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• Are we ready for the Cloud computing era?

  - by andrewkatumba

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} "Elite?" developer circles are abuzz with the notion of Cloud computing . The increasing bandwidth, the desire for faster and leaner operations and ofcourse the need for outsourcing non core it related business requirements e.g wordprocessing, spreadsheets, data backups. In strolls Chrome OS (am sure other similar OSes will join with their own wagons for us to jump on), offering just that, internet based services(more like a repository of), quick efficient and "reliable" and for the most part cheap and often time even free! And we all go rhapsodic!  It boils down to the age old dilemma, "if the cops are so busy protecting us then who will protect them" (even the folks back at Hollywood keep us reminded)! Who is going to ensure that these internet based services do not go down(either intentionally or by some malicious third party) leading to a multinational colossal disaster .At the risk of sounding pessimistic,  IT IS NOT AN ISSUE OF TRUST, this is but a mere case of Murphy's Law!  What then? Should the "cloud" be trusted to this extent at this time?  This is an era where challenges are rapidly solved with lightning promptness to "beat the competition", my hope is that our solutions are not just creating problems that we may not be able to solve!  Keeping my ear on the Ground.

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• Looking for recommendations for a server-side newsletter program

  - by Sparky672

  Hello- I'm currently using a server-side SQL based mailing list program called Php-List on multiple sites and it works fairly well. But installation and setup is quite cumbersome, quirky and the interface is not well organized... neither is the code... with pieces all over the place in random fashion. Customizing the "look & feel" and full site integration are both tedious and painful. Upgrading the version is made more complex since multiple edits need to be manually transferred each time. Also, probably due to a poor English translation, descriptions and instructions within certain areas of the user interface are contradictory and unclear. You just have to play with it and remember what you did last time it worked. It's supposed to be so my customers can send out their own newsletters... after supplying a written tutorial, about half of them seem to stumble through it okay and the other half just hire me to do it for them. So not quite easy enough for most average people to use. I'm looking for something that's as easy for them as using a blog or discussion forum. It also must be easier to set up and integrate into a site than Php-List. I have no problem getting dirty and writing CSS or HTML by hand. Nor do I have any problem editing the program code. Perhaps what I'm looking for is a solution that is more organized, a better GUI, and template or "skin" based. Therefore, if I spend many hours customizing a skin, I can simply update the program and re-use my custom skin without having to reproduce the tedious setup over and over. (I currently maintain a list of about 25 things I must manually edit or add to multiple files in multiple directories each time I install or upgrade Php-List) A great example of what I'm looking for is very much like WordPress or phpBB. They're both easy to install and customize yet powerful and packed full of features. They're also VERY well organized making customization less painful. So enough yammering for now... anyone know of something, besides Php-List, with many of the same features as Php-List; maintaining a mailing list with a server-side database, custom sign-up pages, automatic opt-in opt-out, allowing custom HTML newsletter templates, etc? Thank-you!

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• XMLHttpRequest not working, trying to test database connection [closed]

  - by Frederick Marcoux

  I'm currently creating my own CMS for personnal use but I'm blocked at a code. I'm trying to make a installation script but the AJAX request to test if database works, doesn't work... There's my JS code: function testDB() { "use strict"; var host = document.getElementById('host').value; var username = document.getElementById('username').value; var password = document.getElementById('password').value; var db = document.getElementById('db_name').value; var xmlhttp = new XMLHttpRequest(); var url = "test_db.php"; var params = "host="+host+"&username="+username+"&password="+password+"&db="+db; xmlhttp.open("POST", url, true); xmlhttp.setRequestHeader("Content-type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded"); xmlhttp.setRequestHeader("Content-length", params.length); xmlhttp.setRequestHeader("Connection", "close"); xmlhttp.send(params); $('#loader').removeAttr('style'); if (xmlhttp.responseText !== '') { if (xmlhttp.readyState===4 && xmlhttp.status===200) { $('#next').removeAttr('disabled'); $('#test').attr('disabled', 'disabled'); $('#test').text('Connection Successful!'); $('#test').addClass('btn-success'); $('#login').addClass('success'); $('#login1').addClass('success'); $('#db').addClass('success'); $('#loader').attr('style', 'display: none;'); } else { $('#next').attr('disabled', 'disabled'); $('#test').removeClass('btn-success'); $('#test').removeAttr('disabled'); $('#test').text('Test Connection'); $('#login').removeClass('success'); $('#login1').removeClass('success'); $('#db').removeClass('success'); $('#loader').attr('style', 'display: none;'); } } else { $('#next').attr('disabled', 'disabled'); $('#next').attr('disabled', 'disabled'); $('#test').removeClass('btn-success'); $('#test').removeAttr('disabled'); $('#test').text('Test Connection'); $('#login').removeClass('success'); $('#login1').removeClass('success'); $('#db').removeClass('success'); $('#loader').attr('style', 'display: none;'); } } And there's my PHP code: <?php $link = mysql_connect($_POST['host'], $_POST['username'], $_POST['password']); if (!$link) { echo ''; } else { if (mysql_select_db($_POST['db'])) { echo 'Connection Successful!'; } else { echo ''; } } mysql_close($link); ?> I don't know why it doesn't work but I tried with JQuery $.ajax, $.get, $.post but nothing work...

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• Travelling at Magenic

  - by Chris G. Williams

  I occasionally get asked if we travel "a lot" at Magenic. Sometimes the question comes from job candidates. Other times it's clients, recruiters or friends. To give a simple yes or no answer would be a disservice to the person asking the question. So here is my standard answer:It depends.(That was the short version.  Here's the long version...)We do have some guys that are more "national" in focus, and they can travel a fair amount. They also receive a little extra in compensation for doing so. It's a balancing act, and not necessarily a one-size-fits-all situation. Not everyone is well suited to constant travel. Some folks enjoy it and some folks hate it.With our local guys, our general policy is to TRY and keep them close to home whenever possible, but sometimes the needs of the client will dictate otherwise. (As Spock would say... the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.)In most cases though, we really do try to avoid sending our guys on extended travel gigs (i.e. every week for 6 months) when a simple kickoff trip and occasional visit will do. This depends on the nature of the gig, of course. Some types of work lend themselves to this model better than others. Additionally, this can and does vary by office. If one office is having trouble staffing a gig (not enough available bodies) and another office has a few too many folks on the bench, well... you can connect the dots. But again, we try to keep that to a minimum.Lastly, we all have our own thresholds for what we consider "a lot" of travel. There are two parts to this threshold:Half of it is whatever you're accustomed to already. The other half is being honest with yourself about how much you [like/hate] dealing with airports, car rentals, taxis, hotels, disruptions to your workout schedule, time away from friends/family, etc.Knowing a bit about yourself will definitely help you decide how much travel is too much for you.

