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• Cannot boot: FGLRX 8.780 + Kernel 2.6.35-25

  - by pluc

  The situation before this all happened is pretty standard. I have a HP Pavillion dv5 laptop with an ATI Mobility Radeon 4200 series. It always worked fine with Ubuntu for as long as I can remember. However, at one point, something happened and truly made a majestic mess of things. It might've been extra repos I enabled with Ubuntu Tweak - I do not know. But something made it so that my system would not boot any longer. And when I say "won't boot", this is what I mean: - Durning a normal bootup, any entries (except Windows) selected with GRUB (or BURG, not even sure which one I'm using anymore) will spawn the Ubuntu loading screen - then try to start X (or GDM) 5 times. The screen goes to dark, black and back to the Ubuntu loading screen. Then it just stays there until I spawn another TTY. I have no idea what is happening or why. There are no errors in my logs, and I'm truly at a loss here. I've linked three files: Xorg.0.log, the output of dmesg and the GDM log: Xorg.0.log: http://ubuntu.pastebin.com/tpVKc2tc dmesg: ubuntu.pastebin.com/Nd5aYj45 gdm's :0.log: couldn't post due to lack of points :( Let me know if any of you more knowledgeable folks can restore some sanity in my life. Any help is greatly apreciated.

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• How do I turn off PCI devices?

  - by ethana2

  With the purchase of an Intel SSD and 85WHr Li-ion battery and the linking of wifi and bluetooth to my laptop's wireless switch, extensive Intel PowerTop usage, switching from compiz to metacity, stopping of the desktop-couch daemon, removal of Ubuntu One and several other services from my startup, disabling of everything possible in my BIOS, and physical removal of my optical drive, I've gotten my battery life up fairly high, but I think there's still more to be done. Specifically, when I'm in class taking notes, I want to temporarily but completely power down: Ethernet Firewire USB ports SD card reader Optical drive Webcam Sound card PCMCIA slot ..without turning them off in my BIOS like they are now, if possible, because then I have to restart my computer to use any of them. As it stands, I still haven't managed to power down: Firewire USB connection to webcam sound card How do I tell Linux to disable and power down these devices? Is it true that any PCI slot can be physically powered down? My current idle power consumption is 7.9 watts plus the screen. (10.0W at min. brightness) Also, how do I set the screen timeout to ten seconds? gconf editor isn't honoring it when I set it to that. Will switching from nVidia to Nouveau save any significant amount of power?

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• Setting up a LAMP VM server for Development and Testing?

  - by TdotThomas

  Info: I would like to set up a VM server on my local computer which will serve pages in the exact same way as my current hosting (but only to me on my local computer). I currently pay a big web hosting company to host my website & web store and they are doing a great job, but I would like to be able to work on my Web site and its corresponding MySQL DB, HTML, and PHP code without being at risk of messing something completely up on the live servers. My current plan of action: Set up a VM webserver with Debian, MySQL, PHP, Apache. Copy web store (PHP/HTML) code to VM server. Copy my current MySQL databases from my hosting provider and install on VM server. Modify and test new features on VM server. Upload MySQL DB and HTML/PHP code back to web host's server where it should work as before but with new modifications. Questions: Now I'm pretty sure I have steps one and two down correctly but I can't for the life of me figure out how to proceed next, so here are my questions. I have my /etc/host file set up so www.MySite.test redirects to the IP address of the local VM webserver. Once I import my PHP/HTML files and MySQL file whats the best way to navigate around the fact that all of my files and DBs will reference www.MySite.com. I can export my MySQL dbs but do I also have to export my MySQL users and passwords to access those db or are those coded into my html/php code?

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• Using foldr to append two lists together (Haskell)

  - by Luke Murphy

  I have been given the following question as part of a college assignment. Due to the module being very short, we are using only a subset of Haskell, without any of the syntactic sugar or idiomatic shortcuts....I must write: append xs ys : The list formed by joining the lists xs and ys, in that order append (5:8:3:[]) (4:7:[]) => 5:8:3:4:7:[] I understand the concept of how foldr works, but I am only starting off in Functional programming. I managed to write the following working solution (hidden for the benefit of others in my class...) : However, I just can't for the life of me, explain what the hell is going on!? I wrote it by just fiddling around in the interpreter, for example, the following line : foldr (\x -> \y -> x:y) [] (2:3:4:[]) which returned [2:3:4] , which led me to try, foldr (\x -> \y -> x:y) (2:3:4:[]) (5:6:7:[]) which returned [5,6,7,2,3,4] so I worked it out from there. I came to the correct solution through guess work and a bit of luck... I am working from the following definition of foldr: foldr = \f -> \s -> \xs -> if null xs then s else f (head xs) (foldr f s (tail xs) ) Can someone baby step me through my correct solution? I can't seem to get it....I already have scoured the web, and also read a bunch of SE threads, such as How foldr works

