Search Results

Search found 17285 results on 692 pages for 'incremental build'.

Page 540/692 | < Previous Page | 536 537 538 539 540 541 542 543 544 545 546 547  | Next Page >

• 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?

  Read the article

• Code testing practice

  - by Robin Castlin

  So now I have come to the conclusion like many others that having some way of constantly testing your code is good practice since it enables fewer people to be involved (colleges and customers alike) by simply knowing what's wrong before someone else finds out the hard way. I've heard and read some about Unit Testing and understand what it's supposed to do and all. The there are so many different types of bugs. It can be everything from web browser not being able not being able to send correct values, javascript failing, a global function messing up a piece of code somewhere to a change that looked good when testing it out but fails in some special case which was hard to anticipate. My simply finding these errors I learn to rarely repeat them again, but there seems to always be new bugs to be found and learnt from. I would guess maybe the best practice would be to run every page and it's functions a couple of times, witness the result and repeat this in Firefox, Chrome and Internet Explorer (and all smartphones apparently) to make sure it works as intended. However this would take quite some time to do consider I don't work with patches/versions and do little fixes here and there a couple of times per week. What I prefer would be some kind of page I can just load that tests as much things as possible to make sure the site works as intended. Basicly just run a lot of cURL's with POST-values and see if I get expected result. But how would I preferably not increase the IDs of every mysql rows if I delete these testing rows? It feels silly to be on ID 1000 with maybe 50 rows in total. If I could build a new project from scratch I would probably implement some kind of smooth way to return a "TRUE" on testing instead of the actual page. But this solution would for the moment being have to be passed on existing projects. My question What would you recommend to be the best way to test my site to make sure that existing functions does their job upon editing the code? Should I consider to implement a lot of edits first, then test manually the entire code to make sure it still works? Is there any nice way of testing codes without "hurting" the ID columns? Extra thoughs Would it be a good idea to associate all of my files to the different parts of my site which they affect? For instance if I edit home.php I will through documentation test if my homepage's start works as intended since it's the only part of my site it should affect.

  Read the article

• Sampling SQL server batch activity

  - by extended_events

  Recently I was troubleshooting a performance issue on an internal tracking workload and needed to collect some very low level events over a period of 3-4 hours.  During analysis of the data I found that a common pattern I was using was to find a batch with a duration that was longer than average and follow all the events it produced.  This pattern got me thinking that I was discarding a substantial amount of event data that had been collected, and that it would be great to be able to reduce the collection overhead on the server if I could still get all activity from some batches. In the past I’ve used a sampling technique based on the counter predicate to build a baseline of overall activity (see Mikes post here).  This isn’t exactly what I want though as there would certainly be events from a particular batch that wouldn’t pass the predicate.  What I need is a way to identify streams of work and select say one in ten of them to watch, and sql server provides just such a mechanism: session_id.  Session_id is a server assigned integer that is bound to a connection at login and lasts until logout.  So by combining the session_id predicate source and the divides_by_uint64 predicate comparator we can limit collection, and still get all the events in batches for investigation. CREATE EVENT SESSION session_10_percent ON SERVER ADD EVENT sqlserver.sql_statement_starting(     WHERE (package0.divides_by_uint64(sqlserver.session_id,10))), ADD EVENT sqlos.wait_info (        WHERE (package0.divides_by_uint64(sqlserver.session_id,10))), ADD EVENT sqlos.wait_info_external (        WHERE (package0.divides_by_uint64(sqlserver.session_id,10))), ADD EVENT sqlserver.sql_statement_completed(     WHERE (package0.divides_by_uint64(sqlserver.session_id,10))) ADD TARGET ring_buffer WITH (MAX_DISPATCH_LATENCY=30 SECONDS,TRACK_CAUSALITY=ON) GO   There we go; event collection is reduced while still providing enough information to find the root of the problem.  By the way the performance issue turned out to be an IO issue, and the session definition above was more than enough to show long waits on PAGEIOLATCH*.        

  Read the article

• How to implement a component based system for items in a web game.

