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• Skynet Big Data Demo Using Hexbug Spider Robot, Raspberry Pi, and Java SE Embedded (Part 3)

  - by hinkmond

  In Part 2, I described what connections you need to make for this demo using a Hexbug Spider Robot, a Raspberry Pi, and Java SE Embedded for programming. Here are some photos of me doing the soldering. Software engineers should not be afraid of a little soldering work. It's all good. See: Skynet Big Data Demo (Part 2) One thing to watch out for when you open the remote is that there may be some glue covering the contact points. Make sure to use an Exacto knife or small screwdriver to scrape away any glue or non-conductive material covering each place where you need to solder. And after you are done with your soldering and you gave the solder enough time to cool, make sure all your connections are marked so that you know which wire goes where. Give each wire a very light tug to make sure it is soldered correctly and is making good contact. There are lots of videos on the Web to help you if this is your first time soldering. Check out Laday Ada's (from adafruit.com) links on how to solder if you need some additional help: http://www.ladyada.net/learn/soldering/thm.html If everything looks good, zip everything back up and meet back here for how to connect these wires to your Raspberry Pi. That will be it for the hardware part of this project. See, that wasn't so bad. Hinkmond

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• How to convince a client to switch to a framework *now*; also examples of great, large-scale php applications.

  - by cbrandolino

  Hi everybody. I'm about to start working on a very ambitious project that, in my opinion, has some great potential for what concerns the basic concept and the implementation ideas (implementation as in how this ideas will be implemented, not as in programming). The state of the code right now is unluckily subpar. It's vanilla php, no framework, no separation between application and visualization logic. It's been done mostly by amateur students (I know great amateur/student programmers, don't get me wrong: this was not the case though). The clients are really great, and they know the system won't scale and needs a redesign. The problem is, they would like to launch a beta ASAP and then think of rebuilding. Since just the basic functionalities are present now, I suggested it would be a great idea if we (we're a three-people shop, all very proficient) ported that code to some framework (we like CodeIgniter) before launching. We would reasonably be able to do that in < 10 days. Problem is, they don't think php would be a valid long-term solution anyway, so they would prefer to just let it be and fix the bugs for now (there's quite a bit) and then directly switch to some ruby/python based system. Porting to CI now will make future improvements incredibly easier, the current code more secure, changing the style - still being discussed with the designers - a breeze (reminder: there are database calls in template files right now); the biggest obstacle is the lack of trust in php as a valid, scalable technology. So well, I need some examples of great php applications (apart from facebook) and some suggestions on how to try to convince them to port soon. Again, they're great people - it's not like they would like ruby cause it's so hot right now; they just don't trust php since us cool programmers like bashing it, I suppose, but I'm sure going on like this for even one more day would be a mistake. Also, we have some weight in the decision process.

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• Accessing second hard drive

  - by Jonathan

  So I recently installed Ubuntu 10.10 64-bit on my computer. I installed it on my 60gb SSD hard drive, and in the installation it never acknowledged the existence of my second hard drive. The hard drive that I keep all my files on, and which I want to make my home folder if I can, is a Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB cache (WD1002FAEX). I've read the following: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Mount but honestly cannot work out how to access the hard drive from my Ubuntu installation. I did have Windows 7 64-bit prior to installing Ubuntu. I have backed up all the files on the hard drive, but if I could just access them straight off that would be super cool. Does anyone know how I can use the second hard drive? Thank you for your help EDIT: The following directories are currently in my /dev/ folder: ati/, block/, bsg/, bus/, char/, cpu/, isk/, input/, mapper/, net/, pktcdvd/, pts/, shm/, snd/, and usb/ EDIT: Result from sudo fdisk -l Disk /dev/sda: 60.0 GB, 60022480896 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 7297 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x000d2dfd Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 * 1 6994 56174592 83 Linux /dev/sda2 6994 7298 2438145 5 Extended /dev/sda5 6994 7298 2438144 82 Linux swap / Solaris @djeykib So very close to fixing it.. unfortunately on the last command you gave it says this: $ sudo apt-get install linux-lts-backport-natty Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done E: Unable to locate package linux-lts-backport-natty Checking on http://www.ubuntuupdates.org/ppas reveals that it is only available for 10.04. Looks like I'll have to unplug and re-plug hardware if I want it working still :(

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• How do I find add-ons for packages when using the command line?

