of our external users show astounding knowledge of how to make OWB really sing. (We hope to feature case studies from several of them over the course of the year on the OWB blog.) My question to all of you: can you identify things you have done or are doing with OWB or that you depend on in it that you think would come as a surprise to us? This could be either some development so advanced as to leave us all gob-smacked, or just some common (to you) thing that you use it for that you find enormously valuable but that you think is a bit off the theoretical "main line" use case of loading data warehouses. I invite the readers of this blog to come visit the OWB and ODI LinkedIn group and share their unusual applications of OWB or the very ordinary-looking features that you don’t want us to forget or would like us to extend. Your anecdotes will impress the crowd and will also help shape future data integration products from Oracle... Come on, surprise us. :)

    Read the article

  • Where to draw the line between development-led security and administration-led security?

    - by haylem
    There are cases where you have the opportunity, as a developer, to enforce stricter security features and protections on a software, though they could very well be managed at an environmental level (ie, the operating system would take care of it). Where would you say you draw the line, and what elements do you factor in your decision? Concrete Examples User Management is the OS's responsibility Not exactly meant as a security feature, but in a similar case Google Chrome used to not allow separate profiles. The invoked reason (though it now supports multiple profiles for a same OS user) used to be that user management was the operating system's responsibility. Disabling Web-Form Fields A recurrent request I see addressed online is to have auto-completion be disabled on form fields. Auto-completion didn't exist in old browsers, and was a welcome feature at the time it was introduced for people who needed to fill in forms often. But it also brought in some security concerns, and so some browsers started to implement, on top of the (obviously needed) setting in their own preference/customization panel, an autocomplete attribute for form or input fields. And this has now been introduced into the upcoming HTML5 standard. For browsers who do not listen to this attribute, strange hacks *\ are offered, like generating unique IDs and names for fields to avoid them from being suggested in future forms (which comes with another herd of issues, like polluting your local auto-fill cache and not preventing a password from being stored in it, but instead probably duplicating its occurences). In this particular case, and others, I'd argue that this is a user setting and that it's the user's desire and the user's responsibility to enable or disable auto-fill (by disabling the feature altogether). And if it is based on an internal policy and security requirement in a corporate environment, then substitute the user for the administrator in the above. I assume it could be counter-argued that the user may want to access non-critical applications (or sites) with this handy feature enabled, and critical applications with this feature disabled. But then I'd think that's what security zones are for (in some browsers), or the sign that you need a more secure (and dedicated) environment / account to use these applications. * I obviously don't deny the ingenuity of the people who were forced to find workarounds, just the necessity of said workarounds. Questions That was a tad long-winded, so I guess my questions are: Would you in general consider it to be the application's (hence, the developer's) responsiblity? Where do you draw the line, if not in the "general" case?