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• Need ideas on how to give my levels structure

  - by akuritsu

  I am making an iOS game for a project at school. It is going to be a tiny bit like Fruit Ninja, as in it will have different things on the screen, and when you hit them, they die, and you get points. The trouble is that unlike Fruit Ninja, my game will have different types of sprites, all doing different things (moving different places, doing different things, etc). The one thing that is bad about having all of these sprites that do different things is that it is hard for them to look neat on the screen all together. I was planning on having a couple of different gamemodes: Time Trial You have 120 seconds to kill as many sprites as possible. Survival You have three lives, every time you try to hit a sprite and miss, you lose a life. ???? Whatever I think of. I am a rookie to game design in general, and I don't know the best way to make my game look good, and play well. I could have all of these sprites on the screen at the same time, or I could have them come in waves, for example 10 of sprite_a come on, and once they are killed, 10 of sprite_b come on, etc... Please give me your opinion about which one I should code. If you have any other suggestions for either a third gamemode, or a completely different way to make the levels, feel free to tell me.

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• Fastest approach to 3D animation

  - by HappyFerret

  I'm currently tasked with designing a small HTML5 game. Having done everything by myself so far (3D models, codebase, game design, etc) I'm now at a point where I'm running out of time. I've less than a day to animate and bind everything together. However, that's exactly my problem. I was under the naive impression that everything would be easier if I went with pre-rendered 3D models. However, I didn't consider the most difficult part. Animation. After having spent over an hour trying to figure out messiahStudio, I figured it's time to ask for outside help. Is there any easier solution to 3D animation than 3D rigging? What I'm basically looking for is some sort of tool that allows me to simply grab and move/deform select polygons. It doesn't have to be as life-like and accurate as rigging, just efficient enough. Were the circumstances any different, I might just learn how to rig. But that's sorely out of scope right now. PS:The models were created in Sculptris but are fairly low-poly.

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• REST API wrapper - class design for 'lite' object responses

  - by sasfrog

  I am writing a class library to serve as a managed .NET wrapper over a REST API. I'm very new to OOP, and this task is an ideal opportunity for me to learn some OOP concepts in a real-life situation that makes sense to me. Some of the key resources/objects that the API returns are returned with different levels of detail depending on whether the request is for a single instance, a list, or part of a "search all resources" response. This is obviously a good design for the REST API itself, so that full objects aren't returned (thus increasing the size of the response and therefore the time taken to respond) unless they're needed. So, to be clear: .../car/1234.json returns the full Car object for 1234, all its properties like colour, make, model, year, engine_size, etc. Let's call this full. .../cars.json returns a list of Car objects, but only with a subset of the properties returned by .../car/1234.json. Let's call this lite. ...search.json returns, among other things, a list of car objects, but with minimal properties (only ID, make and model). Let's call this lite-lite. I want to know what the pros and cons of each of the following possible designs are, and whether there is a better design that I haven't covered: Create a Car class that models the lite-lite properties, and then have each of the more detailed responses inherit and extend this class. Create separate CarFull, CarLite and CarLiteLite classes corresponding to each of the responses. Create a single Car class that contains (nullable?) properties for the full response, and create constructors for each of the responses which populate it to the extent possible (and maybe include a property that returns the response type from which the instance was created). I expect among other things there will be use cases for consumers of the wrapper where they will want to iterate through lists of Cars, regardless of which response type they were created from, such that the three response types can contribute to the same list. Happy to be pointed to good resources on this sort of thing, and/or even told the name of the concept I'm describing so I can better target my research.

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• How can I make my PHP development environment more efficient?

