Search Results

Search found 20852 results on 835 pages for 'intellij idea'.

Page 568/835 | < Previous Page | 564 565 566 567 568 569 570 571 572 573 574 575  | Next Page >

• Segmentation and Targeting: Your Tools for Personalizing the Online Customer Experience

  - by Christie Flanagan

  In order to deliver the kind of personalized and engaging online experiences that customers expect today, look to segmentation and targeting.  Segmentation is the practice of dividing your site visitors into distinct groups based on shared characteristics or behavior – for example, a segment may consist of site visitors who have visited pages related to certain product type, or they may consist of visitors within the same age group or geographic area.  The idea is that those within a segment are more likely to have common needs, problems or interests that can be served by your business. Targeting is the process by which the most relevant content, whether an article promotion or other piece of content, is delivered to your visitors based on their segment membership. Segmentation and targeting are used to drive greater engagement on your web presence by delivering content to your site visitors that is tailored to their interests, behavior or other attributes.  You may have a number of different goals for your segmentation and targeting efforts: Up-sell or cross-sell to your customers Conduct A/B testing on your offers and creative Offer discounts, promotions or other incentives for the time and duration that you specify Make is easier to find relevant information about products and services Create premium content model There are two different approaches you can take toward segmentation and targeting for you online customer experience initiatives. The first is more of a manual process, in which marketers manage the process of determining which segments to create and which content to target to those segments. The benefit of this approach is that it gives marketers a high level of control over the whole process which works well when you have a thorough understanding of your segments and which content is most likely to serve their needs.  Tools for marketer managed segmentation and targeting are often built right in to your WEM platform, as they are with Oracle WebCenter Sites. The downside is that the more segments and content that you have, the more time consuming and complicated in can be to manage manually.The second approach relies on predictive intelligence to automate the segmentation and targeting process.  This allows optimization of the process to occur in real time. This approach helps reduce the burden of manual segmentation and targeting and can result in new insights into segments that you may never have thought of on your own.  It also provides you with the capability to quickly test new offers and promotions on your site.  Predictive segmentation and targeting can be achieved by using Oracle WebCenter Sites and Oracle Real-Time Decisions together. *****Get a taste for how Oracle WebCenter Sites and Oracle Real-Time Decisions combine to deliver powerful capabilities for predictive segmentation and targeting by watching this on demand webcast introducing Oracle WebCenter Sites 11g or by reading IDC’s take on the latest release of Oracle’s web experience management solution.  Be sure to return to the Oracle WebCenter blog on Thursday for a closer look at how to optimize the online customer experience using these two products together.

  Read the article

• Does it make the game more fun when the user is forced to progress thru the levels sequentially rather than letting them pick and play?

  - by BeachRunnerJoe

  Hello. For the first time in my game, I'm stuck with a real design dilemma. I guess that's a good thing ;) I'm building a word puzzle game that has five levels, each with 30 puzzles. Currently, the user has to solve one puzzle at a time before moving to the next. However, I'm finding the user occasionally gets stuck on a puzzle, at which point they can no longer play until they solve it. This is obviously bad because many people will just quit playing the game and delete the app since they get frustrated and can't play any other puzzles until the current puzzle is solved. The only elegant solution I can find to helping the player get unstuck is changing the design of the game to allow the users to pick any puzzle to play at any time. This way, if they get stuck, they can come back to it later and at least they have other puzzles to play in the meantime. It's my opinion, however, that this new flow design doesn't make the game as fun as the original flow design where the player has to complete a puzzle before moving to the next. To me, it's like anything else, when you only have one of something, it's more enjoyable, but when you have 30 of something, it's far less enjoyable. In fact, when I present the user with 30 puzzles to choose from that they need to solve before unlocking the next level, it almost seems as tho I'm making them feel like it's work they have to do. I even had a tester voluntarily tell me that being forced to complete a puzzle before moving to the next is more motivating. My questions are... Do you agree/disagree? Do you have any suggestions for how I can help the player get unstuck? Thanks so much in advance for your thoughts! EDIT: I should mention that I've already considered a few other solutions to helping the user get unstuck, but none of them seem like good ideas. They are... Add more hints: Currently, the user gets two hints per puzzle. If I increase the hint count, it only makes the game more easy and still leaves the possibility of the user getting stuck. Add a "Show Solution" button: This seems like a bad idea because it's my opinion this takes the fun out of the game for many people who would probably otherwise solve the puzzle if they didn't have the quick option to see the solution.

  Read the article

• Alternatives to multiple inheritance for my architecture (NPCs in a Realtime Strategy game)?

  - by Brettetete

  Coding isn't that hard actually. The hard part is to write code that makes sense, is readable and understandable. So I want to get a better developer and create some solid architecture. So I want to do create an architecture for NPCs in a video-game. It is a Realtime Strategy game like Starcraft, Age of Empires, Command & Conquers, etc etc.. So I'll have different kinds of NPCs. A NPC can have one to many abilities (methods) of these: Build(), Farm() and Attack(). Examples: Worker can Build() and Farm() Warrior can Attack() Citizen can Build(), Farm() and Attack() Fisherman can Farm() and Attack() I hope everything is clear so far. So now I do have my NPC Types and their abilities. But lets come to the technical / programmatical aspect. What would be a good programmatic architecture for my different kinds of NPCs? Okay I could have a base class. Actually I think this is a good way to stick with the DRY principle. So I can have methods like WalkTo(x,y) in my base class since every NPC will be able to move. But now lets come to the real problem. Where do I implement my abilities? (remember: Build(), Farm() and Attack()) Since the abilities will consists of the same logic it would be annoying / break DRY principle to implement them for each NPC (Worker,Warrior, ..). Okay I could implement the abilities within the base class. This would require some kind of logic that verifies if a NPC can use ability X. IsBuilder, CanBuild, .. I think it is clear what I want to express. But I don't feel very well with this idea. This sounds like a bloated base class with too much functionality. I do use C# as programming language. So multiple inheritance isn't an opinion here. Means: Having extra base classes like Fisherman : Farmer, Attacker won't work.