  - by user74660

  My question is a little bit different from others already asked, I guess. I've already searched for answers, but I didn't find anything related. For example, I've always installed K3B via Terminal with the following command "sudo apt-get install k3b". It always worked, of course. One day, I decided to install it via Ubuntu Sofware Center and, to my surprise, there were a few Add-ons I didn't know about. I checked some of them to be installed as well because I found them useful. Now, here's my question: When we try to install a software via Terminal and this software has add-ons, how do we know that? And how do we install the add-ons via Terminal? I suppose we have to know the names of the add-ons first, and then install them one by one, once the main software has already been installed. But how do we get to know those names via Terminal? Using the Software Center is cool because it shows the add-ons, a brief description for each one and their names in brackets, right? How about that via Terminal? I had never paid attention to this until I used the Software Center. By the way, K3B was just an example, of course.

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• What should you do when presented with a horrible design?

  - by plua

  Our firm makes websites. We also design websites. But sometimes our client brings his/her own design. This is often made by an in-house designer, or it is the same design they used for something else. However, sometimes these designs look awful. And I am talking really unprofessional, unbalanced, uncool. But the client really wants this design. I really do not like working with a design that is so awful. It takes away all pleasure in coding. You code. You check the demo. Works great. Looks awful. It's just not fun. And ultimately the client might be happy, but 1) I do not feel proud of the final product and 2) the community sees you 'develop' ugly websites, which is bad for your image. Anybody experiencing this kind of stuff? What do you recommend? I've been thinking: Blocking these clients. If somebody has an 'own' design, ask to see it first. Then somehow politely decline. Drawback: you lose a client. Create a new design. Have our in-house designers work one something really cool. Drawbacks: client would need to pay for this (without asking for it), or it will be declined and the company loses time = money. And it might come as an insult if you propose a new design out of the blue. THEIR designer won't like it for sure. Put a clear disclaimer at the bottom of the site: Website design by XXXXX, Website development by US. Helps for the community-impact (if people pay attention), but not for the uneasy feeling.

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• Estimate of Hits / Visits / Uniques in order to fall within a given Alexa Tier?

  - by Alex C

  Hi there! I was wondering if anyone could offer up rough estimates that could tell me how many hits a day move you into a given Alexa rank ? Top 5,000 Top 10,000 Top 50,000 Top 100,000 Top 500,000 Top 1,000,000 I know this is incredibly subjective and thus the broad brush strokes with the number ranges... BUT I've got a site currently ranked just over 1.2M worldwide and over 500k in the USA (http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/fstr.net) Pretty cool for something hand-built on weekends (pat self on back) I was applying to an ad-platform and was told that their program doesn't accept webmasters who have an Alexa rank of greater than 100,000. (Time to take back that pat on the back I guess). I know that my hits in the last 30 days are somewhere on the order of 15,000 uniques and 20,000 pageviews. So I'm wondering how much harder do I have to work to achieve my next "goals"? I'd like to break into the top million, then re-evaluate from there. It'd be nice to know what those targets translate into (very roughly of course). I imagine that alexa ranks and tiers become very much exponential as you move up the ranks, but even hearing annecdotal evidence from other webmasters would be really useful to me. (ie: I have a site that is ranked X and it got Y hits in the last 30 days) Thanks :) - Alex

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• How can I make permanent death in a MUD seem acceptable and fair to players?

