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• Code testing practice

  - by Robin Castlin

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

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• Checking timeouts made more readable

  - by Markus

  I have several situations where I need to control timeouts in a technical application. Either in a loop or as a simple check. Of course – handling this is really easy, but none of these is looking cute. To clarify, here is some C# (Pseudo) code: private DateTime girlWentIntoBathroom; girlWentIntoBathroom = DateTime.Now; do { // do something } while (girlWentIntoBathroom.AddSeconds(10) > DateTime.Now); or if (girlWentIntoBathroom.AddSeconds(10) > DateTime.Now) MessageBox.Show("Wait a little longer"); else MessageBox.Show("Knock louder"); Now I was inspired by something a saw in Ruby on StackOverflow: Now I’m wondering if this construct can be made more readable using extension methods. My goal is something that can be read like “If girlWentIntoBathroom is more than 10 seconds ago” 1st attempt if (girlWentIntoBathroom > (10).Seconds().Ago()) MessageBox.Show("Wait a little longer"); else MessageBox.Show("Knock louder"); So I wrote an extension for integer that converts the integer into a TimeSpan public static TimeSpan Seconds(this int amount) { return new TimeSpan(0, 0, amount); } After that, I wrote an extension for TimeSpan like this: public static DateTime Ago(this TimeSpan diff) { return DateTime.Now.Add(-diff); } This works fine so far, but has a great disadvantage. The logic is inverted! Since girlWentIntoBathroom is a timestamp in the past, the right side of the equation needs to count backwards: impossible. Just inverting the equation is no solution, because it will invert the read sentence as well. 2nd attempt So I tried something new: if (girlWentIntoBathroom.IsMoreThan(10).SecondsAgo()) MessageBox.Show("Knock louder"); else MessageBox.Show("Wait a little longer"); IsMoreThan() needs to transport the past timestamp as well as the span for the extension SecondsAgo(). It could be: public static DateWithIntegerSpan IsMoreThan(this DateTime baseTime, int span) { return new DateWithIntegerSpan() { Date = baseTime, Span = span }; } Where DateWithIntegerSpan is simply: public class DateWithIntegerSpan { public DateTime Date {get; set;} public int Span { get; set; } } And SecondsAgo() is public static bool SecondsAgo(this DateWithIntegerSpan dateAndSpan) { return dateAndSpan.Date.Add(new TimeSpan(0, 0, dateAndSpan.Span)) < DateTime.Now; } Using this approach, the English sentence matches the expected behavior. But the disadvantage is, that I need a helping class (DateWithIntegerSpan). Has anyone an idea to make checking timeouts look more cute and closer to a readable sentence? Am I a little too insane thinking about something minor like this?

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• Why is Java the lingua franca at so many institutions?

  - by Billy ONeal

  EDIT: This question at first seems to be bashing Java, and I guess at this point it is a bit. However, the bigger point I am trying to make is why any one single language is chosen as the one end all be all solution to all problems. Java happens to be the one that's used so that's the one I had to beat on here, but I'm not intentionality ripping Java a new one :) I don't like Java in most academic settings. I'm not saying the language itself is bad -- it has several extremely desirable aspects, most importantly the ability to run without recompilation on most any platform. Nothing wrong with using the language for Your Next App ^TM. (Not something I would personally do, but that's more because I have less experience with it, rather than it's design being poor) I think it is a waste that high level CS courses are taught using Java as a language. Too many of my co-students cannot program worth a damn, because they don't know how to work in a non-garbage-collected world. They don't fundamentally understand the machines they are programming for. When someone can work outside of a garbage collected world, they can work inside of one, but not vice versa. GC is a tool, not a crutch. But the way it is used to teach computer science students is a as a crutch. Computer science should not teach an entire suite of courses tailored to a single language. Students leave with the idea that all good design is idiomatic Java design, and that Object Oriented Design is the ONE TRUE WAY THAT IS THE ONLY WAY THINGS CAN BE DONE. Other languages, at least one of them not being a garbage collected language, should be used in teaching, in order to give the graduate a better understanding of the machines. It is an embarrassment that somebody with a PHD in CS from a respected institution cannot program their way out of a paper bag. What's worse, is that when I talk to those CS professors who actually do understand how things operate, they share feelings like this, that we're doing a disservice to our students by doing everything in Java. (Note that the above would be the same if I replaced it with any other language, generally using a single language is the problem, not Java itself) In total, I feel I can no longer respect any kind of degree at all -- when I can't see those around me able to program their way out of fizzbuzz problems. Why/how did it get to be this way?

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• The type of programmer I want to be [closed]

  - by Aventinus_

  I'm an undergraduate Software Engineer student, although I've decided that pure programming is what I want to do for the rest of my life. The thing is that programming is a vast field and although most of its aspects are extremely interesting, soon or later I'll have to choose one (?) to focus on. I have several ideas on small projects I'd like to develop this summer, having in mind that this will gain me some experience and, in the best scenario, some cash. But the most important reason I'd like to develop something close to “professional” is to give myself direction on what I want to do as a programmer. One path is that of the Web Programmer. I enjoy PHP and MySQL, as well as HTML and CSS, although I don't really like ASP.NET. I can see myself writing web apps, using the above technologies, as well as XML and Javascript. I also have a neat idea on a Facebook app. The other path is that of the Desktop Programmer. This is a little more complicated cause I really-really enjoy high level languages such as Java and Python but not the low level ones, such as C. I use both Linux and Windows for the last 6 years and I like their latest DEs (meaning Gnome Shell and Metro). I can see myself writing desktop applications for both OSs as long as it means high level programming. Ideally I'd like being able to help the development of GNOME. The last path that interests me is the path of the Smartphone Programmer. I have created some sample applications on Android and due to Java I found it a quite interesting experience. I can also see myself as an independent smartphone developer. These 3 paths seem equally interesting at the moment due to the shallowness of my experience, I guess. I know that I should spend time with all of them and then choose the right one for me but I'd like to know what are the pros and cons in terms of learning curve, fun, job finding and of course financial rewards with each of these paths. I have fair or basic understanding of the languages/technologies I described earlier and this question will help me choose where to focus, at least for now.

