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• Static "LoD" hack opinions

  - by David Lively

  I've been playing with implementing dynamic level of detail for rendering a very large mesh in XNA. It occurred to me that (duh) the whole point of this is to generate small triangles close to the camera, and larger ones far away. Given that, rather than constantly modifying or swapping index buffers based on a feature's rendered size or distance from the camera, it would be a lot easier (and potentially quite a bit faster), to render a single "fan" or flat wedge/frustum-shaped planar mesh that is tessellated into small triangles close to the near or small end of the frustum and larger ones at the far end, sort of like this (overhead view) (Pardon the gap in the middle - I drew one side and mirrored it) The triangle sizes are chosen so that all are approximately the same size when projected. Then, that mesh would be transformed to track the camera so that the Z axis (center vertical in this image) is always aligned with the view direction projected into the XZ plane. The vertex shader would then read terrain heights from a height texture and adjust the Y coordinate of the mesh to match a height field that defines the terrain. This eliminates the need for culling (since the mesh is generated to match the viewport dimensions) and the need to modify the index and/or vertex buffers when drawing the terrain. Obviously this doesn't address terrain with overhangs, etc, but that could be handled to a certain extent by including a second mesh that defines a sort of "ceiling" via a different texture. The other LoD schemes I've seen aren't particularly difficult to implement and, in some cases, are a lot more flexible, but this seemed like a decent quick-and-dirty way to handle height map-based terrain without getting into geometry manipulation. Has anyone tried this? Opinions?

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• Ask the Readers: Would You Be Willing to Give Windows Up and Use a Different O.S.?

  - by Asian Angel

  When it comes to computers, Windows definitely rules the desktop in comparison to other operating systems. What we would like to know this week is if you would actually be willing to give up using Windows altogether and move to a different operating system on your computers. Note: This week’s Ask the Readers post is posing a hypothetical situation, so please refrain from starting arguments or a flame war in the comments. Good reasoned discussion is always welcome. There is no doubt that Windows is the dominant operating system in use today. Everywhere you go or look it is easy to find computers with Windows installed such as at work, home, the library, government offices, and more. For many people it is the operating system that they know and are comfortable with, which makes changing to a different operating system less appealing. Adding to the preference for Windows (or dependency based on your view) is the custom software that many businesses use on a daily basis. Throw in the high volume of people who depend on and use Microsoft Office as a standard for their business documents and it is little wonder that Windows is so dominant. So what would you use if you did decide to take a break from or permanently move away from Windows? If your choice is Linux then you have a large and wonderful variety of distributions to choose from based on what you want out of your system. Want a distribution that is easy to work with? You could choose Ubuntu, Linux Mint, or others that are engineered to be ready to go “out of the box”. Like a challenge? Perhaps Arch Linux is more your style. One of the most attractive features of all about Linux is the price…it is very hard to beat free! Maybe Mac OS X sounds like the perfect choice. It has a certain mystique and elegance associated with it and many OS X fans refuse to use anything else if given a choice. Then there is the soon to be released Chrome OS with its’ emphasis on cloud computing. This is a system that is definitely focused on being as low-maintenance and hassle-free as possible. Quick on, quick off, minimalist, and made to be portable. All of the system’s updates will occur automatically leaving you free to work and play in the cloud. But it does have its’ limitations…no installing all of those custom apps that you love using on Windows or other systems…it is literally all about the browsing window and web apps. So there you have it. If the opportunity presented itself would you, could you give Windows up and use a different operating system? Would it be easy or hard for you to do? Perhaps it would not really matter so long as you could do what you needed or wanted to do on a computer. And maybe this is the perfect time to try something new and find out…that new favorite operating system could be just an install disc away. Let us know your thoughts in the comments! How-To Geek Polls require Javascript. Please Click Here to View the Poll. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC The Complete List of iPad Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials The 50 Best Registry Hacks that Make Windows Better The How-To Geek Holiday Gift Guide (Geeky Stuff We Like) LCD? LED? Plasma? The How-To Geek Guide to HDTV Technology The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 8: Filters Improve Digital Photography by Calibrating Your Monitor The Brothers Mario – Epic Gangland Style Mario Brothers Movie Trailer [Video] Score Awesome Games on the Cheap with the Humble Indie Bundle Add a Colorful Christmas Theme to Your Windows 7 Desktop This Windows Hack Changes the Blue Screen of Death to Red Edit Images Quickly in Firefox with Pixlr Grabber Zoho Writer, Sheet, and Show Now Available in Chrome Web Store

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• How do I check on non-transparent pixels in a bitmapdata?