  - by Luke Laupheimer

  I have considered writing a MUD for years, and I have a lot of ideas my friends think are really cool (and that's how I'd hope to get anywhere -- word of mouth). Thing is, there's one thing I have always wanted, that my friends and strangers hated: permanent death. Now, the emotional response I get to this is visceral revulsion, every time. I'm pretty sure I am the only person that wants this, or if I'm not, I'm a tiny minority. Now, the reason I want it is because I want the actions of the players to matter. Unlike a lot of other MUDs, which have a set of static city-states and social institutions etc, I want the things my players do, should I get any, to actually change the situation. And that includes killing people. If you kill someone, you didn't send them to time out, you killed them. What happens when you kill people? They go away. They don't come back in half an hour to smack talk you some more. They're gone. Forever. By making death non-permanent, you make death not matter. It would be similar if a climax to a character's arc is getting a speeding ticket. It cheapens it. Non-permanent death cheapens death. How can I: 1) Convince my players (and random people!) that this is actually a good idea?, or 2) Find some other way to make death and violence matter as much as it does in real life (except within the game, of course) sans character deletion? What alternatives are there out there?

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• Business knowledge in a large financial org?

  - by Victor

  As a programmer working in the finance industry, I recently got a project that is a hedge fund adminsitrative application(used to calculate NAVs, allocate assets etc.) From a business point of view this is a good thing. When we think of our 'next' project, typically the impulse is to think in terms of technology. e.g: 'I want to work on a project that uses SOA/cloud etc etc.' I am interested to know if anyone while career planning also takes into account the business aspect of a future project. i.e. what the application does. So does anybody ever think like this : 'I wish to work on a trading system so I can understand capital markets better.' instead of 'I want to work on a project that uses SOA/cloud etc etc.' I say this because it appears to me in the finance domain, for senior position, good business knowledge pays well. So maybe a guy that knows more business but maybe not so much latest technologies is at an advantage? The rockstar programmer seems more suited for an aggressive startup. Particularly big old finance orgs rarely invest in tech just for the 'cool factor'. No?

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• Is there really anything to gain with complex design? [duplicate]

  - by SB2055

  This question already has an answer here: What is enterprise software, exactly? 8 answers I've been working for a consulting firm for some time, with clients of various sizes, and I've seen web applications ranging in complexity from really simple: MVC Service Layer EF DB To really complex: MVC UoW DI / IoC Repository Service UI Tests Unit Tests Integration Tests But on both ends of the spectrum, the quality requirements are about the same. In simple projects, new devs / consultants can hop on, make changes, and contribute immediately, without having to wade through 6 layers of abstraction to understand what's going on, or risking misunderstanding some complex abstraction and costing down the line. In all cases, there was never a need to actually make code swappable or reusable - and the tests were never actually maintained past the first iteration because requirements changed, it was too time-consuming, deadlines, business pressure, etc etc. So if - in the end - testing and interfaces aren't used rapid development (read: cost-savings) is a priority the project's requirements will be changing a lot while in development ...would it be wrong to recommend a super-simple architecture, even to solve a complex problem, for an enterprise client? Is it complexity that defines enterprise solutions, or is it the reliability, # concurrent users, ease-of-maintenance, or all of the above? I know this is a very vague question, and any answer wouldn't apply to all cases, but I'm interested in hearing from devs / consultants that have been in the business for a while and that have worked with these varying degrees of complexity, to hear if the cool-but-expensive abstractions are worth the overall cost, at least while the project is in development.

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• SEO and external sites that serve responsive images (like Re-SRC)

