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• What is the start point in game development? Where to start?

  - by Dragon

  I understand, I'm not unique with such a question, there are a lot of questions like this one. But I hope you'll take a minute and maybe can give me a piece of advice. I have an idea to develop games, but I don't know where is the start point in game development. The learning curve isn't as straight as in learning of a programming language, but I want to give it a try. I have some experience with OOP and programming in general. I know (not too deep) C#, Java programming languages. I searched info on where to start, read a lot of blogs, forums and so on. Once I decided "stop wandering around, just start develop a game" and I started. At the moment I have a console version of very simple game (RPS - rock-paper-scissors) developed with C#. It has different modes: "player vs cpu" and "player vs player". Some time later I looked at the code and decided that it should be refactored or even redeveloped from the scratch. And I thought that time "GUI is what I need. I can add logic later." And now I'm here. I've already decided to make RPS with GUI, then make multiplayer and so on. I'm not thinking about 3D now, 2D is enough. It doesn't matter what language to use: C# or Java, I found frameworks for both - XNA (C#) and Slick (Java). Both are good for 2D game development. But I know nothing about sprites, how to bind objects on the screen and so on. You can say "you don't need it for such simple game like RPS", but RPS is the beginning, I have some ideas like "Tower Defense" game... you know, everybody has ideas, wishes.... and this knowledge is useful and in some way obligatory. So what is the start point to achieve my plans, ideas, wishes? Where to start? Is it possible to make game development learning curve a little bit straight? Or there're ways that amateur and game development beginners use for years? Thank you for you answers and advise in advance. P.S Sorry for that this post turned out an essay, but I tried to express my wish to start acting. Hope I managed to do it.

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• Where and how to reference composite MVP components?

  - by Lea Hayes

  I am learning about the MVP (Model-View-Presenter) Passive View flavour of MVC. I intend to expose events from view interfaces rather than using the observer pattern to remove explicit coupling with presenter. Context: Windows Forms / Client-Side JavaScript. I am led to believe that the MVP (or indeed MVC in general) pattern can be applied at various levels of a user interface ranging from the main "Window" to an embedded "Text Field". For instance, the model to the text field is probably just a string whereas the model to the "Window" contains application specific view state (like a persons name which resides within the contained text field). Given a more complex scenario: Documentation viewer which contains: TOC navigation pane Document view Search pane Since each of these 4 user interface items are complex and can be reused elsewhere it makes sense to design these using MVP. Given that each of these user interface items comprises of 3 components; which component should be nested? where? who instantiates them? Idea #1 - Embed View inside View from Parent View public class DocumentationViewer : Form, IDocumentationViewerView { public DocumentationViewer() { ... // Unclear as to how model and presenter are injected... TocPane = new TocPaneView(); } protected ITocPaneView TocPane { get; private set; } } Idea #2 - Embed Presenter inside View from Parent View public class DocumentationViewer : Form, IDocumentationViewerView { public DocumentationViewer() { ... // This doesn't seem like view logic... var tocPaneModel = new TocPaneModel(); var tocPaneView = new TocPaneView(); TocPane = new TocPanePresenter(tocPaneModel, tocPaneView); } protected TocPanePresenter TocPane { get; private set; } } Idea #3 - Embed View inside View from Parent Presenter public class DocumentationViewer : Form, IDocumentationViewerView { ... // Part of IDocumentationViewerView: public ITocPaneView TocPane { get; set; } } public class DocumentationViewerPresenter { public DocumentationViewerPresenter(DocumentationViewerModel model, IDocumentationViewerView view) { ... var tocPaneView = new TocPaneView(); var tocPaneModel = new TocPaneModel(model.Toc); var tocPanePresenter = new TocPanePresenter(tocPaneModel, tocPaneView); view.TocPane = tocPaneView; } } Some better idea...

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• Oracle User Productivity Kit Translation

  - by ultan o'broin

  Oracle's customers just love the User Productivity Kit (UPK). I hear only great things about it from our international customers at the Oracle Usability Advisory Board meetings too. The UPK is the perfect solution for enterprise applications training needs (I previously reviewed a fine book about UPK btw). One question I am often asked is how source content created using the UPK can be translated into another language. I spoke with Peter Maravelias, Principal Product Strategy Manager for UPK about this recently. UPK is already optimized for easy source-target translation already. There is even a solution for re-recording demos. Here's what you can do to get your source content into another language: Use UPK's ability to automatically translate events and actions. UPK comes with XML templates that allow you to accomplish this in 21 languages with a simple publishing action switch. These templates even deal with the tricky business of using gender-based translations. Spanish localization template sample Japanese localization template sample Use the Import and Export localization features to export additional custom content in a format like XLIFF, easily handled by translation tools. You could also export and import in Word format. Re-record the sound (audio) files that go with the recordings, one per screen. UPK's granular approach to the sound files means that timing isn't an option. Retiming demos isn't required. A tip here with sound files and XLFF-exported custom content is to facilitate translation context by avoiding explicit references to actions going on in the screen recordings. A text based storyboard with screenshots accompanying the sound files should also be provided to the translators. Provide a glossary of terms too. Use the re-record option in UPK to record any demo from a translated application. This will allow all the translated UI labels to be automatically captured. You may be required to resize any action events here due to text expansion issues. Of course, you will need translated data in the translated application too, so plan for this in advance. However, source-target language skills aren't required for the re-recording. The UPK Player itself, of course, is also available from Oracle along with content and doc in 21 languages. The Developer and Setup is also translated in a smaller number of languages. Check the Oracle UPK website for latest details. UPK is a super solution for global enterprise applications training deployments allowing source content to be translated into multiple languages easily. See this post on the UPK blog for more insight too!

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• Silverlight Cream for June 19, 2011 -- #1109