  - by Opoe

  I'm still working on my window cleaning game from one of my previous questions I marked a contribution as my answer, but after all this time I can't get it to work and I have to many questions about this so I decided to ask some more about it. As a sequel on my mentioned previous question, my question to you is: How can I check whether or not a bitmapData contains non transparent pixels? Subquestion: Is this possible when the masked image is a movieclip? Shouldn't I use graphics instead? Information I have: A dirtywindow movieclip on the bottom layer and a clean window movieclip on layer 2(mc1) on the layer above. To hide the top layer(the dirty window) I assign a mask to it. Code // this creates a mask that hides the movieclip on top var mask_mc:MovieClip = new MovieClip(); addChild(mask_mc) //assign the mask to the movieclip it should 'cover' mc1.mask = mask_mc; With a brush(cursor) the player wipes of the dirt ( actualy setting the fill from the mask to transparent so the clean window appears) //add event listeners for the 'brush' brush_mc.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_DOWN,brushDown); brush_mc.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_UP,brushUp); //function to drag the brush over the mask function brushDown(dragging:MouseEvent):void{ dragging.currentTarget.startDrag(); MovieClip(dragging.currentTarget).addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME,erase) ; mask_mc.graphics.moveTo(brush_mc.x,brush_mc.y); } //function to stop dragging the brush over the mask function brushUp(dragging:MouseEvent):void{ dragging.currentTarget.stopDrag(); MovieClip(dragging.currentTarget).removeEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME,erase); } //fill the mask with transparant pixels so the movieclip turns visible function erase(e:Event):void{ with(mask_mc.graphics){ beginFill(0x000000); drawRect(brush_mc.x,brush_mc.y,brush_mc.width,brush_mc.height); endFill(); } }

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama Top 10 for October 21-27, 2012

  - by Bob Rhubart

  The Top 10 most popular items shared on the OTN ArchBeat Facebook Page for the week of October 21-27, 2012. OTN Architect Day: Los Angeles This is your brain on IT architecture. Stuff your cranium with architecture by attending Oracle Technology Network Architect Day in Los Angeles, October 25, 2012, at the Sofitel Los Angeles, 8555 Beverly Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90048. Technical sessions, panel Q&A, and peer roundtables—plus a free lunch. [NOTE: The event was last week, of course. Big thanks to the session presenters and especially to those Angelinos who came out for the event.] WebLogic Server 11gR1 Interactive Quick Reference"The WebLogic Server 11gR1 Administration interactive quick reference," explains Juergen Kress, "is a multimedia tool for various terms and concepts used in WebLogic Server architecture. This tool is available for administrators for online or offline use. This is built as a multimedia web page which provides descriptions of WebLogic Server Architectural components, and references to relevant documentation. This tool offers valuable reference information for any complex concept or product in an intuitive and useful manner." Podcast: Are You Future Proof? The latest OTN ArchBeat Podcast series features Oracle ACE Directors Ron Batra, Basheer Khan, and Ronald van Luttikhuizen, three practicing architects in an open discussion about how changes in enterprise IT are raising the bar for success for software architects and developers. Play Oracle Vanquisher Here's a little respite from whatever it is you normally spend your time on. Oracle Vanquisher is an online diversion that makes a game of data center optimization. According to the description: "Armed with a cool Oracle vacuum pack suit and a strategic IT roadmap, you will thwart threats and optimize your data center to increase your company’s stock price and boost your company’s position." Mainly you avoid electric shock and killer birds. The current high score belongs to someone identified as 'TEN." My score? Never mind. Advanced Oracle SOA Suite OOW 2012 PresentationsThe Oracle SOA Product Management team has compiled a complete list of all twelve of their Oracle SOA Suite presentations from Oracle OpenWorld 2012, with links to the slide decks. OAM and OIM 11g Academies Looking for technical how-to content covering Oracle Access Manager and Oracle Identity Manager? The people behind the Oracle Middleware Security blog have indexed relevant blog posts into what they call "Academies." "These indexes contain the articles we’ve written that we believe provide long lasting guidance on OAM and OIM. Posts covered in these series include articles on key aspects of OAM and OIM 11g, best practice architectural guidance, integrations, and customizations." Oracle’s Analytics, Engineered Systems, and Big Data Strategy | Mark Rittman Part 1 of 3 in Oracle ACE Director Mark Rittman's series on Oracle Exalytics, Oracle R Enterprise and Endeca. Oracle ACE Directors Nordic Tour 2012 : Venues and BI Presentations | Mark RittmanOracle ACE Director Mark Rittman shares information on the Oracle ACE Director Tour, as the community leaders make their way through the land of the midnight sun, with events in Copenhagen, Stockholm, Oslo and Helsinki. Following the Thread in OSB | Antony Reynolds Antony Reynolds recently led an Oracle Service Bus POC in which his team needed to get high throughput from an OSB pipeline. "Imagine our surprise when, on stressing the system, we saw it lock up, with large numbers of blocked threads." He shares the details of the problem and the solution in this extensive technical post. OW12: Oracle Business Process Management/Oracle ADF Integration Best Practices | Andrejus Baranovskis The Oracle OpenWorld presentations keep coming! Oracle ACE Director Andrejus Baranovskis shares the slides from "Oracle Business Process Management/Oracle ADF Integration Best Practices," co-presented with Danilo Schmiedel from Opitz Consulting. Thought for the Day "Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." — Albert Einstein (March 14, 1879 – April 18, 1955) Source: Quotes For Software Engineers

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• Duplication of code (backend and javascript - knockout)

  - by Michal B.

