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• a young intellect asks: Python or Ruby for freelance?

  - by Sophia

  Hello, I'm Sophia. I have an interest in self-learning either Python, or Ruby. The primary reason for my interest is to make my life more stable by having freelance work = $. It seems that programming offers a way for me to escape my condition of poverty (I'm on the edge of homelessness right now) while at the same time making it possible for me to go to uni. I intend on being a math/philosophy major. I have messed with Python a little bit in the past, but it didn't click super well. The people who say I should choose Python say as much because it is considered a good first language/teaching language, and that it is general-purpose. The people who say I should choose Ruby point out that I'm a very right-brained thinker, and having multiple ways to do something will make it much easier for me to write good code. So, basically, I'm starting this thread as a dialog with people who know more than I do, as an attempt to make the decision. :-) I've thought about asking this in stackoverflow, but they're much more strict about closing threads than here, and I'm sort of worried my thread will be closed. :/ TL;DR Python or Ruby for freelance work opportunities ($) as a first language? Additional question (if anyone cares to answer): I have a personal feeling that if I devote myself to learning, I'd be worth hiring for a project in about 8 weeks of work. I base this on a conservative estimate of my intellectual capacities, as well as possessing motivation to improve my life. Is my estimate necessarily inaccurate? random tidbit: I'm in Portland, OR I'll answer questions that are asked of me, if I can help the accuracy and insight contained within the dialog.

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• Iphone/Android app – chatroom development – what framework & hosting needs?

  - by MikaelW

  I have some experience regarding IPhone and Android development but I am now struggling to solve a new class of problem: apps that involve a client/server chatroom feature. That is, an app when people can exchange text over the internet, and without having the app to constantly “pull” content from the server. So that problem can’t be solved with a normal php/mysql website, there must be some kind of application running on a server that is able to send message from the server to the phone, rather than having the phone to check for new messages every 10 seconds… So I’m looking for ways to solve the different problems here: What framework should I use on the two sides (phone / server)? It should be some kind of library that doesn’t prevent me to write paid apps. It should also be possible to have the same server for the Iphone and android version of the app. What server / hosting solution do I need with what sort of features, I just have no experience regarding server application that can handle and initiate multiple connections and are hosted on hardware that is always online I tried to find resources online but couldn’t so far, either the libraries had the wrong kind of license/language or I just didn’t understand… Sometimes there were nice tutorial but for different needs such as peer2peer chat over local network… Same with the server and the hosting problem, not sure where to start really, I’m calling for help and I promise I will complete this page with notes about the experience I will get :-) Obviously the ideal would be to find a tutorial I missed that include client code, server code and a free scalable server… That being said, If I see something as good, it probably means that I have eaten the wrong kind of mushroom again… So, failing that, any pointer which might help me toward that quest, would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance. Mikael

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• Notebook Dell Inspiron N5110 Overheating after Installing Ubuntu 12.04

  - by Gilberto Albino

  there! I am scared here! I am a Windows 7 User and decided to install Ubuntu 12.04 on my Notebook Dell Inspiron N5110 and when the Grub loads with the menu list the fan starts speeding up. If I choose windows the fan is noiseless but if I choose Ubuntu... Gosh!!! It continues speeding up and overheating... I'm very sad about that! Every time I try to use Linux... I get a diferent hardware issue related to incompatibility or bugs! When it's not graphic driver it is bug elsewhere unimaginable!!! If there is a solution for this... I wonder if someone could spend some time helping me out because... I have JUST bought this notebook because it is in the list of Certified Hardware: http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/hardware/201012-6931/ So this is sad and somehow disgusting! Linux is going for the wrong way! It's never gonna be popular while doesn't have so wide hardware support like WIndows! That's a pitty! It's very likely I won't get answered meanwhile I will switch back for windows! I prefer paying my Windows License and having a fully working system than having a free open source software that is about to explode my notebook or toast my hands before! So you linux wonderful guys help! I need somebody help (beattles so I won't cry)

