Search Results

Search found 16947 results on 678 pages for 'game play'.

Page 570/678 | < Previous Page | 566 567 568 569 570 571 572 573 574 575 576 577  | Next Page >

• How to progress far enough in a year [on hold]

  - by xCasper

  So I came to a realization the other day, I graduate in a year. I will have completed my four year degree in about two and a half (I went to a school that goes full time year round). Anyway, I want to get a job, as a programmer, when I graduate. The problem is, I feel like I am no where near ready. In the last year I cant say I have made any spectacular projects. I know that my advanced programming courses are coming up, but by the time I take them, I will be graduating in 6 months. Not nearly enough time to really take what I learn, apply it, and create something to show for myself. I want to push myself ahead of the game; mainly because my major is Computer Information Systems, so the focus is not programming. In fact, I only get, 4 programming classes. Before anyone says anything, CIS is the closest to a programming major at my school that I am able to do. So the questions come down to this: 1) What can I do to really step up the speed at which I progress (on my own) 2) Should I be aiming for a certain amount of projects in my "Portfolio." 2a) Should they be big projects? P.S: The language we have used in school in c++, I do take a Java class in the spring, and .net over Summer; if any of that matters for anything.

  Read the article

• Store scores for players and produce a high score list

  - by zrvan

  This question is derived from an interview question that I got for a job I was declined. I have asked for code review for my solution at the dedicated Stack Exchange site. But I hope this question is sufficiently rephrased and asked with a different motivation not to be a duplicate of the other question. Consider the following scenario: You should store player scores in the server back end of a game. The server is written in Java. Every score should be registered, that is, one player may have any number of scores for any number of levels. A high score list should be produced with the fifteen top scores for a given level, but only one score per user (to the effect that even if player X has the two highest scores for level Y, only the first position is counted and player Z has the second place). No information should be persisted and only Java 1.7+ standard libraries should be used. No third party libraries or frameworks are acceptable. With the number of players as the primary factor, what would be the best data structure in terms of scalability and concurrency? How would you access the structure to register a single score given a level and a player id? How would you access the structure to compile the high score list?

  Read the article

• What differences should I know? I just upgraded to 13.10 from 10.10 [on hold]

  - by test

  I ran Ubuntu 10.10 for a long time because I liked the menu style. The change in GUI with the upgrades drove me nuts but I finally gave in and downloaded Saucy Salamander 13.10 x64. It's a fresh install running as a virtual machine guest in VMWare Workstation 9 on a Windows 7 x64 host. Well it looks like all those icons are still there on the side which I would be OK with if there were some way to bring back my menus. I have no organized way of accessing things now, or do I? That is the purpose for this question, maybe there is some functionality I just can't find but is there. Also all my fine tuning was gone. I used to be able to change DPI but that's gone. I went ahead and installed Unity Tweak Tool via sudo apt-get install unity-tweak-tool but I couldn't find an icon for it after I installed it.. because again no menu. So I did a search for it and found it there. I've changed the font and which side the window buttons appear on which is good enough for now. Anyway... any suggestions you may have for me I'm game. I'm a Windows 7 user primarily but I use Ubuntu every once in a while. I really liked the old style where everything was categorized like for Applications there was Accessories, Games, Graphics, Internet, Office, Sound & Video, Wine.

  Read the article

• iPhone Serialization problem

  - by Jenicek

  Hi, I need to save my own created class to file, I found on the internet, that good approach is to use NSKeyedArchiver and NSKeyedUnarchiver My class definition looks like this: @interface Game : NSObject <NSCoding> { NSMutableString *strCompleteWord; NSMutableString *strWordToGuess; NSMutableArray *arGuessedLetters; //This array stores characters NSMutableArray *arGuessedLettersPos; //This array stores CGRects NSInteger iScore; NSInteger iLives; NSInteger iRocksFallen; BOOL bGameCompleted; BOOL bGameOver; } I've implemented methods initWithCoder: and encodeWithCoder: this way: - (id)initWithCoder:(NSCoder *)coder { if([coder allowsKeyedCoding]) { strCompleteWord = [[coder decodeObjectForKey:@"CompletedWord"] copy]; strWordToGuess = [[coder decodeObjectForKey:@"WordToGuess"] copy]; arGuessedLetters = [[coder decodeObjectForKey:@"GuessedLetters"] retain]; // arGuessedLettersPos = [[coder decodeObjectForKey:@"GuessedLettersPos"] retain]; iScore = [coder decodeIntegerForKey:@"Score"]; iLives = [coder decodeIntegerForKey:@"Lives"]; iRocksFallen = [coder decodeIntegerForKey:@"RocksFallen"]; bGameCompleted = [coder decodeBoolForKey:@"GameCompleted"]; bGameOver = [coder decodeBoolForKey:@"GameOver"]; } else { strCompleteWord = [[coder decodeObject] retain]; strWordToGuess = [[coder decodeObject] retain]; arGuessedLetters = [[coder decodeObject] retain]; // arGuessedLettersPos = [[coder decodeObject] retain]; [coder decodeValueOfObjCType:@encode(NSInteger) at:&iScore]; [coder decodeValueOfObjCType:@encode(NSInteger) at:&iLives]; [coder decodeValueOfObjCType:@encode(NSInteger) at:&iRocksFallen]; [coder decodeValueOfObjCType:@encode(BOOL) at:&bGameCompleted]; [coder decodeValueOfObjCType:@encode(BOOL) at:&bGameOver]; } return self; } - (void)encodeWithCoder:(NSCoder *)coder { if([coder allowsKeyedCoding]) { [coder encodeObject:strCompleteWord forKey:@"CompleteWord"]; [coder encodeObject:strWordToGuess forKey:@"WordToGuess"]; [coder encodeObject:arGuessedLetters forKey:@"GuessedLetters"]; //[coder encodeObject:arGuessedLettersPos forKey:@"GuessedLettersPos"]; [coder encodeInteger:iScore forKey:@"Score"]; [coder encodeInteger:iLives forKey:@"Lives"]; [coder encodeInteger:iRocksFallen forKey:@"RocksFallen"]; [coder encodeBool:bGameCompleted forKey:@"GameCompleted"]; [coder encodeBool:bGameOver forKey:@"GameOver"]; } else { [coder encodeObject:strCompleteWord]; [coder encodeObject:strWordToGuess]; [coder encodeObject:arGuessedLetters]; //[coder encodeObject:arGuessedLettersPos]; [coder encodeValueOfObjCType:@encode(NSInteger) at:&iScore]; [coder encodeValueOfObjCType:@encode(NSInteger) at:&iLives]; [coder encodeValueOfObjCType:@encode(NSInteger) at:&iRocksFallen]; [coder encodeValueOfObjCType:@encode(BOOL) at:&bGameCompleted]; [coder encodeValueOfObjCType:@encode(BOOL) at:&bGameOver]; } } And I use these methods to archive and unarchive data: [NSKeyedArchiver archiveRootObject:currentGame toFile:strPath]; Game *currentGame = [NSKeyedUnarchiver unarchiveObjectWithFile:strPath]; I have two problems. 1) As you can see, lines with arGuessedLettersPos is commented, it's because every time I try to encode this array, error comes up(this archiver cannot encode structs), and this array is used for storing CGRect structs. I've seen solution on the internet. The thing is, that every CGRect in the array is converted to an NSString (using NSStringFromCGRect()) and then saved. Is it a good approach? 2)This is bigger problem for me. Even if I comment this line and then run the code successfully, then save(archive) the data and then try to load (unarchive) them, no data is loaded. There aren't any error but currentGame object does not have data that should be loaded. Could you please give me some advice? This is first time I'm using archivers and unarchivers. Thanks a lot for every reply.