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Kunal Chowdhury(-2-), Oren Gal, Rudi Grobler, Stephen Price, Erno de Weerd, Joost van Schaik, WindowsPhoneGeek, Andrea Boschin, and Vikram Pendse. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Multiple Page Printing in Silverlight4 - Part 3 - Printing Driving Directions" Oren Gal WP7: "Prototyping Windows Phone 7 Applications using SketchFlow" Vikram Pendse Shoutouts: Not Silverlight, but darned cool... Michael Crump has just what you need to get going with Kinect: The busy developers guide to the Kinect SDK Beta Rudi Grobler replies to a few questions about how he gets great WP7 screenshots: Screenshot Tools for WP7 From SilverlightCream.com: Windows Phone 7 (Mango) Tutorial - 14 - Detecting Network Information of the Device Squeaking in just under the posting wire with 2 more WP7.1 posts is Kunal Chowdhury ... first up is this one on grabbing the mobile operator and othe rnetwork info in WP7.1 Windows Phone 7 (Mango) Tutorial - 15 - Detecting Device Information Kunal Chowdhury's latest is on using the DeviceStatus class in WP7.1 to detect device information such as is there is a physical keyboard installed, Memory Usage, Total Memory, etc. Multiple Page Printing in Silverlight4 - Part 3 - Printing Driving Directions Oren Gal has the final episode in his Multiple Page Printing Tutorial Trilogy up... and this is *way* cool... Printing the driving directions. AgFx hidden gem - PhoneApplicationFrameEx Rudi Grobler continues his previous post about AgFX with this one talking about the PhoneApplicationFrameEx class inside AgFx.Controls.Phone.dll.. a RootFrame replacement. Binding to ActualHeight or ActualWidth Stephen Price's latest XAML snippet is about Binding to ActualHeight or ActualWidth... you've probably tried to without luck... check out the workaround. Windows Phone 7: Drawing graphics for your application with Inkscape – Part I: Tiles Erno de Weerd decided to try the 'free' route to Drawing graphics for his WP7 app, and has part 1 of a tutorial series on doing that with Inkscape. Mogade powered Live Tile high score service for Windows Phone 7 Joost van Schaik expounds on his "Catch 'em Birds" WP7 game in the Marketplace... specifically the online leaderboard using the services of Mogade. Building a Reusable ICommand implementation for Windows Phone Mango MVVM apps WindowsPhoneGeek's latest post is discussing the ICommand interface available in WP7.1, and he demontstrates how to implement a reusable ICommand Implementation and how to use it. A TCP Server with Reactive Extensions Andrea Boschin is back posting about Rx, and promises this post *will be* Silverlight related eventually :) First up though is a socket server using Rx. Prototyping Windows Phone 7 Applications using SketchFlow Vikram Pendse has a tutorial up for prototyping your WP7* apps in Sketchflow including a 5 minute video Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• When to use HTTP status code 404 in an API

  - by Sybiam

  I am working on a project and after arguing with people at work for about more than a hour. I decided to know what people on stack-exchange might say. We're writing an API for a system, there is a query that should return a tree of Organization or a tree of Goals. The tree of Organization is the organization in which the user is present, In other words, this tree should always exists. In the organization, a tree of goal should be always present. (that's where the argument started). In case where the tree doesn't exist, my co-worker decided that it would be right to answer response with status code 200. And then started asking me to fix my code because the application was falling apart when there is no tree. I'll try to spare flames and fury. I suggested to raise a 404 error when there is no tree. It would at least let me know that something is wrong. When using 200, I have to add special check to my response in the success callback to handle errors. I'm expecting to receive an object, but I may actually receive an empty response because nothing is found. It sounds totally fair to mark the response as a 404. And then war started and I got the message that I didn't understand HTTP status code schema. So I'm here and asking what's wrong with 404 in this case? I even got the argument "It found nothing, so it's right to return 200". I believe that it's wrong since the tree should be always present. If we found nothing and we are expecting something, it should be a 404. More info, I forgot to add the urls that are fetched. Organizations /OrgTree/Get Goals /GoalTree/GetByDate?versionDate=... /GoalTree/GetById?versionId=... My mistake, both parameters are required. If any versionDate that can be parsed to a date is provided, it will return the closes revision. If you enter something in the past, it will return the first revision. If by Id with a id that doesn't exists, I suspect it's going to return an empty response with 200. Extra Also, I believe the best answer to the problem is to create default objects when organizations are created, having no tree shouldn't be a valid case and should be seen as an undefined behavior. There is no way an account can be used without both trees. For that reasons, they should be always present. also I got linked this (one similar but I can't find it) http://viswaug.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/http-headers-status1.png

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• Beginning with first project on game development [closed]

  - by Tsvetan

  Today is the day I am going to start my first real game project. It will be a Universe simulator. Basically, you can build anything from tiny meteor to quazars and universes. It is going to be my project for an olympiad in IT in my country and I really want to make it perfect(at least a bronze medal). So, I would like to ask some questions about organization and development methodologies. Firstly, my plan is to make a time schedule. In it I would write my plans for the next month or two(because that is the time I have). With this exact plan I hope to make my organisation at its best. Of course, if I am doing sth faster than the schedule I would involve more features for the game and/or continue with the tempo I have. Also, for the organisation I would make a basic pseudocode(maybe) and just rewrite it so it is compilable. Like a basic skeleton of everything. The last is an idea I tought of in the moment, but if it is good I will use it. Secondly, for the development methodologies, obviously, I think of making object-oriented code and make everything perfect(a lot of testing, good code, documentation etc.). Also, I am going to make my own menu system(I read that OpenGL hasn't got very good one). Maybe I would implement it with an xml file, holding the info about position of buttons, text boxes, images and everything. Maybe I would do a specific CSS for it and so on. I think that is very good way of doing the menu system, because it makes the presentation layer separate of the logic. But, if there is a better way, I would do it the better way. For the logic, well, I don't have much to say. OO code, testing, debuging, good and fast algorithms and so on. Also, a good documentation must be written and this is the area I need to make some research in. I think that is for now. I hope I have been enough descriptive. If more questions come on my mind, I will ask them. Edit: I think of blogging every part of the project, or at least writing down everything in a file or something like that. My question is: Is my plan of how to do everything around the project good? And if not, what is necessary to be improved and what other things I can involve for making the project good.

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• RightNow CX Cloud Service Combined with Oracle Fusion CRM in the Cloud

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  ·        The May 2012 release of Oracle’s RightNow CX Cloud Service, the customer experience suite, is now integrated with Oracle Fusion CRM, helping organizations to achieve sustainable business growth through relevant, cross-channel customer interactions that can increase revenue opportunities and drive organizational efficiencies. Relevant Interactions Build Stronger Customer Relationships ·          Armed with a comprehensive view of all customer interactions across channels, the context and status of these interactions, and an awareness of the customer’s value to the organization, companies can now offer more relevant products and services to customers. ·         Using the combined Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service and Oracle Fusion CRM solutions, organizations can increase customer retention, drive higher levels of customer advocacy, and increase sales conversion rates with tools designed to: - Provide a complete, cross-channel view of the customer to sales, marketing and service. - Empower sales and service departments to easily collaborate to proactively solve customer issues, using opportunities to provide purchase advice at the right time and with the right solutions. - Allow sales to easily review service history in preparation for sales calls. - Enable agents to understand customer value based upon prior buying habits and existing opportunities. Deeper Insight Enables Targeted, Personalized Opportunities ·          The combination of Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service and Oracle Fusion CRM allows sales and marketing organizations to simultaneously leverage service interactions from RightNow CX and sales prediction and segmentation capabilities from Fusion Sales. This helps companies to: - Better match products and services to specific customer needs based on customer service history.  - Deliver targeted, personalized interactions intended to help customers derive more value from purchases and to inform future buying decisions. - Identify new opportunities to increase deal size and conversion rates. Supporting Quotes ·         “Every interaction is a relationship opportunity to grow your business. When these interactions are relevant and add value for customers, customers are more likely to trust the relationship and seek purchase advice,” said David Vap, group vice president, Oracle. “This customer trust provides an opportunity to increase customer product adoption and to reduce the cost of customer acquisition, thereby increasing company profitability.” Supporting Resources ·         Oracle Fusion CRM ·         Oracle Fusion Applications ·         Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service ·         OracleCRM on Facebook ·         OracleCRM on YouTube