  - by pixel

  I want to start a home-brew pet project in PHP. I've spent some time in my life developing in PHP and I've always felt it was hard to organize the development environment efficiently. In my previous PHP work, I've used a windows desktop machine and a linux server for development. This configuration had it's advantages: it's easy to configure Apache (and it's modules)/PHP/MySql on a linux box, and, at the time, this configuration was the same like on production server. However, I never successfully set up a debug connection between my Eclipse install and X-debug on server. Transferring files from my local workspace to the server was also very annoying (either ftp or Bazaar script moving files from repository to web root). For my new setup, I'm considering installing everything on my local machine. I'm afraid that it will slow down workstation performance (LAMP + Eclipse), and that compatibility problems will kick-in. What would you recommend? Should I develop using two separate machines? On one? Do you have experience using one of above configurations in your work?

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• What online games would let me practice AI development?

  - by Myn

  I am working on a project experimenting with Artificial Intelligence design methodologies for online world avatars. Online world here is quite open to interpretation; Second Life is just as applicable as Counter Strike, for example. To carry out these experiments, I must first develop an intelligent agent for the world in question. However, I am honestly quite stuck as to which game I could use for this. My preference was to develop an intelligent "bot" to play an MMORPG, but the legal restrictions of such games prevent me. Likewise with most FPS games the use of an intelligent agent in place of a human player is considered cheating. The alternative, of course, is to create an NPC bot; an intelligent agent that populates the world alongside the player(s) rather than replacing a particular player. However, I'm struggling to find a game that would enable me to create an intelligent opponent either. I suppose the main requirements would be a game allows a third party program to use the function calls usually utilised by players and read feedback on the state of the world. Quake III and Unreal Tournament have been suggested before, but they have already been the subject of work on this research project. Short of writing my own online game from scratch, what games would allow me, through middleware, an API, or otherwise, to create either an artificially intelligent player or a bot?

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• Which powerful laptop, with UK keyboard and 8gb ram

  - by RobinL

  I've been searching high and low for high spec laptops compatible with Ubuntu. The lack of coherent information on the topic is high (considering the number of people who apparently want a good laptop with an OS operating system). So I thought you may have some advice. My requirements: a) has = 8Gb ram b) is compatible with Ubuntu c) has a UK keyboard and charger d) does not cost the Earth Which would you go for? Does anyone have good experience with high-end laptops running Ubuntu? So here's some background research: Samsung Series 7 looks great, but has various problems on Ubuntu, including: poor battery life, touchpad does not work, graphics card not fully supported and sucks power when it does (see [here] and [here], for example). Other options on the [wish list] include: the sensible [Acer] (possibly n.1 choice, but not sure about graphics card compatibility or battery), a nice looking [HP Pavilion dv6-6c56ea], which also has incompatibility issues (see [here] and [here] and check ubuntuforums) And another [Acer] which may be best due to its simplicity and cheapness. Other sub-questions: didn't Dell offer Ubuntu support for decent laptops (above 6Gb ram their offerings are scarce); what about pre-installed options such as those provided by System76? If it weren't for the UK keyboard and charger, I'd probably go for this [amazing-looking] [machine]. Many thanks for any advice, P.s. Apologies for lack of hyperlinks; I'm a noob so only allowed 2 :( All 10 links are available here though for the interested reader :) Robin

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• Working with volonteers

  - by JavaCecilia

  I've been engaged as a scout leader in the Scout movement since 1993, working on a local and national level, leading both kids and other scout leaders.Last year, the Swedish Scout Association invited 40000 scouts aged 14-17 years old from 150 countries around the world to go camping for 10 days. I was on the planning team with a couple of hundreds of my closest scout friends and during a couple of years we spent our spare time planning logistics, food, program, etc to give these youths an experience of a life time. It was a big and complex project; different languages, religion (Ramadan was celebrated during the camp) and the Swedish weather were some of the factors we had to take into account. The camp was a huge success, the daily wow factor was measured and people truly had fun and got to know each other. I learnt a lot and got friends around the globe - looking back at the pictures it feels unreal that we managed it.The Java platform as OpenJDK and its' future is a similar project in my mind. With 9 million developers and being installed on 3 bn devices, the platform touches a lot of users and businesses. There's a strong community taking Java into the future, making sure it stays relevant. Finding ways to collaborate in a scalable way is the key to success here. We have the bylaws directing how decisions are made, roles are appointed and how to "level" within the community. Using these, we can then make contributions according to our competence and interest and innovate taking our platform into the future.If you find a way to organize volunteers towards a common goal, solving conflicts, making decisions, dividing the work into manageable chunks and having fun while doing it - there's no end to what you can achieve.

