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• Multiplayer / Networking options for a 2D game with physics

  - by lahmas

  Summary: My 50% finished 2D sidescroller with Box2D as physics engine should have multiplayer support in the final version. However, the current code is just a singleplayer game. What should I do now? And more important, how should I implement multiplayer and combine it with singleplayer? Is it a bad idea to code the singleplayer mode separated from multiplayer mode (like Notch did it with Minecraft)? The performance in singleplayer should be as good as possible (Simulating physics with using a loopback server to implement singleplayer mode would be a problem there) Full background / questions: I'm working on a relatively large 2D game project in C++, with physics as a core element of it. (I use Box2D for that) The finished game should have full multiplayer support, however I made the mistake that I didn't plan the networking part properly and basically worked on a singleplayer game until now. I thought that multiplayer support could be added to the almost finished singleplayer game in a relatively easy and clear way, but apparently, from what I have read this is wrong. I even read that a multiplayer game should be programmed as one from the beginning, with the singleplayer mode actually just consisting of hosting an invisible local server and connecting to it via loopback. (I found out that most FPS game engines do it that way, an example would be Source) So here I am, with my half finished 2D sidescroller game, and I don't really know how to go on. Simply continueing to work on the singleplayer / client seems useless to me now, as I'd have to recode and refactor even more later. First, a general question to anybody who possibly found himself in a situation like this: How should I proceed? Then, the more specific one - I have been trying to find out how I can approach the networking part for my game: (Possible solutions:) Invisible / loopback server for singleplayer This would have the advantage that there basically is no difference between singleplayer and multiplayer mode. Not much additional code would be needed. A big disadvantage: Performance and other limitations in singleplayer. There would be two physics simulations running. One for the client and one for the loopback server. Even if you work around by providing a direct path for the data from the loopback server, through direct communcation by the threads for example, the singleplayer would be limited. This is a problem because people should be allowed to play around with masses of objects at once. Separated singleplayer / Multiplayer mode There would be no server involved in singleplayer mode. I'm not really sure how this would work. But at least I think that there would be a lot of additional work, because all of the singleplayer features would have to be re-implemented or glued to multiplayer mode. Multiplayer mode as a module for singleplayer This is merely a quick thought I had. Multiplayer could consist of a singleplayer game, with an additional networking module loaded and connected to a server, which sends and receives data and updates the singleplayer world. In the retrospective, I regret not having planned the multiplayer mode earlier. I'm really stuck at this point and I hope that somebody here is able to help me!

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• Avoiding new operator in JavaScript -- the better way

  - by greengit

  Warning: This is a long post. Let's keep it simple. I want to avoid having to prefix the new operator every time I call a constructor in JavaScript. This is because I tend to forget it, and my code screws up badly. The simple way around this is this... function Make(x) { if ( !(this instanceof arguments.callee) ) return new arguments.callee(x); // do your stuff... } But, I need this to accept variable no. of arguments, like this... m1 = Make(); m2 = Make(1,2,3); m3 = Make('apple', 'banana'); The first immediate solution seems to be the 'apply' method like this... function Make() { if ( !(this instanceof arguments.callee) ) return new arguments.callee.apply(null, arguments); // do your stuff } This is WRONG however -- the new object is passed to the apply method and NOT to our constructor arguments.callee. Now, I've come up with three solutions. My simple question is: which one seems best. Or, if you have a better method, tell it. First – use eval() to dynamically create JavaScript code that calls the constructor. function Make(/* ... */) { if ( !(this instanceof arguments.callee) ) { // collect all the arguments var arr = []; for ( var i = 0; arguments[i]; i++ ) arr.push( 'arguments[' + i + ']' ); // create code var code = 'new arguments.callee(' + arr.join(',') + ');'; // call it return eval( code ); } // do your stuff with variable arguments... } Second – Every object has __proto__ property which is a 'secret' link to its prototype object. Fortunately this property is writable. function Make(/* ... */) { var obj = {}; // do your stuff on 'obj' just like you'd do on 'this' // use the variable arguments here // now do the __proto__ magic // by 'mutating' obj to make it a different object obj.__proto__ = arguments.callee.prototype; // must return obj return obj; } Third – This is something similar to second solution. function Make(/* ... */) { // we'll set '_construct' outside var obj = new arguments.callee._construct(); // now do your stuff on 'obj' just like you'd do on 'this' // use the variable arguments here // you have to return obj return obj; } // now first set the _construct property to an empty function Make._construct = function() {}; // and then mutate the prototype of _construct Make._construct.prototype = Make.prototype; eval solution seems clumsy and comes with all the problems of "evil eval". __proto__ solution is non-standard and the "Great Browser of mIsERY" doesn't honor it. The third solution seems overly complicated. But with all the above three solutions, we can do something like this, that we can't otherwise... m1 = Make(); m2 = Make(1,2,3); m3 = Make('apple', 'banana'); m1 instanceof Make; // true m2 instanceof Make; // true m3 instanceof Make; // true Make.prototype.fire = function() { // ... }; m1.fire(); m2.fire(); m3.fire(); So effectively the above solutions give us "true" constructors that accept variable no. of arguments and don't require new. What's your take on this. -- UPDATE -- Some have said "just throw an error". My response is: we are doing a heavy app with 10+ constructors and I think it'd be far more wieldy if every constructor could "smartly" handle that mistake without throwing error messages on the console.

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• Edit the Windows Live Writer Custom Dictionary

  - by Matthew Guay

  Windows Live Writer is a great tool for writing and publishing posts to your blog, but its spell check unfortunately doesn’t include many common tech words.  Here’s how you can easily edit your custom dictionary and add your favorite words. Customize Live Writer’s Dictionary Adding an individual word to the Windows Live Writer dictionary works as you would expect.  Right-click on a word and select Add to dictionary. And changing the default spell check settings is easy too.  In the menu, click Tools, then Options, and select the Spelling tab in this dialog.  Here you can choose your dictionary language and turn on/off real-time spell checking and other settings. But there’s no obvious way to edit your custom dictionary.  Editing the custom dictionary directly is nice if you accidently add a misspelled word to your dictionary and want to remove it, or if you want to add a lot of words to the dictionary at once. Live Writer actually stores your custom dictionary entries in a plain text file located in your appdata folder.  It is saved as User.dic in the C:\Users\user_name\AppData\Roaming\Windows Live Writer\Dictionaries folder.  The easiest way to open the custom dictionary is to enter the following in the Run box or the address bar of an Explorer window: %appdata%\Windows Live Writer\Dictionaries\User.dic   This will open the User.dic file in your default text editor.  Add any new words to the custom dictionary on separate lines, and delete any misspelled words you accidently added to the dictionary.   Microsoft Office Word also stores its custom dictionary in a plain text file.  If you already have lots of custom words in it and want to import them into Live Writer, enter the following in the Run command or Explorer’s address bar to open Word’s custom dictionary.  Then copy the words, and past them into your Live Writer custom dictionary file. %AppData%\Microsoft\UProof\Custom.dic Don’t forget to save the changes when you’re done.  Note that the changes to the dictionary may not show up in Live Writer’s spell check until you restart the program.  If it’s currently running, save any posts you’re working on, exit, and then reopen, and all of your new words should be in the dictionary. Conclusion Whether you use Live Writer daily in your job or occasionally post an update to a personal blog, adding your own custom words to the dictionary can save you a lot of time and frustration in editing.  Plus, if you’ve accidently added a misspelled word to the dictionary, this is a great way to undo your mistake and make sure your spelling is up to par! Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Backup Your Windows Live Writer SettingsTransfer or Move Your Microsoft Office Custom DictionaryFuture Date a Post in Windows Live WriterTools to Help Post Content On Your WordPress BlogInstall Windows Live Essentials In Windows 7 TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows Video Toolbox is a Superb Online Video Editor Fun with 47 charts and graphs Tomorrow is Mother’s Day Check the Average Speed of YouTube Videos You’ve Watched OutlookStatView Scans and Displays General Usage Statistics How to Add Exceptions to the Windows Firewall

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• HSSFS Part 2.1 - Parsing @@VERSION

  - by Most Valuable Yak (Rob Volk)

