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• Calculating a circle or sphere along a vector

  - by Sparky

  Updated this post and the one at Math SE (http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/127866/calculating-a-circle-or-sphere-along-a-vector), hope this makes more sense. I previously posted a question (about half an hour ago) involving computations along line segments, but the question and discussion were really off track and not what I was trying to get at. I am trying to work with an FPS engine I am attempting to build in Java. The problem I am encountering is with hitboxing. I am trying to calculate whether or not a "shot" is valid. I am working with several approaches and any insight would be helpful. I am not a native speaker of English nor skilled in Math so please bear with me. Player position is at P0 = (x0,y0,z0), Enemy is at P1 = (x1,y1,z1). I can of course compute the distance between them easily. The target needs a "hitbox" object, which is basically a square/rectangle/mesh either in front of, in, or behind them. Here are the solutions I am considering: I have ruled this out...doesn't seem practical. [Place a "hitbox" a small distance in front of the target. Then I would be able to find the distance between the player and the hitbox, and the hitbox and the target. It is my understanding that you can compute a circle with this information, and I could simply consider any shot within that circle a "hit". However this seems not to be an optimal solution, because it requires you to perform a lot of calculations and is not fully accurate.] Input, please! Place the hitbox "in" the player. This seems like the better solution. In this case what I need is a way to calculate a circle along the vector, at whatever position I wish (in this case, the distance between the two objects). Then I can pick some radius that encompasses the whole player, and count anything within this area a "hit". I am open to your suggestions. I'm trying to do this on paper and have no familiarity with game engines. If any software folk out there think I'm doing this the hard way, I'm open to help! Also - Anyone with JOGL/LWJGL experience, please chime in. Is this making sense?

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• Should i continue my self-taught coding practice or learn how to do coding professionally?

  - by G1i1ch

  Lately I've been getting professional work, hanging out with other programmers, and making friends in the industry. The only thing is I'm 100% self-taught. It's caused my style to extremely deviate from the style of those that are properly trained. It's the techniques and organization of my code that's different. It's a mixture of several things I do. I tend to blend several programming paradigms together. Like Functional and OO. I lean to the Functional side more than OO, but I see the use of OO when something would make more sense as an abstract entity. Like a game object. Next I also go the simple route when doing something. When in contrast, it seems like sometimes the code I see from professional programmers is complicated for the sake of it! I use lots of closures. And lastly, I'm not the best commenter. I find it easier just to read through my code than reading the comment. And most cases I just end up reading the code even if there are comments. Plus I've been told that, because of how simply I write my code, it's very easy to read it. I hear professionally trained programmers go on and on about things like unit tests. Something I've never used before so I haven't even the faintest idea of what they are or how they work. Lots and lots of underscores "_", which aren't really my taste. Most of the techniques I use are straight from me, or a few books I've read. Don't know anything about MVC, I've heard a lot about it though with things like backbone.js. I think it's a way to organize an application. It just confuses me though because by now I've made my own organizational structures. It's a bit of a pain. I can't use template applications at all when learning something new like with Ubuntu's Quickly. I have trouble understanding code that I can tell is from someone trained. Complete OO programming really leaves a bad taste in my mouth, yet that seems to be what EVERYONE else is strictly using. It's left me not that confident in the look of my code, or wondering whether I'll cause sparks when joining a company or maybe contributing to open source projects. In fact I'm rather scared of the fact that people will eventually be checking out my code. Is this just something normal any programmer goes through or should I really look to change up my techniques?

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• 2D collision resolving

  - by Philippe Paré

  I've just worked out an AABB collision algorithm for my 2D game and I was very satisfied until I found out it only works properly with movements of 1 in X and 1 in Y... here it is: public bool Intersects(Rectanglef rectangle) { return this.Left < rectangle.Right && this.Right > rectangle.Left && this.Top < rectangle.Bottom && this.Bottom > rectangle.Top; } public bool IntersectsAny(params Rectanglef[] rectangles) { for (int i = 0; i < rectangles.Length; i++) { if (this.Left < rectangles[i].Right && this.Right > rectangles[i].Left && this.Top < rectangles[i].Bottom && this.Bottom > rectangles[i].Top) return true; } return false; } and here is how I use it in the update function of my player : public void Update(GameTime gameTime) { Rectanglef nextPosX = new Rectanglef(AABB.X, AABB.Y, AABB.Width, AABB.Height); Rectanglef nextPosY; if (Input.Key(Key.Left)) nextPosX.X--; if (Input.Key(Key.Right)) nextPosX.X++; bool xFree = !nextPosX.IntersectsAny(Boxes.ToArray()); if (xFree) nextPosY = new Rectanglef(nextPosX.X, nextPosX.Y, nextPosX.Width, nextPosX.Height); else nextPosY = new Rectanglef(AABB.X, AABB.Y, AABB.Width, AABB.Height); if (Input.Key(Key.Up)) nextPosY.Y--; if (Input.Key(Key.Down)) nextPosY.Y++; bool yFree = !nextPosY.IntersectsAny(Boxes.ToArray()); if (yFree) AABB = nextPosY; else if (xFree) AABB = nextPosX; } What I'm having trouble with, is a system where I can give float values to my movement and make it so there's a smooth acceleration. Do I have to retrieve the collision rectangle (the rectangle created by the other two colliding)? or should I do some sort of vector and go along this axis until I reach the collision? Thanks a lot!

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• Can Anything be Done to Make Improv (a 1993 Win 3.1 App) handle larger Files?