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• When should I start learning a PHP Framework

  - by Festus

  I'm a beginner programmer I have been learning PHP for a while, though not consistently. But for the past few months (say 3 months) I have been a bit consistent in my learning, largely because of a project a friend ask me to do for him since he knew I was into web design. Though I struggled to complete the tiny project for him after about 3 weeks, because I got stuck some times and I have to look up tutorials/references relating to the problem I was trying to solve, but I feel fulfilled been able to accomplish a project and along the way grab most of PHP basics. My interest in Web development has grew higher since completing that project and I have been trying to learn PHP/MySQL as fast as I could, because the same friend want me to do something else for him, which to me is way beyond the basics I know. Though I don't charge him anything, but it gives me a sense of fulfillment. I want to learn a framework, because I heard it can make you accomplish more as a web developer and makes life much easier. Can I learn a framework without having OOP knowledge? I know how to create and use functions, though I don't use it much I know my question is not straight forward, but I know you will understand were I'm coming from and advice me appropriately. I wish to become a professional Web Developer. I really need your professional advice.

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• Solutions for "Maintenance Mode"

  - by Ka Lyse

  Given a web application running across 10+ servers, what techniques have you put in place for doing things like altering the state of your website so that you can implement certain features. For instance, you might want to: Restrict Logins/Disable Certain Features Turn Site to "Read Only" Turn Site to Single "Maintenance Mode" page. Doing any of the above is pretty trivial. You can throw a particular "flag" in an .ini file, or add a row/value to a site_options table in your database and just read that value and do the appropriate thing. But these solutions have their problems. Disadvantages/Problems For instance, if you use a file for your application, and you want to switch off a certain feature temporarily, then you need to update this file on all servers. So then you might want to look at running something like ZooKeeper, but you are probably overcomplicating things. So then, you might decide that you want to store these "feature" flags in a database. But then you are obviously adding unncessary queries to each page request. So you think to yourself, that you will throw memcached in to the mix and just cache the query. Then you just retrieve all of your "Features" from memcached and add a 2ms~ latency to your application on every page. So to get around this, you decide to use a two tier-cache system, whereby you use an inmemory cache on each machine, (like Apc/Redis etc). This would work, but then it gets complicated, because you would have to set the key/hash life to perhaps 60 seconds, so that when you purge/invalidate the memcached object storing your "Features" result, your on machine cache is prompt enough to get the the new states. What suggestions might you have? Keeping in mind that optimization/efficiency is the priority here.

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• How to fundamentally approach creating a 'financial planner' application?

  - by Anonymous -

  I want to create a financial planning application (for personal use), for which the overall functionality will be this: User (me..) can create different 'scenarios'. Each scenario is configured with different incomings/outgoings. Scenarios can be 'explored' in a calendar format with projections taking into account tax, interest (on both debt and savings) and so on and so forth. My problem lies in how to fundamentally approach the project. I've considered: When creating incomings/outgoings for a script to apply them to each day in a 'days' table of a database, acting as a method of caching. This means that if I wanted to look at January 14th, 2074 there aren't thousands of cycles of calculations to run through and the result can just be pulled. Do each calculation dynamically, but again, I'm finding it hard to visuallize how I would handle different tax allowances (I'm based in the UK by the way), payrises and 'changes' to my incomings/outgoings. I've sat on this for a couple of days and am struggling to come up with an elegant approach to my problem. There may well be software out there that does what I'm looking to do (in fact I'm sure it is) but I would like to develop this myself for learning purposes, to be able to add it to my personal life 'toolset' and to allow me to expand on it in the future. Many thanks to all who have any input on my dilemna.

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• Should I be concerned that I can't program very fast without Google? [closed]

  - by seth

  Possible Duplicate: Google is good or bad for programmer? I'm currently in college to be a software engineer, and one of the main principles taught to us is how to learn for ourselves, and how to search the web when we have a doubt. This leads to a proactive attitude - when I need something, I go get it. Recently, I started wondering how much development would I be able to do without internet access and the answer bugged me quite a bit. I know the concept of the languages and how to use them, but I was amazed by how "slow" things were without having the Google to help in the development. Most of the problems I have are related to specific syntax. For example, reading and writing to a file in Java. I have done this about a dozen times in my life, yet every time I need to do it, I end up googling "read file java" and refreshing my memory. I completely understand the code and fully understand what it does, but I am sure that without Google it would take me a few tries to get the code correct. Is this normal? Should I be worried and try to change something in my programming behaviour?

