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• external USB HD doesn't show up on 'sudo fdisk -l' on one Ubuntu, shows up on another (both 'precise')

  - by Menelaos

  I have a 1.5TB WD external USB HDD and two Ubuntu systems, both 'precise'. When I plug the disk on system A it doesn't show up on the output of sudo fdisk -l nor is it automatically mounted (note that that wasn't always the case - it used to appear in the past). When I plug it on system B (again Ubuntu precise) it shows up when I do a sudo fdisk -l (output appended at the end) and mounts automatically just fine. What does this discrepancy point to and what kind of diagnostics should I run / tools I should use to troubleshoot the problem? I followed the suggestion I received to do a sudo tail -f /var/log/syslog and the output is the following when I plug, unplug and replug the USB cable on System A: Sep 14 23:27:09 thorin mtp-probe: checking bus 2, device 3: "/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:13.2/usb2/2-2" Sep 14 23:27:09 thorin mtp-probe: bus: 2, device: 3 was not an MTP device Sep 14 23:28:01 thorin kernel: [ 338.994295] usb 2-2: USB disconnect, device number 3 Sep 14 23:28:04 thorin kernel: [ 341.808139] usb 2-2: new high-speed USB device number 4 using ehci_hcd Sep 14 23:28:04 thorin mtp-probe: checking bus 2, device 4: "/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:13.2/usb2/2-2" Sep 14 23:28:04 thorin mtp-probe: bus: 2, device: 4 was not an MTP device Sep 14 23:29:54 thorin AptDaemon: INFO: Quitting due to inactivity Sep 14 23:29:54 thorin AptDaemon: INFO: Quitting was requested (I guess the last two message are irrelevant). Output of sudo fdisk -l on System B $ sudo fdisk -l Disk /dev/sda: 1500.3 GB, 1500301910016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 182401 cylinders, total 2930277168 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x00070db4 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 * 2048 2905114623 1452556288 83 Linux /dev/sda2 2905116670 2930276351 12579841 5 Extended /dev/sda5 2905116672 2930276351 12579840 82 Linux swap / Solaris Disk /dev/sdb: 250.1 GB, 250059350016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders, total 488397168 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x9c849c84 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdb1 * 63 488375999 244187968+ 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT Disk /dev/sdg: 1500.3 GB, 1500299395072 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 182401 cylinders, total 2930272256 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x0003e17f Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdg1 2048 2930272255 1465135104 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT

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

  - by BeachRunnerJoe

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

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• OOF checklist

  - by Daniel Moth

  When going on vacation or otherwise being out of office (known as OOF in Microsoft), it is polite and professional that our absence creates the minimum disruption possible to the rest of the business, and especially our colleagues. Below is my OOF checklist - I try to do these as soon as I know I'll be OOF, rather than leave it for the night before. Let the relevant folks on the team know the planned dates of absence and check if anybody was expecting something from you during that timeframe. Reset expectations with them, and as applicable try to find another owner for individual activities that cannot wait. Go through your calendar for the OOF period and decline every meeting occurrence so the owner of the meeting knows that you won't be attending (similar to my post about responding to invites). If it is your meeting cancel it so that people don’t turn up without the meeting organizer being there. Do this even for meetings were the folks should know due to step #1. Over-communicating is a good thing here and keeps calendars all around up to date. Enter your OOF dates in whatever tool your company uses. Typically that is the notification to your manager. In your Outlook calendar, create a local Appointment (don't invite anyone) for the date range (All day event) setting the "Show As" dropdown to "Out of Office". This way, people won’t try to schedule meetings with you on that day. If you use Lync, set the status to "Off Work" for that period. If you won't be responding to email (which when on your vacation you definitely shouldn't) then in Outlook setup "Automatic Replies (Out of Office)" for that period. This way people won’t think you are rude when not replying to their emails. In your OOF message point to an alias (ideally of many people) as a fallback for urgent queries. If you want to proactively notify individuals of your OOFage then schedule and send a multi-day meeting request for the entire period. Remember to set the "Show As" to "Free" (so their calendar doesn’t show busy/oof to others), set the "Reminder" to "None" (so they don’t get a reminder about it), set "Low Importance", and uncheck both "Response Options" so if they don't want this on their calendar, it is just one click for them to get rid of it. Aside: I have another post with advice on sending invites. If you care about people who would not observe the above but could drop by your office, stick a physical OOF note at your office door or chair/monitor or desk. Have I missed any? Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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• How can I achieve a 3D-like effect with spritebatch's rotation and scale parameters