  Read the article

• Using SDL to replace colors using SDL Color Keys

  - by Shawn B

  Hey, I am working an a simple Roguelike game, and using SDL as the display. The Graphics for the game is an image of Codepage 437, with the background being black, and the font white. Instead of using many seperate image files that are already colored, I want to use one image file, and replace the colors when it is being loaded into memory. The code to split the codepage into a sprite sheet works properly, but when attempting to print in color, everything comes out in white. I had it working the past, but somehow I broke the code when changing it from change the color at print, to change the color on load. Here is the code to load the image: SDL_Surface *Screen,*Font[2]; SDL_Rect Character[256]; Uint8 ScreenY,ScreenX; Uint16 PrintX,PrintY,ScreenSizeY,ScreenSizeX; Uint32 Color[2]; void InitDisplay() { if(SDL_Init(SDL_INIT_VIDEO) == -1) { printf("SDL Init failed\n"); return; } ScreenSizeY = 600; ScreenSizeX = 800; Screen = SDL_SetVideoMode(ScreenSizeX,ScreenSizeY,32,SDL_HWSURFACE | SDL_RESIZABLE); SDL_WM_SetCaption("Alpha",NULL); SDL_Surface *Load; Load = IMG_Load("resource/font.png"); Font[0] = SDL_DisplayFormat(Load); SDL_FreeSurface(Load); Color[0] = SDL_MapRGB(Font[0]->format,255,255,255); Color[1] = SDL_MapRGB(Font[0]->format,255,0,0); Uint8 i,j,k = 0; PrintX = 0; PrintY = 0; for(i = 0; i < 16; i++) { for(j = 0; j < 16; j++) { Character[k].x = PrintX; Character[k].y = PrintY; Character[k].w = 8; Character[k].h = 12; k++; PrintX += 8; } PrintX = 0; PrintY += 12; } PrintX = 0; PrintY = 0; for(i = 1; i < 2; i++) { Font[i] = SDL_DisplayFormat(Font[0]); SDL_SetColorKey(Font[i],SDL_SRCCOLORKEY,Color[i]); SDL_FillRect(Font[i],&Font[i]->clip_rect,Color[i]); SDL_BlitSurface(Font[0],NULL,Font[i],NULL); SDL_SetColorKey(Font[0],0,Color[0]); } } The problem is with the last for loop above. I can't figure out why it isn't working. Any help is greatly appreciated!

  Read the article

• Placing Varibles into an external Sheet

  - by Leslie Peer

  Trying to Build an Online D&d program which stores the character info into Tables my problem is the game works just fine while your playing but as soon as you exit game all varibles are lost which means you have to restart from scratch the next time you log on... So this is a Two Fold Question What is the Best type of External Sheet to save it on... and two How to access sheet for saving and Loading Below are Varibles <SCRIPT> Name1="Tabor Bloomfield"; Name2="Sam Wrightfield"; Name3="Gavin Hartfild"; Name4="Gail Quickfoot"; Name5="Robert Gragorian"; Name6="Peter Shain"; Class1="MagicUser"; Class2="Fighter"; Class3="Fighter"; Class4="Thief"; Class5="Cleric"; Class6="Fighter"; Level1=23; Level2=1; Level3=1; Level4=2; Level5=2; Level6=1; Hpts1=145; Hpts2=14; Hpts3=13; Hpts4=8; Hpts5=12; Hpts6=15; Armor1="Robe of Protection +5"; Armor2="Splinted Armor"; Armor3="Chain Armor"; Armor4="Leather Armor"; Armor5="Chain Armor"; Armor6="Splinted Armor"; Ac1a=5; Ac2a=3; Ac3a=3; Ac4a=4; Ac5a=2; Ac6a=3; Armor1b="Ring of Protection +5"; Armor2b="Small Shield"; Armor3b="Small Shield"; Armor4b="Wooden Shield"; Armor5b="Large Shield"; Armor6b="Small Shield"; Ac1b=5; Ac2b=1; Ac3b=1; Ac4b=1; Ac5b=1; Ac6b=1; Str1=21; Str2=16; Str3=14; Str4=13; Str5=14; Str6=13; Int1=19; Int2=11; Int3=12; Int4=13; Int5=14; Int6=13; Wis1=18; Wis2=12; Wis3=14; Wis4=13; Wis5=14; Wis6=12; Dex1=19; Dex2=14; Dex3=13; Dex4=15; Dex5=14; Dex6=12; Con1=19; Con2=15; Con3=16; Con4=13; Con5=12; Con6=10; Chr1=21; Chr2=14; Chr3=13; Chr4=12; Chr5=14; Chr6=13; </SCRIPT> File name ="gamestats" Path="trellian Webpage/droves E and F/gamestats have tryed html Page,Javascript,Creating a serperate table page and putting the varibles into cells...But at a lost on how to arrive at a solution

  Read the article

• Need help looping through text file in Objective-C and looping through multidimensional array of dat

  - by Fulvio

  I have a question regarding an iPhone game I'm developing. At the moment, below is the code I'm using to currently I loop through my multidimensional array and position bricks accordingly on my scene. Instead of having multiple two dimensional arrays within my code as per the following (gameLevel1). Ideally, I'd like to read from a text file within my project and loop through the values in that instead. Please take into account that I'd like to have more than one level within my game (possibly 20) so my text file would have to have some sort of separator line item to determine what level I want to render. I was then thinking of having some sort of method that I call and that method would take the level number I'm interested in rendering. e.g. Method to call level based on separator? -(void)renderLevel:(NSString) levelNumber; e.g. Text file example? #LEVEL_ONE# 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0 #LEVEL_TWO# 1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1 Code that I'm currently using: int gameLevel[17][9] = { { 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0 } }; for (int row=0; row < 17; row++) { for (int col=0; col < 9; col++) { thisBrickValue = gameLevel[row][col]; xOffset = 35 * floor(col); yOffset = 22 * floor(row); switch (thisBrickValue) { case 0: brick = [[CCSprite spriteWithFile:@"block0.png"] autorelease]; break; case 1: brick = [[CCSprite spriteWithFile:@"block1.png"] autorelease]; break; } brick.position = ccp(xOffset, yOffset); [self addChild:brick]; } }

  Read the article

• Fatal error on a non-object

  - by Chris Leah

  Hey, so I have created a function to check the DB for unique entries, but when I call the function it doesn't seem to work and gives me a fatal error any ideas ? Thanks :) //Check for unique entries function checkUnique($table, $field, $compared) { $query = $mysqli->query('SELECT '.$mysqli->real_escape_string($field).' FROM '.$mysqli->real_escape_string($table).' WHERE "'.$mysqli->real_escape_string($field).'" = "'.$mysqli->real_escape_string($compared).'"'); if(!$query){ return TRUE; } else { return FALSE; } } The page calling it..... //Start session session_start(); //Check if the session is already set, if so re-direct to the game if(isset($_SESSION['id'], $_SESSION['logged_in'])){ Header('Location: ../main/index.php'); }; //Require database connection require_once('../global/includes/db.php'); require_once('../global/functions/functions.php'); //Check if the form has been submitted if (isset($_POST['signup'])){ //Validate input if (!empty($_POST['username']) && !empty($_POST['password']) && $_POST['password']==$_POST['password_confirm'] && !empty($_POST['email']) && validateEmail($_POST['email']) == TRUE && checkUnique('users', 'email', $_POST['email']) == TRUE && checkUnique('users', 'username', $_POST['username']) == TRUE) { //Insert user to the database $insert_user = $mysqli->query('INSERT INTO (`username, `password`, `email`, `verification_key`) VALUES ("'.$mysqli->real_escape_string($_POST['username']).'", "'.$mysqli-real_escape_string(md5($_POST['password'])).'", "'.$mysqli->real_escape_string($_POST['email']).'", "'.randomString('alnum', 32). '"') or die($mysqli->error()); //Get user information $getUser = $mysqli->query('SELECT id, username, email, verification_key FROM users WHERE username = "'.$mysqli->real_escape_string($_POST['username']).'"' or die($mysqli->error())); //Check if the $getUser returns true if ($getUser->num_rows == 1) { //Fetch associated fields to this user $row = $getUser->fetch_assoc(); //Set mail() variables $headers = 'From: [email protected]'."\r\n". 'Reply-To: [email protected]'."\r\n". 'X-Mailer: PHP/'.phpversion(); $subject = 'Activate your account (Music Battles.net)'; //Set verification email message $message = 'Dear '.$row['username'].', I would like to welcome you to Music Battles. Although in order to enjoy the gmae you must first activate your account. \n\n Click the following link: http://www.musicbattles.net/home/confirm.php?id='.$row['id'].'key='.$row['verification_key'].'\n Thanks for signing up, enjoy the game! \n Music Battles Team'; //Attempts to send the email if (mail($row['email'], $subject, $message, $headers)) { $msg = '<p class="success">Accound has been created, please go activate it from your email.</p>'; } else { $error = '<p class="error">The account was created but your email was not sent.</p>'; } } else { $error = '<p class="error">Your account was not created.</p>'; } } else { $error = '<p class="error">One or more fields contain non or invalid data.</p>'; } } Erorr.... Fatal error: Call to a member function query() on a non-object in /home/mbattles/public_html/global/functions/functions.php on line 5

  Read the article

• How to get dropdown menu to open/close on click rather than hover?

