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  • Best practice for organizing/storing character/monster data in an RPG?

    - by eclecto
    Synopsis: Attempting to build a cross-platform RPG app in Adobe Flash Builder and am trying to figure out the best class hierarchy and the best way to store the static data used to build each of the individual "hero" and "monster" types. My programming experience, particularly in AS3, is embarrassingly small. My ultra-alpha method is to include a "_class" object in the constructor for each instance. The _class, in turn, is a static Object pulled from a class created specifically for that purpose, so things look something like this: // Character.as package { public class Character extends Sprite { public var _strength:int; // etc. public function Character(_class:Object) { _strength = _class._strength; // etc. } } } // MonsterClasses.as package { public final class MonsterClasses extends Object { public static const Monster1:Object={ _strength:50, // etc. } // etc. } } // Some other class in which characters/monsters are created. // Create a new instance of Character var myMonster = new Character(MonsterClasses.Monster1); Another option I've toyed with is the idea of making each character class/monster type its own subclass of Character, but I'm not sure if it would be efficient or even make sense considering that these classes would only be used to store variables and would add no new methods. On the other hand, it would make creating instances as simple as var myMonster = new Monster1; and potentially cut down on the overhead of having to read a class containing the data for, at a conservative preliminary estimate, over 150 monsters just to fish out the one monster I want (assuming, and I really have no idea, that such a thing might cause any kind of slowdown in execution). But long story short, I want a system that's both efficient at compile time and easy to work with during coding. Should I stick with what I've got or try a different method? As a subquestion, I'm also assuming here that the best way to store data that will be bundled with the final game and not read externally is simply to declare everything in AS3. Seems to me that if I used, say, XML or JSON I'd have to use the associated AS3 classes and methods to pull in the data, parse it, and convert it to AS3 object(s) anyway, so it would be inefficient. Right?

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  • Unconvert Text File from Binary Format

    - by Hammer Bro.
    I've got a rather large CSV file (~700MB) which I know to consist of lines of 27-character alpha-numeric hashes; no commas or anything fancy. Somehow, during its migration from Windows to Linux (via winSCP and then a few regular SCPs), it has converted into some kind of binary format I am unfamiliar with. If I open the file in vi, everything appears fine, and it says [converted] at the bottom, although I know it's not a line endings issue (and dos2unix doesn't help). If I 'head' the file, it looks proper except for a "ÿþ" at the beginning of the first line. If I open up the file in nano, however, I see the "ÿþ" at the start and then "^@" before every character (even newlines and EoF). If I try to re-save or copy the file (say via: head file.csv short.txt), this special encoding is preserved. I copied the first ten lines out of vi (which displays it properly) into my Windows clipboard via my SSH client, then pasted it into a new text file, test.txt. This file is visually identical when opened in vi (and similar through 'head', minus the "ÿþ"), although it's roughly half of the filesize. Additionally, file test.txt test.txt: ASCII text file short.txt short.txt: I have no idea what format this once-text file got converted to (it's notoriously hard to search the internet for symbols), but surely there must be some way to convert it back. Any ideas?

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  • Create SAMBA node trust relationship to Windows 2003 PDC server

    - by Rod Regier
    I am having problems creating a trust relationship between an OpenVMS/IA64 node running V/IA64 8.3-1H1, TCPIP 5.6 ECO 5, CIFS 1.1 ECO1 PS11 (SAMBA 3.0.28a) and Windows 2003 server running as a PDC. I do have two other OpenVMS/Alpha nodes running V/A 8.3, TCPIP 5.6 ECO 4, CIS 1.1 ECO1 PS10 (SAMBA 3.0.28a) with working trust relationships to the same Windows 2003 server. Looking for assistance in resolving the trust "handshake". \\ Details from failing node. Unless otherwise noted, corresponding files on working nodes are similar or identical. SMB.CONF extract: [global] server string = Samba %v running on %h (OpenVMS) workgroup = WILMA netbios name = %h security = DOMAIN encrypt passwords = Yes name resolve order = lmhosts host wins bcast Password server = * log file = /samba$log/log.%m printcap name = /sys$manager/ucx$printcap.dat guest account = DYMAX print command = print %f/queue=%p/delete/passall/name="""""%s""""" lprm command = delete/entry=%j map archive = No printing = OpenVMS net rpc testjoin [2010/08/13 16:09:28, 0] SAMBA$SRC:[SOURCE.RPC_CLIENT]CLI_PIPE.C;1:(2443) get_schannel_session_key: could not fetch trust account password for domain 'WILMA' [2010/08/13 16:09:28, 0] SAMBA$SRC:[SOURCE.UTILS]NET_RPC_JOIN.C;1:(72) net_rpc_join_ok: failed to get schannel session key from server W2K3AD2 for domain WILMA. Error was NT_STATUS_CANT_ACCESS_DOMAIN_I NFO Join to domain 'WILMA' is not valid net rpc join "-Uaccount%password" tdb_open_isam: error verifying status of file SAMBA$ROOT:[PRIVATE]secrets.tdb tdb_open_isam: errno value = 1 [2010/08/13 16:21:13, 0] SAMBA$SRC:[SOURCE.PASSDB]SECRETS.C;1:(72) Failed to open /SAMBA$ROOT/PRIVATE/secrets.tdb [2010/08/13 16:21:13, 0] SAMBA$SRC:[SOURCE.UTILS]NET_RPC.C;1:(322) error storing domain sid for WILMA tdb_open_isam: error verifying status of file SAMBA$ROOT:[PRIVATE]secrets.tdb tdb_open_isam: errno value = 1 [2010/08/13 16:21:13, 0] SAMBA$SRC:[SOURCE.PASSDB]SECRETS.C;1:(72) Failed to open /SAMBA$ROOT/PRIVATE/secrets.tdb [2010/08/13 16:21:13, 0] SAMBA$SRC:[SOURCE.UTILS]NET_RPC_JOIN.C;1:(409) error storing domain sid for WILMA Unable to join domain WILMA. \\ Example from other node: net rpc testjoin Join to 'WILMA' is OK

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  • Replacing latex with unicode symbols

    - by Elazar Leibovich
    Often, during a conversation or an email, or at a forum, I would like to type some math, but I don't need full equation support. Unicode symbols should suffice. What I need is an easy way to type math related unicode symbols. Since I already know latex, it makes sense to use the latex symbol mnemonics to type the math symbols. What I currently did is to write an AutoHotKey script which automatically replaces \latexSymbol with the corresponding unicode symbol, using the "hotstrings" AutoHotKey feautres. However, the AutoHotKey hotstrings proved unstable for many strings. Having a couple of tens lines would cause AHK to fail recognizing the strings from time to time. Any other solution? (No, Alt+unicode number isn't convenient enough) Attached is my AHK script. The PutUni function is taken from here. ::\infty:: PutUni("e2889e") return ::\sum:: PutUni("e28891") return ::\int:: PutUni("e288ab") return ::\pm:: PutUni("c2b1") return ::\alpha:: PutUni("c991") return ::\beta:: PutUni("c992") return ::\phi:: PutUni("c9b8") return ::\delta:: PutUni("ceb4") return ::\pi:: PutUni("cf80") return ::\omega:: PutUni("cf89") return ::\in:: PutUni("e28888") return ::\notin:: PutUni("e28889") return ::\iff:: PutUni("e28794") return ::\leq:: PutUni("e289a4") return ::\geq:: PutUni("e289a5") return ::\sqrt:: PutUni("e2889a") return ::\neq:: PutUni("e289a0") return ::\subset:: PutUni("e28a82") return ::\nsubset:: PutUni("e28a84") return ::\nsubseteq:: PutUni("e28a88") return ::\subseteq:: PutUni("e28a86") return ::\prod:: PutUni("e2888f") return ::\N:: PutUni("e28495") return

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  • I must clear my cmos to be able to boot

    - by Fredou
    I have this Asus p7p55d-e pro for about 8 months(got it last July) and for this last 3-4 days I cannot boot without clearing my CMOS what I have is: Seasonic M12D 750W ASUS P7P55D-E Pro Intel Core i5 760 Quad Core Processor Lynnfield LGA1156 XFX GeForce® 8800 GT Alpha Dog 512MB DDR3 Standard (PV-T88P-YDF4) 2x Corsair XMS3 CMX4GX3M2A1600C7 4GB DDR3 2X2GB DDR3-1600 CL 7-8-7-20 I tried to remove all the unnecessary stuff: HD/dvd/pci card/usb cable/etc I tried with only 1 dimm filled, instead of my 4, each one individually it didn't work I tried changing the battery, here goes a few dollars to nowhere, didn't work if I don't reset the CMOS it sometime stock on RAM led, sometime on BOOT DEVICE led, when this happen, it stuck on CPU speed detection when I boot right after the reset, i MUST click on the F2 option (boot with default bios setting) if i go into the bios and save/restart, i have to reset it again when booted, everything is rock solid stable, tried memtest, cpu stress, etc, etc. without issue what should be my next step? trying a new psu? (i need to find one..) doing rma? (i need this mb since it's my only computer...) something else?