  We have a new developer in our team. He seems a smart guy (he just came in so I cannot really judge). He started with implementing some small enhancements in the project (MVC3 web application using javascript - jquery and knockout). Let's say we have two values: A - quite complex calculation C - constant B = A + C On the screen there is value B and user can change it (normal texbox). When B changes, A changes as well because C is constant. So there is linear dependency between A and B. Now, all the calculations are done in the backend, but we need to recalculate A as user changes B (in js, I would use knockout). I thought about storing old A and B and when B changes by 10 then we know that new A will be old A + 10. He says this is dirty, because it's duplication of code (we make use of the fact that they are dependent and according to him that should be only in one place in our app). I understand it's not ideal, but making AJAX request after every key press seems a bit too much. It's a really small thing and I would not post if we haven't had long discussion about it. How do you deal with such problems? Also I can imagine that using knockout implies lots of calculations on the client side, which very often leads to duplication of the same calculations from the backend. Does anyone have links to some articles/thoughts on this topic?

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• Archbeat Link-O-Rama Top 10 Tweets for October 2013

  - by OTN ArchBeat

  What caught the attention of the 1,988 people who follow @OTNArchBeat last month? The answer is below, in the list of Top 10 Tweets for October 2013 RT @java: Which women in tech inspire you? Blog about them on Ada Lovelace Day! #ALD13 Oct 10, 2013 at 11:14 AM RT @ORCL_Linux: New blog post: Announcing Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 3 for #Oracle #Linux Oct 21, 2013 at 07:11 PM RT @glassfish: Quick & Dirty How-to Guide: Install #GlassFish 4 on #RaspberryPi. Creating an #IoT infra via @MkHeck Oct 27, 2013 at 07:19 PM RT @java: Nighthacking with James Gosling, interview from Hawaii, watch live Oct. 23, 11am PT #java Oct 21, 2013 at 11:26 AM RT @ensode: "Oracle has posted blogs on how to migrate from #Spring to #JavaEE" I wrote the linked article Oct 07, 2013 at 10:53 AM SOA and User Interfaces - by @soacommunity @hajonormann @gschmutz @t_winterberg et al #industrialsoa Oct 03, 2013 at 01:17 PM RT @oracleace: Welcome and congrats to new #ACEDs @kevin_mcginley and Rene van Wijk @MiddlewareMagic Oct 25, 2013 at 12:59 PM SOA in Real Life: Mobile Solutions by @soacommunity @HajoNormann @gschmutz @t_winterberg et al #industrialsoa Oct 28, 2013 at 09:23 AM RT @OracleAnalytics: Curious to how big #oow13 was? Here’s an infographic to show you some of the stats. Oct 25, 2013 at 01:13 PM Free Poster: ACM in Practice >> thanks to @dschmeid @hajonormann @torsten_winterberg @tbmaier @gschmutz et al. Oct 16, 2013 at 09:56 AM Thought for the Day "You can converge a toaster and a refrigerator, but those things are probably not going to be pleasing to the user." — Tim Cook, CEO of Apple Inc. (Born November 1, 1960) Source: brainyquote.com

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• Where is it permissible to add logging code in a MVC model?

  - by BDotA

  Working on a C# WinForms program that is written in a MVC ( actually Model-View-Presenter) style and I want to add a few lines of code that is responsible for logging some events. Where should I write two or three lines of code that I need? Should I write it in the Presenter section? To get an idea, here is some lines of sample code that already exists in the Save() metohd in Company.MyApplication.Presenter.MyPresenter.cs class: he has written codes lie the following in this part of presenter: private void Save(Helper.SaveStatusEnum status) { if (notification.CheckLocks(orderIdCollection)) { using (new HourglassController()) { controller.FireActiveCellLeaving(); ViewDocumentedValues(); int result = saveController.Save(status); if (result == Helper.SAVE_SUCCESSFUL) { // IS IT OK TO WRITE MY COUPLE LINES OF CODE IN HERE??????????? model.Dirty = false; if ((model.CurrentStatus == Helper.OrderStatusEnum.Complete) || (model.CurrentStatus == Helper.OrderStatusEnum.Corrected)) { controller.EnableDisableSheet(false); } CheckApplicationState(); SheetHelper.ClearUnsavedDataRowImage(view.ActiveSheet); } else { MessageBox.Show("An unexpected error occuring trying to save."); } } } }

