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• Collaborative work (small team) - Best practices

  - by LEM01

  I'm currently working in a very small team of programmers (2-3) and I'm looking for advices/best practices on how to organise our work. We're all working on the same application using PHP. Today we're kind of all working on our way. Today situation: List item that have to be worked on by each dev 1/week. What has to be done is defined at a high functional level (ex: Build the search engine for this product..) Commit / merge our individual branches (git) every week before the next meeting No real dev rules, no code review No test written (aouutch) Problems faced: Code quality issue: discovering someone else code is sometime tough (inline, variable+function+class names, spaces, comments..) Changes in already existing classes (impact on someone else work) Responsibility of each dev unclear: after getting someone else code and discover something messy, should I make the change? Should he make the change? How to plan those things,... What I'm looking for: Basically I'm looking into structuring the way we develop things in order to avoid frustration and improve overall quality. How to define coding standards (naming convention, code rules...)? Do you you any validation script to make sure code is valid before committing? Do you think that defining an architect role in the team is needed? Someone that would actually define what has to be developed during the next phase. By defining interfaces or class descriptions that have to be written. (Does it make sense in such a small team?) Today we're losing time into understanding what others did or tried to do, we're also losing time in discussion like "you should have done it that way! Why is this class doing that and not that..? Shouldn't we have a embedded class rather that this set of data...". I'm looking into a work process, maybe with more defined responsibilities and process in order to improve our performance. If you have experience, advices, best practices or anything to share that we could benefit from it will be much appreciated! Thanks a lot for your time!

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• HTML5 platformer collision detection problem

  - by fnx

  I'm working on a 2D platformer game, and I'm having a lot of trouble with collision detection. I've looked trough some tutorials, questions asked here and Stackoverflow, but I guess I'm just too dumb to understand what's wrong with my code. I've wanted to make simple bounding box style collisions and ability to determine on which side of the box the collision happens, but no matter what I do, I always get some weird glitches, like the player gets stuck on the wall or the jumping is jittery. You can test the game here: Platform engine test. Arrow keys move and z = run, x = jump, c = shoot. Try to jump into the first pit and slide on the wall. Here's the collision detection code: function checkCollisions(a, b) { if ((a.x > b.x + b.width) || (a.x + a.width < b.x) || (a.y > b.y + b.height) || (a.y + a.height < b.y)) { return false; } else { handleCollisions(a, b); return true; } } function handleCollisions(a, b) { var a_top = a.y, a_bottom = a.y + a.height, a_left = a.x, a_right = a.x + a.width, b_top = b.y, b_bottom = b.y + b.height, b_left = b.x, b_right = b.x + b.width; if (a_bottom + a.vy > b_top && distanceBetween(a_bottom, b_top) + a.vy < distanceBetween(a_bottom, b_bottom)) { a.topCollision = true; a.y = b.y - a.height + 2; a.vy = 0; a.canJump = true; } else if (a_top + a.vy < b_bottom && distanceBetween(a_top, b_bottom) + a.vy < distanceBetween(a_top, b_top)) { a.bottomCollision = true; a.y = b.y + b.height; a.vy = 0; } else if (a_right + a.vx > b_left && distanceBetween(a_right, b_left) < distanceBetween(a_right, b_right)) { a.rightCollision = true; a.x = b.x - a.width - 3; //a.vx = 0; } else if (a_left + a.vx < b_right && distanceBetween(a_left, b_right) < distanceBetween(a_left, b_left)) { a.leftCollision = true; a.x = b.x + b.width + 3; //a.vx = 0; } } function distanceBetween(a, b) { return Math.abs(b-a); }

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• Help writing server script to ban IP's from a list

  - by Chev_603

  I have a VPS that I use as an openvpn and web server. For some reason, my apache log files are filled with thousands of these hack attempts: "POST /xmlrpc.php HTTP/1.0" 404 395 These attack attempts fill up 90% of my logs. I think it's a WordPress vulnerability they're looking for. Obviously they are not successful (I don't even have Wordpress on my server), but it's annoying and probably resource consuming as well. I am trying to write a bash script that will do the following: Search the apache logs and grab the offending IP's (even if they try it once), Sort them into a list with each unique IP on a seperate line, And then block them using the IP table rules. I am a bash newb, and so far my script does everything except Step 3. I can manually block the IP's, but that's tedious and besides, this is Linux and it's perfectly capable of doing it for me. I also want the script to be customizable so that I (or anyone else who wants to use it) can change the variables to suit whatever situation I/they may deal with in the future. Here is the script so far: #!/bin/bash ##IP LIST GENERATOR ##Author Chev Young ##Script to search Apache logs and list IP's based on custom filters ## ##Define our variables: DIRECT=~/Script ##Location of script&where to put results/temp files LOGFILE=/var/log/apache2/access.log ## Logfile to search for offenders TEMPLIST=xml_temp ## Temporary file name IP_LIST=ipstoban ## Name of results file FILTER1=xmlrpc ## What are we looking for? (Requests we want to ban) cd $DIRECT if [ ! -f $TEMPLIST ];then touch $TEMPLIST ##Create temp file fi cat $LOGFILE | grep $FILTER1 >> $DIRECT/$TEMPLIST ## Only interested in the IP's, so: sed -e 's/\([0-9]\+\.[0-9]\+\.[0-9]\+\.[0-9]\+\).*$/\1/' -e t -e d $DIRECT/$TEMPLIST | sort | uniq > $DIRECT/$IP_LIST rm $TEMPLIST ## Clean temp file echo "Done. Results located at $DIRECT/$IP_LIST" So I need help with the next part of the script, which should ban the IP's (incoming and perhaps outgoing too) from the resulting $IP_LIST file. I don't care if it utilizes UFW or IPTables directly, as long as it bans the IP's. I'd probably run it as a cron task. What I'm having trouble with is understanding how to use line of the result file as a seperate variable to do something like: ufw deny $IP1 $IP2 $IP3, ect Any ideas? Thanks.