  - by TankDriver

  Hello! I am very new to java and ajax/jquery and have been working on trying to get a script to open and close the drop menu on click rather that hover. The menu in question is found on http://www.gamefriction.com/Coded/ and is the dark menu on the right side under the header. I would like it to open and close like the other menu that is further below it (it is light gray and is in the "Select Division" module). The gray menu is part of a menu and the language menu is not. I have a jquery import as well which can be found in the view source of the above link. My Java: <script type="text/javascript"> /* Language Selector */ $(function() { $("#lang-selector li").hover(function() { $('ul:first',this).css('display', 'block'); }, function() { $('ul:first',this).css('display', 'none'); }); }); $(document).ready(function(){ /* Navigation */ $('.subnav-game').hide(); $('.subnav-game:eq(0)').show(); $('.preorder-type').hide(); $('.preorder-type:eq(3)').show(); }); </script> My CSS: #lang-selector { font-size: 11px; height: 21px; margin: 7px auto 17px auto; width: 186px; } #lang-selector span { color: #999; float: left; margin: 4px 0 0 87px; padding-right: 4px; text-align: right; } #lang-selector ul { float: left; list-style: none; margin: 0; padding: 0; } #lang-selector ul li a { padding: 3px 10px 1px 10px; } #lang-selector ul, #lang-selector a { width: 186px; } #lang-selector ul ul { display: none; position: absolute; } #lang-selector ul ul li { border-top: 1px solid #666; float: left; position: relative; } #lang-selector a { background: url("http://www.gamefriction.com/Coded/images/language_bg.png") no-repeat; color: #666; display: block; font-size: 10px; height: 17px; padding: 4px 10px 0 10px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; width: 166px; } #lang-selector ul ul li a { background: #333; color: #999; } #lang-selector ul ul li a:hover { background: #c4262c; color: #fff; } My HTML: <div id="lang-selector"> <ul> <li> <a href="#">Choose a Language</a> <ul> <li><a href="?iw_lang=en">English</a></li> <li><a href="?iw_lang=de">Deutsch</a></li> <li><a href="?iw_lang=es">Espa&ntilde;ol</a></li> <li><a href="?iw_lang=fr">Fran&ccedil;ais</a></li> <li><a href="?iw_lang=it">Italiano</a></li> </ul> </li> </ul> </div> Thanks!

  Read the article

• Need help with a possible memory management problem(leak) regarding NSMutableArray

  - by user309030

  Hi, I'm a beginner level programmer trying to make a game app for the iphone and I've encountered a possible issue with the memory management (exc_bad_access) of my program so far. I've searched and read dozens of articles regarding memory management (including apple's docs) but I still can't figure out what exactly is wrong with my codes. So I would really appreciate it if someone can help clear up the mess I made for myself. - (void)viewDidLoad { [super viewDidLoad]; self.gameState = gameStatePaused; fencePoleArray = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init]; fencePoleImageArray = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init]; fenceImageArray = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init]; mainField = CGRectMake(10, 35, 310, 340); .......... [NSTimer scheduledTimerWithTimeInterval:0.05 target:self selector:@selector(gameLoop) userInfo:nil repeats:YES]; } So basically, the player touches the screen to set up the fences/poles -(void)touchesBegan:(NSSet *)touches withEvent:(UIEvent *)event { if(.......) { ....... } else { UITouch *touch = [[event allTouches] anyObject]; currentTapLoc = [touch locationInView:touch.view]; NSLog(@"%i, %i", (int)currentTapLoc.x, (int)currentTapLoc.y); if(CGRectContainsPoint(mainField, currentTapLoc)) { if([self checkFence]) { onFencePole++; //this 3 set functions adds their respective objects into the 3 NSMutableArrays using addObject: [self setFencePole]; [self setFenceImage]; [self setFencePoleImage]; ....... } } else { ....... } } } } The setFence function (setFenceImage and setFencePoleImage is similar to this) -(void)setFencePole { Fence *fencePole; if (!elecFence) { fencePole = [[Fence alloc] initFence:onFencePole fenceType:1 fencePos:currentTapLoc]; } else { fencePole = [[Fence alloc] initFence:onFencePole fenceType:2 fencePos:currentTapLoc]; } [fencePoleArray addObject:fencePole]; [fencePole release]; and whenever I press a button in the game, endOpenState is called to clear away all the extra images(fence/poles) on the screen and also to remove all existing objects in the 3 NSMutableArray -(void)endOpenState { ........ int xMax = [fencePoleArray count]; int yMax = [fenceImageArray count]; for (int x = 0; x < xMax; x++) { [[fencePoleImageArray objectAtIndex:x] removeFromSuperview]; } for (int y = 0; y < yMax; y++) { [[fenceImageArray objectAtIndex:y] removeFromSuperview]; } [fencePoleArray removeAllObjects]; [fencePoleImageArray removeAllObjects]; [fenceImageArray removeAllObjects]; ........ } The crash happens here at the checkFence function. -(BOOL)checkFence { if (onFencePole == 0) { return YES; } else if (onFencePole >= 1 && onFencePole < currentMaxFencePole - 1) { CGPoint tempPoint1 = currentTapLoc; CGPoint tempPoint2 = [[fencePoleArray objectAtIndex:onFencePole-1] returnPos]; // the crash happens at this line if ([self checkDistance:tempPoint1 point2:tempPoint2]) { return YES; } else { return NO; } } else if (onFencePole == currentMaxFencePole - 1) { ...... } else { return NO; } } What I'm thinking of is that fencePoleArray got messed up when I used [fencePoleArray removeAllObjects] because it doesn't crash when I comment it out. It would really be great if someone can explain to me what went wrong. And thanks in advance.

  Read the article

• Dialog created after first becomes unresponsive unless created first?

  - by Justin Sterling

  After creating the initial dialog box that works perfectly fine, I create another dialog box when the Join Game button is pressed. The dialog box is created and show successfully, however I am unable to type in the edit box or even press or exit the dialog. Does anyone understand how to fix this or why it happens? I made sure the dialog box itself was not the problem by creating and displaying it from the main loop in the application. It worked fine when I created it that way. So why does it error when being created from another dialog? My code is below. This code is for the DLGPROC function that each dialog uses. #define WIN32_LEAN_AND_MEAN #include "Windows.h" #include ".\Controllers\Menu\MenuSystem.h" #include ".\Controllers\Game Controller\GameManager.h" #include ".\Controllers\Network\Network.h" #include "resource.h" #include "main.h" using namespace std; extern GameManager g; extern bool men; NET_Socket server; extern HWND d; HWND joinDlg; char ip[64]; void JoinMenu(){ joinDlg = CreateDialog(g_hInstance, MAKEINTRESOURCE(IDD_GETADDRESSINFO), NULL, (DLGPROC)GameJoinDialogPrompt); SetFocus(joinDlg); // ShowWindow(joinDlg, SW_SHOW); ShowWindow(d, SW_HIDE); } LRESULT CALLBACK GameJoinDialogPrompt(HWND Dialogwindow, UINT Message, WPARAM wParam, LPARAM lParam){ switch(Message){ case WM_COMMAND:{ switch(LOWORD(wParam)){ case IDCONNECT:{ GetDlgItemText(joinDlg, IDC_IP, ip, 63); if(server.ConnectToServer(ip, 7890, NET_UDP) == NET_INVALID_SOCKET){ LogString("Failed to connect to server! IP: %s", ip); MessageBox(NULL, "Failed to connect!", "Error", MB_OK); ShowWindow(joinDlg, SW_SHOW); break; }   } LogString("Connected!"); break; case IDCANCEL: ShowWindow(d, SW_SHOW); ShowWindow(joinDlg, SW_HIDE); break; } break; } case WM_CLOSE: PostQuitMessage(0); break; } return 0; } LRESULT CALLBACK GameMainDialogPrompt(HWND Dialogwindow, UINT Message, WPARAM wParam, LPARAM lParam){ switch(Message){ case WM_PAINT:{ PAINTSTRUCT ps; RECT rect; HDC hdc = GetDC(Dialogwindow);    hdc = BeginPaint(Dialogwindow, &ps); GetClientRect (Dialogwindow, &rect); FillRect(hdc, &rect, CreateSolidBrush(RGB(0, 0, 0)));    EndPaint(Dialogwindow, &ps);    break;  } case WM_COMMAND:{ switch(LOWORD(wParam)){ case IDC_HOST: if(!NET_Initialize()){ break; } if(server.CreateServer(7890, NET_UDP) != 0){ MessageBox(NULL, "Failed to create server.", "Error!", MB_OK); PostQuitMessage(0); return -1; } ShowWindow(d, SW_HIDE); break; case IDC_JOIN:{ JoinMenu(); } break; case IDC_EXIT: PostQuitMessage(0); break; default: break; } break; } return 0; } } I call the first dialog using the below code void EnterMenu(){ // joinDlg = CreateDialog(g_hInstance, MAKEINTRESOURCE(IDD_GETADDRESSINFO), g_hWnd, (DLGPROC)GameJoinDialogPrompt);// d = CreateDialog(g_hInstance, MAKEINTRESOURCE(IDD_SELECTMENU), g_hWnd, (DLGPROC)GameMainDialogPrompt); } The dialog boxes are not DISABLED by default, and they are visible by default. Everything is set to be active on creation and no code deactivates the items on the dialog or the dialog itself.

