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• CPU Wars Is a Trump-Style Card Game Driven by Chip Stats

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  If you’re looking for the geekiest card game around, you’d be hard pressed to beat CPU Wars–a top-trumps card game built around CPU specs. From the game’s designers: CPU Wars is a trump card game built by geeks for geeks. For Volume 1.0 we chose 30 CPUs that we believe had the greatest impact on the desktop history. The game is ideally played by 2 or 3 people. The deck is split between the players and then each player takes a turn and picks a category that they think has the best value. We have chosen the most important specs that could be numerically represented, such as maximum speed achieved and maximum number of transistors. It’s lots of fun, it has a bit of strategy and can be played during a break or over a coffee. If you’re interested, you can pick up a copy for £7.99 (roughly $12.50 USD). Hit up the link below for more information. How To Customize Your Wallpaper with Google Image Searches, RSS Feeds, and More 47 Keyboard Shortcuts That Work in All Web Browsers How To Hide Passwords in an Encrypted Drive Even the FBI Can’t Get Into

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• Building a Store Locator ASP.NET Application Using Google Maps API (Part 1)

  Over the past couple of months I've been working on a couple of projects that have used the free Google Maps API to add interactive maps and geocoding capabilities to ASP.NET websites. In a nutshell, the Google Maps API allow you to display maps on your website, to add markers onto the map, and to compute the latitude and longitude of an address, among many other tasks. With some Google Maps API experience under my belt, I decided it would be fun to implement a store locator feature and share it here on 4Guys. A store locator lets a visitor enter an address or postal code and then shows the nearby stores. Typically, store locators display the nearby stores on both a map and in a grid, along with the distance between the entered address and each store within the area. To see a store locator in action, check out the Wells Fargo store locator. This article is the first in a multi-part series that walks through how to add a store locator feature to your ASP.NET application. In this inaugural article, we'll build the database table to hold the store information. Next, we'll explore how to use the Google Maps API's geocoding feature to allow for flexible address entry and how to translate an address into latitude and longitude pairs. Armed with the latitude and longitude coordinates, we'll see how to retrieve nearby locations as well as how to compute the distance between the address entered by the visitor and the each nearby store. (A future installment will examine how to display a map showing the nearby stores.) Read on to learn more! Read More >Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Building a Store Locator ASP.NET Application Using Google Maps API (Part 1)

  Over the past couple of months I've been working on a couple of projects that have used the free Google Maps API to add interactive maps and geocoding capabilities to ASP.NET websites. In a nutshell, the Google Maps API allow you to display maps on your website, to add markers onto the map, and to compute the latitude and longitude of an address, among many other tasks. With some Google Maps API experience under my belt, I decided it would be fun to implement a store locator feature and share it here on 4Guys. A store locator lets a visitor enter an address or postal code and then shows the nearby stores. Typically, store locators display the nearby stores on both a map and in a grid, along with the distance between the entered address and each store within the area. To see a store locator in action, check out the Wells Fargo store locator. This article is the first in a multi-part series that walks through how to add a store locator feature to your ASP.NET application. In this inaugural article, we'll build the database table to hold the store information. Next, we'll explore how to use the Google Maps API's geocoding feature to allow for flexible address entry and how to translate an address into latitude and longitude pairs. Armed with the latitude and longitude coordinates, we'll see how to retrieve nearby locations as well as how to compute the distance between the address entered by the visitor and the each nearby store. (A future installment will examine how to display a map showing the nearby stores.) Read on to learn more! Read More >

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• Reduce Bookmarks in Chrome to Toolbar Icons