  - by user75185

  My very favorite spradsheet is Improv, a 1993 Windows 3.1 application. It still puts Excel to shame for building spreadsheets and writing formulas. The only problem is because Improv was written when 1 Meg of RAM was state of the art, it becomes unstable when working with larger spreadsheets and often crashes and/or corrupts the data file. I am working on a project that greatly exceeds Improv's limits. Although it will ultimately require more robust databasing capability, I could save a lot of critical time if I could delay that headache and continue working in Improv for now. To that end, I moved to the only product I could find that comes close, Quantrix, which is nothing more than Improv updated to handle large spreadsheets and utilize today's technologies. The problems with Quantrix are its speed (significantly slower than Improv) and its $1000 price (which I cannot afford). I have already had 3 15 day extensions after the initial 30 day trial, so my time to use Quantrix as a bridge is at its end. Searches for Improv over the years have gotten me nowhere and, not surprisingly after reading some posts on this site, I got nothing for the money and time invested to find a programmer to write code to "fix" this problem. Improv is freely available as "abandonware" at http://vetusware.com/download/LotusImprov2.1/?id=5797 , and the best background info can be found on Wikipedia and at "Moose's Greatest Software Products of All Time - Lotus Improv" http://moosevalley.fhost.com.au/mooses_review_page_lotus_improv.html It is critically urgent for me to focus on analyzing the data asap. Working in a stable Improv would, without question, be the fastest route. To that end, I am looking for answers to the following questions and anything else that might be helpful: 1) Is it lawful to hire someone to fix Improv for my own use? If so, 2) About how much should it cost? 3) About how long should it take? 4) What skills should I be looking for &/or how should a post be worded? 5) Is there a niche site where it should it be posted? 6) What questions can I ask to quickly screen candidates? Since I am not a programmer, I need questions the answers to which leave no room to confuse me, whether intentional or not. For example, what tools or players should someone with an acceptable competency level have knowledge of?

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• Testing and Validation – You Really Do Have The Time

  - by BuckWoody

  One of the great advantages in my role as a Technical Specialist here at Microsoft is that I get to work with so many great clients. I get to see their environments and how they use them, and the way they work with SQL Server. I’ve been a data professional myself for many years. Over that time I’ve worked with many database platforms, lots of client applications, and written a lot of code in many industries. For a while I was also a consultant, so I got to see how other shops did things as well. But because I now focus on a “set” base of clients (over 500 professionals in over 150 companies) I get to see them over a longer period of time. Many of them help me understand how they use the product in their projects, and I even attend some DBA regular meetings. I see the way the product succeeds, and I see when it fails. Something that has really impacted my way of thinking is the level of importance any given shop is able to place on testing and validation. I’ve always been a big proponent of setting up a test system and following a very disciplined regimen to make sure it will work in production for any new projects, and then taking the lessons learned into production as standards. I know, I know – there’s never enough time to do things right like this. Yet the shops I see that do it have the same level of work that they output as the shops that don’t. They just make the time to do the testing and validation and create a standard that they will follow in production. And what I’ve found (surprise surprise) is that they have fewer production problems. OK, that might seem obvious – but I’ve actually tracked it and those places that do the testing and best practices really do save stress, time and trouble from that effort. We all think that’s a good idea, but we just “don’t have time”. OK – but from what I’m seeing, you can gain time if you spend a little up front. You may find that you’re actually already spending the same amount of time that you would spend in doing the testing, you’re just doing it later, at night, under the gun. Food for thought.  Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• "You are missing the following 32-bit libraries, and Steam may not run: libc.so.6" The common fixes don't work,

  - by M_Steam_User

  So I know this is a problem that has been asked around a lot, but I've tried a bunch of solutions with no success. I'm running Ubuntu 12.04 (64 bit), and I just installed it yesterday. This is my first time working with linux. The error is: You are missing the following 32-bit libraries, and Steam may not run: libc.so.6 Things I've tried. First, I had downloaded from the steam website. I uninstalled it, and tried again from the ubuntu software centre. sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install ia32-libs sudo apt-get upgrade This installed a bunch of the 32 bit libraries, but did not fix the issue. This seems like the major fix for most people. The direct approach of sudo apt-get install libc.so.6 returns this: Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done E: Unable to locate package libc.so.6 E: Couldn't find any package by regex 'libc.so.6' I guess libc.so.6 isn't a package, just a single file or something? I also tried gksudo gedit /etc/ld.so.conf.d/steam.conf Added these two lines, those the second one was all ready in the file, but copied over: /usr/lib32 /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/mesa Then executed: sudo ldconfig But nothing seemed to happen, steam still doesn't work. So, I feel like it is more likely that I have the library and steam isn't looking in the right place. One thing I've seen is people usually reference /usr/local/lib/ for your library locations. However, I can't find where to cd into /usr/, it isn't in my home folder. If /usr/ is the home folder, there is only a /.local folder which only has /share, no lib anywhere. Sorry for my linux ignorance. I appreciate any help, I honestly have no idea how to confirm I have the library and point steam to it, or if that is even the right thing to do. Edit: Tried this, not entirely sure what it means ~$ ls -l /lib32/libc* -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1721832 Sep 30 11:06 /lib32/libc-2.15.so -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 185928 Sep 30 11:06 /lib32/libcidn-2.15.so lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 Sep 30 11:06 /lib32/libcidn.so.1 -> libcidn-2.15.so -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 34316 Sep 30 11:06 /lib32/libcrypt-2.15.so lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 16 Sep 30 11:06 /lib32/libcrypt.so.1 -> libcrypt-2.15.so lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 12 Sep 30 11:06 /lib32/libc.so.6 -> libc-2.15.so

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• Notes - Part I - Say Hello from Java