  - by Alic44

  I'm working on a 2d game with a top-down perspective similar to Secret of Mana and the 2D Final Fantasy games, with one big difference being that it's an action rpg using a 3-dimensional physics engine. I'm trying to draw an aimer graphic (basically an arrow) at my characters' feet when they're aiming a ranged weapon. At first I just converted the character's aim vector to radians and passed that into spritebatch, but there was a problem. The position of every object in my world is scaled for perspective when it's drawn to the screen. So if the physics engine coordinates are (1, 0, 1), the screen coords are actually (1, .707) -- the Y and Z axis are scaled by a perspective factor of .707 and then added together to get the screen coordinates. This meant that the direction the aimer graphic pointed (thanks to its rotation value passed into spritebatch) didn't match up with the direction the projectile actually traveled over time. Things looked fine when the characters fired left, right, up, or down, but if you fired on a diagonal the perspective of the physics engine didn't match with the simplistic way I was converting the character's aim direction to a screen rotation. Ok, fast forward to now: I've got the aimer's rotation matched up with the path the projectile will actually take, which I'm doing by decomposing a transform matrix which I build from two rotation matrices (one to represent the aimer's rotation, and one to represent the camera's 45 degree rotation on the x axis). My question is, is there a way to get not just rotation from a series of matrix transformations, but to also get a Vector2 scale which would give the aimer the appearance of being a 3d object, being warped by perspective? Orthographic perspective is what I'm going for, I think. So, the aimer arrow would get longer when facing sideways, and shorter when facing north and south because of the perspective. At the same time, it would get wider when facing north and south, and less wide when facing right or left. I'd like to avoid actually drawing the aimer texture in 3d because I'm still using spritebatch's layerdepth parameter at this point in my project, and I don't want to have to figure out how to draw a 3d object within the depth sorting system I already have. I can provide code and more details if this is too vague as a question... This is my first post on stack exchange. Thanks a lot for reading! Note: (I think) I realize it can't be a technically correct 3D perspective, because the spritebatch's vector2 scaling argument doesn't allow for an object to be skewed the way it actually should be. What I'm really interested in is, is there a good way to fake the effect, or should I just drop it and not scale at all? Edit to clarify without the help of a picture (apparently I can't post them yet): I want the aimer arrow to look like it has been painted on the ground at the character's feet, so it should appear to be drawn on the ground plane (in my case the XZ plane) which should be tilted at a 45 degree angle (around the X axis) from the viewing perspective. Alex

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• Building a Solaris 11 repository without network connection

  - by user12611852

  Solaris 11 has been released and is a fantastic new iteration of Oracle's rock solid, enterprise operating system.  One of the great new features is the repository based Image Packaging system.  IPS not only introduces new cloud based package installation services, it is also integrated with our zones, boot environment and ZFS file systems to provide a safe, easy and fast way to perform system updates. My customers typically don't have network access and, in fact, can't connect to any network until they have "Authority to connect."  It's useful, however, to build up a Solaris 11 system with additional software using the new Image Packaging System and locally stored repository. The Solaris 11 documentation describes how to create a locally stored repository with full explanations of what the commands do. I'm simply providing the quick and dirty steps.  The easiest way is to download the ISO image, burn to a DVD and insert into your DVD drive.  Then as root: pkg set-publisher -G '*' -g file:///cdrom/sol11repo_full/repo solaris Now you can to install software using the GUI package manager or the pkg commands.  If you would like something more permanent (or don't have a DVD drive), however, it takes a little more work. After installing Solaris 11, download (on another system perhaps) the two files that make up the Solaris 11 repository from our download site Sneaker-net the files to your Solaris 11 system Unzip and cat the two files together to create one large ISO image. The file is about 6.9 GB in size zfs create rpool/export/repoSolaris11 zfs set atime=off rpool/export/repoSolaris11 zfs set compression=on rpool/export/repoSolaris11 (save some space) lofiadm -a sol-11-1111-repo-full.iso /dev/lofi/1 mount -F hsfs /dev/lofi/1 /mnt You could stop here and set the publisher to point to the /mnt/repo location, however, this mount will not be persistent across reboots. Copy the repository from the mounted ISO image to a permanent, on disk location. rsync -aP /mnt/repo /export/repoSolaris11 pkgrepo -s /export/repoSolaris11 refresh pkg set-publisher -G '*' -g /export/repoSolaris11/repo solaris You now have a locally installed repository for adding additional software packages for Solaris 11.  The documentation also takes you through publishing your repository on the network so that others can access it.