    Read the article

  • Oracle Social Network Developer Challenge: Bezzotech

    - by Kellsey Ruppel
    Originally posted by Jake Kuramoto on The Apps Lab blog. I’ve covered all the entries we had for the Oracle Social Network Developer Challenge, the winners, Dimitri and Martin, HarQen, TEAM Informatics and John Sim from Fishbowl Solutions, and today, I’m giving you bonus coverage. Friend of the ‘Lab, Bex Huff (@bex) from Bezzotech (@bezzotech), had an interesting OpenWorld. He rebounded from an allergic reaction to finish his entry, Honey Badger, only to have his other OpenWorld commitments make him unable to present his work. Still, he did a bunch of work, and I want to make sure everyone knows about the Honey Badger. If you’re wondering about the name, it’s a meme; “honey badger don’t care.” Bex tackled a common problem with social tools by adding game mechanics to create an incentive for people to keep their profiles updated. He used a Hot-or-Not style comparison app that poses expertise questions and awards a badge to the winner. Questions are based on whatever attributes the business wants to emphasize. The goal is to find the mavens in an organization, give them praise and recognition, ideally creating incentive for everyone to raise their games. In his own words: There is a real information quality problem in social networks. In last year’s keynote, Larry Elison demonstrated how to use the social network to track down resources that have the skill sets needed for specific projects. But how well would that work in real life? People usually update that information with the basic profile information, but they rarely update their profiles with latest news items, projects, customers, or skills. It’s a pain. Or, put another way, when was the last time you updated your LinkedIn profile? Enter the Honey Badger! This is a example of a comparator app that gamifies the way people keep their profiles updated, which ensures higher quality data in the social network. An administrator comes up with a series of important questions: Who is a better communicator? Who is a better Java programmer? Who is a better team player? And people would have a space in their profile to give a justification as to why they have these skills. The second part of the app is the comparator. It randomly shows two people, their names, and their justification for why they have these skills. You will click on one of them to “vote” for them, then on the next page you will see the results from the previous match, and get 2 new people to vote on. Anybody with a winning score wins a “Honey Badge” to be displayed on their profile page, which proudly states that their peers agree that this person has those skills. Once a badge is won, it will be jealously guarded. The longer your go without updating your profile, the more likely it is that you will lose your badge. This “loss aversion” is well known in psychology, and is a strong incentive for people to keep their profiles up to date. If a user sees their rank drop from 90% to 60%, they will find the time to update their justification! Unfortunately, during the hackathon we were not allowed to modify the schema to allow for additional fields such as “justification.” So this hack is limited to just the one basic question: who is the bigger Honey Badger? Here are some shots of the Honey Badger application: #gallery-1 { margin: auto; } #gallery-1 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-1 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-1 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } Thanks to Bex and everyone for participating in our challenge. Despite very little time to promote this event, we had a great turnout and creative and useful entries. The amount of work required to put together these final entries was significant, especially during a conference, and the judges and all of us involved were impressed at how much work everyone was able to do. Congrats to everyone, pat yourselves on the back. Stay tuned if you’re interested in challenges like these. We’ll likely be running similar events in the not-so-distant future.

    Read the article

  • Open the SQL Server Error Log with PowerShell

    - by BuckWoody
    Using the Server Management Objects (SMO) library, you don’t even need to have the SQL Server 2008 PowerShell Provider to read the SQL Server Error Logs – in fact, you can use regular old everyday PowerShell. Keep in mind you will need the SMO libraries – which can be installed separately or by installing the Client Tools from the SQL Server install media. You could search for errors, store a result as a variable, or act on the returned values in some other way. Replace the Machine Name with your server and Instance Name with your instance, but leave the quotes, to make this work on your system: [reflection.assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("Microsoft.SqlServer.Smo") $machineName = "UNIVAC" $instanceName = "Production" $sqlServer = new-object ("Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.Server") "$machineName\$instanceName" $sqlServer.ReadErrorLog() Want to search for something specific, like the word “Error”? Replace the last line with this: $sqlServer.ReadErrorLog() | where {$_.Text -like "Error*"} Script Disclaimer, for people who need to be told this sort of thing: Never trust any script, including those that you find here, until you understand exactly what it does and how it will act on your systems. Always check the script on a test system or Virtual Machine, not a production system. Yes, there are always multiple ways to do things, and this script may not work in every situation, for everything. It’s just a script, people. All scripts on this site are performed by a professional stunt driver on a closed course. Your mileage may vary. Void where prohibited. Offer good for a limited time only. Keep out of reach of small children. Do not operate heavy machinery while using this script. If you experience blurry vision, indigestion or diarrhea during the operation of this script, see a physician immediately. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