  For Part 2 of the Handy SQL Server Function Series I decided to tackle parsing useful information from the @@VERSION function, because I am an idiot.  It turns out I was confused about CHARINDEX() vs. PATINDEX() and it pretty much invalidated my original solution.  All is not lost though, this mistake turned out to be informative for me, and hopefully for you. Referring back to the "Version" view in the prelude I started with the following query to extract the version number: SELECT DISTINCT SQLVersion, SUBSTRING(VersionString,PATINDEX('%-%',VersionString)+2, 12) VerNum FROM VERSION I used PATINDEX() to find the first hyphen "-" character in the string, since the version number appears 2 positions after it, and got these results: SQLVersion VerNum ----------- ------------ 2000 8.00.2055 (I 2005 9.00.3080.00 2005 9.00.4053.00 2008 10.50.1600.1 As you can see it was good enough for most of the values, but not for the SQL 2000 @@VERSION.  You'll notice it has only 3 version sections/octets where the others have 4, and the SUBSTRING() grabbed the non-numeric characters after.  To properly parse the version number will require a non-fixed value for the 3rd parameter of SUBSTRING(), which is the number of characters to extract. The best value is the position of the first space to occur after the version number (VN), the trick is to figure out how to find it.  Here's where my confusion about PATINDEX() came about.  The CHARINDEX() function has a handy optional 3rd parameter: CHARINDEX (expression1 ,expression2 [ ,start_location ] ) While PATINDEX(): PATINDEX ('%pattern%',expression ) Does not.  I had expected to use PATINDEX() to start searching for a space AFTER the position of the VN, but it doesn't work that way.  Since there are plenty of spaces before the VN, I thought I'd try PATINDEX() on another character that doesn't appear before, and tried "(": SELECT SQLVersion, SUBSTRING(VersionString,PATINDEX('%-%',VersionString)+2, PATINDEX('%(%',VersionString)) FROM VERSION Unfortunately this messes up the length calculation and yields: SQLVersion VerNum ----------- --------------------------- 2000 8.00.2055 (Intel X86) Dec 16 2008 19:4 2005 9.00.3080.00 (Intel X86) Sep 6 2009 01: 2005 9.00.4053.00 (Intel X86) May 26 2009 14: 2008 10.50.1600.1 (Intel X86) Apr 2008 10.50.1600.1 (X64) Apr 2 20 Yuck.  The problem is that PATINDEX() returns position, and SUBSTRING() needs length, so I have to subtract the VN starting position: SELECT SQLVersion, SUBSTRING(VersionString,PATINDEX('%-%',VersionString)+2, PATINDEX('%(%',VersionString)-PATINDEX('%-%',VersionString)) VerNum FROM VERSION And the results are: SQLVersion VerNum ----------- -------------------------------------------------------- 2000 8.00.2055 (I 2005 9.00.4053.00 (I Msg 537, Level 16, State 2, Line 1 Invalid length parameter passed to the LEFT or SUBSTRING function. Ummmm, whoops.  Turns out SQL Server 2008 R2 includes "(RTM)" before the VN, and that causes the length to turn negative. So now that that blew up, I started to think about matching digit and dot (.) patterns.  Sadly, a quick look at the first set of results will quickly scuttle that idea, since different versions have different digit patterns and lengths. At this point (which took far longer than I wanted) I decided to cut my losses and redo the query using CHARINDEX(), which I'll cover in Part 2.2.  So to do a little post-mortem on this technique: PATINDEX() doesn't have the flexibility to match the digit pattern of the version number; PATINDEX() doesn't have a "start" parameter like CHARINDEX(), that allows us to skip over parts of the string; The SUBSTRING() expression is getting pretty complicated for this relatively simple task! This doesn't mean that PATINDEX() isn't useful, it's just not a good fit for this particular problem.  I'll include a version in the next post that extracts the version number properly. UPDATE: Sorry if you saw the unformatted version of this earlier, I'm on a quest to find blog software that ACTUALLY WORKS.

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• SQL SERVER – OVER clause with FIRST _VALUE and LAST_VALUE – Analytic Functions Introduced in SQL Server 2012 – ROWS BETWEEN UNBOUNDED PRECEDING AND UNBOUNDED FOLLOWING

  - by pinaldave

  Yesterday I had discussed two analytical functions FIRST_VALUE and LAST_VALUE. After reading the blog post I received very interesting question. “Don’t you think there is bug in your first example where FIRST_VALUE is remain same but the LAST_VALUE is changing every line. I think the LAST_VALUE should be the highest value in the windows or set of result.” I find this question very interesting because this is very commonly made mistake. No there is no bug in the code. I think what we need is a bit more explanation. Let me attempt that first. Before you do that I suggest you read yesterday’s blog post as this question is related to that blog post. Now let’s have fun following query: USE AdventureWorks GO SELECT s.SalesOrderID,s.SalesOrderDetailID,s.OrderQty, FIRST_VALUE(SalesOrderDetailID) OVER (ORDER BY SalesOrderDetailID) FstValue, LAST_VALUE(SalesOrderDetailID) OVER (ORDER BY SalesOrderDetailID) LstValue FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail s WHERE SalesOrderID IN (43670, 43669, 43667, 43663) ORDER BY s.SalesOrderID,s.SalesOrderDetailID,s.OrderQty GO The above query will give us the following result: As per the reader’s question the value of the LAST_VALUE function should be always 114 and not increasing as the rows are increased. Let me re-write the above code once again with bit extra T-SQL Syntax. Please pay special attention to the ROW clause which I have added in the above syntax. USE AdventureWorks GO SELECT s.SalesOrderID,s.SalesOrderDetailID,s.OrderQty, FIRST_VALUE(SalesOrderDetailID) OVER (ORDER BY SalesOrderDetailID ROWS BETWEEN UNBOUNDED PRECEDING AND CURRENT ROW) FstValue, LAST_VALUE(SalesOrderDetailID) OVER (ORDER BY SalesOrderDetailID ROWS BETWEEN UNBOUNDED PRECEDING AND CURRENT ROW) LstValue FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail s WHERE SalesOrderID IN (43670, 43669, 43667, 43663) ORDER BY s.SalesOrderID,s.SalesOrderDetailID,s.OrderQty GO Now once again check the result of the above query. The result of both the query is same because in OVER clause the default ROWS selection is always UNBOUNDED PRECEDING AND CURRENT ROW. If you want the maximum value of the windows with OVER clause you need to change the syntax to UNBOUNDED PRECEDING AND UNBOUNDED FOLLOWING for ROW clause. Now run following query and pay special attention to ROW clause again. USE AdventureWorks GO SELECT s.SalesOrderID,s.SalesOrderDetailID,s.OrderQty, FIRST_VALUE(SalesOrderDetailID) OVER (PARTITION BY SalesOrderID ORDER BY SalesOrderDetailID ROWS BETWEEN UNBOUNDED PRECEDING AND UNBOUNDED FOLLOWING) FstValue, LAST_VALUE(SalesOrderDetailID) OVER (PARTITION BY SalesOrderID ORDER BY SalesOrderDetailID ROWS BETWEEN UNBOUNDED PRECEDING AND UNBOUNDED FOLLOWING) LstValue FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail s WHERE SalesOrderID IN (43670, 43669, 43667, 43663) ORDER BY s.SalesOrderID,s.SalesOrderDetailID,s.OrderQty GO Here is the resultset of the above query which is what questioner was asking. So in simple word, there is no bug but there is additional syntax needed to add to get your desired answer. The same logic also applies to PARTITION BY clause when used. Here is quick example of how we can further partition the query by SalesOrderDetailID with this new functions. USE AdventureWorks GO SELECT s.SalesOrderID,s.SalesOrderDetailID,s.OrderQty, FIRST_VALUE(SalesOrderDetailID) OVER (PARTITION BY SalesOrderID ORDER BY SalesOrderDetailID ROWS BETWEEN UNBOUNDED PRECEDING AND UNBOUNDED FOLLOWING) FstValue, LAST_VALUE(SalesOrderDetailID) OVER (PARTITION BY SalesOrderID ORDER BY SalesOrderDetailID ROWS BETWEEN UNBOUNDED PRECEDING AND UNBOUNDED FOLLOWING) LstValue FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail s WHERE SalesOrderID IN (43670, 43669, 43667, 43663) ORDER BY s.SalesOrderID,s.SalesOrderDetailID,s.OrderQty GO Above query will give us windowed resultset on SalesOrderDetailsID as well give us FIRST and LAST value for the windowed resultset. There are lots to discuss for this two functions and we have just explored tip of the iceberg. In future post I will discover it further deep. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Function, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• TechEd Israel 2010 may only accept speakers from sponsors

