Search Results

Search found 21331 results on 854 pages for 'require once'.

Page 616/854 | < Previous Page | 612 613 614 615 616 617 618 619 620 621 622 623  | Next Page >

• Why do old programming languages continue to be revised?

  - by SunAvatar

  This question is not, "Why do people still use old programming languages?" I understand that quite well. In fact the two programming languages I know best are C and Scheme, both of which date back to the 70s. Recently I was reading about the changes in C99 and C11 versus C89 (which seems to still be the most-used version of C in practice and the version I learned from K&R). Looking around, it seems like every programming language in heavy use gets a new specification at least once per decade or so. Even Fortran is still getting new revisions, despite the fact that most people using it are still using FORTRAN 77. Contrast this with the approach of, say, the typesetting system TeX. In 1989, with the release of TeX 3.0, Donald Knuth declared that TeX was feature-complete and future releases would contain only bug fixes. Even beyond this, he has stated that upon his death, "all remaining bugs will become features" and absolutely no further updates will be made. Others are free to fork TeX and have done so, but the resulting systems are renamed to indicate that they are different from the official TeX. This is not because Knuth thinks TeX is perfect, but because he understands the value of a stable, predictable system that will do the same thing in fifty years that it does now. Why do most programming language designers not follow the same principle? Of course, when a language is relatively new, it makes sense that it will go through a period of rapid change before settling down. And no one can really object to minor changes that don't do much more than codify existing pseudo-standards or correct unintended readings. But when a language still seems to need improvement after ten or twenty years, why not just fork it or start over, rather than try to change what is already in use? If some people really want to do object-oriented programming in Fortran, why not create "Objective Fortran" for that purpose, and leave Fortran itself alone? I suppose one could say that, regardless of future revisions, C89 is already a standard and nothing stops people from continuing to use it. This is sort of true, but connotations do have consequences. GCC will, in pedantic mode, warn about syntax that is either deprecated or has a subtly different meaning in C99, which means C89 programmers can't just totally ignore the new standard. So there must be some benefit in C99 that is sufficient to impose this overhead on everyone who uses the language. This is a real question, not an invitation to argue. Obviously I do have an opinion on this, but at the moment I'm just trying to understand why this isn't just how things are done already. I suppose the question is: What are the (real or perceived) advantages of updating a language standard, as opposed to creating a new language based on the old?

  Read the article

• How to make an object move again after being stopped by collision in Unity?

  - by Matthew Underwood

  I have a player object which position is always centered on the main camera's viewport. This object has a Rigidbody 2D, a box and circle collider. The player moves around a level, the level has a polygon collider attached. I move the camera until the object hits against the collider, which stops the movement of the camera by setting its speed to 0. The problem happens when I want to move the camera / player object away from the collider. As the speed is already at 0, it cannot move away from the collider. The script attached to the player object, checks for collisions and applies the speed to 0 on the main camera's test script. using UnityEngine; using System.Collections; public class move : MonoBehaviour { public float speed; public test testing; // Use this for initialization void Start () { speed = 10F; testing = Camera.main.GetComponent<test>(); } // Update is called once per frame void FixedUpdate () { Vector3 p = Camera.main.ViewportToWorldPoint(new Vector3(0.5F, 0.5F, Camera.main.nearClipPlane)); transform.position = new Vector3(p.x, p.y, -1); } void OnCollisionEnter2D(Collision2D col) { testing.speed = 0; } void OnCollisionExit2D(Collision2D col) { testing.speed = 10F; } } This is the script attached to the main camera; just a simple script that changes the camera's position. using UnityEngine; using System.Collections; public class test : MonoBehaviour { public float speed; public float translationY; public float translationX; // Use this for initialization void Start () { speed = 10F; } void FixedUpdate () { translationY = Input.GetAxis("Vertical") * speed * Time.deltaTime; translationX = Input.GetAxis("Horizontal") * speed * Time.deltaTime; transform.Translate(translationX, translationY, 0); } } The player object isn't kinematic and is a fixed angle, the colliders aren't triggers and the polygon collider isn't a trigger either. The player is the red square, the collider is the pink area. -- EDIT -- From the latest change the collider set up for the player So if the X speed was disabled. It wouldnt move into the side of the polygon colider which is good, but yet you couldnt move away from it. And moving down would move inside the colider.

  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

• Sharing on Github

  - by Alan

  Over the past couple weeks I have gotten a lot of help from StackOverflow users on a project, and rather than keep the finished product to myself I wanted to share it unencumbered by licenses, but don't want there to be so much legwork during installation that users shy away from trying it. I am about to post it to Github and choosing public domain licensing. I would like to to be super simple for users to make use of and just FTP it up and go. That being said, do I need to make sure I remove things like the JQuery file, and other GPL / MIT licensed dependencies that I didn't write but that my code depends on? I haven't removed any copyright notices from the other code and all of it open source, it would just be nice if users could download everything at once while of course not trying to represent that I am the license holder of the dependencies. Inside my files are also some snippets, do those have to be externalized with installation instructions or can it be posted as is? Here is an example, my nav.php file is 115 lines long and I have these at the top: <script type="text/javascript" src="./js/ddaccordion.js"> /*********************************************** * Accordion Content script- (c) Dynamic Drive DHTML code library (www.dynamicdrive.com) * Visit http://www.dynamicDrive.com for hundreds of DHTML scripts * This notice must stay intact for legal use ***********************************************/ </script> <link href="css/admin.css" rel="stylesheet"> <script type="text/javascript"> ddaccordion.init({ headerclass: "submenuheader", //Shared CSS class name of headers group contentclass: "submenu", //Shared CSS class name of contents group revealtype: "click", //Reveal content when user clicks or onmouseover the header? Valid value: "click", "clickgo", or "mouseover" mouseoverdelay: 200, //if revealtype="mouseover", set delay in milliseconds before header expands onMouseover collapseprev: false, //Collapse previous content (so only one open at any time)? true/false defaultexpanded: [], //index of content(s) open by default [index1, index2, etc] [] denotes no content onemustopen: false, //Specify whether at least one header should be open always (so never all headers closed) animatedefault: false, //Should contents open by default be animated into view? persiststate: true, //persist state of opened contents within browser session? toggleclass: ["", ""], //Two CSS classes to be applied to the header when it's collapsed and expanded, respectively ["class1", "class2"] togglehtml: ["suffix", "<img src='./images/plus.gif' class='statusicon' />", "<img src='./images/minus.gif' class='statusicon' />"], //Additional HTML added to the header when it's collapsed and expanded, respectively ["position", "html1", "html2"] (see docs) animatespeed: "fast", //speed of animation: integer in milliseconds (ie: 200), or keywords "fast", "normal", or "slow" oninit:function(headers, expandedindices){ //custom code to run when headers have initalized //do nothing }, onopenclose:function(header, index, state, isuseractivated){ //custom code to run whenever a header is opened or closed //do nothing } }) </script>