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• Oracle Magazine: Getting started with SQL Analytics

  - by KLaker

  I am currently working on a series of podcasts covering the broad categories of our SQL analytical functions and features and while I was doing some research I came across of series of four articles in the Oracle Magazine. This series of article is written by Melanie Caffrey who is a senior development manager at Oracle. She is a coauthor of Expert PL/SQL Practices for Oracle Developers and DBAs (Apress, 2011) and Expert Oracle Practices: Oracle Database Administration from the Oak Table (Apress, 2010). The four articles are under the banner "Technology: SQL 101" and parts 9, 10, 11 and 12 cover SQL analytics. Here are the links to the four articles: Jan 2013 Having Sums, Averages, and Other Grouped Data March 2013 A Window into the World of Analytic Functions May 2013 Leading Ranks and Lagging Percentages: Analytic Functions, Continued July 2013 Pivotal Access to Your Data: Analytic Functions, Concluded The articles cover topics such as GROUP BY, SUM, AVG, HAVING, window functions, RANK, FIRST, LAST, LAG, LEAD etc.   The great news is that  you can try out the examples in this series. All you need is access to an Oracle Database instance. All the schemas, data sets and SQL statements that you will need can be downloaded from a link included in the January article.    I hope you find this series of articles useful.

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• How should I share variables between instances/classes?

  - by tesselode

  I'm making a game using LOVE, so everything is programmed in Lua. I've been experimenting with using classes and object orientation recently. I've found out that a nice system to use is having most of the game's code in different classes, and having a table of instances with all of the instances of any class in it. This way, I can go through every instance of every class and update and draw it by calling the same function. There is a problem, though. Let's say I have an instance of a player with variables for health and recharge time of a weapon. I also have a master instance which is responsible for drawing the HUD. How can I tell the master instance what the player's health is? Bad solutions: Assuming that the player instance will always have the same position in the table - that can be easily changed. Using global variables. Global variables are evil. Have the master instance outside of the instances table, and have the player set variables inside the master instance, which it then uses for HUD drawing. This is really bad because now I have to make a duplicate of every variable the master instance needs. What is the proper, standard way of sharing variables between instances? Do I need to change the way I keep track of instances?

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• Android threads trouble wrapping my head around design

  - by semajhan

  I am having trouble wrapping my head around game design. On the android platform, I have an activity and set its content view with a custom surface view. The custom surface view acts as my panel and I create instances of all classes and do all the drawing and calculation in there. Question: Should I instead create the instances of other classes in my activity? Now I create a custom thread class that handles the game loop. Question: How do I use this one class in all my activities? Or do I have to create a separate instance of the extended thread class each time? In my previous game, I had multiple levels that had to create an instance of the thread class and in the thread class I had to set constructor methods for each separate level and in the loop use a switch statement to check which level it needs to render and update. Sorry if that sounds confusing. I just want to know if the method I am using is inefficient (which it probably is) and how to go about designing it the correct way. I have read many tutorials out there and I am still having lots of trouble with this particular topic. Maybe a link to a some tutorials that explain this? Thanks.

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• Iphone/Android app – chatroom development – what framework & hosting needs?

  - by MikaelW

  I have some experience regarding IPhone and Android development but I am now struggling to solve a new class of problem: apps that involve a client/server chatroom feature. That is, an app when people can exchange text over the internet, and without having the app to constantly “pull” content from the server. So that problem can’t be solved with a normal php/mysql website, there must be some kind of application running on a server that is able to send message from the server to the phone, rather than having the phone to check for new messages every 10 seconds… So I’m looking for ways to solve the different problems here: What framework should I use on the two sides (phone / server)? It should be some kind of library that doesn’t prevent me to write paid apps. It should also be possible to have the same server for the Iphone and android version of the app. What server / hosting solution do I need with what sort of features, I just have no experience regarding server application that can handle and initiate multiple connections and are hosted on hardware that is always online I tried to find resources online but couldn’t so far, either the libraries had the wrong kind of license/language or I just didn’t understand… Sometimes there were nice tutorial but for different needs such as peer2peer chat over local network… Same with the server and the hosting problem, not sure where to start really, I’m calling for help and I promise I will complete this page with notes about the experience I will get :-) Obviously the ideal would be to find a tutorial I missed that include client code, server code and a free scalable server… That being said, If I see something as good, it probably means that I have eaten the wrong kind of mushroom again… So, failing that, any pointer which might help me toward that quest, would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance. Mikael