  - by Asian Angel

  Do you want to make the most efficient use of the space in Chrome’s Bookmarks Toolbar? Now you can reduce the bookmarks to icons with just a few minutes work. Note: You may or may not wish to do some reorganizing with your bookmarks before-hand. Condensing the Bookmarks If your browser is anything like ours then it has not taken long to fill up your Bookmarks Toolbar. Accessing the drop-down section often throughout the day is not too fun. The bookmarks are the easiest part of your collection to condense. Right-click on each bookmark and select “Edit…” to open the Edit Bookmark Window. Delete the text, click OK, and you are finished. You still have a useable bookmark that looks nice and takes up very little room. These are our bookmarks from the first screenshot above…no problems with accessing all of them now. With just a few minutes work you can have a beautiful and compact Bookmarks Toolbar. If you have been looking for a more efficient and compact Bookmarks Toolbar in Chrome, then this little hack will certainly be useful for you. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Reduce Your Bookmarks Toolbar to a Toolbar ButtonAccess Your Bookmarks with a Toolbar Button in Google ChromeConvert Chrome Bookmark Toolbar Folders to IconsAdd the Bookmarks Menu to Your Bookmarks Toolbar with Bookmarks UI ConsolidatorCompact Toolbar Buttons in Firefox TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Creating a Password Reset Disk in Windows Bypass Waiting Time On Customer Service Calls With Lucyphone MELTUP – "The Beginning Of US Currency Crisis And Hyperinflation" Enable or Disable the Task Manager Using TaskMgrED Explorer++ is a Worthy Windows Explorer Alternative Error Goblin Explains Windows Error Codes

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• Malaysian Airlines bans kids under 12, creates separate cabins in basement of flight

  - by Gopinath

  Kids are lot of fun to watch and play as long as they don’t start crying. Once they start crying it’s tough job for parents to calm them down and for people around it’s painful to be part of it. If it happens to be on a flight, it’s a biggest annoyance one can ever experience. Especially on long journey over night flights, it’s a nightmare for passengers if couple of kids are uncontrollable. After receiving many complaints from its passengers who are disturbed by kids in flight, Malaysian Airlines decided to ban kids under 12 in their regular Economy class cabins of new Airbus A380s. Parents with under 12 years old kids are allowed only in to special kids zone created in the basement of  the multi-storied jumbo flights Airbus A380s. May be parents with under 12 kids does not appreciate this move, but the rest of travellers would be happy. Back in June 2011 Malaysian Airlines banned infants in first class of its Boeing 747-400 jets. The CEO of Malaysian Airlines defended on twitter about the decision as first classers spend pricy amount for a comfortable journey.  So if you are a parent of kids  under 12, think twice before you book tickets on Malaysian Airlines. Creative commons image courtesy: flickr/transworld

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• Interesting sessions/tips from RMOUG

  - by jean-pierre.dijcks

  One of the sessions I was at at last week's RMOUG was a session on Temp Tablespace Groups. I had a look because I had no experience with this and it seemed to help with parallel processing and the allocation/usage of temp. You can read the excellent write-up at Kellyn Pedersen's blog - who did the session and all the work - here. So for all of those who may be seeing lot's of waits like enq: TS - Contention when you are doing hash joins and sorts, do have a look at the above blog post. I also had the chance to listen in at Stewart Bryson's session on Restartability (he had 3 R-s) where he gave very useful tips about how to deal with your data warehouse loads. Questions like archive log mode - should I or should I not were well covered. Flashback archives, also nice to hear about. Very nice talk, very interesting. Unfortunately he hasn't blogged about it yes, so no pointers to that one. Got to see a couple of other interesting sessions, and as conferences go got to meet some interesting Oracle folks from the region. As usual RMOUG was useful and fun. Off to the drawing boards to design next year's session!

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• Bring the Grid to Your Desktop with the TRON Legacy Theme for Windows 7

  - by Asian Angel

  The battle for control of the Grid and escape back to our reality in TRON Legacy was nothing less than epic. Now you can relive the adventure right on your desktop with the TRON Legacy theme for Windows 7. The theme comes with 39 Hi-Res wallpapers, custom TRON icons, a TRON styled set of cursors, and music from the movie as system sounds to make your desktop as one with the Grid. Tron Legacy Theme For Windows (Movie Themes) [VikiTech] More TRON Goodness for Your Desktop Desktop Fun: TRON and TRON Legacy Customization Set Four Awesome TRON Legacy Themes for Chrome and Iron Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How To Make Disposable Sleeves for Your In-Ear Monitors Macs Don’t Make You Creative! So Why Do Artists Really Love Apple? MacX DVD Ripper Pro is Free for How-To Geek Readers (Time Limited!) HTG Explains: What’s a Solid State Drive and What Do I Need to Know? How to Get Amazing Color from Photos in Photoshop, GIMP, and Paint.NET Learn To Adjust Contrast Like a Pro in Photoshop, GIMP, and Paint.NET Bring the Grid to Your Desktop with the TRON Legacy Theme for Windows 7 The Dark Knight and Team Fortress 2 Mashup Movie Trailer [Video] Dirt Cheap DSLR Viewfinder Improves Outdoor DSLR LCD Visibility Lakeside Sunset in the Mountains [Wallpaper] Taskbar Meters Turn Your Taskbar into a System Resource Monitor Create Shortcuts for Your Favorite or Most Used Folders in Ubuntu