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• Should i continue my self-taught coding practice or learn how to do coding professionally?

  - by G1i1ch

  Lately I've been getting professional work, hanging out with other programmers, and making friends in the industry. The only thing is I'm 100% self-taught. It's caused my style to extremely deviate from the style of those that are properly trained. It's the techniques and organization of my code that's different. It's a mixture of several things I do. I tend to blend several programming paradigms together. Like Functional and OO. I lean to the Functional side more than OO, but I see the use of OO when something would make more sense as an abstract entity. Like a game object. Next I also go the simple route when doing something. When in contrast, it seems like sometimes the code I see from professional programmers is complicated for the sake of it! I use lots of closures. And lastly, I'm not the best commenter. I find it easier just to read through my code than reading the comment. And most cases I just end up reading the code even if there are comments. Plus I've been told that, because of how simply I write my code, it's very easy to read it. I hear professionally trained programmers go on and on about things like unit tests. Something I've never used before so I haven't even the faintest idea of what they are or how they work. Lots and lots of underscores "_", which aren't really my taste. Most of the techniques I use are straight from me, or a few books I've read. Don't know anything about MVC, I've heard a lot about it though with things like backbone.js. I think it's a way to organize an application. It just confuses me though because by now I've made my own organizational structures. It's a bit of a pain. I can't use template applications at all when learning something new like with Ubuntu's Quickly. I have trouble understanding code that I can tell is from someone trained. Complete OO programming really leaves a bad taste in my mouth, yet that seems to be what EVERYONE else is strictly using. It's left me not that confident in the look of my code, or wondering whether I'll cause sparks when joining a company or maybe contributing to open source projects. In fact I'm rather scared of the fact that people will eventually be checking out my code. Is this just something normal any programmer goes through or should I really look to change up my techniques?

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• Collision rectangle response

  - by dotty

  I'm having difficulties getting a moveable rectangle to collide with more than one rectangle. I'm using SFML and it has a handy function called Intersect() which takes 2 rectangles and returns the intersections. I have a vector full of rectangles which I want my moveable rectangle to collide with. I'm looping through this using the following code (p is the moveble rectangle). IsCollidingWith returns a bool but also uses SFML's Interesect to work out the intersections. while(unsigned i = 0; i!= testRects.size(); i++){ if(p.IsCollidingWith(testRects[i]){ p.Collide(testRects[i]); } } and the actual Collide() code void gameObj::collide( gameObj collidingObject ){ printf("%f %f\n", this->colliderResult.width, this->colliderResult.height); if (this->colliderResult.width < this->colliderResult.height) { // collided on X if (this->getCollider().left < collidingObject.getCollider().left ) { this->move( -this->colliderResult.width , 0); }else { this->move( this->colliderResult.width, 0 ); } } if(this->colliderResult.width > this->colliderResult.height){ if (this->getCollider().top < collidingObject.getCollider().top ) { this->move( 0, -this->colliderResult.height); }else { this->move( 0, this->colliderResult.height ); } } } and the IsCollidingWith() code is bool gameObj::isCollidingWith( gameObj testObject ){ if (this->getCollider().intersects( testObject.getCollider(), this->colliderResult )) { return true; }else { return false; } } This works fine when there's only 1 Rect in the scene. However, when there's move than one Rect it causes issue when working out 2 collisions at once. Any idea how to deal with this correctly? I have uploaded a video to youtube to show my problem. The console on the far-right shows the width and height of the intersections. You can see on the console that it's trying to calculate 2 collisions at once, I think this is where the problem is being caused. The youtube video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fA2gflOMcAk also , this image also seems to illustrate the problem nicely. Can someone please help, I've been stuck on this all weekend!

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• Storing a looong lookup table

  - by inquisitive

  Background The product i am working on has a very long lookup-table. the table contains static data and cannot be auto generated. there are about 500 rows and 10 columns. columns have mostly integers and strings. to complicate the matters, there are actually two such tables. every row in table-1 maps to zero-or-more rows in table-2. we use an SQLite database with two tables. the product installer places the SQLite file in the installation directory. the application is written in dot-net and we use ADO to load the data once on startup. now, the lookup table grows. in each release a month, we add about 10 new entries existing entries are adjusted. every release we fine tune existing entries. The problem a team of (10) developers work on the lookup table. Code goes in the SVN, but the little devil the SQLite does not. this prevents multiple developers to work on it. we do take regular backups of the file, but proper versioning is not possible. we never know who did the breaking change. the worse thing is we dont know if there is any change at all. diff'ing databases is tedious if not impossible. the tables are expected to grow quite large in years to come and we would need developers to work in parallel on it. the data is business critical. we need to be able to audit changes made to it. Question What would be a solution for the problems outlines above? one idea was to transform the whole thing to XML and treat it like just another source file. that way SVN can do the versioning and we can work in parallel. but the data shows relational behavior. with XML we loose the unique and foreign-key constraints. also we cant query it with sql like ease. any help here will be appreciated.