  Read the article

• Oops, I left my kernel zone configuration behind!

  - by mgerdts

  Most people use boot environments to move in one direction.  A system starts with an initial installation and from time to time new boot environments are created - typically as a result of pkg update - and then the new BE is booted.  This post is of little interest to those people as no hackery is needed.  This post is about some mild hackery. During development, I commonly test different scenarios across multiple boot environments.  Many times, those tests aren't related to the act of configuring or installing zone and I so it's kinda handy to avoid the effort involved of zone configuration and installation.  A somewhat common order of operations is like the following: # beadm create -e golden -a test1 # reboot Once the system is running in the test1 BE, I install a kernel zone. # zonecfg -z a178 create -t SYSsolaris-kz # zoneadm -z a178 install Time passes, and I do all kinds of stuff to the test1 boot environment and want to test other scenarios in a clean boot environment.  So then I create a new one from my golden BE and reboot into it. # beadm create -e golden -a test2 # reboot Since the test2 BE was created from the golden BE, it doesn't have the configuration for the kernel zone that I configured and installed.  Getting that zone over to the test2 BE is pretty easy.  My test1 BE is really known as s11fixes-2. root@vzl-212:~# beadm mount s11fixes-2 /mnt root@vzl-212:~# zonecfg -R /mnt -z a178 export | zonecfg -z a178 -f - root@vzl-212:~# beadm unmount s11fixes-2 root@vzl-212:~# zoneadm -z a178 attach root@vzl-212:~# zoneadm -z a178 boot On the face of it, it would seem as though it would have been easier to just use zonecfg -z a178 create -t SYSolaris-kz within the test2 BE to get the new configuration over.  That would almost work, but it would have left behind the encryption key required for access to host data and any suspend image.  See solaris-kz(5) for more info on host data.  I very commonly have more complex configurations that contain many storage URIs and non-default resource controls.  Retyping them would be rather tedious.

  Read the article

• Independent Research on 1500 Companies Reveals Challenges in Performance Visibility – Part 1

  - by ndwyouell

  At the end of May I was joined by Professor Andy Neely of Cambridge University on a webinar, with an audience of over 700, to discuss the results of this extensive study which covered 13 countries and nearly every commercial and industrial sector.  What stunned both of us was not so much the number listening but the 100 questions they asked in just 1 hour.  This certainly represents a record in my experience and for those that organized the webinar. So what was all the fuss about?  Well, to begin with this was a pretty big sample and it represented organizations with over $100m sales across the USA, Europe, Africa and the Middle East. It also delivered some pretty interesting results across a wide range of EPM subjects such as profitability, planning and reporting.  Let’s look at some of those findings. We kicked off with profitability, one of the key factors in driving performance, or that is what you would think, but in fact 82% of our respondents said they did not have complete visibility into the profitability of their organization. 91% of these went further to say that, not surprisingly, this lack of knowledge into the profitability has implications with over half citing 3 or more implications.  Implications cited included misallocated resources, revenue opportunities not maximized, erroneous decisions made and impaired financial performance.  Quite a list of implications, especially given the difficult economic circumstances many organizations are operating in at this time. So why is this?  Well other results in the study point to some of the potential reasons.  Firstly 59% of respondents that use spreadsheets use them for monitoring profitability and 93% of all managers responding to the study use spreadsheets to gather and analyze information.  This is an enormous proportion given the problems with using spreadsheets based performance management systems that have been widely talked about for many years.  For profitability analysis this is particularly important when you consider the typical requirement will be to allocate cost and revenue across 6+ dimensions based on many different allocation methods.  Not something that can be done easily in spreadsheets plus it gets to be a nightmare once you want to change allocations, run different scenarios and then change the basis of your planning and budgeting! It is no wonder so many organizations have challenges in performance visibility. My next blog will look at the fragmented nature of many organizations’ planning.  In the meantime if you want to read the complete report on the research go to: http://www.oracle.com/webapps/dialogue/ns/dlgwelcome.jsp?p_ext=Y&p_dlg_id=10077790&src=7038701&Act=29

  Read the article

• When to use typedef?