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  • Limiting interface bandwidth with tc under Linux

    - by Matt
    I have a linux router which has a 10GBe interface on the outside and bonded Gigabit ethernet interfaces on the inside. We have currently budget for 2GBit/s. If we exceed that rate by more than 5% average for a month then we'll be charged for the whole 10Gbit/s capacity. Quite a step up in dollar terms. So, I want to limit this to 2GBit/s on 10GBe interface. TBF filter might be ideal, but this comment is of concern. On all platforms except for Alpha, it is able to shape up to 1mbit/s of normal traffic with ideal minimal burstiness, sending out data exactly at the configured rates. Should I be using TBF or some other filter to apply this rate to the interface and how would I do it. I don't understand the example given here: Traffic Control HOWTO In particular "Example 9. Creating a 256kbit/s TBF" tc qdisc add dev eth0 handle 1:0 root dsmark indices 1 default_index 0 tc qdisc add dev eth0 handle 2:0 parent 1:0 tbf burst 20480 limit 20480 mtu 1514 rate 32000bps How is the 256K bit/s rate calculated? In this example, 32000bps = 32k bytes per second. Since tc uses bps = bytes per second. I guess burst and limit come into play but how would you go about choosing sensible numbers to reach the desired rate? This is not a mistake. I tested this and it gave a rate close to 256K but not exactly that.

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  • Quick, Linux-compatible unit-aware calculator

    - by endolith
    I want to be able to press a keyboard combination, start typing a mathematical expression that includes units and slightly advanced math (not just a four-function calculator), and get a result immediately, in units that I specify, that I can copy and paste. Currently I open Firefox and press Ctrl+K, type in the search box, and it usually gives me a result in the drop-down from Google Calculator. It doesn't always, though, so I press "=" at the end, wait for a result, remove the equals, wait for a result, realize it doesn't understand the way I typed a unit, open the result in a new tab, etc. it sucks. Wolfram Alpha is smarter, but very much slower, and the output is all images, not text, and I don't have a quick widget for it, if such a thing could even exist. GNU units has a ton of units, which is great, and I can define my own units, which is great, but they have to be written in specific, unintuitive ways, it doesn't handle much advanced math, and I'd need to open a terminal, start units, etc. I hate the command line. I wasted a lot of time trying to make front-ends for units in Deskbar and Launchy, but I'm not a real coder and I don't use either of those anymore. Any other solutions or enhancements of these?

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  • Windows AD DNS: Event ID 5504

    - by Chris_K
    Two of my AD controllers (both running DNS service) appear to be having a similar issue. Both are throwing lots of events in the DNS events that look like this: Event Type: Information Event Source: DNS Event Category: None Event ID: 5504 Date: 5/24/2010 Time: 11:51:38 AM User: N/A Computer: ALPHA Description: The DNS server encountered an invalid domain name in a packet from 76.74.137.6. The packet will be rejected. The event data contains the DNS packet. That will come with the same event, same time, with a packet from 76.74.137.7 as well. I know this is "Information" not an error, but since it is new and different it bothers me (yes, I fear unexplained change!) Both machines are running Windows 2003 R2 SP2. The DNS servers are not exposed to the internet. Both DNS servers are configured to use OpenDNS for Forwarders. For both servers, this started about a week ago. Any thoughts on: 1) should I be concerned? 2) how can I stop/fix this? To keep it interesting, I have a 3rd AD / DNS box. Same domain, different Active Directory site. Same forwarders, yet doesn't have this issue.

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  • Replacing latex with unicode symbols

    - by Elazar Leibovich
    Often, during a conversation or an email, or at a forum, I would like to type some math, but I don't need full equation support. Unicode symbols should suffice. What I need is an easy way to type math related unicode symbols. Since I already know latex, it makes sense to use the latex symbol mnemonics to type the math symbols. What I currently did is to write an AutoHotKey script which automatically replaces \latexSymbol with the corresponding unicode symbol, using the "hotstrings" AutoHotKey feautres. However, the AutoHotKey hotstrings proved unstable for many strings. Having a couple of tens lines would cause AHK to fail recognizing the strings from time to time. Any other solution? (No, Alt+unicode number isn't convenient enough) Attached is my AHK script. The PutUni function is taken from here. ::\infty:: PutUni("e2889e") return ::\sum:: PutUni("e28891") return ::\int:: PutUni("e288ab") return ::\pm:: PutUni("c2b1") return ::\alpha:: PutUni("c991") return ::\beta:: PutUni("c992") return ::\phi:: PutUni("c9b8") return ::\delta:: PutUni("ceb4") return ::\pi:: PutUni("cf80") return ::\omega:: PutUni("cf89") return ::\in:: PutUni("e28888") return ::\notin:: PutUni("e28889") return ::\iff:: PutUni("e28794") return ::\leq:: PutUni("e289a4") return ::\geq:: PutUni("e289a5") return ::\sqrt:: PutUni("e2889a") return ::\neq:: PutUni("e289a0") return ::\subset:: PutUni("e28a82") return ::\nsubset:: PutUni("e28a84") return ::\nsubseteq:: PutUni("e28a88") return ::\subseteq:: PutUni("e28a86") return ::\prod:: PutUni("e2888f") return ::\N:: PutUni("e28495") return

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  • BTrFS crashhhh?

    - by bumbling fool
    I create a new BTrFS raid10 file system using two 250GB drives and the second partition on a third 80GB drive. I create a subvol and snapshot. I mount the snapshot and start copying 8GB of data to it. It gets to around 1GB and the Desktop disappears and what looks like a non interactive terminal comes up with dump/crash information. I don't have a camera handy or I'd take a picture and post it. It basically looks like stack trace info. CTRL-ALT F7 will eventually bring back the Desktop though but the entire BTrFS portion of the OS is hung and non responsive until I reboot. I've reformated and reproduced this problem 3 times now and I'm about to give up :( I realize it is possible this problem is not entirely BTrFS' fault because I'm on natty which is still alpha. More granular details in case I'm an idiot: 1) Create FS: sudo mkfs.btrfs -m raid10 -d raid10 /dev/sda2 /dev/sdb /dev/sdc 2) Initial temporary mount: mkdir /btrfs && sudo mount -t btrfs /dev/sda2 /btrfs 3) Create subvol btrfs s c /btrfs/vm 4) Create initial snapshot: (optional) btrfs s sn /btrfs/cantremember.snap.something 5)unmount /btrfs and mount /btrfs/vm sudo mount -t btrfs -o subvol=vm /dev/sda2 /btrfs/vm 6) Copy data to subvolume. 7) Balance data across drives: (optional) btrfs f bal <path> (never get to this step 7...) Am I doing something wrong?

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  • Quad channel memory and compatibility

