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• Do you care about your Oracle System Support experience?

  - by user12244613

  It has been a while since I blogged about Systems Support within Oracle. I want to take this opportunity to raise awareness of how Oracle is communicating out to its systems customers. Previously every item to be communicated was sent independently via an email message however, not all messages appear to be being getting the attention they require. In an effort to ensure Oracle is reaching all of our Sun and Oracle System customers, we have created the Oracle Systems Support Newsletter. This monthly newsletter will have a summary of customer support relevant information for you to use and will cover topics that impact your support experience. For example: 1. Did you know that sending explorer content to email addresses with @sun.com is going away soon? For more information, review the Document 1362484.1 2. Are you an Auto Service Request (ASR) user? If yes, here are the latest changes: · ASR Manager accepts My Oracle Support User Name (email address) and password. [Doc ID 1345484.1] · ASR IP Address for secure file transfer has changed [Doc ID 1338575.1] · ASR No Heartbeat Status - Find out how to resolve [Doc ID 1346328.1] 3. Did you notice we have changed the Service Request options for Hardware and introduced a new problem category called “Automated Diagnosis”? This service streamlines the data you send in and then automatically provides an update of known issues found in your My Oracle Support Service Request. This feature also fast tracks hardware failures by sending parts as soon as the data is analyzed. Have you used this new feature? If yes tell us about it – take the 5minute survey 4. Are you being proactive or are you still ‘fire fighting’ in the reactive mode? If you are being proactive for your Oracle System products you might have used Oracle Sun System Analysis. Did you finding this helpful? Can we improve it? You tell us, take the 5minute survey 5. Are you aware that if you attach files to your Service Request it enables the support engineer to start work straight away? For a summary of products and files review the Newsletter. 6. Are you struggling to find patches or firmware or product downloads? If yes, these types of issues are all addressed in the Newsletter. If this is the type of information you want to know about each month, then take time to read the Newsletter link and bookmark it in My Oracle Support so you can stay informed. Thanks for your time.

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• Using runtime checking of code contracts in Visual Studio 2010

  - by DigiMortal

  In my last posting about code contracts I introduced how to check input parameters of randomizer using static contracts checking. But you can also compile code contracts to your assemblies and use them also in runtime. In this posting I will show you simple example about runtime checking of code contracts. NB! If you want to play with code and try out things described here feel free to download example solution. if you are speaker and want to use this solution as a part of your sessions then feel free to do so, but don’t forget to refer me and this blog as source of this solution. And please let me know about your session. As a speaker I am very interested about it. :) To see how code contracts are checked at runtime we have to enable runtime checking from project properties. Make sure you have checked the box “Perform Runtime Contract Checking” and make sure you select “Full” from dropdown. These parts are in red box on the screenshot below. Visual Studio 2010 settings for code contracts. Runtime Checking is turned on and checks are made only in public surface. Click on image to see it at original size.  Save project settings. Then compile code and run it. As soon as code execution hits the call to GetRandomFromRangeContracted() exception is thrown. If you are not currently playing with solution referred above take a look at the following screenshot. Visual Studio 2010 runtime checking of code contracts. Exception of type ContractException is thrown when contract is violated. Click on image to see it at original size.  The exact type of exception is ContractException and it is defined in System.Diagnostics.Contracts.__ContractsRuntime namespace. In our example the message of exception is following: "Precondition failed: min < max  Min must be less than max" Besides the description we inserted for the case contract violation the message also contains violated contract type. In this case the type of contract is Precondition. Conclusion Using runtime checking of code contracts enables you to take code contracts with your code and have them checked every time when your methods are called. This way you can assure that all conditions are met to run method or exception is thrown and calling system has to handle the situation.

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• Suggestions for connecting .NET WPF GUI with Java SE Server

  - by Sam Goldberg

  BACKGROUND We are building a Java (SE) trading application which will be monitoring market data and sending trade messages based on the market data, and also on user defined configuration parameters. We are planning to provide the user with a thin client, built in .NET (WPF) for managing the parameters, controlling the server behavior, and viewing the current state of the trading. The client doesn't need real-time updates; it will instead update the view once every few seconds (or whatever interval is configured by the user). The client has about 6 different operations it needs to perform with the server, for example: CRUD with configuration parameters query subset of the data receive updates of current positions from server It is possible that most of the different operations (except for receiving data) are just different flavors of managing the configuration parameters, but it's too early in our analysis for us to be sure. To connect the client with the server, we have been considering using: SOAP Web Service RESTful service building a custom TCP/IP based API (text or xml) (least preferred - but we use this approach with other applications we have) As best as I understand, pros and cons of the different web service flavors are: SOAP pro: totally automated in .NET (and Java), modifying server side interface require no code changes in communication layer, just running refresh on Web Service reference to regenerate the classes. con: more overhead in the communication layer sending more text, etc. We're not using J2EE container so maybe doesn't work so well with J2SE REST pro: lighter weight, less data. Has good .NET and Java support. (I don't have any real experience with this, so don't know what other benefits it has.) con: client will not be automatically aware if there are any new operations or properties added (?), so communication layer needs to be updated by developer if server interface changes. con: (both approaches) Server cannot really push updates to the client at regular intervals (?) (However, we won't mind if client polls the server to get updates.) QUESTION What are your opinions on the above options or suggestions for other ways to connect the 2 parts? (Ideally, we don't want to put much work into the communication layer, because it's not the significant part of the application so the more off-the-shelf and automated the better.)

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• SQL – What ACID stands in the Database? – Contest to Win 24 Amazon Gift Cards and Joes 2 Pros 2012 Kit

  - by Pinal Dave

  We love puzzles. One of the brain’s main task is to solve puzzles. Sometime puzzles are very complicated (e.g Solving Rubik Cube or Sodoku)  and sometimes the puzzles are very simple (multiplying 4 by 8 or finding the shortest route while driving). It is always to solve puzzle and it creates an experience which humans are not able to forget easily. The best puzzles are the one where one has to do multiple things to reach to the final goal. Let us do something similar today. We will have a contest where you can participate and win something interesting. Contest This contest have two parts. Question 1: What ACID stands in the Database? This question seems very easy but here is the twist. Your answer should explain minimum one of the properties of the ACID in detail. If you wish you can explain all the four properties of the ACID but to qualify you need to explain minimum of the one properties. Question 2: What is the size of the installation file of NuoDB for any specific platform. You can answer this question following format – NuoDB installation file is of size __ MB for ___ Platform. Click on the Download the Link and download your installation file for NuoDB. You can post figure out the file size from the properties of the file. We have exciting content prizes for the winners. Prizes 1) 24 Amazon Gift Cards of USD 10 for next 24 hours. One card at every hour. (Open anywhere in the world) 2) One grand winner will get Joes 2 Pros SQL Server 2012 Training Kit worth USD 249. (Open where Amazon ship books). Amazon | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5  Rules The contest will be open till July 21, 2013. All the valid comments will be hidden till the result is announced. The winners will be announced on July 24, 2013. Hint: Download NuoDB  Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Puzzle, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• add collision detection to sprite?