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• ObjectStorageHelper<T> now available for Windows 8 RTM

  - by jamiet

  In October 2011 I wrote a blog post entitled ObjectStorageHelper<T> – A WinRT utility for Windows 8 where I introduced a little utility class called ObjectStorageHelper<T> that I had been working on while noodling around on the Developer Preview of Windows 8. ObjectStorageHelper<T> makes it easy for anyone building apps for Windows 8 to save data to files. How easy? As easy as this: var myPoco = new Poco() { IntProp = 1, StringProp = "one" }; var objectStorageHelper = new ObjectStorageHelper<Poco>(StorageType.Local); await objectStorageHelper.SaveAsync(myPoco); Compare that to the plumbing code that you would have to write otherwise: var Obj = new Poco() { IntProp = 1, StringProp = "one" }; StorageFile file = null; StorageFolder folder = GetFolder(storageType); file = await folder.CreateFileAsync(FileName(Obj), CreationCollisionOption.ReplaceExisting); IRandomAccessStream writeStream = await file.OpenAsync(FileAccessMode.ReadWrite); using (Stream outStream = Task.Run(() => writeStream.AsStreamForWrite()).Result) {     serializer.Serialize(outStream, Obj);     await outStream.FlushAsync(); } and you can see how ObjectStorageHelper<T> can help save a Windows 8 developer quite a few headaches. ObjectStorageHelper<T> simply requires you to pass it an object to be saved, tell it where to save it (Roaming, Local or Temporary), and you’re done. Retrieving an object from storage is equally as simple: var objectStorageHelper = new ObjectStorageHelper<Poco>(StorageType.Local); var myPoco = await objectStorageHelper.LoadAsync(); Please check the homepage for the project at http://winrtstoragehelper.codeplex.com/ for (much) more info. A number of people have used and tested ObjectStorageHelper<T> since those early days and one of those folks in particular, David Burela, was good enough to report a couple of bugs: Saving Asynchronously Save fails when class is in another project As a result of David’s bug reports and some more extensive testing on my side I have overhauled the initial code that I wrote last October and am confident that it is now much more robust and ready for primetime (check the commit history if you’re interested). The source code (which, again, you can find on Codeplex at http://winrtstoragehelper.codeplex.com/) includes a suite of unit tests to test all of the basic use cases (if you can think of any more please let me know). If you use this in any of your Windows 8 projects then please let me know. I love getting feedback and I’d also love to know if this is actually being used anywhere. @Jamiet

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• How To Build An Enterprise Application - Introduction

  - by Tuan Nguyen

  An enterprise application is a software which fulfills 4 core quality attributes: Reliability Flexibility Reusability Maintainability Reliability is the ability of a system or component to perform its required functions under stated conditions for a specific period of time. Because there are no ways more than testing to make sure a system is reliability, we can exchange the term reliability with the term testability. Flexibility is the ability of changing a system's core features without violating unrelated features or components. Although flexibility can helps us to achieve interoperability easily but the opposite is not true. For example, a program might run on multiple platforms, contains logic for many scenarios but that wouldn't mean it was flexibility if it forces us rewrite code in all components when we just want to change some aspects of a feature it had. Reusability is the ability of sharing one or more system's components for another system. We should just open a component's reusability in the context in which it is used. For example, we write classes that implement UI logic and deliver them to only classes which implementing UI. Maintainability is the ability of adding or removing features to a system after it was released. Maintainability consists of many factors such as readability, analyzability, extensibility therein extensibility is critical. Maintainability requires us to write code that is longer and complexer than normal but it doesn't mean we introduce unneccessarily complex code. We always try to make our code clear and transparent to everyone. An application enterprise is built on an enterprise design which consists of two parts: low-level design and high-level design. At low-level design, it focuses on building loose-coupled classes or components. Particularly, it recommends: Each class or component undertakes only single responsibility (design based on unit test) Classes or components implement and work through interfaces (design based on contract) Dependency relationship between classes and components could be injected at run-time (design based on dependency) At high-level design, it focuses on architecting system into tiers and layers. Particularly, it recommends: Divide system into subsystems for deployment. Each subsytem is called a tier. Typical, an enterprise application would have 3 tiers as illustrated in the following figure: Arrange classes and components to logical containers called layers. Typical, an enterprise application would have 5 layers as illustrated in the following figure

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• Don Knuth and MMIXAL vs. Chuck Moore and Forth -- Algorithms and Ideal Machines -- was there cross-pollination / influence in their ideas / work?

  - by AKE

  Question: To what extent is it known (or believed) that Chuck Moore and Don Knuth had influence on each other's thoughts on ideal machines, or their work on algorithms? I'm interested in citations, interviews, articles, links, or any other sort of evidence. It could also be evidence of the form of A and B here suggest that Moore might have borrowed or influenced C and D from Knuth here, or vice versa. (Opinions are of course welcome, but references / links would be better!) Context: Until fairly recently, I have been primarily familiar with Knuth's work on algorithms and computing models, mostly through TAOCP but also through his interviews and other writings. However, the more I have been using Forth, the more I am struck by both the power of a stack-based machine model, and the way in which the spareness of the model makes fundamental algorithmic improvements more readily apparent. A lot of what Knuth has done in fundamental analysis of algorithms has, it seems to me, a very similar flavour, and I can easily imagine that in a parallel universe, Knuth might perhaps have chosen Forth as his computing model. That's the software / algorithms / programming side of things. When it comes to "ideal computing machines", Knuth in the 70s came up with the MIX computer model, and then, collaborating with designers of state-of-the-art RISC chips through the 90s, updated this with the modern MMIX model and its attendant assembly language MMIXAL. Meanwhile, Moore, having been using and refining Forth as a language, but using it on top of whatever processor happened to be in the computer he was programming, began to imagine a world in which the efficiency and value of stack-based programming were reflected in hardware. So he went on in the 80s to develop his own stack-based hardware chips, defining the term MISC (Minimal Instruction Set Computers) along the way, and ending up eventually with the first Forth chip, the MuP21. Both are brilliant men with keen insight into the art of programming and algorithms, and both work at the intersection between algorithms, programs, and bare metal hardware (i.e. hardware without the clutter of operating systems). Which leads me to the headlined question... Question:To what extent is it known (or believed) that Chuck Moore and Don Knuth had influence on each other's thoughts on ideal machines, or their work on algorithms?