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• Branded Application Pages (layouts pages) in SharePoint 2010

  - by Sahil Malik

  Ad:: SharePoint 2007 Training in .NET 3.5 technologies (more information). Application pages are now branded by default in SharePoint 2010. WOOHOO!!! The DynamicMasterPageFile attribute in SharePoint 2010 master pages allows application pages start using the site’s master page instead of the application master page. If you want backwards compatibility with SharePoint 2007, i.e. you want unbranded application pages, here is what you can do, a) You can change the MasterPageReferenceEnabled property to false in your SPWebApplication object, orb) Go to central administration\application management\manage web application\select your web app … go to the ribbon, look for general settings\general settings, and detach application pages from the site’s master page. I don’t see why you’d ever wanna do that, but hey if you want to .. go for it. This article was first published on blah.winsmarts.com. Stealing content is not cool. Safeguarded application pages Now for the fine print, there is something called as “Safeguarded application pages” in SP2010. These are pages, that IF IN CASE your custom master page screws up, they will automatically revert to use a master page that is guaranteed to work in the _layouts folder. Now that’s nice! That means, if you screw up, you always have a way to fix things. How nice! Here is a list of such safe guarded application pages - AccessDenied.aspx MngSiteAdmin.aspx People.aspx RecycleBin.aspx ReGhost.aspx ReqAcc.aspx Settings.aspx UserDisp.aspx ViewLsts.aspx Have fun! Comment on the article ....

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• 13 MORE Things from the Oracle Social Summit You Should Know

  - by Mike Stiles

  In our previous blog, we started giving those of you who couldn’t make it just a sampling of the valuable takeaways from the first annual Oracle Social Summit, held Nov 14 and 15 in Las Vegas. And while yes, 13 items is a pretty healthy sampling, we wanted to go the extra mile and give you 13 more, an indication of just how much great information came out of it.  Follow the arrow, and come on in as if you were there with us. 1. Weber Shandwick takes a 70/20/10 approach when advising clients how to allocate resources to paid social opportunities. 70% of spend should go toward paid opportunities the agency and client both know work, 20% should go toward paid social the agency knows works, and 10% should go toward experimentation. (Matt Dickman – Weber Shandwick) 2. By 2017, the technically competent CMO will spend more on IT than the CIO. (Gartner Study) 3. CIOs are focused on infrastructure. As the roles of the CMO and CIO continue coming together, those CIOs have to make a very conscious decision to get CMOs what they need. 4. It’s now harder for brands to differentiate based on product. The advantage will go to the brands that are successful in garnering customer trust. 5. More and more, enterprise software is going to start looking like the software consumers are used to seeing and using. 6. You will see brands prioritizing mobile and dropping investments in www, HTML, POS systems, etc. 7. The social graph has to be added to brands’ customer data for a more holistic view. Customers will give you the information you need if the reward is appropriate. 8. Viacom did a study that showed viewers are most honest on social. Not so much on surveys or other feedback vehicles. 9. How are you determining your influencers? Influence isn’t about reach. It’s about getting people to change behavior. 10. A mix of skills is becoming critically important in a social staff. It shouldn’t be a mixture of several disciplines, not just a bunch of “social experts.” 11. If senior management isn’t engaged, the social team is forced into guessing what might be considered a “success” by the C-suite. 12. Mobile customization will be getting big investments from brands in 2013. Brands need to provide shoppers utility, not just information. 75% will use mobile this holiday season to avoid in-store madness. 13. Data becomes information, information becomes insight, and insight becomes actionable. The Oracle Social Summit brought together brands, agencies, Oracle social experts and industry thought leaders to take a serious look at where social stands today, and where it’s headed in the near future. Given the speed of social’s evolution, attending such events (or at least reading nifty summary blogs) is a good investment in making sure your enterprise isn’t falling gradually behind.