  - by xBroak

  bassically im trying to add collision detection to the sprite below, using the following: self.rect = bounds_rect collide = pygame.sprite.spritecollide(self, wall_list, False) if collide: # yes print("collide") However it seems that when the collide is triggered it continuously prints 'collide' over and over when instead i want them to simply not be able to walk through the object, any help? def update(self, time_passed): """ Update the creep. time_passed: The time passed (in ms) since the previous update. """ if self.state == Creep.ALIVE: # Maybe it's time to change the direction ? # self._change_direction(time_passed) # Make the creep point in the correct direction. # Since our direction vector is in screen coordinates # (i.e. right bottom is 1, 1), and rotate() rotates # counter-clockwise, the angle must be inverted to # work correctly. # self.image = pygame.transform.rotate( self.base_image, -self.direction.angle) # Compute and apply the displacement to the position # vector. The displacement is a vector, having the angle # of self.direction (which is normalized to not affect # the magnitude of the displacement) # displacement = vec2d( self.direction.x * self.speed * time_passed, self.direction.y * self.speed * time_passed) self.pos += displacement # When the image is rotated, its size is changed. # We must take the size into account for detecting # collisions with the walls. # self.image_w, self.image_h = self.image.get_size() global bounds_rect bounds_rect = self.field.inflate( -self.image_w, -self.image_h) if self.pos.x < bounds_rect.left: self.pos.x = bounds_rect.left self.direction.x *= -1 elif self.pos.x > bounds_rect.right: self.pos.x = bounds_rect.right self.direction.x *= -1 elif self.pos.y < bounds_rect.top: self.pos.y = bounds_rect.top self.direction.y *= -1 elif self.pos.y > bounds_rect.bottom: self.pos.y = bounds_rect.bottom self.direction.y *= -1 self.rect = bounds_rect collide = pygame.sprite.spritecollide(self, wall_list, False) if collide: # yes print("collide") elif self.state == Creep.EXPLODING: if self.explode_animation.active: self.explode_animation.update(time_passed) else: self.state = Creep.DEAD self.kill() elif self.state == Creep.DEAD: pass #------------------ PRIVATE PARTS ------------------# # States the creep can be in. # # ALIVE: The creep is roaming around the screen # EXPLODING: # The creep is now exploding, just a moment before dying. # DEAD: The creep is dead and inactive # (ALIVE, EXPLODING, DEAD) = range(3) _counter = 0 def _change_direction(self, time_passed): """ Turn by 45 degrees in a random direction once per 0.4 to 0.5 seconds. """ self._counter += time_passed if self._counter > randint(400, 500): self.direction.rotate(45 * randint(-1, 1)) self._counter = 0 def _point_is_inside(self, point): """ Is the point (given as a vec2d) inside our creep's body? """ img_point = point - vec2d( int(self.pos.x - self.image_w / 2), int(self.pos.y - self.image_h / 2)) try: pix = self.image.get_at(img_point) return pix[3] > 0 except IndexError: return False def _decrease_health(self, n): """ Decrease my health by n (or to 0, if it's currently less than n) """ self.health = max(0, self.health - n) if self.health == 0: self._explode() def _explode(self): """ Starts the explosion animation that ends the Creep's life. """ self.state = Creep.EXPLODING pos = ( self.pos.x - self.explosion_images[0].get_width() / 2, self.pos.y - self.explosion_images[0].get_height() / 2) self.explode_animation = SimpleAnimation( self.screen, pos, self.explosion_images, 100, 300) global remainingCreeps remainingCreeps-=1 if remainingCreeps == 0: print("all dead")

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• How To: Spell Check InfoPath web form in SharePoint 2010

  - by Jeremy Ramos

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/JeremyRamos/archive/2013/11/07/how-to-spell-check-infopath-web-form-in-sharepoint-2010.aspxThis is a sequel to my 2011 post about How To: Spell Check InfoPath Web Form in SharePoint. This time I will share how I managed to achieve Spell Checking in SharePoint 2010. This time round, we have changed our Online Forms strategy to use Custom lists instead of Form Libraries. I thought everything will be smooth sailing as we are using all OOTB features. So, we customised a Custom list form using InfoPath and added a few Rich Text Boxes (Spell Check is a requirement for this specific project). All is good in the InfoPath client including the Spell Checker so, happy days, I published straight away.Here comes the surprises now. I browsed to my Custom List and clicked Add New Item. This launched my Form in a modal dialog format. I went to my Rich Text Boxes to check the spell checker, and voila, it's disabled!I tried hacking the FormServer.aspx and the CustomSpellCheckEntirePage.js again but the new FormServer.aspx behaves differently than of MOSS 2007's. I searched for answers in many blogs to no avail. Often ending up being linked to my old blog post. I also tried placing the spell check javascript into a Content Editor Webpart of the Item's New Form and Edit form. It is launching the Spell Check dialog but it's not spellchecking the page correctly.At this point, I decided I needed to get my project across ASAP so enough with experimentations and logged a ticket with Microsoft Premier Support.On a call with the Support Engineer, I browsed through the Custom List and to the item to demonstrate my problem. Suddenly, the Spell Check tab in the toolbar is now Enabled! Surprised? Not much, it's Microsoft!Anyway, to cut my story short, here is a summary of my solution:Navigate to your Custom ListIn the Ribbon Toolbar, navigate to List > Customize List > Form Web Parts > Content Type Forms > (Item) New Form. This will display the newifs.aspx which is the page displayed when Add New Item is clicked. This page, just like any other SharePoint page, contains webparts. In this case, we have the InfoPath Form Web Part.Add a Content Editor Web Part (CEWP) on top of the InfoPath Form Web Part. (A blank CEWP would do for this example)Navigate to Page and click Stop EditingClick Add New Item again and navigate to a Rich Text box. Tadah! The Spell Check tab is now enabled!Do the same steps for the (Item) Edit Form to enable Spell Checks when editing an item.This "no code" solution discovered purely by accident!

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• Book review: Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams

