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• Working with PivotTables in Excel

  - by Mark Virtue

  PivotTables are one of the most powerful features of Microsoft Excel.  They allow large amounts of data to be analyzed and summarized in just a few mouse clicks. In this article, we explore PivotTables, understand what they are, and learn how to create and customize them. Note:  This article is written using Excel 2010 (Beta).  The concept of a PivotTable has changed little over the years, but the method of creating one has changed in nearly every iteration of Excel.  If you are using a version of Excel that is not 2010, expect different screens from the ones you see in this article. A Little History In the early days of spreadsheet programs, Lotus 1-2-3 ruled the roost.  Its dominance was so complete that people thought it was a waste of time for Microsoft to bother developing their own spreadsheet software (Excel) to compete with Lotus.  Flash-forward to 2010, and Excel’s dominance of the spreadsheet market is greater than Lotus’s ever was, while the number of users still running Lotus 1-2-3 is approaching zero.  How did this happen?  What caused such a dramatic reversal of fortunes? Industry analysts put it down to two factors:  Firstly, Lotus decided that this fancy new GUI platform called “Windows” was a passing fad that would never take off.  They declined to create a Windows version of Lotus 1-2-3 (for a few years, anyway), predicting that their DOS version of the software was all anyone would ever need.  Microsoft, naturally, developed Excel exclusively for Windows.  Secondly, Microsoft developed a feature for Excel that Lotus didn’t provide in 1-2-3, namely PivotTables.  The PivotTables feature, exclusive to Excel, was deemed so staggeringly useful that people were willing to learn an entire new software package (Excel) rather than stick with a program (1-2-3) that didn’t have it.  This one feature, along with the misjudgment of the success of Windows, was the death-knell for Lotus 1-2-3, and the beginning of the success of Microsoft Excel. Understanding PivotTables So what is a PivotTable, exactly? Put simply, a PivotTable is a summary of some data, created to allow easy analysis of said data.  But unlike a manually created summary, Excel PivotTables are interactive.  Once you have created one, you can easily change it if it doesn’t offer the exact insights into your data that you were hoping for.  In a couple of clicks the summary can be “pivoted” – rotated in such a way that the column headings become row headings, and vice versa.  There’s a lot more that can be done, too.  Rather than try to describe all the features of PivotTables, we’ll simply demonstrate them… The data that you analyze using a PivotTable can’t be just any data – it has to be raw data, previously unprocessed (unsummarized) – typically a list of some sort.  An example of this might be the list of sales transactions in a company for the past six months. Examine the data shown below: Notice that this is not raw data.  In fact, it is already a summary of some sort.  In cell B3 we can see $30,000, which apparently is the total of James Cook’s sales for the month of January.  So where is the raw data?  How did we arrive at the figure of $30,000?  Where is the original list of sales transactions that this figure was generated from?  It’s clear that somewhere, someone must have gone to the trouble of collating all of the sales transactions for the past six months into the summary we see above.  How long do you suppose this took?  An hour?  Ten?  Probably. If we were to track down the original list of sales transactions, it might look something like this: You may be surprised to learn that, using the PivotTable feature of Excel, we can create a monthly sales summary similar to the one above in a few seconds, with only a few mouse clicks.  We can do this – and a lot more too! How to Create a PivotTable First, ensure that you have some raw data in a worksheet in Excel.  A list of financial transactions is typical, but it can be a list of just about anything:  Employee contact details, your CD collection, or fuel consumption figures for your company’s fleet of cars. So we start Excel… …and we load such a list… Once we have the list open in Excel, we’re ready to start creating the PivotTable. Click on any one single cell within the list: Then, from the Insert tab, click the PivotTable icon: The Create PivotTable box appears, asking you two questions:  What data should your new PivotTable be based on, and where should it be created?  Because we already clicked on a cell within the list (in the step above), the entire list surrounding that cell is already selected for us ($A$1:$G$88 on the Payments sheet, in this example).  Note that we could select a list in any other region of any other worksheet, or even some external data source, such as an Access database table, or even a MS-SQL Server database table.  We also need to select whether we want our new PivotTable to be created on a new worksheet, or on an existing one.  In this example we will select a new one: The new worksheet is created for us, and a blank PivotTable is created on that worksheet: Another box also appears:  The PivotTable Field List.  This field list will be shown whenever we click on any cell within the PivotTable (above): The list of fields in the top part of the box is actually the collection of column headings from the original raw data worksheet.  The four blank boxes in the lower part of the screen allow us to choose the way we would like our PivotTable to summarize the raw data.  So far, there is nothing in those boxes, so the PivotTable is blank.  All we need to do is drag fields down from the list above and drop them in the lower boxes.  A PivotTable is then automatically created to match our instructions.  If we get it wrong, we only need to drag the fields back to where they came from and/or drag new fields down to replace them. The Values box is arguably the most important of the four.  The field that is dragged into this box represents the data that needs to be summarized in some way (by summing, averaging, finding the maximum, minimum, etc).  It is almost always numerical data.  A perfect candidate for this box in our sample data is the “Amount” field/column.  Let’s drag that field into the Values box: Notice that (a) the “Amount” field in the list of fields is now ticked, and “Sum of Amount” has been added to the Values box, indicating that the amount column has been summed. If we examine the PivotTable itself, we indeed find the sum of all the “Amount” values from the raw data worksheet: We’ve created our first PivotTable!  Handy, but not particularly impressive.  It’s likely that we need a little more insight into our data than that. Referring to our sample data, we need to identify one or more column headings that we could conceivably use to split this total.  For example, we may decide that we would like to see a summary of our data where we have a row heading for each of the different salespersons in our company, and a total for each.  To achieve this, all we need to do is to drag the “Salesperson” field into the Row Labels box: Now, finally, things start to get interesting!  Our PivotTable starts to take shape….   With a couple of clicks we have created a table that would have taken a long time to do manually. So what else can we do?  Well, in one sense our PivotTable is complete.  We’ve created a useful summary of our source data.  The important stuff is already learned!  For the rest of the article, we will examine some ways that more complex PivotTables can be created, and ways that those PivotTables can be customized. First, we can create a two-dimensional table.  Let’s do that by using “Payment Method” as a column heading.  Simply drag the “Payment Method” heading to the Column Labels box: Which looks like this: Starting to get very cool! Let’s make it a three-dimensional table.  What could such a table possibly look like?  Well, let’s see… Drag the “Package” column/heading to the Report Filter box: Notice where it ends up…. This allows us to filter our report based on which “holiday package” was being purchased.  For example, we can see the breakdown of salesperson vs payment method for all packages, or, with a couple of clicks, change it to show the same breakdown for the “Sunseekers” package: And so, if you think about it the right way, our PivotTable is now three-dimensional.  Let’s keep customizing… If it turns out, say, that we only want to see cheque and credit card transactions (i.e. no cash transactions), then we can deselect the “Cash” item from the column headings.  Click the drop-down arrow next to Column Labels, and untick “Cash”: Let’s see what that looks like…As you can see, “Cash” is gone. Formatting This is obviously a very powerful system, but so far the results look very plain and boring.  For a start, the numbers that we’re summing do not look like dollar amounts – just plain old numbers.  Let’s rectify that. A temptation might be to do what we’re used to doing in such circumstances and simply select the whole table (or the whole worksheet) and use the standard number formatting buttons on the toolbar to complete the formatting.  The problem with that approach is that if you ever change the structure of the PivotTable in the future (which is 99% likely), then those number formats will be lost.  We need a way that will make them (semi-)permanent. First, we locate the “Sum of Amount” entry in the Values box, and click on it.  A menu appears.  We select Value Field Settings… from the menu: The Value Field Settings box appears. Click the Number Format button, and the standard Format Cells box appears: From the Category list, select (say) Accounting, and drop the number of decimal places to 0.  Click OK a few times to get back to the PivotTable… As you can see, the numbers have been correctly formatted as dollar amounts. While we’re on the subject of formatting, let’s format the entire PivotTable.  There are a few ways to do this.  Let’s use a simple one… Click the PivotTable Tools/Design tab: Then drop down the arrow in the bottom-right of the PivotTable Styles list to see a vast collection of built-in styles: Choose any one that appeals, and look at the result in your PivotTable:   Other Options We can work with dates as well.  Now usually, there are many, many dates in a transaction list such as the one we started with.  But Excel provides the option to group data items together by day, week, month, year, etc.  Let’s see how this is done. First, let’s remove the “Payment Method” column from the Column Labels box (simply drag it back up to the field list), and replace it with the “Date Booked” column: As you can see, this makes our PivotTable instantly useless, giving us one column for each date that a transaction occurred on – a very wide table! To fix this, right-click on any date and select Group… from the context-menu: The grouping box appears.  We select Months and click OK: Voila!  A much more useful table: (Incidentally, this table is virtually identical to the one shown at the beginning of this article – the original sales summary that was created manually.) Another cool thing to be aware of is that you can have more than one set of row headings (or column headings): …which looks like this…. You can do a similar thing with column headings (or even report filters). Keeping things simple again, let’s see how to plot averaged values, rather than summed values. First, click on “Sum of Amount”, and select Value Field Settings… from the context-menu that appears: In the Summarize value field by list in the Value Field Settings box, select Average: While we’re here, let’s change the Custom Name, from “Average of Amount” to something a little more concise.  Type in something like “Avg”: Click OK, and see what it looks like.  Notice that all the values change from summed totals to averages, and the table title (top-left cell) has changed to “Avg”: If we like, we can even have sums, averages and counts (counts = how many sales there were) all on the same PivotTable! Here are the steps to get something like that in place (starting from a blank PivotTable): Drag “Salesperson” into the Column Labels Drag “Amount” field down into the Values box three times For the first “Amount” field, change its custom name to “Total” and it’s number format to Accounting (0 decimal places) For the second “Amount” field, change its custom name to “Average”, its function to Average and it’s number format to Accounting (0 decimal places) For the third “Amount” field, change its name to “Count” and its function to Count Drag the automatically created field from Column Labels to Row Labels Here’s what we end up with: Total, average and count on the same PivotTable! Conclusion There are many, many more features and options for PivotTables created by Microsoft Excel – far too many to list in an article like this.  To fully cover the potential of PivotTables, a small book (or a large website) would be required.  Brave and/or geeky readers can explore PivotTables further quite easily:  Simply right-click on just about everything, and see what options become available to you.  There are also the two ribbon-tabs: PivotTable Tools/Options and Design.  It doesn’t matter if you make a mistake – it’s easy to delete the PivotTable and start again – a possibility old DOS users of Lotus 1-2-3 never had. We’ve included an Excel that should work with most versions of Excel, so you can download to practice your PivotTable skills. 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• Minecraft Style Chunk building problem