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• rotating an object on an arc

  - by gardian06

  I am trying to get a turret to rotate on an arc, and have hit a wall. I have 8 possible starting orientations for the turrets, and want them to rotate on a 90 degree arc. I currently take the starting rotation of the turret, and then from that derive the positive, and negative boundary of the arc. because of engine restrictions (Unity) I have to do all of my tests against a value which is between [0,360], and due to numerical precision issues I can not test against specific values. I would like to write a general test without having to go in, and jury rig cases //my current test is: // member variables public float negBound; public float posBound; // found in Start() function (called immediately after construction) // eulerAngles.y is the the degree measure of the starting y rotation negBound = transform.eulerAngles.y-45; posBound = transform.eulerAngles.y+45; // insure that values are within bounds if(negBound<0){ negBound+=360; }else if(posBound>360){ posBound-=360; } // called from Update() when target not in firing line void Rotate(){ // controlls what direction if(transform.eulerAngles.y>posBound){ dir = -1; } else if(transform.eulerAngles.y < negBound){ dir = 1; } // rotate object } follows is a table of values for my different cases (please excuse my force formatting) read as base is the starting rotation of the turret, neg is the negative boundry, pos is the positive boundry, range is the acceptable range of values, and works is if it performs as expected with the current code. |base-|-neg-|-pos--|----------range-----------|-works-| |---0---|-315-|--45--|-315-0,0-45----------|----------| |--45--|---0---|--90--|-0-45,54-90----------|----x----| |-135-|---90--|-180-|-90-135,135-180---|----x----| |-180-|--135-|-225-|-135-180,180-225-|----x----| |-225-|--180-|-270-|-180-225,225-270-|----x----| |-270-|--225-|-315-|-225-270,270-315-|----------| |-315-|--270-|---0---|--270-315,315-0---|----------| I will need to do all tests from derived, or stored values, but can not figure out how to get all of my cases to work simultaneously. //I attempted to concatenate the 2 tests: if((transform.eulerAngles.y>posBound)&&(transform.eulerAngles.y < negBound)){ dir *= -1; } this caused only the first case to be successful // I attempted to store a opposite value, and do a void Rotate(){ // controlls what direction if((transform.eulerAngles.y > posBound)&&(transform.eulerAngles.y<oposite)){ dir = -1; } else if((transform.eulerAngles.y < negBound)&&(transform.eulerAngles.y>oposite)){ dir = 1; } // rotate object } this causes the opposite situation as indicated on the table. What am I missing here?

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• Forced to be trained [closed]

  - by steeb

  is it OK to force employees to take a training in order to make them sign a contract to stay in the job for X years? Here I'm the only developer in the company and before this job I've developed in VB6, VB.Net and others. There are others technicians here but they query the database server to make reports and make little programs but do not spend all day in programming. I was hired here to manage some legacy data to be migrated to a new system and I used my experience to accomplish the task. I also have made some utilities and other developments. Since we went live with the new system I've been developing a lot of side programs, add-ons and changed the source code of it and basically I've been learning from it since then and became some sort of jack of all trades when some feature needs to be changed or corrected. I have one and a half year in this company but during the last 8 months I've been entirely programming in the system. There have been times when even the implementers ask me how I accomplish certain things. The issue here is that the company has come and told me and other co-workers (which do not program in the system but know basic programming and databases) to have a basic training to program for the new system's platform and when we finish it we will sign a contract to stay in the company for an unspecified time. They have offered also an unspecified better salary. I'm feeling very suspicious cause I know the basics of system and I don't understand why I have to take it, being known by everybody all developments I've made. I gathered with my boss and told him that I should not take that course because I feel that I can learn more with all the daily requirements I've been asked and they should save that money. But he responded me that I have to take it and sign after that. I think they want me to be with them for a long time, and I'd like to, but my opinion is that I would like to stay in the company because I feel comfortable in all laboral aspects (including salary) but not because I signed a contract forced to do more tasks and forced to say no if I have others and better job offers. What advice can you give me in this kind of situation?