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• Silverlight Cream for June 15, 2010 - 2 -- #883

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Vibor Cipan, Chris Klug, Pete Brown, Kirupa, and Xianzhong Zhu. Shoutouts (thought I gave up on them, didn't you?): Jesse Liberty has the companion video to his WP7 OData post up: New Video: Master/Detail in WinPhone 7 with oData Michael Scherotter who made the first Ball Watch SL1 app back in the day, has a Virtual Event: Creating an Entry for the BALL Watch Silverlight Contest... sounds like the thing to do if you want in on this :) Even if you don't speak Portuguese, you can check this out: MSN Brazil Uses Silverlight to Showcase the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa Erik Mork and crew have their latest up: This Week in Silverlight – Teched and Quizes Michael Klucher has a post up to give you some relief if you're having Trouble Installing the Windows Phone Developer Tools Portuguese above and now French... Jeremy Alles has a post up about [WP7] Windows Phone 7 challenge for french readers ! Just a note, not that it makes any difference, but Adam Kinney turned @SilverlightNews over to me today. I am the only one that has ever posted on it, but still having it all to myself feels special :) From SilverlightCream.com: Silverlight 4 tutorial: HOW TO use PathListBox and Sample Data Crank up that new version of Blend and follow along with Vibor Cipan's PathListBox tutorial ... oh, and sample data too. Cool INotifyPropertyChanged implementation Chris Klug shows off some INotifyPropertyChange goodness he is not implementing, and credits a blog by Manuel Felicio for some inspiration. Check out that post as well... I've tagged his blog... I needed *another* one :) Silverlight Tip: Using LINQ to Select the Largest Available Webcam Resolution With no Silverlight Tip of the Day today, Pete Brown stepped up with this tip for finding the largest available webcam resolution using LINQ ... and read the comment from Rene as well. Creating a Master-Detail UI in Blend Kirupa has a very nice Master/Detail UI post up with backrounder info and the code for the project. There's a running example in the post for you to get an idea what you're learning. Get started with Farseer Physics 2.1.3 in Silverlight 3 Xianzhong Zhu has a Silverlight 3 tutorial up for Farseer Physics 2.1.3 ... might track for Silverlight 4, but hey, WP7 is kinda/sort Silverlight 3, right? ... lots of code and external links. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• Naming Convention for Dedicated Thread Locking objects

  - by Chris Sinclair

  A relatively minor question, but I haven't been able to find official documentation or even blog opinion/discussions on it. Simply put: when I have a private object whose sole purpose is to serve for private lock, what do I name that object? class MyClass { private object LockingObject = new object(); void DoSomething() { lock(LockingObject) { //do something } } } What should we name LockingObject here? Also consider not just the name of the variable but how it looks in-code when locking. I've seen various examples, but seemingly no solid go-to advice: Plenty of usages of SyncRoot (and variations such as _syncRoot). Code Sample: lock(SyncRoot), lock(_syncRoot) This appears to be influenced by VB's equivalent SyncLock statement, the SyncRoot property that exists on some of the ICollection classes and part of some kind of SyncRoot design pattern (which arguably is a bad idea) Being in a C# context, not sure if I'd want to have a VBish naming. Even worse, in VB naming the variable the same as the keyword. Not sure if this would be a source of confusion or not. thisLock and lockThis from the MSDN articles: C# lock Statement, VB SyncLock Statement Code Sample: lock(thisLock), lock(lockThis) Not sure if these were named minimally purely for the example or not Kind of weird if we're using this within a static class/method. Several usages of PadLock (of varying casing) Code Sample: lock(PadLock), lock(padlock) Not bad, but my only beef is it unsurprisingly invokes the image of a physical "padlock" which I tend to not associate with the abstract threading concept. Naming the lock based on what it's intending to lock Code Sample: lock(messagesLock), lock(DictionaryLock), lock(commandQueueLock) In the VB SyncRoot MSDN page example, it has a simpleMessageList example with a private messagesLock object I don't think it's a good idea to name the lock against the type you're locking around ("DictionaryLock") as that's an implementation detail that may change. I prefer naming around the concept/object you're locking ("messagesLock" or "commandQueueLock") Interestingly, I very rarely see this naming convention for locking objects in code samples online or on StackOverflow. Question: What's your opinion generally about naming private locking objects? Recently, I've started naming them ThreadLock (so kinda like option 3), but I'm finding myself questioning that name. I'm frequently using this locking pattern (in the code sample provided above) throughout my applications so I thought it might make sense to get a more professional opinion/discussion about a solid naming convention for them. Thanks!

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• Economic modelling - Resources for valuing goods

  - by Rushyo

  tl;dr: What economic/computer science books would you suggest for learning about economic valuation of goods and simulations thereof? I'm looking to create an economic model for a game based on goods created procedurally. Every natural resource and produced good would be procedurally generated, with certain goods being assigned certain uses. Fakesium might be used for the production of Weapon A and produced from Fakesium factories which use Dilithium and Widgets as reagents, where Widgets are also the product of Foo and Bar The problem is not creating the resources and their various production utlities - but getting the game's AI empires and merchants to correctly value the goods according to their scarcity, utility and production costs. I need to create a simulation of goods which allows the various game factions to assign a common value denominator (credits) to each resource, depending on how much its worth to that empire. I see the simulation being something like: "I have a high requirement for Weapon A. Since I don't have much of Fakesium, which is needed for Weapon A - I must have a high demand for Fakesium. If I can acquire Fakesium, devalue it. If not, increase its value - and also increase demand for Dilithium and Widgets too." This is very naive - because it may be much much cheaper for the empire to simply purchase Dilithium and Widgets directly rather than purchasing Fakesium, for example. Another example is two resources might allow the creation of Weapon A (Fakesium and Lieron), so we'd need to consider that. I've been scratching my head over the problem and it keeps growing. By the time the player joins the world, I'd expect enough iterations of this process to have occurred that prices would have largely normalised - and would then only trigger rarely to compensate for major changes (eg. if the player blows up the world's only Foo mine!) Could anyone suggest resources (books, largely) which outline this style of modelling, preferably in the context of simulations? Since this problem would never occur outside fantasy worlds, I figured this is probably the most likely place to find people who have encountered similar problems and I'm sure there's people who know of good places for Games Developers to start looking at less specific economic theory too. Additionally, does anyone know of any developers with blogs whose games or research applications perform similar modelling?