  Read the article

• Investment scheme for a PC game the project

  - by Alex Kamen

  Good day everyone, I am working on a PC game project that has 3 phases planned, micro, macro and mmo versions [if confused, see a brief description at the bottom]. I have found a potential investor for the micro version of the game, but naturally, he requested a detailed plan of how the game will pay back. And the problem is that micro version itself is not supposed to be monetized much, other than some ads and limited in-game currency utilization. The idea is that with this combat demo already at hand, it should be possible to get a really large enough investment (millions of dollars) and use it to pay back the initial small one (thousands of dollars) and take the project into macro phase, which will really make profit. This way, everybody is going to win, provided that I can deliver the end-product. Yet while I am confident of that both the conception of the macro and the real game-play of the micro versions are going to be appealing, I don’t know how to obtain any guarantee of that I will be able to get funded once I have the prototype ready. And without that, I won’t receive the funds for the prototype in the first place! To summarize, my question is: how to figure out my future possibilities of getting funded once I have combat demo out, basically “whom to write to and what”. Ideally, I would like some sort of a preliminary agreement with a game publisher, something that would basically state “If the developer provides the product in time and in quality corresponding to the specifications given, the publisher guarantees to allocate funds for distribution and further development, thereby acquiring the right to X part of all future profits”. Does this sound sane? It’s just that I don’t want to sell all of my rights out straight away by taking a big outside investment while the project is in such early stage. I would appreciate if you would share your thoughts on this kind of scheme, and be sure to ask questions as I am sure I must have forgotten to mention a ton of important things, like the fact that initial funds are going to be spent on outsourcing (living in Siberia is really just great). [here’s a brief outline of what each version will feature] [micro] 1) turn based tactical combat rules 2) character development 3) arena/tournament system [macro] 4) ai-ruled dynamic interactive worlds 5) global map adventuring 6) strategic rpg + god simulator gameplay [mmo] 7) Persistent worlds system 8) Social structures system (“guilds/clans”) 9) god-simulation on the mmo scale P.S. Obviously, these features are incremental, so that mmo version has all 9.

  Read the article

• Many sources of movement in an entity system

  - by Sticky

  I'm fairly new to the idea of entity systems, having read a bunch of stuff (most usefully, this great blog and this answer). Though I'm having a little trouble understanding how something as simple as being able to manipualate the position of an object by an undefined number of sources. That is, I have my entity, which has a position component. I then have some event in the game which tells this entity to move a given distance, in a given time. These events can happen at any time, and will have different values for position and time. The result is that they'd be compounded together. In a traditional OO solution, I'd have some sort of MoveBy class, that contains the distance/time, and an array of those inside my game object class. Each frame, I'd iterate through all the MoveBy, and apply it to the position. If a MoveBy has reached its finish time, remove it from the array. With the entity system, I'm a little confused as how I should replicate this sort of behavior. If there were just one of these at a time, instead of being able to compound them together, it'd be fairly straightforward (I believe) and look something like this: PositionComponent containing x, y MoveByComponent containing x, y, time Entity which has both a PositionComponent and a MoveByComponent MoveBySystem that looks for an entity with both these components, and adds the value of MoveByComponent to the PositionComponent. When the time is reached, it removes the component from that entity. I'm a bit confused as to how I'd do the same thing with many move by's. My initial thoughts are that I would have: PositionComponent, MoveByComponent the same as above MoveByCollectionComponent which contains an array of MoveByComponents MoveByCollectionSystem that looks for an entity with a PositionComponent and a MoveByCollectionComponent, iterating through the MoveByComponents inside it, applying/removing as necessary. I guess this is a more general problem, of having many of the same component, and wanting a corresponding system to act on each one. My entities contain their components inside a hash of component type - component, so strictly have only 1 component of a particular type per entity. Is this the right way to be looking at this? Should an entity only ever have one component of a given type at all times?

  Read the article

• C++ and SDL resource management for 2D game

  - by KuruptedMagi

  My first question is about stateManagers. I do not use the singleton pattern (read many random posts with various reasons not to use it), I have gameStateManager which runs the pointer cCurrentGameState-render(), etc. I want to make a transitioning game, this engine should ideally cover both a platformer and a bird's eye RPG (with some recoding, I just mean the base engine), both of which will load different levels and events, such as world map, dungeon, shops, etc. So I then thought, rather then having to store all this data within all the states, I would break the engine into gameStates, and playStates... when gameState reaches gameStatePlay(), gameStatePlay simply runs the usual handleInput, logic, and render for the playStates, just as the low level gameStateManager does. This lets me store all the player data within the base playstate class without storing useless data in the gameStates. Now I have added a seperate mapEditor, which uses editorStates from gameStateEditor. Is this too much usage of the gameState concept? It seems to work pretty well for me, so I was wondering if I am too far off a common implementation of this. My second question is on image resources. I have my sprite class with nothing but static members, mainly loadImage, applySurface, and my screen pointer. I also have a map pairing imageName enums with actual SDL_Surface pointers, and one pairing clipNumber enums with a wrapper class for a vector of clips, so that each reference in the map can have different amounts of clips with different sizes. I thought it would be better to store all these images, and screen within one static body, since 20 different goblins all use the same sprite sheet, and all need to print to the same screen, and of course, this way I do not need to pass my screen reference to every little entity. The imageMap seems to work very well, I can even add the ability to search through the map at creation of entity type to see if a particular image at creation, creating if it doesnt exist, and destroying the image if the last entity that needs it was just destroyed. The vectored clip map however, seems to take too long to initialize, so if i run past the state that initializes them to fast, the game crashes <. Plus, the clip map call is half of this line =P SPRITE::applySurface( cEditorMap.cTiles[x][y].iX, cEditorMap.cTiles[x][y].iY, SPRITE::mImages[ IMAGE_TILEMAP ], SPRITE::screen, SPRITE::mImageClips[IMAGE_TILEMAP]->clips.at( cEditorMap.cTiles[x][y].iTileType ) ); Again, do I have the right idea? I like the imageMap, but am I better off with each entity storing its own clips? My last question is about collision detection. I only grasp the basics, will look at per-pixel and circular soon, but how can I determine which side the collision comes from with just the basic square collision detection, I tried breaking each entity into 4 collision zones, but that just gave me problems with walking through walls and the like <. Also, is per-pixel color collision a good way to decide what collision just occured, or is checking multiple colors for multiple entities too taxing each cycle?