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• Android threads trouble wrapping my head around design

  - by semajhan

  I am having trouble wrapping my head around game design. On the android platform, I have an activity and set its content view with a custom surface view. The custom surface view acts as my panel and I create instances of all classes and do all the drawing and calculation in there. Question: Should I instead create the instances of other classes in my activity? Now I create a custom thread class that handles the game loop. Question: How do I use this one class in all my activities? Or do I have to create a separate thread each time? In my previous game, I had multiple levels that had to create an instance of the thread class and in the thread class I had to set constructor methods for each separate level and in the loop use a switch statement to check which level it needs to render and update. Sorry if that sounds confusing. I just want to know if the method I am using is inefficient (which it probably is) and how to go about designing it the correct way. I have read many tutorials out there and I am still having lots of trouble with this particular topic. Maybe a link to a some tutorials that explain this? Thanks.

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• In Google Webmaster Tools we have 3 sitemaps attributed to 1 domain

  - by Frank

  Thanks for you advice and help ahead of time I have a website that has been on the internet for almost 10 years created in "Microsoft Frontpage" with over 900 pages. Currently in Google Webmaster tools it shows up as 2 domains and 3 sitemaps: http://www.example.com example.com hostedsitmaps.com Furthermore, since we were having hard to placing the xml sitemap on our site(Frontpage Issues) we decided to hire pro-sitemaps.com to create, host and upload the xml file which they did. Thus, I have another site hostedsitemaps.com on our webmaster tools for the site. Hosted sitemaps shows: 900 urls submitted 800 Indexed. Crawl errors and Search queries: No data available http://www.example.com shows: 889 URLs submitted 1 URLs indexed. Crawl Errors: 14 Soft 404 796 Not found Search Queries: 8104 example.com shows: 889 URLs submitted 1 URLs indexed Crawl errors: 48 Soft 404 91 Not found Search Queries: 8104 My questions and need for help are as followed: 1. Why are our domain based sites in webmaster tools ( example.com and http:www.example.com) showing only 1 URL indexed while the hostedsitemap has 800 indexed? 2. Should we have 3 domains configured for this "one" domain in Google Webmaster tools? 3. Should we eliminate/delete the hostedsitemap from webmaster tools completely and take off that XML sitemap? 4 Does having example.com and http://www.example.com impact web ranking? 5. Any other thoughts or help in this very complicated matter for us. Thanks.

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• 2D Collision masks for handling slopes

  - by JiminyCricket

  I've been looking at the example at: http://create.msdn.com/en-US/education/catalog/tutorial/collision_2d_perpixel and am trying to figure out how to adjust the sprite once a collision has been detected. As David suggested at XNA 4.0 2D sidescroller variable terrain heightmap for walking/collision, I made a few sensor points (feet, sides, bottom center, etc.) and can easily detect when these points actually collide with non-transparent portions of a second texture (simple slope). I'm having trouble with the algorithm of how I would actually adjust the sprite position based on a collision. Say I detect a collision with the slope at the sprite's right foot. How can I scan the slope texture data to find the Y position to place the sprite's foot so it is no longer inside the slope? The way it is stored as a 1D array in the example is a bit confusing, should I try to store the data as a 2D array instead? For test purposes, I'm thinking of just using the slope texture alpha itself as a primitive and easy collision mask (no grass bits or anything besides a simple non-linear slope). Then, as in the example, I find the coordinates of any collisions between the slope texture and the sprite's sensors and mark these special sensor collisions as having occurred. Finally, in the case of moving up a slope, I would scan for the first transparent pixel above (in the texture's Ys at that X) the right foot collision point and set that as the new height of the sprite. I'm a little unclear also on when I should make these adjustments. Collisions are checked on every game.update() so would I quickly change the position of the sprite before the next update is called? I also noticed several people mention that it's best to separate collision checks horizontally and vertically, why is that exactly? Open to any suggestions if this is an inefficient or inaccurate way of handling this. I wish MSDN had provided an example of something like this, I didn't know it would be so much more complex than NES Mario style pure box platforming!