  - by David Torrey

  I'm having some problems with speed in my chunk engine. I timed it out, and in its current state it takes a total ~5 seconds per chunk to fill each face's list. I have a check to see if each face of a block is visible and if it is not visible, it skips it and moves on. I'm using a dictionary (unordered map) because it makes sense memorywise to just not have an entry if there is no block. I've tracked my problem down to testing if there is an entry, and accessing an entry if it does exist. If I remove the tests to see if there is an entry in the dictionary for an adjacent block, or if the block type itself is seethrough, it runs within about 2-4 milliseconds. so here's my question: Is there a faster way to check for an entry in a dictionary than .ContainsKey()? As an aside, I tried TryGetValue() and it doesn't really help with the speed that much. If I remove the ContainsKey() and keep the test where it does the IsSeeThrough for each block, it halves the time, but it's still about 2-3 seconds. It only drops to 2-4ms if I remove BOTH checks. Here is my code: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using System.Threading.Tasks; using System.Runtime.InteropServices; using OpenTK; using OpenTK.Graphics.OpenGL; using System.Drawing; namespace Anabelle_Lee { public enum BlockEnum { air = 0, dirt = 1, } [StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential,Pack=1)] public struct Coordinates<T1> { public T1 x; public T1 y; public T1 z; public override string ToString() { return "(" + x + "," + y + "," + z + ") : " + typeof(T1); } } public struct Sides<T1> { public T1 left; public T1 right; public T1 top; public T1 bottom; public T1 front; public T1 back; } public class Block { public int blockType; public bool SeeThrough() { switch (blockType) { case 0: return true; } return false ; } public override string ToString() { return ((BlockEnum)(blockType)).ToString(); } } class Chunk { private Dictionary<Coordinates<byte>, Block> mChunkData; //stores the block data private Sides<List<Coordinates<byte>>> mVBOVertexBuffer; private Sides<int> mVBOHandle; //private bool mIsChanged; private const byte mCHUNKSIZE = 16; public Chunk() { } public void InitializeChunk() { //create VBO references #if DEBUG Console.WriteLine ("Initializing Chunk"); #endif mChunkData = new Dictionary<Coordinates<byte> , Block>(); //mIsChanged = true; GL.GenBuffers(1, out mVBOHandle.left); GL.GenBuffers(1, out mVBOHandle.right); GL.GenBuffers(1, out mVBOHandle.top); GL.GenBuffers(1, out mVBOHandle.bottom); GL.GenBuffers(1, out mVBOHandle.front); GL.GenBuffers(1, out mVBOHandle.back); //make new list of vertexes for each face mVBOVertexBuffer.top = new List<Coordinates<byte>>(); mVBOVertexBuffer.bottom = new List<Coordinates<byte>>(); mVBOVertexBuffer.left = new List<Coordinates<byte>>(); mVBOVertexBuffer.right = new List<Coordinates<byte>>(); mVBOVertexBuffer.front = new List<Coordinates<byte>>(); mVBOVertexBuffer.back = new List<Coordinates<byte>>(); #if DEBUG Console.WriteLine("Chunk Initialized"); #endif } public void GenerateChunk() { #if DEBUG Console.WriteLine("Generating Chunk"); #endif for (byte i = 0; i < mCHUNKSIZE; i++) { for (byte j = 0; j < mCHUNKSIZE; j++) { for (byte k = 0; k < mCHUNKSIZE; k++) { Random blockLoc = new Random(); Coordinates<byte> randChunk = new Coordinates<byte> { x = i, y = j, z = k }; mChunkData.Add(randChunk, new Block()); mChunkData[randChunk].blockType = blockLoc.Next(0, 1); } } } #if DEBUG Console.WriteLine("Chunk Generated"); #endif } public void DeleteChunk() { //delete VBO references #if DEBUG Console.WriteLine("Deleting Chunk"); #endif GL.DeleteBuffers(1, ref mVBOHandle.left); GL.DeleteBuffers(1, ref mVBOHandle.right); GL.DeleteBuffers(1, ref mVBOHandle.top); GL.DeleteBuffers(1, ref mVBOHandle.bottom); GL.DeleteBuffers(1, ref mVBOHandle.front); GL.DeleteBuffers(1, ref mVBOHandle.back); //clear all vertex buffers ClearPolyLists(); #if DEBUG Console.WriteLine("Chunk Deleted"); #endif } public void UpdateChunk() { #if DEBUG Console.WriteLine("Updating Chunk"); #endif ClearPolyLists(); //prepare buffers //for every entry in mChunkData map foreach(KeyValuePair<Coordinates<byte>,Block> feBlockData in mChunkData) { Coordinates<byte> checkBlock = new Coordinates<byte> { x = feBlockData.Key.x, y = feBlockData.Key.y, z = feBlockData.Key.z }; //check for polygonson the left side of the cube if (checkBlock.x > 0) { //check to see if there is a key for current x - 1. if not, add the vector if (!IsVisible(checkBlock.x - 1, checkBlock.y, checkBlock.z)) { //add polygon AddPoly(checkBlock.x, checkBlock.y, checkBlock.z, mVBOHandle.left); } } else { //polygon is far left and should be added AddPoly(checkBlock.x, checkBlock.y, checkBlock.z, mVBOHandle.left); } //check for polygons on the right side of the cube if (checkBlock.x < mCHUNKSIZE - 1) { if (!IsVisible(checkBlock.x + 1, checkBlock.y, checkBlock.z)) { //add poly AddPoly(checkBlock.x, checkBlock.y, checkBlock.z, mVBOHandle.right); } } else { //poly for right add AddPoly(checkBlock.x, checkBlock.y, checkBlock.z, mVBOHandle.right); } if (checkBlock.y > 0) { //check to see if there is a key for current x - 1. if not, add the vector if (!IsVisible(checkBlock.x, checkBlock.y - 1, checkBlock.z)) { //add polygon AddPoly(checkBlock.x, checkBlock.y, checkBlock.z, mVBOHandle.bottom); } } else { //polygon is far left and should be added AddPoly(checkBlock.x, checkBlock.y, checkBlock.z, mVBOHandle.bottom); } //check for polygons on the right side of the cube if (checkBlock.y < mCHUNKSIZE - 1) { if (!IsVisible(checkBlock.x, checkBlock.y + 1, checkBlock.z)) { //add poly AddPoly(checkBlock.x, checkBlock.y, checkBlock.z, mVBOHandle.top); } } else { //poly for right add AddPoly(checkBlock.x, checkBlock.y, checkBlock.z, mVBOHandle.top); } if (checkBlock.z > 0) { //check to see if there is a key for current x - 1. if not, add the vector if (!IsVisible(checkBlock.x, checkBlock.y, checkBlock.z - 1)) { //add polygon AddPoly(checkBlock.x, checkBlock.y, checkBlock.z, mVBOHandle.back); } } else { //polygon is far left and should be added AddPoly(checkBlock.x, checkBlock.y, checkBlock.z, mVBOHandle.back); } //check for polygons on the right side of the cube if (checkBlock.z < mCHUNKSIZE - 1) { if (!IsVisible(checkBlock.x, checkBlock.y, checkBlock.z + 1)) { //add poly AddPoly(checkBlock.x, checkBlock.y, checkBlock.z, mVBOHandle.front); } } else { //poly for right add AddPoly(checkBlock.x, checkBlock.y, checkBlock.z, mVBOHandle.front); } } BuildBuffers(); #if DEBUG Console.WriteLine("Chunk Updated"); #endif } public void RenderChunk() { } public void LoadChunk() { #if DEBUG Console.WriteLine("Loading Chunk"); #endif #if DEBUG Console.WriteLine("Chunk Deleted"); #endif } public void SaveChunk() { #if DEBUG Console.WriteLine("Saving Chunk"); #endif #if DEBUG Console.WriteLine("Chunk Saved"); #endif } private bool IsVisible(int pX,int pY,int pZ) { Block testBlock; Coordinates<byte> checkBlock = new Coordinates<byte> { x = Convert.ToByte(pX), y = Convert.ToByte(pY), z = Convert.ToByte(pZ) }; if (mChunkData.TryGetValue(checkBlock,out testBlock )) //if data exists { if (testBlock.SeeThrough() == true) //if existing data is not seethrough { return true; } } return true; } private void AddPoly(byte pX, byte pY, byte pZ, int BufferSide) { //create temp array GL.BindBuffer(BufferTarget.ArrayBuffer, BufferSide); if (BufferSide == mVBOHandle.front) { //front face mVBOVertexBuffer.front.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX) , y = (byte)(pY + 1), z = (byte)(pZ + 1) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.front.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX) , y = (byte)(pY) , z = (byte)(pZ + 1) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.front.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX + 1), y = (byte)(pY) , z = (byte)(pZ + 1) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.front.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX + 1), y = (byte)(pY) , z = (byte)(pZ + 1) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.front.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX + 1), y = (byte)(pY + 1), z = (byte)(pZ + 1) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.front.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX) , y = (byte)(pY + 1), z = (byte)(pZ + 1) }); } else if (BufferSide == mVBOHandle.right) { //back face mVBOVertexBuffer.back.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX + 1), y = (byte)(pY + 1), z = (byte)(pZ) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.back.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX + 1), y = (byte)(pY) , z = (byte)(pZ) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.back.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX) , y = (byte)(pY) , z = (byte)(pZ) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.back.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX) , y = (byte)(pY) , z = (byte)(pZ) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.back.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX) , y = (byte)(pY + 1), z = (byte)(pZ) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.back.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX + 1), y = (byte)(pY + 1), z = (byte)(pZ) }); } else if (BufferSide == mVBOHandle.top) { //left face mVBOVertexBuffer.left.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX), y = (byte)(pY + 1), z = (byte)(pZ) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.left.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX), y = (byte)(pY) , z = (byte)(pZ) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.left.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX), y = (byte)(pY) , z = (byte)(pZ + 1) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.left.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX), y = (byte)(pY) , z = (byte)(pZ + 1) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.left.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX), y = (byte)(pY + 1), z = (byte)(pZ + 1) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.left.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX), y = (byte)(pY + 1), z = (byte)(pZ) }); } else if (BufferSide == mVBOHandle.bottom) { //right face mVBOVertexBuffer.right.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX + 1), y = (byte)(pY + 1), z = (byte)(pZ + 1) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.right.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX + 1), y = (byte)(pY) , z = (byte)(pZ + 1) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.right.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX + 1), y = (byte)(pY) , z = (byte)(pZ) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.right.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX + 1), y = (byte)(pY) , z = (byte)(pZ) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.right.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX + 1), y = (byte)(pY + 1), z = (byte)(pZ) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.right.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX + 1), y = (byte)(pY + 1), z = (byte)(pZ + 1) }); } else if (BufferSide == mVBOHandle.front) { //top face mVBOVertexBuffer.top.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX) , y = (byte)(pY + 1), z = (byte)(pZ) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.top.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX) , y = (byte)(pY + 1), z = (byte)(pZ + 1) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.top.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX + 1), y = (byte)(pY + 1), z = (byte)(pZ + 1) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.top.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX + 1), y = (byte)(pY + 1), z = (byte)(pZ + 1) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.top.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX + 1), y = (byte)(pY + 1), z = (byte)(pZ) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.top.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX) , y = (byte)(pY + 1), z = (byte)(pZ) }); } else if (BufferSide == mVBOHandle.back) { //bottom face mVBOVertexBuffer.bottom.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX) , y = (byte)(pY), z = (byte)(pZ + 1) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.bottom.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX) , y = (byte)(pY), z = (byte)(pZ) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.bottom.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX + 1), y = (byte)(pY), z = (byte)(pZ) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.bottom.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX + 1), y = (byte)(pY), z = (byte)(pZ) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.bottom.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX + 1), y = (byte)(pY), z = (byte)(pZ + 1) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.bottom.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX) , y = (byte)(pY), z = (byte)(pZ + 1) }); } } private void BuildBuffers() { #if DEBUG Console.WriteLine("Building Chunk Buffers"); #endif GL.BindBuffer(BufferTarget.ArrayBuffer, mVBOHandle.front); GL.BufferData(BufferTarget.ArrayBuffer, (IntPtr)(Marshal.SizeOf(new Coordinates<byte>()) * mVBOVertexBuffer.front.Count), mVBOVertexBuffer.front.ToArray(), BufferUsageHint.StaticDraw); GL.BindBuffer(BufferTarget.ArrayBuffer, mVBOHandle.back); GL.BufferData(BufferTarget.ArrayBuffer, (IntPtr)(Marshal.SizeOf(new Coordinates<byte>()) * mVBOVertexBuffer.back.Count), mVBOVertexBuffer.back.ToArray(), BufferUsageHint.StaticDraw); GL.BindBuffer(BufferTarget.ArrayBuffer, mVBOHandle.left); GL.BufferData(BufferTarget.ArrayBuffer, (IntPtr)(Marshal.SizeOf(new Coordinates<byte>()) * mVBOVertexBuffer.left.Count), mVBOVertexBuffer.left.ToArray(), BufferUsageHint.StaticDraw); GL.BindBuffer(BufferTarget.ArrayBuffer, mVBOHandle.right); GL.BufferData(BufferTarget.ArrayBuffer, (IntPtr)(Marshal.SizeOf(new Coordinates<byte>()) * mVBOVertexBuffer.right.Count), mVBOVertexBuffer.right.ToArray(), BufferUsageHint.StaticDraw); GL.BindBuffer(BufferTarget.ArrayBuffer, mVBOHandle.top); GL.BufferData(BufferTarget.ArrayBuffer, (IntPtr)(Marshal.SizeOf(new Coordinates<byte>()) * mVBOVertexBuffer.top.Count), mVBOVertexBuffer.top.ToArray(), BufferUsageHint.StaticDraw); GL.BindBuffer(BufferTarget.ArrayBuffer, mVBOHandle.bottom); GL.BufferData(BufferTarget.ArrayBuffer, (IntPtr)(Marshal.SizeOf(new Coordinates<byte>()) * mVBOVertexBuffer.bottom.Count), mVBOVertexBuffer.bottom.ToArray(), BufferUsageHint.StaticDraw); GL.BindBuffer(BufferTarget.ArrayBuffer,0); #if DEBUG Console.WriteLine("Chunk Buffers Built"); #endif } private void ClearPolyLists() { #if DEBUG Console.WriteLine("Clearing Polygon Lists"); #endif mVBOVertexBuffer.top.Clear(); mVBOVertexBuffer.bottom.Clear(); mVBOVertexBuffer.left.Clear(); mVBOVertexBuffer.right.Clear(); mVBOVertexBuffer.front.Clear(); mVBOVertexBuffer.back.Clear(); #if DEBUG Console.WriteLine("Polygon Lists Cleared"); #endif } }//END CLASS }//END NAMESPACE