    - by balteo
    My motherboard has quad channel memory compatibility. There are 8 memory slots in all: 4 slots are black the other 4 slots are white. I currently have 4 memory modules of 1 GB each in the 4 white slots. That leaves me with 4 free memory slots. My question is: can I put 4 memory modules of 2 GB each in the 4 remaining slots or do I have to use modules of 1 GB all over? FYI here is the output of lshw: alpha description: Ordinateur Tour produit: Precision WorkStation 690 *-cpu:0 description: CPU produit: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X5355 @ 2.66GHz *-memory description: Mémoire Système identifiant matériel: 1000 emplacement: Carte mère taille: 4GiB *-bank:0 description: FB-DIMM DDR2 FB-DIMM Synchrone 667 MHz (1,5 ns) produit: HYMP512F72CP8N3-Y5 fabriquant: Hynix Semiconductor (Hyundai Electronics) identifiant matériel: 0 numéro de série: 56737501 emplacement: DIMM 1 taille: 1GiB bits: 64 bits horloge: 667MHz (1.5ns) *-bank:1 description: FB-DIMM DDR2 FB-DIMM Synchrone 667 MHz (1,5 ns) produit: HYMP512F72CP8N3-Y5 fabriquant: Hynix Semiconductor (Hyundai Electronics) identifiant matériel: 1 numéro de série: 48115124 emplacement: DIMM 2 taille: 1GiB bits: 64 bits horloge: 667MHz (1.5ns) *-bank:2 description: FB-DIMM DDR2 FB-DIMM Synchrone 667 MHz (1,5 ns) produit: HYMP512F72CP8N3-Y5 fabriquant: Hynix Semiconductor (Hyundai Electronics) identifiant matériel: 2 numéro de série: 48115523 emplacement: DIMM 3 taille: 1GiB bits: 64 bits horloge: 667MHz (1.5ns) *-bank:3 description: FB-DIMM DDR2 FB-DIMM Synchrone 667 MHz (1,5 ns) produit: HYMP512F72CP8N3-Y5 fabriquant: Hynix Semiconductor (Hyundai Electronics) identifiant matériel: 3 numéro de série: 48115424 emplacement: DIMM 4 taille: 1GiB bits: 64 bits horloge: 667MHz (1.5ns) *-bank:4 description: FB-DIMM DDR2 FB-DIMM Synchrone 667 MHz (1,5 ns) [vide] fabriquant: FFFFFFFFFFFF identifiant matériel: 4 numéro de série: FFFFFFFF emplacement: DIMM 5 bits: 64 bits horloge: 667MHz (1.5ns) *-bank:5 description: FB-DIMM DDR2 FB-DIMM Synchrone 667 MHz (1,5 ns) [vide] fabriquant: FFFFFFFFFFFF identifiant matériel: 5 numéro de série: FFFFFFFF emplacement: DIMM 6 bits: 64 bits horloge: 667MHz (1.5ns) *-bank:6 description: FB-DIMM DDR2 FB-DIMM Synchrone 667 MHz (1,5 ns) [vide] fabriquant: FFFFFFFFFFFF identifiant matériel: 6 numéro de série: FFFFFFFF emplacement: DIMM 7 bits: 64 bits horloge: 667MHz (1.5ns) *-bank:7 description: FB-DIMM DDR2 FB-DIMM Synchrone 667 MHz (1,5 ns) [vide] fabriquant: FFFFFFFFFFFF identifiant matériel: 7 numéro de série: FFFFFFFF emplacement: DIMM 8 bits: 64 bits horloge: 667MHz (1.5ns) *-pci:0 description: Host bridge produit: 5000X Chipset Memory Controller Hub fabriquant: Intel Corporation identifiant matériel: 100 information bus: pci@0000:00:00.0 version: 12 bits: 32 bits horloge: 33MHz

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  • Is there a way to change the string format for an existing CSR "Country Code" field from UTF8 to Printable String?

    - by Mike B
    CentOS 5.x The short version: Is there a way to change the encoding format for an existing CSR "Country Code" field from UTF8 to Printable String? The long version: I've got a CSR generated from a product using standard java security providers (jsse/jce). Some of the information in the CSR uses UTF8 Strings (which I understand is the preferred encoding requirement as of December 31, 2003 - RF 3280). The certificate authority I'm submitting the CSR to explicitly requires the Country Code to be specified as a PrintableString. My CSR has it listed as a UTF8 string. I went back to the latest RFC - http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc5280.txt. It seems to conflict specifically on countryName. Here's where it gets a little messy... The countryName is part of the relative DN. The relative DN is defined to be of type DirectoryString, which is defined as a choice of teletexString, printableString, universalString, utf8String, or bmpString. It also more specifically defines countryName as being either alpha (upper bound 2 bytes) or numeric (upper bound 3 bytes). Furthermore, in the appendix, it refers to the X520countryName, which is limited to be only a PrintableString of size 2. So, it is clear why it doesn't work. It appears that the certificate authority and Sun/Java do not agree on their interpretation of the requirements for the countryName. Is there anything I can do to modify the CSR to be compatible with the CA?

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  • Excel data representation: show me all people who did not pass the exam

    - by dreftymac
    Background I have an excel spreadsheet with the results of a pass/no-pass exam. Students are allowed to take the exam as often as they want until they either pass, or give up trying. student ;; result ;; date [email protected] ;; no-pass ;; 2000-06-07 [email protected] ;; pass ;; 2000-06-07 [email protected] ;; pass ;; 2000-06-07 [email protected] ;; no-pass ;; 2000-06-07 [email protected] ;; pass ;; 2000-06-07 [email protected] ;; pass ;; 2000-06-08 [email protected] ;; no-pass ;; 2000-06-08 Question Using a pivot-table or something else, how can I get excel to show me a clean report or representation of this data on another sheet that answers the question: Who are all the people who took the exam, but never got a passing grade? In the above example it would just show me [email protected] ;; no-pass ;; with all the dates that delta took the exam. I know excel is not a database nor a reporting tool per-se, but it would be great if I could get it to do this.

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  • Which CPU for XEN - LAMP testbed - Budget

    - by deploymonkey
    Dear serverfault knowledgeables, im in a decision dilemma right now, which I can't resolve due to lack of hands on experience. I need to build a testbed for basically virtualizing a LAMP application (os'ses not yet decided) including server side calculations. I'll opt for XEN since it seems better supported by cloud hosters at the moment. The hardware is for a proof of concept for a startup doing saas and might be used for closed live alpha/beta later on. After testing, the testbed might be a) deployed as a colocated white box server b) used as workstation Single socket is enough. We want to have ECC memory for reliability, this excludes most of the consumer line at intel. If intel CPU, then threaded cpu (HT) is preferred have at least 16 gig ram If justified by price and reliability is not too bad, a high quality desktop MB instead of a server MB would be worth a try It came down to the opteron 6128 vs. the xeon 5620 for me after a lot of research, but I don't necessarily have to be right. Which CPU is preferrable, concerning TCO (MB price, power requirements 24/7...) , Opteron 6128 or Xeon 5620? Which one offers better performance in real world applications? (Do You have any other suggestions I probably overlooked?) Thank You for Your consideration

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  • Inkscape: Copying an object, retaining transparency

    - by dpk
    I'm looking for a way to copy objects from one window to another without losing the surrounding transparency. I have two Inkscape windows. The setup is pretty simple. In the first window I draw a filled circle and a filled rectangle in it, with the circle set on top of the rectangle to show that the area around the circle is transparent (that is, you can see the rectangle "under" the circle, see screenshot 1, left). In the second window I just drew a filled rectangle (screenshot 1, right). When I copy the circle from window 1 to window 2 the transparency around the circle is lost (screenshot 2). I've verified that the backgrounds of the documents are 0% alpha/white. This is a rather contrived example but is readily reproducible. The real graphics I am working with have a bunch of objects all in a single group, but I have the same results. I feel like I'm missing something. The circle no longer behaves like a circle at its destination. Instead, it acts kind of like a bitmap. I'm definitely not using the bitmap copy feature.

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  • I can't get my PC to start up by a normal way.

    - by ssice
    I couldn't write a more accurate title. I am just unable to start the computer by pressing the Power On button. I checked the Power Supply and it seems to give good voltage values in every pin. And this is not a BIOS malfunction because of bad overclocking or anything that may come to your mind. And I will tell you why. It happens that EPS (or any ATX-based) power supply has the ability to be powered-on by the Motherboard by jumping the 13th pin of the 24-pin-ATX-connector to COM/GND. I did it, after pushing the power on button (without any visual response) and, pwhaa! The machine turned on. I was able to read (and even write, if I wanted) BIOS values and then start any OS installed. Machine starts, so it's not any kind of misconfiguration. It seems some hardware related. I am able to power the machine on only if I already pushed the power on button. Though pushing it without jumping the 13th pin to ground for a second does not power the machine. Of course, jumping the pin without pushing the power on button does not tell the motherboard anything, so the computer would not start up either. It's as if the logic that connects the power button with the 13th pin derivation to GND was unable to be activated. What can be the issue? How can I solve it? My configuration is as follows: CPU: AMD Phenom 9850 X4 Black Edition MB: ASUS Formula II AM2 RAM: 2x2GB Corsair Dominator 5-5-5-15 2T @ 1066MHz DDR2 Tested also with only 1 module GPU: 2x XFX nVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT XxX Alpha Dog Edition @ Core: 540Mhz [SLi] Power Supply: Xilence 700W (ATX 12V 2.3 / EPS 12V 2.92 compatible) PS: I know the machine is like 2 years old. I hardly use it now, but my parents do.

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  • I cannot connect to home server after a few hours

    - by Iago
    I have an old PC and I decided to revive it. A LAMP (for my own use) and a P2P server (torrent and e2dk). My old PC is an AMD Athlon XP (1400 MHz) with 384 Mb of RAM First of all I installed Ubuntu Server 11.10, SSH, FTP, SAMBA and LAMP. With this configuration my home server works well, with no problem. Then I went to the P2P server and I tried rTorrent and then uTorrent Server Alpha. And here is my problem. After a few hours (maybe 10 hours, or maybe 30 hours) with the torrent app running (rTorrent or uTorrent) I lose the connection to my home server. That is, I cannot access via ssh, I cannot access the apache server, etc. but I can ping the home server. It seems that the server freezes and all I can do is reboot the server physically. So, I have two questions: What is the problem? and How can I solve it?