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• Star Trek inspired home automation visualisation

  - by Zak McKracken

  I’ve always been a more or less active fan of Star Trek. During the construction phase of my house I started coding a GUI for controlling the house which has an EIB. Just for fun I designed a version inspired by the LCARS design used in Star Trek TNG and showed this to my wife. I showed her several designs before but this was the only one, she really liked. So I decided to go on with this. I started a C# WinForms application. The software runs on a wall mounted Shuttle Barebone-PC. First plan was an industrial panel-pc but the processor was too slow. The now-used Atom is ok. I started with the LCARS-controls found on Codeproject. Since the classic LCARS design divides the screen into two parts this tended to be impracticable, so I used my own design For now the software is able to: Switch lights/wall outlets Show current temperatures for all room controllers Show outside temperature with a 24h trend chart Show the status of the two heat pumps Provide an alarm clock (e.g. for cooking) Play internet radio streams Control absence Mute the door bell Speak status messages via speech synthesis For now, I’m working on an integration of my electric meter. The main heat pump and the electric meter are connected to my LAN. I also tried some speech recognition, but I’ve problems with the microphone. I't’s working when you are right in front of the PC, but not far away, let’s say on the other side of the room. So this is the main view. The table displays raw values which are sent over the EIB – completely useless but looks great For each floor I have a different view. Here you can see the temperatures and check the status of the lights (the buttons are blinking when a light is switched on) This is the view for the heat pump:   Next step would be to integrate a control of my squeezebox server (I use different Squeezeboxes through the house as a multiroom audio solution)

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• Register now for the UK Windows Azure Self-paced Interactive Learning Course starting May 10th

  - by Eric Nelson

  [Suggested twitter tag #selfpacedazure] We (myself and David Gristwood) have been working in the UK to create a fantastic opportunity to get yourself up to speed on the Windows Azure Platform over a 6 week period starting May 10th – without ever needing to leave the comfort of your home/office.  The course is derived from the internal training Microsoft gives on Azure which is both fun and challenging in equal parts – and we felt was just too good to keep to ourselves! We will be releasing more details nearer the date but hopefully the following is enough to convince you to register and … recommend it to a colleague or three :-) What we have produced is the “Microsoft Azure Self-paced Learning Course”. This is a free, interactive, self-paced, technical training course covering the Windows Azure platform – Windows Azure, SQL Azure and the Azure AppFabric. The course takes place over a six week period finishing on June 18th. During the course you will work from your own home or workplace, and get involved via interactive Live Meetings session, watch on-line videos, work through hands-on labs and research and complete weekly coursework assignments. The mentors and other attendees on the course will help you in your research and learning, and there are weekly Live Meetings where you can raise questions and interact with them. This is a technical course, aimed at programmers, system designers, and architects who want a solid understanding of the Microsoft Windows Azure platform, hence a prerequisite for this course is at least six months programming in the .NET framework and Visual Studio. Check out the full details of the event or go straight to registration.   The course outline is: Week 1 - Windows Azure Platform Week 2 - Windows Azure Storage Week 3 - Windows Azure Deep Dive and Codename "Dallas" Week 4 - SQL Azure Week 5 - Windows Azure Platform AppFabric Access Control Week 6 - Windows Azure Platform AppFabric Service Bus If you have any questions about the course and its suitability, please email [email protected].

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• Feeling Old? Before Middleware, Gamification, and MacBook Airs

  - by ultan o'broin

  Think we're done with green screens in the enterprise apps world? Fusion User Experience Advocate Debra Lilley (@debralilley) drew my attention to this super retro iPad terminal emulator app being used by a colleague to connect to JDE. Yes, before Middleware, this is how you did it. Surely the ultimate in hipster retro coexistence? Mind you, I've had to explain to lots of people I showed this to just what Telnet and IBM AS/400 are (or were). MochaSoft TN5250 Terminal Emulator iPad App This OG way of connecting to apps is a timely reminder not to forget all those legacy apps out there and the UX aspect to adoption and change. If a solution already works well and there's an emotional attachment to it, then the path to upgrade needs to be very clear and have valuable and demonstrable ROI for users and decision makers, a path that spans emotion and business benefits. On a pure usability front, that old school charm of the character-based green glow look 'n' feel could be easily done as a skin, personalizing an application for the user so that they feel comfortable with it. Fun too particularly in the mobile and BYOD space! In fact, there is a thriving retro apps market out there as illustrated by this spiffy lunar lander app (hat tip: John Cartan), part of a whole set of Atari's greatest hits available for iOS. Lunar Lander App And of course, there's the iOS version of Pong. Check out this retro Apple Mac SE/30 too. I actually remember using one of these. I have an Apple Mac Plus somewhere in my parents' house. I tried it out recently, and it actually booted, although all it was good for was playing the onboard games. Looking at all these olde worlde things makes me feel very old, but kinda warm inside too. The latter is a key part of today's applications user experience too.