  - by futlib

  I'm a bit confused about if and when I should use typedef in C++. I feel it's a balancing act between readability and clarity. Here's a code sample without any typedefs: int sum(std::vector<int>::const_iterator first, std::vector<int>::const_iterator last) { static std::map<std::tuple<std::vector<int>::const_iterator, std::vector<int>::const_iterator>, int> lookup_table; std::map<std::tuple<std::vector<int>::const_iterator, std::vector<int>::const_iterator>, int>::iterator lookup_it = lookup_table.find(lookup_key); if (lookup_it != lookup_table.end()) return lookup_it->second; ... } Pretty ugly IMO. So I'll add some typedefs within the function to make it look nicer: int sum(std::vector<int>::const_iterator first, std::vector<int>::const_iterator last) { typedef std::tuple<std::vector<int>::const_iterator, std::vector<int>::const_iterator> Lookup_key; typedef std::map<Lookup_key, int> Lookup_table; static Lookup_table lookup_table; Lookup_table::iterator lookup_it = lookup_table.find(lookup_key); if (lookup_it != lookup_table.end()) return lookup_it->second; ... } The code is still a bit clumsy, but I get rid of most nightmare material. But there's still the int vector iterators, this variant gets rid of those: typedef std::vector<int>::const_iterator Input_iterator; int sum(Input_iterator first, Input_iterator last) { typedef std::tuple<Input_iterator, Input_iterator> Lookup_key; typedef std::map<Lookup_key, int> Lookup_table; static Lookup_table lookup_table; Lookup_table::iterator lookup_it = lookup_table.find(lookup_key); if (lookup_it != lookup_table.end()) return lookup_it->second; ... } This looks clean, but is it still readable? When should I use a typedef? As soon as I have a nightmare type? As soon as it occurs more than once? Where should I put them? Should I use them in function signatures or keep them to the implementation?

  Read the article

• My First 5K, the recap.

  - by Chris Williams

  It was a nice day to be outside (and trust me, those aren't words you'll hear from me often.) I got to the site around 7:45, hit the pre-reg table and got my number along with a goody bag full of coupons for racing gear, a water bottle and a tshirt. Oh and a map. Stashed all that stuff in the jeep, emptied my pockets of everything but my iPhone and my jeep key, and proceeded to walk around for a bit as people started showing up and signing in. It was fairly breezy, and there was definitely a storm coming... but it was anyone's guess on when it would actually arrive. It was interesting to see everyone who was participating. If I had to guess, I would say the event was 60-70% women, with a pretty broad distribution of age... as young as 13 to well over 60 (in both genders.) I don't know exactly how many folks were there, but it was well over 300. Eventually it was time to kick things off, and everyone made their way to the start line. All of the 5k and 10k runners were mixed together, starting at the same time. All the walkers and the people with strollers or dogs were in the back. It was pretty chaotic at first, once things started, but it thinned out fairly quickly. The 10k people and the hardcore runners sped ahead of everyone else and the walkers gradually lagged behind. The 5K course was pretty nice, winding around a lake down in Eden Prairie. The 10K course overlapped most of ours, but branched off a couple times too. I didn't run the whole time, but I started the race running and I ended it running, and did a mix of walking and running along the way. I met my goals, which were a) don't ever stop and b) don't be last. The weather managed to hold out for the entire race. It never got too hot, there was a nice breeze and it was mostly overcast. Pretty much perfect in my book. About 20-30 minutes after I left, the rain came down pretty hard. I had a good time, and will most likely do more of them. We'll see.

  Read the article

• Write and fprintf for file I/O

  - by Darryl Gove

  fprintf() does buffered I/O, where as write() does unbuffered I/O. So once the write() completes, the data is in the file, whereas, for fprintf() it may take a while for the file to get updated to reflect the output. This results in a significant performance difference - the write works at disk speed. The following is a program to test this: #include <fcntl.h #include <unistd.h #include <stdio.h #include <stdlib.h #include <errno.h #include <stdio.h #include <sys/time.h #include <sys/types.h #include <sys/stat.h static double s_time; void starttime() { s_time=1.0*gethrtime(); } void endtime(long its) { double e_time=1.0*gethrtime(); printf("Time per iteration %5.2f MB/s\n", (1.0*its)/(e_time-s_time*1.0)*1000); s_time=1.0*gethrtime(); } #define SIZE 10*1024*1024 void test_write() { starttime(); int file = open("./test.dat",O_WRONLY|O_CREAT,S_IWGRP|S_IWOTH|S_IWUSR); for (int i=0; i<SIZE; i++) { write(file,"a",1); } close(file); endtime(SIZE); } void test_fprintf() { starttime(); FILE* file = fopen("./test.dat","w"); for (int i=0; i<SIZE; i++) { fprintf(file,"a"); } fclose(file); endtime(SIZE); } void test_flush() { starttime(); FILE* file = fopen("./test.dat","w"); for (int i=0; i<SIZE; i++) { fprintf(file,"a"); fflush(file); } fclose(file); endtime(SIZE); } int main() { test_write(); test_fprintf(); test_flush(); } Compiling and running I get 0.2MB/s for write() and 6MB/s for fprintf(). A large difference. There's three tests in this example, the third test uses fprintf() and fflush(). This is equivalent to write() both in performance and in functionality. Which leads to the suggestion that fprintf() (and other buffering I/O functions) are the fastest way of writing to files, and that fflush() should be used to enforce synchronisation of the file contents.