  Read the article

• iOS: Interpreted code - where do they draw the line?

  - by d7samurai

  Apple's iOS developer guidelines state: 3.3.2 — An Application may not itself install or launch other executable code by any means, including without limitation through the use of a plug-in architecture, calling other frameworks, other APIs or otherwise. No interpreted code may be downloaded or used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple’s Documented APIs and built-in interpreter(s). Assuming that downloading data - like XML and images (or a game level description), for example - at run-time is allowed (as is my impression), I am wondering where they draw the line between "data" and "code". Picture the scenario of an app that delivers interactive "presentations" to users (like a survey, for instance). Presentations are added continuously to the server and different presentations are made available to different users, so they cannot be part of the initial app download (this is the whole point). They are described in XML format, but being interactive, they might contain conditional branching of this sort (shown in pseudo form to exemplify): <options id="Gender"> <option value="1">Male</option> <option value="2">Female</option> </options> <branches id="Gender"> <branch value="1"> <image src="Man" /> </branch> <branch value="2"> <image src="Woman" /> </branch> </branches> When the presentation is "played" within the app, the above would be presented in two steps. First a selection screen where the user can click on either of the two choices presented ("Male" or "Female"). Next, an image will be [downloaded dynamically] and displayed based on the choice made in the previous step. Now, it's easy to imagine additional tags describing further logic still. For example, a containing tag could be added: <loop count="3"> <options... /> <branches... /> </loop> The result here being that the selection screen / image screen pair would be sequentially presented three times over, of course. Or imagine some description of a level in a game. It's easy to view that as passive "data", but if it includes, say, several doorways that the user can go through and with various triggers, traps and points attached to them etc - isn't that the same as using a script - or, indeed, interpreted code - to describe options and their conditional responses? Assuming that the interpretation engine for this XML data is already present in the app and that such presentations can only be consumed (not created or edited) in the app, how would this fare against Apple's iOS guidelines? Doesn't XML basically constitute a scripting language (couldn't any interpreted programming language simply be described by XML) in this sense? Would it be OK if the proprietary scripting language (ref the XML used above) was strictly sandboxed (how can they tell?) and not given access to the operating system in any way (but able to download content dynamically - and upload results to the authoring server)? Where does the line go?

  Read the article

• Android - determine specific locations (X,Y coordinates) on a Bitmap on different resolutions?

  - by Mike

  My app that I am trying to create is a board game. It will have one bitmap as the board and pieces that will move to different locations on the board. The general design of the board is square, has a certain number of columns and rows and has a border for looks. Think of a chess board or scrabble board. Before using bitmaps, I first created the board and boarder by manually drawing it - drawLine & drawRect. I decided how many pixels in width the border would be based on the screen width and height passed in on "onSizeChanged". The remaining screen I divided by the number of columns or rows I needed. For examples sake, let's say the screen dimensions are 102 x 102. I may have chosen to set the border at 1 and set the number of rows & columns at 10. That would leave 100 x 100 left (reduced by two to account for the top & bottom border, as well as left/right border). Then with columns and rows set to 10, that would leave 10 pixels left for both height and width. No matter what screen size is passed in, I store exactly how many pixels in width the boarder is and the height & width of each square on the board. I know exactly what location on the screen to move the pieces to based on a simple formula and I know exactly what cell a user touched to make a move. Now how does that work with bitmaps? Meaning, if I create 3 different background bitmaps, once for each density, won't they still be resized to fit each devices screen resolution, because from what I read there were not just 3 screen resolutions, but 5 and now with tablets - even more. If I or Android scales the bitmaps up or down to fit the current devices screen size, how will I know how wide the border is scaled to and the dimensions of each square in order to figure out where to move a piece or calculate where a player touched. So far the examples I have looked at just show how to scale the overall bitmap and get the overall bitmaps width and height. But, I don't see how to tell how many pixels wide or tall each part of the board would be after it was scaled. When I draw each line and rectangle myself based in the screen dimensions from onSizeChanged, I always know these dimensions. If anyone has any sample code or a URL to point me to that I can a read about this with bitmaps, I would appreciate it. Thanks, --Mike BTW, here is some sample code (very simplified) on how I know the dimensions of my game board (border and squares) no matter the screen size. Now I just need to know how to do this with the board as a bitmap that gets scaled to any screen size. @Override protected void onSizeChanged(int w, int h, int oldw, int oldh) { intScreenWidth = w; intScreenHeight = h; // Set Border width - my real code changes this value based on the dimensions of w // and h that are passed in. In other words bigger screens get a slightly larger // border. intOuterBorder = 1; /** Reserve part of the board for the boardgame and part for player controls & score My real code forces this to be square, but this is good enough to get the point across. **/ floatBoardHeight = intScreenHeight / 4 * 3; // My real code actually causes floatCellWidth and floatCellHeight to // be equal (Square). floatCellWidth = (intScreenWidth - intOuterBorder * 2 ) / intNumColumns; floatCellHeight = (floatBoardHeight - intOuterBorder * 2) / intNumRows; super.onSizeChanged(w, h, oldw, oldh); }

  Read the article

• Are all <canvas> tag dimensions in pixels?

  - by Simon Omega

  Are all tag dimensions in pixels? I am asking because I understood them to be. But my math is broken or I am just not grasping something here. I have been doing python mostly and just jumped back into Java Scripting. If I am just doing something stupid let me know. For a game I am writing, I wanted to have a blocky gradient. I have the following: HTML <canvas id="heir"></canvas> CSS @media screen { body { font-size: 12pt } /* Game Rendering Space */ canvas { width: 640px; height: 480px; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px; } } JavaScript (Shortened) function testDraw ( thecontext ) { var myblue = 255; thecontext.save(); // Save All Settings (Before this Function was called) for (var i = 0; i < 480; i = i + 10 ) { if (myblue.toString(16).length == 1) { thecontext.fillStyle = "#00000" + myblue.toString(16); } else { thecontext.fillStyle = "#0000" + myblue.toString(16); } thecontext.fillRect(0, i, 640, 10); myblue = myblue - 2; }; thecontext.restore(); // Restore Settings to Save Point (Removing Styles, etc...) } function main () { var targetcontext = document.getElementById(“main”).getContext("2d"); testDraw(targetcontext); } To me this should produce a series of 640w by 10h pixel bars. In Google Chrome and Fire Fox I get 15 bars. To me that means ( 480 / 15 ) is 32 pixel high bars. So I change the code to: function testDraw ( thecontext ) { var myblue = 255; thecontext.save(); // Save All Settings (Before this Function was called) for (var i = 0; i < 16; i++ ) { if (myblue.toString(16).length == 1) { thecontext.fillStyle = "#00000" + myblue.toString(16); } else { thecontext.fillStyle = "#0000" + myblue.toString(16); } thecontext.fillRect(0, (i * 10), 640, 10); myblue = myblue - 10; }; thecontext.restore(); // Restore Settings to Save Point (Removing Styles, etc...) } And get a true 32 pixel height result for comparison. Other than the fact that the first code snippet has shades of blue rendering in non-visible portions of the they are measuring 32 pixels. Now back to the Original Java Code... If I inspect the tag in Chrome it reports 640 x 480. If I inspect it in Fire Fox it reports 640 x 480. BUT! Fire Fox exports the original code to png at 300 x 150 (which is 15 rows of 10). Is it some how being resized to 640 x 480 by the CSS instead of being set to a true 640 x 480? Why, how, what? O_o I confused...

  Read the article

• How to maintain GridPane's fixed-size after adding elemnts dynamically

  - by Eviatar G.