  Read the article

• Some Problems Can't Be Outsourced

  - by mikef

  More and more companies are becoming attracted to the idea of Infrastructure as a Service (or IaaS). It would seem that you can outsource the provisioning and management of your services, encompassing everything from Email, through to your servers, workstations and software, all the way down to your LAN and internet services. This type of outsourcing can be a very attractive option for companies who have tight budgets who are short of technical skills or don't have the means to provide long-term IT support. Essentially, they can outsource your services at low short-term costs that are knowable and controllable, are quickly and easily scalable, and generate a minimum of hassle for your internal staff. If you want to get a sophisticated IT infrastructure set up in a hurry without the usual high buy-in costs, or the task of finding and hiring the right specialists. It would seem the way to go, particularly when their salesmen are hypnotizing you with oleaginous phrases such as "we are closely aligned with our client organization's core business requirements, providing agile services". It sounds too good to be true, and so it is. Whereas the costs will have initially been calculated on the annual renewal fees and service fees for ongoing support, there are other charges too which aren't so obvious. It can end up costing far more than the conventional solution once you take into account the extra costs, the fees for customization and upgrades. The Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) only becomes apparent when it is too late to extract the company easily from the arrangement. After a few years, these annual fees can add up to more than the initial cost of implementing a traditional in-house system. Worse than that is that you can then lose your power to determine your priorities: When you become reliant on this company, with its own schedule of priorities, to implement every change, however simple, you have effectively lost control of your technical infrastructure. This will make senior management very nervous. There is definitely a requirement for this sort of service. If you urgently need an exceptionally high class of service or more expertise than you currently possess, then outsourcing is probably for you. You and your IT colleagues will always have something to do, be it user assistance, smoothing out integrations with an external provider, or working on something entirely new. Heck, if you outsource to IBM, the SysAdmins can go along for the ride and polish their expertise. What you need to figure out is how much your time is worth, because time is ultimately all that outsourcing will buy you and your organization. Now you just need to convince your nervous CEO. Cheers, Michael

  Read the article

• Good, simple reasons for having multiple environments

  - by smp7d

  Throughout my career I had worked at companies that had a collection of different environments for different purposes. We always had more or less our desktop environment, a test environment, a QA environment, a staging environment and a production environment. This went for both servers/applications and any data sources we were using. When I started at my current company I found that 90% of the apps were either developed on a desktop environment against production data sources or developed directly on the production server depending on the platform. I wasn't fazed because I was hired in part to make changes to improve the way the development team functioned, which was clear from my interview process. We slowly started to turn the philosophy and pretty soon, most of the apps could be run in either a desktop, test or production environment. Not too long after that staging came around as well. Now most of our developers see the benefit of this methodology and defend it vigilantly. However, we have a number of legacy apps that never got migrated. We also have a number of legacy programmers who think of this as a waste of time. Unfortunately, we got lip service but never full buy-in from management. We got what we thought was a commitment to invest substantially in this about a year ago, but nothing materialized despite the considerable planning that we put into it. Now we are finding that we need more and more environments. We need help from the server/network administration teams for setup and we need participation from the business stakeholders to support the release cycle. We are at a place now where a project can function what I consider "normally" only if you have the right people on the project and the time to set up the proper environments. I'd love to present a complete argument, but management really has no time and interest in hearing me out until there is a critical issue. I can't really articulate the benefits simply as it always just seemed second nature to me. I was wondering if there are any good, simple, irrefutable reasons for the separation of environments that would get managers with no development experience to get behind this idea. Are there any good resources/literature on the topic?

  Read the article

• Need help on a problemset in a programming contest

  - by topher

  I've attended a local programming contest on my country. The name of the contest is "ACM-ICPC Indonesia National Contest 2013". The contest has ended on 2013-10-13 15:00:00 (GMT +7) and I am still curious about one of the problems. You can find the original version of the problem here. Brief Problem Explanation: There are a set of "jobs" (tasks) that should be performed on several "servers" (computers). Each job should be executed strictly from start time Si to end time Ei Each server can only perform one task at a time. (The complicated thing goes here) It takes some time for a server to switch from one job to another. If a server finishes job Jx, then to start job Jy it will need an intermission time Tx,y after job Jx completes. This is the time required by the server to clean up job Jx and load job Jy. In other word, job Jy can be run after job Jx if and only if Ex + Tx,y = Sy. The problem is to compute the minimum number of servers needed to do all jobs. Example: For example, let there be 3 jobs S(1) = 3 and E(1) = 6 S(2) = 10 and E(2) = 15 S(3) = 16 and E(3) = 20 T(1,2) = 2, T(1,3) = 5 T(2,1) = 0, T(2,3) = 3 T(3,1) = 0, T(3,2) = 0 In this example, we need 2 servers: Server 1: J(1), J(2) Server 2: J(3) Sample Input: Short explanation: The first 3 is the number of test cases, following by number of jobs (the second 3 means that there are 3 jobs for case 1), then followed by Ei and Si, then the T matrix (sized equal with number of jobs). 3 3 3 6 10 15 16 20 0 2 5 0 0 3 0 0 0 4 8 10 4 7 12 15 1 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 4 8 10 4 7 12 15 1 4 0 50 50 50 50 0 50 50 50 50 0 50 50 50 50 0 Sample Output: Case #1: 2 Case #2: 1 Case #3: 4 Personal Comments: The time required can be represented as a graph matrix, so I'm supposing this as a directed acyclic graph problem. Methods I tried so far is brute force and greedy, but got Wrong Answer. (Unfortunately I don't have my code anymore) Could probably solved by dynamic programming too, but I'm not sure. I really have no clear idea on how to solve this problem. So a simple hint or insight will be very helpful to me.

  Read the article

• How should I structure my turn based engine to allow flexibility for players/AI and observation?