  Read the article

• Creating an object that is ready to be used & unset properties - with IoC

  - by GetFuzzy

  I have a question regarding the specifics of object creation and the usage of properties. A best practice is to put all the properties into a state such that the object is useful when its created. Object constructors help ensure that required dependencies are created. I've found myself following a pattern lately, and then questioning its appropriateness. The pattern looks like this... public class ThingProcesser { public List<Thing> CalculatedThings { get; set; } public ThingProcesser() { CalculatedThings = new List<Thing>(); } public double FindCertainThing() { CheckForException(); foreach (var thing in CalculatedThings) { //do some stuff with things... } } public double FindOtherThing() { CheckForException(); foreach (var thing in CalculatedThings) { //do some stuff with things... } } private void CheckForException() { if (CalculatedThings.Count < 2) throw new InvalidOperationException("Calculated things must have more than 2 items"); } } The list of items is not being changed, just looked through by the methods. There are several methods on the class, and to avoid having to pass the list of things to each function as a method parameter, I set it once on the class. While this works, does it violate the principle of least astonishment? Since starting to use IoC I find myself not sticking things into the constructor, to avoid having to use a factory pattern. For example, I can argue with myself and say well the ThingProcessor really needs a List to work, so the object should be constructed like this. public class ThingProcesser { public List<Thing> CalculatedThings { get; set; } public ThingProcesser(List<Thing> calculatedThings) { CalculatedThings = calculatedThings; } } However, if I did this, it would complicate things for IoC, and this scenario hardly seems appropriate for something like the factory pattern. So in summary, are there some good guidelines for when something should be part of the object state, vs. passed as a method parameter? When using IoC, is the factory pattern the best way to deal with objects that need created with state? If something has to be passed to multiple methods in a class, does that render it a good candidate to be part of the objects state?

  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

• F# Project Euler Problem 1

  - by MarkPearl

  Every now and then I give project Euler a quick browse. Since I have been playing with F# I have found it a great way to learn the basics of the language. Today I thought I would give problem 1 an attempt… Problem 1 If we list all the natural numbers below 10 that are multiples of 3 or 5, we get 3, 5, 6 and 9. The sum of these multiples is 23. Find the sum of all the multiples of 3 or 5 below 1000. My F# Solution I broke this problem into two functions… 1) be able to generate a collection of numbers that are multiples of a number but but are smaller than another number. let GenerateMultiplesOfXbelowY X Y = X |> Seq.unfold (fun i -> if (i<Y) then Some(i, i+X) else None) I then needed something that generated collections for multiples of 3 & 5 and then removed any duplicates. Once this was done I would need to sum these all together to get a result. I found the Seq object to be extremely useful to achieve this… let Multiples = Seq.append (GenerateMultiplesOfXbelowY 3 1000) (GenerateMultiplesOfXbelowY 5 1000) |> Seq.distinct |> Seq.fold(fun acc a -> acc + a) 0 |> Console.WriteLine |> Console.ReadLine My complete solution was … open System let GenerateMultiplesOfXbelowY X Y = X |> Seq.unfold (fun i -> if (i<Y) then Some(i, i+X) else None) let Multiples = Seq.append (GenerateMultiplesOfXbelowY 3 1000) (GenerateMultiplesOfXbelowY 5 1000) |> Seq.distinct |> Seq.fold(fun acc a -> acc + a) 0 |> Console.WriteLine |> Console.ReadLine   Which seemed to generate the correct result in a relatively short period of time although I am sure I will get some comments from the experts who know of some intrinsic method to achieve all of this in one method call.

  Read the article

• Nvidia driver overscan issue second monitor via dvi-d cable

  - by benmichael

  Ok, I know that I have a bit of a bizarre setup, but here goes. I have an old laptop, HP Pavilion 6000. The graphics card in there is a GeForce 7150M. The monitor connection is an old 18pin. The external monitor I use is a Samsung SyncMaster 2333. Don't ask me why, but this monitor only has a dvi-d connection (yes, i have searched it). So I have the monitor plugged into the laptop. If I use any of the Nvidia propriety drivers and try to set the resolution up to 1920x1080 (the monitor's native resolution), I get a massive overscan issue. Over the years I have tried to get this to work, tinkering with my xorg.conf to death. I have also tried this on every Ubuntu since 10.04, on all the corresponding LUbuntus, and on all the Linux Mints since Lisa. Exact same issue. I have even tried it in WinDoze and it works perfectly there (although I did get the error once, but was unable to reproduce it). Using the Open Source drivers it works perfectly iff I switch off the laptop monitor (this makes no difference with the Nvidia drivers). I would have happily gone on using the Open Source drivers, except that since upgrading to LUbuntu 12.10, the Open Source drivers make my monitor completely hazy and have the same overscan issue until I (through the haze, only because I know where things are) go to the monitor settings, activate the laptop's monitor, then deactivate it, and suddenly it comes right. I have to do this every time. So I have to find a way to fix one of them, so I may as well tackle the propriety drivers, hence this overlong question. Amidst other things, I have tried the nvidia-settings, but because it is connected to an 18pin, it detects the monitor as a vga monitor and does not give me overscan correction options. I have tried custom modlines (although there are always more of those try), I have tried using xrandr, and I have tried all the FlatPanelOptions. What I have not tried is a Gentoo build, as I don't have time any more to do that installation, but up to about three years ago when I ran Gentoo exclusively I did not have this issue. Below is an link to an image with a red highlight around the portion of the screen visible to me, the numbers around it are the number of pixels which are cut off. This does seem to drift a few pixels every now and then. Thanks in advance. Nvidia driver issue image

  Read the article

• What will be the better way for data retrieval on application that needs to handle limited amount of data.?