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• Securing credentials passed to web service

  - by Greg Smith

  I'm attempting to design a single sign on system for use in a distributed architecture. Specifically, I must provide a way for a client website (that is, a website on a different domain/server/network) to allow users to register accounts on my central system. So, when the user takes an action on a client website, and that action is deemed to require an account, the client will produce a page (on their site/domain) where the user can register for a new account by providing an email and password. The client must then send this information to a web service, which will register the account and return some session token type value. The client will need to hash the password before sending it across the wire, and the webservice will require https, but this doesn't feel like it's safe enough and I need some advice on how I can implement this in the most secure way possible. A few other bits of relevant information: Ideally we'd prefer not to share any code with the client We've considered just redirecting the user to a secure page on the same server as the webservice, but this is likely to be rejected for non-technical reasons. We almost certainaly need to salt the password before hashing and passing it over, but that requires the client to either a) generate the salt and communicate it to us, or b) come and ask us for the salt - both feel dirty. Any help or advice is most appreciated.

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• Sucking Less Every Year?

  - by AdityaGameProgrammer

  Sucking Less Every Year -Jeff Atwood I had come across this insightful article.Quoting directly from the post I've often thought that sucking less every year is how humble programmers improve. You should be unhappy with code you wrote a year ago. If you aren't, that means either A) you haven't learned anything in a year, B) your code can't be improved, or C) you never revisit old code. All of these are the kiss of death for software developers. How often does this happen or not happen to you? How long before you see an actual improvement in your coding ? month, year? Do you ever revisit Your old code? How often does your old code plague you? or how often do you have to deal with your technical debt. It is definitely very painful to fix old bugs n dirty code that we may have done to quickly meet a deadline and those quick fixes ,some cases we may have to rewrite most of the application/code. No arguments about that. Some of the developers i had come across argued that they were already at the evolved stage where their coding doesn't need improvement or cant get improved anymore. Does this happen? If so how many years into coding on a particular language does one expect this to happen? Related: Ever look back at some of your old code and grimace in pain? Star Wars Moment in Code "Luke! I am your code!" "No! Impossible! It can't be!"

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• Learn Advanced ADF online – for free by Grant Ronald

  - by JuergenKress

  DF knowledge is key for any BPM implementation! The second part of the advanced ADF online eCourse is Live now! This covers the advanced topics of region and region interaction as well as getting down and dirty with some of the layout features of ADF Faces, skinning and DVT components. The aim of this course is to give you a self-paced learning aid which covers the more advanced topics of ADF development. The content is developed by Product Management and our Curriculum development teams and is based on advanced training material we have been running internally for about 18 months. We will get started on the next chapter, but in the meantime, please have a look at chapters one and two. SOA & BPM Partner Community For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit  www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Technorati Tags: ADF,Grant Ronald,ADF training,education,SOA Community,Oracle SOA,Oracle BPM,BPM Community,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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• Let's Get It Started! Oracle OpenWorld Music Festival

  - by Oracle OpenWorld Blog Team

  By Karen Shamban How are you spending your day at Oracle OpenWorld? At the Oracle Users Forum? Getting some training at Oracle University? Meeting up with colleagues and friends to discuss technology? Doing some or all of the above while enjoying the gorgeous fall weather in San Francisco? Regardless of how your day is going, be sure to attend the opening keynote this evening - starting at 5:00 p.m. -  at Moscone North, Hall D. Larry Ellison is the featured keynoter, so you know he'll have something interesting and intriguing to say. Following the keynote is the Welcome Reception, being held this year in both the Howard Street Tent and Yerba Buena Gardens. Debuting tonight is the Oracle OpenWorld Music Festival and it's going to be awesome! The schedule for this evening is below. Note that due to limited capacity at some venues, admission (free with your Oracle OpenWorld badge) is first-come, first-served.  Enjoy yourself, and rock on! Time Performer Venue 7:00 p.m DJ ZAQ John Colins 7:00 p.m DJ Blondie K. Ruby Skye 7:15 p.m The Velvet Teen Mezzanine 8:30 p.m Astral Mezzanine 8:30 p.m. Macy Gray Yerba Buena Gardens 9:00 p.m. American Steel Mezzanine 8:30 p.m. Magic Wands Ruby Skye 10:00 p.m. The Crystal Method Ruby Skye 10:30 p.m. Dirty Ghosts Mezzanine

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• Visual Studio 2010 Pro Power Tools Screencast