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• Organization &amp; Architecture UNISA Studies &ndash; Chap 13

  - by MarkPearl

  Learning Outcomes Explain the advantages of using a large number of registers Discuss the way in which compilers optimize register usage Discuss the evolution of CISC machines Describe the characteristics of RISC architecture Discuss the RISC vs. CISC controversy Describe the way in which RISC and CISC design principles can be combined Instruction Execution Characteristics To understand the the line of reasoning of RISC advocates, we need a brief overview of instruction execution characteristics. These include… Operations Operands Procedure Calls These three sections can be studied in depth in the textbook at pages 503 - 505 A number of groups have come up with the conclusion that the attempt to make the instruction set architecture closer to HLLs (High Level Languages) is not the most effective design strategy. Rather HLL’s can be best supported by optimizing performance of the most time-consuming features of typical HLL programs. Generally 3 main characteristics came up to improve performance… Use a large number of registers or use a compiler to optimize register usage Careful attention needs to be paid to the design of instruction pipelines A simplified (reduced) instruction set is indicated The use of a large register optimization One of the most important design principles of RISC machines is the use of a large number of registers. The concept of register windows and the use of a large register file versus the use of cache memory are discussed. On the face of it, the use of a large set of registers should decrease the need to access memory. The design task is to organize the registers in such a fashion that this goal is realized. Read page 507 – 510 for a detailed explanation. Compiler-based register optimization   Reduced Instructions Set Architecture There are two advantages to smaller programs… Because the program takes up less memory, there is a savings in that resource (this was more compelling when memory was more expensive) Smaller programs should improve performance, and this will happen in two ways – fewer instructions means fewer instruction bytes to be fetched and in a paging environment smaller programs occupy fewer pages, reducing page faults. Certain characteristics are common to RISC processors… One instruction per cycle Register-to-register operations Simple addressing modes Simple instruction formats RISC vs. CISC After initial enthusiasm for RISC machines, there has been a growing realization that RISC designs may benefit from the inclusion of some CISC features CISC designs may benefit from the inclusion of some RISC features

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• The Problem Should Define the Process, Not the Tool

  - by thatjeffsmith

  All around awesome tool, but not the only gadget in your toolbox.I’m stepping down from my SQL Developer pulpit today and standing up on my philosophical soap box. I’m frequently asked to help folks transition from one set of database tools over to Oracle SQL Developer, which I’m MORE than happy to do. But, I’m not looking to simply change the way people interact with Oracle database. What I care about is your productivity. Is there a faster, more efficient way for you to connect the dots, get from A to B, or just get home to your kids or to the pub for happy hour? If you have defined a business process around a specific tool, what happens when that tool ‘goes away?’ Does the business stop? No, you feel immediate pain until you are able to re-implement the process using another mechanism. Where I get confused, or even frustrated, is when someone asks me to redesign our tool to match their problem. Tools are just tools. Saying you ‘can’t load your data anymore because XYZ’ isn’t valid when you could easily do that same task via SQL*Loader, Create Table As Selects, or 9 other different mechanisms. Sometimes changes brings opportunity for improvement in the process. Don’t be afraid to step back and re-evaluate a problem with a fresh set of eyes. Just trying to replicate your process in another tool exactly as it was done in the ‘old tool’ doesn’t always make sense. Quick sidebar: scheduling a Windows program to kick off thousands if not millions of table inserts from Excel versus using a ‘proper’ server process using SQL*Loader and or external tables means sacrificing scalability and reliability for convenience. Don’t let old habits blind you to new solutions and possibilities. Of couse I’m not going to sit here and say that our tools aren’t deficient in some areas or can’t be improved upon. But I bet if we work together we can find something that’s not only better for the business, but is also better for you. What do you ‘miss’ since you’ve started using SQL Developer as your primary Oracle database tools? I’d love to start a thread here and share ideas on how we can better serve you and your organizations needs. The end solution might not look exactly what you have in mind starting out, but I had no idea I’d be a Product Manager when I started college either What can you no longer ‘do’ since you picked up SQL Developer? What hurts more than it should? What keeps you from being great versus just good?

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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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• High-Powered Sites for low Cost

  - by HighAltitudeCoder

  Ahh, I am experiencing the intimidation of my very first post - visible by the whole world. Ok, here goes.   This first post is nothing exceptional.  It is simply a recommendation based (fittingly, I suppose) upon the job search you may be gearing up for.  I find myself in this very situation right now.  And, I will take my own recommendation after posting this entry. Job-Seekers: To the left you will notice two links under "Recommended Learning".  I have found these links to be invaluable when it comes to re-tooling, re-familiarizing, or otherwise resharping my skills when looking for that next job. Often, you will find job-postings with the text, usually posted after a laborious list of qualifications indicating the company's desire to hire candidates who know what they are doing: "...Looking for a candidate who can hit the ground running...".  The interesting thing about this post to me is I've encountered many individuals who, after speaking and working with them for some time, I've realized are perfectly capable of hitting the ground running - and FAST.  But what if they speed off in the wrong direction? The next time you spearhead a major task in your job, ask yourself: Am I headed in the wrong direction?  There are many ways to do this.  In fact, I've found in this new field there are more tempting ways to steer your project in the wrong direction than there are good ones.  I don't want to suggest that every one of my posts will fall into the "right direction" category, however I do think a healthy dose of introspection of the pros and cons will always be beneficial before you set off. That said, allow me to expound on the previously mentioned links. These web sites are invaluable.  They demonstrate the capabilities of existing as well as new and upcoming tools available in several IDE's.  I've viewed many tutorials in LearnVisualStudio.NET, and only one or two so far in TrainingSpot, however I've been delighted in their simplicity and straightforward approach to proper usage of the particular tool or concept being discussed.  They have not (so far in my experience) demonstrated ways in which to use the tools that become cumbersome, impractical, or error-prone. Each website has step-by-step videos that can be paused, replayed, and most importantly, they are done in real time.  As the author is typing, the viewer gets to experience the coding experience from a first-person perspective, including syntax errors, unexpected behaviors, IDE setup idiosyncracies, everything.  A subtle value I've gained from these videos is that a certain degree of confusion and introspection is normal when working with new tools and exploring new paths.  They (as well as your own experience) are not to be feared, but enjoyed.  I highly recommend them. Good work, guys!