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• "You are missing the following 32-bit libraries, and Steam may not run: libc.so.6" The common fixes don't work,

  - by M_Steam_User

  So I know this is a problem that has been asked around a lot, but I've tried a bunch of solutions with no success. I'm running Ubuntu 12.04 (64 bit), and I just installed it yesterday. This is my first time working with linux. The error is: You are missing the following 32-bit libraries, and Steam may not run: libc.so.6 Things I've tried. First, I had downloaded from the steam website. I uninstalled it, and tried again from the ubuntu software centre. sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install ia32-libs sudo apt-get upgrade This installed a bunch of the 32 bit libraries, but did not fix the issue. This seems like the major fix for most people. The direct approach of sudo apt-get install libc.so.6 returns this: Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done E: Unable to locate package libc.so.6 E: Couldn't find any package by regex 'libc.so.6' I guess libc.so.6 isn't a package, just a single file or something? I also tried gksudo gedit /etc/ld.so.conf.d/steam.conf Added these two lines, those the second one was all ready in the file, but copied over: /usr/lib32 /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/mesa Then executed: sudo ldconfig But nothing seemed to happen, steam still doesn't work. So, I feel like it is more likely that I have the library and steam isn't looking in the right place. One thing I've seen is people usually reference /usr/local/lib/ for your library locations. However, I can't find where to cd into /usr/, it isn't in my home folder. If /usr/ is the home folder, there is only a /.local folder which only has /share, no lib anywhere. Sorry for my linux ignorance. I appreciate any help, I honestly have no idea how to confirm I have the library and point steam to it, or if that is even the right thing to do. Edit: Tried this, not entirely sure what it means ~$ ls -l /lib32/libc* -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1721832 Sep 30 11:06 /lib32/libc-2.15.so -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 185928 Sep 30 11:06 /lib32/libcidn-2.15.so lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 Sep 30 11:06 /lib32/libcidn.so.1 -> libcidn-2.15.so -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 34316 Sep 30 11:06 /lib32/libcrypt-2.15.so lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 16 Sep 30 11:06 /lib32/libcrypt.so.1 -> libcrypt-2.15.so lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 12 Sep 30 11:06 /lib32/libc.so.6 -> libc-2.15.so

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• Testing and Validation – You Really Do Have The Time

  - by BuckWoody

  One of the great advantages in my role as a Technical Specialist here at Microsoft is that I get to work with so many great clients. I get to see their environments and how they use them, and the way they work with SQL Server. I’ve been a data professional myself for many years. Over that time I’ve worked with many database platforms, lots of client applications, and written a lot of code in many industries. For a while I was also a consultant, so I got to see how other shops did things as well. But because I now focus on a “set” base of clients (over 500 professionals in over 150 companies) I get to see them over a longer period of time. Many of them help me understand how they use the product in their projects, and I even attend some DBA regular meetings. I see the way the product succeeds, and I see when it fails. Something that has really impacted my way of thinking is the level of importance any given shop is able to place on testing and validation. I’ve always been a big proponent of setting up a test system and following a very disciplined regimen to make sure it will work in production for any new projects, and then taking the lessons learned into production as standards. I know, I know – there’s never enough time to do things right like this. Yet the shops I see that do it have the same level of work that they output as the shops that don’t. They just make the time to do the testing and validation and create a standard that they will follow in production. And what I’ve found (surprise surprise) is that they have fewer production problems. OK, that might seem obvious – but I’ve actually tracked it and those places that do the testing and best practices really do save stress, time and trouble from that effort. We all think that’s a good idea, but we just “don’t have time”. OK – but from what I’m seeing, you can gain time if you spend a little up front. You may find that you’re actually already spending the same amount of time that you would spend in doing the testing, you’re just doing it later, at night, under the gun. Food for thought.  Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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

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

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• Variable number of GUI Buttons

  - by Wakaka

  I have a generic HTML5 Canvas GUI Button class and a Scene class. The Scene class has a method called createButton(), which will create a new Button with onclick parameter and store it in a list of buttons. I call createButton() for all UI buttons when initializing the Scene. Because buttons can appear and disappear very often during rendering, Scene would first deactivate all buttons (temporarily remove their onclick, onmouseover etc property) before each render frame. During rendering, the renderer would then activate the required buttons for that frame. The problem is that part of the UI requires a variable number of buttons, and their onclick, onmouseover etc properties change frequently. An example is a buffs system. The UI will list all buffs as square sprites for the current unit selected, and mousing over each square will bring up a tooltip with some information on the buff. But the number of buffs is variable thus I won't know how many buttons to create at the start. What's the best way to solve this problem? P.S. My game is in Javascript, and I know I can use HTML buttons, but would like to make my game purely Canvas-based. Create buttons on-the-fly during rendering. Thus I will only have buttons when I require them. After the render frame these buttons would be useless and removed. Create a fixed set of buttons that I'm going to assume the number of buffs per unit won't exceed. During each render frame activate the buttons accordingly and set their onmouseover property. Assign a button to each Buff instance. This sounds wrong as the buff button is a part of the GUI which can only have one unit selected. Assigning a button to every single Buff in the game seems to be overkill. Also, I would need to change the button's position every render frame since its order in the unit's list of buffs matter. Any other solutions? I'm actually quite for idea (1) but am worried about the memory/time issues of creating a new Button() object every render frame. But this is in Javascript where object creation is oh-so-common ({} mainly) due to automatic garbage collection. What is your take on this? Thanks!