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  • Windows Small Business System 2003. SQL timeout in Server Performance Report

    - by tetranz
    I'm the volunteer IT admin at a small school. We have SBS 2003 with about ten desktops. The server performance report is emailed to me daily. It is setup with a wizard in the Monitoring and Performance part of the "Server Management" console. It often fails with a "The page cannot be displayed" error. The event log shows Event Type: Error Event Source: ServerStatusReports Event Category: None Event ID: 1 Date: 1/16/2011 Time: 6:03:14 AM User: N/A Computer: ALPHA Description: Server Status Report: URL: http://localhost/monitoring/perf.aspx?reportMode=1&allHours=1 Error Message: Timeout expired. The timeout period elapsed prior to completion of the operation or the server is not responding. Stack Trace: at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnection.OnError(SqlException exception, TdsParserState state) at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlInternalConnection.OnError(SqlException exception, TdsParserState state) at System.Data.SqlClient.TdsParser.ThrowExceptionAndWarning() at System.Data.SqlClient.TdsParser.ReadNetlib(Int32 bytesExpected) [plus lots more stack trace] This has been happening for years :) I've never really solved it. It seems to be related to WSUS. When it happens, I run the Update Services "Server Cleanup Wizard". That takes a long time to run. If I haven't run it for a while it can take 10 hours. I also run the WsusDBMaintenance.sql script (from TechNet I think) which reindexes the database etc. Those two things seem to get it working again for a while. Recently the "while" has become a couple of weeks. My searching online has revealed lots of people having this problem but no real solution. Does anyone have any good ideas about this? I have to wonder if something in the WSUS SQL schema is not indexed properly. The time that the server cleanup wizard takes seems ridiculous. Thanks

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  • doubt regarding carrying data in custom events using actionscript

    - by user267530
    Hi I am working on actionscript to generate a SWF dynamically using JSON data coming from an HTTP request. I receive the data on creationComplete and try to generate a tree like structure. I don’t create the whole tree at the same time. I create 2 levels, level 1 and level 2. My goal is to attach custom events on the panels which represent tree nodes. When users click the panels, it dispatches custom events and try to generate the next level. So, it goes like this : On creation complete - get JSON- create top tow levels - click on level 2- create the level 2 and level 3 - click on level 3- create level 3 and 4. …and so on and so on. I am attaching my code with this email. Please take a look at it and if you have any hints on how you would do this if you need to paint a tree having total level number = “n” where( 0 import com.iwobanas.effects.*; import flash.events.MouseEvent; import flash.filters.BitmapFilterQuality; import flash.filters.BitmapFilterType; import flash.filters.GradientGlowFilter; import mx.controls.Alert; private var roundedMask:Sprite; private var panel:NewPanel; public var oldPanelIds:Array = new Array(); public var pages:Array = new Array();//cleanup public var delPages:Array = new Array(); public function DrawPlaybook(pos:Number,title:String,chld:Object):void { panel = new NewPanel(chld); panel.title = title; panel.name=title; panel.width = 100; panel.height = 80; panel.x=pos+5; panel.y=40; // Define a gradient glow. var gradientGlow:GradientGlowFilter = new GradientGlowFilter(); gradientGlow.distance = 0; gradientGlow.angle = 45; gradientGlow.colors = [0xFFFFF0, 0xFFFFFF]; gradientGlow.alphas = [0, 1]; gradientGlow.ratios = [0, 255]; gradientGlow.blurX = 10; gradientGlow.blurY = 10; gradientGlow.strength = 2; gradientGlow.quality = BitmapFilterQuality.HIGH; gradientGlow.type = BitmapFilterType.OUTER; panel.filters =[gradientGlow]; this.rawChildren.addChild(panel); pages.push(panel); panel.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, function(e:MouseEvent){onClickHandler(e,title,chld)}); this.addEventListener(CustomPageClickEvent.PANEL_CLICKED, function(e:CustomPageClickEvent){onCustomPanelClicked(e,title)}); } public function onClickHandler(e:MouseEvent,title:String,chld:Object):void { //var panel:Panel; for each(var stp1:NewPanel in pages){ if(stp1.title==title){ var eventObj:CustomPageClickEvent = new CustomPageClickEvent("panelClicked"); eventObj.panelClicked = stp1; dispatchEvent(eventObj); } } } private function onCustomPanelClicked(e:CustomPageClickEvent,title:String):void { //cleanup itself Alert.show("onCustomPanelClicked" + title); var panel:NewPanel; for each(var stp:NewPanel in pages){ startAnimation(e,stp); } if(title == e.panelClicked.title){ panel = new NewPanel(null); panel.title = title; panel.name=title; panel.width = 150; panel.height = 80; panel.x=100; panel.y=40; this.rawChildren.addChild(panel); // var slideRight:SlideRight = new SlideRight(); slideRight.target=panel; slideRight.duration=750; slideRight.showTarget=true; slideRight.play(); //draw the steps var jsonData = this.map.getValue(title); var posX:Number = 50; var posY:Number = 175; for each ( var pnl:NewPanel in pages){ pages.pop(); } for each ( var stp1:Object in jsonData.children){ //Alert.show("map step=" + stp.text ); panel = new NewPanel(null); panel.title = stp1.text; panel.name=stp1.id; panel.width = 100; panel.id=stp1.id; panel.height = 80; panel.x = posX; panel.y=posY; posX+=150; var s:String="hi" + stp1.text; panel.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, function(e:MouseEvent){onChildClick(e,s);}); this.addEventListener(CustomPageClickEvent.PANEL_CLICKED, function(e:CustomPageClickEvent){onCustomPnlClicked(e)}); this.rawChildren.addChild(panel); // Alert.show("map step=" + this.getChildIndex(panel) ); // oldPanelIds.push(panel); pages.push(panel); //this.addEventListener(CustomPageClickEvent.PANEL_CLICKED, //function(e:CustomPageClickEvent){onCustomPanelClicked(e,title)}); var slide:SlideUp = new SlideUp(); slide.target=panel; slide.duration=1500; slide.showTarget=false; slide.play(); } } } public function onChildClick(e:MouseEvent,s:String):void { //var panel:Panel; //Alert.show(e.currentTarget.title); for each(var stp1:NewPanel in pages){ if(stp1.title==e.currentTarget.title){ var eventObj:CustomPageClickEvent = new CustomPageClickEvent("panelClicked"); eventObj.panelClicked = stp1; dispatchEvent(eventObj); } } } private function onCustomPnlClicked(e:CustomPageClickEvent):void { for each ( var pnl:NewPanel in pages){ pages.pop(); } //onCustomPanelClicked(e,e.currentTarget.title); //Alert.show("hi from cstm" + e.panelClicked.title); } private function fadePanel(event:Event,panel:NewPanel):void{ panel.alpha -= .005; if (panel.alpha <= 0){ //Alert.show(panel.title); panel.removeEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, function(e:Event){fadePanel(e,panel);}); }; panel.title=""; } private function startAnimation(event:CustomPageClickEvent,panel:NewPanel):void{ panel.addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, function(e:Event){fadePanel(e,panel)}); } Thanks in advance. Palash

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  • How to Smooth the drawing Stroke?