  - by Steve Michelotti

  Microsoft just released the Visual Studio 2010 Pro Power Tools extension and it is awesome. A summary of all the features can be found here and it is available in the Visual Studio Gallery here. There are a bunch of great features but, in my opinion, the best one is the replacement for the Add Reference dialog. This gives sub-string search capabilities as well as the ability to add multiple references without having to continually re-open the dialog. For this feature alone, you should install the Pro Power Tools right now. There are a few blogs posts that do a good job describing all the features but what I wanted to do here was to post a quick screencast (7 minutes) that shows the features that I think are really cool. I show most (but not all) of the features focusing on the ones I think are the best. The features I cover are: Installation with the Extension Manager Add Reference Dialog replacement Tab Well including pinned tabs, pinned tabs in second row, fixed close button, colorized tabs, dirty indicator Highlight current line Triple Click for full-line selection Ctrl + Click for Go To Definition Colorized Parameter Help Enjoy! (Right-click and Zoom to view in full screen)

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• Class hierarchy problem in this social network model

  - by Gerenuk

  I'm trying to design a class system for a social network data model - basically a link/object system. Now I have roughly the following structure (simplified and only relevant methods shown) class Data: "used to handle the data with mongodb" "can link, unlink data and also return other linked data" "is basically a proxy object that only stores _id and accesses mongodb on requests" "it looks like {_id: ..., _out: [id1, id2,...], _inc: [id3, id4, ...]}" def get_node(self, id) "create a new Data object from the underlying mongodb" "each data object can potentially create a reference object to new mongo data" "this is needed when the data returns the linked objects" class Node: """ this class proxies linking calls to .data it includes additional network logic operations whereas Data only contains a basic database solution """ def __init__(self, data): "the infrastructure realization is stored as composition by an included object data" "Node bascially proxies most calls to the infrastructure object data" def get_node(self, data): "creates a new object of class Object or Link depending on data" class Object(Node): "can have multiple connections to Link" class Link(Node): "has one 'in' and one 'out' connection to an Object" This system is working, however maybe wouldn't work outside Python. Note that after reading links Now I have two questions here: 1) I want to infrastructure of the data storage to be replacable. Earlier I had Data as a superclass of Node so that it provided the neccessary calls. But (without dirty Python tricks) you cannot replace the superclass dynamically. Is using composition therefore recommended? The drawback is that I have to proxy most calls (link, unlink etc). Any thoughts? 2) The class Node contains the common method .get_node which is used to built new Object or Link instances after reading out the data. Some attribute of data decided whether the object which is only stored by id should be instantiated as an Object or Link class. The problem here is that Node needs to know about Object and Link in advance, which seems dodgy. Do you see a different solution? Both Object and Link need to instantiate one of all possible types depending on what the find in their linked data. Are there any other ideas how to implement a flexible Object/Link structure where the underlying database storage is isolated?

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• Reducing Deadlocks - not a DBA issue ?

  - by steveh99999

   As a DBA, I'm involved on an almost daily basis troubleshooting 'SQL Server' performance issues. Often, this troubleshooting soon veers away from a 'its a SQL Server issue' to instead become a wider application/database design/coding issue.One common perception with SQL Server is that deadlocking is an application design issue - and is fixed by recoding...  I see this reinforced by MCP-type questions/scenarios where the answer to prevent deadlocking is simply to change the order in code in which tables are accessed....Whilst this is correct, I do think this has led to a situation where many 'operational' or 'production support' DBAs, when faced with a deadlock, are happy to throw the issue over to developers without analysing the issue further....A couple of 'war stories' on deadlocks which I think are interesting :- Case One , I had an issue recently on a third-party application that I support on SQL 2008.  This particular third-party application has an unusual support agreement where the customer is allowed to change the index design on the third-party provided database.  However, we are not allowed to alter application code or modify table structure..This third-party application is also known to encounter occasional deadlocks – indeed, I have documentation from the vendor that up to 50 deadlocks per day is not unusual !So, as a DBA I have to support an application which in my opinion has too many deadlocks - but, I cannot influence the design of the tables or stored procedures for the application. This should be the classic - blame the third-party developers scenario, and hope this issue gets addressed in a future application release - ie we could wait years for this to be resolved and implemented in our production environment...But, as DBAs  can change the index layout, is there anything I could do still to reduce the deadlocks in the application ?I initially used SQL traceflag 1222 to write deadlock detection output to the SQL Errorlog – using this I was able to identify one table heavily involved in the deadlocks.When I examined the table definition, I was surprised to see it was a heap – ie no clustered index existed on the table.Using SQL profiler to see locking behaviour and plan for the query involved in the deadlock, I was able to confirm a table scan was being performed.By creating an appropriate clustered index - it was possible to produce a more efficient plan and locking behaviour.So, less locks, held for less time = less possibility of deadlocks. I'm still unhappy about the overall number of deadlocks on this system - but that's something to be discussed further with the vendor.Case Two,  a system which hadn't changed for months suddenly started seeing deadlocks on a regular basis. I love the 'nothing's changed' scenario, as it gives me the opportunity to appear wise and say 'nothings changed on this system, except the data'.. This particular deadlock occurred on a table which had been growing rapidly. By using DBCC SHOW_STATISTICS - the DBA team were able to see that the deadlocks seemed to be occurring shortly after auto-update stats had regenerated the table statistics using it's default sampling behaviour.As a quick fix, we were able to schedule a nightly UPDATE STATISTICS WITH FULLSCAN on the table involved in the deadlock - thus, greatly reducing the potential for stats to be updated via auto_update_stats, consequently reducing the potential for a bad plan to be generated based on an unrepresentative sample of the data. This reduced the possibility of a deadlock occurring.  Not a perfect solution by any means, but quick, easy to implement, and needed no application code changes. This fix gave us some 'breathing space'  to properly fix the code during the next scheduled application release.   The moral of this post - don't dismiss deadlocks as issues that can only be fixed by developers...