  - by DigiMortal

     Peopleware by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister is golden classic book that can be considered as mandatory reading for software project managers, team leads, higher level management and board members of software companies. If you make decisions about people then you cannot miss this book. If you are already good on managing developers then this book can make you even better – you will learn new stuff about successful development teams for sure. Why peopleware? Peopleware gives you very good hints about how to build up working environment for project teams where people can really do their work. Book also covers team building topics that are also important reading. As software developer I found practically all points in this book to be accurate and valid. Many times I have found my self thinking about same things and Peopleware made me more confident about my opinions. Peopleware covers also time management and planning topics that help you do way better job on using developers time effectively by minimizing the amount of interruptions by phone calls, pointless meetings and i-want-to-know-what-are-you-doing-right-now questions by managers who doesn’t write code anyway. I think if you follow suggestions given by Peopleware your developers are very happy. I suggest you to also read another great book – Death March by Edward Yourdon. Death March describes you effectively what happens when good advices given by Peopleware are totally ignored or worse yet – people are treated exactly opposite way. I consider also Death March as golden classics and I strongly recommend you to read this book too. Table of Contents Acknowledgments Preface to the Second Edition Preface to the First Edition Part 1: Managing the Human Resource Chapter 1: Somewhere Today, a Project Is Failing Chapter 2: Make a Cheeseburger, Sell a Cheeseburger Chapter 3: Vienna Waits for You Chapter 4: Quality-If Time Permits Chapter 5: Parkinson's Law Revisited Chapter 6: Laetrile Part II: The Office Environment Chapter 7: The Furniture Police Chapter 8: "You Never Get Anything Done Around Here Between 9 and 5" Chapter 9: Saving Money on Space Intermezzo: Productivity Measurement and Unidentified Flying Objects Chapter 10: Brain Time Versus Body Time Chapter 11: The Telephone Chapter 12: Bring Back the Door Chapter 13: Taking Umbrella Steps Part III: The Right People Chapter 14: The Hornblower Factor Chapter 15: Hiring a Juggler Chapter 16: Happy to Be Here Chapter 17: The Self-Healing System Part IV: Growing Productive Teams Chapter 18: The Whole Is Greater Than the Sum of the Parts Chapter 19: The Black Team Chapter 20: Teamicide Chapter 21: A Spaghetti Dinner Chapter 22: Open Kimono Chapter 23: Chemistry for Team Formation Part V: It't Supposed to Be Fun to Work Here Chapter 24: Chaos and Order Chapter 25: Free Electrons Chapter 26: Holgar Dansk Part VI: Son of Peopleware Chapter 27: Teamicide, Revisited Chapter 28: Competition Chapter 29: Process Improvement Programs Chapter 30: Making Change Possible Chapter 31: Human Capital Chapter 32:Organizational Learning Chapter 33: The Ultimate Management Sin Is Chapter 34: The Making of Community Notes Bibliography Index About the Authors

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• Suggestions for connecting .NET WPF GUI with Java SE Server aoo

  - by Sam Goldberg

  BACKGROUND We are building a Java (SE) trading application which will be monitoring market data and sending trade messages based on the market data, and also on user defined configuration parameters. We are planning to provide the user with a thin client, built in .NET (WPF) for managing the parameters, controlling the server behavior, and viewing the current state of the trading. The client doesn't need real-time updates; it will instead update the view once every few seconds (or whatever interval is configured by the user). The client has about 6 different operations it needs to perform with the server, for example: CRUD with configuration parameters query subset of the data receive updates of current positions from server It is possible that most of the different operations (except for receiving data) are just different flavors of managing the configuration parameters, but it's too early in our analysis for us to be sure. To connect the client with the server, we have been considering using: SOAP Web Service RESTful service building a custom TCP/IP based API (text or xml) (least preferred - but we use this approach with other applications we have) As best as I understand, pros and cons of the different web service flavors are: SOAP pro: totally automated in .NET (and Java), modifying server side interface require no code changes in communication layer, just running refresh on Web Service reference to regenerate the classes. con: more overhead in the communication layer sending more text, etc. We're not using J2EE container so maybe doesn't work so well with J2SE REST pro: lighter weight, less data. Has good .NET and Java support. (I don't have any real experience with this, so don't know what other benefits it has.) con: client will not be automatically aware if there are any new operations or properties added (?), so communication layer needs to be updated by developer if server interface changes. con: (both approaches) Server cannot really push updates to the client at regular intervals (?) (However, we won't mind if client polls the server to get updates.) QUESTION What are your opinions on the above options or suggestions for other ways to connect the 2 parts? (Ideally, we don't want to put much work into the communication layer, because it's not the significant part of the application so the more off-the-shelf and automated the better.)

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• Apprentice Boot Camp in South Africa (Part 1)

  - by Tim Koekkoek

  By Maximilian Michel (DE), Jorge Garnacho (ES), Daniel Maull (UK), Adam Griffiths (UK), Guillermo De Las Nieves (ES), Catriona McGill (UK), Ed Dunlop (UK) The Boot Camp in South Africa was an amazing experience for all of us. The minute we landed, we were made to feel at home from our host Patrick Fitzgerald. The whole family who run the Guest House were also very friendly and always keen to help us. Since we had people from South Africa to show us all the amazing sights and their traditional ways to live their lives, the two weeks were very enjoyable for all of us and we came much closer together as a group. You can read this in the following parts of this report. Enjoy! The first group of Apprentices in Oracle (from left to right): Maximilian Michel (DE), Jorge Garnacho (ES), Daniel Maull (UK), Adam Griffiths (UK), Guillermo De Las Nieves (ES), Catriona McGill (UK), Ed Dunlop (UK) The Training Well, it’s time to talk about the main purpose of our trip to South Africa: the training. Two weeks, two courses. Servers and Storage. Two weeks to learn as much as possible and get the certificate. First week: Eben Pretorius with Servers Boot Camp. Learning about: • Machines: T1000, T2000, T3, T4, M series; • How to connect to the machines: serial and network connections; • Levels of software: ALOM, ILOM, OBP and of course the operating system, Solaris Combined with the practical part (screwdriver in one hand, and antistatic wristband on the other) makes quite a lot of stuff! But fortunately, Eben was able to tell us about everything without making our brains explode. For the second week: Storage Boot Camp with Deon Van Vuuren. Taking a look at the content: • Storage machines; • Connectors and protocols: SCSi, SAS, SATA Fiber Channel. Again, huge amounts of information, but Deon definitely did a great job and helped us learn it all. At the end, there was just one question left. Were we able to pass the exam and get the certificate? Well, what can we say? Just take a closer look at the picture above and make your conclusions! Our lovely Oracle office in Woodmead (near Johannesburg) We are all very proud to receive certification in “Server and Storage Support Fundamentals” together with our trainer Deon Van Vuuren. In summary, in case that you don't remember any of the above, the allies for a field engineer are: • System Handbook • EIS-DVD • A proper toolkit With these tools by our side, we’ll be unbeatable!  In the next article later this week, you can find part 2 of our experiences!

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• Forms&Reports upgrade characterset issues

  - by Lukasz Romaszewski

  Hello,This quick post is based on my findings during recent IMC workshops, especially those related to upgrading the Forms 6i/9i/10g applications to Forms 11g platform. The upgrade process itself is pretty straightforward and it basically requires recompiling your Forms application with a latest version of frmcmp tool. For some cases though, especially when you migrate from Forms 6i which is a client-server architecture to a 3-tier web solution (Forms 11g), you need to rewrite some parts of your code to make it run on new platform. The things you need to change range from reimplementing (using webutil library) typical client-site functionality like local IO operation, access to WinAPI, invoking DLLs etc. to changing deprecated or obsolete APIs like RUN_PRODUCT to RUN_REPORT_OBJECT. To automate those changes Oracle provides complete Java API  which allows you to manipulate the code and structure of you modules (JDAPI). To make it even easier we can use Forms Migration Assistant tool (written in Java using JDAPI) which is able to replace all occurrences of old API entries with their 11g equivalents or warn you when the replacement is not possible. You can also add your own replacement definitions in the search_replace.properties file. But you need to be aware of some issues that can be encountered using this tool. First of all if you are using some hard-coded text inside your triggers you may notice that after processing them by the Migration Assistant tool the national characters may be lost. This is due to the fact that you need to explicitly tell Java application (which MA really is) what kind of characterset it should use to read those text properly. In order to do that just add to a script calling MA the following line:  export JAVA_TOOL_OPTIONS=-Dfile.encoding=<JAVA_ISO_ENCODING>  when the particular encoding must match the NLS_LANG in your Forms Builder environment (for example for Polish characterset you need to use ISO-8859-2).Second issue you can encounter related to national charactersets is lack of national symbols in you reports after migration. This can be solved by adding appropriate NLS_LANG entry in your reports environment. Sometimes instead of particular characterset you see "Greek characters" in your reports. This is just default font used by reports engine instead of the one defined in your report. To solve it you must copy fonts definitions from your old environment (e.g. Forms 10g installation) to appropriate directory in new installation (usually AFM folder). For more information about this and other issues please refer to https://support.oracle.com/CSP/main/article?cmd=show&type=NOT&doctype=BULLETIN&id=1297012.1at My Oracle Support site. That's all for today, stay tuned for more posts on this topic! Lukasz