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• SQLAuthority News – Job Interviewing the Right Way (and for the Right Reasons) – Guest Post by Feodor Georgiev

  - by pinaldave

  Feodor Georgiev is a SQL Server database specialist with extensive experience of thinking both within and outside the box. He has wide experience of different systems and solutions in the fields of architecture, scalability, performance, etc. Feodor has experience with SQL Server 2000 and later versions, and is certified in SQL Server 2008. Feodor has written excellent article on Job Interviewing the Right Way. Here is his article in his own language. A while back I was thinking to start a blog post series on interviewing and employing IT personnel. At that time I had just read the ‘Smart and gets things done’ book (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/06/05.html) and I was hyped up on some debatable topics regarding finding and employing the best people in the branch. I have no problem with hiring the best of the best; it’s just the definition of ‘the best of the best’ that makes things a bit more complicated. One of the fundamental books one can read on the topic of interviewing is the one mentioned above. If you have not read it, then you must do so; not because it contains the ultimate truth, and not because it gives the answers to most questions on the subject, but because the book contains an extensive set of questions about interviewing and employing people. Of course, a big part of these questions have different answers, depending on location, culture, available funds and so on. (What works in the US may not necessarily work in the Nordic countries or India, or it may work in a different way). The only thing that is valid regardless of any external factor is this: curiosity. In my belief there are two kinds of people – curious and not-so-curious; regardless of profession. Think about it – professional success is directly proportional to the individual’s curiosity + time of active experience in the field. (I say ‘active experience’ because vacations and any distractions do not count as experience :)  ) So, curiosity is the factor which will distinguish a good employee from the not-so-good one. But let’s shift our attention to something else for now: a few tips and tricks for successful interviews. Tip and trick #1: get your priorities straight. Your status usually dictates your priorities; for example, if the person looking for a job has just relocated to a new country, they might tend to ignore some of their priorities and overload others. In other words, setting priorities straight means to define the personal criteria by which the interview process is lead. For example, similar to the following questions can help define the criteria for someone looking for a job: How badly do I need a (any) job? Is it more important to work in a clean and quiet environment or is it important to get paid well (or both, if possible)? And so on… Furthermore, before going to the interview, the candidate should have a list of priorities, sorted by the most importance: e.g. I want a quiet environment, x amount of money, great helping boss, a desk next to a window and so on. Also it is a good idea to be prepared and know which factors can be compromised and to what extent. Tip and trick #2: the interview is a two-way street. A job candidate should not forget that the interview process is not a one-way street. What I mean by this is that while the employer is interviewing the potential candidate, the job seeker should not miss the chance to interview the employer. Usually, the employer and the candidate will meet for an interview and talk about a variety of topics. In a quality interview the candidate will be presented to key members of the team and will have the opportunity to ask them questions. By asking the right questions both parties will define their opinion about each other. For example, if the candidate talks to one of the potential bosses during the interview process and they notice that the potential manager has a hard time formulating a question, then it is up to the candidate to decide whether working with such person is a red flag for them. There are as many interview processes out there as there are companies and each one is different. Some bigger companies and corporates can afford pre-selection processes, 3 or even 4 stages of interviews, small companies usually settle with one interview. Some companies even give cognitive tests on the interview. Why not? In his book Joel suggests that a good candidate should be pampered and spoiled beyond belief with a week-long vacation in New York, fancy hotels, food and who knows what. For all I can imagine, an interview might even take place at the top of the Eifel tower (right, Mr. Joel, right?) I doubt, however, that this is the optimal way to capture the attention of a good employee. The ‘curiosity’ topic What I have learned so far in my professional experience is that opinions can be subjective. Plus, opinions on technology subjects can also be subjective. According to Joel, only hiring the best of the best is worth it. If you ask me, there is no such thing as best of the best, simply because human nature (well, aside from some physical limitations, like putting your pants on through your head :) ) has no boundaries. And why would it have boundaries? I have seen many curious and interesting people, naturally good at technology, though uninterested in it as one  can possibly be; I have also seen plenty of people interested in technology, who (in an ideal world) should have stayed far from it. At any rate, all of this sums up at the end to the ‘supply and demand’ factor. The interview process big-bang boils down to this: If there is a mutual benefit for both the employer and the potential employee to work together, then it all sorts out nicely. If there is no benefit, then it is much harder to get to a common place. Tip and trick #3: word-of-mouth is worth a thousand words Here I would just mention that the best thing a job candidate can get during the interview process is access to future team members or other employees of the new company. Nowadays the world has become quite small and everyone knows everyone. Look at LinkedIn, look at other professional networks and you will realize how small the world really is. Knowing people is a good way to become more approachable and to approach them. Tip and trick #4: Be confident. It is true that for some people confidence is as natural as breathing and others have to work hard to express it. Confidence is, however, a key factor in convincing the other side (potential employer or employee) that there is a great chance for success by working together. But it cannot get you very far if it’s not backed up by talent, curiosity and knowledge. Tip and trick #5: The right reasons What really bothers me in Sweden (and I am sure that there are similar situations in other countries) is that there is a tendency to fill quotas and to filter out candidates by criteria different from their skill and knowledge. In job ads I see quite often the phrases ‘positive thinker’, ‘team player’ and many similar hints about personality features. So my guess here is that discrimination has evolved to a new level. Let me clear up the definition of discrimination: ‘unfair treatment of a person or group on the basis of prejudice’. And prejudice is the ‘partiality that prevents objective consideration of an issue or situation’. In other words, there is not much difference whether a job candidate is filtered out by race, gender or by personality features – it is all a bad habit. And in reality, there is no proven correlation between the technology knowledge paired with skills and the personal features (gender, race, age, optimism). It is true that a significantly greater number of Darwin awards were given to men than to women, but I am sure that somewhere there is a paper or theory explaining the genetics behind this. J This topic actually brings to mind one of my favorite work related stories. A while back I was working for a big company with many teams involved in their processes. One of the teams was occupying 2 rooms – one had the team members and was full of light, colorful posters, chit-chats and giggles, whereas the other room was dark, lighted only by a single monitor with a quiet person in front of it. Later on I realized that the ‘dark room’ person was the guru and the ultimate problem-solving-brain who did not like the chats and giggles and hence was in a separate room. In reality, all severe problems which the chatty and cheerful team members could not solve and all emergencies were directed to ‘the dark room’. And thus all worked out well. The moral of the story: Personality has nothing to do with technology knowledge and skills. End of story. Summary: I’d like to stress the fact that there is no ultimately perfect candidate for a job, and there is no such thing as ‘best-of-the-best’. From my personal experience, the main criteria by which I measure people (co-workers and bosses) is the curiosity factor; I know from experience that the more curious and inventive a person is, the better chances there are for great achievements in their field. Related stories: (for extra credit) 1) Get your priorities straight. A while back as a consultant I was working for a few days at a time at different offices and for different clients, and so I was able to compare and analyze the work environments. There were two different places which I compared and recently I asked a friend of mine the following question: “Which one would you prefer as a work environment: a noisy office full of people, or a quiet office full of faulty smells because the office is rarely cleaned?” My friend was puzzled for a while, thought about it and said: “Hmm, you are talking about two different kinds of pollution… I will probably choose the second, since I can clean the workplace myself a bit…” 2) The interview is a two-way street. One time, during a job interview, I met a potential boss that had a hard time phrasing a question. At that particular time it was clear to me that I would not have liked to work under this person. According to my work religion, the properly asked question contains at least half of the answer. And if I work with someone who cannot ask a question… then I’d be doing double or triple work. At another interview, after the technical part with the team leader of the department, I was introduced to one of the team members and we were left alone for 5 minutes. I immediately jumped on the occasion and asked the blunt question: ‘What have you learned here for the past year and how do you like your job?’ The team member looked at me and said ‘Nothing really. I like playing with my cats at home, so I am out of here at 5pm and I don’t have time for much.’ I was disappointed at the time and I did not take the job offer. I wasn’t that shocked a few months later when the company went bankrupt. 