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• How do you stay productive when dealing with extremely badly written code?

  - by gaearon

  I don't have much experience in working in software industry, being self-taught and having participated in open source before deciding to take a job. Now that I work for money, I also have to deal with some unpleasant stuff, which is normal of course. Recently I was assigned to add logging to a large SharePoint project which is written by some programmer who obviously was learning to code on the job. After 2 years of collaboration, the client switched to our company, but the damage was done, and now somehow I need to maintain this code. Not that the code was too hard to read. Despite problems - each project has one class with several copy-pasted methods, enormous if nestings, Systems Hungarian, undisposed connections — it's still readable. However, I found myself absolutely unproductive despite working on something as simple as adding logging. Basically, I just need to go through the code step by step and add some trace calls. However, the idiocy of the code is so annoying that I get tired within 10 minutes of starting. In the beginning, I used to add using constructs, reduce nesting by reversing if's, rename the variables to readable names—but the project is large, and eventually I gave up. I know this is not the task I should be doing, but at least reducing the mess gave me some kind of psychological reward so I could keep going. Now the trick stopped working, and I still have 60% of my work to do. I started having headaches after work, and I no longer get the feeling of satisfaction I used to get - which would usually allow me to code for 10 hours straight and still feel fresh. This is not just one big rant, for I really do have an actual question: Is there a way to stay productive and not to fight the windmills? Is there some kind of psychological trick to stay focused on the task, instead of thinking “How stupid is that?” each time I see another clever trick by the previous programmer? The problem with adding logging is that I actually have to understand what the code does, and doing so hurts my brain in an unpleasant fashion.

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• Is there a process-oriented IDE ?

  - by Raveline

  My problem is simple : when I'm programming in an OO paradigm, I'm often having part of a main business process divided in many classes. Which means, if I want to examine the whole functional chain that leads to the output, for debugging or for optimization research, it can be a bit painful. So I was wondering : is there an IDE that let you put a "process tag" on functions coming from different objects, and give you a view of all those functions having the same tag ? edit : To give an example (that I'm making up completely, sorry if it doesn't sound very realistic). Let's say we have the following business process for a HR application : receive a holiday-request by an employee, check the validity of the request, then give an alert to his boss ("one of those lazy programmer wants another day off"); at the same time, let's say the boss will want to have a table of all employee's timetable during the time the employee wants his vacations; then handle the answer of the boss, send a nice little mail to the employee ("No way, lazy bones"). Even if we get rid of everything not purely business-related (mail sending process, db handling to get the useful info, GUI functionalities, and so on), we still have something that doesn't really fit in "one class". I'd like to have an IDE that would give me the opportunity to embrace quickly, at the very least : The function handling the validation of the request by the employee; The function preparing the "timetable" for the boss; The function handling the validation of the request by the boss; I wouldn't put all those functions in the same class (but perhaps that's my mistake ?). This is where my dreamed IDE could be helpful.