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• Can I eventually consider myself a professional developer if I don't have a CS degree? [on hold]

  - by heltonbiker

  Question first, context later: If I am a dedicated, self-taught programmer, always seeking top-quality books AND READING THEM, while successfully applying all that new knowledge into my current work, could I call myself (and offer my work as) a PROFESSIONAL developer? How limiting (or how common) that is nowadays? I am afraid that, no matter how hard I study and practice, it could be too difficult to compete with "actual", college graduated developers, and potential employers might have doubts investing in an "undergraduated" person. Now, context: My former profession is from healthcare sector, then I studied mechanical engineering (quit in the middle), then I studied product design (master degree), and I ended up working (very happily) at an engineering company that manufactures medical devices. For more than two years now my main activity in this company is software development. The devices contain software, and we gave up hiring software development (domain knowledge needed, too much communication cost). My current company sees a lot of value in what I do, but I cannot afford the risk of depending on this single company for the rest of my life, you get it. But a lot of job offers require some minimal formal education, usually a CS degree. Fact is that I am sure this is my target profession, I don't plan to go to another area, it is a pleasure to dive into books that normal people would consider unreadable, but I'm 36 years old and can't see going back to college as a viable alternative.

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• How to reset a List c# and XNA [on hold]

  - by P3erfect

  I need to do a "retry" option when the player finishes the game.For doing this I thought to reset the lists of Monsters and other objects that moved at the first playing or which have been "killed".for example I have a list like that: //the enemy1 class is already done // in Game1 I declare it List<enemy1> enem1 = new List<enemy1>(); //Initialize method List<enemy1> enem1 = new List<enemy1>(); //LoadContent foreach (enemy1 enemy in enem1) { enemy.Load(Content); } enem1.Add(new enemy1(Content.Load<Texture2D>("enemy"), new Vector2(5900, 12600))); //Update foreach (enemy1 enemy in enem1) { enemy.Update(gameTime); } //after being shoted the enemies disappear and i remove them //if the monsters are shoted the bool "visible" goes from false to true for (int i = enem1.Count - 1; i >= 0; --i) { if (enem1[i].visible == true) enem1.RemoveAt(i); } //Draw foreach (enemy1 enemy in enem1) { if(enemy.visble==false) { enemy.Draw(spriteBatch, gameTime); } } //So my problem is to restart the game. I did this in Update method if(lost==false) { //update all the things... } if(lost==true)//this is if I die { //here I have to put the code that restore the list //I tried: foreach (enemy1 enemy in enem1) { enemy.visible=false; } player.life=3;//initializing the player,points,time player.position=initialPosition; points=0; time=0; }//the player works.. } } they should be drawn again but if I removed them they won't be drawn anymore.If I don't remove them ,instead, the enemies are in different places (because they follow me). Any suggestions to restore or reinitialize the list??

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• How can I get nVidia CUDA or OpenCL working on a laptop with nVidia discrete card/Intel Integrated Graphics?

  - by PeterDC

  Background: I'm a 3D artist (as a hobby) and have recently started using Ubuntu 12.04 LTS as a dual-boot with Windows 7. It's running on my a fairly new 64-bit Toshiba laptop with an nVidia GeForce GT 540M GPU (graphics card). It also, however has Intel Integrated Graphics (which I suspect Ubuntu's been using). So, when I render my 3D scenes to images on Windows, I am able to choose between using my CPU or my nVidia GPU (faster). From the 3D application, I can set the GPU to use either CUDA or OpenCL. In Ubuntu, there's no GPU option. After doing (too much?) research on the issues with Linux and the nVidia Optimus technology, I am slightly more enlightened, but a lot more confused. I don't care one bit about the Optimus technology, as battery life is not by any means an issue for me. Here's my question: What can I do to be able to use CUDA-utilizing programs (such as Blender) on my nVidia GPU in Ubuntu? Will I need nVidia drivers? (I have heard they don't play nicely with Optimus setups on Linux.) Is there at least a way to use OpenCL on my GPU in Ubuntu?