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• Arrive steering behavior

  - by dbostream

  I bought a book called Programming game AI by example and I am trying to implement the arrive steering behavior. The problem I am having is that my objects oscillate around the target position; after oscillating less and less for awhile they finally come to a stop at the target position. Does anyone have any idea why this oscillating behavior occur? Since the examples accompanying the book are written in C++ I had to rewrite the code into C#. Below is the relevant parts of the steering behavior: private enum Deceleration { Fast = 1, Normal = 2, Slow = 3 } public MovingEntity Entity { get; private set; } public Vector2 SteeringForce { get; private set; } public Vector2 Target { get; set; } public Vector2 Calculate() { SteeringForce.Zero(); SteeringForce = SumForces(); SteeringForce.Truncate(Entity.MaxForce); return SteeringForce; } private Vector2 SumForces() { Vector2 force = new Vector2(); if (Activated(BehaviorTypes.Arrive)) { force += Arrive(Target, Deceleration.Slow); if (!AccumulateForce(force)) return SteeringForce; } return SteeringForce; } private Vector2 Arrive(Vector2 target, Deceleration deceleration) { Vector2 toTarget = target - Entity.Position; double distance = toTarget.Length(); if (distance > 0) { //because Deceleration is enumerated as an int, this value is required //to provide fine tweaking of the deceleration.. double decelerationTweaker = 0.3; double speed = distance / ((double)deceleration * decelerationTweaker); speed = Math.Min(speed, Entity.MaxSpeed); Vector2 desiredVelocity = toTarget * speed / distance; return desiredVelocity - Entity.Velocity; } return new Vector2(); } private bool AccumulateForce(Vector2 forceToAdd) { double magnitudeRemaining = Entity.MaxForce - SteeringForce.Length(); if (magnitudeRemaining <= 0) return false; double magnitudeToAdd = forceToAdd.Length(); if (magnitudeToAdd > magnitudeRemaining) magnitudeToAdd = magnitudeRemaining; SteeringForce += Vector2.NormalizeRet(forceToAdd) * magnitudeToAdd; return true; } This is the update method of my objects: public void Update(double deltaTime) { Vector2 steeringForce = Steering.Calculate(); Vector2 acceleration = steeringForce / Mass; Velocity = Velocity + acceleration * deltaTime; Velocity.Truncate(MaxSpeed); Position = Position + Velocity * deltaTime; } If you want to see the problem with your own eyes you can download a minimal example here. Thanks in advance.

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• How do I stop icons appearing on the desktop in a particular area?

  - by Seamus

  When I download something to my desktop, or insert a CD or flash drive, the icon appears on my desktop. When I have conky running, the icon sometimes appears in the top right corner, underneath conky; where I can't see it. How do I stop this happening? My .conkyrc is pasted below. I didn't write it all myself, so I'm not entirely sure what I need to change, or what parts are relevant for this particular question... # UBUNTU-CONKY # A comprehensive conky script, configured for use on # Ubuntu / Debian Gnome, without the need for any external scripts. # # Based on conky-jc and the default .conkyrc. # INCLUDES: # - tail of /var/log/messages # - netstat shows number of connections from your computer and application/PID making it. Kill spyware! # # -- Pengo # # Create own window instead of using desktop (required in nautilus) own_window yes own_window_type override own_window_transparent yes own_window_hints undecorated,below,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager # Use double buffering (reduces flicker, may not work for everyone) double_buffer yes # fiddle with window use_spacer right # Use Xft? use_xft yes xftfont DejaVu Sans:size=8 xftalpha 0.8 text_buffer_size 2048 # Update interval in seconds update_interval 3.0 # Minimum size of text area # minimum_size 250 5 # Draw shades? draw_shades no # Text stuff draw_outline no # amplifies text if yes draw_borders no uppercase no # set to yes if you want all text to be in uppercase # Stippled borders? stippled_borders 3 # border margins border_margin 9 # border width border_width 10 # Default colors and also border colors, grey90 == #e5e5e5 default_color grey own_window_colour brown own_window_transparent yes # Text alignment, other possible values are commented #alignment top_left alignment top_right #alignment bottom_left #alignment bottom_right # Gap between borders of screen and text gap_x 10 gap_y 20 # stuff after 'TEXT' will be formatted on screen TEXT $color ${color orange}SYSTEM ${hr 2}$color $nodename $sysname $kernel on $machine ${color orange}CPU ${hr 2}$color ${freq}MHz Load: ${loadavg} Temp: ${acpitemp} $cpubar ${cpugraph 000000 ffffff} NAME ${goto 150}PID ${goto 200}CPU% ${goto 250}MEM% ${top name 1} ${goto 150}${top pid 1} ${goto 200}${top cpu 1} ${goto 250}${top mem 1} ${top name 2} ${goto 150}${top pid 2} ${goto 200}${top cpu 2} ${goto 250}${top mem 2} ${top name 3} ${goto 150}${top pid 3} ${goto 200}${top cpu 3} ${goto 250}${top mem 3} ${top name 4} ${goto 150}${top pid 4} ${goto 200}${top cpu 4} ${goto 250}${top mem 4} ${color orange}MEMORY / DISK ${hr 2}$color RAM: $memperc% ${membar 6}$color Swap: $swapperc% ${swapbar 6}$color Home: ${fs_free_perc /home}% ${fs_bar 6 /}$color Free Space: ${fs_free /home} ${color orange}NETWORK (${addr eth0}) ${hr 2}$color Down: $color${downspeed eth0} k/s ${alignr}Up: ${upspeed eth0} k/s ${downspeedgraph eth0 25,140 000000 ff0000} ${alignr}${upspeedgraph eth0 25,140 000000 00ff00}$color Total: ${totaldown eth0} ${alignr}Total: ${totalup eth0} ${execi 30 netstat -ept | grep ESTAB | awk '{print $9}' | cut -d: -f1 | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr} ${color orange}WIRELESS (${addr wlan0}) ${hr 2}$color Down: $color${downspeed wlan0} k/s ${alignr}Up: ${upspeed wlan0} k/s ${downspeedgraph wlan0 25,140 000000 ff0000} ${alignr}${upspeedgraph wlan0 25,140 000000 00ff00}$color Total: ${totaldown wlan0} ${alignr}Total: ${totalup wlan0} ${execi 30 netstat -ept | grep ESTAB | awk '{print $9}' | cut -d: -f1 | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr} Conky solutions have been offered, but perhaps these aren't the best way of approaching it. What I really want is to stop icons even appearing in that part of the desktop window: that is, I want to make part of the desktop real estate "off-limits" to new icons appearing on the desktop.