  - by RoyOsherove

  A month or so ago, Microsoft Israel started sending out emails to its partners and registered event users to “Save the date!” – Micraoft Teched Israel is coming, and it’s going to be this november! “Great news” I thought to myself. I’d been to a couple of the MS teched events, as a speaker and as an attendee, and it was lovely and professionally done. Israel is an amazing place for technology and development and TechEd hosted some big names in the world of MS software. A couple of weeks ago, I was shocked to hear from a couple of people that Microsoft Israel plans to only accept non-MS teched speakers, only from sponsors of the event. That means that according to the amount that you have paid, you get to insert one or more of your own selected speakers as part of teched. I’ve spent the past couple of weeks trying to gather more evidence of this, and have gotten some input from within MS about this information. It looks like that is indeed the case, though no MS rep. was prepared to answer any email I had publicly. If they approach me now I’d be happy to print their response. What does this mean? If this is true, it means that Microsoft Israel is making a grave mistake – They are diluting the quality of the speakers for pure money factors. That means, that as a teched attendee, who paid good money, you might be sitting down to watch nothing more that a bunch of infomercials, or sub-standard speakers – since speakers are no longer selected on quality or interest in their topic. They are turning the conference from a learning event to a commercial driven event They are closing off the stage to the community of speakers who may not be associated with any organization  willing to be a sponsor They are losing speakers (such as myself) who will not want to be part of such an event. (yes – even if my company ends up sponsoring the event, I will not take part in it, Sorry Eli!) They are saying “F&$K you” to the community of MVPs who should be the people to be approached first about technical talks (my guess is many MVPs wouldn’t want to talk at an event driven that way anyway ) I do hope this ends up not being true, but it looks like it is. MS Israel had already done such a thing with the Developer Days event previouly held in Israel – only sponsors were allowed to insert speakers into the event. If this turns out to be true I would urge the MS community in Israel to NOT TAKE PART AT THIS EVENT in any form (attendee, speaker, sponsor or otherwise). by taking part, you will be telling MS Israel it’s OK to piss all over the community that they are quietly suffocating anyway. The MVP case MS Israel has managed to screw the MVP program as well. MS MVPs (I’m one) have had a tough time here in Israel the past couple of years. ever since yosi taguri left the blue badge ranks, there was not real community leader left. Whoever runs things right now has their eyes and minds set elsewhere, with the software MVP community far from mind and heart. No special MVP events (except a couple of small ones this year). No real MVP leadership happens here, with the MVP MEA lead (Ruari) being on a remote line, is not really what’s needed. “MVP? What’s that?” I’m sure many MS Israel employees would say. Exactly my point. Last word I’ve been disappointed by the MS machine for a while now, but their slowness to realize what real community means in the past couple of years really turns me off. Maybe it’s time to move on. Maybe I shouldn’t be chasing people at MS Israel begging for a room to host the Agile Israel user group. Maybe it’s time to say a big bye bye and start looking at a life a bit more disconnected.

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• How can I thoroughly evaluate a prospective employer?

  - by glenviewjeff

  We hear much about code smells, test smells, and even project smells, but I have heard no discussion about employer "smells" outside of the Joel Test. After much frustration working for employers with a bouquet of unpleasant corporate-culture odors, I believe it's time for me to actively seek a more mature development environment. I've started assembling a list of questions to help vet employers by identifying issues during a job interview, and am looking for additional ideas. I suppose this list could easily be modified by an employer to vet an employee as well, but please answer from the interviewee's perspective. I think it would be important to ask many of these questions of multiple people to find out if consistent answers are given. For the most part, I tried to put the questions in each section in the order they could be asked. An undesired answer to an early question will often make follow-ups moot. Values What constitutes "well-written" software? What attributes does a good developer have? Same question for manager. Process Do you have a development process? How rigorously do you follow it? How do you decide how much process to apply to each project? Describe a typical project lifecycle. Ask the following if they don't come up otherwise: Waterfall/iterative: How much time is spent in upfront requirements gathering? upfront design? Testing Who develops tests (developers or separate test engineers?) When are they developed? When are the tests executed? How long do they take to execute? What makes a good test? How do you know you've tested enough? What percentage of code is tested? Review What is the review process like? What percentage of code is reviewed? Design? How frequently can I expect to participate as code/design reviewer/reviewee? What are the criteria applied to review and where do the criteria come from? Improvement What new tools and techniques have you evaluated or deployed in the past year? What training courses have your employees been given in the past year? What will I be doing for the first six months in your company (hinting at what kind of organized mentorship/training has been thought through, if any) What changes to your development process have been made in the past year? How do you improve and learn from your mistakes as an organization? What was your organizations biggest mistake in the past year, and how was it addressed? What feedback have you given to management lately? Was it implemented? If not, why? How does your company use "best practices?" How do you seek them out from the outside or within, and how do you share them with each other? Ethics Tell me about an ethical problem you or your employees experienced recently and how was it resolved? Do you use open-source software? What open-source contributions have you made? Follow-Ups I liked what @jim-leonardo said on this Stack Overflow question: Really a thing to ask yourself: "Does this person seem like they are trying to recruit me and make me interested?" I think this is one of the most important bits. If they seem to be taking the attitude that the only one being interviewed is you, then they probably will treat you poorly. Good interviewers understand they have to sell the position as much as the candidate needs to sell themselves. @SethP added: Glassdoor.com is a good web site for researching potential employers. It contains information about how specific companies conduct interviews...

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• Sweet and Sour Source Control

  - by Tony Davis

  Most database developers don't use Source Control. A recent anonymous poll on SQL Server Central asked its readers "Which Version Control system do you currently use to store you database scripts?" The winner, with almost 30% of the vote was...none: "We don't use source control for database scripts". In second place with almost 28% of the vote was Microsoft's VSS. VSS? Given its reputation for being buggy, unstable and lacking most of the basic features required of a proper source control system, answering VSS is really just another way of saying "I don't use Source Control". At first glance, it's a surprising thought. You wonder how database developers can work in a team and find out what changed, when the system worked before but is now broken; to work out what happened to their changes that now seem to have vanished; to roll-back a mistake quickly so that the rest of the team have a functioning build; to find instantly whether a suspect change has been deployed to production. Unfortunately, the survey didn't ask about the scale of the database development, and correlate the two questions. If there is only one database developer within a schema, who has an automated approach to regular generation of build scripts, then the need for a formal source control system is questionable. After all, a database stores far more about its metadata than a traditional compiled application. However, what is meat for a small development is poison for a team-based development. Here, we need a form of Source Control that can reconcile simultaneous changes, store the history of changes, derive versions and builds and that can cope with forks and merges. The problem comes when one borrows a solution that was designed for conventional programming. A database is not thought of as a "file", but a vast, interdependent and intricate matrix of tables, indexes, constraints, triggers, enumerations, static data and so on, all subtly interconnected. It is an awkward fit. Subversion with its support for merges and forks, and the tolerance of different work practices, can be made to work well, if used carefully. It has a standards-based architecture that allows it to be used on all platforms such as Windows Mac, and Linux. In the words of Erland Sommerskog, developers should "just do it". What's in a database is akin to a "binary file", and the developer must work only from the file. You check out the file, edit it, and save it to disk to compile it. Dependencies are validated at this point and if you've broken anything (e.g. you renamed a column and broke all the objects that reference the column), you'll find out about it right away, and you'll be forced to fix it. Nevertheless, for many this is an alien way of working with SQL Server. Subversion is the powerhouse, not the GUI. It doesn't work seamlessly with your existing IDE, and that usually means SSMS. So the question then becomes more subtle. Would developers be less reluctant to use a fully-featured source (revision) control system for a team database development if they had a turn-key, reliable system that fitted in with their existing work-practices? I'd love to hear what you think. Cheers, Tony.

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• LibGdx drawing weird behaviour