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• PHP - Internal APIs/Libraries - What makes sense?

  - by Mark Locker

  I've been having a discussion lately with some colleagues about the best way to approach a new project, and thought it'd be interesting to get some external thoughts thrown into the mix. Basically, we're redeveloping a fairly large site (written in PHP) and have differing opinions on how the platform should be setup. Requirements: The platform will need to support multiple internal websites, as well as external (non-PHP) projects which at the moment consist of a mobile app and a toolbar. We have no plans/need in the foreseeable future to open up an API externally (for use in products other than our own). My opinion: We should have a library of well documented native model classes which can be shared between projects. These models will represent everything in our database and can take advantage of object orientated features such as inheritance, traits, magic methods, etc. etc. As well as employing ORM. We can then add an API layer on top of these models which can basically accept requests and route them to the appropriate methods, translating the response so that it can be used platform independently. This routing for each method can be setup as and when it's required. Their opinion: We should have a single HTTP API which is used by all projects (internal PHP ones or otherwise). My thoughts: To me, there are a number of issues with using the sole HTTP API approach: It will be very expensive performance wise. One page request will result in several additional http requests (which although local, are still ones that Apache will need to handle). You'll lose all of the best features PHP has for OO development. From simple inheritance, to employing the likes of ORM which can save you writing a lot of code. For internal projects, the actual process makes me cringe. To get a users name, for example, a request would go out of our box, over the LAN, back in, then run through a script which calls a method, JSON encodes the output and feeds that back. That would then need to be JSON decoded, and be presented as an array ready to use. Working with arrays, as appose to objects, makes me sad in a modern PHP framework. Their thoughts (and my responses): Having one method of doing thing keeps things simple. - You'd only do things differently if you were using a different language anyway. It will become robust. - Seeing as the API will run off the library of models, I think my option would be just as robust. What do you think? I'd be really interested to hear the thoughts of others on this, especially as opinions on both sides are not founded on any past experience.

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• Dark Sun Dispatch 001.5 (a review of City Under The Sand)

  - by Chris Williams

  City Under The Sand - a review I'm moderately familiar with the Dark Sun setting. I've read the other Dark Sun novels, ages ago and I recently started running a D&D 4.0 campaign in the Dark Sun world, so I picked up this book to help re-familiarize myself with the setting. Overall, it did accomplish that, in a limited way. The book takes place in Nibenay and a neighboring expanse of desert that includes a formerly buried city, a small town and a bandit outpost. The book does a more interesting job of describing Nibenese politics and the court of the ruling Sorcerer King, his templars and the expected jockeying for position that occurs between the Templar Wives. There is a fair amount of combat, which was interesting and fairly well detailed. The ensemble cast is introduced and eventually brought together over the first few chapters. Not a lot of backstory on most of the characters, but you get a feel for them fairly quickly. The storyline was somewhat predictable after the first third of the book. Some of the reviews on Amazon complain about the 2-dimensional characterizations, and yes there were some... but it's easy to ignore because there is a lot going on in the book... several interwoven plotlines that all eventually converge. Where the book falls short... First, it appears to have been edited by a 4th grader who knows how to use spellcheck but lacks the attention to detail to notice the frequent occurence of incorrect words that often don't make sense or change the context of the entire sentence. It happened just enough to be distracting, and honestly I expect better from WOTC. Second, there is a lot of buildup to the end of the story... the big fight, the confrontation between good and evil, etc... which is handled in just a few pages and then the story basically just ends. Kind of a letdown, honestly. There wasn't a big finish, and it wasn't a cliffhanger, it just wraps up neatly and ends. It felt pretty rushed. Overall, aside from the very end, I enjoyed it. I really liked the insight into that region of Athas and it gave me some good ideas for fleshing out my own campaign. In that sense, the book served its purpose for me. If you're looking for a light read (got a 5-6 hour flight somewhere?) or you want to learn more about the Dark Sun setting, then I'd recommend this book.

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• Reasons to Use a VM For Development

  - by George Stocker

  Background: I work at a start-up company, where one team uses Virtual Machines to connect to a remote server to do their development, and another team (the team I'm on) uses local IIS/SQL Server 2005/Visual Studio installations to conduct work. Team VM is located about 1000 miles from Team Non-VM, and the servers the VMs run off of are located near Team VM (Latency, for those that are wondering, is about 50ms). A person high in the company is pushing for Team Non-VM to use virtual machines for programming, development, and testing. The latter point we agree on -- we want Virtual Machines to test configurations and various aspects of the web application in a 'clean' state. The Problem: What we don't agree on is having developers using RDP to connect to a desktop remotely that contains Visual Studio, SQL Server, and IIS to do the same development we could do locally on our laptops. I've tried the VM set-up, and besides the color issue, there is a latency issue that is rather noticeable, not to mention that since we're a start-up, a good number of employees work from home on occasion with our work laptops, and this move would cut off the laptops. They'd be turned in. Reasons to Use Remote VMs for Development (Not Testing!): Here are the stated reasons that this person wants us to use VMs: They work for TeamVM. They keep the source code "safe". If we want to work from home, we could just use our home PCs. Licenses (I don't know what the argument is, only that it's been used). Reasons not to use Remote VMs for Development: Here are the stated reasons why we don't want to use VMs: We like working from home. We get a lot done on our own time. We're not going to use our Home PCs to do work related stuff. The Latency is noticeable. Support for the VMs (if they go down, or if we need a new VM) takes a while. We don't have administrative privileges on the VM, and are unable to change settings as needed. What I'm looking for from the community is this: What reasons would you give for not using VMs for development? Keep in mind these are remote VMs -- this isn't a VM running on a local desktop. It's using the laptop (or a desktop) as a thin client for a remote VM. Also, on the other side of the coin: Is there something we're missing that makes VMs more palatable for development? Edit: I think 'safe' is used in term of corporate espionage, or more correctly if the Laptop gets stolen, the person who stole would have access to our source code. The former (as we've pointed out, is always going to be a possibility -- companies stop that with litigation, there isn't a technical solution (so far as I can see)). The latter point is ( though I don't know its usefulness in a corporate scenario) mitigated by Truecrypt'ing the entire volume.