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• Encapsulating code in F# (Part 1)

  - by MarkPearl

  I have been looking at F# for a while now and seem a few really interesting samples and snippets on howto’s. This has been great to see the basic outline of the language and the possibilities, however a nagging question in the back of my mind has been what does an F# project look like? How do I code group code in F# so that it can be modularized and brought in and out of a project easily? My Expert F# book has an entire chapter (7) dedicated to this and after browsing the other chapters of the book I decided that this topic was something I really wanted to know more about now! Because of my C# background I keep trying to think in F# of objects. So to try and get a clearer idea of how to do things the F# way I am first going to take a very simplified C# example and try to “translate” it. using System; namespace ConsoleApplication1 { namespace ExampleOfEncapsulationInCSharp { class Program { static void EncapsulatedVariableInAMethod() { int count = 10; Console.WriteLine(count); } static void Main(string[] args) { EncapsulatedVariableInAMethod(); Console.ReadLine(); } } } } From the above example the count integer is encapsulated within EncapsulatedVariableInAMethod method. You couldn’t access the count variable from outside the scope of its parent method but have full access to it within the method. Lets look at my F# equivalent… open System let EncapsulatedVariableInAMethod = let count = 10 Console.WriteLine(count) () EncapsulatedVariableInAMethod Console.ReadLine()   Now, when I first attempted to write the F# code I got stuck… I didn’t have the Console.WriteLine calls but had the following… open System let EncapsulatedVariableInAMethod = let count = 10 EncapsulatedVariableInAMethod Console.ReadLine()   The compiler didn’t like the let before the count = 10. This is because every F# expression must evaluate to a value. If I did not want to make the Console call, I would still need to evaluate the expression to something – and for this reason the Unit Type is provided. I could have done something like…. open System let EncapsulatedVariableInAMethod = let count = 10 () EncapsulatedVariableInAMethod Console.ReadLine()   Which the compiler would be happy with…

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

  - by Snuggy

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

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• How does the fstab 'defaults' option work? Is relatime recommended?

  - by hushs

  I know the fstab defaults option means this: rw,suid,dev,exec,auto,nouser,async. But what if I want to add one more option, for example relatime, should I still add defaults too or they are applied anyway? Is it needed to add at least one option? Some examples: 1. UUID=bfb42838-d866-4233-9679-96e7536356df /media/data ext3 defaults 0 2 2. UUID=bfb42838-d866-4233-9679-96e7536356df /media/data ext3 0 2 3. UUID=bfb42838-d866-4233-9679-96e7536356df /media/data ext3 defaults,relatime 0 2 4. UUID=bfb42838-d866-4233-9679-96e7536356df /media/data ext3 relatime 0 2 Is the (2) correct(no option at all)? Are the (1) and (2) the same? Are the (3) and (4) the same? Furthermore, I read in the Ubuntu Community Documentation that in Ubuntu 8.04 relatime was used as default for linux native file systems. Is it still true for 12.04? If yes, then why do I see this if I use the mount command: /dev/sda2 on / type ext4 (rw,errors=remount-ro) If no, why not? It isn't recommended to use relatime now? I just wanted to apply it to my non system partitions, it is a good idea? EDIT: I found an other command to list the mounted partitions and their options: cat /proc/mounts This is the result of a partition mounted with the defaults option in fstab: /dev/sdb2 /media/adat ext3 rw,relatime,errors=continue,barrier=1,data=ordered 0 0 This is the output of mount for the same partition: /dev/sdb2 on /media/adat type ext3 (rw) And here is both result if the same partition mounted from Nautilus as a non-root user: /dev/sdb2 /media/adat ext3 rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,errors=continue,barrier=1,data=ordered 0 0 /dev/sdb2 on /media/adat type ext3 (rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=udisks) So it looks like relatime is used if we mount an ext partition in 12.04. So it is unneeded to add it manually. So my problem is broadly solved. But I still can't see why the options that should be in the defaults are not listed even with the cat /proc/mounts. Maybe there is a third and even better method to list the partition mount options :)

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• Does OO, TDD, and Refactoring to Smaller Functions affect Speed of Code?