  - by Ryckes

  I am finding strange behaviour while rendering TextureRegions in my game, only when pausing it. I am making a game for Android, in Java with LibGdx. When I comment out the line "drawLevelPaused()" everything seems to work fine, both running and paused. When it's not commented, everything works fine until I pause the screen, then it draws those two rectangles, but maybe ships are not shown, and if I comment out drawShips() and drawTarget() (just trying) maybe one of the planets disappears, or if I change the order, other things disappear and those that disappeared before now are rendered again. I can't find the way to fix this behaviour I beg your help, and I hope it's my mistake and not a LibGdx issue. I use OpenGL ES 2.0, stated in AndroidManifest.xml, if it is of any help. Thank you in advance. My Screen render method(game loop) is as follows: @Override public void render(float delta) { Gdx.gl.glClearColor(0.1f, 0.1f, 0.1f, 1); Gdx.gl.glClear(GL10.GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT); controller.update(delta); renderer.render(); } When world state is PAUSED controller.update does nothing at all, there is a switch in it. And renderer.render() is as follows: public void render() { int worldState=this.world.getWorldState(); updateCamera(); spriteBatch.begin(); drawPlanets(); drawTarget(); drawShips(); if(worldState==World.PAUSED) { drawLevelPaused(); } else if(worldState==World.LEVEL_WON) { drawLevelWin(); } spriteBatch.end(); } And those methods are: private void updateCamera() { this.offset=world.getCameraOffset(); } private void drawPlanets() { for(Planet planet : this.world.getPlanets()) { this.spriteBatch.draw(this.textures.getTexture(planet.getTexture()), (planet.getPosition().x - this.offset[0]) * ppuX, (planet.getPosition().y - this.offset[1]) * ppuY); } } private void drawTarget() { Target target=this.world.getTarget(); this.spriteBatch.draw(this.textures.getTexture(target.getTexture()), (target.getPosition().x - this.offset[0]) * ppuX, (target.getPosition().y - this.offset[1]) * ppuY); } private void drawShips() { for(Ship ship : this.world.getShips()) { this.spriteBatch.draw(this.textures.getTexture(ship.getTexture()), (ship.getPosition().x - this.offset[0]) * ppuX, (ship.getPosition().y - this.offset[1]) * ppuY, ship.getBounds().width*ppuX/2, ship.getBounds().height*ppuY/2, ship.getBounds().width*ppuX, ship.getBounds().height*ppuY, 1.0f, 1.0f, ship.getAngle()-90.0f); } if(this.world.getStillShipVisibility()) { Ship ship=this.world.getStillShip(); Arrow arrow=this.world.getArrow(); this.spriteBatch.draw(this.textures.getTexture(ship.getTexture()), (ship.getPosition().x - this.offset[0]) * ppuX, (ship.getPosition().y - this.offset[1]) * ppuY, ship.getBounds().width*ppuX/2, ship.getBounds().height*ppuY/2, ship.getBounds().width*ppuX, ship.getBounds().height*ppuY, 1f, 1f, ship.getAngle() - 90f); this.spriteBatch.draw(this.textures.getTexture(arrow.getTexture()), (ship.getCenter().x - this.offset[0] - arrow.getBounds().width/2) * ppuX, (ship.getCenter().y - this.offset[1]) * ppuY, arrow.getBounds().width*ppuX/2, 0, arrow.getBounds().width*ppuX, arrow.getBounds().height*ppuY, 1f, arrow.getRate(), ship.getAngle() - 90f); } } private void drawLevelPaused() { this.shapeRenderer.begin(ShapeType.FilledRectangle); this.shapeRenderer.setColor(0f, 0f, 0f, 0.8f); this.shapeRenderer.filledRect(0, 0, this.width/this.ppuX, PAUSE_MARGIN_HEIGHT/this.ppuY); this.shapeRenderer.filledRect(0, (this.height-PAUSE_MARGIN_HEIGHT)/this.ppuY, this.width/this.ppuX, PAUSE_MARGIN_HEIGHT/this.ppuY); this.shapeRenderer.end(); for(Button button : this.world.getPauseButtons()) { this.spriteBatch.draw(this.textures.getTexture(button.getTexture()), (button.getPosition().x - this.offset[0]) * this.ppuX, (button.getPosition().y - this.offset[1]) * this.ppuY); } }

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• How to Waste Your Marketing Budget

  - by Mike Stiles

  Philosophers have long said if you find out where a man’s money is, you’ll know where his heart is. Find out where money in a marketing budget is allocated, and you’ll know how adaptive and ready that company is for the near future. Marketing spends are an investment. Not unlike buying stock, the money is placed in areas the marketer feels will yield the highest return. Good stock pickers know the lay of the land, the sectors, the companies, and trends. Likewise, good marketers should know the media available to them, their audience, what they like & want, what they want their marketing to achieve…and trends. So what are they doing? And how are they doing? A recent eTail report shows nearly half of retailers planned on focusing on SEO, SEM, and site research technologies in the coming months. On the surface, that’s smart. You want people to find you. And you’re willing to let the SEO tail wag the dog and dictate the quality (or lack thereof) of your content such as blogs to make that happen. So search is prioritized well ahead of social, multi-channel initiatives, email, even mobile - despite the undisputed explosive growth and adoption of it by the public. 13% of retailers plan to focus on online video in the next 3 months. 29% said they’d look at it in 6 months. Buying SEO trickery is easy. Attracting and holding an audience with wanted, relevant content…that’s the hard part. So marketers continue to kick the content can down the road. Pretty risky since content can draw and bind customers to you. Asked to look a year ahead, retailers started thinking about CRM systems, customer segmentation, and loyalty, (again well ahead of online video, social and site personalization). What these investors are missing is social is spreading across every function of the enterprise and will be a part of CRM, personalization, loyalty programs, etc. They’re using social for engagement but not for PR, customer service, and sales. Mistake. Allocations are being made seemingly blind to the trends. Even more peculiar are the results of an analysis Mary Meeker of Kleiner Perkins made. She looked at how much time people spend with media types and how marketers are investing in those media. 26% of media consumption is online, marketers spend 22% of their ad budgets there. 10% of media time is spent with mobile, but marketers are spending 1% of their ad budgets there. 7% of media time is spent with print, but (get this) marketers spend 25% of their ad budgets there. It’s like being on Superman’s Bizarro World. Mary adds that of the online spending, most goes to search while spends on content, even ad content, stayed flat. Stock pickers know to buy low and sell high. It means peering with info in hand into the likely future of a stock and making the investment in it before it peaks. Either marketers aren’t believing the data and trends they’re seeing, or they can’t convince higher-ups to acknowledge change and adjust their portfolios accordingly. Follow @mikestilesImage via stock.xchng

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• Workflow versioning

  - by Nitra

  I believe I have a fundamental misunderstanding when it comes to workflow engines which I would appreciate if you could help me sort out. I'm not sure if my misunderstanding is specific to the workflow engine I'm using, or if it's a general misunderstanding. I happen to use Windows Workflow Foundation (WWF). TLDR-version WWF allows you to implement business processes in long-running workflows (think months or even years). When started, the workflows can't be changed. But what business process can't change at any time? And if a business process changes, wouldn't you want your software to reflect this change for already started 'instances' of the business process? What am I missing? Background In WWF you define a workflow by combining a set of activites. There are different types of activities - some of them are for flow control, such as the IfElseActivity and the WhileActivty while others allows you to perform actual tasks, such as the CodeActivity wich allows you to run .NET code and the InvokeWebServiceActivity which allows you to call web services. The activites are combined to a workflow using a visual designer. You pretty much drag-and-drop activities from a toolbox to a designer area and connect the activites to each other. The workflow and activities have input paramters, output parameters and variables. We have a single workflow which sometimes runs in a matter of a few days, but it may run for 5-6 months. WWF takes care of persisting the workflow state (what activity are we currently executing, what are the variable values and so on). So far I think WWF makes sense. Some people will prefer to implement a software representation of a business process using a visual designer over writing all of it in code. So what's the issue then? What I don't really get is the following: WWF is designed to take care of long-running workflows. But at the same time, WWF has no built-in functionality which allows you to modify the running workflows. So if you model a business process using a workflow and run that for 6 months, you better hope that the business process does not change. Because if it do, you'll have to have multiple versions of the workflow executing at the same time. This seems like a fundamental design mistake to me, but at the same time it seems more likely that I've misunderstood something. For us, this has had some real-world effects: We release new versions every month, but some workflows may run for a year. This means that we have several versions of the workflow running in parallell, in other words several versions of the business logics. This is the same as having many differnt versions of your code running in production in the same system at the same time, which becomes a bit hard to understand for users. (depending on on whether they clicked a 'Start' button 9 or 10 months ago, the software will behave differently) Our workflow refers to different types of entities and since WWF now has persisted and serialized these we can't really refactor the entities since then existing workflows can't be resumed (deserialization will fail We've received some suggestions on how to handle this When we create a new version of the workflow, cancel all running workflows and create new ones. But in our workflows there's a lot of manual work involved and if we start from scratch a lot of people has to re-do their work. Track what has been done in the workflow and when you create a new one skip activites which have already been executed. I feel that this alternative may work for simple workflows, but it becomes hairy to automatically figure out what activities to skip if there's major refactoring done to a workflow. When we create a new version of the workflow, upgrade old versions using the new WWF 4.5 functionality for upgrading workflows. But then we would have to skip using the visual designer and write code to inject activities in the right places in the workflow. According to MSDN, this upgrade functionality is only intended for minor bug fixes and not larger changes. What am I missing?