  - by Silviu Turuga

  Sometimes we need to take small notes to remember things, one way to do this is to use stick notes and have them all around our desktop. But what happening if you have a lot of notes and a small office? You'll need a piece of software that will sort things for you and also it will provide you a quick way to retrieve the notes when need. Did I mention that this will keep your desktop clean and also will reduce paper waste? During the next days we'll gonna create an application that will let you manage your notes, put them in different categories etc. I'll show you step by step what do you need to do and finally you'll have the application run on multiple systems, such as Mac, Windows, Linux, etc. The only pre-requisition for this lesson is to have JDK 7 with JavaFX installed and an IDE, preferably NetBeans. I'll call this application Notes…. Part I - Say Hello from Java  From NetBeans go to Files->New Project Chose JavaFX->JavaFX FXML Application Project Name: Notes FXML name: NotesUI Check Create Application Class and name it Main After this the project is created and you'll see the following structure As a best practice I advice you to have your code in your own package instead of the default one. right click on Source Packages and chose New->Java Package name it something like this: com.turuga.notes and click Next after the package is created, select all the 3 files from step #3 and drag them over the new package chose Refactor, as this will make sure all the references are correctly moved inside the new package now you should have the following structure if you'll try to run the project you'll get an error: Unable to find class: Main right click on project name Notes and click properties go to Run and you'll see Application Class set to Main, but because we have defined our own packages, this location has been change, so click on Browse and the correct one appear: com.turuga.notes.Main last modification before running the project is to right click on NotesUI.fxml and chose Edit (if you'll double click it will open in JavaFX Scene Builder) look around line 9 and change fx:controller="NotesUIController" to fx:controller="com.turuga.notes.NotesUIController" now you are ready to run it and you should see the following On the next lesson we'll continue to play with NetBeans and start working on the interface of our project

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• Building a Store Locator ASP.NET Application Using Google Maps API

  The past couple of projects I've been working on have included the use of the Google Maps API and geocoding service in websites for various reasons. I decided to tie together some of the lessons learned, build an ASP.NETstore locator demo, and write about it on 4Guys. Last week I published the first article in what I think will be a three-part series: Building a Store Locator ASP.NET Application Using Google Maps (Part 1). Part 1 walks through creating a demo where a user can type in an address and any stores within a (roughly) 15 mile area will be displayed in a grid.The article begins with a look at the database used to power the store locator (namely, a single table that contains one row for every location, with each location storing its store number, address, and, most important, latitude and longitude coordinates) and then turns to usingGoogle's geocoding service to translatea user-entered address into latitude and longitude coordinates. The latitude and longitude coordinates are used to find nearby stores, which are then displayed in a grid. Part 2 looks at enhancing the search results to include a map with markers indicating the position of each nearby store location. The Google Maps API, along with a bit of client-side script and server-side logic, make this actually pretty straightforward and easy to implement. Here's a screen shot of the improved store locator results. Part 3, which I plan on publishing next week, looks at how to enhance the map by using information windows to display address information when clicking a marker. Additionally, I'll show how to use custom icons for the markers so that instead of having the same marker for each nearby location the markers will be images numbered 1, 2, 3, and so on, which will correspond to a number assigned to each search result in the grid. The idea here is that by numbering the search results in the grid and the markers on the map visitors will quickly be able to see what marker corresponds to what search result. This article and demo has been a lot of fun to write and create, and I hope you enjoy reading it, too. Building a Store Locator ASP.NET Application Using Google Maps API (Part 1) Building a Store Locator ASP.NET Application Using Google Maps API (Part 2) Happy Programming!Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Cannot boot from K/Ubuntu install disk on my UEFI system

  - by user93241

  I just got a new system and have been trying to get it set up w/ Win7 & Kubuntu dual-boot, but I've got a major problem. The BIOS of my motherboard (an Asus Crosshair 990FX) is strictly UEFI -- there is no legacy support mode available. I've been reading up on how to get Kubuntu installed in UEFI mode but no matter what I try I cannot seem to even boot into my install CD/USB key properly. I can get as far as the selection screen ("Try Kubuntu", "Install Kubuntu"...) but this screen starts off not appearing correctly. If I try moving the cursor around it sometimes seems to correct itself and show me my choices. But once I select "Try Kubuntu" it starts loading, the screen goes black and then proceeds to flicker -- about once every 5-10 seconds or so. This continues indefinitely. I've tried this with both Kubuntu & Ubuntu installation media, even the AMD64+Mac Ubuntu variety that is supposed to be a lot more flexible w.r.t. UEFI. The only hint I've had that the system might have booted correctly is a little drum sound that plays when booting from the Ubuntu install disk. Well, that and the fact that when I hit my system's power button it seems to shut down correctly, even ejecting the CD at the end. This might be a video driver issue; my system has two nVidia 550's, one of which is attached to my primary monitor. (The secondary isn't hooked up yet.) I'll keep looking over similar questions but any advice would be greatly appreciated. UPDATE: I've tried booting into my 12.04 install CD twice now, each time using two different options supplied by my BIOS. One seemed to offer the ability to boot into my CD under UEFI mode -- this didn't even produce the initial boot menu. The other method offers the ability to boot into my CD NOT under UEFI mode. This DOES produce the boot menu, but after this point it seems I still cannot get to a proper video mode to see what's going on.

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• Developer career feeling like going back in time every new job [closed]

  - by komediant

  Is there a good category for this question? My background is bachelor in ICT and for a hobby I am programming already since I was around twelve I think. Started with QBasic, Pascal, C, Java et cetera. Currently I am working for about eight/nine years. Half academics/medical and half company world. A few years ago I started with frameworks and I began with Grails (underlying Spring/Hibernate), which was a heavenly job, very productive and no hassle. My previous job I developed in pure Spring/Hibernate Java, which was a bit more writing annotations and XML and no conventions like Grails. But still, I did like Spring/Hibernate a lot and the professional setup with a developmentstreet, versioning, Jenkins/Sonar, log4j and a good IDE like IntellIJ. It felt quite 'clear' and organised, although I knew Grails which felt a bit more productive. But...at my current job almost half the code is pure servlet, hard coded JDBC (connections handled by yourself), scriptlets in all JSP pages, no service layer, no versioning, no Maven, HTML in DAO-layer, JAR-hell, no hot swap deployment locally, every change you have to deploy and hope it works fine on the server. All local development needs ugly scriptlet tags to check which environment it is running. Et cetera. Now and then developers work over in the evening - I don't - and still lots of issues are not solved and new projects are waiting. I hear the developers complaining, but somehow they feel like what they have now is "advanced" or they are in a sort of comfore zone. The lead developer seems open for new things, but half of the times he says he can implement MVC-framework features himself instead of using what is already out there. So in short, I currently feel like I miss all the modern framework techniques and that the company is going so slow forward. I just work here for two months now. What I do now is also code some partially ugly stuff, but it goes in completely into my nature and I feel uncomfortable with it. Coding something takes long(er) than estimated and my manager complains about why it takes so long and I feel ashamed for myself needing so much time. Where I was used to just writing a query I now build up whole try catch methods. My manager knows my complaints and the developers do so too. There will come a meeting to line out plans for 2013 on technology and the issues I and the company are facing. I am not looking for another job yet, it's close to wehre I live and the economy is fragile. Does anyone else have had this kind of career, like feeling going backwards witch technology? And how did you cope with it?