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• The difference

  So with the CTP tools available, weve been building a few apps, just to get a feel for the tools and whats supported in the framework.  Whats been great is that everything is fairly familiar and consistent, largely to do with the .net framework and Microsofts focus on providing good tools.  Weve produced mobile applications, mostly in concept form, for Windows Phone Classic, iPhone and Android but never so quickly and not of such high quality and visual impression.  I attribute some of this obviously to our familiarity to the Microsoft platform and tools.  Though when you look at the designs our team has produced, it becomes clear that this is not just another mobile application container.                                                            The Metro design language implores content prominence with fluid motion and transitions, with a crisp font and easily organized features and services placement.  In addition to a purposeful right edge tease, where the intent is for users to discover new premium content and services.   The concept that enables this is called hubs, building application with hubs changes your thinking from a single mobile application task, to thinking creatively about a mobile experience. Its engaging to think of the other brands and industry verticals that will take advantage of this core feature.  Combine this with Windows Phone 7 live tiles, more on that later, and you have a recipe for a solid mobile services platform.                                                              This so much more fun and liberating than my icon on a gridDid 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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• ADF Mobile Released!!

  - by Denis T

  ADFmfAnnounce We are pleased to announce the general availability of the newest version of Oracle’s ADF Mobile framework. This new framework provides the much anticipated on-device capabilities that the latest mobile applications require.  Feature Highlights Java - Oracle brings a Java VM embedded with each application so you can develop all your business logic in the platform neutral language you know and love! (Yes, even iOS!) JDBC - Since we give you Java, we also provide JDBC along with a SQLite driver and engine that also supports encryption out of the box. Multi-Platform - Truly develop your application only once and deploy to multiple platforms. iOS and Android platforms are supported for both phone and tablet. Flexible - You can decide how to implement the UI: (a) Use existing server-based UI framework like JSF. (b) Use your own favorite HTML5 framework like JQuery. (c) Use our declarative HTML5 component set provided with the framework. ADF Mobile XML or AMX for short, provides all the normal input and layout controls you expect and we also add charts/maps/gauges along with it to provide a very comprehensive UI controls. You can also mix and match any of the three for ultimate flexibility! Device Feature Access - You can get access to device features from either Java or JavaScript to invoke features like camera, GPS, email, SMS, contacts, etc. Secure - ADF Mobile provides integrated security that works with your server back-end as well. Whether you’re using remote URLs, local HTML or AMX, you can secure any/all of your features with a single consistent login page. Since we also give you SQLite encryption, we are assured that your data is safe. Rapid - Using the same development techniques that ADF developers are already used to, you can quickly create mobile applications without ever learning another language! Architecture ADF Mobile is a “hybrid” architecture that employs a natively built “container” on each platform that hosts a number of browser windows that are used to display the application content. We add the Java VM as a natively built library to the container for business logic.   How To Get Started ADF Mobile is an extension to the recently released JDeveloper version 11.1.2.3.0. Simple get the latest JDeveloper from Oracle Technology Network and use the Check for Updates feature to get the ADF Mobile extension. Note: ADF Mobile does not require developers to learn any other languages or frameworks but to build/deploy to iOS, you must be on an Apple MacintoshTM and have Xcode installed. To build/deploy to Android™ you must have the Android SDK installed.

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• Advice on how to build html5 basic tile game (multi player, cross device)

  - by Eric

  I just read http://buildnewgames.com/real-time-multiplayer/ which explains the fundamentals and bets practices to build a massive real time multiplayer html5 game. My question is however given the “simplicity” of the game I need to build (simple kind of scratch game where you find or not something behind a tile), do I really need complex tools (canvas or node.js for example) ? The game The gamestakes place with a picture of our office as a background (tilemap). For HR purpose, we wish to create the following game fore employees: each day they can come to the website and click on a certain number of tiles (3 max per day) and find behind it motivation advice and interesting facts about the company. The constraints and rules the screen is divided into isometric 2D square tiles. There are basically an image (photograph of our office) number of tiles on the screen game: about 10,000 to much more (with scroll , see below) the players can scroll in 4 directions there are only 2 types of tiles: already open and closed player can open tiles that have not been yet open by other players there is no path for players : any player can click on any tile on the screen at any moment (if it’s not already done by another player) 2 players can’t be on the same tile at the same moment (or if they can, I’ll have to manage to see which one clicked on it first) only one type of player (all with similar roles), no weapon, no internal score… very simple game. no complex physics (collision only occurs if 2 players are on the same tile) The target I need to achieve: cross device, cross browsers high performance reaction (subsecond reactions) average nb of players per hour: up to 10K players per hour (quite high indeed but it’s because we aim at proving our case for the game to our business unit) So what I would like to know: 2D Tiled map: Do I need tiledmapeditor or can I enable me split the screen like here ? should I use canvas or plain html/css could be sufficient for my need? do I need a game engine/framework such as melon.js or crafty./js ? (even if the game play is extremely basic, I do need mouse and touché device support, mouse emulations on touch devices…) or ca I easily/quickly do it without? for my constraints and targets, should I use CPU acceleration ? for my constraints and targets, should I use web workers ? for the database, for a massively real time game should I avoid to put the current locations of player in MySQL as i feel it might slow me down. What kind of DB should I implement ? Thanks for your help !