    Read the article

  • Man pages not finding entry

    - by Mike
    So, I'm not sure what is going on with my system (ubuntu 12.04), but my man pages do not seem to be working. I try man gcc and get the following response No manual entry for gcc See 'man 7 undocumented' for help when manual pages are not available. However I see the man entry in /usr/share/man/man1/gcc.1.gz Here is what my /etc/manpath.config file looks like # manpath.config # # This file is used by the man-db package to configure the man and cat paths. # It is also used to provide a manpath for those without one by examining # their PATH environment variable. For details see the manpath(5) man page. # # Lines beginning with `#' are comments and are ignored. Any combination of # tabs or spaces may be used as `whitespace' separators. # # There are three mappings allowed in this file: # -------------------------------------------------------- # MANDATORY_MANPATH manpath_element # MANPATH_MAP path_element manpath_element # MANDB_MAP global_manpath [relative_catpath] #--------------------------------------------------------- # every automatically generated MANPATH includes these fields # #MANDATORY_MANPATH /usr/src/pvm3/man # MANDATORY_MANPATH /usr/man MANDATORY_MANPATH /usr/share/man MANDATORY_MANPATH /usr/local/share/man #--------------------------------------------------------- # set up PATH to MANPATH mapping # ie. what man tree holds man pages for what binary directory. # # *PATH* -> *MANPATH* # MANPATH_MAP /bin /usr/share/man MANPATH_MAP /usr/bin /usr/share/man MANPATH_MAP /sbin /usr/share/man MANPATH_MAP /usr/sbin /usr/share/man MANPATH_MAP /usr/local/bin /usr/local/man MANPATH_MAP /usr/local/bin /usr/local/share/man MANPATH_MAP /usr/local/sbin /usr/local/man MANPATH_MAP /usr/local/sbin /usr/local/share/man MANPATH_MAP /usr/X11R6/bin /usr/X11R6/man MANPATH_MAP /usr/bin/X11 /usr/X11R6/man MANPATH_MAP /usr/games /usr/share/man MANPATH_MAP /opt/bin /opt/man MANPATH_MAP /opt/sbin /opt/man #--------------------------------------------------------- # For a manpath element to be treated as a system manpath (as most of those # above should normally be), it must be mentioned below. Each line may have # an optional extra string indicating the catpath associated with the # manpath. If no catpath string is used, the catpath will default to the # given manpath. # # You *must* provide all system manpaths, including manpaths for alternate # operating systems, locale specific manpaths, and combinations of both, if # they exist, otherwise the permissions of the user running man/mandb will # be used to manipulate the manual pages. Also, mandb will not initialise # the database cache for any manpaths not mentioned below unless explicitly # requested to do so. # # In a per-user configuration file, this directive only controls the # location of catpaths and the creation of database caches; it has no effect # on privileges. # # Any manpaths that are subdirectories of other manpaths must be mentioned # *before* the containing manpath. E.g. /usr/man/preformat must be listed # before /usr/man. # # *MANPATH* -> *CATPATH* # MANDB_MAP /usr/man /var/cache/man/fsstnd MANDB_MAP /usr/share/man /var/cache/man MANDB_MAP /usr/local/man /var/cache/man/oldlocal MANDB_MAP /usr/local/share/man /var/cache/man/local MANDB_MAP /usr/X11R6/man /var/cache/man/X11R6 MANDB_MAP /opt/man /var/cache/man/opt # #--------------------------------------------------------- # Program definitions. These are commented out by default as the value # of the definition is already the default. To change: uncomment a # definition and modify it. # #DEFINE pager pager -s #DEFINE cat cat #DEFINE tr tr '\255\267\264\327' '\055\157\047\170' #DEFINE grep grep #DEFINE troff groff -mandoc #DEFINE nroff nroff -mandoc #DEFINE eqn eqn #DEFINE neqn neqn #DEFINE tbl tbl #DEFINE col col #DEFINE vgrind vgrind #DEFINE refer refer #DEFINE grap grap #DEFINE pic pic -S # #DEFINE compressor gzip -c7 #--------------------------------------------------------- # Misc definitions: same as program definitions above. # #DEFINE whatis_grep_flags -i #DEFINE apropos_grep_flags -iEw #DEFINE apropos_regex_grep_flags -iE #--------------------------------------------------------- # Section names. Manual sections will be searched in the order listed here; # the default is 1, n, l, 8, 3, 0, 2, 5, 4, 9, 6, 7. Multiple SECTION # directives may be given for clarity, and will be concatenated together in # the expected way. # If a particular extension is not in this list (say, 1mh), it will be # displayed with the rest of the section it belongs to. The effect of this # is that you only need to explicitly list extensions if you want to force a # particular order. Sections with extensions should usually be adjacent to # their main section (e.g. "1 1mh 8 ..."). # SECTION 1 n l 8 3 2 3posix 3pm 3perl 5 4 9 6 7 # #--------------------------------------------------------- # Range of terminal widths permitted when displaying cat pages. If the # terminal falls outside this range, cat pages will not be created (if # missing) or displayed. # #MINCATWIDTH 80 #MAXCATWIDTH 80 # # If CATWIDTH is set to a non-zero number, cat pages will always be # formatted for a terminal of the given width, regardless of the width of # the terminal actually being used. This should generally be within the # range set by MINCATWIDTH and MAXCATWIDTH. # #CATWIDTH 0 # #--------------------------------------------------------- # Flags. # NOCACHE keeps man from creating cat pages. #NOCACHE Thanks for any help (p.s. even 'man man' fails) Edit: When I run ls -l /usr/share/man/man1/gcc* I get the following output lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 12 May 27 15:41 /usr/share/man/man1/gcc.1.gz -> gcc-4.6.1.gz -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 217776 Apr 15 17:34 /usr/share/man/man1/gcc-4.6.1.gz

    Read the article

  • Basic shadow mapping fails on NVIDIA card?