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• Quickly Copy Movie Files to Individually Named Folders

  - by DigitalGeekery

  Some HTPC media manager applications require movie files to be in stored in separate folders to properly store information such as cover art images and other metadata. Here we look at copying movie files to individual folders. If you already have a large movie collection stored in a single folder, we’ll show you how to quickly move those files into their own individually named folders. File2Folder FIle2folder is a handy portable app that automatically creates and moves movie files into a folder of the same filename. There is no installation needed. Simply download and run the .exe file (link below). Enter the current movie directory, or browse for the folder. File2folder now supports both local and network shares. When you are ready to create the folders and move the files, click Move! You’ll see the move progress displayed in the window. When the process is finished, you’ll have all your movie file in individual folders.   Change your mind? Just click the Undo! button…   …and the move and folder creation process will be undone. If you would like to have the folder monitored for new files, click the Start button. File2folder will process any new files it discovers every 180 seconds. To turn it off, click Stop. This simple little program is a huge timesaver for those looking to organize movie collections for their HTPC. We should also note that this will work with any files, not just videos. Download file2folder Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Hack: Turn Off Debug Mode in VMWare Workstation 6 BetaAdd Images and Metadata to Windows 7 Media Center Movie LibraryAdd Folders to the Movie Library in Windows 7 Media CenterAutomatically Mount and View ISO files in Windows 7 Media CenterMove the Public Folder in Windows Vista TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips HippoRemote Pro 2.2 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Identify Fonts using WhatFontis.com Windows 7’s WordPad is Actually Good Greate Image Viewing and Management with Zoner Photo Studio Free Windows Media Player Plus! – Cool WMP Enhancer Get Your Team’s World Cup Schedule In Google Calendar Backup Drivers With Driver Magician

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• Taking a Chomp out of a (Social Network) Product Hype

  - by kellsey.ruppel

  Andrew Kershaw, Senior Director Oracle Social Network Product Development, speaks about Oracle Social Network One of our competitors is being very aggressive with its own developed Social Network add-on, but there should be no doubt in the minds that the Oracle social capabilities available with Fusion CRM stack up well against it. Within the Oracle Cloud, we have announced a product called Oracle Social Network. That technology is pre-integrated into Fusion Applications, enabling your customer to build a collaborative and social enterprise (without all the noise!). Oracle Social Network is designed together with our Fusion Applications. It is very conveniently pre-integrated with CRM, HCM, Financials, Projects, Supply Chain, and the Fusion family. But what's even better is that the individual teams can take a considered approach to what they are trying to achieve within the collaboration process and the outcome they are trying to enable. Then they can utilize the network and collaboration tools to support that result. And there's more! The Fusion teams can design social interactions that bridge across and outside their individual product lines because we have more than just a product line and they know they have the social network to connect them. I know we have a superior product, but it is our ability to understand and execute across the enterprise that will enable us to deliver a much more robust and capable platform in the short term than our competitor can. We have built a product specifically designed for enterprise social collaboration which is not the same for the competition. We have delivered a much more effective solution - one in which individuals can easily collaborate to get results, while being confident that they know who has access to their information. Our platform has been pre-built to cross the company boundaries and enable our customers to collaborate, not just with their customers, but with their partners and suppliers as well. So Fusion addresses the combination of the enterprise application suite with enterprise collaboration and social networking. Oracle Social Network already has a feature function advantage over our competitor's tool providing a real added value to the employees. Plus Oracle has the ability to execute in a broad enterprise and cross-enterprise way that our competitors cannot. We have the power of a tool that provides the core social fabric across all of the applications, as well as supporting enterprise collaboration. That allows us to provide intelligent business insight, connections, and recommendations that our competitor simply can't. From our competitors, customers get integration for Sales; they get integration for Service, but then they have to integrate every other enterprise asset that they have by themselves. With Oracle, we are doing the integration. Fusion Applications will be pre-integrated, and over time, all of the applications in the business suite, including our Applications Unlimited and specialist industry applications, will connect to the Oracle Social Network. I'm confident these capabilities make Oracle Social Network the only collaboration platform on which to deliver the social enterprise.

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• Analysing SQLBits Feedback

  - by jamiet

  Earlier this week I received all the feedback that people offered on my session at SQLBits 7 in York – “SSIS Dataflow Performance Tuning” (the video is available online if you wish to see it). As you may have gathered from previous posts on this blog and my less-SQLy-focused Wordpress blog I am a big fan of collecting and tracking both personal and public data and session feedback lends itself very well to tracking because it is quantitative rather than qualitative; by that I mean attendees are invited to provide marks out of ten rather than (or, in the case of SQLBits, as well as) written comments. The SQLBits feedback is also useful because they use a consistent format – the same questions are asked each time – this means it is particularly easy to to track whether the scores that people give are trending up or down. I suspect that somewhere the SQLBits organisers have a big Analysis Services cube (ok, perhaps its an Excel pivot table) that allows them to analyse these scores per conference, speaker, track etc.… and there’s no reason that we as session speakers cannot do the same thing. To that end I have started to store my feedback in an Excel spreadsheet of my own which in the interests of transparency is available for public viewing (only a web browser required) on SkyDrive at http://cid-550f681dad532637.office.live.com/view.aspx/Public/Misc/Personal%20SQLBits%20Session%20Feedback.xlsx. I have used a pivot table to aggregate all that feedback and here is a screenshot: I am hereby making a public plea to the SQLBits organisers (on the off-chance that they are reading) to please continue to keep the feedback format consistent in the future and I encourage them to publish all of the feedback in an anonymised form. I would also encourage anyone doing conference speaking to track their conference feedback in the same way that I am doing so that you get an insight into whether or not you are improving over time. It is not difficult to setup and maintaining it as you do more sessions takes very little effort. Storing feedback data like this leads me to wider thoughts about well-known conventions and data format standardisation. Let’s imagine a utopia where there were a standard set of questions for capturing session feedback that were leveraged at every conference regardless of subject matter, location or culture; that would give rise to immense cross-conference and cross-discipline analysis – the data analyst in me goes giddy at the thought of it. It is scenarios like this that drive my interest both in data formats such as iCalendar, microformats and RDF, and in emerging movements such as the semantic web and linked data, all things which I have written about in the past. I don’t know whether we will ever reach the stage where every piece of data has structured, descriptive metadata associated with it but I live in hope. @Jamiet