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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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• 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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• How to synchronize the ball in a network pong game?

  - by Thaars

  I’m developing a multiplayer network pong game, my first game ever. The current state is, I’ve running the physic engine with the same configurations on the server and the clients. The own paddle movement is predicted and get just confirmed by the authoritative server. Is a difference detected between them, I correct the position at the client by interpolation. The opponent paddle is also interpolated 200ms to 100ms in the past, because the server is broadcasting snapshots every 100ms to each client. So far it works very well, but now I have to simulate the ball and have a problem to understanding the procedure. I’ve read Valve’s (and many other) articles about fast-paced multiplayer several times and understood their approach. Maybe I can compare my ball with their bullets, but their advantage is, the bullets are not visible. When I have to display the ball, and see my paddle in the present, the opponent in the past and the server is somewhere between it, how can I synchronize the ball over all instances and ensure, that it got ever hit by the paddle even if the paddle is fast moving? Currently my ball’s position is simply set by a server update, so it can happen, that the ball bounces back, even if the paddle is some pixel away (because of a delayed server position). Until now I’ve got no synced clock over all instances. I’m sending a client step index with each update to the server. If the server did his job, he sends the snapshot with the last step index of each client back to the clients. Now I’m looking for the stored position at the returned step index and compare them. Do I need a common clock to sync the ball? EDIT: I've tried to sync a common clock for the server and all clients with a timestamp. But I think it's better to use an own stepping instead of a timestamp (so I don't need to calculate with the ping and so on - and the timestamp will never be exact). The physics are running 60 times per second and now I use this for keeping them synchronized. Is that a good way? When the ball gets calculated by each client, the angle after bouncing can differ because of the different position of the paddles (the opponent is 200ms in the past). When the server is sending his ball position, velocity and angle (because he knows the position of each paddle and is authoritative), the ball could be in a very different position because of the different angles after bouncing (because the clients receive the server data after 100ms). How is it possible to interpolate such a huge difference? I posted this question some days ago at stackoverflow, but got no answer yet. Maybe this is the better place for this question.

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• Keeping the meshes "thickness" the same when scaling an object

  - by user1806687

  I've been bashing my head for the past couple of weeks trying to find a way to help me accomplish, on first look very easy task. So, I got this one object currently made out of 5 cuboids (2 sides, 1 top, 1 bottom, 1 back), this is just for an example, later on there will be whole range of different set ups. Now, the thing is when the user chooses to scale the whole object this is what should happen: X scale: top and bottom cuboids should get scaled by a scale factor, sides should get moved so they are positioned just like they were before(in this case at both ends of top and bottom cuboids), back should get scaled so it fits like before(if I simply scale it by a scale factor it will leave gaps on each side). Y scale: sides should get scaled by a scale factor, top and bottom cuboid should get moved, and back should also get scaled. Z scale: sides, top and bottom cuboids should get scaled, back should get moved. Hope you can help, EDIT: So, I've decided to explain the situation once more, this time more detailed(hopefully). I've also made some pictures of how the scaling should look like, where is the problem and the wrong way of scaling. I this example I will be using a thick walled box, with one face missing, where each wall is made by a cuboid(but later on there will be diffrent shapes of objects, where a one of the face might be roundish, or triangle or even under some angle), scaling will be 2x on X axis. 1.This is how the default object without any scaling applied looks like: http://img856.imageshack.us/img856/4293/defaulttz.png 2.If I scale the whole object(all of the meshes) by some scale factor, the problem becomes that the "thickness" of the object walls also change(which I do not want): http://img822.imageshack.us/img822/9073/wrongwaytoscale.png 3.This is how the correct scaling should look like. Appropriate faces gets caled in this case where the scale is on X axis(top, bottom, back): http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/163/rightwayxscale1.png/ 4.But the scale factor might not be the same for all object all of the times. In this case the back has to get scaled a bit more or it leaves gaps: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/9/problemwhenscaling.png/ 5.If everything goes well this is how the final object should look like: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/856/rightwayxscale2.png/ So, as you have might noticed there are quite a bit of things to look out when scaling. I am asking you, if any of you have any idea on how to accomplish this scaling. I have tried whole bunch of things, from scaling all of the object by the same scale factor, to subtracting and adding sizes to get the right size. But nothing I tried worked, if one mesh got scaled correctly then others didnt. Donwload the example object. English is not my first language, so I am really sorry if its hard to understand what I am saying.