    - by James
    Recently I switched from an AMD Radeon HD 6870 card to an (MSI) NVIDIA GTX 670 for performance reasons. I found however that my implementation of shadow mapping in all my applications failed. In a very simple shadow POC project the problem appears to be that the scene being drawn never results in a draw to the depth map and as a result the entire depth map is just infinity, 1.0 (Reading directly from the depth component after draw (glReadPixels) shows every pixel is infinity (1.0), replacing the depth comparison in the shader with a comparison of the depth from the shadow map with 1.0 shadows the entire scene, and writing random values to the depth map and then not calling glClear(GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT) results in a random noisy pattern on the scene elements - from which we can infer that the uploading of the depth texture and comparison within the shader are functioning perfectly.) Since the problem appears almost certainly to be in the depth render, this is the code for that: const int s_res = 1024; GLuint shadowMap_tex; GLuint shadowMap_prog; GLint sm_attr_coord3d; GLint sm_uniform_mvp; GLuint fbo_handle; GLuint renderBuffer; bool isMappingShad = false; //The scene consists of a plane with box above it GLfloat scene[] = { -10.0, 0.0, -10.0, 0.5, 0.0, 10.0, 0.0, -10.0, 1.0, 0.0, 10.0, 0.0, 10.0, 1.0, 0.5, -10.0, 0.0, -10.0, 0.5, 0.0, -10.0, 0.0, 10.0, 0.5, 0.5, 10.0, 0.0, 10.0, 1.0, 0.5, ... }; //Initialize the stuff used by the shadow map generator int initShadowMap() { //Initialize the shadowMap shader program if (create_program("shadow.v.glsl", "shadow.f.glsl", shadowMap_prog) != 1) return -1; const char* attribute_name = "coord3d"; sm_attr_coord3d = glGetAttribLocation(shadowMap_prog, attribute_name); if (sm_attr_coord3d == -1) { fprintf(stderr, "Could not bind attribute %s\n", attribute_name); return 0; } const char* uniform_name = "mvp"; sm_uniform_mvp = glGetUniformLocation(shadowMap_prog, uniform_name); if (sm_uniform_mvp == -1) { fprintf(stderr, "Could not bind uniform %s\n", uniform_name); return 0; } //Create a framebuffer glGenFramebuffers(1, &fbo_handle); glBindFramebuffer(GL_FRAMEBUFFER, fbo_handle); //Create render buffer glGenRenderbuffers(1, &renderBuffer); glBindRenderbuffer(GL_RENDERBUFFER, renderBuffer); //Setup the shadow texture glGenTextures(1, &shadowMap_tex); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, shadowMap_tex); glTexImage2D(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0, GL_DEPTH_COMPONENT, s_res, s_res, 0, GL_DEPTH_COMPONENT, GL_FLOAT, NULL); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, GL_NEAREST); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, GL_NEAREST); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_S, GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_T, GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE); return 0; } //Delete stuff void dnitShadowMap() { //Delete everything glDeleteFramebuffers(1, &fbo_handle); glDeleteRenderbuffers(1, &renderBuffer); glDeleteTextures(1, &shadowMap_tex); glDeleteProgram(shadowMap_prog); } int loadSMap() { //Bind MVP stuff glm::mat4 view = glm::lookAt(glm::vec3(10.0, 10.0, 5.0), glm::vec3(0.0, 0.0, 0.0), glm::vec3(0.0, 1.0, 0.0)); glm::mat4 projection = glm::ortho<float>(-10,10,-8,8,-10,40); glm::mat4 mvp = projection * view; glm::mat4 biasMatrix( 0.5, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.5, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.5, 0.0, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 1.0 ); glm::mat4 lsMVP = biasMatrix * mvp; //Upload light source matrix to the main shader programs glUniformMatrix4fv(uniform_ls_mvp, 1, GL_FALSE, glm::value_ptr(lsMVP)); glUseProgram(shadowMap_prog); glUniformMatrix4fv(sm_uniform_mvp, 1, GL_FALSE, glm::value_ptr(mvp)); //Draw to the framebuffer (with depth buffer only draw) glBindFramebuffer(GL_FRAMEBUFFER, fbo_handle); glBindRenderbuffer(GL_RENDERBUFFER, renderBuffer); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, shadowMap_tex); glFramebufferTexture2D(GL_FRAMEBUFFER, GL_DEPTH_ATTACHMENT, GL_TEXTURE_2D, shadowMap_tex, 0); glDrawBuffer(GL_NONE); glReadBuffer(GL_NONE); GLenum result = glCheckFramebufferStatus(GL_FRAMEBUFFER); if (GL_FRAMEBUFFER_COMPLETE != result) { printf("ERROR: Framebuffer is not complete.\n"); return -1; } //Draw shadow scene printf("Creating shadow buffers..\n"); int ticks = SDL_GetTicks(); glClear(GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT); //Wipe the depth buffer glViewport(0, 0, s_res, s_res); isMappingShad = true; //DRAW glEnableVertexAttribArray(sm_attr_coord3d); glVertexAttribPointer(sm_attr_coord3d, 3, GL_FLOAT, GL_FALSE, 5*4, scene); glDrawArrays(GL_TRIANGLES, 0, 14*3); glDisableVertexAttribArray(sm_attr_coord3d); isMappingShad = false; glBindFramebuffer(GL_FRAMEBUFFER, 0); printf("Render Sbuf in %dms (GLerr: %d)\n", SDL_GetTicks() - ticks, glGetError()); return 0; } This is the full code for the POC shadow mapping project (C++) (Requires SDL 1.2, SDL-image 1.2, GLEW (1.5) and GLM development headers.) initShadowMap is called, followed by loadSMap, the scene is drawn from the camera POV and then dnitShadowMap is called. I followed this tutorial originally (Along with another more comprehensive tutorial which has disappeared as this guy re-configured his site but used to be here (404).) I've ensured that the scene is visible (as can be seen within the full project) to the light source (which uses an orthogonal projection matrix.) Shader utilities function fine in non-shadow-mapped projects. I should also note that at no point is the GL error state set. What am I doing wrong here and why did this not cause problems on my AMD card? (System: Ubuntu 12.04, Linux 3.2.0-49-generic, 64 bit, with the nvidia-experimental-310 driver package. All other games are functioning fine so it's most likely not a card/driver issue.)