  - by Baumr

  Re-SRC is a tool that allows you to automatically serve responsive images for your website from their cloud servers. It delivers a new image file each time the browser window (viewport) is resized. To use it in your HTML when linking to an image, you would do the following: <img src="http://app.resrc.it//www.your-domain.com/img/img001.jpg"/> Some more background for SEO considerations: As an example, looking at their demo page's code, the src of the Arc de Triomphe photo — when the browser window is resized to be at a tablet-width — shows this particular file at it's widest. It is found under the following URL: http://app4-uk.resrc.it/s=w560,pd1/ro=h//www.resrc.it/img/demo/demo-image-1.jpg If the viewport is increased to desktop-width, then a smaller image is served in line with the design; see this URL: http://app4-uk.resrc.it/s=w320,pd1/ro=h//www.resrc.it/img/demo/demo-image-1.jpg If I change the viewport to be about half-way between those two, then the image's URL is: http://app4-uk.resrc.it/s=w240,pd1/ro=h//www.resrc.it/img/demo/demo-image-1.jpg In other words, I found that there is a separate file for every 10-pixel increment of the image width. Very cool for saving bandwidth on mobile devices and service responsive/retina images on others, but... Here are two problems I see for SEO: The img on your site, part of your semantic markup, will not be hosted on your site at all, or even a server you control. Any links to these images will pass on "link juice" to Re-SRC's site instead. You are serving a vast array of different image files to different people — some may link to one, others to another size. Then there's the question of what different search engine crawlers will see. Also: There seems to be no fallback option if their servers are down. Do you see any other concerns? Or, perhaps, do you not see those as concerns?

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• JavaOne Countdown, Are you ready?

  - by Angela Caicedo

  This is a great time of the year!  Not only does the weather start cooling down a bit, but it's time to get ready for JavaOne 2012.  It feels so long since my last JavaOne (last year I missed it because I was on a mom duty), so this year I couldn't be happier to be this close to the action again.  Have you ever been at JavaOne?  There are a million great reasons to love JavaOne, and the most important for me is the atmosphere of the conference: The Java community is there, and Java is in the air! This year we have more than 450 sessions, and there are HOLs (Hands on labs) to get your hands dirty with code.  In addition, there will be very cool demos, an exhibition hall. and a DEMOground.  During the whole time, you will have the opportunity to interact with the speakers, discuss topics and concerns, and even have a drink! Oh yes, I almost forgot, there will be lots of fun even apart from the technology!  For example there will be a Geek Bike Ride, a Thirsty Bear party, and the Appreciation Party with Pearl Jam and Kings of Leon.  How can this get any better! So, are you ready yet?  Have you registered?  If not, just follow this "Register for JavaOne" link and we'll see you there! P.S.  Little known fact: If you are a student you can get your pass for free!!!

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• Correcting Lighting in Stencil Reflections

  - by Reanimation

  I'm just playing around with OpenGL seeing how different methods of making shadows and reflections work. I've been following this tutorial which describes using GLUT_STENCIL's and MASK's to create a reasonable interpretation of a reflection. Following that and a bit of tweaking to get things to work, I've come up with the code below. Unfortunately, the lighting isn't correct when the reflection is created. glPushMatrix(); plane(); //draw plane that reflection appears on glColorMask(GL_FALSE, GL_FALSE, GL_FALSE, GL_FALSE); glDepthMask(GL_FALSE); glEnable(GL_STENCIL_TEST); glStencilFunc(GL_ALWAYS, 1, 0xFFFFFFFF); glStencilOp(GL_REPLACE, GL_REPLACE, GL_REPLACE); plane(); //draw plane that acts as clipping area for reflection glColorMask(GL_TRUE, GL_TRUE, GL_TRUE, GL_TRUE); glDepthMask(GL_TRUE); glStencilFunc(GL_EQUAL, 1, 0xFFFFFFFF); glStencilOp(GL_KEEP, GL_KEEP, GL_KEEP); glDisable(GL_DEPTH_TEST); glPushMatrix(); glScalef(1.0f, -1.0f, 1.0f); glTranslatef(0,2,0); glRotatef(180,0,1,0); sphere(radius, spherePos); //draw object that you want to have a reflection glPopMatrix(); glEnable(GL_DEPTH_TEST); glDisable(GL_STENCIL_TEST); sphere(radius, spherePos); //draw object that creates reflection glPopMatrix(); It looked really cool to start with, then I noticed that the light in the reflection isn't correct. I'm not sure that it's even a simple fix because effectively the reflection is also a sphere but I thought I'd ask here none-the-less. I've tried various rotations (seen above the first time the sphere is drawn) but it doesn't seem to work. I figure it needs to rotate around the Y and Z axis but that's not correct. Have I implemented the rotation wrong or is there a way to correct the lighting?