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• JDK 8u20 Documentation Updates

  - by joni g.

  JDK 8u20 has been released and is available from the Java Downloads page. See the JDK 8u20 Update Release Notes for details. Highlights for this release: The Medium security level has been removed. Now only High and Very High levels are available. Applets that do not conform with the latest security practices can still be authorized to run by adding the sites that host them to the Exception Site List. See Security for more information. The javafxpackager tool has been renamed to javapackager, and supports both Java and JavaFX applications. The -B option has been added to the javapackager deploy command to enable arguments to be passed to the bundlers that are used to create self-contained applications. See javapackager for Windows or Linux and OS X for information. The <fx:bundleArgument> helper parameter argument has been added to enable arguments to be passed to the bundlers when using ant tasks. See JavaFX Ant Task Reference for more information. A new attribute is available for JAR file manifests. The Entry-Point attribute is used to identify the classes that are allowed to be used as entry points to your application. See Entry-Point Attribute for more information. A new Microsoft Windows Installer (MSI) Enterprise JRE Installer, which enables users to install the JRE across the enterprise, is available for Java SE Advanced or Java SE Suite licensees. See Downloading the Installer in JRE Installation For Microsoft Windows for more information. The following new configuration parameters are added to the installation process to support commercial features, for use by Java SE Advanced or Java SE Suite licensees only: USAGETRACKERCFG= DEPLOYMENT_RULE_SET= See Installing With a Configuration File for more information about these and other installer parameters. Documentation highlights: New Troubleshooting Guide combines and replaces the Desktop Technologies Troubleshooting Guide and the HotSpot Virtual Machine Troubleshooting Guide to provide a single location for diagnosing and solving problems that might occur with Java Client applications. New Deployment Guide combines and replaces the JavaFX Deployment Guide and the Java Rich Internet Applications Guide to provide a single location for information about the Java packaging tools, creating self-contained applications, and deploying Java and JavaFX applications. New Garbage Collection Tuning Guide describes the garbage collectors included with the Java HotSpot VM and helps you choose which one to use. The Java Tutorials have a new look.

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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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• How to properly document functionality in an agile project?

  - by RoboShop

  So recently, we've just finished the first phase of our project. We used agile with fortnightly sprints. And whilst the application turned out well, we're now turning our eyes on some of the maintenance tasks. One maintenance task is that all of our documentation appears in the form of specs. These specs describe 1 or more stories and generally are a body of work which a few devs could knock over in a week. For development, that works really well - every two weeks, the devs get handed a spec and it's a nice discrete chunk of work that they can just do. From a documentation point of view, this has become a mess. The problem with writing specs that are focused on delivering just-in-time requirements to developers is we haven't placed much emphasis on the big picture. Specs come from all different angles - it could be describing a standard function, it could describing parts of a workflow, it could be describing a particular screen... And now, we have business rules about our application scattered across 120 documents. Looking for any document for a particular business rule or function in particular is quite hard because you don't know which document has this information, and making a change request is equally hard because once again, we are unsure about which spec to make the change. So we have maybe a couple of weeks of lull before it's back to specing out functionality for the next phase but in this time, I'd like to re-visit our processes. I think the way we have worked so far in terms of delivering fortnightly specs works well. But we also need a way to manage our documentation so that our business rules for a given function / workflow are easy to locate / change. I have two ideas. One is we compile all of our specs into a series of master specs broken by a few broad functional areas. The specs describe the sprint, the master spec describe the system. The only problem I can see is 1) Our existing 120 specs are not all neatly defined into broad functional areas. Some will require breaking up, merging etc. which will take a lot of time. 2) We'll be writing specs and updating master specs in each new sprint. Seems like double the work, and then do the devs look at the spec or the master spec? My other suggestion is to concede that our documentation is too big of a mess, and manage that mess going forward. So we go through each spec, assign like keywords to it, and then when we want to search for a function, we search for that keyword. Problems I can see 1) Still the problem of business rules scattered everywhere, keywords just make it easier to find it. anyway, if anyone has any decent ideas or any experience to share about how best to manage documentation, would really appreciate it.

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• IPv6, isn't it just a few extra bits?

  - by rclewis

  It's always an interesting task, to try and explain what you do to family and friends. I have described IPv6 as the "Next Generation Internet"  or "Second Internet" but the hollow expressions on my kids faces scream for the instant relief of the latest video game.  Never one to give up easily, I have formulated a new example - the Post Office... Similar to the Post Office the Internet delivers mail and packages based on addresses. As the number of residences, businesses, and delivery locations increased, the 5 digit ZIP Code (Washington, DC 20005) was expanded to ZIP+4  allowing for more precise delivery points (Postmaster General, Washington, DC 20260-3100). Ah, if only computers were as simple.  IPv6 isn't an add-on or expansion of the existing IPv4 Addressing, it is a new addressing model which will allow the internet to grow from a single computer in the basement of a university or your parents kitchen table, to support the multitude of smart phones, smart TV's, tablets, dvr's, and disk players, all clambering to connect for information. Unfortunetly there are only a finite number of IPv4 public addresses left, and those are being consumed at an ever increasing rate. Few people could have predicted the explosive growth of the internet or the shortage of IPv4 addresses we now face - but there is a "Plan B" and that is the vastly larger address space of IPv6.  Many in the industry have labeled this a "business continuity" problem,  when in fact most companies will be able to continue conducting business once they run out of existing IPv4 Addresses. The problem is really a Customer Continuity problem, how will businesses communicate with existing customers and reach new customers online who's only option is to adopt IPv6 when IPv4 is depleted? Perhaps a first step is publishing a blog that is also accessible via IPv6, it's just a few extra bits. Join us for the Oracle OpenWorld 2012 Session:   Navigating IPv6 @ Oracle Thursday, Oct. 4th 2:15PM - 3:15PM  Palace Hotel - Concert   Learn more about IPv6 Technologies at Oracle