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• ubuntu 13.04 recognizes usb mobile broadband modem as ethernet connection

  - by Bence Mihalka

  When I plug in my usb mobile broadband modem (ZTE MF-667), in the network manager instead of a mobile broadband connection, I get an ethernet connection, called: Ethernet Network (ZTE WCDMA Technologies MSM), which of course doesn't work. Here is my lsusb output and the relevant parts of dmesg output: lsusb: Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0cf3:3005 Atheros Communications, Inc. AR3011 Bluetooth Bus 001 Device 004: ID 04f2:b1b9 Chicony Electronics Co., Ltd Asus Integrated Webcam Bus 001 Device 005: ID 058f:6366 Alcor Micro Corp. Multi Flash Reader Bus 002 Device 004: ID 19d2:1405 ZTE WCDMA Technologies MSM dmesg: [ 195.328467] usb 2-1.1: new high-speed USB device number 3 using ehci-pci [ 195.423545] usb 2-1.1: New USB device found, idVendor=19d2, idProduct=1225 [ 195.423555] usb 2-1.1: New USB device strings: Mfr=3, Product=2, SerialNumber=4 [ 195.423561] usb 2-1.1: Product: ZTE WCDMA Technologies MSM [ 195.423567] usb 2-1.1: Manufacturer: ZTE,Incorporated [ 195.423572] usb 2-1.1: SerialNumber: P680A1ZTED000000 [ 195.426319] scsi7 : usb-storage 2-1.1:1.0 [ 196.425354] scsi 7:0:0:0: CD-ROM CWID USB SCSI CD-ROM 2.31 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2 [ 197.447919] usb 2-1.1: USB disconnect, device number 3 [ 197.457582] sr0: scsi3-mmc drive: 243x/186x xa/form2 cdda pop-up [ 197.457594] cdrom: Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.20 [ 197.459058] sr 7:0:0:0: Attached scsi CD-ROM sr0 [ 197.459483] sr 7:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 5 [ 197.759186] usb 2-1.1: new high-speed USB device number 4 using ehci-pci [ 197.854543] usb 2-1.1: New USB device found, idVendor=19d2, idProduct=1405 [ 197.854556] usb 2-1.1: New USB device strings: Mfr=4, Product=3, SerialNumber=5 [ 197.854564] usb 2-1.1: Product: ZTE WCDMA Technologies MSM [ 197.854572] usb 2-1.1: Manufacturer: ZTE,Incorporated [ 197.854579] usb 2-1.1: SerialNumber: P680A1ZTED010000 [ 197.957739] scsi8 : usb-storage 2-1.1:1.2 [ 198.076554] cdc_ether 2-1.1:1.0 eth1: register 'cdc_ether' at usb-0000:00:1d.0-1.1, CDC Ethernet Device, 00:a0:c6:00:00:00 [ 198.076583] usbcore: registered new interface driver cdc_ether [ 198.955985] scsi 8:0:0:0: CD-ROM CWID USB SCSI CD-ROM 2.31 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2 [ 198.956797] scsi 8:0:0:1: Direct-Access ZTE MMC Storage 2.31 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2 I created the appropriate mobile broadband connection manually, but I cannot enable it in network manager, since the device is not recognized as mobile broadband. Any tips how to make it work?

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• Oracle CRM For Public Sector, Commercial Business, Education

  - by michael.seback

  Chongqing Transport Commission Improves Management of Transport Projects The Chongqing Transport Commission is responsible for public passenger, road, and waterway transport in urban and rural areas of Chongqing. The commission administers the region's road and water industry; oversees the construction of transport infrastructure; and manages civil aviation, railroads, roads, waterways, ports, and wharves. "After studying the IT initiatives of other provincial transport commissions, we decided to use Siebel Public Sector to build our integrated transport service system. The Siebel software offers powerful functions that allow us to integrate information and improve the management of our road, rail, and waterway infrastructure projects." - Chen Xiaoming, Vice Director, Information Center, Chongqing Transport Commission. Read more here. Siemens Information Services Increases Productivity by 20% Siemens Information Services Pvt, Ltd. provides back-office account processing services to Siemens' vendors. The company works with Siemens' healthcare, energy, and industry divisions in Europe, the United States, and parts of the Asia-Pacific region. It approves financial services such as processing payroll, accounts data, purchase orders, invoices, and payments, and also creates service catalogs for customers and internal teams. "Oracle CRM ON Demand provides us with a complete view of each customer's data from the moment they log a request to the time we close it. This has eliminated manual requests, and improved the service we offer to our clients across the Asia-Pacific region." -Sunil Zutshi, General Manager, IT, Siemens Information Services Pvt, Ltd. Read more here. China Distance Education Holdings Improves Call Center Productivity by 24% China Distance Education Holdings Limited is a leading provider of online education. The organization offers 174 courses through 16 Web sites, including accounting, healthcare, law, and engineering. In 2010, 215,000 students were enrolled. "Online education is a fast growing sector in China. To maintain our competitiveness, we implemented Oracle Contact Center Anywhere to make it easier and faster for our call center staff to respond to student enquiries. As a result, their productivity increased by 24%." - Qin Songjiang, Chief Technology Officer, China Distance Education Holdings Limited. Read more here.

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• Where Are You on the Visualization Maturity Curve?

  - by Celine Beck

  The old phrase “A picture is worth a thousand words” is as true now as ever. Providing the right users with access to the right product data, at the right time, can provide significant benefits to a business. This is especially evident with increasing technical and product complexities, elongated supply chains, and growing pressure to bring innovative products to market faster. With this in mind, it is easy to understand why visualization is an integral part of any successful product lifecycle management (PLM) strategy. At a bare minimum, knowledge workers use multiple individual documents of different formats and structure, and leverage visualization solutions to access information; but the real value of visualization can be fully reaped when it is connected to enterprise applications like PLM and tied to the appropriate business context. The picture below illustrates this visualization maturity curve, as we presented during the last Oracle Open World and the transformational effect that visualization can have on PLM processes and performance (check out the post about AutoVue Key Highlights from Oracle Open World 2012 for more information). Organizations are likely to see greater positive impact on business performance when visualization is connected to enterprise systems, allowing access to information coming from multiple sources, such as PLM, supply chain management (SCM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP). This allows organizations to reach higher levels of collaboration and optimize decision-making capacity as users can benefit from in-context access to visual information. For instance, within a PLM system, a design engineer can access a product assembly and review digital annotations added by other users specific to the engineering change request he is reviewing rather than all historical annotations. The last stage on the curve is what we call augmented business visualization (ABV).  ABV is an innovative framework which lets structured data (from Oracle’s Agile PLM for instance) interact with unstructured data (documents, design, 3D models, etc). With this new level of integration, information coming from multiple sources can be presented in a highly visual fashion; color displays can be used in order to identify parts with specific characteristics (for example pending quality issues) and you can take actions directly from within the context of documents and designs, maximizing user productivity. Those who had the chance to attend our PLM session during Oracle Open World already got a sneak peek of our latest augmented business visualization for Oracle’s Agile PLM. The solution generated a lot of wows. Stephen Porter, CEO at Zero Wait State, indicated in a post entitled “The PLM State: the Manhattan Project-Oracle’s Next Big Secret Weapon” that “this kind of synergy between visualization and PLM could qualify as a powerful weapon differentiating Agile PLM from other solutions.” If you are interested in learning more about ABV for Oracle’s Agile PLM and hear about real examples of usage of visualization at all stages of the visualization maturity curve, don’t miss our Visual Decision Making to Optimize New Product Development and Introduction session during the Oracle Value Chain Summit (Feb. 4-6, 2013, San Francisco). We look forward to seeing you there!