    - by user1852420
    I am creating drawing.. i can undo, and put colors on it. but when i draw using my fingers the stroke is not that smooth and has edge lines,, here my codes. on which I can Paint on a view, Undo, change color, and the opacity. stroke.h #import <UIKit/UIKit.h> @interface stroke : UIView{ NSMutableArray *strokeArray; UIColor *strokeColor; int strokeSize; float strokeAlpha; int strokeAlpha2; IBOutlet UISlider *slides; float red; float green; float blue; CGPoint mid1; CGPoint mid2; CGPoint endingPoint,previousPoint1,previousPoint2; CGPoint currentTouch; } @property (nonatomic, retain) UIColor *strokeColor; @property (nonatomic) int strokeSize; @property (nonatomic, retain) NSMutableArray *strokeArray; - (IBAction)changeAlphaValue; -(void)loadSLider; -(void)blueColor; -(void)darkvioletColor; -(void)violetColor; -(void)pinkColor; -(void)darkbrownColor; -(void)redColor; -(void)magentaRedColor; -(void)lightBrownColor; -(void)lightOrangeColor; -(void)OrangeColor; -(void)YellowColor; -(void)greenColor; -(void)lightYellowColor; -(void)darkGreenColor; -(void)TurquioseColor; -(void)PaleTurquioseColor; -(void)skyBlueColor; -(void)whiteColor; -(void)DirtyWhiteColor; -(void)SilverColor; -(void)LightGrayColor; -(void)GrayColor; -(void)LightBlackColor; -(void)BlackColor; @end stroke.m #import "stroke.h" @implementation stroke @synthesize strokeColor; @synthesize strokeSize; @synthesize strokeArray; - (void) awakeFromNib{ self.strokeArray = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init]; self.strokeColor = [UIColor colorWithRed:0 green:0 blue:232 alpha:1]; self.strokeSize = 3; } - (void)drawRect:(CGRect)rect{ NSMutableArray *stroke; for (stroke in strokeArray) { CGContextRef contextRef = UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext(); CGContextSetLineWidth(contextRef, [[stroke objectAtIndex:1] intValue]); CGFloat *color = CGColorGetComponents([[stroke objectAtIndex:2] CGColor]); CGContextSetRGBStrokeColor(contextRef, color[0], color[1], color[2], color[3]); CGContextBeginPath(contextRef); CGPoint points[[stroke count]]; for (NSUInteger i = 3; i < [stroke count]; i++) { points[i-3] = [[stroke objectAtIndex:i] CGPointValue]; } CGContextAddLines(contextRef, points, [stroke count]-3); CGContextStrokePath(contextRef); } } -(void)loadSLider{ } - (IBAction)changeAlphaValue{ strokeAlpha2 =((int)slides.value); } -(void)blueColor{ red = 0/255.0; green = 0/255.0; blue = 255/255.0; } -(void)darkvioletColor{ red = 75/255.0; green = 0/255.0; blue = 130/255.0; } -(void)violetColor{ red = 128/255.0; green = 0/255.0; blue = 128/255.0; } -(void)pinkColor{ red = 255/255.0; green = 0/255.0; blue = 255/255.0; } -(void)darkbrownColor{ red = 0.200; green = 0.0; blue = 0.0; } -(void)redColor{ red = 255/255.0; green = 0/255.0; blue = 0/255.0; } -(void)magentaRedColor{ red = 0.350; green = 0.0; blue = 0.0; } -(void)lightBrownColor{ red = 0.480; green = 0.0; blue = 0.0; } -(void)lightOrangeColor{ red = 0.600; green = 0.200; blue = 0.0; } -(void)OrangeColor{ red = 1.0; green = 0.300; blue = 0.0; } -(void)YellowColor{ red = 0.950; green = 0.450; blue = 0.0; } -(void)greenColor{ red = 0.0; green = 1.0; blue = 0.0; } -(void)lightYellowColor{ red = 1.0; green = 1.0; blue = 0.0; } -(void)darkGreenColor{ red = 0.0; green = 0.500; blue = 0.0; } -(void)TurquioseColor{ red = 0.0; green = 0.700; blue = 0.200; } -(void)PaleTurquioseColor{ red = 0.0; green = 0.700; blue = 0.600; } -(void)skyBlueColor{ red = 0.0; green = 0.400; blue = 0.800; } -(void)whiteColor{ red = 1.0; green = 1.0; blue = 1.0; } -(void)DirtyWhiteColor{ red = 0.800; green = 0.800; blue = 0.800; } -(void)SilverColor{ red = 0.600; green = 0.600; blue = 0.600; } -(void)LightGrayColor{ red = 0.500; green = 0.500; blue = 0.500; } -(void)GrayColor{ red = 0.300; green = 0.300; blue = 0.300; } -(void)LightBlackColor{ red = 0.150; green = 0.150; blue = 0.150; } -(void)BlackColor{ red = 0.0; green = 0.0; blue = 0.0; } - (void)touchesBegan:(NSSet *)touches withEvent:(UIEvent *)event { UITouch *touch; NSEnumerator *counter = [touches objectEnumerator]; while ((touch = (UITouch *)[counter nextObject])) { switch (strokeAlpha2) { case 1: strokeAlpha = .1; break; case 2: strokeAlpha = .2; break; case 3: strokeAlpha = .3; break; case 4: strokeAlpha = .4; break; case 5: strokeAlpha = .5; break; case 6: strokeAlpha = .6; break; case 7: strokeAlpha = .7; break; case 8: strokeAlpha = .8; break; case 9: strokeAlpha = .9; break; case 10: strokeAlpha = 1; break; default: strokeAlpha = 1; break; } self.strokeColor = [UIColor colorWithRed:red green:green blue:blue alpha:strokeAlpha]; NSValue *touchPos = [NSValue valueWithCGPoint:[touch locationInView:self]]; UIColor *color = [UIColor colorWithCGColor:strokeColor.CGColor]; NSNumber *size = [NSNumber numberWithInt:strokeSize]; NSMutableArray *stroke = [NSMutableArray arrayWithObjects: touch, size, color, touchPos, nil]; [strokeArray addObject:stroke]; } } - (void)touchesMoved:(NSSet *)touches withEvent:(UIEvent *)event { UITouch *touch; NSEnumerator *counter = [touches objectEnumerator]; while ((touch = (UITouch *)[counter nextObject])) { NSMutableArray *stroke; for (stroke in strokeArray) { if ([stroke objectAtIndex:0] == touch) { [stroke addObject:[NSValue valueWithCGPoint:[touch locationInView:self]]]; } [self setNeedsDisplay]; } } } @end