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• OSB unit testing, part 1 by Qualogy

  - by JuergenKress

  First you need to implement the simple bpel process like this : In my current project, I inherited a lot of OSB components that have been developed by (former) team members, but they all lack unit tests. This is a situation I really dislike, since this makes it much harder to refactor or bug-fix the existing code base. So, for all newly created components (and components I have to bug-fix) I strive to add unit tests. Of course, the unit tests will be created using my favourite testing tool: soapUI ! Unit of test The unit test should be created for the service composition, which in OSB terms should be the proxy service combination with its business service. Now, since you do not want to rely on any other services, you should provide mock services for all services invoked from your Component-Under-Test. In a previous article, I wrote about mocking your services in soapUI. While this approach would also be valid here, creating a mock service (and certainly deploying it on a separate WebServer) does violate one of the core principles of unit testing: to make your unit tests as self-contained as possible, i.e. not depending on any external components. In this article, I will show you how to achieve this by simply providing a mock response inside your unit test. Scenario The scenario I implement for testing is a simple currency converter; the external request consists of a from and a to currency, and an amount (in currency from). The service will perform an exchange rate lookup using the WebServiceX CurrencyConverter and return a response to the caller consisting of both the source and target currencies and amounts. For the purpose of unit testing, I will implement a mock response for the exchange rate lookup. Read the complete article here. 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 Facebook Wiki Technorati Tags: Qualogy,OSB,SOA Community,Oracle SOA,Oracle BPM,Community,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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• URL slugs: ideal length, and the real SEO effects of these slugs

  - by tattvamasi

  this question is addressed widely on SO and outside it, but for some reason, instead of taking it as a good load of great advice, all this information is confusing me. ** Problem ** I already had, on one of my sites, "prettified" urls. I had taken out the query strings, rewritten the URLS, and the link was short enough for me, but had a problem: the ID of the item or post in the URL isn't good for users. One of the users asked is there's a way to get rid of numbers, and I thought it was better for users to just see a clue of the page content in the URL. ** Solution ** With this in mind, I am trying with a section of the site.Armed with 301 redirects, some parsing work, and a lot of patience, I have added the URL slugs to some blog entries, and the slug of the URL reports the title of the article (something close to http://example.com/my-news/terribly-boring-and-long-url-that-replaces-the-number-I-liked-so-much/ ** Problems after Solution ** The problem, as I see it, is that now the URL of those blog articles is very descriptive for sure, but it is also impossible to remember. So, this brings me to the same issue I had with my previous problem: if numbers say nothing and can't be remembered, what's the use of these slugs? I prefer to see http://example.com/my-news/1/ than http://example.com/my-news/terribly-boring-and-long-url-that-replaces-the-number-I-liked-so-much/ To avoid forcing my user to memorize my URLS, I have added a script that finds the closest match to the URL you type, and redirects there. This is something I like, because the page now acts as a sort of little search engine, and users can play with the URLS to find articles. ** Open questions ** I still have some open questions, and don't seem to be able to find an answer, because answers tend to contradict one another. 1) How many characters should an URL ideally be long? I've read the magic number 115 and am sticking to that, but am not sure. 2) Is this really good for SEO? One of those blog articles I have redirected, with ID number in the URL and all, ranked second on Google. I've just found this question, and the answer seems to be consistent with what I think URL slug and SEO - structure (but see this other question with the opposite opinion) 3) To make a question with a specific example, would this URL risk to be penalized? Is it acceptable? Is it too long? StackOverflow seems to have comparably long URLs, but I'm not sure it's a winning strategy in my case. I just wanted to facilitate my users without running into Google's algorithms.

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• What is hiberfil.sys and How Do I Delete It?

  - by The Geek

  You’re no doubt reading this article because there’s a gigantic hiberfil.sys file sitting in the root of your drive, and you want to get rid of it to free up some space… but you can’t! Luckily, you actually can delete it, and today we’ll show you how. The more memory you have in your PC, the bigger the file will be. So What is hiberfil.sys Anyway? Windows has two power management modes that you can choose from: one is Sleep Mode, which keeps the PC running in a low power state so you can almost instantly get back to what you were working on. The other is Hibernate mode, which completely writes the memory out to the hard drive, and then powers the PC down entirely, so you can even take the battery out, put it back in, start back up, and be right back where you were. Hibernate mode uses the hiberfil.sys file to store the the current state (memory) of the PC, and since it’s managed by Windows, you can’t delete the file. So if you never use it, and want to disable Hibernate mode, keep reading. Personally I stick with Sleep Mode the vast majority of the time, but I do use Hibernate quite often. Disable Hibernate (and Delete hiberfil.sys) in Windows 7 or Vista You’ll need to open an administrator mode command prompt by right-clicking on the command prompt in the start menu, and then choosing Run as Administrator. Once you’re there, type in the following command: powercfg -h off You should immediately notice that the Hibernate option is gone from the Shut down menu. You’ll also notice that the file is magically gone! For more about dealing with Hibernate like setting how long it takes to head into Hibernate mode, you can check out our article on How to Manage Hibernate Mode in Windows 7. Disabling Hibernate Mode in Windows XP It’s a lot easier in Windows XP to get rid of Hibernate mode… in fact, we’ve already covered it before, but we’ll cover it again. Just head into Control Panel –> Power Options, and then find the Hibernate tab. Uncheck the box, reboot your PC, and then you can delete the hiberfil.sys file. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips How to Delete a System File in Windows 7 or VistaDisable Delete Confirmation Dialog in Windows 7 or VistaClear IE7 Browsing History From the Command LineHide, Delete, or Destroy the Recycle Bin Icon in Windows 7 or VistaClear the Auto-Complete Email Address Cache in Outlook TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Whoa ! Use Printflush to Solve Printing Problems Icelandic Volcano Webcams Open Multiple Links At One Go NachoFoto Searches Images in Real-time Office 2010 Product Guides