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• MDX needs a function or macro syntax

  - by Darren Gosbell

  I was having an interesting discussion with a few people about the impact of named sets on performance (the same discussion noted by Chris Webb here: http://cwebbbi.wordpress.com/2011/03/16/referencing-named-sets-in-calculations). And apparently the core of the performance issue comes down to the way named sets are materialized within the SSAS engine. Which lead me to the thought that what we really need is a syntax for declaring a non-materialized set or to take this even further a way of declaring an MDX expression as function or macro so that it can be re-used in multiple places. Because sometimes you do want the set materialised, such as when you use an ordered set for calculating rankings. But a lot of the time we just want to make our MDX modular and want to avoid having to repeat the same code over and over. I did some searches on connect and could not find any similar suggestions so I posted one here: https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/details/651646/mdx-macro-or-function-syntax Although apparently I did not search quite hard enough as Chris Webb made a similar suggestion some time ago, although he also included a request for true MDX stored procedures (not the .Net style stored procs that we have at the moment): https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/details/473694/create-parameterised-queries-and-functions-on-the-server Chris also pointed out this post that he did last year http://cwebbbi.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/iccube/ where he pointed out that the icCube product already has this sort of functionality. So if you think either or both of these suggestions is a good idea then I would encourage you to click on the links and vote for them.

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• How to Properly Make use of Codeigniter's HMVC

  - by Branden Stilgar Sueper

  I have been having problems wrapping my brain around how to properly utilize the modular extension for Codeigniter. From what I understand, modules should be entirely independent of one another so I can work on one module and not have to worry about what module my teammate is working on. I am building a frontend and a backend to my site, and am having confusion about how I should structure my applications. The first part of my question is should I use the app root controllers to run modules, or should users go directly to the modules by urls? IE: in my welcome.php public function index() { $this->data['blog'] = Modules::run( 'blog' ); $this->data['main'] = Modules::run( 'random_image' ); $this->load->view('v_template', $this->data); } public function calendar() { $this->data['blog'] = Modules::run( 'blog' ); $this->data['main'] = Modules::run( 'calendar' ); $this->load->view('v_template', $this->data); } My second part of the question is should I create separate front/back end module folders -config -controllers welcome.php -admin admin.php -core -helpers -hooks -language -libraries -models -modules-back -dashboard -logged_in -login -register -upload_images -delete_images -modules-front -blog -calendar -random_image -search -views v_template.php -admin av_template.php Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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• Can't install Ubuntu on Asus Eee 1015pem

  - by Peter

  I'm having trouble to install Ubuntu. I use a ASUS Eee 1015pem netbook. Recently, I my netbook got wet. I had it inside my backback and all my things got wet. The netbook boots up fine but it will not load the OS. I downloaded ubuntu onto my external hard drive and changed the settings in my Bios to boot from a removable device. Nothing happens. When I plug in my external hard drive I'm not able to get to the boot icon. I have to unplug it the external hard drive. Set my boot settings I tried both Removable and CD-Rom. Than I plug my external drive back in and nothing happens on either settings. My Asus never came with a recovery disk and suppose to have a build in recovery by pressing F9 in the Bios. Also I need to disable Boot Booster in Bios and Boot Booster is not even an opition in Bios. My friend told me try installing Ubuntu but now I'm having no luck with Ubuntu. Any suggestions?

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• Cloning existing software for commercial purposes - legal implications

  - by user2036256

  I have been asked to clone some existing software for a company. Basically its an old 16 bit DOS console app, which was supplied free of charge in I believe the late 80's. Having replaced the machine that needs to run it with a box running Win7 x64 they can't get it to work. It crashes every couple of minutes under DOSbox. The company that supplied it appears to no longer exist - if they did the company asking me to do this would almost certainly know about it. Its undetermined whether they have gone entirely or are just trading under a different name. If the latter they seem to have withdrawn from the market related to this product (because again, niche area, we should know about everyone there). What is the status to this with regards to copyright etc.? The main concern for the company involved is they want an identical interface to what they already have so I would have to clone this entirely. Having no source code / indication of the underlying mechanisms these would be written from scratch. Is an interface covered by copyright? / Does that still hold 30 years later? What is the assumed license when none at all is provided? Under UK law would I be under any serious risk were I to take on the project? How would this pan out if I then decided to sell the software on to other companies? Thanks