    Read the article

  • I Choose iNada

    - by Mark Treadwell
    As a laptop and Kindle user, I have been looking at the usual cyclical Apple frenzy in the press with the same kind of amused tolerance I give my three-year-old son.  They never seem to learn, and they keep repeating the same things.  However when I ready articles like this, I am reminded that that is not always the case. I am a happy user of a monster-sized HP HDX laptop, HP touch screen all-in-one system, and multi-screen Dell desktops at home as well as a HP business laptop at work.  I have no iPod, iMac, iTouch or any other relationship with the company who wants to trademark the prefix “i”. I have not missed them. That is not to say that I have no technological gadgets.  I do.  They just do not dominate Every company wants to preserve their customer base, but Apple just does it too rigidly.  The buy-in necessary rubs me wrong.  When the fanboys scream about the next great iApple thing which will kill off another market segment (this time, the iPad will kill off laptops), the amused tolerance returns. From what I have seen, the iPad virtual keyboard is a poor substitute for an actual keyboard.  It was intended to let you get some kind of text into a device that is not really intended for keyboard input, but rather for touch manipulation of a designed interface.  I like the virtual keyboard on my LG Dare cell phone, but you will not catch me writing my next novel with it.  But, you hear, you can connect a real keyboard and get info from another computer.  That is when you realize that the iPad is not a true standalone device like a laptop.  You have to make more hardware purchases to get what you truly want.  It is an expensive accommodation to get you a different form of freedom. So if Apple made a product with me in mind, you can have it.  Everyone gets to make their own choice.  My choice is the iNada.