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• Creating a 2D perspective in 3D game

  - by Accatyyc

  I'm new to XNA and 3D game development in general. I'm creating a puzzle game kind of similar to tetris, built with blocks. I decided to build the game in 3D since I can do some cool animations and transitions when using 3D blocks with physics etc. However, I really do want the game to look "2D". My blocks are made up of 3D models, but I don't want that to be visible when they're not animating. I have followed some XNA tutorials and set up my scene like this: this.view = Matrix.CreateLookAt(cameraPosition, Vector3.Zero, Vector3.Up); this.aspectRatio = graphics.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.AspectRatio; this.projection = Matrix.CreatePerspectiveFieldOfView( MathHelper.ToRadians(45.0f), aspectRatio, 1.0f, 10000.0f); ... and it gives me a very 3D-ish look. For example, the blocks in the center of the screen looks exactly how I want them, but closer to the edges of the screen I can see the rotation and sides of them. My guess is that I'm not after a perspective field of view, but any help on which field of view/settings to use to get a "flat" look when the blocks aren't rotated would be great!

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• IRC News from #netbeans on FreeNode

  - by Geertjan

  I joined the #netbeans channel on FreeNode last week and the discussions there are really great. It's so cool to not have the endless back and forth of an e-mail exchange. Instead, you can hammer out a complete solution to a problem while chatting live in the channel. A case in point was yesterday, when someone named 'charmeleon' wanted to create a NetBeans Platform based application that includes the "image" module from the NetBeans IDE sources. That way, he'd have a starting point for his own image-oriented application, since he'd not only have the NetBeans Platform, but also the sources of the "image" module. Had we been communicating via e-mail, it would have taken weeks, at least, to come to a solution. Instead, we hashed it out together live, including some very specific problems that would have been hard to communicate about via e-mail. In the end, I made a movie showing exactly the scenario that charmeleon was interested in: And, right now, in the #netbeans channel, charmeleon said: "NetBeans RCP feels like cheating once you start getting over the hump." I'm sure the fact that the hump was handled within a few hours of chatting on irc is a big contributor to that impression.

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• OUCH! Laptop running SUPER HOT after 12.10 upgrade!

  - by dinkelk

  I was running 12.04 for 6 months, my laptop ran almost silently and cool enough to hold on my lap. I updated to 12.10 and now my computer gets too hot to hold on my lap and the fan is constantly running on full blast. This is the output of sensors: acpitz-virtual-0 Adapter: Virtual device temp1: +84.0°C (crit = +99.0°C) coretemp-isa-0000 Adapter: ISA adapter Physical id 0: +84.0°C (high = +86.0°C, crit = +100.0°C) Core 0: +74.0°C (high = +86.0°C, crit = +100.0°C) Core 1: +72.0°C (high = +86.0°C, crit = +100.0°C) Core 2: +75.0°C (high = +86.0°C, crit = +100.0°C) Core 3: +84.0°C (high = +86.0°C, crit = +100.0°C) radeon-pci-0100 Adapter: PCI adapter temp1: +76.0°C I have an HP Pavilion dv6, i7, amd radeon graphics. Please let me know if you need additional information. What could be different between the two Ubuntu editions that caused such a drastic change? Edit 1: Per @Paul's suggestion, I ran htop to try to narrow down the problem. Here is the result! (left side of terminal) (right side of terminal) This is about 10 minutes after boot-up, htop, yakuake, and a chrome page with 1 tab opened to this question are all that I have manually opened. The most taxing program to the CPU is htop itself. I think that the problem must lie elsewhere; my temps are already up to ~65C for the CPU and ~69C for the GPU, with nearly 0% CPU usage.