  - by Milanix

  This is not really a coding question since, I am not adding any code in here. Since, adding my code snippets itself would make this question really long. Instead, I am pretty interested in knowing a better ways for data retrieval on application that needs to handle limited amount of data which isn't updated regularly. Let's take this example: I am writing an application which gets a schedule as an XML from server. I have written a logic in order to parse XML version and update database only if the version is newer than the local version. Although the update is checked automatically/manually on daily basis based on user preference, the actual version update happens only once per few months or so. Since, this is done by some other authority which doesn't provide API but, rather inform publicly on their changes. The actual XML contains a "(n number of groups)(days in a week) (n number of schedule)" . The group is usually 6 and the number of schedule is usually 2. So basically there would usually be only around 100 strings. Now although I have used SQLite at the moment. I want to know how to make update on database. Should I show progress dialog that the application is updating and exit the app when it's done? Since, my updates are infrequent i don't think this will really harm user experience but, is there any better ways to do it? Because I don't want update to be made when user is searching which is done using database. This will cause an database already open exception. Atleast I have faced this problem before. Is it better to rather parse XML every time when user wants to view certain things or to use SQLite? Since, I make lots of use of adapter in my app to create lists, will that degrade the performance? It would really be a great help if anyone can give me better overview about it. Or may be counter argument against each. Many thanks!

  Read the article

• Should I continue to pursue programming based on my experience?

  - by El Be

  The reason I ask this question is because I am not sure my troubles come from a lack of confidence, or something much deeper like lack of passion. I'm hoping experienced programmers and developers can help identify the cause of my troubles. To be brief my undergraduate major was in Computer Science, but in a small school and I had the highest gpa in my year in computer science. The first time I ever programmed was once in the 5th grade (using logo) and when I was a freshman in college. I enjoyed programming when I was in school. Then I did an internships where I was expected to produce image processing software and program microchips. I was unsuccessful and produced little results and I hated the job, because I had to figure out everything for myself, did not have any help, and there was a lot of pressure to produce results. Although I tried I could not figure out what to do and was stuck all the time and made me dislike the job. When the internship ended I went to a PhD program for computer science at a prestigious computer science school. I had a very hard time with the course, met people who have been programming since they were 6 and made plenty of applications in their spare time (which I never did, although I tried). I even met many sophomores who understood more than I did. The combination of this and other things have made me feel that programming is not for me, but sometimes I consider a career in programming. I still consider programming as a career because of the career potential (not only just because of money). Based on my experience do you believe my confidence has just been shaken and I should continue to prepare for a programming career, or do you see a lack of passion and it would make it tough to continue programming. thank you for reading and for your advice Thank you for everyone's advice so far! Also: I dropped out of the ph.D program for computer science and switched to a master's in computer graphics. Its more applied, but I still find it hard to be motivated (due to either lack of confidence or passion), but since programming is such a big field I am looking for that niche area that I feel good programming in.

  Read the article

• In Technology, Ignorance is NOT Bliss

  - by Tanu Sood

  Author: Debra Lilley, ACE Director, UK Proof I’m not technical -  I’ve just finished a Latin America tour with OTN and a funny thing happened that I want to share with you; because it is quite a good analogy for how many of us use technology today and you know how I love analogies. In Costa Rica we had a really long journey up through the mountains to where our conference was to be. The road was windy and narrow and once it got dark there was no scenery to see, boredom set in. At one stage I looked at my watch to see the time, but in the dark I couldn’t make it out, so I thought I would be clever and use the torch in my smartphone! Even though as soon as I switched on the phone it showed the time, I ignored it and used the torch to read my watch. That’s us when we pay maintenance on software, ask for enhancements, and either chose not to upgrade or as I have seen so many times, upgrade but don’t use the new features. I know there are always other factors not least the upgrade costs themselves but in the later releases of all the Oracle family of applications Oracle have done a lot to make the interoperability of them with Oracle Fusion Middleware more successful and in many cases for the first time. My heritage is Oracle E Business Suite (EBS) and the availability of Oracle Weblogic for EBS is fantastic for an Oracle powered organisation that can move away from supporting multiple flavours of application server. The same release made available  - the no downtime patching that Oracle Database 11g introduced with Edition Based Redefinition. I am not saying you must use these features but you must be aware of what each release of your application brings and make a business based decision as to whether it is for you or not. I like to have a simple spreadsheet of features with no-value, nice-to-have, must-have ratings, but make the spreadsheet cumulative so that when you do upgrade you have all the features listed you previously didn’t take up. That way you can avoid the ‘using your phone to read your watch’ scenario. About the Author: Debra Lilley, Fusion Champion, UKOUG Board Member, Fusion User Experience Advocate and ACE Director. Lilley has 18 years experience with Oracle Applications, with E Business Suite since 9.4.1, moving to Business Intelligence Team Lead and Oracle Alliance Director. She has spoken at over 100 conferences worldwide and posts at debrasoraclethoughts  

  Read the article

• Multi-Part Map Troubleshooting

  - by Michael Stephenson

  Scenario I came across a nice little one with multi-part maps the other day. I had an orchestration where I needed to combine 4 input messages into one output message like in the below table:   Input Messages Output Messages Company Details Member Details Event Message Member Search Member Import   I thought my orchestration was working fine but for some reason when I was trying to send my message it had no content under the root node like below <ns0:ImportMemberChange xmlns:ns0="http://---------------/"></ns0:ImportMemberChange>   My map is displayed in the below picture. I knew that the member search message may not have any elements under it but its root element would always exist. The rest of the messages were expected to be fully populated. I tried a number of different things and testing my map outside of the orchestration it always worked fine. The Eureka Moment The eureka moment came when I was looking at the xslt produced by the map. Even though I'd tried swapping the order of the messages in the input of the map you can see in the below picture that the first part of the processing of the message (with the red circle around it) is doing a for-each over the GetCompanyDetailsResult element within the GetCompanyDetailsResponse message. This is because the processing is driven by the output message format and the first element to output is the OrganisationID which comes from the GetCompanyDetailsResponse message. At this point I could focus my attention on this message as the xslt shows that if this xpath statement doesn’t return the an element from the GetCompanyDetailsResponse message then the whole body of the output message will not be produced and the output from the map would look like the message I was getting. <ns0:ImportMemberChange xmlns:ns0="http://---------------/"></ns0:ImportMemberChange> I was quickly able to prove this in my map test which proved this was a likely candidate for the problem. I revisited the orchestration focusing on the creation of the GetCompanyDetailsResponse message and there was actually a bug in the orchestration which resulted in the message being incorrectly created, once this was fixed everything worked as expected. Conclusion Originally I thought it was a problem with the map itself, and looking online there wasn’t really much in the way of content around troubleshooting for multi-part map problems so I thought I'd write this up. I guess technically it isn't a multi-part map problem, but I spend a good couple of hours the other day thinking it was.