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• Using unordered_multimap as entity and component storage

  - by natebot13

  The Setup I've made a few games (more like animations) using the Object Oriented method with base classes for objects that extend them, and objects that extend those, and found I couldn't wrap my head around expanding that system to larger game ideas. So I did some research and discovered the Entity-Component system of designing games. I really like the idea, and thoroughly understood the usefulness of it after reading Byte54's perfect answer here: Role of systems in entity systems architecture. With that said, I have decided to create my current game idea using the described Entity-Component system. Having basic knowledge of C++, and SFML, I would like to implement the backbone of this entity component system using an unordered_multimap without classes for the entities themselves. Here's the idea: An unordered_mulitmap stores entity IDs as the lookup term, while the value is an inherited Component object. Examlpe: ____________________________ |ID |Component | ---------------------------- |0 |Movable | |0 |Accelable | |0 |Renderable | |1 |Movable | |1 |Renderable | |2 |Renderable | ---------------------------- So, according to this map of objects, the entity with ID 0 has three components: Movable, Accelable, and Renderable. These component objects store the entity specific data, such as the location, the acceleration, and render flags. The entity is simply and ID, with the components attached to that ID describing its attributes. Problem I want to store the component objects within the map, allowing the map have full ownership of the components. The problem I'm having, is I don't quite understand enough about pointers, shared pointers, and references in order to get that set up. How can I go about initializing these components, with their various member variables, within the unordered_multimap? Can the base component class take on the member variables of its child classes, when defining the map as unordered_multimap<int, component>? Requirements I need a system to be able to grab an entity, with all of its' attached components, and access members from the components in order to do the necessary calculations and reassignments for position, velocity, etc. Need a clarification? Post a comment with your concerns and I will gladly edit or comment back! Thanks in advance! natebot13

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• Squeezing all the SEO out of a URL as possible.

  - by John Isaacks

  I am working on an ecommerce site, I told our SEO consultant that I plan to make the URL scheme: /products/<id>/<name>. This is similar to Stackoverflow's URLs which are /questions/<id>/<title>. He asked me if I could change the URL scheme to /p/<id>/<name> instead. I know why he wants this change, the word "products" isn't needed to find the correct product, and it doesn't offer any SEO, so shortening it to just p would make the relevant keywords in the <name> weigh more. His main priority is maximizing SEO, but the part that I don't think he is considering is how this effects the semantics of the site. Also having the word "products" looks like it has meaning and a reason for being there, just having a p looks chaotic and ugly to me. I also don't think it makes that much of a difference does it? Stackoverflow doesn't use /q/<id>/<title> and they do just fine, I do realize that theres many factors at play here though, not just the URL. So I want some outside opinions on which is the better way and why?

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• GitHub: Are there external tools for managing issues list vs. project backlog

  - by DXM

  Recently I posted one of my the projects1 on GitHub and as I was exploring capabilities of the site, I noticed they have a rather decent issue tracking section. I want to use that section as a) other people can report bugs if they'd like and b) other people can see which bugs I'm aware of. However, as others have noted, issues list cannot be prioritized in order to create a project backlog. For now my backlog has been a text file, but I'd like to be able to have it integrated so the same information isn't maintained in different places. Having a fully ordered list, which is something we also practice at work, has been very useful as I can open one file, start with line 1 and fire off 2 or 3 items in one sitting without having to go back to a full issues/stories bucket. GitHub doesn't offer this. What GitHub does offer is a very nice and clean API so issues can easily be exported into anything else. I've searched to see if there are other websites (like Trello) that integrate with GitHub issues, but did not find anything. Does anyone know of such a product, service or offline tool? Those that use GitHub, what is your experience in managing backlog? I kinda hate the idea of manually managing two disconnected lists like some people seem to be doing with Wiki project pages. 1 - are shameless plugs allowed no this site? Searched but didn't find a definite answer. If it's bad practice, STOP and don't read further As a developer I got sick and tired of navigating to same set of folders 30 times a day, so I wrote a little, auto-collapsible utility that gets stuck to the desktop and allows easy access to the folders you constantly use.