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• How to generate an ASCII representation of a Unix file hierarchy?

  - by Jenn D.

  Hi, all. I'm looking for a quick and dirty way to generate some diagrams of some directories that have almost, but not exactly, the same hierarchy, so I can show them around at a meeting and we can decide which flavor we like best. I'm not interested in the "leaf" nodes, just the directories. The catch: I don't want to mess with X. This is a server system I deal with entirely through SSH. So I'm looking for something that will do ASCII layout, maybe with simple pipes-and-hyphens for lines or something. Does anyone know of such a utility? I'm sure I could write something myself, but it's such a fiddly little sort of project, with handling spacing and layout and such; I'd really like to discover that someone's done it for me. Alas, Google doesn't seem to know of such a thing...or if it does, it's hidden beneath heaps of excellent visual explications of the standard general Unix file hierarchy. Thanks!

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• Updating password hashing without forcing a new password for existing users

  - by Willem

  You maintain an existing application with an established user base. Over time it is decided that the current password hashing technique is outdated and needs to be upgraded. Furthermore, for UX reasons, you don't want existing users to be forced to update their password. The whole password hashing update needs to happen behind the screen. Assume a 'simplistic' database model for users that contains: ID Email Password How does one go around to solving such a requirement? My current thoughts are: create a new hashing method in the appropriate class update the user table in the database to hold an additional password field Once a user successfully logs in using the outdated password hash, fill the second password field with the updated hash This leaves me with the problem that I cannot reasonable differentiate between users who have and those who have not updated their password hash and thus will be forced to check both. This seems horribly flawed. Furthermore this basically means that the old hashing technique could be forced to stay indefinitely until every single user has updated their password. Only at that moment could I start removing the old hashing check and remove the superfluous database field. I'm mainly looking for some design tips here, since my current 'solution' is dirty, incomplete and what not, but if actual code is required to describe a possible solution, feel free to use any language.

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• Horse Drawn Fiber Optics Bring Broadband to Remote Areas

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  When you think of fiber optics and high speed internet the last thing you likely think of is… horses. Yet horses have been put to use rolling out fiber optics to remote rural locations. In Vermont a Belgium draft horse named Fred, seen in the photo above being tended by his handler Claude, is a distinctly 19th century solution to a 21st century problem; how to run fiber optic cable through remote areas where trucks cannot easily pass. The man and animal are indispensable to cable and phone-service provider FairPoint Communications because they easily can access hard-to-reach job sites along country roads, which bulky utility trucks often cannot. “It just saves so much work – it would take probably 15 guys to do what Fred and Claude can do,” said Paul Clancy, foreman of a line crew from FairPoint. “They can pull 5,000 feet of cable with no sweat.” You can read more about the use of draft horses to draw lines and the roll out of broadband to rural Vermont at the link below. Vermont Uses Draft Horse to Lay Cables for Internet Access [Reuters] How To Encrypt Your Cloud-Based Drive with BoxcryptorHTG Explains: Photography with Film-Based CamerasHow to Clean Your Dirty Smartphone (Without Breaking Something)

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• Happy Tau Day! (Or: How Some Mathematicians Think We Should Retire Pi) [Video]

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  When you were in school you learned all about Pi and its relationship to circles and turn-based geometry. Some mathematicians are rallying for a new lesson, on about Tau. Michael Hartl is a mathematician on a mission, a mission to get people away from using Pi and to start using Tau. His manifesto opens: Welcome to The Tau Manifesto. This manifesto is dedicated to one of the most important numbers in mathematics, perhaps the most important: the circle constant relating the circumference of a circle to its linear dimension. For millennia, the circle has been considered the most perfect of shapes, and the circle constant captures the geometry of the circle in a single number. Of course, the traditional choice of circle constant is p—but, as mathematician Bob Palais notes in his delightful article “p Is Wrong!”,1 p is wrong. It’s time to set things right. Why is Pi wrong? Among the arguments is that Tau is the ration of a circumference to the radius of a circle and defining circles by their radius is more natural and that Pi is a 2-factor number but with Tau everything is based of a single unit–three quarters of a turn around a Tau-defined circle is simply three quarters of a Tau radian. Watch the video above to see the Tau sequence (which begins 6.2831853071…) turned into a musical composition. For more information about Tau hit up the link below to read the manifesto. The Tau Manifesto [TauDay] HTG Explains: Photography with Film-Based CamerasHow to Clean Your Dirty Smartphone (Without Breaking Something)What is a Histogram, and How Can I Use it to Improve My Photos?