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• Pixels - A cry for some insight

  - by CarrotFile

  I'm pretty new to web developing and I'd love some clarification. Although reading more than one book on the topic, I cannot seem to wrap my head around the pixel concept. I encounter problems with this issue when trying to use CSS and pixel units for design that fits different screen sizes. To my understanding a pixel is the most basic unit used by a monitor in order to compose an image on the screen. So if me resolution is 800 by 600, everything on my screen is rendered using those 800*600 basic building blocks. If I were to enlarge my screen resolution, 3 things would accrue: A. The basic image building block(the pixel) would shrink in size B. The pixels would move close together C. Well, more pixels would now be available All these combined lead to a sharper(depending on the viewing distance) and more detail enabling image. Well so far so good. Here is were I start getting lost: To my knowledge a pixel is not a physical, real object. Monitors are not embedded with a few thousand pixels. I am drawn to this conclusion because anyone can change his screen's resolution, making a pixel on his screen bigger or smaller, and adding or subtracting the amount of total pixels on screen. Adding to that, I have herd that different monitors have different pixel densities. For example Apple's retina monitors. Taking all of the above as my knowledge base, These are my questions: If a pixel has no real world constant size, what does comparing different pixel densities matter? Each screen company can define it's own pixel concept and declare the higher density. What does a bigger pixel density mean? Say we take two screens with the same physical dimensions, but with a different pixel density, am I to assert that the main difference would be the larger density screen being able to display a higher max resolution? Or am I to assert that given the same resolution on both monitors, the higher density one would display a sharper, smaller image? If a pixel is not a fixed size within one monitor, is it a fixed size between the same resolution on two different monitors? For example, would two different monitors, set to the same resolution, be comprised of same size, same quantity pixels? I'd love some help (:

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• Weird Ubuntu Desktop Boot Partition On External Hard Drive

  - by Magnitus

  I have a Thinkpad with Windows 7. Last time I installed an Ubuntu/Windows dual boot, Windows was never same after and regularly got corrupted so this time, I installed Ubuntu on a separate external hard drive. I took a 500 GB external hard drive and used Windows to shrink the partition on it to 400 GB, freeing 100 GB to install Ubuntu. Then I modified the booting priority of my computer to boot from the external hard drive if present. Then, I installed Ubuntu desktop on the external hard drive using a DVD, picked the most simplistic partitioning scheme I could get away with (didn't go auto as it didn't include the external hard drive as a choice) and voilà. Fast forward some time and I'm trying to refresh my understanding of Linux partitions to install a bunch of servers, so I'm looking at the current partitioning scheme on my external hard drive and find the boot partition puzzling... sda is my integrated hard drive with Windows 7. sdb is my Ubuntu desktop external hard drive. Running parted on sdb, I get this: (parted) print Model: WD My Passport 0740 (scsi) Disk /dev/sdb: 500GB Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B Partition Table: msdos Number Start End Size Type File system Flags 1 1049kB 393GB 393GB primary ntfs boot 2 393GB 500GB 107GB extended 5 393GB 425GB 32.8GB logical linux-swap(v1) 6 425GB 500GB 74.6GB logical ext4 At this point, I'm wondering why the ntfs partition is flagged as "boot" and not my ext4 partition which is the partition that contains / (and by extension, /boot since it's not on its own separate partition). Looking at mtab only confirms what I already know: eric@eric-ThinkPad-W530:~$ sudo cat /etc/mtab /dev/sdb6 / ext4 rw,errors=remount-ro 0 0 proc /proc proc rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev 0 0 sysfs /sys sysfs rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev 0 0 none /sys/fs/cgroup tmpfs rw 0 0 none /sys/fs/fuse/connections fusectl rw 0 0 none /sys/kernel/debug debugfs rw 0 0 none /sys/kernel/security securityfs rw 0 0 udev /dev devtmpfs rw,mode=0755 0 0 devpts /dev/pts devpts rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=0620 0 0 tmpfs /run tmpfs rw,noexec,nosuid,size=10%,mode=0755 0 0 none /run/lock tmpfs rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,size=5242880 0 0 none /run/shm tmpfs rw,nosuid,nodev 0 0 none /run/user tmpfs rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,size=104857600,mode=0755 0 0 none /sys/fs/pstore pstore rw 0 0 systemd /sys/fs/cgroup/systemd cgroup rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,none,name=systemd 0 0 gvfsd-fuse /run/user/1000/gvfs fuse.gvfsd-fuse rw,nosuid,nodev,user=eric 0 0 /dev/sdb1 /media/eric/My\040Passport fuseblk rw,nosuid,nodev,allow_other,default_permissions,blksize=4096 0 0 My lack of understanding concerning this is not vital to anything (this is only my development desktop partition), but somehow annoys me. Any insight that could shed some light on this would be welcome.

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• Innovation for Retailers

  - by David Dorf

  One of my main objectives for this blog is to point out emerging technologies and how they might apply to the retail industry.  But ideas are just the beginning; retailers either have to rely on vendors or have their own lab to explore these ideas and see which ones work.  (A healthy dose of both is probably the best solution.)  The Nordstrom Innovation Lab is a fine example of dedicating resources to cultivate ideas and test prototypes. The video below, from 2011, is a case study in which the team builds an iPad app that helps customers purchase sunglasses in the store.  Customers take pictures of themselves wearing different sunglasses, then can do side-by-side comparisons. There are a few interesting take-aways from their process.  First, they are working in the store alongside employees and customers.  There's no concept of documenting all the requirements then building the product.  Instead, they work closely with those that will be using the app in order to fully understand what's needed.  When they find an issue, they change the software onsite and try again.  This iterative prototyping ensures their product hits the mark.  Feels like Extreme Programming if you recall that movement. Second, they have time-boxed the project to one week.  Either it works or it doesn't, and either way they've only expended a week's worth of resources.  Innovation always entails failure, and those that succeed are often good at detecting failure quickly then adjusting.  Fail fast and fail often. Third, its not always about technology.  I was impressed they used paper designs to walk through user stories and help understand the needs of the customer.  Pen and paper is the innovator's most powerful tool. Our Retail Applied Research (RAR) team uses some of these concepts in our development process.  (Calling it a process is probably overkill.)  We try to give life to concepts quickly so the rest of organization can help us decide if we're heading the right direction.  It takes many failures before finding a successful product.