    Read the article

  • Unity desktop "smears" (doesn't refresh) and shows no wallpaper

    - by Cedric Reichenbach
    Since a couple of days now, my unity desktop background smears everything, just like what old Windows versions were famous for: Of course, I tried rebooting a couple of times. Also, I switched graphics driver and I tried to change wallpaper and theme, but none of them solved the problem. What could be causing that problem, and where can I search on for its source? Infomation update I'm using Ubuntu 13.04 (not updated to 13.10 yet). The following command were all run from cinnamon (on the same Ubuntu installation). sudo lsb_release -a: No LSB modules are available. Distributor ID: Ubuntu Description: Ubuntu 13.04 Release: 13.04 Codename: raring sudo uname -a: Linux cedric-MacBookPro 3.8.0-32-generic #47-Ubuntu SMP Tue Oct 1 22:35:23 UTC 2013 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux sudo dpkg -l | grep xserver-xorg-video: ii xserver-xorg-video-all 1:7.7+1ubuntu4 amd64 X.Org X server -- output driver metapackage ii xserver-xorg-video-ati 1:7.1.0-0ubuntu2 amd64 X.Org X server -- AMD/ATI display driver wrapper ii xserver-xorg-video-cirrus 1:1.5.2-0ubuntu1 amd64 X.Org X server -- Cirrus display driver ii xserver-xorg-video-fbdev 1:0.4.3-0ubuntu1 amd64 X.Org X server -- fbdev display driver ii xserver-xorg-video-intel 2:2.21.6-0ubuntu4.3 amd64 X.Org X server -- Intel i8xx, i9xx display driver ii xserver-xorg-video-mach64 6.9.3-0ubuntu1 amd64 X.Org X server -- ATI Mach64 display driver ii xserver-xorg-video-mga 1:1.6.2-0ubuntu1 amd64 X.Org X server -- MGA display driver ii xserver-xorg-video-modesetting 0.7.0-0ubuntu2 amd64 X.Org X server -- Generic modesetting driver ii xserver-xorg-video-neomagic 1:1.2.7-0ubuntu1 amd64 X.Org X server -- Neomagic display driver ii xserver-xorg-video-nouveau 1:1.0.7-0ubuntu1 amd64 X.Org X server -- Nouveau display driver ii xserver-xorg-video-openchrome 1:0.3.1-0ubuntu1.13.04.1 amd64 X.Org X server -- VIA display driver ii xserver-xorg-video-qxl 0.1.0-0ubuntu3 amd64 X.Org X server -- QXL display driver ii xserver-xorg-video-r128 6.9.1-0ubuntu1 amd64 X.Org X server -- ATI r128 display driver ii xserver-xorg-video-radeon 1:7.1.0-0ubuntu2 amd64 X.Org X server -- AMD/ATI Radeon display driver ii xserver-xorg-video-s3 1:0.6.5-0ubuntu3 amd64 X.Org X server -- legacy S3 display driver ii xserver-xorg-video-savage 1:2.3.6-0ubuntu1 amd64 X.Org X server -- Savage display driver ii xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion 1:1.7.7-0ubuntu1 amd64 X.Org X server -- SiliconMotion display driver ii xserver-xorg-video-sis 1:0.10.7-0ubuntu1 amd64 X.Org X server -- SiS display driver ii xserver-xorg-video-sisusb 1:0.9.6-0ubuntu1 amd64 X.Org X server -- SiS USB display driver ii xserver-xorg-video-tdfx 1:1.4.5-0ubuntu1 amd64 X.Org X server -- tdfx display driver ii xserver-xorg-video-trident 1:1.3.6-0ubuntu2 amd64 X.Org X server -- Trident display driver ii xserver-xorg-video-vesa 1:2.3.2-0ubuntu1 amd64 X.Org X server -- VESA display driver ii xserver-xorg-video-vmware 1:12.0.2+git.e5ac80d8-0ubuntu1 amd64 X.Org X server -- VMware display driver sudo lspci | grep VGA: 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GT216M [GeForce GT 330M] (rev a2)

    Read the article

< Previous Page | 450 451 452 453 454 455 456 457 458 459 460 461  | Next Page >