3) The right reasons to take a job: personality check. A while back I was asked to serve as a job reference for a coworker. I agreed, and after some weeks I got a phone call from the company where my colleague was applying for a job. The conversation started with the manager’s question about my colleague’s personality and about their social skills. (You can probably guess what my internal reaction was… J ) So, after 30 minutes of pouring common sense into the interviewer’s head, we finally agreed on the fact that a shy or quiet personality has nothing to do with work skills and knowledge. Some years down the road my former colleague is taking the manager’s position as the manager is demoted to a different department. Reference: Feodor Georgiev, Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, Readers Contribution, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, June 11, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, June 11, 2011Popular ReleasesSimplePlanner: v2.0b: For 2011-2012 Sem 1 ???2011-2012 ????Econ NetVert: 2.4.2.14 Production: Many thanks to paulhickman for testing and reporting issues. - this release has lots of bugfixes in codeconversion when using NRefactory 4.0 (local) and VisualStudio Projects conversionVisual Studio 2010 Help Downloader: 1.0.0.3: Domain name support for proxy Cleanup old packages bug Writing to EventLog with UAC enabled bug Small fixes & RefactoringMedia Companion: MC 3.406b weekly: With this version change a movie rebuild is required when first run -else MC will lock up on exit. Extract the entire archive to a folder which has user access rights, eg desktop, documents etc. Refer to the documentation on this site for the Installation & Setup Guide Important! If you find MC not displaying movie data properly, please try a 'movie rebuild' to reload the data from the nfo's into MC's cache. Fixes Movies Readded movie preference to rename invalid or scene nfo's to info ext...SCCM Client Actions Tool: SCCM Client Actions Tool v0.5.1: SCCM Client Actions Tool v0.5.1 is currently the most stable version and includes all of the functionality requested so far. It comes with following changes since last version: Fixed an incorrect path to x64 client setup folder. It comes as a ZIP file that contains three files: ClientActionsTool.hta – The tool itself. Cmdkey.exe – command line tool for managing cached credentials. This is needed for alternate credentials feature when running the HTA on Windows XP. Cmdkey.exe is natively a...Windows Azure VM Assistant: AzureVMAssist V1.0.0.5: AzureVMAssist V1.0.0.5 (Debug) - Test Release VersionSizeOnDisk: 1.8.0.3: Fix (issue 317): Main window icon loading error on windows server 2003 32bit runing on x86 cpu. Bypass of the Microsoft windows comexception.NetOffice - The easiest way to use Office in .NET: NetOffice Release 0.9: Changes: - fix examples (include issue 16026) - add new examples - 32Bit/64Bit Walkthrough is now available in technical Documentation. Includes: - Runtime Binaries and Source Code for .NET Framework:......v2.0, v3.0, v3.5, v4.0 - Tutorials in C# and VB.Net:..............................................................COM Proxy Management, Events, etc. - Examples in C# and VB.Net:............................................................Excel, Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, Access - COMAddi...Reusable Library: V1.1.3: A collection of reusable abstractions for enterprise application developerClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.54.0: New on this release: 1) Mayor performance improvements. 2) AdjustToContents now take into account the text rotation. 3) Fixed issues 6782, 6784, 6788HTML-IDEx: HTML-IDEx .15 ALPHA: This release fixes line counting a little bit and adds the masshighlight() sub, which highlights pasted and inserted code.AutoLoL: AutoLoL v2.0.3: - Improved summoner spells are now displayed - Fixed some of the startup errors people got - Double clicking an item selects it - Some usability changes that make using AutoLoL just a little easier - Bug fixes AutoLoL v2 is not an update, but an entirely new version! Please install to a different directory than AutoLoL v1Host Profiles: Host Profiles 1.0: Host Profiles 1.0 Release Quickly modify host file Automatically flush dnsVidCoder: 0.9.2: Updated to HandBrake 4024svn. This fixes problems with mpeg2 sources: corrupted previews, incorrect progress indicators and encodes that incorrectly report as failed. Fixed a problem that prevented target sizes above 2048 MB.SharePoint Search XSL Samples: SharePoint 2010 Samples: I have updated some of the samples from the 2007 release. These all work in SharePoint 2010. I removed the Pivot on File Extension because SharePoint 2010 search has refiners that perform the same function.AcDown????? - Anime&Comic Downloader: AcDown????? v3.0 Beta5: ??AcDown?????????????，??????????????，????、????。?????Acfun????? ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7 ????????????? ??：????????Windows XP???,?????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)?.NET Framework 2.0???(x64)，?????"?????????"??? ??v3.0 Beta5 ?????????? ???? ?? ???????? ???"????????"?? ????????????? ????????/???? ?? ???"????"??? ?? ??????????? ?? ?? ??????????? ?? ?????????????????? ??????????????????? ???????????????? ????????????Discussions???????? ????AcDown??????????????VFPX: GoFish 4 Beta 1: Current beta is Build 144 (released 2011-06-07 ) See the GoFish4 info page for details and video link: http://vfpx.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=GoFishShowUI: Write-UI -in PowerShell: ShowUI: ShowUI is a PowerShell module to help you write rich user interfaces in script.SharePoint 2010 FBA Pack: SharePoint 2010 FBA Pack 1.0.3: Fixed User Management screen when "RequiresQuestionAndAnswer" set to true Reply to Email Address can now be customized User Management page now only displays users that reside in the membership database Web parts have been changed to inherit from System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts.WebPart, so that they will display on anonymous application pages For installation and configuration steps see here.TerrariViewer: TerrariViewer v2.5: Added new items associated with Terraria v1.0.3 to the character editor. Fixed multiple bugs with Piggy Bank EditoryNew Projects.NET MVC Base by OST: The OST .NET MVC project is currently in infancy but contains html helper extensions, model binders and other extensions to the mvc 3 framework. It also contains a separate project for easily consuming JQGrid requests and return the correct JSON to the jQuery plugin.Asterisk AMI Proxy suite: The AMI Proxy suite project will bridge the gap between your asterisk phone system and your windows based applications. The AMI Proxy is a service that can be used to simply proxy AMI connections to your asterisk server but also adds call stat generation and line monitors.Augusta Developers Guild: The web site for the user group Augusta Developers GuildAzure Blob Pusher: File uploader allows bulk upload of files from client to Azure blob storage. FileSystemWatcher notices new files in configured directory. SQL Express database tracks files as they are pushed up to blob storage and then processed. Local Directory is cleaned up after acknowledgement.Basic Class Library: A collection of functions created to eased up the programmers life in order to solved basic task like validation, AmountTowords, Encrypt & Decryption it also has capability to Connect and retrieve sql data just in one line of code, and some other Basic but very Important task.Basic RTS Game using RolePlayingGame Tool kit based XNA: this is a basic RTS Game. i can make it easy by using RolePlayingGame Took Kit based XNA.Batch Scheduler using .Net 4, MEF and Entity framework 4.1 (Magic Unicorn): Simple Batch Architecture written on C#. Uses the .NET 4, MEF and Entity Framework 4.1 Code First. If you dont need a scheduler, just use the sample code. Agents can be scheduled through a central database table. Plug-ins (or jobs) are launched through MEF. DropBox Linker: The goal of DropBox Linker project is to improve DropBox service client usability. It intellectually automates copying URLs to clipboard after publishing a file. Multiple files at once is supported. Additionally, it corrects URL on file rename after its link been copied.Exchange Spigot for NodeXL: Exchange Spigot for NodeXL enables Microsoft Excel plugin NodeXL to collect messaging data from the Microsoft Exchange Server and display that data as a graph. It is developed in C#.G - Low Level Graphics API: A low level graphics api, in similar style to OpenGL, but more OO. Can drastically speed up OpenGL based apps. Makes full use of Net4.0 features such as lambada expressions where useful. (C#, OpenTK powered. This is not for C++) GpgAPI - A C# Api for Gpg: GpgAPI is a C# API for Gpg. Gpg is a command line software to encrypt, decrypt files with a symmetric or assymetric key. You can also managed public keys, import keys from the web, export your public keys, etc. GpgAPI is an interface to Gpg. In C#, with a few lines, you can execute gpg to encrypt, decrypt, etc. The license of this project is "GPL v3"; it is NOT GPL v2. GPL v3 is not present in the licenses list so I had to choose GPL v2. So if use GpgAPI, you must accept the GPL v...iDreamBoard: iDreamBoard is an application to ease the process of creating and editing dreamboard themes for iOS devices. UNDER DEVELOPMENTIETouch: Use IE Touch to access multitouch events from JavaScript in IE. This project uses some of the code from Windows 7 Multitouch .NET Interop Sample Library available in http://archive.msdn.microsoft.com/WindowsTouch/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=2127iMaker-Lion: Applications post installation pour Mac OS X sur PC.Informatic System Ma Chung University Alumni Center: Informatic System Ma Chung University Alumni Center is a website for alumni at Information System Faculty at Ma Chung University at Malang, IndonesiaJasc (just another script compressor): Just another script compressor, but that's by far the easiest to use! Use Jasc to merge compress your javascript (JS) and style sheets (CSS). Just drop the executable in your javascript / CSS folder and run it. Voyla! It will handle everything by itself. Compression is based on Microsoft Ajax Minifier. Jasc can handle single or multiple files, will accept regular expressions to remove specific lines from the source code, and can also optimize the results by shrinking variable names and twe...LINQ Extensions Library: A library of useful LINQ extensions allowing for arithmetic manipulation of sequences, statistical analysis, sequence generation, sequence manipulation, pattern detection and more.Mail2FotoFrame: Pulls emails from a POP3-Account, extracts picture-attachments and saves them to a SD-card, so you can view them on a fotoframe.Make web (or sharepoint) pages screenshots with Powershell: From a text file containing url, make screenshot of each page. This powershell script use iecapt.exe project. You can manage width format and delay for each captureModé Internationalé (E-Commerce Site): Mode International is a fictional clothing store, and this website project is meant to be the e-Commerce site for this store. So far, the project has been developed using Java Enterprise Edition and Sockets, but I am considering making the use of C# in ASP .NET in the future.Music House: Site dedicado a musica e afiliadosNiphor's ToolBox: ?????????Nordic nRF24L01+ .NET Micro Framework Driver: Library that enables .NET Micro Framework developers to use Nordic 2.4 GHz wireless tranceivers. This library can be used on any net mf device with SPI interface.Petey's Game Engine: Petey's Game Engine is a XNA 4.0 game engine with a featured blog describing each step of the development. This is a learning project so people may follow and learn as my project evolves.ReportGenerator: ReportGenerator converts XML reports generated by PartCover or NCover into a readable HTML report.Rise of the rabbits: Rise of the RabbitsSapaFinance: SapaFinanceSCSM Copy Object: SCSM Copy Object is a CodePlex project that enables users to select objects in the System Center Service Manager console, click a task in the task pane and create a copy of the selected object(s). Objects can also be copied from command line executables.SharePoint 2010 Language Pack Downloader: SharePoint 2010 Language Pack Downloader is a tool to quickly download multiple language pack files for the SharePoint 2010 Server platform.SharePoint XQuery Reporting Solution: My company's project needs this technology because of the current company has a lot of data is stored in SharePoint, through Infopath data collection, data storage and not all InfoPath field values ​​are saved into a database, a considerable number of data in XML File, which caused difficulties in query and print a report, need a solution. Simply explained the thinking: First step:Put SharePoint, InfoPath XML file later (I did a small tool XMLToDB) or through the Event Handle sync sav...The Pacman: A simple single player game similar to Pacman. Developed using XNA game framework and C#. Game demonstrates usage of fuzzy logic for controlling the AI ghosts. This game is developed to test the effect of fuzzy logic AI in Pacman game.TodoStrike: Todo Strike is a simple todo list keeper.WallpaperDeleter: Simple program to delete the current background wallpaper image.Windows Phone 7 Continuous Integration Testing Framework: WP7 CI is a port of the Silverlight Toolkit Test Framework with added CI support, allowing tests to be run in the emulator from the command lineWolfpack - Distributed System Monitoring: Wolfpack is an extensible, .Net windows service framework for running jobs to monitor your software, system & business KPI's. The data collected can be sent directly to Growl, Geckoboard, WCF, SQL, SQLite, NServiceBus. It comes loaded with some tasks but it's simple to implement your own!