  - by Reefpirate

  I've just started making a Turn Based Strategy engine in GameMaker's GML language... And I was cruising along nicely until it came time to handle the turn cycle, and determining who is controlling what player, and also how to handle the camera and what is displayed on screen. Here's an outline of the main switch happening in my main game loop at the moment: switch (GameState) { case BEGIN_TURN: // Start of turn operations/routines break; case MID_TURN: switch (PControlledBy[Turn]) { case HUMAN: switch (MidTurnState) { case MT_SELECT: // No units selected, 'idle' UI state break; case MT_MOVE: // Unit selected and attempting to move break; case MT_ATTACK: break; } break; case COMPUTER: // AI ROUTINES GO HERE break; case OBSERVER: // OBSERVER ROUTINES GO HERE break; } break; case END_TURN: // End of turn routines/operations, and move Turn to next player break; } Now, I can see a couple of problems with this set-up already... But I don't have any idea how to go about making it 'right'. Turn is a global variable that stores which player's turn it is, and the BEGIN_TURN and END_TURN states make perfect sense to me... But the MID_TURN state is baffling me because of the things I want to happen here: If there are players controlled by humans, I want the AI to do it's thing on its turn here, but I want to be able to have the camera follow the AI as it makes moves in the human player's vision. If there are no human controlled player's, I'd like to be able to watch two or more AI's battle it out on the map with god-like 'observer' vision. So basically I'm wondering if there are any resources for how to structure a Turn Based Strategy engine? I've found lots of writing about pathfinding and AI, and those are all great... But when it comes to handling the turn structure and the game states I am having trouble finding any resources at all. How should the states be divided to allow flexibility between the players and the controllers (HUMAN, COMPUTER, OBSERVER)? Also, maybe if I'm on the right track I just need some reassurance before I lay down another few hundred lines of code...

  Read the article

• Oracle Virtualization Friday Spotlight - November 8, 2013

  - by Monica Kumar

  Hands-on Private Cloud Simulator In One Hour Submitted by: Doan Nguyen, Senior Principal Product Marketing Director My aeronautics instructor used to say, "you can’t appreciate flying until you take flight." To clarify, this is not about gearing up in a flying squirrel suit and hopping off a cliff (topic for another blog!) but rather about flying an airplane. The idea is to get hands-on with the controls at the cockpit and experience flight before you actually fly a real plane. After the initial 40 hours of flight time, the concept sank in and it really made sense.This concept is what inspired our technical experts to put together the hands-on lab for a private cloud deployment and management self-service model. Yes, we are comparing the lab to a flight simulator! Let’s look at the parallels: To get trained to fly, starting in the simulator gets you off the ground quicker. There is no need to have a real plane to begin with. In a hands-on lab, there is no need for a real server, with networking and real storage installed. All you need is your laptop The simulator is pre-configured, pre-flight check done. Similarly, in a hands-on lab, Oracle VM and Oracle Enterprise Manager are pre-configured and assembled using Oracle VM VirtualBox as the container. Software installations are not needed. After time spent training at the controls, you can really appreciate the practical experience of flying. Along the same lines, the hands-on lab is a guided learning path, without the encumbrances of hardware, software installation, so you can learn about cloud deployment and management.  However, unlike the simulator training, your time investment with the lab is only about an hour and not 40 hours! This hands-on lab takes you through private cloud deployment and management using Oracle VM and  Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c in an Infrastructure as a service IaaS model. You will first configure the IaaS cloud as the cloud administrator and then deploy guest virtual machines (VMs) as a self-service user. Then you are ready to take flight into the cloud! Why not step into the cockpit now!

  Read the article

• Think Before You Leap - Life is Dangerous for Change Agents

  - by technodrone

  So you want to introduce agile methods to your team... The following are some "lessons learned" when from someone who advocated agile/scrum to a group that was not ready for it. "Change agents, in my experience, face negative consequences. Sometimes, most of the time at the beginning, it's painful. This is the question you might have to ask yourself. Do you want to be a developer in scrum project or do you want be a scrum master managing the process? I think with proper mentoring/training, you can become good scrum master. But is that what you want? if yes, you can go ahead, take the training. if you want to be a developer, you may not need to be certified  as scrum master. You can just pick up from a book such as Mike Cohn new book Succeeding with Agile, I am reading it now. It's good. In my experience, I did waste my resources by trying to change the culture. It cost me lot. Instead, I should have focused on technical practices that are core to agile. Then look for teams that are good at agile. I would have saved lot of energy, and time. Try baby steps first yourself in the company, and next with the team, starting with technical practices like writing unit tests, SOLID principles, patterns, refactoring, continuous integration, pairing, and peer code reviews. These have inherent pull that can bring collaboration from a team.  Once you see team adaption in core practices, then you can introduce scrum concepts like user stories/task board etc.  This idea of Leading by example seems to be working for most of the agile folks. You can pitch core practices to the manager, and the team, and start showing them how you are doing.  You can put a road map for agile adaption and you can pitch to your manager. I would include need for scrum master training as part of the road map. " I thought about his advice for a couple of weeks and read about the pitfalls of technical debt and the team not having prior awareness of agile methods. The more I read and think about it the more I think he was right.  What do you think?

  Read the article

• Collision in PyGame for spinning rectangular object.touching circles

  - by OverAchiever

  I'm creating a variation of Pong. One of the differences is that I use a rectangular structure as the object which is being bounced around, and I use circles as paddles. So far, all the collision handling I've worked with was using simple math (I wasn't using the collision "feature" in PyGame). The game is contained within a 2-dimensional continuous space. The idea is that the rectangular structure will spin at different speed depending on how far from the center you touch it with the circle. Also, any extremity of the rectangular structure should be able to touch any extremity of the circle. So I need to keep track of where it has been touched on both the circle and the rectangle to figure out the direction it will be bounced to. I intend to have basically 8 possible directions (Up, down, left, right and the half points between each one of those). I can work out the calculation of how the objected will be dislocated once I get the direction it will be dislocated to based on where it has been touch. I also need to keep track of where it has been touched to decide if the rectangular structure will spin clockwise or counter-clockwise after it collided. Before I started coding, I read the resources available at the PyGame website on the collision class they have (And its respective functions). I tried to work out the logic of what I was trying to achieve based on those resources and how the game will function. The only thing I could figure out that I could do was to make each one of these objects as a group of rectangular objects, and depending on which rectangle was touched the other would behave accordingly and give the illusion it is a single object. However, not only I don't know if this will work, but I also don't know if it is gonna look convincing based on how PyGame redraws the objects. Is there a way I can use PyGame to handle these collision detections by still having a single object? Can I figure out the point of collision on both objects using functions within PyGame precisely enough to achieve what I'm looking for? P.s: I hope the question was specific and clear enough. I apologize if there were any grammar mistakes, English is not my native language.