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• RewriteRule not working for certain URLs

  - by keiki

  There are a few domains pointing towards the same server, and of course I need them all redirect to only one of them. Redirects work, but only for certain URLs. What works: http://www.domain.com, http://domain.com, domain.com/index.html, domain.com/index.php, , domain.com/nonExistentDirectory, and if I click in the menu the following URLs are also redirected correctly: domain.com/foo/bar, domain.com/foo/bar.html or .php or other extension. What doesn't work: domain.com/existentDirectory, domain.com/foo/bar (if I type the URL in the address bar). If anyone will have the time and skill and will to tell me where's the mistake, I'll be deeply grateful. Here's my .htaccess file: AddHandler x-httpd-php .html .htm <ifModule mod_gzip.c> mod_gzip_on Yes mod_gzip_dechunk Yes mod_gzip_item_include file \.(html?|txt|css|js|php|pl)$ mod_gzip_item_include handler ^cgi-script$ mod_gzip_item_include mime ^text/.* mod_gzip_item_include mime ^application/x-javascript.* mod_gzip_item_exclude mime ^image/.* mod_gzip_item_exclude rspheader ^Content-Encoding:.*gzip.* </ifModule> <ifModule mod_expires.c> ExpiresActive On ExpiresDefault "access plus 1 seconds" ExpiresByType text/html "access plus 1 seconds" ExpiresByType image/gif "access plus 2592000 seconds" ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 2592000 seconds" ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 2592000 seconds" ExpiresByType text/css "access plus 2592000 seconds" ExpiresByType text/javascript "access plus 216000 seconds" ExpiresByType application/x-javascript "access plus 216000 seconds" </ifModule> <ifModule mod_headers.c> <filesMatch "\\.(ico|pdf|flv|jpg|jpeg|png|gif|swf)$"> Header set Cache-Control "max-age=2592000, public" </filesMatch> <filesMatch "\\.(css)$"> Header set Cache-Control "max-age=2592000, public" </filesMatch> <filesMatch "\\.(js)$"> Header set Cache-Control "max-age=216000, private" </filesMatch> <filesMatch "\\.(xml|txt)$"> Header set Cache-Control "max-age=216000, public, must-revalidate" </filesMatch> <filesMatch "\\.(html|htm|php)$"> Header set Cache-Control "max-age=1, private, must-revalidate" </filesMatch> </ifModule> <ifModule mod_headers.c> Header unset ETag </ifModule> FileETag None <ifModule mod_headers.c> Header unset Last-Modified </ifModule> # BEGIN WordPress <IfModule mod_rewrite.c> RewriteEngine On RewriteBase / RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteRule . /index.php [L] </IfModule> # END WordPress RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^foo\.com$ [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.foo\.com$ RewriteRule (.*) http://domain.com/$1 [R=301,L,QSA] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^foo1\.com$ [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.foo1\.com$ RewriteRule (.*) http://domain.com/$1 [R=301,L,QSA] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^foo2\.com$ [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.foo2\.com$ RewriteRule (.*) http://domain.com/$1 [R=301,L,QSA] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^foo3\.com$ [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.foo3\.com$ RewriteRule (.*) http://domain.com/$1 [R=301,L,QSA] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^foo8\.com$ [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.foo8\.com$ RewriteRule (.*) http://domain.com/$1 [R=301,L,QSA] Thinking that the above version was overkill, I've also tried to redirect all the requests for domains different than the main on to be redirected to it like this: RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^domain\.com$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain.com [L,R=301] Is it also wrong? Because it doesn't work either! P.S. @Sodved I've tried that and it doesn't help (I comment here because I can't seem to be able to comment your answer.) Removing the following piece of code didn't solve the issue either, so the problem must be somewhere else: # BEGIN WordPress <IfModule mod_rewrite.c> RewriteEngine On RewriteBase / RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteRule . /index.php [L] </IfModule> # END WordPress New details: using this tool for checking the redirects I got the following results for the URLs that are not redirected: Checked link: http://domain.com/aDirectory/ Type of link: direct link (note the trailing slash above) and: Checked link: http://domain.com/aDirectory Type of redirect: 301 Moved Permanently Redirected to: http://domain.com/aDirectory/ (no trailing slash here) I hope/suspect I'm getting closer to the cause of this behavior.

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• (libgdx) Button doesn't work

  - by StercoreCode

  At the game I choose StopScreen. At this screen displays button. But if I click it - it doesn't work. What I expect - when I press button it must restart game. At this stage must display at least a message that the button is pressed. I tried to create new and clear project. Main class implement ApplicationListener. I put the same code in the appropriate methods. And it's works! But if i create this button in my game - it doesn't work. When i play and go to the StopScreen, i saw button. But if i click, or touch, nothing happens. I think that the proplem at the InputListener, although i set the stage as InputProcessor. Gdx.input.setInputProcessor(stage); I also try to addListener for Button as ClickListener. But it gave no results. Or it maybe problem that i implements Screen method - not ApplicationListener or Game. But if StopScreen implement ApplicationListener, at the mainGame I can't to setScreen. Just interests question: why button displays but nothing happens to it? Here is the code of StopScreen if it helps find my mistake: public class StopScreen implements Screen{ private OrthographicCamera camera; private SpriteBatch batch; public Stage stage; //** stage holds the Button **// private BitmapFont font; //** same as that used in Tut 7 **// private TextureAtlas buttonsAtlas; //** image of buttons **// private Skin buttonSkin; //** images are used as skins of the button **// public TextButton button; //** the button - the only actor in program **// public StopScreen(CurrusGame currusGame) { camera = new OrthographicCamera(); camera.setToOrtho(false, 800, 480); batch = new SpriteBatch(); buttonsAtlas = new TextureAtlas("button.pack"); //** button atlas image **// buttonSkin = new Skin(); buttonSkin.addRegions(buttonsAtlas); //** skins for on and off **// font = AssetLoader.font; //** font **// stage = new Stage(); stage.clear(); Gdx.input.setInputProcessor(stage); TextButton.TextButtonStyle style = new TextButton.TextButtonStyle(); style.up = buttonSkin.getDrawable("ButtonOff"); style.down = buttonSkin.getDrawable("ButtonOn"); style.font = font; button = new TextButton("PRESS ME", style); //** Button text and style **// button.setPosition(100, 100); //** Button location **// button.setHeight(100); //** Button Height **// button.setWidth(100); //** Button Width **// button.addListener(new InputListener() { public boolean touchDown(InputEvent event, float x, float y, int pointer, int button) { Gdx.app.log("my app", "Pressed"); return true; } public void touchUp(InputEvent event, float x, float y, int pointer, int button) { Gdx.app.log("my app", "Released"); } }); stage.addActor(button); } @Override public void render(float delta) { Gdx.gl.glClearColor(0, 1, 0, 1); Gdx.gl.glClear(GL20.GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT); stage.act(); batch.setProjectionMatrix(camera.combined); batch.begin(); stage.draw(); batch.end(); }

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• What are the disadvantages of self-encapsulation?

  - by Dave Jarvis

  Background Tony Hoare's billion dollar mistake was the invention of null. Subsequently, a lot of code has become riddled with null pointer exceptions (segfaults) when software developers try to use (dereference) uninitialized variables. In 1989, Wirfs-Brock and Wikerson wrote: Direct references to variables severely limit the ability of programmers to re?ne existing classes. The programming conventions described here structure the use of variables to promote reusable designs. We encourage users of all object-oriented languages to follow these conventions. Additionally, we strongly urge designers of object-oriented languages to consider the effects of unrestricted variable references on reusability. Problem A lot of software, especially in Java, but likely in C# and C++, often uses the following pattern: public class SomeClass { private String someAttribute; public SomeClass() { this.someAttribute = "Some Value"; } public void someMethod() { if( this.someAttribute.equals( "Some Value" ) ) { // do something... } } public void setAttribute( String s ) { this.someAttribute = s; } public String getAttribute() { return this.someAttribute; } } Sometimes a band-aid solution is used by checking for null throughout the code base: public void someMethod() { assert this.someAttribute != null; if( this.someAttribute.equals( "Some Value" ) ) { // do something... } } public void anotherMethod() { assert this.someAttribute != null; if( this.someAttribute.equals( "Some Default Value" ) ) { // do something... } } The band-aid does not always avoid the null pointer problem: a race condition exists. The race condition is mitigated using: public void anotherMethod() { String someAttribute = this.someAttribute; assert someAttribute != null; if( someAttribute.equals( "Some Default Value" ) ) { // do something... } } Yet that requires two statements (assignment to local copy and check for null) every time a class-scoped variable is used to ensure it is valid. Self-Encapsulation Ken Auer's Reusability Through Self-Encapsulation (Pattern Languages of Program Design, Addison Wesley, New York, pp. 505-516, 1994) advocated self-encapsulation combined with lazy initialization. The result, in Java, would resemble: public class SomeClass { private String someAttribute; public SomeClass() { setAttribute( "Some Value" ); } public void someMethod() { if( getAttribute().equals( "Some Value" ) ) { // do something... } } public void setAttribute( String s ) { this.someAttribute = s; } public String getAttribute() { String someAttribute = this.someAttribute; if( someAttribute == null ) { setAttribute( createDefaultValue() ); } return someAttribute; } protected String createDefaultValue() { return "Some Default Value"; } } All duplicate checks for null are superfluous: getAttribute() ensures the value is never null at a single location within the containing class. Efficiency arguments should be fairly moot -- modern compilers and virtual machines can inline the code when possible. As long as variables are never referenced directly, this also allows for proper application of the Open-Closed Principle. Question What are the disadvantages of self-encapsulation, if any? (Ideally, I would like to see references to studies that contrast the robustness of similarly complex systems that use and don't use self-encapsulation, as this strikes me as a fairly straightforward testable hypothesis.)