  I need to create board game that can be dynamically change. Its size can be 5x5, 6x6, 7x7 or 8x8. I am jusing JavaFX with NetBeans and Scene builder for the GUI. When the user choose board size greater than 5x5 this is what happens: This is the template on the scene builder before adding cells dynamically: To every cell in the GridPane I am adding StackPane + label of the cell number: @FXML GridPane boardGame; public void CreateBoard() { int boardSize = m_Engine.GetBoard().GetBoardSize(); int num = boardSize * boardSize; int maxColumns = m_Engine.GetNumOfCols(); int maxRows = m_Engine.GetNumOfRows(); for(int row = 0; row < maxRows ; row++) { for(int col = maxColumns - 1; col >= 0 ; col--) { StackPane stackPane = new StackPane(); stackPane.setPrefSize(150.0, 200.0); stackPane.getChildren().add(new Label(String.valueOf(num))); boardGame.add(stackPane, col, row); num--; } } boardGame.setGridLinesVisible(true); boardGame.autosize(); } The problem is the stack panes's size on the GridPane are getting smaller. I tried to set them equal minimum and maximum size but it didn't help they are still getting smaller. I searched on the web but didn't realy find same problem as mine. The only similar problem to mine was found here: Dynamically add elements to a fixed-size GridPane in JavaFX But his suggestion is to use TilePane and I need to use GridPane because this is a board game and it more easier to use GridPane when I need to do tasks such as getting to cell on row = 1 and column = 2 for example. EDIT: I removed the GridPane from the FXML and created it manually on the Controller but now it print a blank board: @FXML GridPane boardGame; public void CreateBoard() { int boardSize = m_Engine.GetBoard().GetBoardSize(); int num = boardSize * boardSize; int maxColumns = m_Engine.GetNumOfCols(); int maxRows = m_Engine.GetNumOfRows(); boardGame = new GridPane(); boardGame.setAlignment(Pos.CENTER); Collection<StackPane> stackPanes = new ArrayList<StackPane>(); for(int row = 0; row < maxRows ; row++) { for(int col = maxColumns - 1; col >= 0 ; col--) { StackPane stackPane = new StackPane(); stackPane.setPrefSize(150.0, 200.0); stackPane.getChildren().add(new Label(String.valueOf(num))); boardGame.add(stackPane, col, row); stackPanes.add(stackPane); num--; } } this.buildGridPane(boardSize); boardGame.setGridLinesVisible(true); boardGame.autosize(); boardGamePane.getChildren().addAll(stackPanes); } public void buildGridPane(int i_NumOfRowsAndColumns) { RowConstraints rowConstraint; ColumnConstraints columnConstraint; for(int index = 0 ; index < i_NumOfRowsAndColumns; index++) { rowConstraint = new RowConstraints(3, Control.USE_COMPUTED_SIZE, Double.POSITIVE_INFINITY, Priority.ALWAYS, VPos.CENTER, true); boardGame.getRowConstraints().add(rowConstraint); columnConstraint = new ColumnConstraints(3, Control.USE_COMPUTED_SIZE, Double.POSITIVE_INFINITY, Priority.ALWAYS, HPos.CENTER, true); boardGame.getColumnConstraints().add(columnConstraint); } }

  Read the article

• SQLAuthority News – SafePeak’s SQL Server Performance Contest – Winners

  - by pinaldave

  SafePeak, the unique automated SQL performance acceleration and performance tuning software vendor, announced the winners of their SQL Performance Contest 2011. The contest quite unique: the writer of the best / most interesting and most community liked “performance story” would win an expensive gadget. The judges were the community DBAs that could participating and Like’ing stories and could also win expensive prizes. Robert Pearl SQL MVP, was the contest supervisor. I liked most of the stories and decided then to contact SafePeak and suggested to participate in the give-away and they have gladly accepted the same. The winner of best story is: Jason Brimhall (USA) with a story about a proc with a fair amount of business logic. Congratulations Jason! The 3 participants won the second prize of $100 gift card on amazon.com are: Michael Corey (USA), Hakim Ali (USA) and Alex Bernal (USA). And 5 participants won a printed copy of a book of mine (Book Reviews of SQL Wait Stats Joes 2 Pros: SQL Performance Tuning Techniques Using Wait Statistics, Types & Queues) are: Patrick Kansa (USA), Wagner Bianchi (USA), Riyas.V.K (India), Farzana Patwa (USA) and Wagner Crivelini (Brazil). The winners are welcome to send safepeak their mail address to receive the prizes (to “info ‘at’ safepeak.com”). Also SafePeak team asked me to welcome you all to continue sending stories, simply because they (and we all) like to read interesting stuff) as well as to send them ideas for future contests. You can do it from here: www.safepeak.com/SQL-Performance-Contest-2011/Submit-Story Congratulations to everybody! I found this very funny video about SafePeak: It looks like someone (maybe the vendor) played with video’s once and created this non-commercial like video: SafePeak dynamic caching is an immediate plug-n-play performance acceleration and scalability solution for cloud, hosted and business SQL server applications. By caching in memory result sets of queries and stored procedures, while keeping all those cache correct and up to date using unique patent pending technology, SafePeak can fix SQL performance problems and bottlenecks of most applications – most importantly: without actual code changes. By the way, I checked their website prior this contest announcement and noticed that they are running these days a special end year promotion giving between 30% to 45% discounts. Since the installation is quick and full testing can be done within couple of days – those have the need (performance problems) and have budget leftovers: I suggest you hurry. A free fully functional trial is here: www.safepeak.com/download, while those that want to start with a quote should ping here www.safepeak.com/quote. Good luck! Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Performance, SQL Puzzle, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

  Read the article

• SQL SERVER – Remove Debug Button in SSMS – SQL in Sixty Seconds #020 – Video

  - by pinaldave

  SQL in Sixty Seconds is indeed tremendous fun to do. Every week, we try to come up with some new learning which we can share in Sixty Seconds. In this busy world, we all have sixty seconds to learn something new – no matter how much busy we are. In this episode of the series, we talk about another interesting feature of SQL Server Management Studio. In SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) we have two button side by side. 1) Execute (!) and 2) Debug (>). It is quite confusing to a few developers. The debug button which looks like a play button encourages developers to click on the same thinking it will execute the code. Also developer with a Visual Studio background often click it because of their habit. However, Debug button is not the same as Execute button. In most of the cases developers want to click on Execute to run the query but by mistake they click on Debug and it wastes their valuable time. It is very easy to fix this. If developers are not frequently using a debug feature in SQL Server they should hide it from the toolbar itself. This will reduce the chances to incorrectly click on the debug button greatly as well save lots of time for developer as invoking debug processes and turning it off takes a few extra moments. In this Sixty second video we will discuss how one can hide the debug button and avoid confusion regarding execution button. I personally use function key F5 to execute the T-SQL code so I do not face this problem that often. More on Removing Debug Button in SSMS: SQL SERVER – Read Only Files and SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) SQL SERVER – Standard Reports from SQL Server Management Studio – SQL in Sixty Seconds #016 – Video SQL SERVER – Discard Results After Query Execution – SSMS SQL SERVER – Tricks to Comment T-SQL in SSMS – SQL in Sixty Seconds #019 – Video SQL SERVER – Right Aligning Numerics in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) I encourage you to submit your ideas for SQL in Sixty Seconds. We will try to accommodate as many as we can. If we like your idea we promise to share with you educational material. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Database, Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL in Sixty Seconds, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Server Management Studio, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology, Video

  Read the article

• Watch YouTube in Windows 7 Media Center

  - by Mysticgeek

  Have you been looking for a way to watch your favorite viral videos from YouTube and Dailymotion from the couch? Today we take a look at an easy to use plugin which allows you to watch streaming video in Windows 7 Media Center. Install Macrotube The first thing we need to do is download and install the plugin called Macrotube (link below) following the defaults through the install wizard. After it’s installed, open Windows 7 Media Center and you’ll find Macrotube in the main menu. Currently there are three services available…YouTube, Dailymotion, and MSN Soapbox. Just select the service where you want to check out some videos. You can browse through different subjects or categories… Or you can search the the service by typing in what you’re looking for…with your remote or keyboard. There is the ability to drill down you search content by date, rating, views, and relevance. There are a few settings available such as the language beta, auto updates, and appearance. Now just kick back and browse through the different services and watch what you want from the comfort of your couch or on your computer. Conclusion This neat project is still in development and the developer is continuing to add changes through updates. It only works with Windows 7 Media Player, but there is a 32 & 64-bit version. Sometimes we experiences certain videos that wouldn’t play and it did crash a few times, but that is to be expected with a work in progress. But overall, this is a cool plugin that will allow you to watch your favorite online content from WMC. Download Macrotube and get more details and troubleshooting help fro the GreenButton forum Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Using Netflix Watchnow in Windows Vista Media Center (Gmedia)Integrate Hulu Desktop and Windows Media Center in Windows 7Automatically Start Windows 7 Media Center in Live TV ModeWatch TV Programming Without a TV Tuner In Window 7 Media CenterAutomatically Mount and View ISO files in Windows 7 Media Center TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 NachoFoto Searches Images in Real-time Office 2010 Product Guides Google Maps Place marks – Pizza, Guns or Strip Clubs Monitor Applications With Kiwi LocPDF is a Visual PDF Search Tool Download Free iPad Wallpapers at iPad Decor

  Read the article

• What&rsquo;s new in RadChart for 2010 Q1 (Silverlight / WPF)

  Greetings, RadChart fans! It is with great pleasure that I present this short highlight of our accomplishments for the Q1 release :). Weve worked very hard to make the best silverlight and WPF charting product even better. Here is some of what we did during the past few months.   1) Zooming&Scrolling and the new sampling engine: Without a doubt one of the most important things we did. This new feature allows you to bind your chart to a very large set of data with blazing performance. Dont take my word for it give it a try!   2) New Smart Label Positioning and Spider-like labels feature: This new feature really helps with very busy graphs. You can play with the different settings we offer in this example.     3) Sorting and Filtering. Much like our RadGridview control the chart now allows you to sort and filter your data out of the box with a single line of code!   4) Legend improvements Weve also been paying attention to those of you who wanted a much improved legend. It is now possible to customize the look and feel of legend items and legend position with a single click.     5) Custom palette brushes. You have told us that you want to easily customize all palette colors using a single clean API from both XAML and code behind. The new custom palette brushes API does exactly that.   There are numerous other improvements as well, as much improved themes, performance optimizations and other features that we did. If you want to dig in further check the release notes and changes and backwards compatibility topics.   Feel free to share the pains and gains of working with RadChart. Our team is always open to receiving constructive feedback and beer :-)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.