  Read the article

• JavaOne 2012: Camel, Twitter, Coherence, Wicket and GlassFish

  - by Bruno.Borges

  Before joining Oracle as Product Manager for WebLogic and GlassFish for Latin America, at the beggining of this year I proposed two talks to JavaOne USA that I had been presenting in Brazil for quite a while. One of them I presented last year at ApacheCon in Vancouver, Canada as well in JavaOne Brazil. In June I got the news that they were accepted as Alternate Sessions. Surprisingly enough, few weeks later and at the same time I joined Oracle, I received the news that they were officially accepted and put on schedule. Tomorrow I'll be flying to San Francisco, to my first JavaOne in the United States, and I wanted to share with you what I'm going to present there. My two sessions are these ones: Wed, 10/03, 4:30pm - CON2989 Leverage Enterprise Integration Patterns with Apache Camel and TwitterOn this one, you will be introducted to the Apache Camel framework that I had been talking about in Brazil at conferences, before joining Oracle, and to a component I contributed to integrate with Twitter. Also, you will have a preview of a new component I've been working on to integrate Camel with the Oracle Coherence distributed cache. Thu, 10/04, 3:30pm - CON3395 How Scala, Wicket, and Java EE Can Improve Web DevelopmentThis one I've been working on for quite a while. It was based on an idea to have an architecture that could be as agile as frameworks and technologies such as Ruby on Rails, PHP or Python, for rapid web development. You will be introduced to the Apache Wicket framework, another Apache project I enjoy working with and gave lots of talks at Brazilian conferences, including JavaOne Brazil, JustJava, QCon SP, and The Developers Conference. You will also be introduced to the Scala language and how to create nice DSLs to boost productiveness. And last but not least, the Java EE 6 platform, that offers an awesome improvement from previous versions with its CDI, JPA, EJB3 and JAX-RS features for web development. Other events I will be participating during my stay in SF: Geeks Bike Ride GlassFish Community Event GlassFish and Friends Party    If you have any other event to suggest, please do suggest! It's my first JavaOne and I'm really looking forward to enjoying everything. See you guys in a few days!!

  Read the article

• Block-level deduplicating filesystem

  - by James Haigh

  I'm looking for a deduplicating copy-on-write filesystem solution for general user data such as /home and backups of it. It should use online/inline/synchronous deduplication at the block-level using secure hashing (for negligible chance of collisions) such as SHA256 or TTH. Duplicate blocks need not even touch the disk. The idea is that I should be able to just copy /home/<user> to an external HDD with the same such filesystem to do a backup. Simple. No messing around with incremental backups where corruption to any of the snapshots will nearly always break all later snapshots, and no need to use a specific tool to delete or 'checkout' a snapshot. Everything should simply be done from the file browser without worry. Can you imagine how easy this would be? I'd never have to think twice about backing-up again! I don't mind a performance hit, reliability is the main concern. Although, with specific implementations of cp, mv and scp, and a file browser plugin, these operations would be very fast, especially when there is a lot of duplication as they would only need to transfer the absent blocks. Accidentally using conventional copy tools that do not integrate with the FS would merely take longer, waste some bandwidth when copying remotely and waste some CPU, as the duplicate data would be re-read, re-transferred and re-hashed (although nothing would be re-written), but would absolutely not corrupt anything. (Some filesharing software may also be able to benefit by integrating with the FS.) So what's the best way of doing this? I've looked at some options: lessfs - Looks unmaintained. Any good? [Opendedup/SDFS][3] - Java? Could I use this on Android?! What does [SDFS][4] stand for? [Btrfs][5] - Some patches floating around on mailing list archives, but no real support. [ZFS][6] - Hopefully they'll one day relicense under a true Free/Opensource GPL-compatible licence. Also, 2 years ago I had a go at an attempt in Python using Fuse at the file-level to be used over the top of a typical solid FS such as EXT4, but I found Fuse for Python underdocumented and didn't manage to implement all of the system calls. My first post here, so I can't post more than 2 links until I get over 10 rep: [3]: http://www.opendedup.org/ [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=SDFS&action=edit&redlink=1 [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Btrfs#Features [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS#Linux

  Read the article

• Facial Recognition for Retail

  - by David Dorf

  My son decided to do his science project on how the brain recognizes faces.  Faces are so complicated and important that the brain has a dedicated area for just that purpose.  During our research, we came across some emerging uses for facial recognition in the retail industry. If you believe the movies, recognizing faces as they walk by a camera is easy for computers but that's not the reality.  Huge investments are being made by the U.S. government in this area, with a focus on airport security.  Now, companies like Eye See are leveraging that research for marketing purposes.  They do things like track eyes while viewing newspaper ads to see which ads get more "eye time."  This can help marketers make better placement and color decisions. But what caught my eye (that was too easy) was their new mannequins that watch shoppers.  These mannequins, being tested at European retailers like Benetton, watch shoppers that walk by and identify their gender, race, and age.  This helps the retailer better understand the types of customers being attracted to the outfit on the mannequin.  Of course to be most accurate, the software has pictures of the employees so they can be filtered out.  Since the mannequins are closer to the shoppers and at eye-level, they are more accurate than traditional in-ceiling LP cameras. Marketing agency RedPepper is offering retailers the ability to recognize loyalty shoppers at their doors using Facedeal.  For customers that have opted into the program, when they enter the store their face is recognized and they are checked in.  Then, as a reward, they are sent an offer on their smartphone. It won't be long before retailers begin to listen to shoppers are they walk the aisles, then keywords can be collected and aggregated to give the retailer an idea of what people are saying about their stores and products.  Sentiment analysis based on what's said or even facial expressions can't be far off. Clearly retailers need to be cautions and respect customer privacy.  That's why these technologies are emerging slowly.  But since the next generation of shoppers are less concerned about privacy, I expect these technologies to appear sporadically in the next five years then go mainstream.  Time will tell.