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• Call For Papers Tips and Tricks

  - by speakjava

  This year's JavaOne session review has just been completed and by now everyone who submitted papers should know whether they were successful or not.  I had the pleasure again this year of leading the review of the 'JavaFX and Rich User Experiences' track.  I thought it would be useful to write up a few comments to help people in future when submitting session proposals, not just for JavaOne, but for any of the many developer conferences that run around the world throughout the year.  This also draws on conversations I recently had with various Java User Group leaders at the Oracle User Group summit in Riga.  Many of these leaders run some of the biggest and most successful Java conferences in Europe. Try to think of a title which will sound interesting.  For example, "Experiences of performance tuning embedded Java for an ARM architecture based single board computer" probably isn't going to get as much attention as "Do you like coffee with your dessert? Java on the Raspberry Pi".  When thinking of the subject and title for your talk try to steer clear of sessions that might be too generic (and so get lost in a group of similar sessions).  Introductory talks are great when the audience is new to a subject, but beware of providing sessions that are too basic when the technology has been around for a while and there are lots of tutorials already available on the web. JavaOne, like many other conferences has a number of fields that need to be filled in when submitting a paper.  Many of these are selected from pull-down lists (like which track the session is applicable to).  Check these lists carefully.  A number of sessions we had needed to be shuffled between tracks when it was thought that the one selected was not appropriate.  We didn't count this against any sessions, but it's always a good idea to try and get the right one from the start, just in case. JavaOne, again like many other conferences, has two fields that describe the session being submitted: abstract and summary.  These are the most critical to a successful submission.  The two fields have different names and that is significant; a frequent mistake people make is to write an abstract for a session and then duplicate it for the summary.  The abstract (at least in the case of JavaOne) is what gets printed in the show guide and is typically what will be used by attendees when deciding what sessions to attend.  This is where you need to sell your session, not just to the reviewers, but also the people who you want in your audience.  Submitting a one line abstract (unless it's a really good one line) is not usually enough to decide whether this is worth investing an hour of conference time.  The abstract typically has a limit of a few hundred characters.  Try to use as many of them as possible to get as much information about your session across.  The summary should be different from the abstract (and don't leave it blank as some people do).  This field is where you can give the reviewers more detail about things like the structure of the talk, possible demonstrations and so on.  As a reviewer I look to this section to help me decide whether the hard-sell of the title and abstract will actually be reflected in the final content.  Try to make this comprehensive, but don't make it excessively long.  When you have to review possibly hundreds of sessions a certain level of conciseness can make life easier for reviewers and help the cause of your session. If you've not made many submissions for talks in the past, or if this is your first, try to give reviewers places to find background on you as a presenter.  Having an active blog and Twitter handle can also help reviewers if they're not sure what your level of expertise is.  Many call-for-papers have places for you to include this type of information.  It's always good to have new and original presenters and presentations for conferences.  Hopefully these tips will help you be successful when you answer the next call-for-papers.

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• Any tips on getting hired as a software project manager straight out of college?

  - by MHarrison

  I graduated with a BS in compsci last September, and I've been trying (unsuccessfully) to find a job as a project manager ever since. I fell in love with software engineering (the formal practice behind it all, not just coding) in school, and I've dedicated the last 3-4 years of my life to learning everything I can about project management and gaining experience. I've managed several projects (with teams around 12 people) while in school, and I worked with my university's software engineering research lab. My résumé is also decent - I worked as a programmer before I went to school (I'm 27 now), and I did Google Summer of Code for 3 summers. I also have general "people management" experience via working as the photo editor for my university's newspaper for 2 years. My first problem with the job hunt is not getting enough interviews. I use careers.stackoverflow.com, which is awesome because I usually get contacted by non-HR people who know what they're talking about, but there's just not enough companies using it for me to get interviews on a regular basis. I've also tried sites like monster.com, and in a fit of desperation, I sent out no less than 60 applications to project management positions. I've gotten 3 automated rejection letters and that's it. At least careers.stackoverflow gets me a phone interview with 8/10 places I apply to. But the main (and extremely frustrating) problem is the matter of experience. I've successfully managed projects from start to finish (in my software engineering classes we had real customers come in with a real software need and we built it for them), but I've never had to deal with budgets and money (I know this is why HR people immediately turn me away). Most of these positions require 5+ years PM experience, and I've seen absurd things like 12+ years required. Interviews are also maddening. I've had so many places who absolutely loved me and I made it to the final round of interviews, and I left thinking things went extremely well and they'd consider me. However, when I check in with them a week later, they tell me "We really liked you and your qualifications are excellent, but we're hoping to find someone with more experience." The bad interviews I can understand - like the PM position that would have had me managing developers both locally and overseas - I had 3 interviews with them and the ENTIRE interview process was them asking me CS brainteasers and having me waste time on things like writing quicksort on paper or writing binary search trees. Even when I tried steering the discussion towards more relevant PM stuff, they gave me some vague generic replies and went back to the "We want to be Google/MS" crap. But when I have a GOOD interview, they say my "qualifications are excellent" but they want "more experience"...that makes me want to tear my hair out. What else can I DO? While I'm aiming for technically-involved PM positions (not just crunching budget numbers), I really don't want a straight development job because I like creating software from the very high-level vs. spending a lot of time debugging memory leaks. In fact, I can't even GET development positions that I'm qualified for because I make the mistake of telling them that my future career goals are as PM (which usually results in them saying something like "Well we already have PMs and this position isn't really set up to get you there." - which I take to mean "No, that's my job, stay away.") My apologies on the long rant, but I'm seriously hellbent on getting hired as a PM since it's both my career goal and the passion that keeps me awake at night. Any suggestions on what the heck else I can do? I'm currently writing a blog where I talk about my philosophies about software engineering, and I'm writing up specs for an iOS app which I will design, code, and show employers, but this takes an awful lot of time that I don't have.

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• Cloud Computing Pricing - It's like a Hotel

  - by BuckWoody

  I normally don't go into the economics or pricing side of Distributed Computing, but I've had a few friends that have been surprised by a bill lately and I wanted to quickly address at least one aspect of it. Most folks are used to buying software and owning it outright - like buying a car. We pay a lot for the car, and then we use it whenever we want. We think of the "cloud" services as a taxi - we'll just pay for the ride we take an no more. But it's not quite like that. It's actually more like a hotel. When you subscribe to Azure using a free offering like the MSDN subscription, you don't have to pay anything for the service. But when you create an instance of a Web or Compute Role, Storage, that sort of thing, you can think of the idea of checking into a hotel room. You get the key, you pay for the room. For Azure, using bandwidth, CPU and so on is billed just like it states in the Azure Portal. so in effect there is a cost for the service and then a cost to use it, like water or power or any other utility. Where this bit some folks is that they created an instance, played around with it, and then left it running. No one was using it, no one was on - so they thought they wouldn't be charged. But they were. It wasn't much, but it was a surprise.They had the hotel room key, but they weren't in the room, so to speak. To add to their frustration, they had to talk to someone on the phone to cancel the account. I understand the frustration. Although we have all this spelled out in the sign up area, not everyone has the time to read through all that. I get that. So why not make this easier? As an explanation, we bill for that time because the instance is still running, and we have to tie up resources to be available the second you want them, and that costs money. As far as being able to cancel from the portal, that's also something that needs to be clearer. You may not be aware that you can spin up instances using code - and so cancelling from the Portal would allow you to do the same thing. Since a mistake in code could erase all of your instances and the account, we make you call to make sure you're you and you really want to take it down. Not a perfect system by any means, but we'll evolve this as time goes on. For now, I wanted to make sure you're aware of what you should do. By the way, you don't have to cancel your whole account not to be billed. Just delete the instance from the portal and you won't be charged. You don't have to call anyone for that. And just FYI - you can download the SDK for Azure and never even hit the online version at all for learning and playing around. No sign-up, no credit card, PO, nothing like that. In fact, that's how I demo Azure all the time. Everything runs right on your laptop in an emulated environment.  