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• reference list for non-IT driven algorithmic patterns

  - by Quicker

  I am looking for a reference list for non-IT driven algorithmic patterns (which still can be helped with IT implementations of IT). An Example List would be: name; short desc; reference Travelling Salesman; find the shortest possible route on a multiple target path; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelling_salesman_problem Ressource Disposition (aka Regulation); Distribute a limited/exceeding input on a given number output receivers based on distribution rules; http://database-programmer.blogspot.de/2010/12/critical-analysis-of-algorithm-sproc.html If there is no such list, but you instantly think of something specific, please 'put it on the desk'. Maybe I can compile something out of the input I get here (actually I am very frustrated as I did not find any such list via research by myself). Details on Scoping: I found it very hard to formulate what I want in a way everything is out that I do not need (which may be the issue why I did not find anything at google). There is a database centric definition for what I am looking for in the section 'Processes' of the second example link. That somehow fits, but the database focus sort of drifts away from the pattern thinking, which I have in mind. So here are my own thoughts around what's in and what's out: I am NOT looking for a foundational algo ref list, which is implemented as basis for any programming language. Eg. the php reference describes substr and strlen. That implements algos, but is not what I am looking for. the problem the algo does address would even exist, if there were no computers (or other IT components) the main focus of the algo is NOT to help other algo's chances are high, that there are implementions of the solution or any workaround without any IT support out there in the world however the algo could be benefitialy implemented/fully supported by a software application = means: the problem of the algo has to be addressed anyway, but running an algo implementation with software automates the process (that is why I posted it on stackoverflow and not somewhere else) typically such algo implementations have more than one input field value and more than one output field value - which implies it could not be implemented as simple function (which is fixed to produce not more than one output value) in a normalized data model often times such algo implementation outputs span accross multiple rows (sometimes multiple tables), whereby the number of output rows depends on the input paraters and rows in the table(s) at start time - which implies that any algo implementation/procedure must interact with a database (read and/or write) I am mainly looking for patterns, not for specific implementations. Example: The Travelling Salesman assumes any coordinates, however it does not say: You need a table targets with fields x and y. - however sometimes descriptions are focussed on examples with specific implementations very much - no worries, as long as the pattern gets clear

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• New Features Of WordPress 3.3 You Must Know

  - by Gopinath

  After months of beta testing, WordPress 3.3 version is going to be released at the end of this month. There are several new features packed in the new version and few of them are going to excite WordPress admins. In this post we are going to discuss about the exciting new features. 1. Drag and Drop Media Uploads One of the biggest improvements in this version of WordPress is it’s all new media uploader. Now you can upload multiple files by just dragging & dropping, instantly resize  the images and filter files by their type. The media upload sports a brand new look WordPress adopted the Pupload plugin to power its media uploader component and it’s written by the same team who created the popular TinyMCE editor plugin. 2. Improved Admin Bar(Toolbar) The admin bar or newly called toolbar has got handful of makeovers. The not so much used items like Search box and other elements are removed to make sure that the bar is not clumsy. The user menu and the related options are moved to the right like how we see in Google’s user bar. Also there are few changes to the colour of the bar to make it more eye friendly. 3. Fly out Admin Menus All the left side bar menus of WordPress admin are now sports a fly out menu style to save a click. In the previous versions if you want to access a sub menu on the left side bar, you need to first click on the category and then choose the menu item from the expanded list. Now on just mouse over you will see a flyout of menu items. 4. Adaptive Admin – Layout Auto Adjust To Fit Various Devices If you own an iPad or any other so called tablets then you are going to love this feature. The admin site of WordPress has got a lot more friendly with tablets and smartphones. WordPress now auto adjusts layout to fit the device through which you are accessing the admin site.  Accessing admin dashboard on your tablets is going to be more fun. 5. Other Features Now that we have read the most useful 4 features here is a small list of other features that may interest you Nice Tooltips are displayed where ever possible to help the newbies to understand the usage of admin site Responsive Layouts jQuery 1.7 and jQuery UI 1.8.16 are the power horses of WordPress Performance improvements This article titled,New Features Of WordPress 3.3 You Must Know, was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

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• ORACLE UK TECHNOLOGY “TEST FEST”

  - by mseika

  ORACLE UK TECHNOLOGY “TEST FEST” Join us at the UKOUG Conference at the ICC in Birmingham and Take your OPN Implementation Specialist Exam for Free! 3-5 December 2012, ICC Birmingham (UK) Dear Oracle Partner,** As a priority partner, we are sending you advance notice of these exclusive “Technology Test Fest” free examination sessions. Please note that this communication will be sent out to the wider community one week from today, so please register immediately to secure your place! ** We are delighted to offer you the exclusive opportunity to register and attend the Oracle UK “Technology Test Fest” being held as Part of the UKOUG Conference at the ICC in Birmingham in the Drawing Room at the Hyatt Regency hotel adjacent to the ICC venue, from 3rd to 5th December 2012.This is your opportunity to sit your chosen Oracle Technology Specialist Implementation Exam free of charge on this day. Four sessions are being run (10.00AM and 14.00PM), with just 15 places at each session – so register now to avoid disappointment! (Exams take about 1.5 hours to complete.) REGISTER - 3 December Afternoon Session - 2:00pm REGISTER - 4 December Morning Session 10:00am REGISTER - 4 December Afternoon Session - 2:00pm REGISTER - 5 December Morning Session - 10:00am Price: FREE Address:The Drawing Room Hyatt Regency Hotel Birmingham 2 Bridge Street Birmingham BI 2JZ 3 - 5 December 2012 Which Implementation Specialist Exams are available to take?Click here to see the list of exams available for you to sit for free at the Oracle UKOUG “Technology Test Fest”. The links also include the study guide for the particular exam. Please review the Specialization Guide as well. How do I register for the Oracle UK “Technology Test Fest”? Fill out the Pearson Vue profile HERE and complete it with your OPN Company ID. NB: Instructions on how to create/update the profile can be found HERE. Register for one of the 4 sessions using the registration links at the top of this page You will need to bring your own laptop with 'Windows OS' and a form of identification to be able to take any of the exams. Need Help or Advice?For more information about the tests and Get Specialized programme, please contact: [email protected] issues with your profile or any other OPN-related problems, please contact our Oracle Partner Business Centre: [email protected] or call 08705 194 194. We look forward to welcoming you to the Oracle UK “Technology Test Fest” on the 3rd- 5thDecember 2012! Book early to avoid disappointment.