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• Multiple Zend application code organisation

  - by user966936

  For the past year I have been working on a series of applications all based on the Zend framework and centered on a complex business logic that all applications must have access to even if they don't use all (easier than having multiple library folders for each application as they are all linked together with a common center). Without going into much detail about what the project is specifically about, I am looking for some input (as I am working on the project alone) on how I have "grouped" my code. I have tried to split it all up in such a way that it removes dependencies as much as possible. I'm trying to keep it as decoupled as I logically can, so in 12 months time when my time is up anyone else coming in can have no problem extending on what I have produced. Example structure: applicationStorage\ (contains all applications and associated data) applicationStorage\Applications\ (contains the applications themselves) applicationStorage\Applications\external\ (application grouping folder) (contains all external customer access applications) applicationStorage\Applications\external\site\ (main external customer access application) applicationStorage\Applications\external\site\Modules\ applicationStorage\Applications\external\site\Config\ applicationStorage\Applications\external\site\Layouts\ applicationStorage\Applications\external\site\ZendExtended\ (contains extended Zend classes specific to this application example: ZendExtended_Controller_Action extends zend_controller_Action ) applicationStorage\Applications\external\mobile\ (mobile external customer access application different workflow limited capabilities compared to full site version) applicationStorage\Applications\internal\ (application grouping folder) (contains all internal company applications) applicationStorage\Applications\internal\site\ (main internal application) applicationStorage\Applications\internal\mobile\ (mobile access has different flow and limited abilities compared to main site version) applicationStorage\Tests\ (contains PHP unit tests) applicationStorage\Library\ applicationStorage\Library\Service\ (contains all business logic, services and servicelocator; these are completely decoupled from Zend framework and rely on models' interfaces) applicationStorage\Library\Zend\ (Zend framework) applicationStorage\Library\Models\ (doesn't know services but is linked to Zend framework for DB operations; contains model interfaces and model datamappers for all business objects; examples include Iorder/IorderMapper, Iworksheet/IWorksheetMapper, Icustomer/IcustomerMapper) (Note: the Modules, Config, Layouts and ZendExtended folders are duplicated in each application folder; but i have omitted them as they are not required for my purposes.) For the library this contains all "universal" code. The Zend framework is at the heart of all applications, but I wanted my business logic to be Zend-framework-independent. All model and mapper interfaces have no public references to Zend_Db but actually wrap around it in private. So my hope is that in the future I will be able to rewrite the mappers and dbtables (containing a Models_DbTable_Abstract that extends Zend_Db_Table_Abstract) in order to decouple my business logic from the Zend framework if I want to move my business logic (services) to a non-Zend framework environment (maybe some other PHP framework). Using a serviceLocator and registering the required services within the bootstrap of each application, I can use different versions of the same service depending on the request and which application is being accessed. Example: all external applications will have a service_auth_External implementing service_auth_Interface registered. Same with internal aplications with Service_Auth_Internal implementing service_auth_Interface Service_Locator::getService('Auth'). I'm concerned I may be missing some possible problems with this. One I'm half-thinking about is a config.ini file for all externals, then a separate application config.ini overriding or adding to the global external config.ini. If anyone has any suggestions I would be greatly appreciative. I have used contextswitching for AJAX functions within the individual applications, but there is a big chance both external and internal will get web services created for them. Again, these will be separated due to authorization and different available services. \applicationstorage\Applications\internal\webservice \applicationstorage\Applications\external\webservice

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• The new direction of the gaming industry