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• Response: Agile's Second Chasm

  - by Malcolm Anderson

  William Pietri over at Agile Focus has written an interesting article entitled, "Agile’s Second Chasm (and how we fell in)" in which he talks about how agile development has fallen into a common trap where large companies are now spending a lot of money hiring agile (Scrum) consultants just so that they can say they are agile, but all the while avoiding any change that is required by Scrum.   It echoes the questions that I've been asking for a while, "Can a fortune 500 company actually do agile development?"  I'm starting to think that the answer is "usually not"   William ask 3 questions at the end of his article that I will answer here.   1) Have I seen agile development brought in and then preemptively customized (read: made into ScrummerFall)?   Yes, Scrum is hard and disruptive.  It's a spotlight on company dysfunction.  In a low trust environment like most fortune 500 companies Scrum will be subverted by anyone who has ever seen "transparency" translate into someone being laid off.   2) If I had to do it all over again, would I change anything?  No, this is a natural progression, but the agile principles are powerful enough, that the companies that don't adopt them will no longer be competitive and will start to fail.   3) Is this situation solvable?  I think it is.  I think that one of the issues is that you often see companies implementing Scrum, but avoiding the agile engineering practices.  I believe that you cannot do one without the other.  Scrum keeps the ship sailing in smooth deep waters.  The agile engineering practices keep the engine running smoothly and cleanly.  If you implement agile engineering practices without Scrum, you run the risk of ending up with a great running piece of software that is useful to no one.  On the other hand, implementing cargo-cult Scrum without the agile engineering practices and you end up (especially in a fortune 500 company) being steered in the right direction, but with your development practices coming to a dead halt because you have code that can not keep up with the changes in requirements.   If you are trying to do Scrum, make sure that you hire some agile engineering coaches, or else you may find your deveolpment engines grinding to a dead halt in the middle of the open ocean.

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• 2d, Top-down map with different levels

  - by Ktash

  So, I'm creating a 2d, top down, sprite based (tiled) game, and right now I'm working on maps (well, a map editor at the moment, but it will be creating my maps, so basically the same thing). The scenario So, I'm thinking about efficiency and creating a map in pieces. In each piece, I plan on having 'layers'. Basically, I plan on rendering it down to a 'below hero' level, and an 'above hero' level, with the hero rendered in between obviously. There will likely also be a 'on level with hero' layer, but I'm not quite there yet. Not even worrying about events or interaction yet. Just looking to get a hero on the screen. Now for movement, I obviously need to know what tiles can be moved and in what direction. My plan at the moment is each tile getting 8 bits (4 'can enter in direction' bits, 4 'can leave in direction'). This will allow me to limit movement and even allow one way directional movement. The dilemma This works great for a lot of scenarios. It will allow me to store a map in essentially 3 layers, a string, and gives me flexibility going forward. However, I can't create maps that themselves have layers. A good example is a bridge where the user can go under or over the bridge without invalid moves being allowed. I can't create a platform and allow movement underneath. These are things I would like to be able to include in my game. My idea In theory, I could allow multiple hero layers and then allow multiple sets of 'below' and 'above' layers (or sandwich layers). But this complicates my system, and makes movement between maps potentially tricky (If the hero is on the third layer at the edge of a map, but that corresponds to the second layer on the other map, how can I allow or disallow movement). My question Is there a better way to manage multiple maps with multiple levels like this where a users level may be 'connected' on different levels on different maps? Or even... Am I doing this the hard way? Is there a more standard way to handle top-down 2d tiled maps that I am just not aware of? Things to note or that might be helpful This will be done in Javascript (transferred around in JSON) State will need to be transferred quickly, so a map-id and x/y/direction should be enough to get me a boolean 'can move' value Maps will not be standard sized (though they will be in a certain number of tiles) Making an editor tool so that I can have others help, so something that I can create in a tool would be helpful 'Teleportation' locations will likely need to exist to get into building maps and to and from different map sets (which will not necessarily be connected), but have not been created yet (lumping in with events at the moment).

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• Building Enterprise Smartphone App &ndash; Part 3: Key Concerns

  - by Tim Murphy

  This is part 3 in a series of posts based on a talk I gave recently at the Chicago Information Technology Architects Group.  Feel free to leave feedback. Keys Concerns Of Smartphones In The Enterprise These are the factors that you need to be aware of and address in order to build successful enterprise smartphone applications.  Most of them have nothing to do with the application itself as you will see here. Managing Devices Managing devices is a factor that is going to effect how much your company will have to spend outside of developing the applications.  How will you track the devices within the corporation?  How often will you have to replace phones and as a consequence have to upgrade your applications to support new phones?  The devices can represent a significant investment of capital.  If these questions are not addressed you will find a number of hidden costs throughout the life of your solution. Purchase or BYOD We have seen the trend of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) lately within the enterprise.  How many meetings have you been in where someone is on their personal iPad, iPhone, Android phone or Windows Phone?  The issue is if you can afford to support everyone's choice in device? That is a lot to take on even if you only support the current release of each platform. Do you go with the most popular device or do you pick a platform that best matches your current ecosystem and distribute company owned devices?  There is no easy answer here, but you should be able give some dollar value to both hardware and development costs related to platform coverage. Asset Tracking/Insurance Smartphones are devices that are easier to lose or have stolen than laptops and desktops. Not only do you have your normal asset management concerns but also assignment of financial responsibility. You also will need to insure them against damage and theft and add legal documents that spell out the responsibilities of the employees that use these devices. Personal vs. Corporate Data What happens when you terminate an employee?  How do you recover the device?  What happens when they have put personal data on the device?  These are all situation that can cause possible loss of corporate intellectual property or legal repercussions of reclaiming a device with personal data on it.  Policies need to be put in place that protect the company from being exposed to type of loss.  This can mean significant legal and procedural cost that you need to consider. Coming Up In the last installment of this series I will cover application development considerations. del.icio.us Tags: Smartphones,Enterprise Smartphone Apps,Architecture