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• What are different ways to reduce latency between a server and a web application? [closed]

  - by jjoensuu

  this is a question about a web application that provides SOAP web services. For the sake of this question, this web app is hosted on a server SERVER B which is located in California. We have an automated, scheduled, process running on a server SERVER A, located in New York. This scheduled process is supposed to send SOAP messages to SERVER B every so often, but this process typically dies soon after starting. We have now been told by the vendor that reason why the process dies is because of the latency between SERVER A and SERVER B. The data traffic is routed through many diffent public networks. There is no dedicated line between SERVER A and SERVER B. As a result I have been asked to look into ways to reduce the latency between SERVER A and SERVER B. So I wanted to ask, what are the different ways to reduce latency in a situation like this? For example, would it help to switch from HTTPS to some other secure protocol? (the thought here is that perhaps some other alternative would require fewer handshakes than HTTPS). Or would a VPN help? If a VPN would reduce the latency, how would it do that? NOTE: I am not looking for an explicit answer that would work in my specific situation. I am more like looking just for a simple list of what technologies could be used for this. I will still have to evaluate the technologies and discuss them internally with others, so the list would just be a starting point. Here I am assuming that there exists very few ways to reduce latency between two servers that communicate across public networks using HTTPS. Feel free to correct me if this assumption is wrong and please ask if there is a need for specific information. NOTE 2: A list of technologies is a specific answer to the question I stated in the title. NOTE 3: Its rather dumb to close this question when it is after all about me looking for information and furthermore this information can clearly be useful for others. Anyway luckily there are other sites where I can ask around. StackExchange seems to attached to their own philosophical principles. Many thanks

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• Code Design question, circular reference across classes?

  - by dsollen

  I have no code here, as this is more of a design question (I assume this is still the best place to ask it). I have a very simple server in java which stores a mapping between certain values and UUID which are to be used by many systems across multiple platforms. It accepts a connection from a client and creates a clientSocket which stores the socket and all the other relevant data unique to that connection. Each clientSocket will run in their own thread and will block on the socket waiting for a read. I expect very little strain on this system, it will rarely get called, but when it does get a call it will need to respond quickly and due to the risk of it having a peak time with multiple calls coming in at once threaded is still better. Each thread has a reference to a Mapper class which stores the mapping of UUID which it's reporting to others (with proper synchronization of course). This all works until I have to add a new UUID to the list. When this happens I want to report to all clients that care about that particular UUID that a new one was added. I can't multicast (limitation of the system I'm running on) so I'm having each socket send the message to the client through the established socket. However, since each thread only knows about the socket it's waiting on I didn't have a clear method of looking up every thread/socket that cares about the data to inform them of the new UUID. Polling is out mostly because it seems a little too convoluted to try to maintain a list of newly added UUID. My solution as of now is to have the 'parent' class which creates the mapper class and spawns all the threads pass itself as an argument to the mapper. Then when the mapper creates a new UUID it can make a call to the parent class telling it to send out updates to all the other sockets that care about the change. I'm concerned that this may be a bad design due to the use of a circular reference; parent has a reference to mapper (to pass it to new ClientSocket threads) and mapper points to parent. It doesn't really feel like a bad design to me but I wanted to check since circular references are suppose to be bad. Note: I realize this means that the thread associated with whatever socket originally received the request that spawned the creation of a UUID is going to pay the 'cost' of outputting to all the other clients that care about the new UUID. I don't care about this; as I said I suspect the client to receive only intermittent messages. It's unlikely for one socket to receive multiple messages at one time, and there won't be that many sockets so it shouldn't take too long to send messages to each of them. Perhaps later I'll fix the fact that I'm saddling higher work load on whatever unfortunate thread gets the first request; but for now I think it's fine.

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• PASS Summit 2011: Save Money Now

  - by Bill Graziano

  Register by March 31st and save $200.  On April 1st we increase the price.  On July 1st we increase it again.  We have regular price bumps all the way through to the Summit.  You can save yourself $200 if you register by Thursday. In two years of marketing for PASS and a year of finance I’ve learned a fair bit about our pricing, why we do this and how you react to it.  Let me help you save some money! Price bumps drive registrations.  We see big spikes in the two weeks prior to a price increase.  Having a deadline with a cost attached is a great motivator to get people to take action. Registering early helps you and it helps PASS.  You get the exact same Summit at a cheaper rate.  PASS gets smoother cash flow and a better idea of how many people to expect.  We also get people that are already registered that will tell their friends about the conference. This tiered pricing lets us serve those that are very price conscious.  They can register early and take advantage of these discounts.  I know there are people that pay for this conference out of their own pockets.  This is a great way for those people to reduce the cost of the conference.  (And remember for next year that our cheapest pricing starts right after the Summit and usually goes up around the first of the year.) We also get big price bumps after we announce the program and the pre-conference sessions.  If you wrote down the 50 or so best known speakers in the SQL Server community I’m guessing we’ll have nearly all of them at the conference.  We did last year.  I expect we will this year too.  We’re going to have good sessions.  Why wait?  Register today. If you want to attend a pre-conference session you can always add it to your registration later.  Pre-con prices don’t change.  It’s very easy to update your registration and add a pre-conference session later. I want as many people as possible to attend the Summit.  It’s been a great experience for me and I hope it will be for you.  And if you are going to go, do yourself a favor and save some money.  Register today!

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• Are they asking too much of me?