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• Signals and threads - good or bad design decision?

  - by Jens

  I have to write a program that performs highly computationally intensive calculations. The program might run for several days. The calculation can be separated easily in different threads without the need of shared data. I want a GUI or a web service that informs me of the current status. My current design uses BOOST::signals2 and BOOST::thread. It compiles and so far works as expected. If a thread finished one iteration and new data is available it calls a signal which is connected to a slot in the GUI class. My question(s): Is this combination of signals and threads a wise idea? I another forum somebody advised someone else not to "go down this road". Are there potential deadly pitfalls nearby that I failed to see? Is my expectation realistic that it will be "easy" to use my GUI class to provide a web interface or a QT, a VTK or a whatever window? Is there a more clever alternative (like other boost libs) that I overlooked? following code compiles with g++ -Wall -o main -lboost_thread-mt <filename>.cpp code follows: #include <boost/signals2.hpp> #include <boost/thread.hpp> #include <boost/bind.hpp> #include <iostream> #include <iterator> #include <string> using std::cout; using std::cerr; using std::string; /** * Called when a CalcThread finished a new bunch of data. */ boost::signals2::signal<void(string)> signal_new_data; /** * The whole data will be stored here. */ class DataCollector { typedef boost::mutex::scoped_lock scoped_lock; boost::mutex mutex; public: /** * Called by CalcThreads call the to store their data. */ void push(const string &s, const string &caller_name) { scoped_lock lock(mutex); _data.push_back(s); signal_new_data(caller_name); } /** * Output everything collected so far to std::out. */ void out() { typedef std::vector<string>::const_iterator iter; for (iter i = _data.begin(); i != _data.end(); ++i) cout << " " << *i << "\n"; } private: std::vector<string> _data; }; /** * Several of those can calculate stuff. * No data sharing needed. */ struct CalcThread { CalcThread(string name, DataCollector &datcol) : _name(name), _datcol(datcol) { } /** * Expensive algorithms will be implemented here. * @param num_results how many data sets are to be calculated by this thread. */ void operator()(int num_results) { for (int i = 1; i <= num_results; ++i) { std::stringstream s; s << "["; if (i == num_results) s << "LAST "; s << "DATA " << i << " from thread " << _name << "]"; _datcol.push(s.str(), _name); } } private: string _name; DataCollector &_datcol; }; /** * Maybe some VTK or QT or both will be used someday. */ class GuiClass { public: GuiClass(DataCollector &datcol) : _datcol(datcol) { } /** * If the GUI wants to present or at least count the data collected so far. * @param caller_name is the name of the thread whose data is new. */ void slot_data_changed(string caller_name) const { cout << "GuiClass knows: new data from " << caller_name << std::endl; } private: DataCollector & _datcol; }; int main() { DataCollector datcol; GuiClass mc(datcol); signal_new_data.connect(boost::bind(&GuiClass::slot_data_changed, &mc, _1)); CalcThread r1("A", datcol), r2("B", datcol), r3("C", datcol), r4("D", datcol), r5("E", datcol); boost::thread t1(r1, 3); boost::thread t2(r2, 1); boost::thread t3(r3, 2); boost::thread t4(r4, 2); boost::thread t5(r5, 3); t1.join(); t2.join(); t3.join(); t4.join(); t5.join(); datcol.out(); cout << "\nDone" << std::endl; return 0; }

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• What add-in/workbench framework is the best .NET alternative to Eclipse RCP?

  - by Winston Fassett

  I'm looking for a plugin-based application framework that is comparable to the Eclipse Plugin Framework, which to my simple mind consists of: a core plugin management framework (Equinox / OSGI), which provides the ability to declare extension endpoints and then discover and load plugins that service those endpoints. (this is different than Dependency Injection, but admittedly the difference is subtle - configuration is highly de-centralized, there are versioning concerns, it might involve an online plugin repository, and most importantly to me, it should be easy for the user to add plugins without needing to know anything about the underlying architecture / config files) many layers of plugins that provide a basic workbench shell with concurrency support, commands, preference sheets, menus, toolbars, key bindings, etc. That is just scratching the surface of the RCP, which itself is meant to serve as the foundation of your application, which you build by writing / assembling even more plugins. Here's what I've gleaned from the internet in the past couple of days... As far as I can tell, there is nothing in the .NET world that remotely approaches the robustness and maturity of the Eclipse RCP for Java but there are several contenders that do either #1 or #2 pretty well. (I should also mention that I have not made a final decision on WinForms vs WPF, so I'm also trying to understand the level of UI coupling in any candidate framework. I'm also wondering about platform coupling and source code licensing) I must say that the open-source stuff is generally less-documented but easier to understand, while the MS stuff typically has more documentation but is less accessible, so that with many of the MS technologies, I'm left wondering what they actually do, in a practical sense. These are the libraries I have found: SharpDevelop The first thing I looked at was SharpDevelop, which does both #1 and also #2 in a basic way (no insult to SharpDevelop, which is admirable - I just mean more basic than Eclipse RCP). However, SharpDevelop is an application more than a framework, and there are basic assumptions and limitations there (i.e. being somewhat coupled to WinForms). Still, there are some articles on CodeProject explaining how to use it as the foundation for an application. System.Addins It appears that System.Addins is meant to provide a robust add-in loading framework, with some sophisticated options for loading assemblies with varying levels of trusts and even running the out of process. It appears to be primarily code-based, and pretty code-heavy, with lots of assemblies that serve to insulate against versioning issues., using Guidance Automation to generate a good deal of code. So far I haven't found many System.AddIns articles that illustrate how it could be used to build something like an Eclipse RCP, and many people seem to be wringing their hands about its complexity. Mono.Addins It appears that Mono.Addins was influenced by System.Addins, SharpDevelop, and MonoDevelop. It seems to provide the basics from System.Addins, with less sophisticated options for plugin loading, but more simplicity, with attribute-based registration, XML manifests, and the infrastructure for online plugin repositories. It has a pretty good FAQ and documentation, as well as a fairly robust set of examples that really help paint a picture of how to develop an architecture like that of SharpDevelop or Eclipse. The examples use GTK for UI, but the framework itself is not coupled to GTK. So it appears to do #1 (add-in loading) pretty well and points the way to #2 (workbench framework). It appears that Mono.Addins was derived from MonoDevelop, but I haven't actually looked at whether MonoDevelop provides a good core workbench framework. Managed Extensibility Framework This is what everyone's talking about at the moment, and it's slowly getting clearer what it does, but I'm still pretty fuzzy, even after reading several posts on SO. The official word is that it "can live side-by-side" with System.Addins. However, it doesn't reference it and it appears to reproduce some of its functionality. It seems to me, then, that it is a simpler, more accessible alternative to System.Addins. It appears to be more like Mono.Addins in that it provides attribute-based wiring. It provides "catalogs" that can be attribute-based or directory-based. It does not seem to provide any XML or manifest-based wiring. So far I haven't found much documentation and the examples seem to be kind of "magical" and more reminiscent of attribute-based DI, despite the clarifications that MEF is not a DI container. Its license just got opened up, but it does reference WindowsBase -- not sure if that means it's coupled to Windows. Acropolis I'm not sure what this is. Is it MEF, or something that is still coming? Composite Application Blocks There are WPF and Winforms Composite Application blocks that seem to provide much more of a workbench framework. I have very little experience with these but they appear to rely on Guidance Automation quite a bit are obviously coupled with the UI layers. There are a few examples of combining MEF with these application blocks. I've done the best I could to answer my own question here, but I'm really only scratching the surface, and I don't have experience with any of these frameworks. Hopefully some of you can add more detail about the frameworks you have experience with. It would be great if we could end up with some sort of comparison matrix.