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• How to keep a data structure synchronized over a network?

  - by David Gouveia

  Context In the game I'm working on (a sort of a point and click graphic adventure), pretty much everything that happens in the game world is controlled by an action manager that is structured a bit like: So for instance if the result of examining an object should make the character say hello, walk a bit and then sit down, I simply spawn the following code: var actionGroup = actionManager.CreateGroup(); actionGroup.Add(new TalkAction("Guybrush", "Hello there!"); actionGroup.Add(new WalkAction("Guybrush", new Vector2(300, 300)); actionGroup.Add(new SetAnimationAction("Guybrush", "Sit")); This creates a new action group (an entire line in the image above) and adds it to the manager. All of the groups are executed in parallel, but actions within each group are chained together so that the second one only starts after the first one finishes. When the last action in a group finishes, the group is destroyed. Problem Now I need to replicate this information across a network, so that in a multiplayer session, all players see the same thing. Serializing the individual actions is not the problem. But I'm an absolute beginner when it comes to networking and I have a few questions. I think for the sake of simplicity in this discussion we can abstract the action manager component to being simply: var actionManager = new List<List<string>>(); How should I proceed to keep the contents of the above data structure syncronized between all players? Besides the core question, I'm also having a few other concerns related to it (i.e. all possible implications of the same problem above): If I use a server/client architecture (with one of the players acting as both a server and a client), and one of the clients has spawned a group of actions, should he add them directly to the manager, or only send a request to the server, which in turn will order every client to add that group? What about packet losses and the like? The game is deterministic, but I'm thinking that any discrepancy in the sequence of actions executed in a client could lead to inconsistent states of the world. How do I safeguard against that sort of problem? What if I add too many actions at once, won't that cause problems for the connection? Any way to alleviate that?

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• Per-pixel collision detection - why does XNA transform matrix return NaN when adding scaling?

  - by JasperS

  I looked at the TransformCollision sample on MSDN and added the Matrix.CreateTranslation part to a property in my collision detection code but I wanted to add scaling. The code works fine when I leave scaling commented out but when I add it and then do a Matrix.Invert() on the created translation matrix the result is NaN ({NaN,NaN,NaN},{NaN,NaN,NaN},...) Can anyone tell me why this is happening please? Here's the code from the sample: // Build the block's transform Matrix blockTransform = Matrix.CreateTranslation(new Vector3(-blockOrigin, 0.0f)) * // Matrix.CreateScale(block.Scale) * would go here Matrix.CreateRotationZ(blocks[i].Rotation) * Matrix.CreateTranslation(new Vector3(blocks[i].Position, 0.0f)); public static bool IntersectPixels( Matrix transformA, int widthA, int heightA, Color[] dataA, Matrix transformB, int widthB, int heightB, Color[] dataB) { // Calculate a matrix which transforms from A's local space into // world space and then into B's local space Matrix transformAToB = transformA * Matrix.Invert(transformB); // When a point moves in A's local space, it moves in B's local space with a // fixed direction and distance proportional to the movement in A. // This algorithm steps through A one pixel at a time along A's X and Y axes // Calculate the analogous steps in B: Vector2 stepX = Vector2.TransformNormal(Vector2.UnitX, transformAToB); Vector2 stepY = Vector2.TransformNormal(Vector2.UnitY, transformAToB); // Calculate the top left corner of A in B's local space // This variable will be reused to keep track of the start of each row Vector2 yPosInB = Vector2.Transform(Vector2.Zero, transformAToB); // For each row of pixels in A for (int yA = 0; yA < heightA; yA++) { // Start at the beginning of the row Vector2 posInB = yPosInB; // For each pixel in this row for (int xA = 0; xA < widthA; xA++) { // Round to the nearest pixel int xB = (int)Math.Round(posInB.X); int yB = (int)Math.Round(posInB.Y); // If the pixel lies within the bounds of B if (0 <= xB && xB < widthB && 0 <= yB && yB < heightB) { // Get the colors of the overlapping pixels Color colorA = dataA[xA + yA * widthA]; Color colorB = dataB[xB + yB * widthB]; // If both pixels are not completely transparent, if (colorA.A != 0 && colorB.A != 0) { // then an intersection has been found return true; } } // Move to the next pixel in the row posInB += stepX; } // Move to the next row yPosInB += stepY; } // No intersection found return false; }

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• How to explain bad software to non-technical people?