  - by Landstander

  Reading several other questions and answers on using a component based system to define items I want to use one for the items and spells in a web game written in PHP. I'm just stuck on the implementation. I'm going to use a DB schema suggested in this series (part 5 describes the schema); http://t-machine.org/index.php/2007/09/03/entity-systems-are-the-future-of-mmog-development-part-1/ This means I'll have an items table with generic item properties, a table listing all of the components for an item and finally records in each component table used to make up the item. Assuming I can select the first two together in a single query, I'm still going to do N queries for each component type. I'm kind of fine with this because I can cache the data into memcache and check there first before doing any queries. I'll need to build up the items on every request they are used in so the implementation needs to be on the lean side even if they're pulled from memcache. But right there is where I feel confident about implementing a component system for my items ends. I figure I'd need to bring attributes and behaviors into the container from each component it uses. I'm just not sure how to do that effectively and not end up writing a lot of specialized code to deal with each component. For example an AttackComponent might need to know how to filter targets inside of a battle context and also maybe provide an attack behavior. That same item might also have a UsableComponent which allows the item to be used and apply some effect onto a different set of targets filtered differently from the same battle context. Then not every part of an item is an active part, an AttributeBonusComponent might need to only kick in when the item is in an equipped state or when displaying the item details page. Ultimately, how should I bring all of the components together into the container so when I use an item as a weapon I get the correct list of targets? Know when a weapon can also be used as an item? Or to apply the bonuses the item provides to a character object? I feel like I've gone too far down the rabbit hole and I can't grasp onto the simple solution in front of me. (If that makes any sense at all.) Likewise if I were to implement the best answer from here I feel like I'd have a lot of the same questions. How to model multiple "uses" (e.g. weapon) for usable-inventory/object/items (e.g. katana) within a relational database.

  Read the article

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

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

  Read the article

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

  - by komediant

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

  Read the article

• LibGDX - Textures rendering at wrong position

  - by ACluelessGuy

  Update 2: Let me further explain my problem since I think that i didn't make it clear enough: The Y-coordinates on the bottom of my screen should be 0. Instead it is the height of my screen. That means the "higher" i touch/click the screen the less my y-coordinate gets. Above that the origin is not inside my screen, atleast not the 0 y-coordinate. Original post: I'm currently developing a tower defence game for fun by using LibGDX. There are places on my map where the player is or is not allowed to put towers on. So I created different ArrayLists holding rectangles representing a tile on my map. (towerPositions) for(int i = 0; i < map.getLayers().getCount(); i++) { curLay = (TiledMapTileLayer) map.getLayers().get(i); //For all Cells of current Layer for(int k = 0; k < curLay.getWidth(); k++) { for(int j = 0; j < curLay.getHeight(); j++) { curCell = curLay.getCell(k, j); //If there is a actual cell if(curCell != null) { tileWidth = curLay.getTileWidth(); tileHeight = curLay.getTileHeight(); xTileKoord = tileWidth*k; yTileKoord = tileHeight*j; switch(curLay.getName()) { //If layer named "TowersAllowed" picked case "TowersAllowed": towerPositions.add(new Rectangle(xTileKoord, yTileKoord, tileWidth, tileHeight)); // ... AND SO ON If the player clicks on a "allowed" field later on he has the opportunity to build a tower of his coice via a menu. Now here is the problem: The towers render, but they render at wrong position. (They appear really random on the map, no certain pattern for me) for(Rectangle curRect : towerPositions) { if(curRect.contains(xCoord, yCoord)) { //Using a certain tower in this example (left the menu out if(gameControl.createTower("towerXY")) { //RenderObject is just a class holding the Texture and x/y coordinates renderList.add(new RenderObject(new Texture(Gdx.files.internal("TowerXY.png")), curRect.x, curRect.y)); } } } Later on i render it: game.batch.begin(); for(int i = 0; i < renderList.size() ; i++) { game.batch.draw(renderList.get(i).myTexture, renderList.get(i).x, renderList.get(i).y); } game.batch.end(); regards

  Read the article

• Are there any good Java/JVM libraries for my Expression Tree architecture?

  - by Snuggy

  My team and I are developing an enterprise-level application and I have devised an architecture for it that's best described as an "Expression Tree". The basic idea is that the leaf nodes of the tree are very simple expressions (perhaps simple values or strings). Nodes closer to the trunk will get more and more complex, taking the simpler nodes as their inputs and returning more complex results for their parents. Looking at it the other way, the application performs some task, and for this it creates a root expression. The root expression divides its input into smaller units and creates child expressions, which when evaluated it can use to build it's own result. The subdividing process continues until the simplest leaf nodes. There are two very important aspects of this architecture: It must be possible to manipulate nodes of the tree after it is built. The nodes may be given new input values to work with and any change in result for that node needs to be propagated back up the tree to the root node. The application must make best use of available processors and ultimately be scalable to other computers in a grid or in the cloud. Nodes in the tree will often be updating concurrently and notifying other interested nodes in the tree when they get a new value. Unfortunately, I'm not at liberty to discuss my actual application, but to aid understanding a little bit, you might imagine a kind of spreadsheet application being implemented with a similar architecture, where changes to cells in the table are propagated all over the place to other cells that need the result. The spreadsheet could get so massive that applying multi-core multi-computer distributed system to solve it would be of benefit. I've got my prototype "Expression Engine" working nicely on a single multi-core PC but I've started to run into a few concurrency issues (as expected because I haven't been taking too much care so far) so it's now time to start thinking about migrating the Engine to a more robust library, and that leads to a number of related questions: Is there any precedent for my "Expression Tree" architecture that I could research? What programming concepts should I consider. I realise this approach has many similarities to a functional programming style, and I'm already aware of the concepts of using futures and actors. Are there any others? Are there any languages or libraries that I should study? This question is inspired by my accidental discovery of Scala and the Akka library (which has good support for Actors, Futures, Distributed workloads etc.) and I'm wondering if there is anything else I should be looking at as well?