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• Problem implementing Blinn–Phong shading model

  - by Joe Hopfgartner

  I did this very simple, perfectly working, implementation of Phong Relflection Model (There is no ambience implemented yet, but that doesn't bother me for now). The functions should be self explaining. /** * Implements the classic Phong illumination Model using a reflected light * vector. */ public class PhongIllumination implements IlluminationModel { @RGBParam(r = 0, g = 0, b = 0) public Vec3 ambient; @RGBParam(r = 1, g = 1, b = 1) public Vec3 diffuse; @RGBParam(r = 1, g = 1, b = 1) public Vec3 specular; @FloatParam(value = 20, min = 1, max = 200.0f) public float shininess; /* * Calculate the intensity of light reflected to the viewer . * * @param P = The surface position expressed in world coordinates. * * @param V = Normalized viewing vector from surface to eye in world * coordinates. * * @param N = Normalized normal vector at surface point in world * coordinates. * * @param surfaceColor = surfaceColor Color of the surface at the current * position. * * @param lights = The active light sources in the scene. * * @return Reflected light intensity I. */ public Vec3 shade(Vec3 P, Vec3 V, Vec3 N, Vec3 surfaceColor, Light lights[]) { Vec3 surfaceColordiffused = Vec3.mul(surfaceColor, diffuse); Vec3 totalintensity = new Vec3(0, 0, 0); for (int i = 0; i < lights.length; i++) { Vec3 L = lights[i].calcDirection(P); N = N.normalize(); V = V.normalize(); Vec3 R = Vec3.reflect(L, N); // reflection vector float diffuseLight = Vec3.dot(N, L); float specularLight = Vec3.dot(V, R); if (diffuseLight > 0) { totalintensity = Vec3.add(Vec3.mul(Vec3.mul( surfaceColordiffused, lights[i].calcIntensity(P)), diffuseLight), totalintensity); if (specularLight > 0) { Vec3 Il = lights[i].calcIntensity(P); Vec3 Ilincident = Vec3.mul(Il, Math.max(0.0f, Vec3 .dot(N, L))); Vec3 intensity = Vec3.mul(Vec3.mul(specular, Ilincident), (float) Math.pow(specularLight, shininess)); totalintensity = Vec3.add(totalintensity, intensity); } } } return totalintensity; } } Now i need to adapt it to become a Blinn-Phong illumination model I used the formulas from hearn and baker, followed pseudocodes and tried to implement it multiple times according to wikipedia articles in several languages but it never worked. I just get no specular reflections or they are so weak and/or are at the wrong place and/or have the wrong color. From the numerous wrong implementations I post some little code that already seems to be wrong. So I calculate my Half Way vector and my new specular light like so: Vec3 H = Vec3.mul(Vec3.add(L.normalize(), V), Vec3.add(L.normalize(), V).length()); float specularLight = Vec3.dot(H, N); With theese little changes it should already work (maby not with correct intensity but basically it should be correct). But the result is wrong. Here are two images. Left how it should render correctly and right how it renders. If i lower the shininess factor you can see a little specular light at the top right: Altough I understand the concept of Phong illumination and also the simplified more performant adaptaion of blinn phong I am trying around for days and just cant get it to work. Any help is appriciated. Edit: I was made aware of an error by this answer, that i am mutiplying by |L+V| instead of dividing by it when calculating H. I changed to deviding doing so: Vec3 H = Vec3.mul(Vec3.add(L.normalize(), V), 1/Vec3.add(L.normalize(), V).length()); Unfortunately this doesnt change much. The results look like this: and if I rise the specular constant and lower the shininess You can see the effects more clearly in a smilar wrong way: However this division just the normalisation. I think I am missing one step. Because the formulas like this just dont make sense to me. If you look at this picture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Blinn-Phong_vectors.svg The projection of H to N is far less than V to R. And if you imagine changing the vector V in the picture the angle is the same when the viewing vector is "on the left side". and becomes more and more different when going to the right. I pesonally would multiply the whole projection by two to become something similiar (and the hole point is to avoid the calculation of R). Altough I didnt read anythinga bout that anywehre i am gonna try this out... Result: The intension of the specular light is far too much (white areas) and the position is still wrong. I think I am messing something else up because teh reflection are just at the wrong place. But what? Edit: Now I read on wikipedia in the notes that the angle of N/H is in fact approximalty half or V/R. To compensate that i should multiply my shineness exponent by 4 rather than my projection. If i do that I end up with this: Far to intense but still one thing. The projection is at the wrong place. Where could i mess up my vectors?

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• How to maintain encapsulation with composition in C++?

  - by iFreilicht

  I am designing a class Master that is composed from multiple other classes, A, Base, C and D. These four classes have absolutely no use outside of Master and are meant to split up its functionality into manageable and logically divided packages. They also provide extensible functionality as in the case of Base, which can be inherited from by clients. But, how do I maintain encapsulation of Master with this design? So far, I've got two approaches, which are both far from perfect: 1. Replicate all accessors: Just write accessor-methods for all accessor-methods of all classes that Master is composed of. This leads to perfect encapsulation, because no implementation detail of Master is visible, but is extremely tedious and makes the class definition monstrous, which is exactly what the composition should prevent. Also, adding functionality to one of the composees (is that even a word?) would require to re-write all those methods in Master. An additional problem is that inheritors of Base could only alter, but not add functionality. 2. Use non-assignable, non-copyable member-accessors: Having a class accessor<T> that can not be copied, moved or assigned to, but overrides the operator-> to access an underlying shared_ptr, so that calls like Master->A()->niceFunction(); are made possible. My problem with this is that it kind of breaks encapsulation as I would now be unable to change my implementation of Master to use a different class for the functionality of niceFunction(). Still, it is the closest I've gotten without using the ugly first approach. It also fixes the inheritance issue quite nicely. A small side question would be if such a class already existed in std or boost. EDIT: Wall of code I will now post the code of the header files of the classes discussed. It may be a bit hard to understand, but I'll give my best in explaining all of it. 1. GameTree.h The foundation of it all. This basically is a doubly-linked tree, holding GameObject-instances, which we'll later get to. It also has it's own custom iterator GTIterator, but I left that out for brevity. WResult is an enum with the values SUCCESS and FAILED, but it's not really important. class GameTree { public: //Static methods for the root. Only one root is allowed to exist at a time! static void ConstructRoot(seed_type seed, unsigned int depth); inline static bool rootExists(){ return static_cast<bool>(rootObject_); } inline static weak_ptr<GameTree> root(){ return rootObject_; } //delta is in ms, this is used for velocity, collision and such void tick(unsigned int delta); //Interaction with the tree inline weak_ptr<GameTree> parent() const { return parent_; } inline unsigned int numChildren() const{ return static_cast<unsigned int>(children_.size()); } weak_ptr<GameTree> getChild(unsigned int index) const; template<typename GOType> weak_ptr<GameTree> addChild(seed_type seed, unsigned int depth = 9001){ GOType object{ new GOType(seed) }; return addChildObject(unique_ptr<GameTree>(new GameTree(std::move(object), depth))); } WResult moveTo(weak_ptr<GameTree> newParent); WResult erase(); //Iterators for for( : ) loop GTIterator& begin(){ return *(beginIter_ = std::move(make_unique<GTIterator>(children_.begin()))); } GTIterator& end(){ return *(endIter_ = std::move(make_unique<GTIterator>(children_.end()))); } //unloading should be used when objects are far away WResult unloadChildren(unsigned int newDepth = 0); WResult loadChildren(unsigned int newDepth = 1); inline const RenderObject& renderObject() const{ return gameObject_->renderObject(); } //Getter for the underlying GameObject (I have not tested the template version) weak_ptr<GameObject> gameObject(){ return gameObject_; } template<typename GOType> weak_ptr<GOType> gameObject(){ return dynamic_cast<weak_ptr<GOType>>(gameObject_); } weak_ptr<PhysicsObject> physicsObject() { return gameObject_->physicsObject(); } private: GameTree(const GameTree&); //copying is only allowed internally GameTree(shared_ptr<GameObject> object, unsigned int depth = 9001); //pointer to root static shared_ptr<GameTree> rootObject_; //internal management of a child weak_ptr<GameTree> addChildObject(shared_ptr<GameTree>); WResult removeChild(unsigned int index); //private members shared_ptr<GameObject> gameObject_; shared_ptr<GTIterator> beginIter_; shared_ptr<GTIterator> endIter_; //tree stuff vector<shared_ptr<GameTree>> children_; weak_ptr<GameTree> parent_; unsigned int selfIndex_; //used for deletion, this isn't necessary void initChildren(unsigned int depth); //constructs children }; 2. GameObject.h This is a bit hard to grasp, but GameObject basically works like this: When constructing a GameObject, you construct its basic attributes and a CResult-instance, which contains a vector<unique_ptr<Construction>>. The Construction-struct contains all information that is needed to construct a GameObject, which is a seed and a function-object that is applied at construction by a factory. This enables dynamic loading and unloading of GameObjects as done by GameTree. It also means that you have to define that factory if you inherit GameObject. This inheritance is also the reason why GameTree has a template-function gameObject<GOType>. GameObject can contain a RenderObject and a PhysicsObject, which we'll later get to. Anyway, here's the code. class GameObject; typedef unsigned long seed_type; //this declaration magic means that all GameObjectFactorys inherit from GameObjectFactory<GameObject> template<typename GOType> struct GameObjectFactory; template<> struct GameObjectFactory<GameObject>{ virtual unique_ptr<GameObject> construct(seed_type seed) const = 0; }; template<typename GOType> struct GameObjectFactory : GameObjectFactory<GameObject>{ GameObjectFactory() : GameObjectFactory<GameObject>(){} unique_ptr<GameObject> construct(seed_type seed) const{ return unique_ptr<GOType>(new GOType(seed)); } }; //same as with the factories. this is important for storing them in vectors template<typename GOType> struct Construction; template<> struct Construction<GameObject>{ virtual unique_ptr<GameObject> construct() const = 0; }; template<typename GOType> struct Construction : Construction<GameObject>{ Construction(seed_type seed, function<void(GOType*)> func = [](GOType* null){}) : Construction<GameObject>(), seed_(seed), func_(func) {} unique_ptr<GameObject> construct() const{ unique_ptr<GameObject> gameObject{ GOType::factory.construct(seed_) }; func_(dynamic_cast<GOType*>(gameObject.get())); return std::move(gameObject); } seed_type seed_; function<void(GOType*)> func_; }; typedef struct CResult { CResult() : constructions{} {} CResult(CResult && o) : constructions(std::move(o.constructions)) {} CResult& operator= (CResult& other){ if (this != &other){ for (unique_ptr<Construction<GameObject>>& child : other.constructions){ constructions.push_back(std::move(child)); } } return *this; } template<typename GOType> void push_back(seed_type seed, function<void(GOType*)> func = [](GOType* null){}){ constructions.push_back(make_unique<Construction<GOType>>(seed, func)); } vector<unique_ptr<Construction<GameObject>>> constructions; } CResult; //finally, the GameObject class GameObject { public: GameObject(seed_type seed); GameObject(const GameObject&); virtual void tick(unsigned int delta); inline Matrix4f trafoMatrix(){ return physicsObject_->transformationMatrix(); } //getter inline seed_type seed() const{ return seed_; } inline CResult& properties(){ return properties_; } inline const RenderObject& renderObject() const{ return *renderObject_; } inline weak_ptr<PhysicsObject> physicsObject() { return physicsObject_; } protected: virtual CResult construct_(seed_type seed) = 0; CResult properties_; shared_ptr<RenderObject> renderObject_; shared_ptr<PhysicsObject> physicsObject_; seed_type seed_; }; 3. PhysicsObject That's a bit easier. It is responsible for position, velocity and acceleration. It will also handle collisions in the future. It contains three Transformation objects, two of which are optional. I'm not going to include the accessors on the PhysicsObject class because I tried my first approach on it and it's just pure madness (way over 30 functions). Also missing: the named constructors that construct PhysicsObjects with different behaviour. class Transformation{ Vector3f translation_; Vector3f rotation_; Vector3f scaling_; public: Transformation() : translation_{ 0, 0, 0 }, rotation_{ 0, 0, 0 }, scaling_{ 1, 1, 1 } {}; Transformation(Vector3f translation, Vector3f rotation, Vector3f scaling); inline Vector3f translation(){ return translation_; } inline void translation(float x, float y, float z){ translation(Vector3f(x, y, z)); } inline void translation(Vector3f newTranslation){ translation_ = newTranslation; } inline void translate(float x, float y, float z){ translate(Vector3f(x, y, z)); } inline void translate(Vector3f summand){ translation_ += summand; } inline Vector3f rotation(){ return rotation_; } inline void rotation(float pitch, float yaw, float roll){ rotation(Vector3f(pitch, yaw, roll)); } inline void rotation(Vector3f newRotation){ rotation_ = newRotation; } inline void rotate(float pitch, float yaw, float roll){ rotate(Vector3f(pitch, yaw, roll)); } inline void rotate(Vector3f summand){ rotation_ += summand; } inline Vector3f scaling(){ return scaling_; } inline void scaling(float x, float y, float z){ scaling(Vector3f(x, y, z)); } inline void scaling(Vector3f newScaling){ scaling_ = newScaling; } inline void scale(float x, float y, float z){ scale(Vector3f(x, y, z)); } void scale(Vector3f factor){ scaling_(0) *= factor(0); scaling_(1) *= factor(1); scaling_(2) *= factor(2); } Matrix4f matrix(){ return WMatrix::Translation(translation_) * WMatrix::Rotation(rotation_) * WMatrix::Scale(scaling_); } }; class PhysicsObject; typedef void tickFunction(PhysicsObject& self, unsigned int delta); class PhysicsObject{ PhysicsObject(const Transformation& trafo) : transformation_(trafo), transformationVelocity_(nullptr), transformationAcceleration_(nullptr), tick_(nullptr) {} PhysicsObject(PhysicsObject&& other) : transformation_(other.transformation_), transformationVelocity_(std::move(other.transformationVelocity_)), transformationAcceleration_(std::move(other.transformationAcceleration_)), tick_(other.tick_) {} Transformation transformation_; unique_ptr<Transformation> transformationVelocity_; unique_ptr<Transformation> transformationAcceleration_; tickFunction* tick_; public: void tick(unsigned int delta){ tick_ ? tick_(*this, delta) : 0; } inline Matrix4f transformationMatrix(){ return transformation_.matrix(); } } 4. RenderObject RenderObject is a base class for different types of things that could be rendered, i.e. Meshes, Light Sources or Sprites. DISCLAIMER: I did not write this code, I'm working on this project with someone else. class RenderObject { public: RenderObject(float renderDistance); virtual ~RenderObject(); float renderDistance() const { return renderDistance_; } void setRenderDistance(float rD) { renderDistance_ = rD; } protected: float renderDistance_; }; struct NullRenderObject : public RenderObject{ NullRenderObject() : RenderObject(0.f){}; }; class Light : public RenderObject{ public: Light() : RenderObject(30.f){}; }; class Mesh : public RenderObject{ public: Mesh(unsigned int seed) : RenderObject(20.f) { meshID_ = 0; textureID_ = 0; if (seed == 1) meshID_ = Model::getMeshID("EM-208_heavy"); else meshID_ = Model::getMeshID("cube"); }; unsigned int getMeshID() const { return meshID_; } unsigned int getTextureID() const { return textureID_; } private: unsigned int meshID_; unsigned int textureID_; }; I guess this shows my issue quite nicely: You see a few accessors in GameObject which return weak_ptrs to access members of members, but that is not really what I want. Also please keep in mind that this is NOT, by any means, finished or production code! It is merely a prototype and there may be inconsistencies, unnecessary public parts of classes and such.