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  • Looking Back at MIX10

    - by WeigeltRo
    It’s the sad truth of my life that even though I’m fascinated by airplanes and flight in general since my childhood days, my body doesn’t like flying. Even the ridiculously short flights inside Germany are taking their toll on me each time. Now combine this with sitting in the cramped space of economy class for many hours on a transatlantic flight from Germany to Las Vegas and back, and factor in some heavy dose of jet lag (especially on my way eastwards), and you get an idea why after coming back home I had this question on my mind: Was it really worth it to attend MIX10? This of course is a question that will also be asked by my boss at Comma Soft (for other reasons, obviously), who decided to send me and my colleague Jens Schaller, to the MIX10 conference. (A note to my German readers: An dieser Stelle der Hinweis, dass Comma Soft noch Silverlight-Entwickler und/oder UI-Designer für den Standort Bonn sucht – aussagekräftige Bewerbungen bitte an [email protected]) Too keep things short: My answer is yes. Before I’ll go into detail, let me ask the heretical questions whether tech conferences in general still make sense. There was a time, where actually being at a tech conference gave you a head-start in regard to learning about new technologies. Nowadays this is no longer true, where every bit of information and every detail is immediately twittered, blogged and whatevered to death. In the case of MIX10 you even can download the video-taped sessions shortly after. So: Does visiting a conference still make sense? It depends on what you expect from a conference. It should be clear to everybody that you’ll neither get exclusive information, nor receive training in a small group. What a conference does offer that sitting in front of your computer does not can be summarized as follows: Focus Being away from work and home will help you to focus on the presented information. Of course there are always the poor guys who are haunted by their work (with mails and short text messages reporting the latest showstopper problem), but in general being out of your office makes a huge difference. Inspiration With the focus comes the emotional involvement. I find it much easier to absorb information if I feel that certain vibe when sitting in a session. This still means that I have put work into reviewing the information later, but it’s a better starting point. And all the impressions collected at a (good) conference combined lead to a higher motivation – be it by the buzz (“this is gonna be sooo cool!”) or by the fear to fall behind (“man, we’ll have work on this, or else…”). People At a conference it’s pretty easy to get into contact with other people during breakfast, lunch and other breaks. This is a good opportunity to get a feel for what other development teams are doing (on a very general level of course, nobody will tell you about their secret formula) and what they are thinking about specific technologies. So MIX10 did offer focus, inspiration and people, but that would have meant nothing without valuable content. When I (being a frontend developer with a strong interest in UI/UX) planned my visit to MIX10, I made the decision to focus on the "soft" topics of design, interaction and user experience. I figured that I would be bombarded with all the technical details about Silverlight 4 anyway in the weeks and months to come. Actually, I would have liked to catch a few technical sessions, but the agenda wasn’t exactly in favor of people interested in any kind of Silverlight and UI/UX/Design topics. That’s one of my few complaints about the conference – I would have liked one more day and/or more sessions per day. Overall, the quality of the workshops and sessions was pretty high. In fact, looking back at my collection of conferences I’ve visited in the past I’d say that MIX10 ranks somewhere near the top spot. Here’s an overview of the workshops/sessions I attended (I’ll leave out the keynotes): Day 0 (Workshops on Sunday) Design Fundamentals for Developers Robby Ingebretsen is the man! Great workshop in three parts with the perfect mix of examples, well-structured definition of terminology and the right dose of humor. Robby was part of the WPF team before founding his own company so he not only has a strong interest in design (and the skillz!) but also the technical background.   Design Tools and Techniques Originally announced to be held by Arturo Toledo, the Rosso brothers from ArcheType filled in for the first two parts, and Corrina Black had a pretty general part about the Windows Phone UI. The first two thirds were a mixed bag; the two guys definitely knew what they were talking about, and the demos were great, but the talk lacked the preparation and polish of a truly great presentation. Corrina was not allowed to go into too much detail before the keynote on Monday, but the session was still very interesting as it showed how much thought went into the Windows Phone UI (and there’s always a lot to learn when people talk about their thought process). Day 1 (Monday) Designing Rich Experiences for Data-Centric Applications I wonder whether there was ever a test-run for this session, but what Ken Azuma and Yoshihiro Saito delivered in the first 15 minutes of a 30-minutes-session made me walk out. A commercial for a product (just great: a video showing a SharePoint plug-in in an all-Japanese UI) combined with the most generic blah blah one could imagine. EPIC FAIL.   Great User Experiences: Seamlessly Blending Technology & Design I switched to this session from the one above but I guess I missed the interesting part – what I did catch was what looked like a “look at the cool stuff we did” without being helpful. Or maybe I was just in a bad mood after the other session.   The Art, Technology and Science of Reading This talk by Kevin Larson was very interesting, but was more a presentation of what Microsoft is doing in research (pretty impressive) and in the end lacked a bit the helpful advice one could have hoped for.   10 Ways to Attack a Design Problem and Come Out Winning Robby Ingebretsen again, and again a great mix of theory and practice. The clean and simple, yet effective, UI of the reader app resulted in a simultaneous “wow” of Jens and me. If you’d watch only one session video, this should be it. Microsoft has to bring Robby back next year! Day 2 (Tuesday) Touch in Public: Multi-touch Interaction Design for Kiosks & Architectural Experiences Very interesting session by Jason Brush, a great inspiration with many details to look out for in the examples. Exactly what I was hoping for – and then some!   Designing Bing: Heart and Science How hard can it be to design the UI for a search engine? An input field and a list of results, that should be it, right? Well, not so fast! The talk by Paul Ray showed the many iterations to finally get it right (up to the choice of a specific blue for the links). And yes, I want an eye-tracking device to play around with!   The Elephant in the Room When Nishant Kothary presented a long list of what his session was not about, I told to myself (not having the description text present) “Am I in the wrong talk? Should I leave?”. Boy, was I wrong. A great talk about human factors in the process of designing stuff.   An Hour with Bill Buxton Having seen Bill Buxton’s presentation in the keynote, I just had to see this man again – even though I didn’t know what to expect. Being more or less unplanned and intended to be more of a conversation, the session didn’t provide a wealth of immediately useful information. Nevertheless Bill Buxton was impressive with his huge knowledge of seemingly everything. But this could/should have been a session some when in the evening and not in parallel to at least two other interesting talks. Day 3 (Wednesday) Design the Ordinary, Like the Fixie This session by DL Byron and Kevin Tamura started really well and brought across the message to keep things simple. But towards the end the talk lost some of its steam. And, as a member of the audience pointed out, they kind of ignored their own advice when they used a fancy presentation software other then PowerPoint that sometimes got in the way of showing things.   Developing Natural User Interfaces Speaking of alternative presentation software, Joshua Blake definitely had the most remarkable alternative to PowerPoint, a self-written program called NaturalShow that was controlled using multi-touch on a touch screen. Not a PowerPoint-killer, but impressive nevertheless. The (excellent) talk itself was kind of eye-opening in regard to what “multi-touch support” on various platforms (WPF, Silverlight, Windows Phone) actually means.   Treat your Content Right The talk by Tiffani Jones Brown wasn’t even on my planned schedule, but somehow I ended up in that session – and it was great. And even for people who don’t necessarily have to write content for websites, some points made by Tiffani are valid in many places, notably wherever you put texts with more than a single word into your UI. Creating Effective Info Viz in Microsoft Silverlight The last session of MIX10 I attended was kind of disappointing. At first things were very promising, with Matthias Shapiro giving a brief but well-structured introduction to info graphics and interactive visualizations. Then the live-coding began and while the result was interesting, too much time was spend on wrestling to get the code working. Ending earlier than planned, the talk was a bit light on actual content, but at least it included a nice list of resources. Conclusion It could be felt all across MIX10, UIs will take a huge leap forward; in fact, there are enough examples that have already. People who both have the technical know-how and at least a basic understanding of design (“literacy” as Bill Buxton called it) are in high demand. The concept of the MIX conference and initiatives like design.toolbox shows that Microsoft understands very well that frontend developers have to acquire new knowledge besides knowing how to hack code and putting buttons on a form. There are extremely exciting times before us, with lots of opportunity for those who are eager to develop their skills, that is for sure.

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  • The Internet of Things & Commerce: Part 2 -- Interview with Brian Celenza, Commerce Innovation Strategist

    - by Katrina Gosek, Director | Commerce Product Strategy-Oracle
    Internet of Things & Commerce Series: Part 2 (of 3) Welcome back to the second installation of my three part series on the Internet of Things & Commerce. A few weeks ago, I wrote “The Next 7,000 Days” about how we’ve become embedded in a digital architecture in the last 7,000 days since the birth of the internet – an architecture that everyday ties the massive expanse of the internet evermore closely with our physical lives. This blog series explores how this new blend of virtual and material will change how we shop and how businesses sell. Now enjoy reading my interview with Brian Celenza, one of the chief strategists in our Oracle Commerce innovation group. He comments on the past, present, and future of the how the growing Internet of Things relates and will relate to the buying and selling of goods on and offline. -------------------------------------------- QUESTION: You probably have one of the coolest jobs on our team, Brian – and frankly, one of the coolest jobs in our industry. As part of the innovation team for Oracle Commerce, you’re regularly working on bold features and groundbreaking commerce-focused experiences for our vision demos. As you look back over the past couple of years, what is the biggest trend (or trends) you’ve seen in digital commerce that started to bring us closer to this idea of what people are calling an “Internet of Things”? Brian: Well as you look back over the last couple of years, the speed at which change in our industry has moved looks like one of those blurred movement photos – you know the ones where the landscape blurs because the observer is moving so quickly your eye focus can’t keep up. But one thing that is absolutely clear is that the biggest catalyst for that speed of change – especially over the last three years – has been mobile. Mobile technology changed everything. Over the last three years the entire thought process of how to sell on (and offline) has shifted because of mobile technology advances. Particularly for eCommerce professionals who have started to move past the notion of “channels” for selling goods to this notion of “Mobile First”… then the Web site. Or more accurately, that everything – smartphones, web, store, tablet – is just one channel or has to act like one singular access point to the same product catalog, information and content. The most innovative eCommerce professionals realized some time ago that it’s not ideal to build an eCommerce Web site and then build everything on top of or off of it. Rather, they want to build an eCommerce API and then integrate it will all other systems. To accomplish this, they are leveraging all the latest mobile technologies or possibilities mobile technology has opened up: 4G and LTE, GPS, bluetooth, touch screens, apps, html5… How has this all started to come together for shopping experiences on and offline? Well to give you a personal example, I remember visiting an Apple store a few years ago and being amazed that I didn’t have to wait in line because a store associate knew everything about me from my ID – right there on the sales floor – and could check me out anywhere. Then just a few months later (when like any good addict) I went back to get the latest and greatest new gadget, I felt like I was stealing it because I could check myself out with my smartphone. I didn’t even need to see a sales associate OR go to a cash register. Amazing. And since then, all sort sorts of companies across all different types of industries – from food service to apparel –  are starting to see mobile payments in the billions of dollars now thanks not only to the convenience factor but to smart loyalty rewards programs as well. These are just some really simple current examples that come to mind. So many different things have happened in the last couple of years, it’s hard to really absorb all of the quickly – because as soon as you do, everything changes again! Just like that blurry speed photo image. For eCommerce, however, this type of new environment underscores the importance of building an eCommerce API – a platform that has services you can tap in to and build on as the landscape changes at a fever pitch. It’s a mobile first perspective. A web service perspective – particularly if you are thinking of how to engage customers across digital and physical spaces. —— QUESTION: Thanks for bringing us into the present – some really great examples you gave there to put things into perspective. So what do you see as the biggest trend right now around the “Internet of Things” – and what’s coming next few years? Brian: Honestly, even sitting where I am in the innovation group – it’s hard to look out even 12 months because, well, I don’t even think we’ve fully caught up with what is possible now. But I can definitely say that in the last 12 months and in the coming 12 months, in the technology and eCommerce world it’s all about iBeacons. iBeacons are awesome tools we have right now to tie together physical and digital shopping experiences. They know exactly where you are as a shopper and can communicate that to businesses. Currently there seem to be two camps of thought around iBeacons. First, many people are thinking of them like an “indoor GPS”, which to be fair they literally are. The use case this first camp envisions for iBeacons is primarily for advertising and marketing. So they use iBeacons to push location-based promotions to customers if they are close to a store or in a store. You may have seen these types of mobile promotions start to pop up occasionally on your smart phone as you pass by a store you’ve bought from in the past. That’s the work of iBeacons. But in my humble opinion, these promotions probably come too early in the customer journey and although they may be well timed and work to “convert” in some cases, I imagine in most they are just eroding customer trust because they are kind of a “one-size-fits-all” solution rather than one that is taking into account what exactly the customer might be looking for in that particular moment. Maybe they just want more information and a promotion is way too soon for that type of customer. The second camp is more in line with where my thinking falls. In this case, businesses take a more sensitive approach with iBeacons to customers’ needs. Instead of throwing out a “one-size-fits-all” to any passer by with iBeacons, the use case is more around looking at the physical proximity of a customer as an opportunity to provide a service: show expert reviews on a product they may be looking at in a particular aisle of a store, offer the opportunity to compare prices (and then offer a promotion), signal an in-store associate if a customer has been in the store for more than 10 minutes in one place. These are all less intrusive more value-driven uses of iBeacons. And they are more about building customer trust through service. To take this example a bit further into the future realm of “Big Data” and “Internet of Things” businesses could actually use the Oracle Commerce Platform and iBeacons to “silently” track customer movement w/in the store to provide higher quality service. And this doesn’t have to be creepy or intrusive. Simply if a customer has been in a particular department or aisle for more than a 5 or 10 minutes, an in-store associate could come over an offer some assistance already knowing customer preferences from their online profile and maybe even seeing the items in a shopping cart they started at home. None of this has to be revealed to the customer, but it certainly could boost the level of service an in-store sales associate could provide. Or, in another futuristic example, stores could use the digital footprint of the physical store transmitted by iBeacons to generate heat maps of the store that could be tracked over time. Imagine how much you could find out about which parts of the store are more busy during certain parts of the day or seasons. This could completely revolutionize how physical merchandising is deployed or where certain high value / new items are placed. And / or this use of iBeacons could also help businesses figure out if customers are getting held up in certain parts of the store during busy days like Black Friday. If long lines are causing customers to bounce from a physical store and leave those holiday gifts behind, maybe having employees with mobile check as an option could remove the cash register bottleneck. But going to back to my original statement, it’s all still very early in the story for iBeacons. The hardware manufacturers are still very new and there is still not one clear standard.  Honestly, it all goes back to building and maintaining an extensible and flexible platform for anywhere engagement. What you’re building today should allow you to rapidly take advantage of whatever unimaginable use cases wait around the corner. ------------------------------------------------------ I hope you enjoyed the brief interview with Brian. It’s really awesome to have such smart and innovation-minded individuals on our Oracle Commerce innovation team. Please join me again in a few weeks for Part 3 of this series where I interview one of the product managers on our team about how the blending of digital and in-store selling in influencing our product development and vision.