  Read the article

• Working with Windows and Unix

  - by user554629

  Beware of new line characters One of the most frequent issues we encounter in Tech Support is the corruption of files that are transferred between Windows and Unix.   The transfer can occur at any stage, but ultimately involves a transfer of a file using an ftp client that is running on Windows;  it could be ftp or filezilla. Windows uses two characters to mark the end of a line in a text file (CR/LF),carriage return, linefeed.   Unix uses a single character (CR). In all situations, it is best to use binary mode transfer for all files, including ascii text files. Common problems: upload a core file from unix to windows using ftp in ascii mode.The file is going to be larger on Windows than Unix.ftp doesn't know if this is a text file with real line-ends, it takes every ascii CR and transmits two ascii characters CR/LF.The core file, tar file, library ... will be corrupted when transferred to Oracle. download a shell script to Windows, and transfer it to Unix using ftpIf the file is edited on Windows, the unix script line-end chars will be doubled.Unix doesn't know how to handle that, and will likely tell you the script is not executable.Why?  The first line of a shell script ( called "sh-bang" ), identifies the command interpreter the unix shell should use for this script.   Common examples:#/bin/sh#/bin/ksh#/bin/bash#/bin/perl#/bin/sh^M    # will not be understood.#/bin/env ksh # special syntax.  Find ksh and run it dos2unix is a common utility found on most unix platforms, that repairs the issue of Windows LineEnd characters in unix script files.   I've written my own flavor of this utility for use in Tech Support and build environments, that is a bit easier to use, and has some nice side-effects. accepts a list of files:   dos2unix *.sh repairs the file in-place.  Doesn't generate a new file you have to name retains the same timestamp;  it is the encoding that changed, not the file content. Here are the versions of dos2unix for each of the environments we work in.They are compressed with gzip, to avoid the ftp ascii transfer trap,and because I am quite limited in the number of files I can upload to this blog. AIX Linux Solaris sparc  Windows 

  Read the article

• A Simple Entity Tagger

  - by Elton Stoneman

  In the REST world, ETags are your gateway to performance boosts by letting clients cache responses. In the non-REST world, you may also want to add an ETag to an entity definition inside a traditional service contract – think of a scenario where a consumer persists its own representation of your entity, and wants to keep it in sync. Rather than load every entity by ID and check for changes, the consumer can send in a set of linked IDs and ETags, and you can return only the entities where the current ETag is different from the consumer’s version.  If your entity is a projection from various sources, you may not have a persistent ETag, so you need an efficient way to generate an ETag which is deterministic, so an entity with the same state always generates the same ETag. I have an implementation for a generic ETag generator on GitHub here: EntityTagger code sample. The essence is simple - we get the entity, serialize it and build a hash from the serialized value. Any changes to either the state or the structure of the entity will result in a different hash. To use it, just call SetETag, passing your populated object and a Func<> which acts as an accessor to the ETag property: EntityTagger.SetETag(user, x => x.ETag); The implementation is all in at 80 lines of code, which is all pretty straightforward: var eTagProperty = AsPropertyInfo(eTagPropertyAccessor); var originalETag = eTagProperty.GetValue(entity, null); try { ResetETag(entity, eTagPropertyAccessor); string json; var serializer = new DataContractJsonSerializer(entity.GetType()); using (var stream = new MemoryStream()) { serializer.WriteObject(stream, entity); json = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(stream.GetBuffer(), 0, (int)stream.Length); } var guid = GetDeterministicGuid(json); eTagProperty.SetValue(entity, guid.ToString(), null); //... There are a couple of helper methods to check if the object has changed since the ETag value was last set, and to reset the ETag. This implementation uses JSON to do the serializing rather than XML. Benefit - should be marginally more efficient as your hashing a much smaller serialized string; downside, JSON doesn't include namespaces or class names at the root level, so if you have two classes with the exact same structure but different names, then instances which have the same content will have the same ETag. You may want that behaviour, but change to use the XML DataContractSerializer if you think that will be an issue. If you can persist the ETag somewhere, it will save you server processing to load up the entity, but that will only apply to scenarios where you can reliably invalidate your ETag (e.g. if you control all the entry points where entity contents can be updated, then you can calculate and persist the new ETag with each update).