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• Confluence vs Sharepoint

  - by FerranB

  We use Confluence mainly for documentation and want to make an step forward moving all the files (pdfs, etc) to Confluence but we want to determine if it's the best option. As far as I know Confluence is a wiki and Sharepoint is not. How compare confluence and Sharepoint as file containers? Which benefits have Sharepoint over Confluence and vice-versa? Pros and Cons?

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• Win7 Task Scheduler Crashes with Error Description "RpcServerUseProtseq:ncacn_ip_tcp"

  - by BlaM

  I just installed my fresh Windows 7 and so far are not very happy with it. Much more problems than with Windows Vista. The latest in a series: My Task Scheduler crashes right at the moment when I boot my system. When I check the Event Viewer it tells me that the scheduler crashes with a critical error: EventID: 404 ErrorDescription: RpcServerUseProtseq:ncacn_ip_tcp ResultCode: 1721 I found this entry in TechNet, but there is no "Internet" Key in my registry: "Task Scheduler service has encountered RPC initialization error..."

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• I need help debugging apache with gdb (no debugging symbols found)

  - by blockhead

  I'm trying to debug a segfault in PHP/Apache running on RHEL4. This is a production server, so I'm trying to install a separate copy of apache and php, and run apache through gdb. When I load httpd through gdb and then do run -X, I get the error (no debugging symbols found)...Error while reading shared library symbols: Dwarf Error: Cannot handle DW_FORM_strp in DWARF reader. The Apache manual says something about setting EXTRA_CFLAGS to "-g", and i've tried configuring with --enable-maintainer-mode, but I don't seem to be getting far.

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• Unrooted G1 stuck on "DREA100 PVT 32B screen" and won't turn off. [closed]

  - by MiffTheFox

  I've been pretty happy with my G1 thus far, but I turned it on this morning and it gave me a screen showing multicolored bars and the following text: DREA100 PVT 32B HBOOT-0.95.0000 CPLD-4 RADIO-2.22.19.261 Sep 2 2008 Later down it says "Serial0". Please help me, I don't want to wipe my phone and lose my data on it! I haven't rooted it and have no interest in rooting it. I got Cupcake over the wire, not via hacking.

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• RDS installation failure on 2012 R2 Server Core VM in Hyper-V Server

  - by Giles

  I'm currently installing a test-bed for my firms Infrastructure replacement. 10 or so Windows/Linux servers will be replaced by 2 physical servers running Hyper-V server. All services (DC, RDS, SQL) will be on Windows 2012 R2 Server Core VMs, Exchange on Server 2012 R2 GUI, and the rest are things like Elastix, MailArchiver etc, which aren't part of the equation thus far. I have installed Hyper-V server on a test box, and sucessfully got two virtual DC's running, SQL 2014 running, and 8.1 which I use for the RSAT tools. When trying to install RDS (The old fashioned kind, not the newer VDI(?) style), I get a failed installation due to the server not being able to reboot. A couple of articles have said not to do it locally, so I've moved on. Sitting at the Powershell prompt on the Domain Controller or SQL server (Both Server Core), I run the following commands: Import-Module RemoteDesktop New-SessionDeployment -ConnectionBroker "AlstersTS.Alsters.local" -SessionHost "AlstersTS.Alsters.local" The installation begins, carries on for 2 or 3 minutes, then I receive the following error message: New-SessionDeployment : Validation failed for the "RD Connection Broker" parameter. AlstersTS.Alsters.local Unable to connect to the server by using WindowsPowerShell remoting. Verify that you can connect to the server. At line:1 char:1 + NewSessionDeployment -ConnectionBroker "AlstersTS.Alsters.local" -SessionHost " ... + + CategoryInfo : NotSpecified: (:) [Write-Error], WriteErrorException + FullyQualifiedErrorID : Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.WriteErrorException,New-SessionDeployment So far, I have: Triple, triple checked syntax. Tried various other commands, and a script to accomplish the same task. Checked DNS is functioning as it should. Checked to the best of my knowledge that AD is working as it should. Checked that the Network Service has the needed permissions. Created another VM and placed the two roles on different servers. Deleted all VMs, started again with a new domain name (Lather, rinse, repeat) Performed the whole installation on a second physical box running Hyper-V Server Pleaded with it Interestingly, if I perform the installation via a GUI installation, the thing just works! Now I know I could convert this to a Server Core role after installation, but this wouldn't teach me what was wrong in the first instance. I've probably got 10 pages through various Google searches, each page getting a little less relevant. The closest matches seem to have good information, but it doesn't seem to be the fix for my set-up. As a side note, I expected to be able to "tee" or "out-file" the error message into a text file, but couldn't get that to work either, so I've typed in the error message manually. Chaps, any suggestions, from the glaringly obvious, to the long-winded and complex? Thanks!

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• How to VPN on demand Mac OS X?

  - by Kami

  I'm trying to configure the Snow Leopard's VPN on demand service without success I've tried the following domain+configuration pairs but none of them have worked: domain.net default *.domain.net default My goal is that each time I go to www.domain.net with Safari, ssh server1.domain.net or everything else on this domain.net the connection will be established trough the VPN ! I've tried plenty of different configs but it has never worked so far... Edit : R

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• Help with search and view using mdfind and qlmanage?