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• Correcting Grammar for Microsoft Products and Technology

  I see book authors, editors, bloggers, press, team members, and occasionally even a VP misspell our products, technologies, and features that I thought I would build and maintain a list of the correct capitalization and spelling of the most commonly misspelled Microsoft products and technologies. Sources: Internal site (brandtools) and the Microsoft Trademarks Web site. Last updated: April 27, 2010   Incorrect Correct .net or .Net .NET .Net framework 4.0, .NET framework 4.0 .NET Framework AdCenter, Ad Center, Adcenter adCenter Ado.net, ADO.Net ADO.NET Asp.net, ASP.Net ASP.NET Asp.Net ajax, Asp.NET Ajax ASP.NET AJAX Asp.Net Mvc ASP.NET MVC Biz Spark, Bizspark BizSpark Clear Type, Clear type, Cleartype ClearType Directaccess, Direct Access DirectAccess Direct Show, Directshow DirectShow Direct X DirectX Dream Spark, Dreamspark DreamSpark Home Group, Home group HomeGroup HotMail, Hot Mail Hotmail Info Path, Infopath InfoPath Intellisense, Intellisense IntelliSense Iron Ruby IronRuby Kin KIN Linq LINQ MSN Messenger Windows Live Messenger One Note, Onenote OneNote Open type, Opentype OpenType PlayTo, Play to Play To Power Point, Powerpoint PowerPoint Powershell, Power Shell PowerShell Sea Dragon, Seadragon SeaDragon Sharepoint, Share Point SharePoint Silver Light, SilverLight Silverlight Skydrive, Sky Drive SkyDrive Sql Server SQL Server Visual Basic .net (the .net was removed in the 2005 version) Visual Basic  Visual C# Express 2010 or Visual Basic Express 2010 or Visual C++ Express 2010 Visual version 2010 Express as in Visual C# 2010 Express, Visual Basic 2010 Express Visual Studio 2010 Team Foundation Server Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 Visual Studio Ultimate 2010 or Visual Studio Professional 2010 Visual Studio 2010 version, as in Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate, Visual Studio 2010 Professional WebSite Spark, Website spark Website Spark Win 32 Win32 Windows Mobile (except when referring to previous versions like 5.0 or 6), Windows phone 7 Series Windows Phone Xaml XAML XBOX, xbox Xbox Xbox Live, XBOX Live Xbox LIVE   Caveats These guidelines dont apply to URLs (ex: www.asp.net) or to code namespaces, variables, and classes should follow the .NET Framework naming guidelines. This list only covers capitalization/spacing rules, it doesnt cover the correct usage of (tm) or symbols or the correct word usage rules. For those, refer to the trademark Web site. Also note that I have no idea why we are so inconsistent say on keeping features/brands two words versus one word or the order of product/version/year.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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• InvokeRequired not reliable?

  - by marocanu2001

  InvalidOperationException: Cross-thread operation not valid: Control 'progressBar' accessed from a thread other than the thread it was created ... Now this is not a nice way to start a day! not even if it's a Monday! So you have seen this and already thought, come on, this is an old one, just ask whether InvokeRequired before calling the method in the control, something like this: if (progressBar.InvokeRequired) {           progressBar.Invoke  ( new MethodInvoker( delegate {  progressBar.Value = 50;    }) ) }else      progressBar.Value = 50;    Unfortunately this was not working the way I would have expected, I got this error, debugged and though in debugging the InvokeRequired had become true , the error was thrown on the branch that did not required Invoke. So there was a scenario where InvokeRequired returned false and still accessing the control was not on the right thread ... Problem was that I kept showing and hiding the little form showing the progressbar. The progressbar was updating on an event  , ProgressChanged and I could not guarantee the little form was loaded by the time the event was thrown. So , spotted the problem, if none of the parents of the control you try to modify is created at the time of the method invoking, the InvokeRequired returns true! That causes your code to execute on the woring thread. Of course, updating UI before the win dow was created is not a legitimate action either, still I would have expected a different error. MSDN: "If the control's handle does not yet exist, InvokeRequired searches up the control's parent chain until it finds a control or form that does have a window handle. If no appropriate handle can be found, the InvokeRequired method returns false. This means that InvokeRequired can return false if Invoke is not required (the call occurs on the same thread), or if the control was created on a different thread but the control's handle has not yet been created." Have  a look at InvokeRequired's implementation: public bool InvokeRequired {     get     {         HandleRef hWnd;         int lpdwProcessId;         if (this.IsHandleCreated)         {             hWnd = new HandleRef(this, this.Handle);         }         else         {             Control wrapper = this.FindMarshallingControl();             if (!wrapper.IsHandleCreated)             {                 return false; // <==========             }             hWnd = new HandleRef(wrapper, wrapper.Handle);         }         int windowThreadProcessId = SafeNativeMethods.GetWindowThreadProcessId(hWnd, out lpdwProcessId);         int currentThreadId = SafeNativeMethods.GetCurrentThreadId();         return (windowThreadProcessId != currentThreadId);     } } Here 's a good article about this and a workaround http://www.ikriv.com/en/prog/info/dotnet/MysteriousHang.html

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• Transparent Technology from Amazon

  - by David Dorf

  Amazon has been making some interesting moves again, this time in the augmented humanity area.  Augmented humanity is about helping humans overcome their shortcomings using technology.  Putting a powerful smartphone in your pocket helps you in many ways like navigating streets, communicating with far off friends, and accessing information.  But the interface for smartphones is somewhat limiting and unnatural, so companies have been looking for ways to make the technology more transparent and therefore easier to use. When Apple helped us drop the stylus, we took a giant leap forward in simplicity.  Using touchscreens with intuitive gestures was part of the iPhone's original appeal.  People don't want to know that technology is there -- they just want the benefits.  So what's the next leap beyond the touchscreen to make smartphones even easier to use? Two natural ways we interact with the world around us is by using sight and voice.  Google and Apple have been using both in their mobile platforms for limited uses cases.  Nobody actually wants to type a text message, so why not just speak it?  Any if you want more information about a book, why not just snap a picture of the cover?  That's much more accurate than trying to key the title and/or author. So what's Amazon been doing?  First, Amazon released a new iPhone app called Flow that allows iPhone users to see information about products in context.  Yes, its an augmented reality app that uses the phone's camera to view products, and overlays data about the products on the screen.  For the most part it requires the barcode to be visible to correctly identify the product, but I believe it can also recognize certain logos as well.  Download the app and try it out but don't expect perfection.  Its good enough to demonstrate the concept, but its far from accurate enough.  (MobileBeat did a pretty good review.)  Extrapolate to the future and we might just have a heads-up display in our eyeglasses. The second interesting area is voice response, for which Siri is getting lots of attention.  Amazon may have purchased a voice recognition company called Yap, although the deal is not confirmed.  But it would make perfect sense, especially with the Kindle Fire in Amazon's lineup. I believe over the next 3-5 years the way in which we interact with smartphones will mature, and they will become more transparent yet more important to our daily lives.  This will, of course, impact the way we shop, making information more readily accessible than it already is.  Amazon seems to be positioning itself to be at the forefront of this trend, so we should be watching them carefully.