  - by Tesserex

  Or am I just whining? Background: I work for a "startup," which I put in air quotes because the company has been around for 4 years. We have about 40 employees in three offices, 9 here plus some part time. We have a good amount of investment and bring in about 75% of what we spend (so not profitable just yet.) Standard work week is supposed to be about 60 hours, but they justify that as we have to be online when our international (Taiwan and Vietnam) offices are awake. When I started the job 6 months ago, I spent about a month prototyping an iphone app and did really well on my own. They also found out about my facebook applications and how many users they got. Putting 2 and 2 together (and winding up at -7) they realized 1. I'm independent and innovative (because I was able to use stackoverflow to answer my iOS questions instead of bugging my superiors) and 2. I must have an eye for marketing (since my fb apps grew totally organically without me doing any advertising), and assigned me to a project optimizing adwords campaigns. Today I got reviewed, and then chewed out, by our CEO for not totally rocking this project. Now I thought I was doing ok, but the CEO said the project is stagnant and they're expecting more from me. But since it's a startup, they play loose with job roles and I've had plenty of other things to do in the past three months. Every time I ask what's most important, I get conflicting responses depending who I ask, and the end result is that almost everything has equal priority - high. I could go on about how I don't think adwords is worthwhile for us since our profit margin is so slim, and how we should be trying to improve our website first, but that's not the point. I also have explained to the office director (who originally assigned me the project, not the CEO) that I don't actually know anything about marketing, I'm just a decent programmer, but they think my general smarts will prove capable of tackling this challenge. The CEO also clarified that he wants a more technical and algorithmic approach to the problem. So is there something I can do to address this? Combined with my existing and confusing workload, should I be raising an issue? Or should I do the grown up thing and give it my all, asking for help when I need it and hoping for the best? Sorry if this is very rant-ish.

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• Java 2D Tile Collision

  - by opiop65

  I have been working on a way to do collision detection forever, and just can't figure it out. Here's my simple 2D array: for (int x = 0; x < 16; x++) { for (int y = 0; y < 16; y++) { map[x][y] = AIR; if(map[x][y] == AIR) { air.draw(x * tilesize, y * tilesize); } } } for (int x = 0; x < 16; x++) { for (int y = 6; y < 16; y++) { map[x][y] = GRASS; if(map[x][y] == GRASS) { grass.draw(x * tilesize, y * tilesize); } } } for (int x = 0; x < 16; x++) { for (int y = 8; y < 16; y++) { map[x][y] = STONE; if(map[x][y] == STONE) { stone.draw(x * tilesize, y * tilesize); } } } I want to do it with rectangles, and using the intersect() method, but how would I go about adding rectangles to all the tiles? Edit: My player moves like this: if(input.isKeyDown(Input.KEY_W)) { shiftY -= delta * speed; idY = (int) shiftY; if(shift == true) { shiftY -= delta * runspeed; } if(isColliding == true) { shiftY += delta * speed; } } if(input.isKeyDown(Input.KEY_S)) { shiftY += delta * speed; idY = (int) shiftY; if(shift == true) { shiftY += delta * runspeed; } if(isColliding == true) { shiftY -= delta * speed; } } if (input.isKeyDown(Input.KEY_A)) { steve = left; shiftX -= delta * speed; idX = (int) shiftX; if(shift == true) { shiftX -= delta * runspeed; } if(isColliding == true) { shiftX += delta * speed; } } if (input.isKeyDown(Input.KEY_D)) { steve = right; shiftX += delta * speed; idX = (int) shiftX; if(shift == true) { shiftX += delta * runspeed; } if(isColliding == true) { shiftX -= delta * speed; } } (I have tried my own collision code, but its horrible. Doesn't work in the slightest)

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• Increase Availability for Data Center Virtual Environments

  - by Antoinette O'Sullivan

  With Oracle VM, you can increase availability and add flexibility for data center virtual environments. To get started, take training on Oracle VM Server for x86 and Oracle VM Server for SPARC as appropriate for your systems. You can take these live instructor-led courses from your own desk as a live-virtual event or travel to an education center for an in-class event. The Oracle VM Administration: Oracle VM Server for x86 course, in 3 days, teaches you about creating NFS and iSCI repositories, migration, cloning and exercising high availabillity. In-class events already on the schedule include:  Location  Date  Delivery Language  Zagreb, Croatia  11 November 2013  Croatian  Prague, Czech Republic  21 October 2013  Czech  Ballerup, Denmark  26 August 2013  English  Bordeaux, France  18 September 2013  French  Paris, France  9 October 2013  French  Strasbourg, France  11 September 2013  French  Hamburg, Germany  30 Septemeber 2013  German  Munich, Germany  28 October 2013  German  Budapest, Hungary  9 September 2013  Hungarian  Riga, Latvia  30 September 2013  Latvian  Oslo, Norway  16 September 2013  English  Warsaw, Poland  28 October 2013  Polish  Bucharest, Romania  14 October 2013  English  Istanbul, Turkey  23 December 2013  Turkish  Indonesia, Jakarta  19 August 2013  English  Canberra, Australia  4 November 2013  English  Melbourne, Australia  6 November 2013  English  Sydney, Australia  25 November 2013  English  San Francisco, CA, United States  16 September 2013  English  Roseville, MN, United States  21 October 2013  English  St Louis, MO, United States  11 November 2013  English  Reston, VA, United States  31 July 2013  English  Buenos Aires, Argentina  21 August 2013  Spanish The Oracle VM Server for SPARC: Installation and Configuration course, in 2 days, teaches you about configuring control and service domains, creating guest domains, using virtual disks and networks, and migration. In-class events already on the schedule include:  Location  Date  Delivery Language  Budapest, Hungary  12 September 2013  Hungarian  Prague, Czech Republic  9 September 2013  Czech  Colombes, France  7 October 2013  French  Stuttgart, Germany  28 October 2013  German  Madrid, Spain  5 September 2013  Spanish  Istanbul, Turkey 30 September 2013  Turkish   Petaling Jaya, Malaysia 15 August 2013  English   Singapore 5 August 2013  English   Cnaberra, Australia  12 August 2013 English  Melbourne, Australia  30 October 2013 English  Sydney, Australia  26 August 2013 English To register for a course or to learn more about Oracle's virtualization curriculum, go to http://education.oracle.com/virtualization.