  Read the article

• What&rsquo;s new in RadChart for 2010 Q1 (Silverlight / WPF)

  Greetings, RadChart fans! It is with great pleasure that I present this short highlight of our accomplishments for the Q1 release :). Weve worked very hard to make the best silverlight and WPF charting product even better. Here is some of what we did during the past few months.   1) Zooming&Scrolling and the new sampling engine: Without a doubt one of the most important things we did. This new feature allows you to bind your chart to a very large set of data with blazing performance. Dont take my word for it give it a try!   2) New Smart Label Positioning and Spider-like labels feature: This new feature really helps with very busy graphs. You can play with the different settings we offer in this example.     3) Sorting and Filtering. Much like our RadGridview control the chart now allows you to sort and filter your data out of the box with a single line of code!   4) Legend improvements Weve also been paying attention to those of you who wanted a much improved legend. It is now possible to customize the look and feel of legend items and legend position with a single click.     5) Custom palette brushes. You have told us that you want to easily customize all palette colors using a single clean API from both XAML and code behind. The new custom palette brushes API does exactly that.   There are numerous other improvements as well, as much improved themes, performance optimizations and other features that we did. If you want to dig in further check the release notes and changes and backwards compatibility topics.   Feel free to share the pains and gains of working with RadChart. Our team is always open to receiving constructive feedback and beer :-)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.

  Read the article

• Manage Files Easier With Aero Snap in Windows 7

  - by Mysticgeek

  Before the days of Aero Snap you would need to arrange your Windows in some weird way to see all of your files. Today we show you how to quickly use the Aero Snap feature get it done in few key strokes in Windows 7. You can of course navigate the windows in Explorer to get them so you can see everything side by side, or use a free utility like Cubic Explorer.   Getting Explorer Windows Side by Side The process is actually simple but quite useful when looking for a large amount of data. Right-click the Windows Explorer icon on the taskbar and click Windows Explorer. Our first window opens up and you can certainly drag it over the the right or left side of the screen but the quickest method we’re using is the “Windows Key+Right Arrow” key combo (make sure to hold the Windows key down). Now the Windows is nicely placed on the right side. Next we want to open the other window, simply right-click the Explorer icon again and click Windows Explorer.   Now we have our second window open, and all we need to do this time is use the Windows Key+Left Arrow combination. There we go! Now you should be able to browse your files a lot more simply than relying on the expanding tree method (as much). You can actually use this method to snap a window to all four corners of your screen if you don’t feel like dragging it. Once you play with Aero Snap more you may enjoy it, but if you still despise it, you can disable it too! Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Multitask Like a Pro with AquaSnapUse Windows Vista Aero through Remote Desktop ConnectionEasily Disable Win 7 or Vista’s Aero Before Running an Application (Such as a Video Game)Understanding Windows Vista Aero Glass RequirementsFree Storage With AOL’s Xdrive (Online Storage Series) TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Awesome Lyrics Finder for Winamp & Windows Media Player Download Videos from Hulu Pixels invade Manhattan Convert PDF files to ePub to read on your iPad Hide Your Confidential Files Inside Images Get Wildlife Photography Tips at BBC’s PhotoMasterClasses

  Read the article

• How To Rip a Music CD in Windows 7 Media Center

  - by DigitalGeekery

  If you’re a Media Center user, you already know that it can play and manage your digital music collection. But, did you know you can also rip a music CD in Windows 7 Media Center and have it automatically added to your music library? Rip a CD in Windows 7 Media Center Place your CD into your optical drive. From within Windows Media Center, open the Music Library and select the CD. If you haven’t previously ripped a CD in Windows 7 with either Windows Media Center or Windows Media Player, you’ll be prompted to select whether or not you’d like to add copy protection. Click Next. By default, your CD will be ripped to .WMA format. The rip settings for Windows Media Center are pulled from Windows Media Player. So to change the rip settings, we’ll need to do so in Media Player. Click Finish. From within Windows Media Player, click on Tools from Menu bar, and select Options. If you are new to Windows Media Player 12, check out our beginner’s guide on how to manage your music with WMP 12. Select the Rip Music tab and choose your output format from the Format drop down list. You can also select the Audio quality (bit rate) by moving the slider bar under Audio quality. Click OK when you are finished.   Now, you are ready to rip your CD. Click on Rip CD. Click Yes to confirm you want to rip the CD. You can follow the progress as each track is being converted.    When the CD is finished you’re ready to start enjoying your music any time you wish in Windows 7 Media Center. Looking for some more tasks you can perform in Media Center with just a remote? Check out our earlier post on how to crop, edit, and print photos in Windows Media Center. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Using Netflix Watchnow in Windows Vista Media Center (Gmedia)Fixing When Windows Media Player Library Won’t Let You Add FilesStartup Customizations for Media Center in Windows 7Schedule Updates for Windows Media CenterIntegrate Hulu Desktop and Windows Media Center in Windows 7 TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 OutlookStatView Scans and Displays General Usage Statistics How to Add Exceptions to the Windows Firewall Office 2010 reviewed in depth by Ed Bott FoxClocks adds World Times in your Statusbar (Firefox) Have Fun Editing Photo Editing with Citrify Outlook Connector Upgrade Error

  Read the article

• Desktop Fun: Abstract Icon Packs

  - by Asian Angel

  Do you prefer a more unique, artistic, or alternative look for your desktop setup? Then you will definitely want to have a look through our Abstract Icon Packs collection. Just set your imagination loose and enjoy the wonderful desktops that these icon packs can inspire for you. Note: To customize the icon setup on your Windows 7 & Vista systems see our article here. Using Windows XP? We have you covered here. Sneak Preview For this week’s preview desktop we created an Alien Desert Planet theme using the Abstract Symbol Icons pack shown below. Note: The original, unmodified version of this wallpaper can be found here. Here is a closer look at the icons we used for our new theme… The Icon Packs Match-stick-play Icons *.ico format only Download Abstract Symbol Icons *.ico format only Download Allomantic Metals *.ico format only Download Mutated Snowflake Icon Set *.ico format only Download Shades of Geometry *.ico format only Download Starry Objects Icons *.ico format only Download New Sin – Abstract Human Icons *.ico, .png, and .psd format Note: While most of the icons in this pack look similar at first glance, there are differences when viewed at a larger size. Download Mysterious Icons *.ico format only Download Alien Icons *.ico format only Download Beads Icons *.ico format only Download Magic Flowers Icons *.ico format only Download Circle Shapes Icons *.ico format only Download geometric doc icons *.png format only Download alumina *.png format only Download Citiscape dockicons *.png format only Download Wanting more great icon sets to look through? Be certain to visit our Desktop Fun section for more icon goodness! Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Use the Avira Rescue CD to Clean Your Infected PC The Complete List of iPad Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials Is Your Desktop Printer More Expensive Than Printing Services? 20 OS X Keyboard Shortcuts You Might Not Know HTG Explains: Which Linux File System Should You Choose? HTG Explains: Why Does Photo Paper Improve Print Quality? Add Falling Snow to Webpages with the Snowfall Extension for Opera [Browser Fun] Automatically Keep Up With the Latest Releases from Mozilla Labs in Firefox 4.0 A Look Back at 2010 Through Infographics Monitor the Weather with the Weather Forecast Extension for Opera Orbiting at the Edge of the Atmosphere Wallpaper Simon’s Cat Explores the Christmas Tree! [Video]