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• MythTV lost recordings - "No recordings available" and no recording rules either

  - by nimasmi

  I have a c.6 year old mythtv database. I recently upgraded from Ubuntu 10.04 to 12.04. This brought a MythTV upgrade from 0.24 to 0.25, which went well. Today, all my recordings have disappeared. They still exist in the /var/lib/mythtv/recordings folder, and the 'M' key in the Watch Recordings page says that there are 201 recordings available somewhere, but they will not display. See screenshot: (implicit thanks to whomever upvoted this, giving me sufficient reputation to upload images) Changing the filter does not remedy the fact that there is nothing shown in the lists. My Upcoming Recordings screen says that there are no rules set, but my list of previously recorded shows is still there, and has an entry from as recently as 3am today. mythbackend --printsched gives the following: user@box:~$ mythbackend --printsched 2012-09-22 12:59:20.537008 C mythbackend version: fixes/0.25 [v0.25.2-15-g46cab93] www.mythtv.org 2012-09-22 12:59:20.537043 C Qt version: compile: 4.8.1, runtime: 4.8.1 2012-09-22 12:59:20.537048 N Enabled verbose msgs: general 2012-09-22 12:59:20.537076 N Setting Log Level to LOG_INFO 2012-09-22 12:59:20.537142 I Added logging to the console 2012-09-22 12:59:20.537152 I Added database logging to table logging 2012-09-22 12:59:20.537279 N Setting up SIGHUP handler 2012-09-22 12:59:20.537373 N Using runtime prefix = /usr 2012-09-22 12:59:20.537394 N Using configuration directory = /home/user/.mythtv 2012-09-22 12:59:20.537999 I Assumed character encoding: en_GB.UTF-8 2012-09-22 12:59:20.538599 N Empty LocalHostName. 2012-09-22 12:59:20.538610 I Using localhost value of box 2012-09-22 12:59:20.538792 I Testing network connectivity to '192.168.1.2' 2012-09-22 12:59:20.539420 I Starting process manager 2012-09-22 12:59:20.541412 I Starting IO manager (read) 2012-09-22 12:59:20.541715 I Starting IO manager (write) 2012-09-22 12:59:20.541836 I Starting process signal handler 2012-09-22 12:59:20.684497 N Setting QT default locale to EN_GB 2012-09-22 12:59:20.684694 I Current locale EN_GB 2012-09-22 12:59:20.684813 N Reading locale defaults from /usr/share/mythtv//locales/en_gb.xml 2012-09-22 12:59:20.697623 I New static DB connectionDataDirectCon 2012-09-22 12:59:20.704769 I MythCoreContext: Connecting to backend server: 192.168.1.2:6543 (try 1 of 1) Calculating Schedule from database. Inputs, Card IDs, and Conflict info may be invalid if you have multiple tuners. 2012-09-22 12:59:27.710538 E MythSocket(21dfcd0:14): readStringList: Error, timed out after 7000 ms. 2012-09-22 12:59:27.710592 C Protocol version check failure. The response to MYTH_PROTO_VERSION was empty. This happens when the backend is too busy to respond, or has deadlocked in due to bugs or hardware failure. Things I have tried so far: restart the backend restart the frontend run mythtv-setup and check database passwords and IP addresses change the frontend setting for backend IP from localhost to 192.168.1.2 (the backend/frontend's IP) run optimize_mythdb.pl Other suggestions appreciated.

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• Script For Detecting Availability of XMLHttp in Internet Explorer

  - by Duncan Mills

  Having the XMLHttpRequest API available is key to any ADF Faces Rich Client application. Unfortunately, it is possible for users to switch off this option in Internet Explorer as a Security setting. Without XMLHttpRequest available, your ADF Faces application will simply not work correctly, but rather than giving the user a bad user experience wouldn't it be nicer to tell them that they need to make some changes in order to use the application?  Thanks to Blake Sullivan in the ADF Faces team we now have a little script that can do just this. The script is available from https://samplecode.oracle.com here - The attached file browserCheck.js is what you'll need to add to your project.The best way to use this script is to make changes to whatever template you are using for the entry points to your application. If you're not currently using template then you'll have to make the same change in each of your JSPX pages. Save the browserCheck.js file into a /js/ directory under your HTML root within your UI project (e.g. ViewController)In the template or page, select the <af:document> object in the Structure window. From the right mouse (context) menu choose Facet and select the metaContainer facet.Switch to the source code view and locate the metaContainer facet. Then insert the following lines (I've included the facet tag for clarity but you'll already have that):      <f:facet name="metaContainer">        <af:resource type="javascript"                      source="/js/browserCheck.js"/>        <af:resource type="javascript">           xmlhttpNativeCheck(                     "help/howToConfigureYourBrowser.html");        </af:resource>      </f:facet>Note that the argument to the xmlhttpNativeCheck function is a page that you want to show to the user if they need to change their browser configuration. So build this page in the appropriate place as well. You can also just call the function without any arguments e.g. xmlhttpNativeCheck(); in which case it will pop up default instructions for the user to follow, but not redirect to any other page.

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• MySQL Enterprise Backup 3.8.2 - Overview

  - by Priya Jayakumar

    MySQL Enterprise Backup (MEB) is the ideal solution for backing up MySQL databases. MEB 3.8.2 is released in June 2013. MySQL Enterprise Backup 3.8.2 release’s main goal is to improve usability. With this release, users can know the progress of backup completed both in terms of size and as a percentage of the total. This release also offers options to be able to manage the behavior of MEB in case the space on the secondary storage is completely exhausted during backup. The progress indicator is a (short) string that indicates how far the execution of a time-consuming MEB command has progressed. It consists of one or more "meters" that measures the progress of the command. There are two options introduced to control the progress reporting function of mysqlbackup command (1) –show-progress (2) –progress-interval. The user can control the progress indicator by using “--show-progress” option in any of the MEB operations. This option instructs MEB to output periodically short reports on the progress of time-consuming commands. The argument of this option instructs where the output could be sent. For example it could be stderr, stdout, file, fifo and table. With the “--show-progress” option both the total size of the backup to be copied and the size that’s already copied will be shown. Along with this, the state of the operation for example data or meta-data being copied or tables being locked and other such operations will also be reported. This gives more clear information to the DBA on the progress of the backup that’s happening. Interval between progress report in seconds is controlled by “--progress-interval” option. For more information on this please refer progress-report-options. MEB can also be accessed through GUI from MySQL WorkBench’s next version. This can be used as the front end interface for MEB users to perform backup operations at the click of a button. This feature was highly requested by DBAs and will be very useful. Refer http://insidemysql.com/mysql-workbench-6-0-a-sneak-preview/ for WorkBench upcoming release info. Along with the progress report feature some of the important issues like below are also addressed in MEB 3.8.2. In MEB 3.8.2 a new command line option “--on-disk-full” is introduced to abort or warn the user when a backup process encounters a full disk condition. When no option is given, by default it would abort. A few issues related to “incremental-backup” are also addressed in this release. Please refer 3.8.2 documentation for more details. It would be good for MEB users to move to 3.8.2 to take incremental backups. Overall the added usability and the important defects fixed in this release makes MySQL Enterprise Backup 3.8.2 a promising release.  