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• Two interesting big data sessions around Openworld

  - by Jean-Pierre Dijcks

  For those who want to talk (not listen) about big data, here are 2 very cool sessions: BOF9877 - A birds of a feather session around all things big data. It is on Monday, Oct 1, 6:15 PM - 7:00 PM - Marriott Marquis - Golden Gate. While all guests on the panel are special, we will have very special guest on the panel. He is a proud owner of a Big Data Appliance (see here). Then there is a Big Data SIG meeting (the invite from Gwen): I'd like to invite everyone to our OOW12 meet up. We'll meet on Tuesday, October 2nd, 8:45 to 9:45 at Moscone West Level 3, Overlook 3. We will network, socialize and discuss plans for the group. Which topics interest us for webinars? Which conferences do we want to meet in? What other activities we are interested in? We can also discuss big data topics, show off our great work, and seek advice on the challenges. Other than figuring out what we are collectively interested in, the discussion will be pretty open. Here is the official invite. See you at Openworld!!

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• Working with Active Directory and Windows Small Business Server 2008

  - by AreYouSerious

  I have to say that in most of my time as a network engineer I have had the opportunity to play with servers, but mostly it's been to put our management software on, and that was about it. I have been a Systems Network Engineer for about three months now, and as such I have been respnosible for the configuration of our test devices... this being said, I have had to start working through how to configure and apply such things as GPO through a new forest, domain and OU. This being said I have configured about three different GPO's and applied them to different locations. The first laptop that I brought into the domain took the default Domain group Policy... this was cool, I got excited... then When I tried to bring in the second Laptop, it didn't take the policy. I looked at the configuration, and the default domain policy was applied to domain computers, however since the laptop resides in the SBS Computers of the OU that was created, SBS created individual policies for XP and Vista for that OU, which I was unaware of. So the default policy for that ou overrode the domain policy and none of the options that were defined in the Domain policy were applied... this being said, I am now working on putting the default Domain as an applicable policy in the OU, thus I won't have to reconfigure another policy to mirror the Domain Policy... here goes nothing!!!.... More to follow Later.

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• Kickstarter and 2D smartphone games

  - by mm24

  I am about to launch a Kickstarter project as, after 14 months of full time development on my first iOS game, I run out of money. I developed an iOS game that needs few more months to be ready (the game structure is there but haven't yet worked on balancing the difficulty of the various levels). I have a feeling that most of the computer games founded on Kickstarter are for console, PC or Mac and not for smartphones. The category that many people seem to like is RPG style games. I have done tons of work over a year and collaborated with musicians and illustrators to get top quality graphics and music. The game looks cool to be an iOS 2D game but, compared to what I've seen on Kickstarter, I feel so little and humbled. I have searched for smartphone game projects on Kickstarter but haven't found many. I believe that the reason is that people are not keen in backing an APP that is normally sold for 0.99$ as they perceive is not something big. Am I the only one having this feeling? Could anyone please share a list of references to some successfully backed kickstarter smartphone game projects? (In this way the question will not become a "chat" and will fulfill the requirements to be a gamedev question). Any other article or authoritative answer will be welcome.

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• Where should "display functions" live in an MVC web app?

  - by User

  I'm using the Yii Framework which is an MVC php framework that is pretty similar to your standard web-based MVC framework. I want to display the related data from a many-to-many table as a list of strings in my view. Assuming a table schema like: tag { id, name } post { id, title, content, date } post_tag { post_id, tag_id } A post will display like: Date: 9/27/2012 Title: Some Title Content: blah blah blah... Tags: Smart Funny Cool Informative I can achieve this by doing something like this in my Post view: <?php echo join(' ', array_map(function($tag) { return $tag->name; }, $model->tags)); ?> (where $model->tags is an array of Tag objects associated with my model) My questions are: Is this amount of code/logic okay in the view? (Personally I think I'd rather just reference a property or call a single function.) If not, where should this code live? In the model? the controller? a helper? Potentially I may want to use in in other views as well. Ultimately I think its purely a display issue which would make me think it should be in the view, but then I have to repeat the code in any view I want to use it in.