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• Getting Wrong Answer in range maximum query [on hold]

  - by user3186829

  I've just learnt range minimum and maximum queries using segment trees.But when I implemented it on my own I'm getting wrong answer.Logically I don't find any mistake in my code but if any one can point it out then I would be really thankful. Code in C++: #include<bits/stdc++.h> using namespace std; #define LL long long #define mp make_pair #define pb push_back #define gc getchar_unlocked #define pc putchar_unlocked #define LD long double #define MAXN 19999999 #define max(a,b) ((a)>(b)?(a):(b)) LL P[MAXN+15]; LL ST[2*MAXN+25]; long N,M,i,A,B,K; void build(long id,long L,long R) { long M=(L+R)>>1L; long LCT=id<<1L; long RCT=LCT+1L; if(L==R) { ST[id]=P[L]; return; } build(LCT,L,M); build(RCT,M+1,R); } //Range Update of segment tree void updateST(long id,long L,long R,long Q1,long Q2,long val) { long M=(L+R)>>1L; long LCT=id<<1L; long RCT=LCT+1L; if(L>Q2||R<Q1) { return; } if(L==Q1&&R==Q2) { ST[id]+=val; return; } if(Q2<=M) { updateST(LCT,L,M,Q1,Q2,val); } else if(Q1>M) { updateST(RCT,M+1,R,Q1,Q2,val); } else { updateST(LCT,L,M,Q1,M,val); updateST(RCT,M+1,R,M+1,Q2,val); } } //Query for finding maximum element in a given range[Q1,Q2] and 1<=Q1,Q2<=N LL query2(long id,long L,long R,long Q1,long Q2) { long M=(L+R)>>1; long LCT=id<<1; long RCT=LCT+1; if(L>Q2||R<Q1) { return 0; } if(L==Q1&&R==Q2) { return ST[id]; } if(Q2<=M) { return query2(LCT,L,M,Q1,Q2); } else if(Q1>M) { return query2(RCT,M+1,R,Q1,Q2); } else { LL G=query2(LCT,L,M,Q1,M); LL H=query2(RCT,M+1,R,M+1,Q2); LL RES=max(G,H); return RES; } } int main() { scanf("%ld %ld",&N,&M); build(1,1,N); for(i=0;i<M;i++) { scanf("%ld %ld %ld",&A,&B,&K); updateST(1,1,N,A,B,K); } //Finding maximum element in range[1,N]] cout<<query2(1,1,N,1,N); return 0; }

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• Projective texture and deferred lighting

  - by Vodácek

  In my previous question, I asked whether it is possible to do projective texturing with deferred lighting. Now (more than half a year later) I have a problem with my implementation of the same thing. I am trying to apply this technique in light pass. (my projector doesn't affect albedo). I have this projector View a Projection matrix: Matrix projection = Matrix.CreateOrthographicOffCenter(-halfWidth * Scale, halfWidth * Scale, -halfHeight * Scale, halfHeight * Scale, 1, 100000); Matrix view = Matrix.CreateLookAt(Position, Target, Vector3.Up); Where halfWidth and halfHeight is are half of the texture's width and height, Position is the Projector's position and target is the projector's target. This seems to be ok. I am drawing full screen quad with this shader: float4x4 InvViewProjection; texture2D DepthTexture; texture2D NormalTexture; texture2D ProjectorTexture; float4x4 ProjectorViewProjection; sampler2D depthSampler = sampler_state { texture = <DepthTexture>; minfilter = point; magfilter = point; mipfilter = point; }; sampler2D normalSampler = sampler_state { texture = <NormalTexture>; minfilter = point; magfilter = point; mipfilter = point; }; sampler2D projectorSampler = sampler_state { texture = <ProjectorTexture>; AddressU = Clamp; AddressV = Clamp; }; float viewportWidth; float viewportHeight; // Calculate the 2D screen position of a 3D position float2 postProjToScreen(float4 position) { float2 screenPos = position.xy / position.w; return 0.5f * (float2(screenPos.x, -screenPos.y) + 1); } // Calculate the size of one half of a pixel, to convert // between texels and pixels float2 halfPixel() { return 0.5f / float2(viewportWidth, viewportHeight); } struct VertexShaderInput { float4 Position : POSITION0; }; struct VertexShaderOutput { float4 Position :POSITION0; float4 PositionCopy : TEXCOORD1; }; VertexShaderOutput VertexShaderFunction(VertexShaderInput input) { VertexShaderOutput output; output.Position = input.Position; output.PositionCopy=output.Position; return output; } float4 PixelShaderFunction(VertexShaderOutput input) : COLOR0 { float2 texCoord =postProjToScreen(input.PositionCopy) + halfPixel(); // Extract the depth for this pixel from the depth map float4 depth = tex2D(depthSampler, texCoord); //return float4(depth.r,0,0,1); // Recreate the position with the UV coordinates and depth value float4 position; position.x = texCoord.x * 2 - 1; position.y = (1 - texCoord.y) * 2 - 1; position.z = depth.r; position.w = 1.0f; // Transform position from screen space to world space position = mul(position, InvViewProjection); position.xyz /= position.w; //compute projection float3 projection=tex2D(projectorSampler,postProjToScreen(mul(position,ProjectorViewProjection)) + halfPixel()); return float4(projection,1); } In first part of pixel shader is recovered position from G-buffer (this code I am using in other shaders without any problem) and then is tranformed to projector viewprojection space. Problem is that projection doesn't appear. Here is an image of my situation: The green lines are the rendered projector frustum. Where is my mistake hidden? I am using XNA 4. Thanks for advice and sorry for my English. EDIT: Shader above is working but projection was too small. When I changed the Scale property to a large value (e.g. 100), the projection appears. But when the camera moves toward the projection, the projection expands, as can bee seen on this YouTube video.

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• Top 5 characteristics Recruiters are looking for

  - by Maria Sandu

  Of course many skills and characteristics recruiters are looking for are job specific. But whether you are a graduate fresh out of college or seasoned in the workplace, recruiters are also looking for generic skills and attitude to see whether you are a good fit to the company. So make sure you prepare and show through examples that you have these skills. 1. Drive/passion Liking the job you are applying for is paramount and something recruiters are always looking for. Show and prove your drive for the role and/or the field you are applying for. Always be prepared to pitch yourself, this shows your drive in the role you are applying for. 2. Communication skills People often make the mistake by thinking this skill is related to how good they are able to talk about their background and expertise. This is important, but as least as important is it that you listen well to questions that are asked. Make sure you answer to the point and ask questions if you want questions to be clarified. This shows your interest in the role and the ability to communicate clearly. This also helps you building trust with the recruiter every time you speak to him/her. 3. Confidence Recruiters are looking for the best candidate for the job. So if you don’t think you are the best candidate why should the recruiter? Show with confidence, without being arrogant (think about building trust), why you are the right person for the job. Confidence also shows in your answers to difficult questions. Be confident enough to explain why some experiences went wrong and how you learnt from them. If you don’t have a direct explanation on a question, it is better to ask for a second to think instead of a random answer. 4. Vision The main reason to hire graduates for many companies is that graduates are perceived to be flexible. The organisation will train and up skill you in the direction best suitable for the organisation. However the most intense learning path is realised when you also know where you want to go. Companies are often happy to accommodate you to support with training and development, but if you don’t have a clear vision on what you want to achieve for yourself and what value you bring to the company, recruiters can decide you are not the right candidate as they are afraid you aren’t going to stay in the company. 5. Business awareness For every job you apply you will get challenged on your knowledge and interest for the market and business they are in. All companies add value in different ways in their respective markets. So make sure you are aware of what a company is doing, what their goal is and why and how they exist and how you can add value for the company in the role you are applying for. /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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• Is there any kind of established architecture for browser based games?

  - by black_puppydog

  I am beginning the development of a broser based game in which players take certain actions at any point in time. Big parts of gameplay will be happening in real life and just have to be entered into the system. I believe a good kind of comparison might be a platform for managing fantasy football, although I have virtually no experience playing that, so please correct me if I am mistaken here. The point is that some events happen in the program (i.e. on the server, out of reach for the players) like pulling new results from some datasource, starting of a new round by a game master and such. Other events happen in real life (two players closing a deal on the transfer of some team member or whatnot - again: have never played fantasy football) and have to be entered into the system. The first part is pretty easy since the game masters will be "staff" and thus can be trusted to a certain degree to not mess with the system. But the second part bothers me quite a lot, especially since the actions may involve multiple steps and interactions with different players, like registering a deal with the system that then has to be approved by the other party or denied and passed on to a game master to decide. I would of course like to separate the game logic as far as possible from the presentation and basic form validation but am unsure how to do this in a clean fashion. Of course I could (and will) put some effort into making my own architectural decisions and prototype different ideas. But I am bound to make some stupid mistakes at some point, so I would like to avoid some of that by getting a little "book smart" beforehand. So the question is: Is there any kind of architectural works that I can read up on? Papers, blogs, maybe design documents or even source code? Writing this down this seems more like a business application with business rules, workflows and such... Any good entry points for that? EDIT: After reading the first answers I am under the impression of having made a mistake when including the "MMO" part into the title. The game will not be all fancy (i.e. 3D or such) on the client side and the logic will completely exist on the server. That is, apart from basic form validation for the user which will also be mirrored on the server side. So the target toolset will be HTML5, JavaScript, probably JQuery(UI). My question is more related to the software architecture/design of a system that enforces certain rules. Separation of ruleset and presentation One problem I am having is that I want to separate the game rules from the presentation. The first step would be to make an own module for the game "engine" that only exposes an interface that allows all actions to be taken in a clean way. If an action fails with regard to some pre/post condition, the engine throws an exception which is then presented to the user like "you cannot sell something you do not own" or "after that you would end up in a situation which is not a valid game state." The problem here is that I would like to be able to not even present invalid action in the first place or grey out the corresponding UI elements. Changing and tweaking the ruleset Another big thing is the ruleset. It will probably evolve over time and most definitely must be tweaked. What's more, it should be possible (to a certain extent) to build a ruleset that fits a specific game round, i.e. choosing different kinds of behaviours in different aspects of the game. This would do something like "we play it with extension A today but we throw out extension B." For me, this screams "Architectural/Design pattern" but I have no idea on who might have published on something like this, not even what to google for.