  Read the article

• All hail the Excel Queen

  - by Tim Dexter

  An excellent question this past week from dear ol Blighty; actually from Brian at Nextgen Clearing Ltd in the big smoke (London). Brian was developing an excel template and wanted to be able to reference the data fields multiple times inside the Excel template. Damn good question and I of course has some wacky solutions, from macros and cell referencing in Excel to pre-processing the data with an XSL stylesheet to copy the data multiple times so it could be referenced multiple times. All completely outlandish, enter our Queen of Excel, Shirley from the development team. Shirley is singlehandedly responsible for the Excel templates, I put her through six months of hell a few years back, with a host of Excel template requirements. She was more than up to the challenge and has developed some great features. One of those, is the ability to use the hidden XDO_METADATA sheet to map the data to custom named fields so they can be used multiple times in the template. So simple and very neat! Excel template and regular Excel users will know that you can only use the naming function once ie the names have to be unique across the workbook so you can not reuse a cell/group name. To get around this you can just come up with as many cell names as you want and map them in the XDO_METADATA sheet to the data columns/fields in your XML data set:. For example: XDO_?DEPTNO_SUMMARY?  <?DEPTNO?> XDO_?DNAME_SUMMARY?  <?DNAME?> XDO_GROUP_?G_D_DETAIL? <xsl:for-each-group select=".//G_D" group-by="./DEPTNO"> XDO_?DEPTNO_DETAIL? <?DEPTNO?> As you can see DEPTNO has been referenced twice and mapped to different named values in the left hand column. These values can then be used to name individual cells in the Excel template. You'll also notice a mix of Publisher <? ...?> and native XSL commands. So the world is your oyster on the mapping and the complexity you might need for calculations or string manipulation. Shirley has kindly built out a sample Excel template, data and result here so you can see how it all hangs together. the XDO_METADATA sheet is hidden, just right click on the sheet names and use the Unhide command to show it.

  Read the article

• Can't change color of sprites in unity

  - by Aceleeon

  I would like to create a script that targets a 2d sprite "enemy" and changes their color to red (slightly opaque red if possible) when you hit tab. I have this code from a 3d tutorial hoping the transition would work. But it does not. I only get the script to cycle the enemy tags but never changes the color of the sprite. I have the code below I'm very new to coding, and any help would be FANTASTIC! HELP! hahah. TL;DR Cant get 3d color targeting to work for 2D. Check out the c#code below using UnityEngine; using System.Collections; using System.Collections.Generic; public class Targetting : MonoBehaviour { public List targets; public Transform selectedTarget; private Transform myTransform; // Use this for initialization void Start () { targets = new List(); selectedTarget = null; myTransform = transform; AddAllEnemies(); } public void AddAllEnemies() { GameObject[] go = GameObject.FindGameObjectsWithTag("Enemy"); foreach(GameObject enemy in go) AddTarget(enemy.transform); } public void AddTarget(Transform enemy) { targets.Add(enemy); } private void SortTargetsByDistance() { targets.Sort(delegate(Transform t1,Transform t2) { return Vector3.Distance(t1.position, myTransform.position).CompareTo(Vector3.Distance(t2.position, myTransform.position)); }); } private void TargetEnemy() { if(selectedTarget == null) { SortTargetsByDistance(); selectedTarget = targets[0]; } else { int index = targets.IndexOf(selectedTarget); if(index < targets.Count -1) { index++; } else { index = 0; } selectedTarget = targets[index]; } } private void SelectTarget() { selectedTarget.GetComponent().color = Color.red; } private void DeselectTarget() { selectedTarget.GetComponent().color = Color.blue; selectedTarget = null; } // Update is called once per frame void Update() { if(Input.GetKeyDown(KeyCode.Tab)) { TargetEnemy(); } } }

  Read the article

• Multiplayer tile based movement synchronization

  - by Mars

  I have to synchronize the movement of multiple players over the Internet, and I'm trying to figure out the safest way to do that. The game is tile based, you can only move in 4 directions, and every move moves the sprite 32px (over time of course). Now, if I would simply send this move action to the server, which would broadcast it to all players, while the walk key is kept being pressed down, to keep walking, I have to take this next command, send it to the server, and to all clients, in time, or the movement won't be smooth anymore. I saw this in other games, and it can get ugly pretty quick, even without lag. So I'm wondering if this is even a viable option. This seems like a very good method for single player though, since it's easy, straight forward (, just take the next movement action in time and add it to a list), and you can easily add mouse movement (clicking on some tile), to add a path to a queue, that's walked along. The other thing that came to my mind was sending the information that someone started moving in some direction, and again once he stopped or changed the direction, together with the position, so that the sprite will appear at the correct position, or rather so that the position can be fixed if it's wrong. This should (hopefully) only make problems if someone really is lagging, in which case it's to be expected. For this to work out I'd need some kind of queue though, where incoming direction changes and stuff are saved, so the sprite knows where to go, after the current movement to the next tile is finished. This could actually work, but kinda sounds overcomplicated. Although it might be the only way to do this, without risk of stuttering. If a stop or direction change is received on the client side it's saved in a queue and the char keeps moving to the specified coordinates, before stopping or changing direction. If the new command comes in too late there'll be stuttering as well of course... I'm having a hard time deciding for a method, and I couldn't really find any examples for this yet. My main problem is keeping the tile movement smooth, which is why other topics regarding synchronization of pixel based movement aren't helping too much. What is the "standard" way to do this?