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• How I might think like a hacker so that I can anticipate security vulnerabilities in .NET or Java before a hacker hands me my hat [closed]

  - by Matthew Patrick Cashatt

  Premise I make a living developing web-based applications for all form-factors (mobile, tablet, laptop, etc). I make heavy use of SOA, and send and receive most data as JSON objects. Although most of my work is completed on the .NET or Java stacks, I am also recently delving into Node.js. This new stack has got me thinking that I know reasonably well how to secure applications using known facilities of .NET and Java, but I am woefully ignorant when it comes to best practices or, more importantly, the driving motivation behind the best practices. You see, as I gain more prominent clientele, I need to be able to assure them that their applications are secure and, in order to do that, I feel that I should learn to think like a malevolent hacker. What motivates a malevolent hacker: What is their prime mover? What is it that they are most after? Ultimately, the answer is money or notoriety I am sure, but I think it would be good to understand the nuanced motivators that lead to those ends: credit card numbers, damning information, corporate espionage, shutting down a highly visible site, etc. As an extension of question #1--but more specific--what are the things most likely to be seeked out by a hacker in almost any application? Passwords? Financial info? Profile data that will gain them access to other applications a user has joined? Let me be clear here. This is not judgement for or against the aforementioned motivations because that is not the goal of this post. I simply want to know what motivates a hacker regardless of our individual judgement. What are some heuristics followed to accomplish hacker goals? Ultimately specific processes would be great to know; however, in order to think like a hacker, I would really value your comments on the broader heuristics followed. For example: "A hacker always looks first for the low-hanging fruit such as http spoofing" or "In the absence of a CAPTCHA or other deterrent, a hacker will likely run a cracking script against a login prompt and then go from there." Possibly, "A hacker will try and attack a site via Foo (browser) first as it is known for Bar vulnerability. What are the most common hacks employed when following the common heuristics? Specifics here. Http spoofing, password cracking, SQL injection, etc. Disclaimer I am not a hacker, nor am I judging hackers (Heck--I even respect their ingenuity). I simply want to learn how I might think like a hacker so that I may begin to anticipate vulnerabilities before .NET or Java hands me a way to defend against them after the fact.

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• Class Design -- Multiple Calls from One Method or One Call from Multiple Methods?

  - by Andrew

  I've been working on some code recently that interfaces with a CMS we use and it's presented me with a question on class design that I think is applicable in a number of situations. Essentially, what I am doing is extracting information from the CMS and transforming this information into objects that I can use programatically for other purposes. This consists of two steps: Retrieve the data from the CMS (we have a DAL that I use, so this is essentially just specifying what data from the CMS I want--no connection logic or anything like that) Map the parsed data to my own [C#] objects There are basically two ways I can approach this: One call from multiple methods public void MainMethodWhereIDoStuff() { IEnumerable<MyObject> myObjects = GetMyObjects(); // Do other stuff with myObjects } private static IEnumerable<MyObject> GetMyObjects() { IEnumerable<CmsDataItem> cmsDataItems = GetCmsDataItems(); List<MyObject> mappedObjects = new List<MyObject>(); // do stuff to map the CmsDataItems to MyObjects return mappedObjects; } private static IEnumerable<CmsDataItem> GetCmsDataItems() { List<CmsDataItem> cmsDataItems = new List<CmsDataItem>(); // do stuff to get the CmsDataItems I want return cmsDataItems; } Multiple calls from one method public void MainMethodWhereIDoStuff() { IEnumerable<CmsDataItem> cmsDataItems = GetCmsDataItems(); IEnumerable<MyObject> myObjects = GetMyObjects(cmsDataItems); // do stuff with myObjects } private static IEnumerable<MyObject> GetMyObjects(IEnumerable<CmsDataItem> itemsToMap) { // ... } private static IEnumerable<CmsDataItem> GetCmsDataItems() { // ... } I am tempted to say that the latter is better than the former, as GetMyObjects does not depend on GetCmsDataItems, and it is explicit in the calling method the steps that are executed to retrieve the objects (I'm concerned that the first approach is kind of an object-oriented version of spaghetti code). On the other hand, the two helper methods are never going to be used outside of the class, so I'm not sure if it really matters whether one depends on the other. Furthermore, I like the fact that in the first approach the objects can be retrieved from one line-- most likely anyone working with the main method doesn't care how the objects are retrieved, they just need to retrieve the objects, and the "daisy chained" helper methods hide the exact steps needed to retrieve them (in practice, I actually have a few more methods but am still able to retrieve the object collection I want in one line). Is one of these methods right and the other wrong? Or is it simply a matter of preference or context dependent?

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• Multiple render targets and gamma correctness in Direct3D9

  - by Mario

  Let's say in a deferred renderer when building your G-Buffer you're going to render texture color, normals, depth and whatever else to your multiple render targets at once. Now if you want to have a gamma-correct rendering pipeline and you use regular sRGB textures as well as rendertargets, you'll need to apply some conversions along the way, because your filtering, sampling and calculations should happen in linear space, not sRGB space. Of course, you could store linear color in your textures and rendertargets, but this might very well introduce bad precision and banding issues. Reading from sRGB textures is easy: just set SRGBTexture = true; in your texture sampler in your HLSL effect code and the hardware does the conversion sRGB-linear for you. Writing to an sRGB rendertarget is theoretically easy, too: just set SRGBWriteEnable = true; in your effect pass in HLSL and your linear colors will be converted to sRGB space automatically. But how does this work with multiple rendertargets? I only want to do these corrections to the color textures and rendertarget, not to the normals, depth, specularity or whatever else I'll be rendering to my G-Buffer. Ok, so I just don't apply SRGBTexture = true; to my non-color textures, but when using SRGBWriteEnable = true; I'll do a gamma correction to all the values I write out to my rendertargets, no matter what I actually store there. I found some info on gamma over at Microsoft: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb173460%28v=vs.85%29.aspx For hardware that supports Multiple Render Targets (Direct3D 9) or Multiple-element Textures (Direct3D 9), only the first render target or element is written. If I understand correctly, SRGBWriteEnable should only be applied to the first rendertarget, but according to my tests it doesn't and is used for all rendertargets instead. Now the only alternative seems to be to handle these corrections manually in my shader and only correct the actual color output, but I'm not totally sure, that this'll not have any negative impact on color correctness. E.g. if the GPU does any blending or filtering or multisampling after the Linear-sRGB conversion... Do I even need gamma correction in this case, if I'm just writing texture color without lighting to my rendertarget? As far as I know, I DO need it because of the texture filtering and mip sampling happening in sRGB space instead, if I don't correct for it. Anyway, it'd be interesting to hear other people's solutions or thoughts about this.