  - by Michael

  Hi, I'm trying to use mdfind and qlmanage to find and display files with quicklook. So far I have this, but am having trouble getting the results from mdfind formatted correctly to pass to qlmanage: tagSearch=$(mdfind -onlyin '/Users/username/Documents/Data' -interpret 'tag:[REFERENCE] Design' | sed -e 's/.*/\"&\" /' | perl -pe 's/\n/ /' ); qlmanage -p $tagSearch Any help would be appreciated!

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• Set up basic Windows Authentication to connect to SQL Server 2008 from a small, trusted network

  - by Margaret

  I'm guessing that this is documented somewhere on Microsoft's site, but thus far I haven't found it. I'm trying to set up a Windows Server 2008 box to have SQL Server 2008 with Windows Authentication (Mixed Mode, actually, but anyway) for work. We have a number of client machines that will need access to the databases, and I would like to keep configuration as simple as feasible. Here's what I've done so far: Install SQL Server 2008 selecting Mixed Mode Create a new 'Standard' (rather than Administrator) Windows login entitled "UserLogin" (with intent to use it as the access account) Create an SQL Server Login for Server\UserLogin and assign it 'Windows Authentication' Log in as UserLogin, check that I'm able to connect to SQL Server using WIndows Authentication, then log out again Start on the first client (Windows XPSP2, SQL Server 2005): Run C:\WINDOWS\system32\rundll32.exe keymgr.dll, KRShowKeyMgr Click "Add", enter the server name in the box, Server\UserLogin in the Username, and UserLogin's password in the Password field. Click "Ok" then "Close" Attempt to access SQL Server 2005 using Windows authentication. Succeed. Confetti! Start on the second client (Windows 7, SQL Server 2008): Run C:\WINDOWS\system32\rundll32.exe keymgr.dll, KRShowKeyMgr Click "Add", enter the server name in the box, Server\UserLogin in the Username, and UserLogin's password in the Password field. Click "Ok" then "Close" Attempt to access SQL Server 2008 using Windows authentication. Receive an error "Login failed. The login is from an untrusted domain and cannot be used with Windows authentication" Assume that this translates to "You can't have two connections from the same account" (Yes, I know that doesn't make sense, but I'm a bit like that) Go back to the server, create a second Windows account, give it SQL Server rights. Go back to the second client, create a new passkey for the second login, try logging in again. Continue to receive the same error. Is this all overly complex and there's an easy way to do what I'm trying to accomplish? Or am I missing some ultra-obvious step that would make everything behave as desired? Most of the stuff that's coming up when I try to Google seems to be along the lines of "My ASP.NET application isn't working!", which obviously isn't all that much use.

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• Firefox Addons to go with Vimperator

  - by Weegee

  Being a ViM fanatic, I recently discovered and began using the Vimperator addon for Mozilla Firefox. I've really enjoyed using it so far, and there is even a list in the Vimperator wiki for some addons that work well with Vimperator. I'm curious as to what other addons that veteran Vimperator users would recommend? Does anyone have any good favorites that blend in well with Vimperator?

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• Setup MSSQL replication with peer to peer topology: problem setting up Conflict Detection

  - by Roel

  Hi, I'm setting up a SQL Replication strategy, using MSSQL2008 with peer-to-peer publications (2 servers, each one subscribes to the other). I followed this HOWTO from MSDN, and the setup seems to be working fine: add a record to one table on server A, query on server B shows the new record. So far, so good. So far I only have one table 'Templates': Id PK (calculated field) NodeId int default 1/2 (Server A = 1, Server B = 2) LocalId int autoid Name nvarchar(100) Now, I would like to enable 'Conflict detection', which should be enabled by default. But every time I try to save the 'Conflict Detection' feature in the Publication Properties I get the following error: Cannot save Peer conflict detection properties. An exception occurred while executing a Transact-SQL statement or batch.(Microsoft.SqlServer.ConnectionInfo) Program Location: at Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Common.ServerConnection.ExecuteNonQuery(String sqlCommand, ExecutionTypes executionType) at Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Common.ServerConnection.ExecuteNonQuery(String sqlCommand) at Microsoft.SqlServer.Replication.ReplicationObject.ExecCommand(String commandIn) at Microsoft.SqlServer.Replication.TransPublication.SetPeerConflictDetection(Boolean enablePeerConflictDetection, Int32 peerOriginatorID) at Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.UI.PubPropSubscriptionOptions.SaveP2PConflictDetection() at Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.UI.PubPropSubscriptionOptions.SaveProperties(ExecutionMode& executionResult) Column name 'Id' does not exist in the target table or view. Changed database context to 'TestDB'. (.Net SqlClient Data Provider) For help, click: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink?ProdName=Microsoft+SQL+Server&ProdVer=10.00.2531&EvtSrc=MSSQLServer&EvtID=1911&LinkId=20476 Server Name: SERVER_A Error Number: 1911 Severity: 16 State: 1 Line Number: 2 Program Location: at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnection.OnError(SqlException exception, Boolean breakConnection) at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlInternalConnection.OnError(SqlException exception, Boolean breakConnection) at System.Data.SqlClient.TdsParser.ThrowExceptionAndWarning(TdsParserStateObject stateObj) at System.Data.SqlClient.TdsParser.Run(RunBehavior runBehavior, SqlCommand cmdHandler, SqlDataReader dataStream, BulkCopySimpleResultSet bulkCopyHandler, TdsParserStateObject stateObj) at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand.RunExecuteNonQueryTds(String methodName, Boolean async) at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand.InternalExecuteNonQuery(DbAsyncResult result, String methodName, Boolean sendToPipe) at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand.ExecuteNonQuery() at Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Common.ServerConnection.ExecuteNonQuery(String sqlCommand, ExecutionTypes executionType) Now, I googled the hell out of this error, and nothing shows up. I also can't seem to find out what the exact target table of the error "Column name 'Id' does not exist..." is. Has anyone every done this successfully? Am I missing something? Having this setup without conflict detection feels pretty useless... EDIT OK, so after some more research and setting up with different databases etc, I found out that the calculated 'Id' column of the Templates table is the culprit. I don't know why, but the replication doesn't seem to allow calculated columns (which are also primary key). It works now too, without the 'Id' column, and using the NodeId and LocalId as a combined PK. So now the question is, why isn't it allowed to have a calculated column as PK for replication with conflict detection?

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• Linux DLNA Server

  - by kzh

  I have just recently set up a DLNA server on my GNU/Linux desktop at home. I am using PS3 Media Server to do the job. I like it a lot so far, but I was curious about whether or not it is the best solution. To you, what is the best DLNA server for Linux?

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• webcam streaming on mobile phone

  - by adam

  hey guys im stuck on a project i have i need to find a way to stream my home webcam onto my mobile phone, in this case on a blackberry bold 9700, also i have an i pod touch 2.0. the problem i keep coming across is that every program i find askes for money, i am looking for a way to do this for free, ive been trying using vlc but have so far been unable to get the stream to work, any help would be great thanks a lot adam

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• Business Owners - What Remote Desktop Solution Do You Use To Service Your Clients PCs?

  - by Sootah

  Howdy fellow computer geeks, I am the owner of a local computer repair business that primarily services its clients on-site. On the occasions that we do service the machines in the office we generally have one of our techs pick the computer up while they are out and about and bring it back with them. Only rarely will we require the customer to bring us the computer themselves. In order to reduce costs, be much more efficient, and potentially expand our market far beyond what would be feasible with travel required; I am looking at ways that we can service our clients remotely whenever possible. What we're in need of is a solid remote desktop application that will be incredibly easy for our customers to connect to, as well as be robust enough that we don't need the client babysitting the computer during the entire repair. Ideally I would like to use a web-based solution so that we don't have to walk the customers through installing, connecting, and configuring it over the phone. This would be unacceptable because of the level of service they are used to. Effectively we'd want them to be able to just go to a URL, enter a PIN or something, and then they are connected and ready to rumble. (Obviously the option to just email them a link that'd do all this for them would be what we'd be aiming for) Along with the ease of use factor, we would need the product to not require any further intervention on the part of the client after we have connected. Nobody is going to be happy if we have to call them every 15 minutes so they can reconnect to us every time we reboot - so auto-reconnect is an absolute must. The only product I know of right now that does any of this is LogMeIn Rescue. It allows unattended access, the applet is lightweight and installs quickly, and the customer can either enter a PIN on the site or just click a link emailed to them in order to connect. The only real downside I see to LogMeIn Rescue is that it's $120.00/month per technician. While we'd ultimately end up saving far more than that per month just in fuel costs alone, I'd like to explore any other options out there that I may not have come across. So - Are there any equally good products out there? If so what are they, why do you recommend them, how have you been utilizing them yourself, and what do they cost? Thanks in advance for your help! -Sootah

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• How to setup custom subdomain with Posterous blog

  - by Tahir Akram

  Hi; I want to setup my custom subdomain with my posterous blog: tahirakram.posterous.com. I am confused over setting up A record and CNAME. Do I need to set A record and CNAME both to run my posterous to this URL: blog.tahirakram.com? So far I set up CNAME Name: blog.tahirakram.com Value: posterous.com Should I set A recrod name value too? (if yes, as following) Host Name: blog.tahirakram.com Destination IPv4 Address: 67.207.139.81 Instruction given by posterous

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• Batch-Renaming Movies using Regex

  - by Nate Mara

  So, I've been trying to rename some movie files using regular expressions, but so far I have been only marginally successful. The goal is to parse files like this: 2001.A.Space.Odyssey.1968.720p.BluRay.DD5.1.x264-LiNG.mkv And rename them Like this: 2001 A Space Odyssey (1968).mkv I created the pattern: ^(.+).(\d{4}).+.(mp4|avi|mkv)$ With the output: \1 (\2).\3 Now, this works perfectly fine when I have movies with one-word titles, but when there is more than one word separated by a period, the regex fails to grab anything. What am I doing wrong here?

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• ext3 slowing down on writes on linux 2.6.18

  - by user29475

  i'm running into a problem where writing to a file will cause a 5 to 15 second pause, this occurs only on writes. So far i have remounted the filesystem with data=writeback as an option, and set /sys/block/sdb/queue/max_sectors_kb to 64 to shorten the queue. Are there any other things i can try to solve this ?

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• Getting back to Dreamweaver CS4?

  - by Chris_45

  My problem is that I want to assign a keyboardshortcut for Dreamweaver CS4 and I have it like this: "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Dreamweaver CS4\Dreamweaver.exe" Thats ok so far. But when I press the key it doesn't place itself infront of everything else like Outlook and Visual Studio does for example, instead it blinks in the taskbar, and I have to click there anyway to get back to Dreamweaver. Is there any switch or something I can assign for Dreamweaver to get back AND have it "popup?"

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