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• JavaOne Session Report - Java ME SDK 3.2

  - by Janice J. Heiss

  Oracle Product Manager for Java ME SDK, Sungmoon Cho, presented a session, "Developing Java Mobile and Embedded Applications with Java ME SDK 3.2,” wherein he covered the basic new features of the Java ME Platform SDK 3.2, a state-of-the-art toolbox for developing mobile and embedded applications. The session began with a summary of the four main components of Java ME SDK. A device emulator allows developers to quickly run and test applications before commercialization. It supports CLDC/MIDP CLDC/IMP.NG and CLC/AGUI. A development environment assists writing, running debugging and deploying and enables on-device debugging. Samples provide developers with useful codes and frameworks. IDE Plugins – NetBeans and Eclipse – equip developers with CPU Profiler, Memory Monitor, Network Monitor, and Device Selector. This means that manual integration is no longer necessary. Cho then talked about the Java ME SDK’s on-device tooling architecture: * Java ME SDK provides an architecture ideal for on-device-debugging.* Device Manager plays the central role by managing different devices whether it is the emulator or a device that Oracle provides or recommends or a third party device as long as the devices have a Java Runtime that supports the protocol that is designated.* The Emulator provides an accurate emulation, since it uses the same code base used in Oracle’s Java ME runtime.* The Universal Emulator Interface (UEI) makes it easy for IDEs to detect the platform.He then focused on the Java ME SDK release highlights, which include: * Implementation and support for the new Oracle® Java Wireless Client 3.2 runtime and the Oracle® Java ME Embedded runtime. A full emulation for the runtime is provided.* Support for JSR 228, the Information Module Profile-Next Generation API (IMP-NG). This is a new profile for embedded devices. * A new Custom Device Skin Creator.* An Eclipse plugin for CLDC/MIDP.* Profiling, Network monitoring, and Memory monitoring are now integrated with the NetBeans profiling tools.* Java ME SDK Update CenterCho summarized the main features: IDE Integration (NetBeans and Eclipse) enables developers to write, run, profile, and debug their applications on their favorite IDE. CPU ProfilerThis enables developers to more quickly detect the hot spot and where CPU time is being used. They can double click the method to jump directly into the source code.Memory Monitor Developers can monitor objects and memory usage in real time.Debugger on the Emulator and DeviceDevelopers can run their applications step by step, and inspect the variables to pinpoint the problem. The debugging can take place either on the emulator or the device.Embedded Application DevelopmentIMP-NG, Device Access, Logging, and AMS API Support are now available.On-Device ToolingConnect your device to your computer, and run and debug the application right on your device.Custom Device Skin CreatorDefine your own device and test on an environment that is closest to your target device. The informative session concluded with a demo that showed more concretely how to apply the new features in Java ME SDK 3.2.

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• Movement prediction for non-shooters

  - by ShadowChaser

  I'm working on an isometric (2D) game with moderate-scale multiplayer - 20-30 players. I've had some difficulty getting a good movement prediction implementation in place. Right now, clients are authoritative for their own position. The server performs validation and broad-scale cheat detection, and I fully realize that the system will never be fully robust against cheating. However, the performance and implementation tradeoffs work well for me right now. Given that I'm dealing with sprite graphics, the game has 8 defined directions rather than free movement. Whenever the player changes their direction or speed (walk, run, stop), a "true" 3D velocity is set on the entity and a packet it sent to the server with the new movement state. In addition, every 250ms additional packets are transmitted with the player's current position for state updates on the server as well as for client prediction. After the server validates the packet, it gets automatically distributed to all of the other "nearby" players. Client-side, all entities with non-zero velocity (ie/ moving entities) are tracked and updated by a rudimentary "physics" system - basically nothing more than changing the position by the velocity according to the elapsed time slice (40ms or so). What I'm struggling with is how to implement clean movement prediction. I have the nagging suspicion that I've made a design mistake somewhere. I've been over the Unreal, Half-life, and all other movement prediction/lag compensation articles I could find, but they all seam geared toward shooters: "Don't send each control change, send updates every 120ms, server is authoritative, client predicts, etc". Unfortunately, that style of design won't work well for me - there's no 3D environment so each individual state change is important. 1) Most of the samples I saw tightly couple movement prediction right into the entities themselves. For example, storing the previous state along with the current state. I'd like to avoid that and keep entities with their "current state" only. Is there a better way to handle this? 2) What should happen when the player stops? I can't interpolate to the correct position, since they might need to walk backwards or another strange direction if their position is too far ahead. 3) What should happen when entities collide? If the current player collides with something, the answer is simple - just stop the player from moving. But what happens if two entities take up the same space on the server? What if the local prediction causes a remote entity to collide with the player or another entity - do I stop them as well? If the prediction had the misfortune of sticking them in front of a wall that the player has gone around, the prediction will never be able to compensate and once the error gets to high the entity will snap to the new position.

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• Collision detection doesn't work for automated elements in XNA 4.0

  - by NDraskovic

  I have a really weird problem. I made a 3D simulator of an "assembly line" as a part of a college project. Among other things it needs to be able to detect when a box object passes in front of sensor. I tried to solve this by making a model of a laser and checking if the box collides with it. I had some problems with BoundingSpheres of models meshes so I simply create a BoundingSphere and place it in the same place as the model. I organized them into a list of BoundingSpheres called "spheres" and for each model I create one BoundingSphere. All models except the box are static, so the box object has its own BoundingSphere (not a member of the "spheres" list). I also implemented a picking algorithm that I use to start the movement. This is the code that checks for collision: if (spheres.Count != 0) { for (int i = 1; i < spheres.Count; i++) { if (spheres[i].Intersects(PickingRay) != null && Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Input.ButtonState.Pressed == Mouse.GetState().LeftButton) { start = true; break; } if (BoxSphere.Intersects(spheres[i]) && start) { MoveBox(0, false);//The MoveBox function receives the direction (0) and a bool value that dictates whether the box should move or not (false means stop) start = false; break; } if (start /*&& Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Input.ButtonState.Pressed == Mouse.GetState().LeftButton*/ && !BoxSphere.Intersects(spheres[i])) { MoveBox(0, true); break; } } The problem is this: When I use the mouse to move the box (the commented part in the third if condition) the collision works fine (I have another part of code that I removed to simplify my question - it calculates the "address" of the box, and by that number I know that the collision is correct). But when I comment it (like in this example) the box just passes trough the lasers and does not detect the collision (the idea is that the box stops at each laser and the user passes it forth by clicking on the appropriate "switch"). Can you see the problem? Please help, and if you need more informations I will try to give them. Thanks

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