  Read the article

• Quick guide to Oracle IRM 11g: Classification design

  - by Simon Thorpe

  Quick guide to Oracle IRM 11g indexThis is the final article in the quick guide to Oracle IRM. If you've followed everything prior you will now have a fully functional and tested Information Rights Management service. It doesn't matter if you've been following the 10g or 11g guide as this next article is common to both. ContentsWhy this is the most important part... Understanding the classification and standard rights model Identifying business use cases Creating an effective IRM classification modelOne single classification across the entire businessA context for each and every possible granular use caseWhat makes a good context? Deciding on the use of roles in the context Reviewing the features and security for context roles Summary Why this is the most important part...Now the real work begins, installing and getting an IRM system running is as simple as following instructions. However to actually have an IRM technology easily protecting your most sensitive information without interfering with your users existing daily work flows and be able to scale IRM across the entire business, requires thought into how confidential documents are created, used and distributed. This article is going to give you the information you need to ask the business the right questions so that you can deploy your IRM service successfully. The IRM team here at Oracle have over 10 years of experience in helping customers and it is important you understand the following to be successful in securing access to your most confidential information. Whatever you are trying to secure, be it mergers and acquisitions information, engineering intellectual property, health care documentation or financial reports. No matter what type of user is going to access the information, be they employees, contractors or customers, there are common goals you are always trying to achieve.Securing the content at the earliest point possible and do it automatically. Removing the dependency on the user to decide to secure the content reduces the risk of mistakes significantly and therefore results a more secure deployment. K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid) Reduce complexity in the rights/classification model. Oracle IRM lets you make changes to access to documents even after they are secured which allows you to start with a simple model and then introduce complexity once you've understood how the technology is going to be used in the business. After an initial learning period you can review your implementation and start to make informed decisions based on user feedback and administration experience. Clearly communicate to the user, when appropriate, any changes to their existing work practice. You must make every effort to make the transition to sealed content as simple as possible. For external users you must help them understand why you are securing the documents and inform them the value of the technology to both your business and them. Before getting into the detail, I must pay homage to Martin White, Vice President of client services in SealedMedia, the company Oracle acquired and who created Oracle IRM. In the SealedMedia years Martin was involved with every single customer and was key to the design of certain aspects of the IRM technology, specifically the context model we will be discussing here. Listening carefully to customers and understanding the flexibility of the IRM technology, Martin taught me all the skills of helping customers build scalable, effective and simple to use IRM deployments. No matter how well the engineering department designed the software, badly designed and poorly executed projects can result in difficult to use and manage, and ultimately insecure solutions. The advice and information that follows was born with Martin and he's still delivering IRM consulting with customers and can be found at www.thinkers.co.uk. It is from Martin and others that Oracle not only has the most advanced, scalable and usable document security solution on the market, but Oracle and their partners have the most experience in delivering successful document security solutions. Understanding the classification and standard rights model The goal of any successful IRM deployment is to balance the increase in security the technology brings without over complicating the way people use secured content and avoid a significant increase in administration and maintenance. With Oracle it is possible to automate the protection of content, deploy the desktop software transparently and use authentication methods such that users can open newly secured content initially unaware the document is any different to an insecure one. That is until of course they attempt to do something for which they don't have any rights, such as copy and paste to an insecure application or try and print. Central to achieving this objective is creating a classification model that is simple to understand and use but also provides the right level of complexity to meet the business needs. In Oracle IRM the term used for each classification is a "context". A context defines the relationship between.A group of related documents The people that use the documents The roles that these people perform The rights that these people need to perform their role The context is the key to the success of Oracle IRM. It provides the separation of the role and rights of a user from the content itself. Documents are sealed to contexts but none of the rights, user or group information is stored within the content itself. Sealing only places information about the location of the IRM server that sealed it, the context applied to the document and a few other pieces of metadata that pertain only to the document. This important separation of rights from content means that millions of documents can be secured against a single classification and a user needs only one right assigned to be able to access all documents. If you have followed all the previous articles in this guide, you will be ready to start defining contexts to which your sensitive information will be protected. But before you even start with IRM, you need to understand how your own business uses and creates sensitive documents and emails. Identifying business use cases Oracle is able to support multiple classification systems, but usually there is one single initial need for the technology which drives a deployment. This need might be to protect sensitive mergers and acquisitions information, engineering intellectual property, financial documents. For this and every subsequent use case you must understand how users create and work with documents, to who they are distributed and how the recipients should interact with them. A successful IRM deployment should start with one well identified use case (we go through some examples towards the end of this article) and then after letting this use case play out in the business, you learn how your users work with content, how well your communication to the business worked and if the classification system you deployed delivered the right balance. It is at this point you can start rolling the technology out further. Creating an effective IRM classification model Once you have selected the initial use case you will address with IRM, you need to design a classification model that defines the access to secured documents within the use case. In Oracle IRM there is an inbuilt classification system called the "context" model. In Oracle IRM 11g it is possible to extend the server to support any rights classification model, but the majority of users who are not using an application integration (such as Oracle IRM within Oracle Beehive) are likely to be starting out with the built in context model. Before looking at creating a classification system with IRM, it is worth reviewing some recognized standards and methods for creating and implementing security policy. A very useful set of documents are the ISO 17799 guidelines and the SANS security policy templates. First task is to create a context against which documents are to be secured. A context consists of a group of related documents (all top secret engineering research), a list of roles (contributors and readers) which define how users can access documents and a list of users (research engineers) who have been given a role allowing them to interact with sealed content. Before even creating the first context it is wise to decide on a philosophy which will dictate the level of granularity, the question is, where do you start? At a department level? By project? By technology? First consider the two ends of the spectrum... One single classification across the entire business Imagine that instead of having separate contexts, one for engineering intellectual property, one for your financial data, one for human resources personally identifiable information, you create one context for all documents across the entire business. Whilst you may have immediate objections, there are some significant benefits in thinking about considering this. Document security classification decisions are simple. You only have one context to chose from! User provisioning is simple, just make sure everyone has a role in the only context in the business. Administration is very low, if you assign rights to groups from the business user repository you probably never have to touch IRM administration again. There are however some obvious downsides to this model.All users in have access to all IRM secured content. So potentially a sales person could access sensitive mergers and acquisition documents, if they can get their hands on a copy that is. You cannot delegate control of different documents to different parts of the business, this may not satisfy your regulatory requirements for the separation and delegation of duties. Changing a users role affects every single document ever secured. Even though it is very unlikely a business would ever use one single context to secure all their sensitive information, thinking about this scenario raises one very important point. Just having one single context and securing all confidential documents to it, whilst incurring some of the problems detailed above, has one huge value. Once secured, IRM protected content can ONLY be accessed by authorized users. Just think of all the sensitive documents in your business today, imagine if you could ensure that only everyone you trust could open them. Even if an employee lost a laptop or someone accidentally sent an email to the wrong recipient, only the right people could open that file. A context for each and every possible granular use case Now let's think about the total opposite of a single context design. What if you created a context for each and every single defined business need and created multiple contexts within this for each level of granularity? Let's take a use case where we need to protect engineering intellectual property. Imagine we have 6 different engineering groups, and in each we have a research department, a design department and manufacturing. The company information security policy defines 3 levels of information sensitivity... restricted, confidential and top secret. Then let's say that each group and department needs to define access to information from both internal and external users. Finally add into the mix that they want to review the rights model for each context every financial quarter. This would result in a huge amount of contexts. For example, lets just look at the resulting contexts for one engineering group. Q1FY2010 Restricted Internal - Engineering Group 1 - Research Q1FY2010 Restricted Internal - Engineering Group 1 - Design Q1FY2010 Restricted Internal - Engineering Group 1 - Manufacturing Q1FY2010 Restricted External- Engineering Group 1 - Research Q1FY2010 Restricted External - Engineering Group 1 - Design Q1FY2010 Restricted External - Engineering Group 1 - Manufacturing Q1FY2010 Confidential Internal - Engineering Group 1 - Research Q1FY2010 Confidential Internal - Engineering Group 1 - Design Q1FY2010 Confidential Internal - Engineering Group 1 - Manufacturing Q1FY2010 Confidential External - Engineering Group 1 - Research Q1FY2010 Confidential External - Engineering Group 1 - Design Q1FY2010 Confidential External - Engineering Group 1 - Manufacturing Q1FY2010 Top Secret Internal - Engineering Group 1 - Research Q1FY2010 Top Secret Internal - Engineering Group 1 - Design Q1FY2010 Top Secret Internal - Engineering Group 1 - Manufacturing Q1FY2010 Top Secret External - Engineering Group 1 - Research Q1FY2010 Top Secret External - Engineering Group 1 - Design Q1FY2010 Top Secret External - Engineering Group 1 - Manufacturing Now multiply the above by 6 for each engineering group, 18 contexts. You are then creating/reviewing another 18 every 3 months. After a year you've got 72 contexts. What would be the advantages of such a complex classification model? You can satisfy very granular rights requirements, for example only an authorized engineering group 1 researcher can create a top secret report for access internally, and his role will be reviewed on a very frequent basis. Your business may have very complex rights requirements and mapping this directly to IRM may be an obvious exercise. The disadvantages of such a classification model are significant...Huge administrative overhead. Someone in the business must manage, review and administrate each of these contexts. If the engineering group had a single administrator, they would have 72 classifications to reside over each year. From an end users perspective life will be very confusing. Imagine if a user has rights in just 6 of these contexts. They may be able to print content from one but not another, be able to edit content in 2 contexts but not the other 4. Such confusion at the end user level causes frustration and resistance to the use of the technology. Increased synchronization complexity. Imagine a user who after 3 years in the company ends up with over 300 rights in many different contexts across the business. This would result in long synchronization times as the client software updates all your offline rights. Hard to understand who can do what with what. Imagine being the VP of engineering and as part of an internal security audit you are asked the question, "What rights to researchers have to our top secret information?". In this complex model the answer is not simple, it would depend on many roles in many contexts. Of course this example is extreme, but it highlights that trying to build many barriers in your business can result in a nightmare of administration and confusion amongst users. In the real world what we need is a balance of the two. We need to seek an optimum number of contexts. Too many contexts are unmanageable and too few contexts does not give fine enough granularity. What makes a good context? Good context design derives mainly from how well you understand your business requirements to secure access to confidential information. Some customers I have worked with can tell me exactly the documents they wish to secure and know exactly who should be opening them. However there are some customers who know only of the government regulation that requires them to control access to certain types of information, they don't actually know where the documents are, how they are created or understand exactly who should have access. Therefore you need to know how to ask the business the right questions that lead to information which help you define a context. First ask these questions about a set of documentsWhat is the topic? Who are legitimate contributors on this topic? Who are the authorized readership? If the answer to any one of these is significantly different, then it probably merits a separate context. Remember that sealed documents are inherently secure and as such they cannot leak to your competitors, therefore it is better sealed to a broad context than not sealed at all. Simplicity is key here. Always revert to the first extreme example of a single classification, then work towards essential complexity. If there is any doubt, always prefer fewer contexts. Remember, Oracle IRM allows you to change your mind later on. You can implement a design now and continue to change and refine as you learn how the technology is used. It is easy to go from a simple model to a more complex one, it is much harder to take a complex model that is already embedded in the work practice of users and try to simplify it. It is also wise to take a single use case and address this first with the business. Don't try and tackle many different problems from the outset. Do one, learn from the process, refine it and then take what you have learned into the next use case, refine and continue. Once you have a good grasp of the technology and understand how your business will use it, you can then start rolling out the technology wider across the business. Deciding on the use of roles in the context Once you have decided on that first initial use case and a context to create let's look at the details you need to decide upon. For each context, identify; Administrative rolesBusiness owner, the person who makes decisions about who may or may not see content in this context. This is often the person who wanted to use IRM and drove the business purchase. They are the usually the person with the most at risk when sensitive information is lost. Point of contact, the person who will handle requests for access to content. Sometimes the same as the business owner, sometimes a trusted secretary or administrator. Context administrator, the person who will enact the decisions of the Business Owner. Sometimes the point of contact, sometimes a trusted IT person. Document related rolesContributors, the people who create and edit documents in this context. Reviewers, the people who are involved in reviewing documents but are not trusted to secure information to this classification. This role is not always necessary. (See later discussion on Published-work and Work-in-Progress) Readers, the people who read documents from this context. Some people may have several of the roles above, which is fine. What you are trying to do is understand and define how the business interacts with your sensitive information. These roles obviously map directly to roles available in Oracle IRM. Reviewing the features and security for context roles At this point we have decided on a classification of information, understand what roles people in the business will play when administrating this classification and how they will interact with content. The final piece of the puzzle in getting the information for our first context is to look at the permissions people will have to sealed documents. First think why are you protecting the documents in the first place? It is to prevent the loss of leaking of information to the wrong people. To control the information, making sure that people only access the latest versions of documents. You are not using Oracle IRM to prevent unauthorized people from doing legitimate work. This is an important point, with IRM you can erect many barriers to prevent access to content yet too many restrictions and authorized users will often find ways to circumvent using the technology and end up distributing unprotected originals. Because IRM is a security technology, it is easy to get carried away restricting different groups. However I would highly recommend starting with a simple solution with few restrictions. Ensure that everyone who reasonably needs to read documents can do so from the outset. Remember that with Oracle IRM you can change rights to content whenever you wish and tighten security. Always return to the fact that the greatest value IRM brings is that ONLY authorized users can access secured content, remember that simple "one context for the entire business" model. At the start of the deployment you really need to aim for user acceptance and therefore a simple model is more likely to succeed. As time passes and users understand how IRM works you can start to introduce more restrictions and complexity. Another key aspect to focus on is handling exceptions. If you decide on a context model where engineering can only access engineering information, and sales can only access sales data. Act quickly when a sales manager needs legitimate access to a set of engineering documents. Having a quick and effective process for permitting other people with legitimate needs to obtain appropriate access will be rewarded with acceptance from the user community. These use cases can often be satisfied by integrating IRM with a good Identity & Access Management technology which simplifies the process of assigning users the correct business roles. The big print issue... Printing is often an issue of contention, users love to print but the business wants to ensure sensitive information remains in the controlled digital world. There are many cases of physical document loss causing a business pain, it is often overlooked that IRM can help with this issue by limiting the ability to generate physical copies of digital content. However it can be hard to maintain a balance between security and usability when it comes to printing. Consider the following points when deciding about whether to give print rights. Oracle IRM sealed documents can contain watermarks that expose information about the user, time and location of access and the classification of the document. This information would reside in the printed copy making it easier to trace who printed it. Printed documents are slower to distribute in comparison to their digital counterparts, so time sensitive information in printed format may present a lower risk. Print activity is audited, therefore you can monitor and react to users abusing print rights. Summary In summary it is important to think carefully about the way you create your context model. As you ask the business these questions you may get a variety of different requirements. There may be special projects that require a context just for sensitive information created during the lifetime of the project. There may be a department that requires all information in the group is secured and you might have a few senior executives who wish to use IRM to exchange a small number of highly sensitive documents with a very small number of people. Oracle IRM, with its very flexible context classification system, can support all of these use cases. The trick is to introducing the complexity to deliver them at the right level. In another article i'm working on I will go through some examples of how Oracle IRM might map to existing business use cases. But for now, this article covers all the important questions you need to get your IRM service deployed and successfully protecting your most sensitive information.