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• How do I make camera move at same speed when rotating and moving forward

  - by dez

  I made a camera in DX9. To move forward I press the Up arrow. To rotate on the Y axis I use the mouse. When I perform these movements on their own the camera moves at the speed I want. However, if I hold down Up and move the mouse at the same time then the camera moves a lot faster than it should. I want it to move at the same speed as it does when only the Up arrow is pressed. I think I need to normalize something somewhere but not sure what and not sure where. Have tried various combinations without success so if anyone can point me in the right direction that would be great. Thanks. I've post code below. #define KEY_DOWN(vk_code) ((GetAsyncKeyState(vk_code) & 0x8000) ? 1 : 0) LRESULT WINAPI MsgProc( HWND hWnd, UINT msg, WPARAM wParam, LPARAM lParam ) { if( KEY_DOWN(VK_UP)) MovePlayer(D3DXVECTOR3(0, 0, -1.0f)); if( KEY_DOWN(VK_DOWN)) MovePlayer(D3DXVECTOR3(0, 0, 1.0f)); switch( msg ) { case WM_MOUSEMOVE: ProcessMouseInput(); } } void MovePlayer( D3DXVECTOR3 in_vec ) { D3DXMATRIX CameraRot; D3DXMatrixRotationY(&CameraRot,D3DXToRadian(AngleY)); D3DXVECTOR3 CameraRotTarget; D3DXVec3TransformNormal(&CameraRotTarget,&in_vec,&CameraRot); CameraPos += (m_timeElapsed * CameraRotTarget); } void ProcessMouseInput() { GetCursorPos( &CurrentMouseState ); if ((CurrentMouseState.x != GameMouseState.x) || (CurrentMouseState.y != GameMouseState.y)) { int dx = CurrentMouseState.x - GameMouseState.x; int dy = CurrentMouseState.y - GameMouseState.y; AngleY+=m_timeElapsed*dx*7.0f; } GameMouseState = CurrentMouseState; // Set back to window center in Render function } VOID UpdateCamera() { D3DXVECTOR3 CameraOrigTarget(0, 0, -1); D3DXVECTOR3 CameraOrigUp(0, 1, 0); D3DXMATRIX CameraRot; D3DXMATRIX CameraRotX; D3DXMatrixRotationX(&CameraRotX,D3DXToRadian(AngleX)); D3DXMATRIX CameraRotY; D3DXMatrixRotationY(&CameraRotY,D3DXToRadian(AngleY)); CameraRot = CameraRotX * CameraRotY; D3DXVECTOR3 CameraRotTarget; D3DXVec3TransformNormal(&CameraRotTarget,&CameraOrigTarget,&CameraRot); D3DXVECTOR3 CameraTarget; CameraTarget = CameraPos + CameraRotTarget; D3DXVECTOR3 vUpVec( 0.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f ); D3DXMatrixLookAtLH( &matView, &CameraPos, &CameraTarget, &vUpVec ); g_pd3dDevice->SetTransform( D3DTS_VIEW, &matView ); D3DXMatrixPerspectiveFovLH( &matProj, D3DX_PI / 4, 1.0f, 1.0f, 100.0f ); g_pd3dDevice->SetTransform( D3DTS_PROJECTION, &matProj ); }

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• [AJAX Numeric Updown Control] Microsoft JScript runtime error: The number of fractional digits is out of range

  - by Jenson

  If you have using Ajax control toolkits a lot (which I will skip the parts on where to download and how to configure it in Visual Studio 2010), you might have encountered some bugs or limitations of the controls, or rather, some weird behaviours. I would call them weird behaviours though. Recently, I've been working on a Ajax numeric updown control, which i remember clearly it was working fine without problems. In fact, I use 2 numeric updown control this time. So I went on to configure it to be as simple as possible and I will just use the default up and down buttons provided by it (so that I won't need to design my own). I have two textbox controls to display the value controlled by the updown control. One for month, and another for year. <asp:TextBox ID="txtMonth" runat="server" CssClass="txtNumeric" ReadOnly="True" Width="150px" /> <asp:TextBox ID="txtYear" runat="server" CssClass="txtNumeric" ReadOnly="True" Width="150px" /> So I will now drop 1 numeric updown control for each of the textboxes. <asp:NumericUpDownExtender ID="txtMonth_NumericUpDownExtender"     runat="server" TargetControlID="txtMonth" Maximum="12" Minimum="1" Width="152"> </asp:NumericUpDownExtender>                          <asp:NumericUpDownExtender ID="txtYear_NumericUpDownExtender"     runat="server" TargetControlID="txtYear" Width="152"> </asp:NumericUpDownExtender>                                                  You noticed that I configure the Maximum and Minimum value for the first numericupdown control, but I never did the same for the second one (for txtYear). That's because it won't work, well, at least for me. So I remove the Minimum="2000" and Maximum="2099" from there. Then I would configure the initial value to the the current year, and let the year to flow up and down freely. If you want, you want write the codes to restrict it. Here are the codes I used on PageLoad:     Protected Sub Page_Load(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Me.Load         If Not Page.IsPostBack Then             If Trim(txtMonth.Text) = "" Then                 Me.txtMonth.Text = System.DateTime.Today.Month             End If             If Trim(txtYear.Text) = "" Then                 Me.txtYear.Text = System.DateTime.Today.Year             End If         End If     End Sub   Enjoy!