  - by Dennis

  In Computer Science field, I have noticed a notable shift in thinking when it comes to programming. The advice as it stands now is write smaller, more testable code refactor existing code into smaller and smaller chunks of code until most of your methods/functions are just a few lines long write functions that only do one thing (which makes them smaller again) This is a change compared to the "old" or "bad" code practices where you have methods spanning 2500 lines, and big classes doing everything. My question is this: when it call comes down to machine code, to 1s and 0s, to assembly instructions, should I be at all concerned that my class-separated code with variety of small-to-tiny functions generates too much extra overhead? While I am not exactly familiar with how OO code and function calls are handled in ASM in the end, I do have some idea. I assume that each extra function call, object call, or include call (in some languages), generate an extra set of instructions, thereby increasing code's volume and adding various overhead, without adding actual "useful" code. I also imagine that good optimizations can be done to ASM before it is actually ran on the hardware, but that optimization can only do so much too. Hence, my question -- how much overhead (in space and speed) does well-separated code (split up across hundreds of files, classes, and methods) actually introduce compared to having "one big method that contains everything", due to this overhead? UPDATE for clarity: I am assuming that adding more and more functions and more and more objects and classes in a code will result in more and more parameter passing between smaller code pieces. It was said somewhere (quote TBD) that up to 70% of all code is made up of ASM's MOV instruction - loading CPU registers with proper variables, not the actual computation being done. In my case, you load up CPU's time with PUSH/POP instructions to provide linkage and parameter passing between various pieces of code. The smaller you make your pieces of code, the more overhead "linkage" is required. I am concerned that this linkage adds to software bloat and slow-down and I am wondering if I should be concerned about this, and how much, if any at all, because current and future generations of programmers who are building software for the next century, will have to live with and consume software built using these practices. UPDATE: Multiple files I am writing new code now that is slowly replacing old code. In particular I've noted that one of the old classes was a ~3000 line file (as mentioned earlier). Now it is becoming a set of 15-20 files located across various directories, including test files and not including PHP framework I am using to bind some things together. More files are coming as well. When it comes to disk I/O, loading multiple files is slower than loading one large file. Of course not all files are loaded, they are loaded as needed, and disk caching and memory caching options exist, and yet still I believe that loading multiple files takes more processing than loading a single file into memory. I am adding that to my concern.

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• Is it dangerous for me to give some of my Model classes Control-like methods?

  - by Pureferret

  In my personal project I have tried to stick to MVC, but I've also been made aware that sticking to MVC too tightly can be a bad thing as it makes writing awkward and forces the flow of the program in odd ways (i.e. some simple functions can be performed by something that normally wouldn't, and avoid MVC related overheads). So I'm beginning to feel justified in this compromise: I have some 'manager programs' that 'own' data and have some way to manipulate it, as such I think they'd count as both part of the model, and part of the control, and to me this feels more natural than keepingthem separate. For instance: One of my Managers is the PlayerCharacterManager that has these methods: void buySkill(PlayerCharacter playerCharacter, Skill skill); void changeName(); void changeRole(); void restatCharacter(); void addCharacterToGame(); void createNewCharacter(); PlayerCharacter getPlayerCharacter(); List<PlayerCharacter> getPlayersCharacter(Player player); List<PlayerCharacter> getAllCharacters(); I hope the mothod names are transparent enough that they don't all need explaining. I've called it a manager because it will help manage all of the PlayerCharacter 'model' objects the code creates, and create and keep a map of these. I may also get it to store other information in the future. I plan to have another two similar classes for this sort of control, but I will orchestrate when and how this happens, and what to do with the returned data via a pure controller class. This splitting up control between informed managers and the controller, as opposed to operating just through a controller seems like it will simplify my code and make it flow more. My question is, is this a dangerous choice, in terms of making the code harder to follow/test/fix? Is this somethign established as good or bad or neutral? I oculdn't find anything similar except the idea of Actors but that's not quite why I'm trying to do. Edit: Perhaps an example is needed; I'm using the Controller to update the view and access the data, so when I click the 'Add new character to a player button' it'll call methods in the controller that then go and tell the PlayerCharacterManager class to create a new character instance, it'll call the PlayerManager class to add that new character to the player-character map, and then it'll add this information to the database, and tell the view to update any GUIs effected. That is the sort of 'control sequence' I'm hoping to create with these manager classes.

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• Insert Or update (aka Replace or Upsert)

  - by Davide Mauri

  The topic is really not new but since it’s the second time in few days that I had to explain it different customers, I think it’s worth to make a post out of it. Many times developers would like to insert a new row in a table or, if the row already exists, update it with new data. MySQL has a specific statement for this action, called REPLACE: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/replace.html or the INSERT …. ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE option: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/insert-on-duplicate.html With SQL Server you can do the very same using a more standard way, using the MERGE statement, with the support of Row Constructors. Let’s say that you have this table: CREATE TABLE dbo.MyTargetTable (     id INT NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY IDENTITY,     alternate_key VARCHAR(50) UNIQUE,     col_1 INT,     col_2 INT,     col_3 INT,     col_4 INT,     col_5 INT ) GO INSERT [dbo].[MyTargetTable] VALUES ('GUQNH', 10, 100, 1000, 10000, 100000), ('UJAHL', 20, 200, 2000, 20000, 200000), ('YKXVW', 30, 300, 3000, 30000, 300000), ('SXMOJ', 40, 400, 4000, 40000, 400000), ('JTPGM', 50, 500, 5000, 50000, 500000), ('ZITKS', 60, 600, 6000, 60000, 600000), ('GGEYD', 70, 700, 7000, 70000, 700000), ('UFXMS', 80, 800, 8000, 80000, 800000), ('BNGGP', 90, 900, 9000, 90000, 900000), ('AMUKO', 100, 1000, 10000, 100000, 1000000) GO If you want to insert or update a row, you can just do that: MERGE INTO     dbo.MyTargetTable T USING     (SELECT * FROM (VALUES ('ZITKS', 61, 601, 6001, 60001, 600001)) Dummy(alternate_key, col_1, col_2, col_3, col_4, col_5)) S ON     T.alternate_key = S.alternate_key WHEN     NOT MATCHED THEN     INSERT VALUES (alternate_key, col_1, col_2, col_3, col_4, col_5) WHEN     MATCHED AND T.col_1 != S.col_1 THEN     UPDATE SET         T.col_1 = S.col_1,         T.col_2 = S.col_2,         T.col_3 = S.col_3,         T.col_4 = S.col_4,         T.col_5 = S.col_5 ; If you want to insert/update more than one row at once, you can super-charge the idea using Table-Value Parameters, that you can just send from your .NET application. Easy, powerful and effective

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• Employer admits that its developers are underpaid and undervalued. Time to part ways?