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  • How To Make Hundreds of Complex Photo Edits in Seconds With Photoshop Actions

    - by Eric Z Goodnight
    Have a huge folder of images needing tweaks? A few hundred adjustments may seem like a big, time consuming job—but read one to see how Photoshop can do repetitive tasks automatically, even if you don’t know how to program! Photoshop Actions are a simple way to program simple routines in Photoshop, and are a great time saver, allowing you to re-perform tasks over and over, saving you minutes or hours, depending on the job you have to work on. See how any bunch of images and even some fairly complicated photo tweaking can be done automatically to even hundreds of images at once. When Can I use Photoshop Actions? Photoshop actions are a way of recording the tools, menus, and keys pressed while using the program. Each time you use a tool, adjust a color, or use the brush, it can be recorded and played back over any file Photoshop can open. While it isn’t perfect and can get very confused if not set up correctly, it can automate editing hundreds of images, saving you hours and hours if you have big jobs with complex edits. The image illustrated above is a template for a polaroid-style picture frame. If you had several hundred images, it would actually be a simple matter to use Photoshop Actions to create hundreds of new images inside the frame in almost no time at all. Let’s take a look at how a simple folder of images and some Image editing automation can turn lots of work into a simple and easy job. Creating a New Action Actions is a default part of the “Essentials” panel set Photoshop begins with as a default. If you can’t see the panel button under the “History” button, you can find Actions by going to Window > Actions or pressing Alt + F9. Click the in the Actions Panel, pictured in the previous illustration on the left. Choose to create a “New Set” in order to begin creating your own custom Actions. Name your action set whatever you want. Names are not relevant, you’ll simply want to make it obvious that you have created it. Click OK. Look back in the layers panel. You’ll see your new Set of actions has been added to the list. Click it to highlight it before going on. Click the again to create a “New Action” in your new set. If you care to name your action, go ahead. Name it after whatever it is you’re hoping to do—change the canvas size, tint all your pictures blue, send your image to the printer in high quality, or run multiple filters on images. The name is for your own usage, so do what suits you best. Note that you can simplify your process by creating shortcut keys for your actions. If you plan to do hundreds of edits with your actions, this might be a good idea. If you plan to record an action to use every time you use Photoshop, this might even be an invaluable step. When you create a new Action, Photoshop automatically begins recording everything you do. It does not record the time in between steps, but rather only the data from each step. So take your time when recording and make sure you create your actions the way you want them. The square button stops recording, and the circle button starts recording again. With these basics ready, we can take a look at a sample Action. Recording a Sample Action Photoshop will remember everything you input into it when it is recording, even specific photographs you open. So begin recording your action when your first photo is already open. Once your first image is open, click the record button. If you’re already recording, continue on. Using the File > Place command to insert the polaroid image can be easier for Actions to deal with. Photoshop can record with multiple open files, but it often gets confused when you try it. Keep your recordings as simple as possible to ensure your success. When the image is placed in, simply press enter to render it. Select your background layer in your layers panel. Your recording should be following along with no trouble. Double click this layer. Double clicking your background layer will create a new layer from it. Allow it to be renamed “Layer 0” and press OK. Move the “polaroid” layer to the bottom by selecting it and dragging it down below “Layer 0” in the layers panel. Right click “Layer 0” and select “Create Clipping Mask.” The JPG image is cropped to the layer below it. Coincidentally, all actions described here are being recorded perfectly, and are reproducible. Cursor actions, like the eraser, brush, or bucket fill don’t record well, because the computer uses your mouse movements and coordinates, which may need to change from photo to photo. Click the to set your Photograph layer to a “Screen” blending mode. This will make the image disappear when it runs over the white parts of the polaroid image. With your image layer (Layer 0) still selected, navigate to Edit > Transform > Scale. You can use the mouse to resize your Layer 0, but Actions work better with absolute numbers. Visit the Width and Height adjustments in the top options panel. Click the chain icon to link them together, and adjust them numerically. Depending on your needs, you may need to use more or less than 30%. Your image will resize to your specifications. Press enter to render, or click the check box in the top right of your application. + Click on your bottom layer, or “polaroid” in this case. This creates a selection of the bottom layer. Navigate to Image > Crop in order to crop down to your bottom layer selection Your image is now resized to your bottommost layer, and Photoshop is still recording to that effect. For additional effect, we can navigate to Image > Image Rotation > Arbitrary to rotate our image by a small tilt. Choosing 3 degrees clockwise , we click OK to render our choice. Our image is rotated, and this step is recorded. Photoshop will even record when you save your files. With your recording still going, find File > Save As. You can easily tell Photoshop to save in a new folder, other than the one you have been working in, so that your files aren’t overwritten. Navigate to any folder you wish, but do not change the filename. If you change the filename, Photoshop will record that name, and save all your images under whatever you type. However, you can change your filetype without recording an absolute filename. Use the pulldown tab and select a different filetype—in this instance, PNG. Simply click “Save” to create a new PNG based on your actions. Photoshop will record the destination and the change in filetype. If you didn’t edit the name of your file, it will always use the variable filename of any image you open. (This is very important if you want to edit hundreds of images at once!) Click File > Close or the red “X” in the corner to close your filetype. Photoshop can record that as well. Since we have already saved our image as a JPG, click “NO” to not overwrite your original image. Photoshop will also record your choice of “NO” for subsequent images. In your Actions panel, click the stop button to complete your action. You can always click the record button to add more steps later, if you want. This is how your new action looks with its steps expanded. Curious how to put it into effect? Read on to see how simple it is to use that recording you just made. Editing Lots of Images with Your New Action Open a large number of images—as many as you care to work with. Your action should work immediately with every image on screen, although you may have to test and re-record, depending on how you did. Actions don’t require any programming knowledge, but often can get confused or work in a counter-intuitive way. Record your action until it is perfect. If it works once without errors, it’s likely to work again and again! Find the “Play” button in your Actions Panel. With your custom action selected, click “Play” and your routine will edit, save, and close each file for you. Keep bashing “Play” for each open file, and it will keep saving and creating new files until you run out of work you need to do. And in mere moments, a complicated stack of work is done. Photoshop actions can be very complicated, far beyond what is illustrated here, and can even be combined with scripts and other actions, creating automated creation of potentially very complex files, or applying filters to an entire portfolio of digital photos. Have questions or comments concerning Graphics, Photos, Filetypes, or Photoshop? Send your questions to [email protected], and they may be featured in a future How-To Geek Graphics article. Image Credits: All images copyright Stephanie Pragnell and author Eric Z Goodnight, protected under Creative Commons. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How To Make Hundreds of Complex Photo Edits in Seconds With Photoshop Actions How to Enable User-Specific Wireless Networks in Windows 7 How to Use Google Chrome as Your Default PDF Reader (the Easy Way) How To Remove People and Objects From Photographs In Photoshop Ask How-To Geek: How Can I Monitor My Bandwidth Usage? Internet Explorer 9 RC Now Available: Here’s the Most Interesting New Stuff Smart Taskbar Is a Thumb Friendly Android Task Launcher Comix is an Awesome Comics Archive Viewer for Linux Get the MakeUseOf eBook Guide to Speeding Up Windows for Free Need Tech Support? Call the Star Wars Help Desk! [Video Classic] Reclaim Vertical UI Space by Adding a Toolbar to the Left or Right Side of Firefox Androidify Turns You into an Android-style Avatar