  Read the article

• UPK 11.1 Content Development Training Offering from Oracle University

  - by user581320

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Oracle University has announced the availability of UPK 11.1 Content Development training courses.  These classroom and virtual classroom courses are available starting later this month.  This course is designed for course authors, editors, and other individuals in need of recording and editing content in the User Productivity Kit Developer. Through hands-on exercises, participants will learn how to build an outline, prepare for and record content in the target application, and use the Topic Editor to customize recorded content. Students will learn how to link web pages and external files to their content as well as create and link questions and assessments. Upon completion, participants will preview their content in the available playback modes before publishing. They will also explore the various deployment options for publishing, including the options for printed documents, and learn how to customize templates for player and print output. For information about the UPK 11.1 Content Development Training course, including offering dates and locations, visit the Oracle University web page for the course.

  Read the article

• Should Item Grouping/Filter be in the ViewModel or View layer?

  - by ronag

  I'm in a situation where I have a list of items that need to be displayed depending on their properties. What I'm unsure of is where is the best place to put the filtering/grouping logic of the viewmodel state? Currently I have it in my view using converters, but I'm unsure whether I should have the logic in the viewmodel? e.g. ViewModel Layer: class ItemViewModel { DateTime LastAccessed { get; set; } bool IsActive { get; set; } } class ContainerViewModel { ObservableCollection<Item> Items {get; set;} } View Layer: <TextView Text="Active Items"/> <List ItemsSource={Binding Items, Converter=GroupActiveItemsByDay}/> <TextView Text="Active Items"/> <List ItemsSource={Binding Items, Converter=GroupInActiveItemsByDay}/> or should I build it like this? ViewModel Layer: class ContainerViewModel { ObservableCollection<IGrouping<string, Item>> ActiveItemsByGroup {get; set;} ObservableCollection<IGrouping<string, Item>> InActiveItemsByGroup {get; set;} } View Layer: <TextView Text="Active Items"/> <List ItemsSource={Binding ActiveItemsGroupByDate }/> <TextView Text="Active Items"/> <List ItemsSource={Binding InActiveItemsGroupByDate }/> Or maybe something in between? ViewModel Layer: class ContainerViewModel { ObservableCollection<IGrouping<string, Item>> ActiveItems {get; set;} ObservableCollection<IGrouping<string, Item>> InActiveItems {get; set;} } View Layer: <TextView Text="Active Items"/> <List ItemsSource={Binding ActiveItems, Converter=GroupByDate }/> <TextView Text="Active Items"/> <List ItemsSource={Binding InActiveItems, Converter=GroupByDate }/> I guess my question is what is good practice in terms as to what logic to put into the ViewModel and what logic to put into the Binding in the View, as they seem to overlap a bit?

  Read the article

• Drawing a line using openGL does not work

  - by vikasm

  I am a beginner in OpenGL and tried to write my first program to draw some points and a line. I can see that the window opens with white background but no line is drawn. I was expecting to see red colored (because glColor3f(1.0, 0.0, 0.0);) dots (pixels) and line. But nothing is seen. Here is my code. void init2D(float r, float g, float b) { glClearColor(r,g,b,0.0); glMatrixMode(GL_PROJECTION); gluOrtho2D(0.0, 200.0, 0.0, 150.0); } void display() { glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT); glColor3f(1.0, 0.0, 0.0); glBegin(GL_POINTS); for(int i = 0; i < 10; i++) { glVertex2i(10+5*i, 110); } glEnd(); //draw a line glBegin(GL_LINES); glVertex2i(10,10); glVertex2i(100,100); glEnd(); glFlush(); } int main(int argc, char** argv) { //Initialize Glut glutInit(&argc, argv); //setup some memory buffers for our display glutInitDisplayMode(GLUT_DOUBLE | GLUT_RGB); //set the window size glutInitWindowSize(500, 500); //create the window with the title 'points and lines' glutCreateWindow("Points and Lines"); init2D(0.0, 0.0, 0.0); glutDisplayFunc(display); glutMainLoop(); } I wanted to verify that the glcontext was opening properly and used this code: int main(int argc, char **argv) { glutInit(&argc, argv); //setup some memory buffers for our display glutInitDisplayMode(GLUT_DOUBLE | GLUT_RGB); //set the window size glutInitWindowSize(500, 500); //create the window with the title 'points and lines' glutCreateWindow("Points and Lines"); char *GL_version=(char *)glGetString(GL_VERSION); puts(GL_version); char *GL_vendor=(char *)glGetString(GL_VENDOR); puts(GL_vendor); char *GL_renderer=(char *)glGetString(GL_RENDERER); puts(GL_renderer); getchar(); return 0; } And the ouput I got was: 3.1.0 - Build 8.15.10.2345 Intel Intel(R) HD Graphics Family Can someone point out what I am doing wrong ? Thanks.

  Read the article

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

  - by Tim Murphy

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

  Read the article

• How to chain actions/animations together and delay their execution?