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• Diving into Scala with Cay Horstmann

  - by Janice J. Heiss

  A new interview with Java Champion Cay Horstmann, now up on otn/java, titled  "Diving into Scala: A Conversation with Java Champion Cay Horstmann," explores Horstmann's ideas about Scala as reflected in his much lauded new book,  Scala for the Impatient.  None other than Martin Odersky, the inventor of Scala, called it "a joy to read" and the "best introduction to Scala". Odersky was so enthused by the book that he asked Horstmann if the first section could be made available as a free download on the Typesafe Website, something Horstmann graciously assented to. Horstmann acknowledges that some aspects of Scala are very complex, but he encourages developers to simply stay away from those parts of the language. He points to several ways Java developers can benefit from Scala: "For example," he says, " you can write classes with less boilerplate, file and XML handling is more concise, and you can replace tedious loops over collections with more elegant constructs. Typically, programmers at this level report that they write about half the number of lines of code in Scala that they would in Java, and that's nothing to sneeze at. Another entry point can be if you want to use a Scala-based framework such as Akka or Play; you can use these with Java, but the Scala API is more enjoyable. " Horstmann observes that developers can do fine with Scala without grasping the theory behind it. He argues that most of us learn best through examples and not through trying to comprehend abstract theories. He also believes that Scala is the most attractive choice for developers who want to move beyond Java and C++.  When asked about other choices, he comments: "Clojure is pretty nice, but I found its Lisp syntax a bit off-putting, and it seems very focused on software transactional memory, which isn't all that useful to me. And it's not statically typed. I wanted to like Groovy, but it really bothers me that the semantics seems under-defined and in flux. And it's not statically typed. Yes, there is Groovy++, but that's in even sketchier shape. There are a couple of contenders such as Kotlin and Ceylon, but so far they aren't real. So, if you want to do work with a statically typed language on the JVM that exists today, Scala is simply the pragmatic choice. It's a good thing that it's such a nice choice." Learn more about Scala by going to the interview here.

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• Test your internet connection - Emtel Mobile Internet

  After yesterday's report on Emtel Fixed Broadband (I'm still wondering where the 'fixed' part is), I did the same tests on Emtel Mobile Internet. For this I'm using the Huawei E169G HSDPA USB stick, connected to the same machine. Actually, this is my fail-safe internet connection and the system automatically switches between them if a problem, let's say timeout, etc. has been detected on the main line. For better comparison I used exactly the same servers on Speedtest.net. The results Following are the results of Rose Hill (hosted by Emtel) and respectively Frankfurt, Germany (hosted by Vodafone DE): Speedtest.net result of 31.05.2013 between Flic en Flac and Rose Hill, Mauritius (Emtel - Mobile Internet) Speedtest.net result of 31.05.2013 between Flic en Flac and Frankfurt, Germany (Emtel - Mobile Internet) As you might easily see, there is a big difference in speed between national and international connections. More interestingly are the results related to the download and upload ratio. I'm not sure whether connections over Emtel Mobile Internet are asymmetric or symmetric like the Fixed Broadband. Might be interesting to find out. The first test result actually might give us a clue that the connection could be asymmetric with a ratio of 3:1 but again I'm not sure. I'll find out and post an update on this. It depends on network coverage Later today I was on tour with my tablet, a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 (model GT-P7500) running on Android 4.0.4 (Ice Cream Sandwich), and did some more tests using the Speedtest.net app. The results are actually as expected and in areas with better network coverage you will get better results after all. At least, as long as you stay inside the national networks. For anything abroad, it doesn't really matter. But see for yourselves: Speedtest.net result of 31.05.2013 between Cascavelle and servers in Rose Hill, Mauritius (Emtel - Mobile Internet), Port Louis, Mauritius and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia It's rather shocking and frustrating to see how the speed on international destinations goes down. And the full capability of the tablet's integrated modem (HSDPA: 21 Mbps; HSUPA: 5.76 Mbps) isn't used, too. I guess, this demands more tests in other areas of the island, like Ebene, Pailles or Port Louis. I'll keep you updated... The question remains: Alternatives? After the publication of the test results on Fixed Broadband I had some exchange with others on Facebook. Sadly, it seems that there are really no alternatives to what Emtel is offering at the moment. There are the various internet packages by Mauritius Telecom feat. Orange, like ADSL, MyT and Mobile Internet, and there is Bharat Telecom with their Bees offer which is currently limited to Ebene and parts of Quatre Bornes.

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• Why is it necessary to install EFI/rEFInd/UEFI/... on a SD Card since the Macbook Pro seems to already have it?

  - by user170794

  Dear askubuntu members, I own a Macbook Pro (late 2009) and when I boot the laptop and hold the alt key meanwhile, there is a EFI screen, so EFI is installed on... the firmware? I had a few troubles with my hard disk, so I had to change it, but I haven't installed OS X, I have only installed Ubuntu and still the EFI screen is there which is surely a good thing. As the new hard disk is making troubles again, I am using Puppy Linux, booting from a CD each time, which is unconfortable. So I am trying to have Ubuntu installed on a SD Card. After having spent many months on the internet grabing informations anywhere I can and trying several things, I applied this method: http://www.weihermueller.de/mac/ I succeeded in making one SD Card recognizable by the EFI of my laptop (holding alt key @ boot), but nothing installed on it yet as I fear to lose the recognizable-by-EFI part. I haven't succeded in producing the same result on another SD Card. I have a bootable USB key of Ubuntu (yipee) which works like a live CD, made with the help of Universal Linux UDF Creator, found there: http://www.pendrivelinux.com/universal-usb-installer-easy-as-1-2-3/ on which I have put Ubuntu 13.04 64bit, retrieved from the official deposits. Eventhough I have to add the "nouveau.noaccel=1" option to the grub command line launching Linux, it works (yipee again) properly as a live cd. When installing Ubuntu I come across the "where do I wanna put Ubuntu" window, I partition another SD Card in: the EFI part (40MB) the Linux part (15GB< <16GB) The installation works fine and finishes with no problem. But at the reboot, the SD Card where Linux is installed is not recognized by the EFI, the icons are : the CD (Puppy Linux), the USB stick (from Linux UDF Creator), the hard drive (the formerly-working Ubuntu 12) but no fourth icon of the SD Card whatsoever. As the title of this thread suggests, I am wondering: why there is a need for EFI to be installed on the SD Card since EFI seems to be on my laptop anyway? why EFI has to be on a different partition than the Linux's one? How do both parts communicate? why the EFI part on the SD Card made with the help of the live-USB key isn't recognized? on the EFI partition, there is a folder named "EFI" which contains another folder named "ubuntu" which contains a file named "grubx64.efi", why is there a thing called grub? Is it the Linux's grub where one can chose either to boot, to boot in safe mode, etc.? Thank you for your patience, looking forward for any kind of answer, Julien