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  • optimizing iPhone OpenGL ES fill rate

    - by NateS
    I have an Open GL ES game on the iPhone. My framerate is pretty sucky, ~20fps. Using the Xcode OpenGL ES performance tool on an iPhone 3G, it shows: Renderer Utilization: 95% to 99% Tiler Utilization: ~27% I am drawing a lot of pretty large images with a lot of blending. If I reduce the number of images drawn, framerates go from ~20 to ~40, though the performance tool results stay about the same (renderer still maxed). I think I'm being limited by the fill rate of the iPhone 3G, but I'm not sure. My questions are: How can I determine with more granularity where the bottleneck is? That is my biggest problem, I just don't know what is taking all the time. If it is fillrate, is there anything I do to improve it besides just drawing less? I am using texture atlases. I have tried to minimize image binds, though it isn't always possible (drawing order, not everything fits on one 1024x1024 texture, etc). Every frame I do 10 image binds. This seem pretty reasonable, but I could be mistaken. I'm using vertex arrays and glDrawArrays. I don't really have a lot of geometry. I can try to be more precise if needed. Each image is 2 triangles and I try to batch things were possible, though often (maybe half the time) images are drawn with individual glDrawArrays calls. Besides the images, I have ~60 triangles worth of geometry being rendered in ~6 glDrawArrays calls. I often glTranslate before calling glDrawArrays. Would it improve the framerate to switch to VBOs? I don't think it is a huge amount of geometry, but maybe it is faster for other reasons? Are there certain things to watch out for that could reduce performance? Eg, should I avoid glTranslate, glColor4g, etc? I'm using glScissor in a 3 places per frame. Each use consists of 2 glScissor calls, one to set it up, and one to reset it to what it was. I don't know if there is much of a performance impact here. If I used PVRTC would it be able to render faster? Currently all my images are GL_RGBA. I don't have memory issues. Here is a rough idea of what I'm drawing, in this order: 1) Switch to perspective matrix. 2) Draw a full screen background image 3) Draw a full screen image with translucency (this one has a scrolling texture). 4) Draw a few sprites. 5) Switch to ortho matrix. 6) Draw a few sprites. 7) Switch to perspective matrix. 8) Draw sprites and some other textured geometry. 9) Switch to ortho matrix. 10) Draw a few sprites (eg, game HUD). Steps 1-6 draw a bunch of background stuff. 8 draws most of the game content. 10 draws the HUD. As you can see, there are many layers, some of them full screen and some of the sprites are pretty large (1/4 of the screen). The layers use translucency, so I have to draw them in back-to-front order. This is further complicated by needing to draw various layers in ortho and others in perspective. I will gladly provide additional information if reqested. Thanks in advance for any performance tips or general advice on my problem!

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  • iPhone development: pointer being freed was not allocated

    - by w4nderlust
    Hello, i got this message from the debugger: Pixture(1257,0xa0610500) malloc: *** error for object 0x21a8000: pointer being freed was not allocated *** set a breakpoint in malloc_error_break to debug so i did a bit of tracing and got: (gdb) shell malloc_history 1257 0x21a8000 ALLOC 0x2196a00-0x21a89ff [size=73728]: thread_a0610500 |start | main | UIApplicationMain | GSEventRun | GSEventRunModal | CFRunLoopRunInMode | CFRunLoopRunSpecific | __CFRunLoopDoObservers | CA::Transaction::observer_callback(__CFRunLoopObserver*, unsigned long, void*) | CA::Transaction::commit() | CA::Context::commit_transaction(CA::Transaction*) | CALayerDisplayIfNeeded | -[CALayer _display] | CABackingStoreUpdate | backing_callback(CGContext*, void*) | -[CALayer drawInContext:] | -[UIView(CALayerDelegate) drawLayer:inContext:] | -[AvatarView drawRect:] | -[AvatarView overlayPNG:] | +[UIImageUtility createMaskOf:] | UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext | CGBitmapContextCreateImage | create_bitmap_data_provider | malloc | malloc_zone_malloc and i really can't understand what i am doing wrong. here's the code of the [UIImageUtility createMaskOf:] function: + (UIImage *)createMaskOf:(UIImage *)source { CGRect rect = CGRectMake(0, 0, source.size.width, source.size.height); UIGraphicsBeginImageContext(CGSizeMake(source.size.width, source.size.height)); CGContextRef context = UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext(); CGContextTranslateCTM(context, 0, source.size.height); CGContextScaleCTM(context, 1.0, -1.0); UIImage *original = [self createGrayCopy:source]; CGContextRef context2 = CGBitmapContextCreate(NULL, source.size.width, source.size.height, 8, 4 * source.size.width, CGColorSpaceCreateDeviceRGB(), kCGImageAlphaNoneSkipLast); CGContextDrawImage(context2, CGRectMake(0, 0, source.size.width, source.size.height), original.CGImage); CGImageRef unmasked = CGBitmapContextCreateImage(context2); const float myMaskingColorsFrameColor[6] = { 1,256,1,256,1,256 }; CGImageRef mask = CGImageCreateWithMaskingColors(unmasked, myMaskingColorsFrameColor); CGContextSetRGBFillColor (context, 256,256,256, 1); CGContextFillRect(context, rect); CGContextDrawImage(context, rect, mask); UIImage *whiteMasked = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext(); UIGraphicsEndImageContext(); return whiteMasked; } the other custom function called before that is the following: - (UIImage *)overlayPNG:(SinglePart *)sp { NSLog([sp description]); // Rect and context setup CGRect rect = CGRectMake(0, 0, sp.image.size.width, sp.image.size.height); NSLog(@"%f x %f", sp.image.size.width, sp.image.size.height); // Create an image of a color filled rectangle UIImage *baseColor = nil; if (sp.hasOwnColor) { baseColor = [UIImageUtility imageWithRect:rect ofColor:sp.color]; } else { SinglePart *facePart = [editingAvatar.face.partList objectAtIndex:0]; baseColor = [UIImageUtility imageWithRect:rect ofColor:facePart.color]; } // Crete the mask of the layer UIImage *mask = [UIImageUtility createMaskOf:sp.image]; mask = [UIImageUtility createGrayCopy:mask]; // Create a new context for merging the overlay and a mask of the layer UIGraphicsBeginImageContext(CGSizeMake(sp.image.size.width, sp.image.size.height)); CGContextRef context2 = UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext(); // Adjust the coordinate system so that the origin // is in the lower left corner of the view and the // y axis points up CGContextTranslateCTM(context2, 0, sp.image.size.height); CGContextScaleCTM(context2, 1.0, -1.0); // Create masked overlay color layer CGImageRef MaskedImage = CGImageCreateWithMask (baseColor.CGImage, mask.CGImage); // Draw the base color layer CGContextDrawImage(context2, rect, MaskedImage); // Get the result of the masking UIImage* overlayMasked = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext(); UIGraphicsEndImageContext(); UIGraphicsBeginImageContext(CGSizeMake(sp.image.size.width, sp.image.size.height)); CGContextRef context = UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext(); // Adjust the coordinate system so that the origin // is in the lower left corner of the view and the // y axis points up CGContextTranslateCTM(context, 0, sp.image.size.height); CGContextScaleCTM(context, 1.0, -1.0); // Get the result of the blending of the masked overlay and the base image CGContextDrawImage(context, rect, overlayMasked.CGImage); // Set the blend mode for the next drawn image CGContextSetBlendMode(context, kCGBlendModeOverlay); // Component image drawn CGContextDrawImage(context, rect, sp.image.CGImage); UIImage* blendedImage = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext(); UIGraphicsEndImageContext(); CGImageRelease(MaskedImage); return blendedImage; }

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