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• Help yourself . if you like

  - by rachelp

  At Red Gate we enjoy talking to our customers. Really! If you've read recent blog posts by members of some of our customer-facing teams, you'll have spotted the pleasure they take in their work. In case you missed those posts, here they are: From our Finance team: Finance: Friends, not foes! From our reception desk: The Front line of Communication However, we recognise that sometimes our customers would like to be able to solve their problems or answer their questions without talking to us - they're in a hurry, it's outside office hours . or perhaps they just prefer not to pick up the phone and call.   Self-service customer care So we've begun a programme of work to enable more self-service; whether it's finding the answer to a "how do i.?" question or getting access to a record of what product licenses they own, we want to make it much easier for our customers to get hold of this information for themselves. If they want to.   Phase 1: make it easier to find information We decided to start by tackling findability. We've got loads of useful information on our website, but it's sometimes difficult to find, so we've been working on improving our site search. Step 1 has been to replace the search engine, clean up the search UI, and make it consistent across the site. We're nearly there! The idea is that if we improve the site search it will be easier - and much more pleasant - for people to find the information they need. The new search will go live some time in April, and then we'll be gathering feedback, looking at web analytics (more about this in an earlier article), and working out what improvements we still need to make. We'd love to hear what you think, so do give your feedback or drop us a line. Or pick up the phone and call, if you like.   What do you think? While I've got your attention, I'd love to hear what people think about self-service customer care. Do you like to call, email, live chat . or do you prefer to dig around and find out answers yourself? Who's getting it right: what self-service sites do you like? p.s. Watch this space for news of phase 2.

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• Are we queueing and serializing properly?

  - by insta

  We process messages through a variety of services (one message will touch probably 9 services before it's done, each doing a specific IO-related function). Right now we have a combination of the worst-case (XML data contract serialization) and best-case (in-memory MSMQ) for performance. The nature of the message means that our serialized data ends up about 12-15 kilobytes, and we process about 4 million messages per week. Persistent messages in MSMQ were too slow for us, and as the data grows we are feeling the pressure from MSMQ's memory-mapped files. The server is at 16GB of memory usage and growing, just for queueing. Performance also suffers when the memory usage is high, as the machine starts swapping. We're already doing the MSMQ self-cleanup behavior. I feel like there's a part we're doing wrong here. I tried using RavenDB to persist the messages and just queueing an identifier, but the performance there was very slow (1000 messages per minute, at best). I'm not sure if that's a result of using the development version or what, but we definitely need a higher throughput[1]. The concept worked very well in theory but performance was not up to the task. The usage pattern has one service acting as a router, which does all reads. The other services will attach information based on their 3rd party hook, and forward back to the router. Most objects are touched 9-12 times, although about 10% are forced to loop around in this system for awhile until the 3rd parties respond appropriately. The services right now account for this and have appropriate sleeping behaviors, as we utilize the priority field of the message for this reason. So, my question, is what is an ideal stack for message passing between discrete-but-LAN'ed machines in a C#/Windows environment? I would normally start with BinaryFormatter instead of XML serialization, but that's a rabbit hole if a better way is to offload serialization to a document store. Hence, my question. [1]: The nature of our business means the sooner we process messages, the more money we make. We've empirically proven that processing a message later in the week means we are less likely to make that money. While performance of "1000 per minute" sounds plenty fast, we really need that number upwards of 10k/minute. Just because I'm giving numbers in messages per week doesn't mean we have a whole week to process those messages.

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• Should we persist with an employee still writing bad code after many years?