  - by codinghands

  I'm trying to build a simple game with a number of screens - 'TitleScreen', 'LoadingScreen', 'PlayScreen', 'HighScoreScreen' - each of which has it's own draw & update logic methods, sprites, other useful fields, etc. This works well for me as a game dev beginner, and it runs. However, on my 'PlayScreen' I want to run some animations before the player gets control - dropping in some artwork, playing some sound effects, generally prettifying things a little. However, I'm not sure what the best way to chain animations / sound effects / other timed general events is. I could make an intermediary screen, 'PrePlayScreen', which simply has all of this hardcoded like so: Update(){ Animation anim1 = new Animation(.....); Animation anim2 = new Animation(.....); anim1.Run(); if(anim1.State == AnimationState.Complete) anim2.Run(); if(anim2.State == AnimationState.Complete) // Load 'PlayScreen' screen } But this doesn't seem so great - surely their must be a better way? I then thought, 'Hey - an AnimationManager! That'd be awesome!'. But then that creeping OOP panic set in as I thought about it some more. If I create the Animation in my Screen, then add it to the AnimationManager (which may or may not be a GameComponent hooked up to Update/Draw), how can I get 'back' to it? To signal commands like start / end / repeat? I'd still need to keep a reference to the object in my Screen so that I could still communicate with it once it's buried in the bosom of a List in my AnimationManager. This seems bad. I've also tried using events - call 'Update' on all the animations in the PlayScreen update loop, but crucially all of the animations have a bool flag ('Active') which determines whether they should begin. The first animation has this set to 'true', all others 'false'. On completion the first animation raises an event, which sets animation 2's bool flag to true (and so it then runs). Once animation 2 is complete another 'anim complete' event is raised, and the screen state changes. Considering the game I'm making is basically as simple as it gets I know I'm overthinking this... it's just the paradigm shift from web - game development is making me break out in a serious case of the stupids.

  Read the article

• I have a performance problem

  - by Alan

  (copied from my wordpress blog). So start 95% of the performance calls that I receive. They usually continue something like: I have gathered some *stat data for you (eg the guds tool from Document 1285485.1), can you please root cause our problem? So, do you think you could? Neither can I, based on this my answer inevitably has to be "No". Given this kind of problem statement, I have no idea about the expectations, the boundary conditions, or even the application. The answer may as well be "Performance problems? Consult your local Doctor for Viagra". It's really not a lot to go on. So, What kind of problem description is going to allow me to start work on the issue that is being seen? I don't doubt that there really is an issue, it just needs to be pinned down somewhat. What behavior exactly are you expecting to see? Be specific and use business metrics. For example "run-time", "response-time" and "throughput". This helps us define exit criterea. Now, let's look at the system that is having problems. How is what you are seeing different? Use the same type of metrics. The answers to these two questions take us a long way towards being able to work a call. Even more helpful are answers to questions like Has this system ever worked to expectation? If so, when did it start exhibiting this behavior? Is the problem always present, or does it sometimes work to expectation? If it sometimes works to expectation, when are you seeing the problem? Is there any discernible pattern? Is the impact of the problem getting better, worse, or remaining constant? What kind of differences are there between when the system was performing to expectation and when it is not? Are there other machines where we could expect to see the same issue (eg similar usage and load), but are not? Again, differences? Once we start to gather information like this we start to build up a much clearer picture of exactly what we need to investigate, and what we need to achieve so that both you and me agree that the problem has been solved. Please help get that figure of poorly defined problem statements down from it's current 95% value.

  Read the article

• What's a good way to get an IT internship? [closed]

  - by user1419715

  I'm a second year CS student who's worked really hard to build and expand my skills. I've spent the past week now trying to find a place to volunteer (i.e. work for FREE) so I can get a little bit of in-the-door experience with web development. I have a portfolio with several decent projects, a handful of languages and other hard/soft skills that employers constantly say they're clamoring for. I can't even get people to take my calls. This is me offering to work for them for FREE, remember. I'm in a reputable program at a respected school, get decent grades and...yeah, I've worked really hard to be presentable. On the rare occassions I actually get to speak to somebody at a design firm they hedge and do everything they can to get me off the phone. Nobody's ever expressed even the slightest interest in taking me on. The answer to the experience problem is supposed to be "you need to spend a year or two building up a big portfolio of projects on your own" so that employers will be impressed. I've done that. Websites, standalone apps, etc.. Nobody will even look at my resume, though. Question: Why does there seem to be so little interest in taking on upaid interns in the world of IT? Update: Sorry you all think I'm too aggressive or angry. It wasn't my intent to be a jerk to people while asking them for their opinions. That said, how would you feel if employer after employer turned you down cold when you offered yourself to them without asking for remuneration? One can't even get an unpaid job in this economy now, it seems. How am I going about my search? I find web firms in my area and contact them via email with a brief sales pitch of myself and a resume attached. Then a couple of days later I follow up with a phone contact. Nobody--anywhere--is advertising for interns of any kind. If there were I'm sure there'd be about 500 resumes per position, even unpaid. I've had good experiences in the past with cold-calling firms for actual paid jobs in other industries (hiring is a pain in the ass process and a call like this can show initiative while reducing a busy employer's need to do all the hiring overhead work), so I thought volunteering would work at least as well. My skills are pretty good for a CS student and include the usual suspects: HTML/CSS/Javascript, Python, Java, C, C#/.Net etc etc. I made a point on my resume to tie each ability claim to a project as well. Oh, and regarding the "working for free still costs the employer money" argument: that's an excellent point I hadn't though of. But it means...what? I have to pay the employer for the privilege of working there now?