  - by raccoon_tim

  Just recently I read a great blog post by David Darling, the founder of Codemasters: http://www.develop-online.net/blog/347/Jurassic-consoles-could-become-extinct. In the blog post he talks about how traditional retail games are experiencing a downfall thanks to the increasing popularity of digital distribution. I personally think of retail games as being relics of the past. It does not really make much sense to still keep distributing boxed games when the same game can be elegantly downloaded and updated over the air through a digital distribution channel. The world is not all rainbows, however. One big issue with mixing digital distribution with boxed retail games is that resellers will not condone you selling your game for 10€ digitally while their selling the same game for 70€. The only way to get around this issue is to move to full digital distribution. This has the added benefit of minimizing piracy as the game can be tightly bound to the service you downloaded the game from. Many players are, however, complaining about not being able to play the games offline. Having games tightly bound to the internet is a problem when games are bought from a retailer as we tend to expect that once we have the product we can use it anywhere because we physically own it. The truth is that we don’t actually own the product. Instead, the typical EULA actually states that we only have a license to use the product. We’re not, for instance, allowed to disassemble the product, which the owner is indeed permitted to do. Digital distribution allows us to provide games as services, instead of selling them as standalone products. This means that for a service to work you have to be connected to the internet but you still have the same rights to use the product. It’s really straightforward; if you downloaded a client from the internet you are expected to have an internet connection so you’re able to connect to the server. A game distributed digitally that is built using a client-server architecture has the added benefit of allowing you to play anywhere as long as you have the client installed and you are able to log in with your user information. Your save games can be backed up and your game can continue anywhere. Another development we’re seeing in the gaming industry is the increasing popularity of free-to-play games. These are games that let you play for free but allow you to boost your gaming experience with real world money. The nature of these games is that players are constantly rewarded with new content and the game can evolve according to their way of playing and their wishes can be incorporated into the product. Free-to-play games can quickly gain a large player basis and monetization is done by providing players valuable things to buy making their gaming experience more fun. I am personally very excited about free-to-play games as it’s possible to start building the game together with your players and there is no need to work on the game for 5 years from start to finish and only then see if it’s actually something the players like. This is a typical problem with big movie-like retail games and recent news about Radical Entertainment practically closing its doors paints a clear picture of what can happen when the risk does not pay off: http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/25874/Prototype-Developer-Radical-Entertainment-Closes/.

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• How come there is still so much programming work?

  - by jd_505

  First I'd like to say that I am not pretty sure that this question will meet the guidelines. I think it can goes under the "Freelancing and business concerns" bullet, but I am not sure. Anyway, I will give it a shot. I wonder how the programming jobs hasn't yet "dried" because of the software evolution, for example, I am a developer myself, which means that I do care about software (I mean I am not of the type of guys that needs a computer mainly to just browse the Internet), and still I wouldn't mind if I never receive any more updates on my Ubuntu machine. I find that it provides everything I need, and while the updates provide various bug fixes/improvements, I wouldn't mind using it with it's current state for the rest of my life, for 2 years of Ubuntu usage I have never bumped at a serious bug/problem. Another example is Windows, almost half of it's users still use XP, which is practically ancient, yet they find it satisfying all their needs (and I agreee with them). I could go with many more examples, but by now you are understanding my point and my question. While new "trends" appears all of the time (like a new mobile OS) which runs on new platforms and requires some fresh development work, still the majority of the software effort goes in to what I consider as "completed projects", or at least a state of a project which is enough to be considered as completed. Do you have an explanation ? I can't think of the right tags for this question, please edit it the way you find it to be most appropriate. Thanks.

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• How do I make a Live USB without destroying my Windows computer?

  - by user71089

  Unlike every other post I have read, let me begin by saying that I am TERRIFIED of destroying my Windows 7 home system in the attempt of making a bootable Ubuntu Thumb Drive. I very specifically DO NOT want to attempt configuring a dual boot system. What I am seeking is a portable operating system on a thumb drive, through which I can run my COREL software via VirtualBox-4.1.16-78094-Win. I want to be able to use my own software on my work computer without any worries about screwing up the host system anywhere I go. Supposedly, I just made a bootable Thumb drive, having successfully loaded the ISO for ubuntu-12.04-desktop-i386 using Pendrivelinux's Universal-USB-Installer-1.9.0.1 However, all that I get is a Thumb Drive that wants to install Unbutu onto my PC's HDD. I am not finding any clear path to this end in the posts I am reading. Like it or not, Windows is a fact of life for me. The goal is to be able to use my software on my work PC without doing anything intrusive that will cost me my job. If I have a meltdown on my PC at home trying to make this happen, it will be nearly as bad. Is this even Do-Able? Can the process be made clear? Thank You, Ubuntu World ...!

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• Why does my system slow down or freeze when there is heavy disk activity?