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• Why CoffeeScript is tough to maintain

  - by Renso

  I recently started trying out CoffeeScript only to find out that it caused more headaches. The abstraction level of jQuery was perfect, it did not dictate to coders how to design their code, it just works. However, I recently posted a request to the CoffeeScript team to consider introducing curly braces to help with more complex code to control the flow of logic. For example a if-then-else with many nested levels can be near impossible to debug without tracing through it when using CoffeeScript. Also with IDEs like Visual Studio, regular JavaScript intellicense and auto-formatting make it easy to appropriate indent nested levels without any work on the part of the developer and reading it is not that hard, especially with some extensions that show vertical lines in the code editor to help see what is nested within what part of the code.However with CoffeeScript that is not the case. The samples given in the CoffeeScript web site are of course just simple examples to explain the features and one gets excited pretty quick over the powerful shortcuts. I tried to convert a piece of JavaScript over to CoffeeScript and gave up since you need to first of all remove ALL non CoffeeScript coding constructs for it to even compile. However js2coffee can help with that. However to keep track of nested levels became something that was simply not manageable using CoffeeScript.Furthermore, any coding language that controls the flow of logic by indentation is extremely dangerous for obvious reasons. I liked CoffeeScript a lot, but the fact that the logical flow of the code is controlled by how much you indent code, spaces or tabs, is not reliable as there is no way the programmer has an easy way of knowing what parts of the code will get hit when the code spans a page.When I suggested introducing curly braces in CoffeeScript the team, one contributor advised me that my code needs to be re-designed! Needless to say that is absurd. When I included a piece of the code he asked my if it was legacy code. It's like saying to a Java programmer, sorry you cannot use Java because we don't agree with how you write your code.jashkenas from the CoffeeScript blog gave some great suggestions and made the point that introducing curly braces would be very problematic for them as they use them to denote objects. Makes sense, but I would still love to see some way to replace code flow control with spaces and indentation to something more concrete and human readable.

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• Misadventures at Radio Shack

  - by Chris Williams

  While I'm waiting for my Arduino kits to show up, I started reading the Getting Started With Arduino book from O'Reilly (review coming later) and I'm about 40 pages in when I get to a parts list for one of the first projects. Looks pretty straightforward, and even has Radio Shack part numbers next to almost everything. So on my lunch today, I decided to run out to "The Shack" (seriously, that's their rebranding?) to pick up some basics, like a couple resistors, a breadboard, a momentary switch and a pack of pre-cut jumper wires. I found the resistors without any difficulty, and while they didn't have the exact switch I wanted, it was easy enough to find one that would do. That's where my good luck abruptly ended. I was surprised that I couldn't find a breadboard or any jumper wires, so while I was looking around, a guy came up and asked me if I needed some help. I told him I did, explained what I needed and even gave him the Radio Shack part number for the pack of jumper wires. After a couple minutes he says he can't find anything in the system, which was unfortunate but not the end of the world.  So then I asked him about the breadboard, and he pointed me to some blank circuitboards (which are not the same thing) and I said (nicely) that those weren't breadboards and attempted to explain (again) what I needed, at which point he says to me "I don't even know what the hell you're looking for!" I stood there for a moment and tried to process his words. About that time, another salesperson came up and asked what I was trying to find. I told her I needed a breadboard, and she pointed to the blank circuit boards and said "they're right in front of you..." After seeing the look on my face, she thought for a minute and said... "OH! you mean those white things. We don't have those anymore." I thanked her, set everything down on the counter and left. (I wasn't going to buy only half the stuff I needed.. and I was pretty sure I was never going to be buying ANYTHING at that particular location ever again.) Guess I'll be ordering more stuff online at this point. It's a shame really, because I used to LOVE going to Radio Shack as a kid, and looking through all the cool electronics components and stuff, even if I didnt understand what most of them were at the time. Seems like the only thing they carry in any quantity/variety now is cell phones and random stereo connectors.

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• Loading levels from .txt or .XML for XNA

  - by Dave Voyles

  I'm attemptin to add multiple levels to my pong game. I'd like to simply exchange a few elements with each level, nothing crazy. Just the background texture, the color of the AI paddle (the one on the right side), and the music. It seems that the best way to go about this is by utilizing the StreamReader to read and write the files from XML. If there is a better, or more efficient alternative way then I'm all for it. In looking over the XNA Starter Platformer Kit provided by MS it seems that they've done it in this manner as well. I'm perplexed by a few things, however, namely parts within the Level class which aren't commented. /// <summary> /// Iterates over every tile in the structure file and loads its /// appearance and behavior. This method also validates that the /// file is well-formed with a player start point, exit, etc. /// </summary> /// <param name="fileStream"> /// A stream containing the tile data. /// </param> private void LoadTiles(Stream fileStream) { // Load the level and ensure all of the lines are the same length. int width; List<string> lines = new List<string>(); using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(fileStream)) { string line = reader.ReadLine(); width = line.Length; while (line != null) { lines.Add(line); if (line.Length != width) throw new Exception(String.Format("The length of line {0} is different from all preceeding lines.", lines.Count)); line = reader.ReadLine(); } } What does width = line.Length mean exactly? I mean I know how it reads the line, but what difference does it make if one line is longer than any of the others? Finally, their levels are simply text files that look like this: .................... .................... .................... .................... .................... .................... .................... .........GGG........ .........###........ .................... ....GGG.......GGG... ....###.......###... .................... .1................X. #################### It can't be that easy..... Can it?

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• In an Entity-Component-System Engine, How do I deal with groups of dependent entities?