  - by Psionic

  My employer recently posted an opening for a C# Developer with 3-5 years of experience. The requirements and expectations for the position were fair, up until the criteria for salary determination. It was stated clearly that compensation would depend ONLY on experience with C#, and that years of programming experience with other languages & frameworks would be considered irrelevant and not factored in. I brought up my concern with HR that good candidates would see this as a red flag and steer away. I attempted to explain that software development is about much more than specific languages, and that paying someone for their experience in a single language is a very shortsighted approach to hiring good developers (I'm telling this to the HR dept of a software company). The response: "We are tired of wasting time interviewing developers who expect 'big salaries' because they have lots of additional programming experience in languages other than what we require." The #1 issue here is that 'big salaries' = Market Rate. After some serious discussion, they essentially admitted that nobody at the company is paid near market rate for their skills, and there's nothing that can be done about it. The C-suite has the mentality that employees should only be paid for skills proven over years under their watch. Entry-level developers are picked up for less than $38K and may reach 50K after 3 years, which I'm assuming is around what they plan on offering candidates for the C# position. Another interesting discovery (not as relevant) - people 'promoted' to higher responsibilities do not get raises. The 'promotion' is considered an adjustment of the individuals' roles to better suit their 'strengths', which is what they're already being paid for. After hearing these hard truths straight from HR, I would assume that most people who are looking out for themselves would quickly begin searching for a new employer that has a better idea of what they're doing in the industry (this company fails in many other ways, but I don't want to write a book). Here is my dilemma however: This is the first official software development position I've held, for barely 1 year now. My previous position of 3 years was with a very small company where I performed many duties, among them software development (not in my official job description, but I tried very hard to make it so). I've identified local openings that I'm currently qualified for, most paying at least 50% more than I'm getting now. Question is, is it too soon for a jump? I am getting valuable experience in my current position, with no shortage of exciting projects. The work environment is very comfortable, and I'm told by many that I'm in the spotlight of the C-level guys for the stuff that I've been able to accomplish during my short time (for what that's worth). However, there is a clear opportunity cost to staying, knowing now with certainty that I will have to wait 3-5 years only to be capped at what I could potentially be earning elsewhere this year. I am also aware that 'job hopper' is a dangerous label to have, regardless of the reasons.

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• git workflow for separating commits

  - by gman

  Best practices with git (or any VCS for that matter) is supposed to be to have each commit do the smallest change possible. But, that doesn't match how I work at all. For example I recently I needed to add some code that checked if the version of a plugin to my system matched the versions the system supports. If not print a warning that the plugin probably requires a newer version of the system. While writing that code I decided I wanted the warnings to be colorized. I already had code that colorized error message so I edited that code. That code was in the startup module of one entry to the system. The plugin checking code was in another path that didn't use that entry point so I moved the colorization code into a separate module so both entry points could use it. On top of that, in order to test my plugin checking code works I need to go edit UI/UX code to make sure it tells the user "You need to upgrade". When all is said and done I've edited 10 files, changed dependencies, the 2 entry points are now both dependant on the colorization code, etc etc. Being lazy I'd probably just git add . && git commit -a the whole thing. Spending 10-15 minutes trying to manipulate all those changes into 3 to 6 smaller commits seems frustrating which brings up the question Are there workflows that work for you or that make this process easier? I don't think I can some how magically always modify stuff in the perfect order since I don't know that order until after I start modifying and seeing what comes up. I know I can git add --interactive etc but it seems, at least for me, kind of hard to know what I'm grabbing exactly the correct changes so that each commit is actually going to work. Also, since the changes are sitting in the current directory it doesn't seem like it would be easy to run tests on each commit to make sure it's going to work short of stashing all the changes. And then, if it were to stash and then run the tests, if I missed a few lines or accidentally added a few too many lines I have no idea how I'd easily recover from that. (as in either grab the missing lines from the stash and then put the rest back or take the few extra lines I shouldn't have grabbed and shove them into the stash for the next commit. Thoughts? Suggestions? PS: I hope this is an appropriate question. The help says development methodologies and processes

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• 2d, Top-down map with different levels