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• OOW 2012: Kings of Leon & Pearl Jam - Appreciation Event

  - by Mike Dietrich

  June 15, 1992 - that was actually the day when Pearl Jam played their first concert in Serenadenhof in my hometown, Nürnberg. Oups ... that's over 20 years ago ... So I was so happy to get a ticket to this year's OOW 2012 appreciation event on Treasure Island. Every year it amazes me over and over again how the organizers manage it logistically to bring almost 40,000 people to and back from the island. Food was ... I would say fairly ok ... and beer (as always) is not - actually even though I'm not a beer drinker I wouldn't call it beer.  Kings of Leon did start. I like them a lot and owe their 2008 album Only By Night. That was a good start to warm up the crowd. And then Pearl Jam took over - and ... wooooooow ... they are such a great live band. First of all as far as I understood they were donating the money they've got for that gig to an NGO. And Eddie Vedder's voice is simply striking ... I had shivers running down my spine. They played a good excerpt of their +20 years career closing down with Alive at the very end. It seemed to everybody that the band had real fun playing there - and it was sooooo good. Thanks a lot to the person who did organize me a ticket Catching my bus back to my hotel area down at Fisherman's Wharf worked well - but I must have fallen asleep 5 minutes after we've left the parking lot. The next thing I did recognize was the bus driver pushing the breaks at Northpoint. What a wonderful night ...

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• Oracle Recruitment and Gild Wants You to Have an Apple iPad

  - by david.talamelli

  Oracle and Gild Present the Oracle Coding Series You are invited to participate. Winners will receive national recognition and an Apple iPad. Oracle is inviting elite technologists across India to compete in the Oracle Coding Series. Your credentials have qualified you to participate in the Series. The Oracle Coding Series is a set of five coding competitions that will run from the middle of May to the end of June. Each competition covers a different technology. Competitions are fun and challenging, and take about 15 minutes to complete. The winner of each competition will receive national recognition and win an Apple iPad. Oracle has partnered with Gild.com to host the competition series and select the champions. You may also browse through Oracle's current top job openings - available exclusively on Gild.com. You can apply right on Gild.com, receive immediate feedback and get fast tracked based on your credentials. Good luck. Jan Ackerman Vice President, Recruiting - JAPAC Enter and Compete Now....Best of Luck.

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• A Cautionary Tale About Multi-Source JNDI Configuration

  - by scott.s.nelson(at)oracle.com

  Here's a bit of fun with WebLogic JDBC configurations.  I ran into this issue after reading that p13nDataSource and cgDataSource-NonXA should not be configured as multi-source. There were some issues changing them to use the basic JDBC connection string and when rolling back to the bad configuration the server went "Boom".  Since one purpose behind this blog is to share lessons learned, I just had to post this. If you write your descriptors manually (as opposed to generating them using the WLS console) and put a comma-separated list of JNDI addresses like this: <jdbc-data-source-params> <jndi-name>weblogic.jdbc.jts.commercePool,contentDataSource, contentVersioningDataSource,portalFrameworkPool</jndi-name> <algorithm-type>Load-Balancing</algorithm-type> <data-source-list>portalDataSource-rac0,portalDataSource-rac1</data-source-list> <failover-request-if-busy>false</failover-request-if-busy> </jdbc-data-source-params> so long as the first address resolves, it will still work. Sort of.  If you call this connection to do an update, only one node of the RAC instance is updated. Other wonderful side-effects include the server refusing to start sometimes. The proper way to list the JNDI sources is one per node, like this: <jdbc-data-source-params> <jndi-name>weblogic.jdbc.jts.commercePool</jndi-name> <jndi-name>contentDataSource</jndi-name> <jndi-name>contentVersioningDataSource</jndi-name> <jndi-name>portalFrameworkPool</jndi-name> <algorithm-type>Load-Balancing</algorithm-type> <data-source-list>portalDataSource-rac0, portalDataSource-rac1, portalDataSource-rac2 </data-source-list> <failover-request-if-busy>false</failover-request-if-busy> </jdbc-data-source-params>(Props to Sandeep Seshan for locating the root cause)