  Read the article

• openGL textures in bitmap mode

  - by evenex_code

  For reasons detailed here I need to texture a quad using a bitmap (as in, 1 bit per pixel, not an 8-bit pixmap). Right now I have a bitmap stored in an on-device buffer, and am mounting it like so: glBindBuffer(GL_PIXEL_UNPACK_BUFFER, BFR.G[(T+1)%2]); glTexImage2D(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0, GL_RGB, W, H, 0, GL_COLOR_INDEX, GL_BITMAP, 0); The OpenGL spec has this to say about glTexImage2D: "If type is GL_BITMAP, the data is considered as a string of unsigned bytes (and format must be GL_COLOR_INDEX). Each data byte is treated as eight 1-bit elements..." Judging by the spec, each bit in my buffer should correspond to a single pixel. However, the following experiments show that, for whatever reason, it doesn't work as advertised: 1) When I build my texture, I write to the buffer in 32-bit chunks. From the wording of the spec, it is reasonable to assume that writing 0x00000001 for each value would result in a texture with 1-px-wide vertical bars with 31-wide spaces between them. However, it appears blank. 2) Next, I write with 0x000000FF. By my apparently flawed understanding of the bitmap mode, I would expect that this should produce 8-wide bars with 24-wide spaces between them. Instead, it produces a white 1-px-wide bar. 3) 0x55555555 = 1010101010101010101010101010101, therefore writing this value ought to create 1-wide vertical stripes with 1 pixel spacing. However, it creates a solid gray color. 4) Using my original 8-bit pixmap in GL_BITMAP mode produces the correct animation. I have reached the conclusion that, even in GL_BITMAP mode, the texturer is still interpreting 8-bits as 1 element, despite what the spec seems to suggest. The fact that I can generate a gray color (while I was expecting that I was working in two-tone), as well as the fact that my original 8-bit pixmap generates the correct picture, support this conclusion. Questions: 1) Am I missing some kind of prerequisite call (perhaps for setting a stride length or pack alignment or something) that will signal to the texturer to treat each byte as 8-elements, as it suggests in the spec? 2) Or does it simply not work because modern hardware does not support it? (I have read that GL_BITMAP mode was deprecated in 3.3, I am however forcing a 3.0 context.) 3) Am I better off unpacking the bitmap into a pixmap using a shader? This is a far more roundabout solution than I was hoping for but I suppose there is no such thing as a free lunch.

  Read the article

• What's the best way to cache a growing database table for html generation?

  - by McLeopold

  I've got a database table which will grow in size by about 5000 rows a hour. For a key that I would be querying by, the query will grow in size by about 1 row every hour. I would like a web page to show the latest rows for a key, 50 at a time (this is configurable). I would like to try and implement memcache to keep database activity low for reads. If I run a query and create a cache result for each page of 50 results, that would work until a new entry is added. At that time, the page of latest results gets new result and the oldest results drops off. This cascades down the list of cached pages causing me to update every cache result. It seems like a poor design. I could build the cache pages backwards, then for each page requested I should get the latest 2 pages and truncate to the proper length of 50. I'm not sure if this is good or bad? Ideally, the mechanism I use to insert a new row would also know how to invalidate the proper cache results. Has someone already solved this problem in a widely acceptable way? What's the best method of doing this? EDIT: If my understanding of the MYSQL query cache is correct, it has table level granularity in invalidation. Given the fact that I have about 5000 updates before a query on a key should need to be invalidated, it seems that the database query cache would not be used. MS SQL caches execution plans and frequently accessed data pages, so it may do better in this scenario. My query is not against a single table with TOP N. One version has joins to several tables and another has sub-selects. Also, since I want to cache the html generated table, I'm wondering if a cache at the web server level would be appropriate? Is there really no benefit to any type of caching? Is the best advice really to just allow a website site query to go through all the layers and hit the database every request?

  Read the article

• Development Approach: User Interface In or Domain Model Out?