  Read the article

• Create a kind of Interface c++ [migrated]

  - by Liuka

  I'm writing a little 2d rendering framework with managers for input and resources like textures and meshes (for 2d geometry models, like quads) and they are all contained in a class "engine" that interacts with them and with a directX class. So each class have some public methods like init or update. They are called by the engine class to render the resources, create them, but a lot of them should not be called by the user: //in pseudo c++ //the textures manager class class TManager { private: vector textures; .... public: init(); update(); renderTexture(); //called by the "engine class" loadtexture(); gettexture(); //called by the user } class Engine { private: Tmanager texManager; public: Init() { //initialize all the managers } Render(){...} Update(){...} Tmanager* GetTManager(){return &texManager;} //to get a pointer to the manager //if i want to create or get textures } In this way the user, calling Engine::GetTmanager will have access to all the public methods of Tmanager, including init update and rendertexture, that must be called only by Engine inside its init, render and update functions. So, is it a good idea to implement a user interface in the following way? //in pseudo c++ //the textures manager class class TManager { private: vector textures; .... public: init(); update(); renderTexture(); //called by the "engine class" friend class Tmanager_UserInterface; operator Tmanager_UserInterface*(){return reinterpret_cast<Tmanager_UserInterface*>(this)} } class Tmanager_UserInterface : private Tmanager { //delete constructor //in this class there will be only methods like: loadtexture(); gettexture(); } class Engine { private: Tmanager texManager; public: Init() Render() Update() Tmanager_UserInterface* GetTManager(){return texManager;} } //in main function //i need to load a texture //i always have access to Engine class engine-GetTmanger()-LoadTexture(...) //i can just access load and get texture; In this way i can implement several interface for each object, keeping visible only the functions i (and the user) will need. There are better ways to do the same?? Or is it just useless(i dont hide the "framework private functions" and the user will learn to dont call them)? Before i have used this method: class manager { public: //engine functions userfunction(); } class engine { private: manager m; public: init(){//call manager init function} manageruserfunciton() { //call manager::userfunction() } } in this way i have no access to the manager class but it's a bad way because if i add a new feature to the manager i need to add a new method in the engine class and it takes a lot of time. sorry for the bad english.

  Read the article

• Problems uploading package to launchpad

  - by user74513

  I'm having a lot of problems uploading my showdown project to a PPA. I've setup correctly PGP keys and my public ssh key to launchpad. I've packaged with debuild my C++ project, producing a source package lintian gave me only those two warnings that I think are ok for the showdown rules: W: massren source: native-package-with-dash-version W: massren source: binary-nmu-debian-revision-in-source 1.0-0extras12.04.1~ppa2 Producing a binary package works to and the package installs without problem on my ubuntu 12.04 machine, I only have a few more lintian warnings about the fact I'm installing in /opt/extras.ubuntu.com/ I'm uploading with: dput ppa:gabrielegreco/massren massren_1.0-0extras12.04.1~ppa2_source.changes When I upload with dput I have no errors, signatures seems ok, and public key seems accepted to (since the upload goes on without asking passwords...): dput ppa:gabrielegreco/massren massren_1.0-0extras12.04.1~ppa2_source.changes Checking signature on .changes gpg: Signature made Mon 02 Jul 2012 10:00:38 AM CEST using RSA key ID 49982576 gpg: Good signature from "Gabriele Greco " Good signature on /home/gabry/no-backup/massren_1.0-0extras12.04.1~ppa2_source.changes. Checking signature on .dsc gpg: Signature made Mon 02 Jul 2012 10:00:33 AM CEST using RSA key ID 49982576 gpg: Good signature from "Gabriele Greco " Good signature on /home/gabry/no-backup/massren_1.0-0extras12.04.1~ppa2.dsc. Uploading to ppa (via ftp to ppa.launchpad.net): Uploading massren_1.0-0extras12.04.1~ppa2.dsc: done. Uploading massren_1.0-0extras12.04.1~ppa2.tar.gz: done. Uploading massren_1.0-0extras12.04.1~ppa2_source.changes: done. Successfully uploaded packages. At the moment I'm not receiving responses from launchpad site, but the upload does not show in the ppa page. Previous attempts gave me response e-mails with different kind of errors: File massren_1.0-0extras12.04.1~ppa1.tar.gz mentioned in the changes has a checksum mismatch. 1503fa155226cbc4aba2f8ba9aa11a75 != 294a5e0caf3fe95b0b007a10766e9672 File massren_1.0-0extras12.04.1~ppa1.tar.gz mentioned in the changes has a checksum mismatch. 1503fa155226cbc4aba2f8ba9aa11a75 != 294a5e0caf3fe95b0b007a10766e9672 Or more cryptic: GPG verification of /srv/launchpad.net/ppa-queue/incoming/upload-ftp-20120629-163320-001135/~gabrielegreco/massren/ubuntu/massren_1.0-0extras12.04.1~ppa1.dsc failed: Verification failed 3 times: ["(7, 58, u'No data')", "(7, 58, u'No data')", "(7, 58, u'No data')"] Further error processing not possible because of a critical previous error. Any idea how can I solve this problem? I'm new to ubuntu packaging, so I may miss some step... There is an alternative to dput (aka manual upload)?

  Read the article

• Ray Picking Problems

  - by A Name I Haven't Decided On

  I've read so many answers on here about how to do Ray Picking, that I thought I had the idea of it down. But when I try to implement it in my game, I get garbage. I'm working with LWJGL. Here's the code: public static Ray getPick(int mouseX, int mouseY){ glPushMatrix(); //Setting up the Mouse Clip Vector4f mouseClip = new Vector4f((float)mouseX * 2 / 960f - 1, 1 - (float)mouseY * 2 / 640f ,0 ,1); //Loading Matrices FloatBuffer modMatrix = BufferUtils.createFloatBuffer(16); FloatBuffer projMatrix = BufferUtils.createFloatBuffer(16); glGetFloat(GL_MODELVIEW_MATRIX, modMatrix); glGetFloat(GL_PROJECTION_MATRIX, projMatrix); //Assigning Matrices Matrix4f proj = new Matrix4f(); Matrix4f model = new Matrix4f(); model.load(modMatrix); proj.load(projMatrix); //Multiplying the Projection Matrix by the Model View Matrix Matrix4f tempView = new Matrix4f(); Matrix4f.mul(proj, model, tempView); tempView.invert(); //Getting the Camera Position in World Space. The 4th Column of the Model View Matrix. model.invert(); Point cameraPos = new Point(model.m30, model.m31, model.m32); //Theoretically getting the vector the Picking Ray goes Vector4f rayVector = new Vector4f(); Matrix4f.transform(tempView, mouseClip, rayVector); rayVector.translate((float)-cameraPos.getX(),(float) -cameraPos.getY(),(float) -cameraPos.getZ(), 0f); rayVector.normalise(); glPopMatrix(); //This Basically Spits out a value that changes as the Camera moves. //When the Mouse moves, the values change around 0.001 points from screen edge to edge. System.out.format("Vector: %f %f %f%n", rayVector.x, rayVector.y, rayVector.z); //return new Ray(cameraPos, rayVector); return null; } I don't really know why this isn't working. I was hoping some more experienced eyes might be able to help me out. I can get the camera position like a champ, it's the vector the rays going in that I can't seem to get right. Thanks.