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• Oracle Social @ OpenWorld

  - by me

   Hi there -  Wanna know what going on at Oracle Open World and Social?  Here are the hot tips!  Do you want to see  the Oracle Social Engagement Center in action ? You can explore the power of social publishing (Vitrue)  and the live social  monitoring (Collective Intellect) of  the Social Buzz around OpenWorld.Let's see if you appear in the Tweeter stream . Visit us  at Moscone South main entrance (foursquare place)  and meet  the Oracle Social Geeks  @Radu43, @peterreiser, @dankmbp and team. Are you a  social developer  and want to discover Oracle Social Network (OSN) ? cool - you can still  join the OSN Developers Challenge , take the OSN technical preview tour and meet our WebCenter evangelists Jake (@theappslab) and @noelportugal. Do you want to meet the Oracle Social Geeks and have some fun?  Then join us at the Social Plaza @ Oracle OpenWorld event on Tuesday, October 2, Noon–8:00 p.m. at the  Mint Plaza, Fifth Street between Mission and Market. cu you all at #oow

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• Oracle Social @ OpenWorld

  - by me

   Hi there -  Wanna know what going on at Oracle OpenWorld and Social?  Here are the hot tips!  Do you want to see  the Oracle Social Engagement Center in action ? You can explore the power of social publishing (Vitrue)  and the live social  monitoring (Collective Intellect) of  the Social Buzz around OpenWorld.Let's see if you appear in the Tweeter stream . Visit us  at Moscone South main entrance (foursquare place)  and meet  the Oracle Social Geeks  @Radu43, @peterreiser, @dankmbp and team. Are you a  social developer  and want to discover Oracle Social Network (OSN) ? cool - you can still  join the OSN Developers Challenge , take the OSN technical preview tour and meet our WebCenter evangelists Jake (@theappslab) and @noelportugal. Do you want to meet the Oracle Social Geeks and have some fun?  Then join us at the Social Plaza @ Oracle OpenWorld event on Tuesday, October 2, Noon–8:00 p.m. at the  Mint Plaza, Fifth Street between Mission and Market. cu you all at #oow

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• MEF, IServiceProvider and Testing Visual Studio Extensions

  - by Daniel Cazzulino

  In the latest and greatest version of Visual Studio, MEF plays a critical role, one that makes extending VS much more fun than it ever was. So typically, you just [Export] something, and then someone [Import]s it and that's it. MEF in all its glory kicks in and gets all your dependencies satisfied. Cool, you say, so let's now import ITextTemplating and have some T4-based codegen going! Ah, if only it was that easy. Turns out by default, none of the VS built-in services are exposed to MEF, apparently because there wasn't enough time to analyze the lifetime, initialization, dependencies, etc. for each one before launch, which makes perfect sense. You don't want to blindly export everything now just in case. There's also the whole VS package initialization thing which in this version of VS is not so transparently integrated with the MEF publishing side (i.e. a MEF export from a package can get instantiated before its owning package, and in fact, the package can remain unloaded forever and the export will continue to be visible to anyone)....Read full article

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• Would adding award points or game features to workplace software be viewed poorly amongst the programming community?

  - by Eric P

  So one of my responsibilities at work is to build an internal tool that helps the workers enter in all their information. It's an enterprise application that is similar to a Windows forms database tool. So it's not much different than like developing a Word + Excel combo application, but the average person in this workgroup is a 20-40 year old woman or a random chatty male type. Plus I know all of these people are heavily involved with Facebook on a daily basis. How bad would it be if I styled my new interface to be similar to what Facebook does. People could get award points and stuff when they fill out different types of forms and basically compete against each other like it was a game. When people had completed one, it would be posted on their wall and everyone could comment/like stuff just like in Facebook. And it would be like they are doing peer reviewing for fun. The rewards would be outstanding I would imagine. These people are so into Facebook and Facebook games that productivity would rise due to them trying to compete and earn points and achievements. Would this be taking advantage of the people by 'tricking them into working harder by giving them a game' or would it be viewed as something that would improve happiness at work?