  Read the article

• Informal Interviews: Just Relax (or Should I?)

  - by david.talamelli

  I was in our St Kilda Rd office last week and had the chance to meet up with Dan and David from GradConnection. I love what these guys are doing, their business has been around for two years and I really like how they have taken their own experiences from University found a niche in their market and have chased it. These guys are always networking. Whenever they come to Melbourne they send me a tweet to catch up, even though we often miss each other they are persistent. It sounds like their business is going from strength to strength and I have to think that success comes from their hard work and enthusiasm for their business. Anyway, before my meeting with ProGrad I noticed a tweet from Kevin Wheeler who was saying it was his last day in Melbourne - I sent him a message and we met up that afternoon for a coffee (I am getting to the point I promise). On my way back to the office after my meeting I was on a tram and was sitting beside a lady who was talking to her friend on her mobile. She had just come back from an interview and was telling her friend how laid back the meeting was and how she wasn't too sure of the next steps of the process as it was a really informal meeting. The recurring theme from this phone call was that 1) her and the interviewer got along really well and had a lot in common 2) the meeting was very informal and relaxed. I wasn't at the interview so I cannot say for certain, but in my experience regardless of the type of interview that is happening whether it is a relaxed interview at a coffee shop or a behavioural interview in an office setting one thing is consistent: the employer is assessing your ability to perform the role and fit into the company. Different interviewers I find have different interviewing styles. For example some interviewers may create a very relaxed environment in the thinking this will draw out less practiced answers and give a more realistic view of the person and their abilities while other interviewers may put the candidate "under the pump" to see how they react in a stressful situation. There are as many interviewing styles as there are interviewers. I think candidates regardless of the type of interview need to be professional and honest in both their skills/experiences, abilities and career plans (if you know what they are). Even though an interview may be informal, you shouldn't slip into complacency. You should not forget the end goal of the interview which is to get a job. Business happens outside of the office walls and while you may meet someone for a coffee it is still a business meeting no matter how relaxed the setting. You don't need to be stick in the mud and not let your personality shine through, but that first impression you make may play a big part in how far in the interview process you go. This article was originally posted on David Talamelli's Blog - David's Journal on Tap

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 566 567 568 569 570 571 572 573 574 575 576 577  | Next Page >