  - by Berin Loritsch

  While I've never delivered anything using Smalltalk, my brief time playing with it has definitely left its mark. The only way to describe the experience is MVC the way it was meant to be. Essentially, all the heavy lifting for your application is done in the business objects (or domain model if you are so inclined). The standard controls are bound to the business objects in some way. For example, a text box is mapped to an object's field (the field itself is an object so it's easy to do). A button would mapped to a method. This is all done with a very simple and natural API. We don't have to think about binding objects, etc. It just works. Yet, in many newer languages and APIs you are forced to think from the outside in. First with C++ and MFC, and now with C# and WPF, Microsoft has gotten it's developer world hooked on GUI builders where you build your application by implementing event handlers. Java Swing development isn't so different, only you are writing the code to instantiate the controls on the form yourself. For some projects, there may never even be a domain model--just event handlers. I've been in and around this model for most of my carreer. Each way forces you to think differently. With the Smalltalk approach, your domain is smart while your GUI is dumb. With the default VisualStudio approach, your GUI is smart while your domain model (if it exists) is rather anemic. Many developers that I work with see value in the Smalltalk approach, and try to shoehorn that approach into the VisualStudio environment. WPF has some dynamic binding features that makes it possible; but there are limitations. Inevitably some code that belongs in the domain model ends up in the GUI classes. So, which way do you design/develop your code? Why? GUI first. User interaction is paramount. Domain first. I need to make sure the system is correct before we put a UI on it. There's pros and cons for either approach. Domain model fits in there with crystal cathedrals and pie in the sky. GUI fits in there with quick and dirty (sometimes really dirty). And for an added bonus: How do you make sure the code is maintainable?

  Read the article

• Is Ubuntu recognizing and/or using my NVIDIA graphics card?

  - by user212860

  This is my first post here, and I'm pretty new to Ubuntu/Linux. I currently have no other OS except for Ubuntu 13.10. (I used to have Win7 until i got a new terabyte hard drive). My current PC build, if any of this helps: CPU: Intel i5 quad-core Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 RAM: 8 GB HDD: 1 TB SATA 3 Motherboard: MSi Z77 A-G41 OS Ubuntu 13.10 So I recently installed Ubuntu 13.10 and put Steam on it, and I'm seeing that my games run a lot slower than they did when I had Win7. I figured it was a graphics problem, so I checked System Settings Details Overview. It says in "Graphics" that I have "Gallium 0.4 on NVE7" (don't really know what that is). Does this mean that Ubuntu is not using my graphics card? In System Settings Software & Updates Additional Drivers, it clearly shows like this: NVIDIA Corporation: GK107 [GeForce GTX 650] -This device is using an alternative driver (And then it shows a list of drivers that I can switch back and forth to) So this is a bit confusing. In Software and Updates, it clearly shows that I have my NVIDIA card installed, and that I have a driver selected for it. But in System Settings, it shows I have some Gallium 0.4 thing. I had done a bit of research, and ended up typing command: "lspci|grep VGA" in the Terminal. It showed this in response: VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GK107 [GeForce GTX 650] (rev a1) The Terminal seems to recognize my graphics card. What it looks like to me, is that I don't have the proper driver, and I might be using my CPU's integrated graphics. When I switch around which driver I am using in that list, it still does not see my card in System Settings. Some of the drivers in the list give me some sort of OpenGL error when I try to run a game. It might just be that my games are running slow because the game developers have not optimized it for Ubuntu that well. However, that still doesn't take away from the fact that System Settings is not showing my NVIDIA card. TL;DR Version: How do I know if my video card is being recognized/used? If my video card is not being used, what is the best way fix that? Please make your answers easy to understand. I do not mind wordy responses, as long as I can follow what you're saying. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks, Jabber5

  Read the article

• Introduction to Agile Development

  - by Grant Fritchey

  Even though my current job is a little weird, I still consider myself to be a DBA. I didn’t start that way in IT. I came through support and into development. I loved development. There was a constant struggle to attempt to improve your code, your understanding, and, most importantly, the process of development itself. Development can be slow and tedious. Left alone, developers can simply disappear to build a project and not come back for two years, at which time they deliver it. But, maybe that software isn’t what you wanted, or it’s no longer needed, or who knows what. So developers are constantly attempting to improve their processes in order to deliver more relavent software quicker (something DBAs could learn about). I really admire it. One of the many processes that has come out of that constant striving is known as Agile. As the name implies, Agile development attempts to come up with a quick, fast turning, business aware, well, for want of a word, agile, process that is more responsive to the needs of the business. There are tons and tons of books and blogs and videos on the subject that can get you going. But, Agile isn’t easy (note, Easy is not part of the name). Agile processes can be hard. I’ve worked on multiple agile teams, some successful, some not. The two principal differences between the teams were their discipline and their knowledge of the process. Discipline, that comes from within. But knowledge, ah, well there I can help. Red Gate is bringing a series of free instructional events to the United States in a few weeks time focused primarily on SQL Server (click here right now to register while there’s still space). We’re also offering some .NET instruction too. That’s a full day, free, with top experts in the business. But, the next day, there’s a full day session introducing Agile. You can go to this and learn how to do Agile. Develop that knowledge that will enable you to successfully use the Agile process. Go to this web site to check it out. No, this event is not free, but not everything can be. And it’s not just for developers. DBAs, you need to learn this stuff too. Management could also benefit from understanding these processes (because you guys can help to enforce discipline). It’s really for everyone involved in the development process.