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• RPi and Java Embedded GPIO: Using Java to read input

  - by hinkmond

  Now that we've learned about using Java code to control the output of the Raspberry Pi GPIO ports (by lighting up LEDs from a Java app on the RPi for now and noting in the future the same Java code can be used to drive industrial automation or medical equipment, etc.), let's move on to learn about reading input from the RPi GPIO using Java code. As before, we need to start out with the necessary hardware. For this exercise we will connect a Static Electricity Detector to the RPi GPIO port and read the value of that sensor using Java code. The circuit we'll use is from William J. Beaty and is described at this Web link. See: Static Electricity Detector He calls it an "Electric Charge" detector, which is a bit misleading. A Field Effect Transistor is subject to nearby electro-magnetic fields, such as a static charge on a nearby object, not really an electric charge. So, this sensor will detect static electricity (or ghosts if you are into paranormal activity ). Take a look at the circuit and in the next blog posts we'll step through how to connect it to the GPIO port of your RPi and then how to write Java code to access this fun sensor. Hinkmond

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• Doing powerups in a component-based system

  - by deft_code

  I'm just starting really getting my head around component based design. I don't know what the "right" way to do this is. Here's the scenario. The player can equip a shield. The the shield is drawn as bubble around the player, it has a separate collision shape, and reduces the damage the player receives from area effects. How is such a shield architected in a component based game? Where I get confused is that the shield obviously has three components associated with it. Damage reduction / filtering A sprite A collider. To make it worse different shield variations could have even more behaviors, all of which could be components: boost player maximum health health regen projectile deflection etc Am I overthinking this? Should the shield just be a super component? I really think this is wrong answer. So if you think this is the way to go please explain. Should the shield be its own entity that tracks the location of the player? That might make it hard to implement the damage filtering. It also kinda blurs the lines between attached components and entities. Should the shield be a component that houses other components? I've never seen or heard of anything like this, but maybe it's common and I'm just not deep enough yet. Should the shield just be a set of components that get added to the player? Possibly with an extra component to manage the others, e.g. so they can all be removed as a group. (accidentally leave behind the damage reduction component, now that would be fun). Something else that's obvious to someone with more component experience?

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• Doing powerups in a component-based system

  - by deft_code

  I'm just starting really getting my head around component based design. I don't know what the "right" way to do this is. Here's the scenario. The player can equip a shield. The the shield is drawn as bubble around the player, it has a separate collision shape, and reduces the damage the player receives from area effects. How is such a shield architected in a component based game? Where I get confused is that the shield obviously has three components associated with it. Damage reduction / filtering A sprite A collider. To make it worse different shield variations could have even more behaviors, all of which could be components: boost player maximum health health regen projectile deflection etc Am I overthinking this? Should the shield just be a super component? I really think this is wrong answer. So if you think this is the way to go please explain. Should the shield be its own entity that tracks the location of the player? That might make it hard to implement the damage filtering. It also kinda blurs the lines between attached components and entities. Should the shield be a component that houses other components? I've never seen or heard of anything like this, but maybe it's common and I'm just not deep enough yet. Should the shield just be a set of components that get added to the player? Possibly with an extra component to manage the others, e.g. so they can all be removed as a group. (accidentally leave behind the damage reduction component, now that would be fun). Something else that's obvious to someone with more component experience?

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• How to define type-specific scripts when using a 'type object' programming pattern?

  - by Erik

  I am in the process of creating a game engine written in C++, using the C/C++ SQLite interface to achieve a 'type object' pattern. The process is largely similar to what is outlined here (Thank you Bob Nystrom for the great resource!). I have a generally defined Entity class that when a new object is created, data is taken from a SQLite database and then is pushed back into a pointer vector, which is then iterated through, calling update() for each object. All the ints, floats, strings are loaded in fine, but the script() member of Entity is proving an issue. It's not much fun having a bunch of stationary objects laying around my gameworld. The only solutions I've come up with so far are: Create a monolithic EntityScript class with member functions encompassing all game AI and then calling the corresponding script when iterating through the Entity vector. (Not ideal) Create bindings between C++ and a scripting language. This would seem to get the job done, but it feels like implementing this (given the potential memory overhead) and learning a new language is overkill for a small team (2-3 people) that know the entirety of the existing game engine. Can you suggest any possible alternatives? My ideal situation would be that to add content to the game, one would simply add a script file to the appropriate directory and append the SQLite database with all the object data. All that is required is to have a variety of integers and floats passed between both the engine and the script file.

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• Ask the Readers: Would You Be Willing to Give Windows Up and Use a Different O.S.?