  - by user72270

  Im a first-time user to Ubuntu-12.04 with WUBI installation. My NoteBook Information : Dell vostro 3450 : i5 2410m, 3 gb ram, intel hd3000, amd 6630m hybrid. Surfing and playing games works flawlessly, however, I'm having huge problems when installing applications and generally copying and moving files. When doing so, system is significantly slower and freezes quite often (Firefox gets bluish, sometimes even black n white). I would say that Ubuntu allocates too much resources on file transfers and installing, but even these tasks are very slow. Here is very specific example : today, i tried to move 6 GB file from win 7 installation. It was good at first, i jumped to firefox but after a while firefox started to randomly turn bluish and mouse was randomly stopping working. It was gradually worse and worse and it got to a point when firefox black n whited and mouse wasn't working at all. I raged and went for some meal, when i got back screen was black. It probably unlogged me due to inactivity, when i pushed random button to bring screen to life i had to wait few minutes to let it show me only my screen background. No log in screen, just background and working mouse. NoteBook fan was working at 100 % so I assumed that file transfer was going on and I left it to work. Nothing then changed for a full hour so I hard rebooted it. File transfer unsuccessful, It transfered hardly 2 gigs. Is this normal ? What to do in these situations ? It didn't let me load system manager and not even terminal. Thanks.

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• Provide A Scrolling "Camera" View Over A 2D Game Map

  - by BitCrash

  I'm in the process of attempting to create a 2D MMO type game with Kryonet and some basic sprites, mostly for my own learning. I have the back end set up great (By my standards) and I'm moving on to actually getting some things drawn onto the map. I cannot for the life of me figure out a solid way to have a "Camera" follow a player around a large area. The view pane for the game is 640 x 480 pixels, and each tile is 32x32 pixels (Thats 20 tiles wide and 15 high for the viewpane) I have tried a couple things to do this, but they did not seem to work out so well. I had a JScrollPane with 9 "Viewpane"-sized canvases in it, and tried to have the JScrollPane move in accordance with the player. The issue came when I reached the end of the JScrollPane. I tried to "Flip" canvases, sending the canvas currrently drawing the player to the middle of the 9 and load the corresponding maps onto the other ones. It was slow and worked poorly. I'm looking for any advice or previous experience with this; any ideas? Thank you! Edit and Clarification: I did not mean to mention Kryonet, I was merely providing peripheral information in case there was something that would help which I could not foresee. Instead of having an array of 9 canvases, why not just have one large canvas loading a large map every once in a while? I'm willing to have "load times" where as with the canvas array I would have none (in theory) to give the user a smooth experience. I could just change the size and location of the map with a modified setBounds() call on the canvas in a layered pane (layered because I have hidden swing items, like inventories and stuff) I'll try it out and post here how it goes for people asking the same question.

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• Iterative and Incremental Principle Series 5: Conclusion

  - by llowitz

  Thank you for joining me in the final segment in the Iterative and Incremental series.  During yesterday’s segment, I discussed Iteration Planning, and specifically how I planned my daily exercise (iteration) each morning by assessing multiple factors, while following my overall Implementation plan. As I mentioned in yesterday’s blog, regardless of the type of exercise or how many increment sets I decide to complete each day, I apply the 6 minute interval sets and a timebox approach.  When the 6 minutes are up, I stop the interval, even if I have more to give, saving the extra energy to apply to my next interval set.   Timeboxes are used to manage iterations.  Once the pre-determined iteration duration is reached – whether it is 2 weeks or 6 weeks or somewhere in between-- the iteration is complete.  Iteration group items (requirements) not fully addressed, in relation to the iteration goal, are addressed in the next iteration.  This approach helps eliminate the “rolling deadline” and better allows the project manager to assess the project progress earlier and more frequently than in traditional approaches. Not only do smaller, more frequent milestones allow project managers to better assess potential schedule risks and slips, but process improvement is encouraged.  Even in my simple example, I learned, after a few interval sets, not to sprint uphill!  Now I plan my route more efficiently to ensure that I sprint on a level surface to reduce of the risk of not completing my increment.  Project managers have often told me that they used an iterative and incremental approach long before OUM.   An effective project manager naturally organizes project work consistent with this principle, but a key benefit of OUM is that it formalizes this approach so it happens by design rather than by chance.    I hope this series has encouraged you to think about additional ways you can incorporate the iterative and incremental principle into your daily and project life.  I further hope that you will share your thoughts and experiences with the rest of us.

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