  Read the article

• Should I use my own public API on my site (via JS)?

  - by newboyhun

  First of all, this question is far more different other 'public api questions' like this: Should a website use its own public API?, second, sorry for my English. You can find the question summarized at the bottom of this question. What I want to achieve is a big website with a public api, so who like programming (like me) and likes my website, can replicate my website's data with a much better approach (of course with some restrictions). Almost everything could be used by the public API. Because of this, I was thinking about making the whole website AJAX driven. There would be parts of the API which would be limited only to my website (domain), like login, registering. There would be only an INTERFACE on the client side, which would use the public and private API to make this interface working. The website would be ONLY CLIENT SIDE, well, I mean, the website would only use AJAX to use the api. How do I imagine this? The website would be like a mobile application, the application only sending a request to a webserver, which returns a json, the application parses it, and uses it to advance in the application. (e.g.: login) My thoughts: Pros: The whole website is built up by javascript, this means I don't need to transfer the html to the client, saving bandwidth. (I hope so) Anyone can use up the data of my website to make their own cool things. (Is this a con or pro? O_O) The public API is always in use, so I can see if there are any error. Cons: Without Javascript the website is unusable. The bad guys easily can load the server with requesting too much data (like Request Per Second 10000), but this can be countered via limiting this with some PHP code and logging. Probably much more work So the question in some words is: Should I build my website around my own api? Is it good to work only on the client side? Is this good for a big website? (e.x.: facebook, yeah facebook is a different story, but could it run with an 'architecture' like this?)

  Read the article

• Developing a cloud based app

  - by user134897

  I am a company owner that has developed a cloud based app. My code writer has told me how good he is more than once, well, better stated, he did a good job telling me he was better than everyone else in my rather small community. In the last 18 months I have spent nearly 160,000.00 dollars trying to get this company to the "making money" stage. I am now nearly broke, sitting on the edge of a brilliant marketing plan to launch a much needed cloud based app. We did launch our app last year (late 2013), and the feedback was amazing from the users. One user that signed up to use the free app stated that we needed to call him the moment our company goes public because he wants to be the first to buy stock. Now, here's my problem. We did not originally set out to develop a freemium app, we just sort of ended up there by the natural progression of the app. So, now I have an app that really needs to be scrapped and re-built. Although I do feel my code writer has displayed some brilliance in what he has done, he was extremely weak on graphics and every time we speak he tells me there is a newer better way to code that he is trying to learn. So, here's the million dollar question. Ho do I find code writers that already know the newest, best ways to write code? Or maybe better asked, what is the newest best code writing technique? Second, is it even possible to find code writers that are good at graphics? In short, I am nearly broke and need to start over, but I do not know where to find people qualified to write it good the first time around and display good graphic skills. I am trying to build a team of writers instead of just one person. Maybe 3 good at code and two good at graphics, but I am clueless as to what criteria I should use to determine if I am building the right team members. Please help, I am sure you can tell I am fairly lost by my continued rambling.

  Read the article

• Zelda-style top-down RPG. How to store tile and collision data?

  - by Delerat

  I'm looking to build a Zelda: LTTP style top-down RPG. I've read a lot on the subject and am currently going back and forth on a few solutions. I'm using C#, MonoGame, and Tiled. For my tile maps, these are the choices I can see in front of me: Store each tile as its own array. Each one having 3-4 layers, texture/animation, depth, flags, and maybe collision(depending on how I do it). I've read warning about memory issues going this route, and my biggest map will probably be 160x120 tiles. My average map however will be about 40x30. The number of tiles might cut in half if I decide to double my tile size, which is currently 16x16. This is the most appealing approach for me, as I feel like I would know how to save maps, make changes, and separate it into chunks for collision checks. Store the static parts of my tile map in multiple arrays acting as the different layers. Then I would just use entities for anything that wasn't static. All of the other tile data such as collisions, depth, etc., would be stored in their own layers as well I guess? This way just seems messy to me though. Regardless of which one I choose, I'm also unsure how to plan all of that other tile data. I could write a bunch of code that would know which integer represents what tile and it's data, but if I changed a tileset in Tiled and exported it again, all of those integers could potentially change and I'd have to adjust a whole bunch of code. My other issue is about how I could do collision. I want to at least support angled collision that slides you around the corners of objects like LTTP does, if not more oddball shapes as well. So do I: Store collision as a flag for binary collision. Could I get this to support angles? Would it be fine to store collision as an integer and have each number represent a certain angle of collision? Store a list of rectangles or other shapes and do collision that way? Sorry for the large two-part(three-part?) question. I felt like these needed to be asked together as I believe each choice influences the other.

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 536 537 538 539 540 541 542 543 544 545 546 547  | Next Page >