  Read the article

• Why can't the IT industry deliver large, faultless projects quickly as in other industries?

  - by MainMa

  After watching National Geographic's MegaStructures series, I was surprised how fast large projects are completed. Once the preliminary work (design, specifications, etc.) is done on paper, the realization itself of huge projects take just a few years or sometimes a few months. For example, Airbus A380 "formally launched on Dec. 19, 2000", and "in the Early March, 2005", the aircraft was already tested. The same goes for huge oil tankers, skyscrapers, etc. Comparing this to the delays in software industry, I can't help wondering why most IT projects are so slow, or more precisely, why they cannot be as fast and faultless, at the same scale, given enough people? Projects such as the Airbus A380 present both: Major unforeseen risks: while this is not the first aircraft built, it still pushes the limits if the technology and things which worked well for smaller airliners may not work for the larger one due to physical constraints; in the same way, new technologies are used which were not used yet, because for example they were not available in 1969 when Boeing 747 was done. Risks related to human resources and management in general: people quitting in the middle of the project, inability to reach a person because she's on vacation, ordinary human errors, etc. With those risks, people still achieve projects like those large airliners in a very short period of time, and despite the delivery delays, those projects are still hugely successful and of a high quality. When it comes to software development, the projects are hardly as large and complicated as an airliner (both technically and in terms of management), and have slightly less unforeseen risks from the real world. Still, most IT projects are slow and late, and adding more developers to the project is not a solution (going from a team of ten developer to two thousand will sometimes allow to deliver the project faster, sometimes not, and sometimes will only harm the project and increase the risk of not finishing it at all). Those which are still delivered may often contain a lot of bugs, requiring consecutive service packs and regular updates (imagine "installing updates" on every Airbus A380 twice per week to patch the bugs in the original product and prevent the aircraft from crashing). How can such differences be explained? Is it due exclusively to the fact that software development industry is too young to be able to manage thousands of people on a single project in order to deliver large scale, nearly faultless products very fast?

  Read the article

• Remote Graphics Diagnostics with Windows RT 8.1 and Visual Studio 2013

  - by Michael B. McLaughlin

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/mikebmcl/archive/2013/11/12/remote-graphics-diagnostics-with-windows-rt-8.1-and-visual-studio.aspxThis blog post is a brief follow up to my What’s New in Graphics and Game Development in Visual Studio 2013 post on the MVP Award blog. While writing that post I was testing out various features to try to make sure everything worked as expected. I had some trouble getting Remote Graphics Diagnostics (a/k/a remote graphics debugging) working on my first generation Surface RT (upgraded to Windows RT 8.1). It was more strange since I could use remote debugging when doing CPU debugging; it was just graphics debugging that was causing trouble. After some discussions with the great folks who work on the graphics tools in Visual Studio, they were able to repro the problem and recommend a solution. My Surface RT needed the ARM Kits policy installed on it. Once I followed the instructions on the previous link, I could successfully use Remote Graphics Diagnostics on my Surface RT. Please note that this requires Windows RT 8.1 RTM (i.e. not Preview) and that Remote Graphics Diagnostics on ARM only works when you are using Visual Studio 2013 as it is a new feature (it should work just fine using the Express for Windows version). Also, when I installed the ARM Kits policy I needed to do two things to get it to work properly. First, when following the “How to install the Kits policy” instructions, I needed to copy the SecureBoot folder into Program Files on my Surface RT (specifically, I copied the SecureBoot folder to “C:\Program Files\Windows Kits\8.1\bin\arm\” on my Surface RT, creating any necessary directories). It may work if it’s in any system folder; I didn’t test any others after I got it working. I had initially put it in my Downloads folder and tried installing it from there. When the machine restarted it displayed a worrisome error message. I repeatedly pressed the button that would allow me to retry and eventually the machine rebooted and managed to recover itself to its previous state. Second, I needed to install it as an Administrator. The instructions say that this might be necessary. For me it was. This is a Remote Graphics Diagnostics is a great new feature in Visual Studio 2013 so I definitely encourage all of you to check it out!

  Read the article

• Developing a Support Plan for Cloud Applications

  - by BuckWoody

  Last week I blogged about developing a High-Availability plan. The specifics of a given plan aren't as simple as "Step 1, then Step 2" because in a hybrid environment (which most of us have) the situation changes the requirements. There are those that look for simple "template" solutions, but unless you settle on a single vendor and a single way of doing things, that's not really viable. The same holds true for support. As I've mentioned before, I'm not fond of the term "cloud", and would rather use the tem "Distributed Computing". That being said, more people understand the former, so I'll just use that for now. What I mean by Distributed Computing is leveraging another system or setup to perform all or some of a computing function. If this definition holds true, then you're essentially creating a partnership with a vendor to run some of your IT - whether that be IaaS, PaaS or SaaS, or more often, a mix. In your on-premises systems, you're the first and sometimes only line of support. That changes when you bring in a Cloud vendor. For Windows Azure, we have plans for support that you can pay for if you like. http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/support/plans/ You're not off the hook entirely, however. You still need to create a plan to support your users in their applications, especially for the parts you control. The last thing they want to hear is "That's vendor X's problem - you'll have to call them." I find that this is often the last thing the architects think about in a solution. It's fine to put off the support question prior to deployment, but I would hold off on calling it "production" until you have that plan in place. There are lots of examples, like this one: http://www.va-interactive.com/inbusiness/editorial/sales/ibt/customer.html some of which are technology-specific. Once again, this is an "it depends" kind of approach. While it would be nice if there was just something in a box we could buy, it just doesn't work that way in a hybrid system. You have to know your options and apply them appropriately.