  - by Asian Angel

  When it comes to computers, Windows definitely rules the desktop in comparison to other operating systems. What we would like to know this week is if you would actually be willing to give up using Windows altogether and move to a different operating system on your computers. Note: This week’s Ask the Readers post is posing a hypothetical situation, so please refrain from starting arguments or a flame war in the comments. Good reasoned discussion is always welcome. There is no doubt that Windows is the dominant operating system in use today. Everywhere you go or look it is easy to find computers with Windows installed such as at work, home, the library, government offices, and more. For many people it is the operating system that they know and are comfortable with, which makes changing to a different operating system less appealing. Adding to the preference for Windows (or dependency based on your view) is the custom software that many businesses use on a daily basis. Throw in the high volume of people who depend on and use Microsoft Office as a standard for their business documents and it is little wonder that Windows is so dominant. So what would you use if you did decide to take a break from or permanently move away from Windows? If your choice is Linux then you have a large and wonderful variety of distributions to choose from based on what you want out of your system. Want a distribution that is easy to work with? You could choose Ubuntu, Linux Mint, or others that are engineered to be ready to go “out of the box”. Like a challenge? Perhaps Arch Linux is more your style. One of the most attractive features of all about Linux is the price…it is very hard to beat free! Maybe Mac OS X sounds like the perfect choice. It has a certain mystique and elegance associated with it and many OS X fans refuse to use anything else if given a choice. Then there is the soon to be released Chrome OS with its’ emphasis on cloud computing. This is a system that is definitely focused on being as low-maintenance and hassle-free as possible. Quick on, quick off, minimalist, and made to be portable. All of the system’s updates will occur automatically leaving you free to work and play in the cloud. But it does have its’ limitations…no installing all of those custom apps that you love using on Windows or other systems…it is literally all about the browsing window and web apps. So there you have it. If the opportunity presented itself would you, could you give Windows up and use a different operating system? Would it be easy or hard for you to do? Perhaps it would not really matter so long as you could do what you needed or wanted to do on a computer. And maybe this is the perfect time to try something new and find out…that new favorite operating system could be just an install disc away. Let us know your thoughts in the comments! How-To Geek Polls require Javascript. Please Click Here to View the Poll. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC The Complete List of iPad Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials The 50 Best Registry Hacks that Make Windows Better The How-To Geek Holiday Gift Guide (Geeky Stuff We Like) LCD? LED? Plasma? The How-To Geek Guide to HDTV Technology The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 8: Filters Improve Digital Photography by Calibrating Your Monitor The Brothers Mario – Epic Gangland Style Mario Brothers Movie Trailer [Video] Score Awesome Games on the Cheap with the Humble Indie Bundle Add a Colorful Christmas Theme to Your Windows 7 Desktop This Windows Hack Changes the Blue Screen of Death to Red Edit Images Quickly in Firefox with Pixlr Grabber Zoho Writer, Sheet, and Show Now Available in Chrome Web Store

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• When creating an library published on CodePlex, how "bad" would it be for the unit-test projects to rely on commercial products?

  - by Lasse V. Karlsen

  I have started a project on CodePlex for a WebDAV server implementation for .NET, so that I can host a WebDAV server in my own programs. This is both a learning/research project (WebDAV + server portion) as well as a project I think I can have much fun with, both in terms of making it and using it. However, I see a need to do mocking of types here in order to unit-testing properly. For instance, I will be relying on HttpListener for the web server portion of the WebDAV server, and since this type has no interface, and is sealed, I cannot easily make mocks or stubs out of it. Unless I use something like TypeMock. So if I used TypeMock in the unit-test projects on this library, how bad would this be for potential users? The projects are made in C# 3.5 for .NET 3.5 and 4.0, and the project files was created with Visual Studio 2010 Professional. The actual class libraries you would end up referencing in your software would of course not be encumbered with anything remotely like this, only the unit-test libraries. What's your thoughts on this? As an example, I have in my old code-base, which is private, the ability to just initiate a WebDAV server with just this: var server = new WebDAVServer(); This constructs, and owns, a HttpListener instance internally, and I would like to verify through unit-tests that if I dispose of this server object, the internal listener is disposed of. If, on the other hand, I use the overload where I hand it a listener object, this object should not be disposed of. Short of exposing the internal listener object to the outside world, something I'm a bit loath to do, how can I in a good way ensure that the object was disposed of? With TypeMock I can mock away parts of this object even though it isn't accessed through interfaces. The alternative would be for me to wrap everything in wrapper classes, where I have complete control.

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