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• Reactive Extensions vs FileSystemWatcher

  - by Joel Mueller

  One of the things that has long bugged me about the FileSystemWatcher is the way it fires multiple events for a single logical change to a file. I know why it happens, but I don't want to have to care - I just want to reparse the file once, not 4-6 times in a row. Ideally, there would be an event that only fires when a given file is done changing, rather than every step along the way. Over the years I've come up with various solutions to this problem, of varying degrees of ugliness. I thought Reactive Extensions would be the ultimate solution, but there's something I'm not doing right, and I'm hoping someone can point out my mistake. I have an extension method: public static IObservable<IEvent<FileSystemEventArgs>> GetChanged(this FileSystemWatcher that) { return Observable.FromEvent<FileSystemEventArgs>(that, "Changed"); } Ultimately, I would like to get one event per filename, within a given time period - so that four events in a row with a single filename are reduced to one event, but I don't lose anything if multiple files are modified at the same time. BufferWithTime sounds like the ideal solution. var bufferedChange = watcher.GetChanged() .Select(e => e.EventArgs.FullPath) .BufferWithTime(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(1)) .Where(e => e.Count > 0) .Select(e => e.Distinct()); When I subscribe to this observable, a single change to a monitored file triggers my subscription method four times in a row, which rather defeats the purpose. If I remove the Distinct() call, I see that each of the four calls contains two identical events - so there is some buffering going on. Increasing the TimeSpan passed to BufferWithTime seems to have no effect - I went as high as 20 seconds without any change in behavior. This is my first foray into Rx, so I'm probably missing something obvious. Am I doing it wrong? Is there a better approach? Thanks for any suggestions...

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• Core Data migration problem: "Persistent store migration failed, missing source managed object model

  - by John Gallagher

  The Background A Cocoa Non Document Core Data project with two Managed Object Models. Model 1 stays the same. Model 2 has changed, so I want to migrate the store. I've created a new version by Design Data Model Add Model Version in Xcode. The difference between versions is a single relationship that's been changed from to a one to many. I've made my changes to the model, then saved. I've made a new Mapping Model that has the old model as a source and new model as a destination. I've ensured all Mapping Models and Data Models and are being compiled and all are copied to the Resource folder of my app bundle. I've switched on migrations by passing in a dictionary with the NSMigratePersistentStoresAutomaticallyOption key as [NSNumber numberWithBool:YES] when adding the Persistent Store. Rather than merging all models in the bundle, I've specified the two models I want to use (model 1 and the new version of model 2) and merged them using modelByMergingModels: The Problem No matter what I do to migrate, I get the error message: "Persistent store migration failed, missing source managed object model." What I've Tried I clean after every single build. I've tried various combinations of having only the model I'm migrating to in Resources, being compiled, or both. Since the error message implies it can't find the source model for my migration, I've tried having every version of the model in both the Resources folder and being compiled. I've made sure I'm not making a really basic error by switching back to the original version of my data model. The app runs fine. I've deleted the Mapping Model and the new version of the model, cleaned, then recreated both. I've tried making a different change in the new model - deleting an entity instead. I'm at my wits end. I can't help but think I've made a huge mistake somewhere that I'm not seeing. Any ideas?

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• Unable to "Run on Server" a webapp from Eclipse

  - by Ram

  When running my WebApp project from Eclipse most of times it run correctly. But if by mistake to stop server, I kill it in "Console" view on instead of "Stop" Server from "Servers" View. While running clean project I get this java.lang.NullPointerException at org.eclipse.wst.common.componentcore.internal.util.VirtualReferenceUtilities.getDefaultProjectArchiveName(VirtualReferenceUtilities.java:81) at org.eclipse.jst.j2ee.componentcore.J2EEModuleVirtualComponent.getJavaClasspathReferences(J2EEModuleVirtualComponent.java:332) at org.eclipse.jst.j2ee.componentcore.J2EEModuleVirtualComponent.getNonManifestRefs(J2EEModuleVirtualComponent.java:236) at org.eclipse.jst.j2ee.componentcore.J2EEModuleVirtualComponent.getReferences(J2EEModuleVirtualComponent.java:160) at org.eclipse.jst.j2ee.componentcore.J2EEModuleVirtualComponent.getReferences(J2EEModuleVirtualComponent.java:208) at org.eclipse.jst.j2ee.componentcore.J2EEModuleVirtualComponent.getReferences(J2EEModuleVirtualComponent.java:201) at org.eclipse.jst.common.internal.modulecore.SingleRootUtil.hasConsumableReferences(SingleRootUtil.java:217) at org.eclipse.jst.common.internal.modulecore.SingleRootUtil.validateSingleRoot(SingleRootUtil.java:165) at org.eclipse.jst.common.internal.modulecore.SingleRootUtil.isSingleRoot(SingleRootUtil.java:93) at org.eclipse.jst.common.internal.modulecore.SingleRootExportParticipant.canOptimize(SingleRootExportParticipant.java:84) at org.eclipse.wst.common.componentcore.internal.flat.FlatVirtualComponent.canOptimize(FlatVirtualComponent.java:136) at org.eclipse.wst.common.componentcore.internal.flat.FlatVirtualComponent.cacheResources(FlatVirtualComponent.java:118) at org.eclipse.wst.common.componentcore.internal.flat.FlatVirtualComponent.fetchResources(FlatVirtualComponent.java:101) at org.eclipse.wst.web.internal.deployables.FlatComponentDeployable.members(FlatComponentDeployable.java:147) at org.eclipse.wst.server.core.internal.ModulePublishInfo.hasDelta(ModulePublishInfo.java:418) at org.eclipse.wst.server.core.internal.ServerPublishInfo.hasDelta(ServerPublishInfo.java:443) at org.eclipse.wst.server.core.internal.Server.hasPublishedResourceDelta(Server.java:1539) at org.eclipse.wst.server.core.internal.Server$ResourceChangeJob$1.visit(Server.java:214) at org.eclipse.wst.server.core.internal.Server.visitModule(Server.java:2929) at org.eclipse.wst.server.core.internal.Server.visit(Server.java:2913) at org.eclipse.wst.server.core.internal.Server$ResourceChangeJob.run(Server.java:225) at org.eclipse.core.internal.jobs.Worker.run(Worker.java:54) And while launching I get this SEVERE: Error starting static Resources java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Document base D:\workspace\.metadata\.plugins\org.eclipse.wst.server.core\tmp0\wtpwebapps\Webapp does not exist or is not a readable directory at org.apache.naming.resources.FileDirContext.setDocBase(FileDirContext.java:142) at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.resourcesStart(StandardContext.java:4319) at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.start(StandardContext.java:4488) at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.start(ContainerBase.java:1053) at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHost.start(StandardHost.java:840) at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.start(ContainerBase.java:1053) at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngine.start(StandardEngine.java:463) Please help recover from this.

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• Undefined control sequence

  - by Jelle Fresen

  Hi, I am making my Master's Thesis with LaTeX, but I can't get the provided style to work. Specifically, I get the error 'Undefined control sequence' when using the function makeformaltitlepages, which is defined in mscthesis.sty. On the internet, the only answer I could find is the straightforward 'you probably made a typo', or 'you probably forgot to include the package', but I have reason to believe neither of those apply to me. I am quite sure that the function exists, for when I add a little verification, using the @ifundefined command, the logfile shows that the function actually does exist. And, as can be seen in the following piece of code, I also include the package: \usepackage{mscthesis} % setup information like author, company, title, etc. \begin{document} \formatmatter \thispagestyle{empty} \maketitle \makeatletter \@ifundefined{makeformaltitlepages}{\message{Function is not defined.}}{\message{Function is defined.}} \makeatother \makeformaltitlepages{\input{abstract}} % add chapters, sections, etc. and end the document Now, the output shows the line "Function is defined." just before the output of maketitle (which I think is rather strange on its own, but that might be a flushing issue), followed by the following infinitely repeated error (well, cut off after 100 times by LaTeX): Function is defined. // some gibberish about font info ! Undefined control sequence. \GenericError ... #4 \errhelp \@err@ ... l.112 \makeformaltitlepages{} The control sequence at the end of the top line of your error message was never \def'ed. If you have misspelled it (e.g., `\hobx'), type `I' and the correct spelling (e.g., `I\hbox'). Otherwise just continue, and I'll forget about whatever was undefined. While the error keeps repeating, the line that starts with '#4' cycles between the following four lines: #4 \errhelp \@err@ ... \let \@err@ ... \@empty \def \MessageBreak... \endgroup Ok, so, do any of you have a suggestion of how I might continue to hunt this bug? Or what blatantly obvious mistake did I make?

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