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for December 6, 2012

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Above and Beyond with the A-Team Maybe it's the coffee… If you follow this blog you've probably noticed that I regularly feature posts from members of the Oracle Fusion Middleware Architecture team, otherwise known as the A-Team. One of those bloggers, someone identified only as "fip" who writes on the A-Team SOA blog, went above and beyond on Dec 4, publishing a total of four substantial technical posts in a single day, each one worth a look: Retrieve Performance Data from SOA Infrastructure Database Configure Oracle SOA JMSAdatper to Work with WLS JMS Topics How to Achieve OC4J RMI Load Balancing Using BPEL Performance Statistics to Diagnose Performance Bottlenecks Web Service Example - Part 3: Asynchronous | The Oracle ADF Mobile Blog Part 3 in this series from the Oracle ADF Mobile blog looks at "firing the web service asynchronously and then filling in the UI when it completes." Denis says, "This can be useful when you have data on the device in a local store and want to show that to the user while the application uses lazy loading from a web service to load more data." ADF Mobile - Implementing Reusable Mobile Architecture | Andrejus Baranovskis "Reusability was always a strong part of ADF," says Oracle ACE Director Andrejus Baranovskis. "The same high reusability level is supported now in ADF Mobile." The objective of this post is "to prove technically that [the] reusable architecture concept works for ADF Mobile." Basic is Best | Eric Stephens "The world we live in and enterprises we strive to transform with enterprise architecture are complicated organisms, much like the human body," says Oracle Enterprise Architect Eric Stephens. "But sometimes a simple solution is the best approach...Whatever level of abstraction you are working at, less is more." Selling Federal Enterprise Architecture | Ted McLaughlan "EA must be 'sold' directly to the communities that matter from a coordinated, proactive messaging perspective that takes BOTH the Program-level value drivers AND the broader Agency mission and IT maturity context into consideration, " explains Ted McLaughlan. And that's true for any organization. Avoiding the "I'm Spartacus" Scenario in SOA | Ben Wilcock "This ‘SOA Spartacus’ scenario usually occurs quite soon after SOA is articulated as the primary strategic direction of the programme," says Ben Wilcock, "but before the organisation’s SOA capability is mature enough to understand what is meant by SOA, and how it should be designed and delivered." In such cases, perhaps the "A" in SOA is missing, no? Thought for the Day "It makes me feel guilty that anybody should have such a good time doing what they are supposed to do." — Charles Eames (1907–1978) Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

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• Best practices for logging and tracing in .NET

  - by Levidad

  I've been reading a lot about tracing and logging, trying to find some golden rule for best practices in the matter, but there isn't any. People say that good programmers produce good tracing, but put it that way and it has to come from experience. I've also read similar questions in here and through the internet and they are not really the same thing I am asking or do not have a satisfying answer, maybe because the questions lack some detail. So, folks say that tracing should sort of replicate the experience of debugging the application in cases where you can't attach a debugger. It should provide enough context so that you can see which path is taken at each control point in the application. Going deeper, you can even distinguish between tracing and event logging, in that "event logging is different from tracing in that it captures major states rather than detailed flow of control". Now, say I want to do my tracing and logging using only the standard .NET classes, those in the System.Diagnostics namespace. I figured that the TraceSource class is better for the job than the static Trace class, because I want to differentiate among the trace levels and using the TraceSource class I can pass in a parameter informing the event type, while using the Trace class I must use Trace.WriteLineIf and then verify things like SourceSwitch.TraceInformation and SourceSwitch.TraceErrors, and it doesn't even have properties like TraceVerbose or TraceStart. With all that in mind, would you consider a good practice to do as follows: Trace a "Start" event when begining a method, which should represent a single logical operation or a pipeline, along with a string representation of the parameter values passed in to the method. Trace an "Information" event when inserting an item into the database. Trace an "Information" event when taking one path or another in an important if/else statement. Trace a "Critical" or "Error" in a catch block depending on weather this is a recoverable error. Trace a "Stop" event when finishing the execution of the method. And also, please clarify when best to trace Verbose and Warning event types. If you have examples of code with nice trace/logging and are willing to share, that would be excelent. Note: I've found some good information here, but still not what I am looking for: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/ff714589.aspx Thanks in advance!

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• Creating the Completely Customized World Just for YOU

  - by divya.malik

  OK so not a customized world, but do you know what goes into creating that customized web store front for you? How do you get those additional offers from vendors when you call in for service or when you are browsing a storefront. This is what is has been happening behind the scenes.  When a customer calls in a contact center for service, at the end of the conversation, they are offered a new product, or service. But what just transpired was that the CRM system that was in place had routed the call to the right agent, the agent got the pop up screen with the customer information, and the call request  was handled. Then came the decision point to cross-sell and up-sell, The agent got some recommended offers that were created based on analyzed data (this data had been put into a data warehouse, modeled, profiled and rules were implemented e.g.. People with profile X like product Y).  But with this system, what happens is that analytics can be applied to a very small subset. Now comes Real Time Decisioning (RTD), this helps companies make optimal decisions in the context of transactional systems. It enables companies to improve business processes with real time intelligence on every single transaction. RTD is like a service plug-in that you put at the back of your transactional systems and that you  ping to get a recommendation.  It listens to business process flows and data moving through the process, getting all that data, processes all that you can do with that data, and gives out out various offers. It takes a process centric view of analytics rather than just a data centric view. It continuously observes and learns from ever-changing customer behavior and applies those insights to providing real-time decisions and recommendations at any customer touch point. At Oracle we define Real Time Decisioning as “ The solution that addresses a business issue faced by all organizations : how to make accurate decisions, using the most up to date information, in real time…consistently and in large volumes”. Here is a video on recommendation engines that are benefiting from real time decisioning today and see how it is helping online vendors.

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