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• Using VirtualBox to test drive Windows Blue

  - by Fat Bloke

  Oracle VM VirtualBox is great for trying out the latest and greatest technologies and platforms. So when Microsoft recently announced the Developer Preview for Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows 8.1,  it was with eager anticipation that FatBloke ran to the TechNet Evaluation Center to download the isos. Once downloaded,  a new VM in VirtualBox Manager was created that used Windows 2012 (64-bit) OS type and all the defaults were selected. And on starting the VM, and pointing to the iso file to install from, the excitement rose as we saw a cool new splashscreen image: But suddenly our hopes are dashed.... It would seem that this platform requires an instruction (CMPXCHG16B) that VirtualBox doesn't offer "out-of-the-box".  Fear not, for the VirtualBox team knew that this day would finally arrive and have prepared an "in case of emergency" switch as follows: Power off the vm; At the command line type:  VBoxManage setextradata [vmname] VBoxInternal/CPUM/CMPXCHG16B 1 Start the VM and install Windows Server 2012 R2 This will be enabled by default in a future release, but geeks can't wait, hence this blog. Enjoy! -FB 

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• In which fields does quality of the software product matter as much as the completion time?

  - by Nav

  Someone told me that if the software product meets clients expectations, it is good quality. But I've worked with Interaction Designers (the same kind of people who made Gmail's interface and usability so cool!), and I've loved working with them because even though they came up with hundreds of changes in requirements, and emphasised on many many subtle details, when the software was complete, I could look at the product and say WOW! The current place I work, the only thing that matters is completing the project on time. As long as it works and as long as the client says it's ok, nobody bothers to improve it. I'm not talking about gold-plating, but I believe that for a programmer to enjoy his (well, maybe her too ;) ) job, they should be able to proudly say that "Hey, I made that software" and that comes only when the product is of good quality. Apart from your opinions on this, I'd also like to know which fields (Eg. Aerospace, Finance etc.) could I find companies (or you could mention the company name) where the quality of a product is as important as completing the project on time?

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• Is it worth moving from Microsoft tech to Linux, NodeJS & other open source frameworks to save money for a start-up?

  - by dormisher

  I am currently getting involved in a startup, I am the only developer involved at the moment, and the other guys are leaving all the tech decisions up to me at the moment. For my day job I work at a software house that uses Microsoft tech on a day to day basis, we utilise .NET, SqlServer, Windows Server etc. However, I realise that as a startup we need to keep costs down, and after having a brief look at the cost of hosting for Windows I was shocked to see some of the prices for a dedicated server. The cheapest I found was £100 a month. Also if the business needs to scale in the future and we end up needing multiple servers, we could end up shelling out £10's of £000's a year in SQL Server / Windows Server licenses etc. I then had a quick look at the price of Linux hosting for a dedicated server and saw the price was waaaaaay lower than windows hosting. One place was offering a machine with 2 cores for less than £20 a month. This got me thinking maybe the way to go is open source on Linux. As I write a lot of Javascript at work (I'm working on a single page backbone app at the moment), I thought maybe NodeJS and a web framework like Express would be cool to use. I then thought that instead of using SQL why not use an open source NoSQL database like MongoDB, which has great support on NodeJS? My only concern is that some of the work the application is going to do is going to be dynamically building images and various other image related stuff, i.e. stuff that is quite CPU heavy - so I'm thinking of maybe writing anything CPU heavy in C++ and consuming it as a module in Node. That's the background - but basically is Linux a good match for: Hosting a NodeJS/Express site? Compiling C++ node modules? Using a NoSQL DB like MongoDB? And is it a good idea to move to these unfamiliar technologies to save money?