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• Using Lerp to create a hovering effect for a GameObject

  - by OhMrBigshot

  I want to have a GameObject that has a "hovering" effect when the mouse is over it. What I'm having trouble with is actually having a color that gradually goes from one color to the next. I'm assuming Color.Lerp() is the best function for that, but I can't seem to get it working properly. Here's my CubeBehavior.cs's Update() function: private bool ReachedTop = false; private float t = 0f; private float final_t; private bool MouseOver = false; // Update is called once per frame void Update () { if (MouseOver) { t = Time.time % 1f; // using Time.time to get a value between 0 and 1 if (t >= 1f || t <= 0f) // If it reaches either 0 or 1... ReachedTop = ReachedTop ? false : true; if (ReachedTop) final_t = 1f - t; // Make it count backwards else final_t = t; print (final_t); // for debugging purposes renderer.material.color = Color.Lerp(Color.red, Color.green, final_t); } } void OnMouseEnter() { MouseOver = true; } void OnMouseExit() { renderer.material.color = Color.white; MouseOver = false; } Now, I've tried several approaches to making it reach 1 then count backwards till 0 including a multiplier that alternates between 1 and -1, but I just can't seem to get that effect. The value goes to 1 then resets at 0. Any ideas on how to do this?

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• Very Cool &ndash; Miami 311 System for tracking citizen service requests (Windows Azure, Silverlight

  - by Jim Duffy

  Having grown up in South Florida this short, but very enlightening, video explaining how the City of Miami has implemented a 311 citizen service request system using Windows Azure, Silverlight and Bing Maps definitely caught my attention. Miami311 The Miami311 System is a Windows Azure/Silverlight-based solution which enables City of Miami citizens report and track issues reported to city management. The system uses Bing Maps to plot the location and relevant information about each issue reported. Citizens now have the ability to easily see the status of the issue without having to call the city office. What I found interesting were a couple of benefits that a metropolitan area such as Miami can take advantage of in Windows Azure cloud-based solution. For the city of Miami, both benefits center around the weather. Of course the threat of a hurricane is a real issue in South Florida and what better way to make sure your site stays up during a hurricane then to have the site hosted far away from the eye of the storm. Using a Windows Azure cloud-based architecture the City of Miami is able to host the application within the Microsoft data centers safely away from any hurricane passing through South Florida. The second benefit is the inherent scalability of a Windows Azure based solution. During a severe weather event like thunderstorms or even worse, a hurricane, downed trees and power lines are a commonly reported problem. Being able to quickly scale up the computing resources required to handle the spike in citizens reporting these types of problems on the site is a huge benefit. Once the weather event has passed and downed tree reports begin to subside they can quickly reverse the process and scale the system back down to pre-storm levels. It’s kind of day-to-day kind of stuff but very cool stuff nonetheless. Have a day. :-|

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• Split a 2D scene in layers or have a z coordinate

  - by Bane

  I am in the process of writing a 2D game engine, and a dilemma emerged. Let me explain the situation... I have a Scene class, to which various objects can be added (Drawable, ParticleEmitter, Light2D, etc), and as this is a 2D scene, things will obviously be drawn over each other. My first thought was that I could have basic add and remove methods, but I soon realized that then there would be no way for the programmer to control the order in which things were drawn. So I can up with two options, each with its pros and cons. A) Would be to split the scene in layers. By that I mean instead of having the scene be a container of objects, have it be a container of layers, which are in turn the containers of objects. B) Would require to have some kind of z-coordinate, and then have the scene sorted so objects with lower z get drawn first. Option A is pretty solid, but the problem is with the lights. In what layer do I add it? Does it work cross-layer? On all bottom layers? And I still need the Z coordinate to calculate the shadow! Option B would require me to change all my code from having Vector2D positions, to some kind of class that inherits from Vector2D and adds a z coordinate to it (I don't want it to be a Vector3D because I still need all the same methods the 2D kind has, just with .z clamped on). Am I missing something? Is there an alternative to these methods? I'm working in Javascript, if that makes a difference.