  - by Ktash

  So, I'm creating a 2d, top down, sprite based (tiled) game, and right now I'm working on maps (well, a map editor at the moment, but it will be creating my maps, so basically the same thing). The scenario So, I'm thinking about efficiency and creating a map in pieces. In each piece, I plan on having 'layers'. Basically, I plan on rendering it down to a 'below hero' level, and an 'above hero' level, with the hero rendered in between obviously. There will likely also be a 'on level with hero' layer, but I'm not quite there yet. Not even worrying about events or interaction yet. Just looking to get a hero on the screen. Now for movement, I obviously need to know what tiles can be moved and in what direction. My plan at the moment is each tile getting 8 bits (4 'can enter in direction' bits, 4 'can leave in direction'). This will allow me to limit movement and even allow one way directional movement. The dilemma This works great for a lot of scenarios. It will allow me to store a map in essentially 3 layers, a string, and gives me flexibility going forward. However, I can't create maps that themselves have layers. A good example is a bridge where the user can go under or over the bridge without invalid moves being allowed. I can't create a platform and allow movement underneath. These are things I would like to be able to include in my game. My idea In theory, I could allow multiple hero layers and then allow multiple sets of 'below' and 'above' layers (or sandwich layers). But this complicates my system, and makes movement between maps potentially tricky (If the hero is on the third layer at the edge of a map, but that corresponds to the second layer on the other map, how can I allow or disallow movement). My question Is there a better way to manage multiple maps with multiple levels like this where a users level may be 'connected' on different levels on different maps? Or even... Am I doing this the hard way? Is there a more standard way to handle top-down 2d tiled maps that I am just not aware of? Things to note or that might be helpful This will be done in Javascript (transferred around in JSON) State will need to be transferred quickly, so a map-id and x/y/direction should be enough to get me a boolean 'can move' value Maps will not be standard sized (though they will be in a certain number of tiles) Making an editor tool so that I can have others help, so something that I can create in a tool would be helpful 'Teleportation' locations will likely need to exist to get into building maps and to and from different map sets (which will not necessarily be connected), but have not been created yet (lumping in with events at the moment).

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• Lazy Processing of Streams

  - by Giorgio

  I have the following problem scenario: I have a text file and I have to read it and split it into lines. Some lines might need to be dropped (according to criteria that are not fixed). The lines that are not dropped must be parsed into some predefined records. Records that are not valid must be dropped. Duplicate records may exist and, in such a case, they are consecutive. If duplicate / multiple records exist, only one item should be kept. The remaining records should be grouped according to the value contained in one field; all records belonging to the same group appear one after another (e.g. AAAABBBBCCDEEEFF and so on). The records of each group should be numbered (1, 2, 3, 4, ...). For each group the numbering starts from 1. The records must then be saved somewhere / consumed in the same order as they were produced. I have to implement this in Java or C++. My first idea was to define functions / methods like: One method to get all the lines from the file. One method to filter out the unwanted lines. One method to parse the filtered lines into valid records. One method to remove duplicate records. One method to group records and number them. The problem is that the data I am going to read can be too big and might not fit into main memory: so I cannot just construct all these lists and apply my functions one after the other. On the other hand, I think I do not need to fit all the data in main memory at once because once a record has been consumed all its underlying data (basically the lines of text between the previous record and the current record, and the record itself) can be disposed of. With the little knowledge I have of Haskell I have immediately thought about some kind of lazy evaluation, in which instead of applying functions to lists that have been completely computed, I have different streams of data that are built on top of each other and, at each moment, only the needed portion of each stream is materialized in main memory. But I have to implement this in Java or C++. So my question is which design pattern or other technique can allow me to implement this lazy processing of streams in one of these languages.

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• Keeping the meshes "thickness" the same when scaling an object

  - by user1806687

  I've been bashing my head for the past couple of weeks trying to find a way to help me accomplish, on first look very easy task. So, I got this one object currently made out of 5 cuboids (2 sides, 1 top, 1 bottom, 1 back), this is just for an example, later on there will be whole range of different set ups. Now, the thing is when the user chooses to scale the whole object this is what should happen: X scale: top and bottom cuboids should get scaled by a scale factor, sides should get moved so they are positioned just like they were before(in this case at both ends of top and bottom cuboids), back should get scaled so it fits like before(if I simply scale it by a scale factor it will leave gaps on each side). Y scale: sides should get scaled by a scale factor, top and bottom cuboid should get moved, and back should also get scaled. Z scale: sides, top and bottom cuboids should get scaled, back should get moved. Hope you can help, EDIT: So, I've decided to explain the situation once more, this time more detailed(hopefully). I've also made some pictures of how the scaling should look like, where is the problem and the wrong way of scaling. I this example I will be using a thick walled box, with one face missing, where each wall is made by a cuboid(but later on there will be diffrent shapes of objects, where a one of the face might be roundish, or triangle or even under some angle), scaling will be 2x on X axis. 1.This is how the default object without any scaling applied looks like: http://img856.imageshack.us/img856/4293/defaulttz.png 2.If I scale the whole object(all of the meshes) by some scale factor, the problem becomes that the "thickness" of the object walls also change(which I do not want): http://img822.imageshack.us/img822/9073/wrongwaytoscale.png 3.This is how the correct scaling should look like. Appropriate faces gets caled in this case where the scale is on X axis(top, bottom, back): http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/163/rightwayxscale1.png/ 4.But the scale factor might not be the same for all object all of the times. In this case the back has to get scaled a bit more or it leaves gaps: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/9/problemwhenscaling.png/ 5.If everything goes well this is how the final object should look like: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/856/rightwayxscale2.png/ So, as you have might noticed there are quite a bit of things to look out when scaling. I am asking you, if any of you have any idea on how to accomplish this scaling. I have tried whole bunch of things, from scaling all of the object by the same scale factor, to subtracting and adding sizes to get the right size. But nothing I tried worked, if one mesh got scaled correctly then others didnt. Donwload the example object. English is not my first language, so I am really sorry if its hard to understand what I am saying.

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• Is there a factory pattern to prevent multiple instances for same object (instance that is Equal) good design?