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• Threads slowing down application and not working properly

  - by Belgin

  I'm making a software renderer which does per-polygon rasterization using a floating point digital differential analyzer algorithm. My idea was to create two threads for rasterization and have them work like so: one thread draws each even scanline in a polygon and the other thread draws each odd scanline, and they both start working at the same time, but the main application waits for both of them to finish and then pauses them before continuing with other computations. As this is the first time I'm making a threaded application, I'm not sure if the following method for thread synchronization is correct: First of all, I use two global variables to control the two threads, if a global variable is set to 1, that means the thread can start working, otherwise it must not work. This is checked by the thread running an infinite loop and if it detects that the global variable has changed its value, it does its job and then sets the variable back to 0 again. The main program also uses an empty while to check when both variables become 0 after setting them to 1. Second, each thread is assigned a global structure which contains information about the triangle that is about to be rasterized. The structures are filled in by the main program before setting the global variables to 1. My dilemma is that, while this process works under some conditions, it slows down the program considerably, and also it fails to run properly when compiled for Release in Visual Studio, or when compiled with any sort of -O optimization with gcc (i.e. nothing on screen, even SEGFAULTs). The program isn't much faster by default without threads, which you can see for yourself by commenting out the #define THREADS directive, but if I apply optimizations, it becomes much faster (especially with gcc -Ofast -march=native). N.B. It might not compile with gcc because of fscanf_s calls, but you can replace those with the usual fscanf, if you wish to use gcc. Because there is a lot of code, too much for here or pastebin, I created a git repository where you can view it. My questions are: Why does adding these two threads slow down my application? Why doesn't it work when compiling for Release or with optimizations? Can I speed up the application with threads? If so, how? Thanks in advance.

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• How do you feel about being asked to code during an interview?

  - by Mystere Man

  I have seen a lot of comments about good interview questions and puzzles to require potential developers to solve during the interview process. I have personally had several interviews in which the interviewer has asked me to write some piece of code or solve a problem during the interview, and I have always performed very poorly in these "tests". The reason is simple, as a developer who spends my days talking to computers, I find I have to prepare myself and "switch gears" to be in "interview mode". I prepare myself to make a good impression. When I'm programming, I'm very focused and am totally different from when I'm being "interpersonal". I just can't get into "the zone" when I'm also having to be a charming and witty potential employee. I feel that by asking a developer to prove his skills during an interview, all you're doing is finding out if they can code under pressure, and at the drop of a hat. It has almost no ability to determine how you would perform in a "real life" development situation. Maybe, if you're looking for someone that can code and chat at the same time, i can see how that would be beneficial. But I think you overlook potential candidates that simply do not perform well in such an artificial environment. While I appreciate that a potential employer wants to see what I can do, I don't think an interview is the place for such a test. I mean, suppose a job for an over the road trucker required that you drive while being interviewed. How does that really end well? So I'm curious as to what others think about such situations. Have you failed interviews because you were not in the right frame of mind? Have you failed to make a good interpersonal impression because you were too distracted trying to solve the problem? If you're a hiring manager, or someone that gives interviews, do you even think about such things? Is it really important that someone perform well in an interview? EDIT: To clarify, I'm not against testing applicants. My concern is about testing during an interview. See also: What are the pros and cons for the employer of code questions during an interview? looking at this from the interviewer's point of view.

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• EF Doesn't Like Same Named Tables

  - by Anthony Trudeau

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/tonyt/archive/2013/07/02/153327.aspxIt's another week and another restriction imposed by the Entity Framework (EF). Don't get me wrong. I like EF, but I don't like how it restricts you in different ways. At this point you may be asking yourself the question: how can you have more than one table with the same name?The answer is to have tables in different schemas. I do this to partition the data based on the area of concern. It allows security to be assigned conveniently. A lot of people don't use schemas. I love them. But this article isn't about schemas.In the situation I have two tables:Contact.PersonEmployee.PersonThe first contains the basic, more public information such as the name. The second contains mostly HR specific information. I then mapped these tables to two classes. I stuck to a Table per Class (TPC) mapping, because of problems I've had in the past implementing inheritance with EF. The following code gives you the basic contents of the classes.[Table("Person", Schema = "Employee")]public class Employee {   ...   public int PersonId { get; set; }   [ForeignKey("PersonId")]   public virtual Person Person { get; set; }}[Table("Person", Schema = "Contact")]public class Person {   [Key]   public int Id { get; set; }   ...}This seemingly simple scenario just doesn't work. The problem occurs when you try to add a Person to the DbContext. You get an InvalidOperationException with the following text:The entity types 'Employee' and 'Person' cannot share table 'People' because they are not in the same type hierarchy or do not have a valid one to one foreign key relationship with matching primary keys between them..This is interesting for a couple of reasons. First, there is no People table in my database. Second, I have used the SetInitializer method to stop a database from being created, so it shouldn't be thinking about new tables.The solution to my problem was to change the name of my Employee.Person table. I decided to name it Employee.Employee. It's not ideal, but it gets me past the EF limitation. I hope that this article will help someone else that has the same problem.

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• Optionally Running SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges with Delgates

  - by Damon Armstrong

  I was writing some SharePoint code today where I needed to give people the option of running some code with elevated permission.  When you run code in an elevated fashion it normally looks like this: SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges(()=> {     //Code to run }); It wasn’t a lot of code so I was initially inclined to do something horrible like this: public void SomeMethod(bool runElevated) {     if(runElevated)     {         SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges(()=>         {             //Code to run         });     }     else     {         //Copy of code to run     } } Easy enough, but I did not want to draw the ire of my coworkers for employing the CTRL+C CTRL+V design pattern.  Extracting the code into a whole new method would have been overkill because it was a pretty brief piece of code.  But then I thought, hey, wait, I’m basically just running a delegate, so why not define the delegate once and run it either in an elevated context or stand alone, which resulted in this version which I think is much cleaner because the code is only defined once and it didn’t require a bunch of extra lines of code to define a method: public void SomeMethod(bool runElevated) {     var code = new SPSecurity.CodeToRunElevated(()=>     {         //Code to run     });     if(runElevated)     {         SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPermissions(code);         }     else     {         Code();     } }

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• When a co-worker asks you to teach him what you know, do you share the information or keep it to yourself? [closed]