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• Strings in .NET are Enumerable

  - by Scott Dorman

  It seems like there is always some confusion concerning strings in .NET. This is both from developers who are new to the Framework and those that have been working with it for quite some time. Strings in the .NET Framework are represented by the System.String class, which encapsulates the data manipulation, sorting, and searching methods you most commonly perform on string data. In the .NET Framework, you can use System.String (which is the actual type name or the language alias (for C#, string). They are equivalent so use whichever naming convention you prefer but be consistent. Common usage (and my preference) is to use the language alias (string) when referring to the data type and String (the actual type name) when accessing the static members of the class. Many mainstream programming languages (like C and C++) treat strings as a null terminated array of characters. The .NET Framework, however, treats strings as an immutable sequence of Unicode characters which cannot be modified after it has been created. Because strings are immutable, all operations which modify the string contents are actually creating new string instances and returning those. They never modify the original string data. There is one important word in the preceding paragraph which many people tend to miss: sequence. In .NET, strings are treated as a sequence…in fact, they are treated as an enumerable sequence. This can be verified if you look at the class declaration for System.String, as seen below: // Summary:// Represents text as a series of Unicode characters.public sealed class String : IEnumerable, IComparable, IComparable<string>, IEquatable<string> The first interface that String implements is IEnumerable, which has the following definition: // Summary:// Exposes the enumerator, which supports a simple iteration over a non-generic// collection.public interface IEnumerable{ // Summary: // Returns an enumerator that iterates through a collection. // // Returns: // An System.Collections.IEnumerator object that can be used to iterate through // the collection. IEnumerator GetEnumerator();} As a side note, System.Array also implements IEnumerable. Why is that important to know? Simply put, it means that any operation you can perform on an array can also be performed on a string. This allows you to write code such as the following: string s = "The quick brown fox";foreach (var c in s){ System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine(c);}for (int i = 0; i < s.Length; i++){ System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine(s[i]);} If you executed those lines of code in a running application, you would see the following output in the Visual Studio Output window: In the case of a string, these enumerable or array operations return a char (System.Char) rather than a string. That might lead you to believe that you can get around the string immutability restriction by simply treating strings as an array and assigning a new character to a specific index location inside the string, like this: string s = "The quick brown fox";s[2] = 'a';   However, if you were to write such code, the compiler will promptly tell you that you can’t do it: This preserves the notion that strings are immutable and cannot be changed once they are created. (Incidentally, there is no built in way to replace a single character like this. It can be done but it would require converting the string to a character array, changing the appropriate indexed location, and then creating a new string.)

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• GAC and SharePoint

  - by Sahil Malik

  SharePoint 2010 Training: more information GAC and SharePoint have had a funny love & hate relationship. In 2007, SharePoint and GAC fell in love. GAC was about the only practical alternative to deploying custom code. Here is a dirty secret, based on completely unscientific and unfounded research, I can tell you that 99% of SharePoint code written, ended up in the GAC. Yes, I know GAC rhymes with hack, crack, smack, and even mac, but still it was the better alternative. You could write CAS policies and put your DLLs in the bin folder, but it was mighty inconvenient to both write, and maintain. Most of us never did it. There are still some SharePoint developers out there insisting on the bin approach – well, get over it; you’re not winning the fight. CAS is about as outdated as Samantha Fox anyway. It was hot at one point though. So all that code that ended up in the GAC caused lots and lots of headache. Clearly, Microsoft had to get us off the crack, uhh .. I mean the GAC. In Read full article ....