  - by user94986

  I've been assigned the task of managing developers for a well-established company. They have a single developer who specialises in all their C++ coding (since forever), but the quality of the work is abysmal. Code reviews and testing have revealed many problems, one of the worst being memory leaks. The developer has never tested his code for leaks, and I discovered that the applications could leak many MBs with only a minute of use. User's were reporting huge slowdowns, and his take was, "it's nothing to do with me - if they quit and restart, it's all good again." I've given him tools to detect and trace the leaks, and sat down with him for many hours to demonstrate how the tools are used, where the problems occur, and what to do to fix them. We're 6 months down the track, and I assigned him to write a new module. I reviewed it before it was integrated into our larger code base, and was dismayed to discover the same bad coding as before. The part that I find incomprehensible is that some of the coding is worse than amateurish. For example, he wanted a class (Foo) that could populate an object of another class (Bar). He decided that Foo would hold a reference to Bar, e.g.: class Foo { public: Foo(Bar& bar) : m_bar(bar) {} private: Bar& m_bar; }; But (for other reasons) he also needed a default constructor for Foo and, rather than question his initial design, he wrote this gem: Foo::Foo() : m_bar(*(new Bar)) {} So every time the default constructor is called, a Bar is leaked. To make matters worse, Foo allocates memory from the heap for 2 other objects, but he didn't write a destructor or copy constructor. So every allocation of Foo actually leaks 3 different objects, and you can imagine what happened when a Foo was copied. And - it only gets better - he repeated the same pattern on three other classes, so it isn't a one-off slip. The whole concept is wrong on so many levels. I would feel more understanding if this came from a total novice. But this guy has been doing this for many years and has had very focussed training and advice over the past few months. I realise he has been working without mentoring or peer reviews most of that time, but I'm beginning to feel he can't change. So my question is, would you persist with someone who is writing such obviously bad code?

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• Is my work on a developers test being taken advantage of?

  - by CodeWarrior

  I am looking for a job and have applied to a number of positions. One of them responded, I had a pretty lengthy phone interview (perhaps an hour +) and they then set me up with the developers test. I was told that this test is estimated to take between 6 and 8 hours and that, provided it met with their approval, I could be paid for my work on it. That gave me some pause, but I endeavored. The dev test took place on a VM accessed via RDP. The task was to implement a search page in a web project that requests data from the server, displays it on the screen in a table, has a pretty complicated search filtering scheme (there are about 15 statuses and when sending the search to the server you can search by these statuses) in addition to the string/field search. They want some SVG icons to change color on certain data values, they want some data to be represented differently than how it is in the database, etc. Loooong story short, this took one heck of a lot longer than 6-8 hours. Much of it was due to the very poor VM that I was running on (Visual Studio 2013 took 10 minutes to load, and another 15 minutes to open the 3 GB ginormous solution). After completing, I was told to commit my changes to source control... Hmm, OK. I get an email back that they thought that the SVGs could have their color changed differently, they found a bug in this edge-case, there was an occasional problem with this other thing that I never experienced, etc. So I am 13-14 hours into this thing now and I have to do bug fixes. I do them, and they come back with some more. This is all apparently going into a production application. I noticed some anomalies in the code that was already in there where it looked like other people had coded all of one functionality and not anything else that I could find. Am I just being used for cheap labor? Even if they pay me the promised 50 dollars and hour for 6 hours, I have committed like 18 hours to this thing now. If I bug fix all of the stuff they keep coming up with, I will have worked at least 16 hours for free. I have taken a number of dev tests. I have never taken one where I worked on code that was destined for production. I have never taken one where I implemented a feature that was in the pipeline for development (it was planned for, and I implemented it through the course of the test). And I have never taken one that took 4 rounds and a total of 20+ hours. I get the impression that they are using their dev test to field some of the functionality, that they don't have time for in their normal team, on the cheap. Also, I wouldn't mind a 'devtest' tag.

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• Want to make RTS strategy game, good starting point...?

  - by NOLANDI

  everybody! I find this community because I did research about game developing topics. So I decide to register on this community and ask for your opinion. I am not begineer in computer stuffs, and I know logic of programming language. I have little knowlegde of C, C++, Started to learn C#...but I was always oriented about other areas of IT. Amateur for game making but not in IT general! I am interested to make RTS strategy video game, isometric camera view (like PC GAME COMMANDOS for example)...so I started to read many books about DirectX, XNA, OpenGL, C#, AI programming...so I want to know where is good starting point for making this game genre. I want to use C# for this project, not C++, since I always had trouble with it, because it is too complicated. I see good oportunity for learning C#, since it has more object-oriented concept, with much less code and easy readible code for writing. Beside of that I know that C++ is the more powerful language until today. So I want to use DirectX and C# for my project. But it will required more time for sure, to learn it. I have trouble with finding books for c# & DirectX (I found just one), but in every next book, it is programming in c++! I read many web sites and they mentioned Slim DX, and in generaly, other articles which I read tells that it is possible to make good game with combination c# and directX, but...I don't have enough information about all this stuffs, so I became confused! It is really hard to have wish to learn c++ from scratch, since I started c# and I like it really...I don't try OpenGL, but I am already familiar with DirectX (some beginning stuffs), and I think that it is good and interesting. So, I decide to choose between maybe Unity3d and XNA first. XNA...hm, it sound that it is not bad solution, but I heard that it is already overcome technology, and I think that it is better to wait with XNA, until I try to make something with DirectX and C#, at first. But I dont know it is possible to make strategy game in XNA?! Maybe I am wrong. I also, find Unity 3D game engine and I find that I could programming there in C#, but many all examples are written in Javascript (Digital tutors videos)...But I generaly have wish to learn it too, because it allows to export games to mobile phones, there a lot of documentations, it is free, etc... I want to find best way to learn C# and DirectX, and make this game, but I dont know if it's possible to combine?! But maybe is good to first try Unity and XNA, because I am beginner?! Thank you all! I am willing to hear your expirience.

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