  - by John Daniels

  After going over a few game design patterns, I have settle with Entity-Component-System (ES System) for my game engine. I've reading articles (mainly T=Machine) and review some source code and I think I got enough to get started. There is just one basic idea I am struggling with. How do I deal with groups of entities that are dependent on each other? Let me use an example: Assume I am making a standard overhead shooter (think Jamestown) and I want to construct a "boss entity" with multiple distinct but connected parts. The break down might look like something like this: Ship body: Movement, Rendering Cannon: Position (locked relative to the Ship body), Tracking\Fire at hero, Taking Damage until disabled Core: Position (locked relative to the Ship body), Tracking\Fire at hero, Taking Damage until disabled, Disabling (er...destroying) all other entities in the ship group My goal would be something that would be identified (and manipulated) as a distinct game element without having to rewrite subsystem form the ground up every time I want to build a new aggregate Element. How do I implement this kind of design in ES System? Do I implement some kind of parent-child entity relationship (entities can have children)? This seems to contradict the methodology that Entities are just empty container and makes it feel more OOP. Do I implement them as separate entities, with some kind of connecting Component (BossComponent) and related system (BossSubSystem)? I can't help but think that this will be hard to implement since how components communicate seem to be a big bear trap. Do I implement them as one Entity, with a collection of components (ShipComponent, CannonComponents, CoreComponent)? This one seems to veer way of the ES System intent (components here seem too much like heavy weight entities), but I'm know to this so I figured I would put that out there. Do I implement them as something else I have mentioned? I know that this can be implemented very easily in OOP, but my choosing ES over OOP is one that I will stick with. If I need to break with pure ES theory to implement this design I will (not like I haven't had to compromise pure design before), but I would prefer to do that for performance reason rather than start with bad design. For extra credit, think of the same design but, each of the "boss entities" were actually connected to a larger "BigBoss entity" made of a main body, main core and 3 "Boss Entities". This would let me see a solution for at least 3 dimensions (grandparent-parent-child)...which should be more than enough for me. Links to articles or example code would be appreciated. Thanks for your time.

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• How can I solve the same problems a CB-architecture is trying to solve without using hacks? [on hold]

  - by Jefffrey

  A component based system's goal is to solve the problems that derives from inheritance: for example the fact that some parts of the code (that are called components) are reused by very different classes that, hypothetically, would lie in a very different branch of the inheritance tree. That's a very nice concept, but I've found out that CBS is often hard to accomplish without using ugly hacks. Implementations of this system are often far from clean. But I don't want to discuss this any further. My question is: how can I solve the same problems a CBS try to solve with a very clean interface? (possibly with examples, there are a lot of abstract talks about the "perfect" design already). Here's an example I was going for before realizing I was just reinventing inheritance again: class Human { public: Position position; Movement movement; Sprite sprite; // other human specific components }; class Zombie { Position position; Movement movement; Sprite sprite; // other zombie specific components }; After writing that I realized I needed an interface, otherwise I would have needed N containers for N different types of objects (or to use boost::variant to gather them all together). So I've thought of polymorphism (move what systems do in a CBS design into class specific functions): class Entity { public: virtual void on_event(Event) {} // not pure virtual on purpose virtual void on_update(World) {} virtual void on_draw(Window) {} }; class Human { private: Position position; Movement movement; Sprite sprite; public: virtual void on_event(Event) { ... } virtual void on_update(World) { ... } virtual void on_draw(Window) { ... } }; class Zombie { private: Position position; Movement movement; Sprite sprite; public: virtual void on_event(Event) { ... } virtual void on_update(World) { ... } virtual void on_draw(Window) { ... } }; Which was nice, except for the fact that now the outside world would not even be able to know where a Human is positioned (it does not have access to its position member). That would be useful to track the player position for collision detection or if on_update the Zombie would want to track down its nearest human to move towards him. So I added const Position& get_position() const; to both the Zombie and Human classes. And then I realized that both functionality were shared, so it should have gone to the common base class: Entity. Do you notice anything? Yes, with that methodology I would have a god Entity class full of common functionality (which is the thing I was trying to avoid in the first place).

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• Five Fake Sounds Engineered to Make Your Feel Better [Science]

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  As objects in our environment (like cars, ATMs, and phones) have grown lighter and quieter scientists have been carefully engineering their sounds so that they continue to sound like we expect them to. Read on to see how. At the design blog Humans Invent they share five interesting ways that the world around us is being engineered so it sounds the way we expect it to. They start with the example of the car door. Years ago cars were almost entirely steel, the doors were weighty, and when you slammed them it sounded like one big hunk of steel locking into another big hunk of steel (which, in fact, it was). Newer cars are lighter but people still crave that substantial clunk. Humans Invent highlights the effect of consumer desire: A car door is essentially a hollow shell with parts placed inside it. Without careful design the door frame amplifies the rattling of mechanisms inside. Car companies know that if buyers don’t get a satisfying thud when they close the door, it dents their confidence in the entire vehicle. To produce the ideal clunk, car doors are designed to minimise the amount of high frequencies produced (we associate them with fragility and weakness) and emphasise low, bass-heavy frequencies that suggest solidity. The effect is achieved in a range of different ways – car companies have piled up hundreds of patents on the subject – but usually involves some form of dampener fitted in the door cavity. Locking mechanisms are also tailored to produce the right sort of click and the way seals make contact is precisely controlled. On average it takes 1.8 seconds to close a car door but in that time you’re witnessing a strange kind of symphony composed by engineers and designers whose goal is to reassure you that its rock solid. They mention lock mechanisms, something you may never have thought about. A friend of mine had a Ford Focus some years ago and that particular model had electric locks that, instead of giving a satisfying thunk or solid click, made this horrible gates-of-the-prison-buzzing sound that was completely unnerving. Hit up the link below to see how sounds are engineered for car doors, electric motors, ATM machines, and more. 5 Fake Sounds Designed to Help Humans [Humans Invent via Boing Boing] How To Easily Access Your Home Network From Anywhere With DDNSHow To Recover After Your Email Password Is CompromisedHow to Clean Your Filthy Keyboard in the Dishwasher (Without Ruining it)

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• Restoring MSDB

  - by David-Betteridge

  We recently performed a disaster recovery exercise which included the restoration of the MSDB database onto our DR server.  I did a quick google to see if there were any special considerations and found the following MS article.  Considerations for Restoring the model and msdb Databases (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms190749(v=sql.105).aspx).   It said both the original and replacement servers must be on the same version,  I double-checked and in my case they are both SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1 (10.50.2500).. So I went ahead and stopped SQL Server agent, restored the database and restarted the agent.  Checked the jobs and they were all there, everything looked great, and was until the server was rebooted a few days later.Then the syspolicy_purge_history job started failing on the 3rd step with the error message “Unable to start execution of step 3 (reason: The PowerShell subsystem failed to load [see the SQLAGENT.OUT file for details]; The job has been suspended). The step failed.”   A bit more googling pointed me to the msdb.dbo.syssubsystems table SELECT * FROM msdb.dbo.syssubsystems WHERE start_entry_point ='PowerShellStart'   And in particular the value for the subsystem_dll. It still had the path to the SQLPOWERSHELLSS.DLL but on the old server. The DR instance has a different name to the live instance and so the paths are different.   This was quickly fixed with the following SQL Use msdb; GO sp_configure 'allow updates', 1 ; RECONFIGURE WITH OVERRIDE ; GO UPDATE msdb.dbo.syssubsystems SET subsystem_dll='C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10_50.DR\MSSQL\binn\SQLPOWERSHELLSS.DLL' WHERE start_entry_point ='PowerShellStart'; GO sp_configure 'allow updates', 0; RECONFIGURE WITH OVERRIDE ; GO Stopped and started SQL Server agent and now the job completes.   I then wondered if anything else might be broken, SELECT subsystem_dll FROM msdb.dbo.syssubsystems Shows a further 10 wrong paths – fortunately for parts of SQL (replication, SSIS etc) we aren’t using! Lessons Learnt 1.       DR exercises are a good thing! 2.       Keep the Live and DR environments as similar as possible.    

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