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• Neural network input preprocessing

  - by TND

  It's clear that the effectiveness of a neural network depends strongly on the format you give it to work with. You want to preprocess it into the most convenient form you can algorithmically get to, so that the neural network doesn't have to account for that itself. I'm working on a little project that (surprise!) is going to be using neural networks. My future goal is to eventually use NEAT, which I'm really excited about. Anyway, one of my ideas involves moving entities in continuous 2D space, from a top-down perspective (this would be a really cool game AI). Of course, unless these guys are blind, they're going to be able to see the world around them. There's a lot of different ways this information could be fed into the network. One interesting but expensive way is to simply render a top-down "view" of things, with the entities as dots on the picture, and feed that in. I was hoping for something much simpler to use (at least at first), such as a list of the x (maybe 7 or so) nearest entities and their position in relative polar coordinates, orientation, health, etc., but I'm trying to think of the best way to do it. My first instinct was to order them by distance, which would inherently also train the neural network to consider those more "important". However, I was thinking- what if there's two entities that are nearly the same distance away? They could easily alternate indexes in that list, confusing the network. My question is, is there a better way of representing this? Essentially, the issue is the network needs a good way of keeping track of who's who, while knowing (by being inputted) relevant information about the list of entities it can see. Thanks!

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• SharePoint 2013 Developer Ramp-Up - Part 2

  As stated already yesterday, today I continued with the available course material on Pluralsight. For sure interesting topics in the second part of the series but not the field of operation I'm going to work in later. During the course you get a lot of information about how to create and deploy SharePoint Solutions and hosted SharePoint Apps. Today's resource(s) Apart from some blog articles I watched in the following course today: SharePoint 2013 Developer Ramp-Up - Part 2 - Developing SharePoint Solutions and Apps Not thrilling but still two solid hours to go. Takeaway One of the coolest aspects I figured out today is that SharePoint development can be done easily in JavaScript and C# - just as you like or prefer. It's actually pretty cool to see that you could integrate external JS libraries like datajs, knockout,js and so forth in order to implement your solution. And that you should be very familiar with Microsoft PowerShell. Not only to simplify some repetitive work but also to do be able to get things going in SharePoint. Having a decent background knowledge in Linux, I find this pretty amusing and remember the initial baby steps when PowerShell was introduced some years back (Note: German language). The outcry as well as the hype was too funny. Honestly, I have kind of mixed feelings about today's progress. Surely, there was interesting information about developing extensions directly for and in SharePoint... Hm, I'll leave that one for now and probably it might be helpful someday.

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• Packing for JavaOne

  - by Tori Wieldt

  While you are packing for JavaOne, here are some things to remember to bring:1) A Jacket!While October is considered the summer in San Francisco, the heat only lasts a day or two. The fog can roll in any day, and it can be chilly (and maybe even rain).2) Your Oracle LoginMake sure your have your Oracle.com account log in details with you when you arrive onsite in San Francisco.  This is the username and password you used/created for your JavaOne 2012 registration.  You'll need these to check in and get your badge as well as to gain access to My Account and Schedule Builder onsite at the event. 3) Walking ShoesYou'll want comfortable and practical shoes as this city requires lots of walking and has lots of hills.4) Thumb DrivesWhen sharing cool code, nothing beats sneaker-net. That said, practice safe computing. 5) Consider Downloading a Ride-Sharing Service AppSideCar, Lyft, Uber and RelayRides are taking SF by storm, and are popular alternative to yellow taxis. These are unregulated ride-sharing services, so ride at your own risk. Hipster Tips for SF 1) Don't call it Frisco.2) If you wear shorts, don't complain about how cold it is.3) Bright colored clothes are for tourists. Locals wear black. 4) The most fun ice-cream flavors in town are at Humphry-Slocombe. Check out "secret breakfast."5) The Mission is hip.6) Don't expect there to be a Starbuck's or anything besides a great view at the other side of the Golden Gate bridge.7) SF has seasons, they are just more subtle.

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