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• How to create a copy of an instance without having access to private variables

  - by Jamie

  Im having a bit of a problem. Let me show you the code first: public class Direction { private CircularList xSpeed, zSpeed; private int[] dirSquare = {-1, 0, 1, 0}; public Direction(int xSpeed, int zSpeed){ this.xSpeed = new CircularList(dirSquare, xSpeed); this.zSpeed = new CircularList(dirSquare, zSpeed); } public Direction(Point dirs){ this(dirs.x, dirs.y); } public void shiftLeft(){ xSpeed.shiftLeft(); zSpeed.shiftRight(); } public void shiftRight(){ xSpeed.shiftRight(); zSpeed.shiftLeft(); } public int getXSpeed(){ return this.xSpeed.currentValue(); } public int getZSpeed(){ return this.zSpeed.currentValue(); } } Now lets say i have an instance of Direction: Direction dir = new Direction(0, 0); As you can see in the code of Direction, the arguments fed to the constructor, are passed directly to some other class. One cannot be sure if they stay the same because methods shiftRight() and shiftLeft could have been called, which changes thos numbers. My question is, how do i create a completely new instance of Direction, that is basically copy(not by reference) of dir? The only way i see it, is to create public methods in both CircularList(i can post the code of this class, but its not relevant) and Direction that return the variables needed to create a copy of the instance, but this solution seems really dirty since those numbers are not supposed to be touched after beeing fed to the constructor, and therefore they are private.

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• .html extension or no for SEO purposes

  - by Scott Schluer

  I know this question has been asked before on Stack Overflow, but what I have not been able to find in the posts I've read are concrete references as to WHY one is better than the other (something I can take to my boss). So I'm working on an MVC 3 application that is basically a rewrite of the existing production application (web forms) using MVC. The current site uses a URL rewriter to rewrite "friendly" urls with HTML extensions to their ASPX counterpart. i.e. http://www.site.com/products/18554-widget.html gets rewritten to http://www.site.com/products.aspx?id=18554 We're moving away from this with the MVC site, but the powers that be still want the HTML extension on the URLs. As a developer, that just feels wrong on an MVC site. I've written a quick and dirty HttpModule that will perform a 301 redirect from the .html URL to the same URL without the .html extension and it works fine, but I need to convince management that removing the .html extension is not going to hurt SEO. I'd prefer to have this sort of friendly URL: http://www.site.com/products/18554-widget Can anyone provide information to back up my position or am I actually trying to do something that WOULD hurt SEO, in which case can you provide references on that?

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• How to share malicious source code?

  - by darma

  I have a client whose site (not one i developed) is infected by a trojan/malicious code. I have asked him to send me the dirty files in a zip but either gmail or unzipping is blocking them. I've tried text files and word files, and i'm suspecting many different file types will be blocked the same way, either by my mail client, anti-malware software, browser etc. (which is normal). Do you know a way he could share those lines so i can read them and do some research about the malicious source code? An image/screenshot of his text editor would be an idea but the files are long + i'd prefer to be able to copy/paste from them. Thank you!

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• how to make a continuous machine gun sound-effect

  - by Jan

  I am trying to make an entity fire one or more machine-guns. For each gun I store the time between shots (1.0 / firing rate) and the time since the last shot. Also I've loaded ~10 different gun-shot sound-effects. Now, for each gun I do the following: function update(deltatime): timeSinceLastShot += deltatime if timeSinceLastShot >= timeBetweenShots + verySmallRandomValue(): timeSinceLastShot -= timeBetweenShots if gunIsFiring: displayMuzzleFlash() spawnBullet() selectRandomSound().play() But now I often get a crackling noise (which I assume is when two or more guns are firing at the same time and confuse the sound-device). My question is whether A) This a common problem and there is a well-known solution, maybe to do with the channels or something, or B) I am using a completely wrong approach to the task. I had a look at some sound-assets for other games and they used complete burst with multiple shots. I suppose I could try that, but I would like to have organic little hickups in the gun-fire (that's what the random value is for) to make the game more gritty and dirty. I am using Panda3D, but I had the exact same problem in PyGame and SDL. [edit] Thanks a lot for the answers so far! One more problem with faking it though: Now how do I stop the sound? Let's say I have an effect with 5 bangs... *bang* *bang* *bang* *bang* *bang* And I magically manage to loop it so that there's no gap or overlap if the player fires more than 5 shots. Now, what do I do if the player stops firing halfway through the third bang? How do I know how long to keep playing the sample so that the third bang is completed and I can start playing the rumbling echo of the last shot? Of course I can look up the shot/pause timing of that sound-sample and code accordingly, but it feels extremely hacky.

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• Is there a clean way to tell Windows to release a volume?

  - by zneak

  Hey guys, I'm trying, under Windows 7, to run a virtual machine with VMWare Player from an OS installed on a physical partition. However, when I boot the virtual machine, VMWare Player says that it couldn't access the physical drive and has to abort there. This seems to be a generally acknowledged problem in the VMWare community, as Windows Vista introduced a compelling new security feature that makes it impossible to write to a raw drive without obtaining exclusive access to it. I have googled the issue and found a few workarounds. However, the clean ones seem to only work on whole physical disks, and not on partitions. So I would be left with the dirty solution. In short, it meddles with the MBR to erase any trace of the partitions to use, makes Windows forget about them, then restores the MBR so we can launch the VM. Is there a way to let VMWare acquire exclusive access to the partition without requiring me to nuke it away?

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