  - by Chuck

  I am the only developer/DBA in a small IT department. There is another guy who can do it, but he's more of a backup as he spends his time working on IT support stuff. Anyway we have a new hire and I've been training him on the IT support side of things. Seems like he is eager to learn and be productive, but nobody is going out of their way to show him anything. He's been asking me to teach him database design, SQL, etc. For some reason, the boss has him working with me. He is also sending him to meetings that I go to, yet he hasn't said outright that I have to teach him anything. Meanwhile, the boss insists on doing a lot of the support work himself (i.e. he hoards information and doesn't delegate to anyone). I'm a little bit on the fence. First, the new guy doesn't yet have a strong foundation on the IT support functions which is where we really need help at this time. Second, I paid thousands of dollars for classes and spent many hours learning this stuff. Is it my responsibility to teach others skills that I had to learn on my own? Others here really aren't quick to share information so I'm not sure that I should either in this environment. I do know that if I get him involved, and get him started on projects, then I'd be responsible for his mistakes. I had to take the heat for the other guy when he made mistakes. OTOH the guy wants to learn something, is motivated, and I don't want to stop him. We've had our share of slackers in the group and it's nice to have someone who is willing to work for a change. So what would you guys do? Would you teach him the skills that you spent all of that time learning? Set him up with a test database on his PC and recommend some books for him? Encourage him to get a strong foundation in IT support first and ask later? We haven't had a new hire in years, let alone one that is interested in what I do, so this is new to me.

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• WiFi on Ubuntu 12.04 custom: downloading unbearably slow

  - by Mark

  iwconfig reports 11 Mbps, yet I've seen as low as <1 KBps. This is the latest in my laundry list of Ubuntu problems in a dual-boot machine (cyberpowerpc custom, intel i7-3820, nvidia gtx 570). I received it two days ago, Windows 7 running fine, still having problems with Ubuntu. The browsing is intermittent but unacceptable. e.g. I could get to this site last night but I couldn't post this question. The downloading is unbearably slow, I can't download anything or install any packages because the speed is so slow. e.g. I am trying to install vim which is inexplicably missing from my 12.04 install (add another one to the problems list) and my download speed reported in the terminal was 241 B/s. Yes, bytes. iwconfig reports 11 Mbps, which further adds to the confusion. User@ubuntu:~$ iwconfig lo no wireless extensions. wlan0 IEEE 802.11bgn ESSID:"linksys" Mode:Managed Frequency:2.437 GHz Access Point: 00:18:39:76:2C:A1 Bit Rate=11 Mb/s Tx-Power=20 dBm Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off Power Management:off Link Quality=36/70 Signal level=-74 dBm Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0 Tx excessive retries:54 Invalid misc:18 Missed beacon:0 eth0 no wireless extensions. Any ideas? I see this is a problem a lot of people, but none of the on line solutions have worked for me so far. e.g. one site recommends editing the ath9k.conf file in /etc/modprobe.d, yet this file isn't even in the folder: User@ubuntu:/$ cd etc/modprobe.d User@ubuntu:/etc/modprobe.d$ ls alsa-base.conf blacklist-oss.conf blacklist-ath_pci.conf blacklist-rare-network.conf blacklist.conf blacklist-watchdog.conf blacklist-firewire.conf dkms.conf blacklist-framebuffer.conf nvidia-current_hybrid.conf blacklist-modem.conf nvidia-graphics-drivers.conf I think the nvidia gpu might be mucking things up. I had the "blinking cursor" problem when installing in the first place, and then I had the monitor out of range problem as well. I have my faithful Asus laptop, which is running Ubuntu 12.04 just fine. The only difference is executing host -t SOA local in the terminal gives User@ubuntu:~$ host -t SOA local local has SOA record local. nobody.localhost. 42 86400 43200 604800 10800 in my new machine, and the command reports Host local. not found in the laptop. Help would be most welcome, as I am in danger of reverting back to Windows. I'm seriously considering it. Sorry for the length, trying to show my effort in resolving the issue and include terminal snippets that might be helpful.

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• Why C++ people loves multithreading when it comes to performances?

  - by user1849534

  I have a question, it's about why programmers seems to love concurrency and multi-threaded programs in general. I'm considering 2 main approach here: an async approach basically based on signals, or just an async approach as called by many papers and languages like the new C# 5.0 for example, and a "companion thread" that maanges the policy of your pipeline a concurrent approach or multi-threading approach I will just say that I'm thinking about the hardware here and the worst case scenario, and I have tested this 2 paradigms myself, the async paradigm is a winner at the point that I don't get why people 90% of the time talk about concurrency when they wont to speed up things or make a good use of their resources. I have tested multi-threaded programs and async program on an old machine with an Intel quad-core that doesn't offer a memory controller inside the CPU, the memory is managed entirely by the motherboard, well in this case performances are horrible with a multi-threaded application, even a relatively low number of threads like 3-4-5 can be a problem, the application is unresponsive and is just slow and unpleasant. A good async approach is, on the other hand, probably not faster but it's not worst either, my application just waits for the result and doesn't hangs, it's responsive and there is a much better scaling going on. I have also discovered that a context change in the threading world it's not that cheap in real world scenario, it's infact quite expensive especially when you have more than 2 threads that need to cycle and swap among each other to be computed. On modern CPUs the situation it's not really that different, the memory controller it's integrated but my point is that an x86 CPUs is basically a serial machine and the memory controller works the same way as with the old machine with an external memory controller on the motherboard. The context switch is still a relevant cost in my application and the fact that the memory controller it's integrated or that the newer CPU have more than 2 core it's not bargain for me. For what i have experienced the concurrent approach is good in theory but not that good in practice, with the memory model imposed by the hardware, it's hard to make a good use of this paradigm, also it introduces a lot of issues ranging from the use of my data structures to the join of multiple threads. Also both paradigms do not offer any security abut when the task or the job will be done in a certain point in time, making them really similar from a functional point of view. According to the X86 memory model, why the majority of people suggest to use concurrency with C++ and not just an async aproach ? Also why not considering the worst case scenario of a computer where the context switch is probably more expensive than the computation itself ?

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