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• Heading to GTC 2010

  - by Daniel Moth

  Next week the GPU Technology Conference (GTC) 2010 takes place in San Jose, CA and I am lucky enough to be attending the entire week. It has been an extremely long time (in fact, I can't remember the last time) where I am registered as an attendee at a conference (full pass/access) without being a speaker *and* without having any booth duty! Having said that, we (our team at Microsoft) will be running GPU debugging UX studies throughout the entire week (similar to what I had previously advertised). If you are attending GTC 2010 and you are interested, look for the related flyer in your conference bag. The conference is an excellent opportunity to connect in-person with various individuals that I have only met virtually. From an educational perspective there is a very long and interesting session list, with multiple concurrent slots, making it very hard to choose between them, but I have managed to create my (packed) schedule. I am most looking forward to sessions on the programming languages and tools, both from Microsoft and MS partners. For full conference details, visit the GTC 2010 official page. Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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• Which platform to choose, Java or .NET?

  - by salman

  I am working in a private bank, a leading mid size bank in local market. We are going to create our core banking solution. Existing solution has been developed on Java using IBM Visual Age 4.0. It is very important to discuss architecture first, we have currently more than 350 branches working in standalone mode, and it means they are working in self contained environment. They have their own database server (IBM DB2 9.7) and they are communicating with other branches via sockets to send and receive data. Having experience of .NET for more than 5 years I am trying to convince my superiors to choose .NET platform, but they are reluctant and unwilling. It is my job to encourage them for choosing best available platform to create large scale enterprise application. In simple word, we are going to create a very large scale enterprise financial application, a centralize and integrated which connects all branch networks plus having scalable, solid architecture that easily evolve over time. I want professional people to comment on above scenarios. Which platform to choose .NET or Java? Our all resource is currently working in Java, we have homogeneous environment (no Linux, no Mac and no UNIX). Any idea, any thoughts, any points technical or non-technical i.e. administrative or management point of view will be really appreciated.

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• 2D Rectangle Collision Response with Multiple Rectangles

  - by Justin Skiles

  Similar to: Collision rectangle response I have a level made up of tiles where the edges of the level are made up of collidable rectangles. The player's collision box is represented by a rectangle as well. The player can move in 8 directions. The player's velocity is equal in X and Y directions and constant. Each update, I am checking the player's collision against all tiles that are a certain distance away. When the player collides with a rectangle, I am finding the intersection depth and resolving along the most shallow axis followed by the other axis. This resolution happens for both axes simultaneously. See below for two examples of situations where I am having trouble. Moving up-left against the left wall In the scenario below, the player is colliding with two tiles. The tile intersection depth is equal on both axes for the top tile and more shallow in the X axis for the middle tile. Because the player is moving up the wall, the player should slide in an upward direction along the wall. This works properly as long as the rectangle with the more shallow depth is evaluated first. If the equal intersection depth rectangle is evaluated first, there is a chance the player becomes stuck. Moving up-left against the top wall Here is an identical scenario with the exception that the collision is with the top wall. The same problem occurs at the corners when intersection depth is equal for both axes. I guess my overall question is: How can I ensure that collision response occurs on tiles that have non-equal intersection depth before tiles that have equal intersection depth in order to get around the weirdness that occurs at these corners. Sean's answer in the linked question was good, but his solution required having different velocity components in a certain direction. My situation has equal velocities, so there's no good way to tell which direction to resolve at corners. I hope I have made my explanation clear.

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