  Read the article

• What arguments can I use to "sell" the BDD concept to a team reluctant to adopt it?

  - by S.Robins

  I am a bit of a vocal proponent of the BDD methodology. I've been applying BDD for a couple of years now, and have adopted StoryQ as my framework of choice when developing DotNet applications. Even though I have been unit testing for many years, and had previously shifted to a test-first approach, I've found that I get much more value out of using a BDD framework, because my tests capture the intent of the requirements in relatively clear English within my code, and because my tests can execute multiple assertions without ending the test halfway through - meaning I can see which specific assertions pass/fail at a glance without debugging to prove it. This has really been the tip of the iceberg for me, as I've also noticed that I am able to debug both test and implementation code in a more targeted manner, with the result that my productivity has grown significantly, and that I can more easily determine where a failure occurs if a problem happens to make it all the way to the integration build due to the output that makes its way into the build logs. Further, the StoryQ api has a lovely fluent syntax that is easy to learn and which can be applied in an extraordinary number of ways, requiring no external dependencies in order to use it. So with all of these benefits, you would think it an easy to introduce the concept to the rest of the team. Unfortunately, the other team members are reluctant to even look at StoryQ to evaluate it properly (let alone entertain the idea of applying BDD), and have convinced each other to try and remove a number of StoryQ elements from our own core testing framework, even though they originally supported the use of StoryQ, and that it doesn't impact on any other part of our testing system. Doing so would end up increasing my workload significantly overall and really goes against the grain, as I am convinced through practical experience that it is a better way to work in a test-first manner in our particular working environment, and can only lead to greater improvements in the quality of our software, given I've found it easier to stick with test first using BDD. So the question really comes down to the following: What arguments can I use to really drive the point home that it would be better to use StoryQ, or at the very least apply the BDD methodology? Can you point me to any anecdotal evidence that I can use to support my argument to adopt BDD as our standard method of choice? What counter arguments can you think of that could suggest that my wish to convert the team efforts to BDD might be in error? Yes, I'm happy to be proven wrong provided the argument is a sound one. NOTE: I am not advocating that we rewrite our tests in their entirety, but rather to simply start working in a different manner for all future testing work.

  Read the article

• Turn-Based RPG Battle Instance Layout For Larger Groups

  - by SoulBeaver

  What a title, eh? I'm currently designing a videogame; a turn-based RPG like Final Fantasy (because everybody knows Final Fantasy). It's a 2D sprite game. These are my ideas for combat: -The player has a group of 15 members (main character included) -During battle, five of the group are designated as active, and appear in the battle. -These five may be switched out at leisure, or when one of the five die. -At any time, the Waiting members can cast buffs, be healed by the active members, or perform special attacks. -Battles should contain 10+ monsters at least. I'm aiming for 20, but I'm not sure if that's possible yet. -Battles should feel larger than normal due to the interaction of Waiting members, active members and the increased amount of monsters per battle. -The player has two rows in which to put the Active members: front and back. -Depending on the implementation, I might allow comboing of player attacks and skills. These are just design ideas, so beware! I have not been able to test this out yet- I have no idea yet if any of these ideas bunched together will make for a compelling game. What sounds good on paper doesn't necessarily have to be good in practice! What I'm asking now is how to create the layout for this. My starting point are the battles in Final Fantasy VI, with up to 5-6 monsters on the left and the characters on the right- monsters on both sides if it's a pincer attack. However, this view would not work feasible with my goal of 20 monsters and 5 characters. All the monsters on the left would appear cluttered unless I scale them far far back. If I create a pincer-like map, then there would be no real pincer-attack possible. If I space the monsters out I force the player to scroll the screen- a game mechanic I've come across and not enjoyed imho. My question is: does anybody have any layouts or guides for designing battle maps in turn-based RPGs, especially with a larger number of enemies taken into consideration? How should it look? I am not asking for specific combat mechanics, just the layout for the moment.

  Read the article

• RTS Game Style Application [closed]

  - by Daniel Wynand van Wyk

  My question may seem somewhat odd, but I hope that my specifications will clarify EXACTLY what it is that I am after. I need some help choosing the right tooling for a particular endeavour. My background is in desktop application development and large back-end systems. I have worked primarily on the Microsoft stack using C# and the .Net framework. My goal is to develop a 2D, RTS style, interactive office simulation. The simulation will model various office spaces, office equipment, employees and their interactions with one another. The idea is to abstract the concept of an office completely. Under the hood the application will do many things that are nothing like a game. This includes P2P networking, VPN tunnelling, streaming video, instant messaging, document collaboration, remote screen sharing, file-sharing, virus scanning, VOIP, document scanning, faxing, emailing, distributed computing, content management and much more! A somewhat similar thing has been attempted by IBM, where they created a virtual office in second life. If their attempt was a game, the game-play would be notably horrible, to say the least! The users/players will drive and control my application through the various objects modelled in the simulation. A single application capable of performing all of these various tasks would be a nightmare to navigate for even the most expert user. Using the concept of a game, I can easily separate functionality by assigning them to objects that relate 1-1 with their real world counter-parts. This can greatly simplify computing for novice users, with many added benefits in terms of visibility, transparency of process and centralized configuration. My hope is to make complex computing tasks accessible to all kinds of users and to greatly reduce the cognitive load associated with using the many different utilities and applications inside office settings. The complexity is therefore limited to the complexity of the space in which you find yourself. I want the application to target as many platforms as possible and run on computers that have no accelerated graphics capabilities. The simulation won't contain any of the fancy eye-candy you find in modern games, to the contrary, my "game" will purposefully be clean and simple. The closest thing I could imagine would be an old game like "Theme Hospital" or the first instalment of "The Sims". All the content will be pre-created and not user-generated like Second Life. New functionality will be added via a plugin system. Given my background and nature of my "game", I would like to spend most of my time writing code that does not have to do with the simulated office, as the "game" is really just a glorified application menu. I have done much reading about existing engines, frameworks and tools. I need the help of an experienced game developer who has tried and tested various products over the years who can guide me in the right direction given my very particular needs. I would appreciate any help I can get!