  - by dsollen

  I have a number of objects storing state. There are essentially two types of fields. The ones that uniquely define what the object is (what node, what edge etc), and the others that store state describing how these things are connected (this node is connected to these edges, this edge is part of these paths) etc. My model is updating the state variables using package methods, so all these objects act as immutable to anyone not in Model scope. All Objects extend one base type. I've toyed with the idea of a Factory approach which accepts a Builder object and constructs the applicable object. However, if an instance of the object already exists (ie would return true if I created the object defined by the builder and passed it to the equal method for the existing instance) the factory returns the current object instead of creating a new instance. Because the Equal method would only compare what uniquely defines the type of object (this is node A to node B) but won't check the dynamic state stuff (node A is currently connected to nodes C and E) this would be a way of ensuring anyone that wants my Node A automatically knows its state connections. More importantly it would prevent aliasing nightmares of someone trying to pass an instance of node A with different state then the node A in my model has. I've never heard of this pattern before, and it's a bit odd. I would have to do some overriding of serialization methods to make it work (ensure that when I read in a serilized object I add it to my facotry list of known instances, and/or return an existing factory in its place), as well as using a weakHashMap as if it was a weakHashSet to know whether an instance exists without worrying about a quasi-memory leak occuring. I don't know if this is too confusing or prone to its own obscure bugs. One thing I know is that plugins interface with lowest level hardware. The plugins have to be able to return state that is different than my memory; to tell my memory when its own state is inconsistent. I believe this is possible despite their fetching objects that exist in my memory; we allow building of objects without checking their consistency with the model until the addToModel is called anyways; and the existing plugins design was written before all this extra state existed and worked fine without ever being aware of it. Should I just be using some other design to avoid this crazyness? (I have another question to that affect that I'm posting).

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• A better way to organize your Silverlight Code Snippets.

  - by mbcrump

  I hate re-writing code. I also hate it when I find a great code snippet on the web and forget to bookmark it or it gets lost in my endless sea of bookmarks. So what do you do to get around this? This is the question that I was asking myself at the end of 2010. How can I get my Silverlight code organized? My requirements for a snippet manager were: Needs to be FREE. An easy way to view XAML/C# code behind together in one “view”. I wanted the ability to store the code snippets in cloud in case my HDD dies. Searchable Keywords to quickly find code snippets. I started looking for a snippet manager that would allow me to do just that and finally found Snippet Manager. Before going any further, I think that one of the most important things to note here is that this software supports 37 languages. It’s not just for Silverlight developers nor C# only guys. The software supports Java, SQL and even COBOL.   Below is a screenshot of the Snippet Manager that shows my Silverlight code snippet. You will notice that I have highlighted two sections. The top part is my XAML and the bottom is my C# code behind. I’ve included a sample below of my code snippets so that you can get an idea of how I organized it. Another thing that’s great about this software is that it supports plain text. I added some connection strings in the TEXT section below.  Once you have finished adding your code snippets, you can store them in the cloud. I created a FTP directory called “snippets” on my FTP Server and hit the upload button once I am finished adding my new codes snippets. This will allow me to use the code snippets on another computer with this application on my USB Key. See screenshots below: Enter your FTP credentials below: Hit the Uploads button on the Toolbar: Login in to your FTP Server and verify the following files are now on the FTP Server: Another great feature of the Snippet Manager is that you can also integrate this into VS2010 by clicking Tools –> External Tools: And setting up your External Screen to point to the Executable: You can now launch it by going to Tools –> Snippet Manager. If you want you could also a shortcut to launch the program with HotKeys. As you can see, this is a nice little program that includes everything needed to organize your code snippets very clean. I didn’t go over every feature but this is something that you might want to download and give it a shot.  Subscribe to my feed CodeProject

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• Help recovering broken OS (permissions issue)

  - by Guandalino

  (At the bottom there is an important update.) I was doing experiments in order to backup a remote account to my local system, Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. I'm not confident with duplicity and probably, due to wrong syntax, some local files have been replaced with remote files. This is just a supposition, I'm not sure this is the real cause of OS corruption. The corruption happened after experimenting with backups, so I think I did something wrong at this regard. I was aware there was a problem when I tried to access a command using sudo: $ sudo ls sudo: unable to open /etc/sudoers: Permission denied sudo: no valid sudoers sources found, quitting sudo: unable to initialize policy plugin This is how /etc/sudoers looks like: $ ls -ald /etc/sudoers -r--r----- 1 root root 788 Oct 2 18:30 /etc/sudoers At this point I tried to reboot and now this is the message I get: The system is running in low graphics mode. Your screen, graphics card and input device settings could not be detected correctly. You will need to configure these yourself. I tried to follow the wizard to configure these settings, but without luck (the system prevents me going on when I press "Next"). The thing that makes me a bit less worried is that all the data on the disk seems readable and I'm able to access them using a live cd. I run memtest and RAM seems to be OK. Do you have any idea about how to recover my system? I'm very glad to provide further information, just let me know what info could be helpful. UPDATE. The issue is about wrong permissions and this is how I discovered: I mounted the root partition of the broken OS on /mnt/broken/ (live CD) and did ls /mnt/broken/. I got a permission denied error, while I expected to have the directory listing. I had to do sudo ls /mnt/broken/ and this worked. Thus without having root permission via sudo it's impossible to access the root of broken os. The current output of ls -ld /mnt/broken/ is: drwxr-x--- 29 1000 812 4096 2012-12-08 21:58 /mnt/broken Any thoughts on how to restore the old (working) set of permissions?

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