  Read the article

• How to generate SPMetal for a specific list (OOTB: like tasks or contacts) with custom columns

  - by KunaalKapoor

  SPMetal is used to make use of LINQ on a list in SharePoint 2010. By default when you generate SPMetal on a site you will get a code generated file for most of the lists and probably more. Here is a MSDN link for some info on SPMetal.http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee538255(office.14).aspxBut what if you want only to generate the code for one list?Well it is quite simple once you figure it out. You need to add an xml file to override the default settings of SPMetal and specify it in the /parameters option. I will show you how to do this.First create a Folder that will contain two files (GenerateSPMetalCode.bat and SPMetal.xml).Below is the content of the files:GenerateSPMetalCode.bat "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\BIN\SPMetal" /web:http://YourServer /code:OutPutFileName.cs /language:csharp /parameters:SPMetal.xml pause SPMetal.xml <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <Web AccessModifier="Internal" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/SharePoint/2009/spmetal"> <List Name="ListName"> <ContentType Name="ContentTypeName" Class="GeneratedClassName" /> </List> <ExcludeOtherLists></ExcludeOtherLists> </Web> You will have to change some of the text in the files so that it will be specific to your SharePoint Server Setup. In the bat file you will have to change http://YourServer to the url of the web where your list is. In the SPMetal.xml file you need to change ListName to the name of your list and the ContentTypeName to the name of the content type you want to extract. The GeneratedClassName can be anything but perhaps you should rename it to something more sensible.Adding the following line: '<List Name="ListName"><ContentType Name="ContentTypeName" Class="GeneratedClassName" /> </List>'  makes sure that any custom columns added to an OOTB list like contacts or tasks are also generated, which are missed out in a regular generation.So now when you run it the SPMetal command will read the SPMetal.xml list and override its commands. ExcludeOtherLists element makes it so that only the code for the lists you specify will be generated. For some reason I got an error if I had this element above the List element.You sould now have a code file called OutPutFileName.cs that has been generated. You can now put this in your SharePoint project for use with your LINQ queries against that list.I will soon write a LINQ example that uses the generated class. UPDATE: Add the /namespace parameter to add a namespace to the generated code. "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\BIN\SPMetal" /web:http://YourServer /namespace:MySPMetalNameSpace /code:OutPutFileName.cs /language:csharp /parameters:SPMetal.xml

  Read the article

• Why are my scene's depth values not being written to my DepthStencilView?

  - by dotminic

  I'm rendering to a depth map in order to use it as a shader resource view, but when I sample the depth map in my shader, the red component has a value of 1 while all other channels have a value of 0. The Texture2D I use to create the DepthStencilView is bound with the D3D11_BIND_DEPTH_STENCIL | D3D11_BIND_SHADER_RESOURCE flags, the DepthStencilView has the DXGI_FORMAT_D32_FLOAT format, and the ShaderResourceView's format is D3D11_SRV_DIMENSION_TEXTURE2D. I'm setting the depth map render target, then i'm drawing my scene, and once that is done, I'm the back buffer render target and depth stencil are set on the output merger, and I'm using the depth map shader resource view as a texture in my shader, but the depth value in the red channel is constantly 1. I'm not getting any runtime errors from D3D, and no compile time warning or anything. I'm not sure what I'm missing here at all. I have the impression the depth value is always being set to 1. I have not set any depth/stencil states, and AFAICT depth writing is enabled by default. The geometry is being rendered correctly so I'm pretty sure depth writing is enabled. The device is created with the appropriate debug flags; #if defined(DEBUG) || defined(_DEBUG) deviceFlags |= D3D11_CREATE_DEVICE_DEBUG | D3D11_RLDO_DETAIL; #endif This is how I create my depth map. I've omitted error checking for the sake of brevity D3D11_TEXTURE2D_DESC td; td.Width = width; td.Height = height; td.MipLevels = 1; td.ArraySize = 1; td.Format = DXGI_FORMAT_R32_TYPELESS; td.SampleDesc.Count = 1; td.SampleDesc.Quality = 0; td.Usage = D3D11_USAGE_DEFAULT; td.BindFlags = D3D11_BIND_DEPTH_STENCIL | D3D11_BIND_SHADER_RESOURCE; td.CPUAccessFlags = 0; td.MiscFlags = 0; _device->CreateTexture2D(&texDesc, 0, &this->_depthMap); D3D11_DEPTH_STENCIL_VIEW_DESC dsvd; ZeroMemory(&dsvd, sizeof(dsvd)); dsvd.Format = DXGI_FORMAT_D32_FLOAT; dsvd.ViewDimension = D3D11_DSV_DIMENSION_TEXTURE2D; dsvd.Texture2D.MipSlice = 0; _device->CreateDepthStencilView(this->_depthMap, &dsvd, &this->_dmapDSV); D3D11_SHADER_RESOURCE_VIEW_DESC srvd; srvd.Format = DXGI_FORMAT_R32_FLOAT; srvd.ViewDimension = D3D11_SRV_DIMENSION_TEXTURE2D; srvd.Texture2D.MipLevels = texDesc.MipLevels; srvd.Texture2D.MostDetailedMip = 0; _device->CreateShaderResourceView(this->_depthMap, &srvd, &this->_dmapSRV);

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 612 613 614 615 616 617 618 619 620 621 622 623  | Next Page >