  Read the article

• How to get better at solving Dynamic programming problems

  - by newbie

  I recently came across this question: "You are given a boolean expression consisting of a string of the symbols 'true', 'false', 'and', 'or', and 'xor'. Count the number of ways to parenthesize the expression such that it will evaluate to true. For example, there is only 1 way to parenthesize 'true and false xor true' such that it evaluates to true." I knew it is a dynamic programming problem so i tried to come up with a solution on my own which is as follows. Suppose we have a expression as A.B.C.....D where '.' represents any of the operations and, or, xor and the capital letters represent true or false. Lets say the number of ways for this expression of size K to produce a true is N. when a new boolean value E is added to this expression there are 2 ways to parenthesize this new expression 1. ((A.B.C.....D).E) ie. with all possible parenthesizations of A.B.C.....D we add E at the end. 2. (A.B.C.(D.E)) ie. evaluate D.E first and then find the number of ways this expression of size K can produce true. suppose T[K] is the number of ways the expression with size K produces true then T[k]=val1+val2+val3 where val1,val2,val3 are calculated as follows. 1)when E is grouped with D. i)It does not change the value of D ii)it inverses the value of D in the first case val1=T[K]=N.( As this reduces to the initial A.B.C....D expression ). In the second case re-evaluate dp[K] with value of D reversed and that is val1. 2)when E is grouped with the whole expression. //val2 contains the number of 'true' E will produce with expressions which gave 'true' among all parenthesized instances of A.B.C.......D i) if true.E = true then val2 = N ii) if true.E = false then val2 = 0 //val3 contains the number of 'true' E will produce with expressions which gave 'false' among all parenthesized instances of A.B.C.......D iii) if false.E=true then val3=( 2^(K-2) - N ) = M ie. number of ways the expression with size K produces a false [ 2^(K-2) is the number of ways to parenthesize an expression of size K ]. iv) if false.E=false then val3 = 0 This is the basic idea i had in mind but when i checked for its solution http://people.csail.mit.edu/bdean/6.046/dp/dp_9.swf the approach there was completely different. Can someone tell me what am I doing wrong and how can i get better at solving DP so that I can come up with solutions like the one given above myself. Thanks in advance.

  Read the article

• Binding MediaElement to a ViewModel in a Windows 8 Store App

  - by jdanforth

  If you want to play a video from your video-library in a MediaElement control of a Metro Windows Store App and tried to bind the Url of the video file as a source to the MediaElement control like this, you may have noticed it’s not working as well for you: <MediaElement Source="{Binding Url}" /> I have no idea why it’s not working, but I managed to get it going using  ContentControl instead: <ContentControl Content="{Binding Video}" /> The code behind for this is: protected override void OnNavigatedTo(NavigationEventArgs e) {     _viewModel = new VideoViewModel("video.mp4");     DataContext = _viewModel; } And the VideoViewModel looks like this: public class VideoViewModel {     private readonly MediaElement _video;     private readonly string _filename;       public VideoViewModel(string filename)     {         _filename = filename;         _video = new MediaElement { AutoPlay = true };         //don't load the stream until the control is ready         _video.Loaded += VideoLoaded;     }       public MediaElement Video     {         get { return _video; }     }       private async void VideoLoaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)     {         var file = await KnownFolders.VideosLibrary.GetFileAsync(_filename);         var stream = await file.OpenAsync(FileAccessMode.Read);         _video.SetSource(stream, file.FileType);     } } I had to wait for the MediaElement.Loaded event until I could load and set the video stream.

  Read the article

• How to send multiple MVP matrices to a vertex shader in OpenGL ES 2.0

  - by Carbon Crystal

  I'm working my way through optimizing the rendering of sprites in a 2D game using OpenGL ES and I've hit the limit of my knowledge when it comes to GLSL and vertex shaders. I have two large float buffers containing my vertex coordinates and texture coordinates (eventually this will be one buffer) for multiple sprites in order to perform a single glDrawArrays call. This works but I've hit a snag when it comes to passing the transformation matrix into the vertex shader. My shader code is: uniform mat4 u_MVPMatrix; attribute vec4 a_Position; attribute vec2 a_TexCoordinate; varying vec2 v_TexCoordinate; void main() { v_TexCoordinate = a_TexCoordinate; gl_Position = u_MVPMatrix * a_Position; } In Java (Android) I am using a FloatBuffer to store the vertex/texture data and this is provided to the shader like so: mGlEs20.glVertexAttribPointer(mVertexHandle, Globals.GL_POSITION_VERTEX_COUNT, GLES20.GL_FLOAT, false, 0, mVertexCoordinates); mGlEs20.glVertexAttribPointer(mTextureCoordinateHandle, Globals.GL_TEXTURE_VERTEX_COUNT, GLES20.GL_FLOAT, false, 0, mTextureCoordinates); (The Globals.GL_POSITION_VERTEX_COUNT etc are just integers with the value of 2 right now) And I'm passing the MVP (Model/View/Projection) matrix buffer like this: GLES20.glUniformMatrix4fv(mMVPMatrixHandle, 1, false, mModelCoordinates); (mModelCoordinates is a FloatBuffer containing 16-float sequences representing the MVP matrix for each sprite) This renders my scene but all the sprites share the same transformation, so it's obviously only picking the first 16 elements from the buffer which makes sense since I am passing in "1" as the second parameter. The documentation for this method says: "This should be 1 if the targeted uniform variable is not an array of matrices, and 1 or more if it is an array of matrices." So I tried modifying the shader with a fixed size array large enough to accomodate most of my scenarios: uniform mat4 u_MVPMatrix[1000]; But this lead to an error in the shader: cannot convert from 'uniform array of 4X4 matrix of float' to 'Position 4-component vector of float' This just seems wrong anyway as it's not clear to me how the shader would know when to transition to the next matrix anyway. Anyone have an idea how I can get my shader to pick up a different MVP matrix (i.e. the NEXT 16 floats) from my MVP buffer for every 4 vertices it encounters? (I am using GL_TRIANGLE_STRIP so each sprite has 4 vertices). Thanks!

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 564 565 566 567 568 569 570 571 572 573 574 575  | Next Page >