  - by mtutty

  In discussing software development with non-technical people (customers, business owners, project sponsors, etc.), I often resort to analogies and metaphors. It's relatively easy and effective to use a "house" or other metaphor for describing the size and complexity of new development. However, we often inherit someone else's code or data, and this approach doesn't seem to hold up as well when trying to explain why we're gutting something that already seems to work. Of course we can point to cycle time and cost to be saved in the future but this generally means nothing to business folks. I know doctors can say "just take this pill," but I'm not sure that software devs have the same authority. Ideas? EDIT: Let me add a bit to the discussion. The specific project I'm talking about has customers that don't realize (or care) about specific aspects of the system we're retiring (i.e., they think it was just fine): The system would save a NEW RECORD every time someone updated a field The system contained tables for reference data. These tables had new records added every day, even though they were duplicates of previous records. And there was no way to tie the reference data used for a particular case at the time it was closed. This is like 99% of the data in the old system. The field NAMES also have spaces, apostrophes and other inappropriate characters in them, making everything harder to work with. In addition to the incredible amount of duplicate data, they have around 1000 XLS files with data they want added to the system. Previously, they would do a spreadsheet for each case in the database, IN ADDITION TO what they typed into the database. Getting rid of this old, unneeded information and piping in the XLS data comprises about 80% of the total project effort, and was not something we could accurately predict. I'm trying to find a concrete way to describe how bad this thing was, mostly so that the customer will understand why the migration process has been so time-consuming. The actual coding was done pretty quickly and the new system works fine, but without the old data they won't be happy. Sorry to get into the weeds, but most of the answers I've seen so far are pretty basic scope/schedule/cost things. I've been doing this for 15 years, so this really is more of a reflective, philosophical question - but without some of the details it can be difficult to really appreciate the awful beauty of this problem.

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• career planning advice [closed]

  - by JDB

  Possible Duplicate: Are certifications worth it? I am at the point in my career where people start to veer off into either management-type roles or they focus on solidifying their technical skills to stay in the development game for the long-haul. Here's my story: I've got a degree in economics, an MA in Political Science and an MBA in Finance and Management. In addition, I've done coursework in advanced math and software development (although no degree in math or software). All-in-all, I've got 13 years of post-secondary education under my belt. I, however, currently work as a software developer using C# for desktop, Silverlight, Flex and javascript for web, and objective c for mobile. I've been in software development for the past 3.3 years, and it seems like it comes pretty easy to me. I work in a field called "geospatial information systems," which just involves customization and manipulation of geospatial data. Right now I am looking at one of several certifications. Given this background, which of these certifications has the highest ceiling? CFA PMP various development/technological certifications from Microsoft, etc. Other? My academic and work experience are all heavy on the analytical/development side, esp. so given the MBA and the B.S. in Econ. The political science degree was really a lot of stats. So it seems that I would be good pursuing more of the CFA/analytical role. This is a difficult path, however, because I have no work experience in the financial sector, and the developers in finance are all "quants," which again, I am OK with, but I haven't done much statistical modeling in the past 3.3 years. The PMP would require knowledge of best practices as it pertains explicitly to software development. I also don't enjoy a lot of business travel, a common theme for most PMP jobs I've seen. If certifications is the route, which would you recommend? Anything else? I've thought about going back to try to knock out a B.S. in C.S., but I wasn't sure how long that would take, or what would be involved. Thoughts or recommendations? Thanks in advance! I turn 32 this weekend, which is what has forced me to think about these issues.

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• 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

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• Creating Corporate Windows Phone Applications

  - by Tim Murphy

  Most developers write Windows Phone applications for their own gratification and their own wallets.  While most of the time I would put myself in the same camp, I am also a consultant.  This means that I have corporate clients who want corporate solutions.  I recently got a request for a system rebuild that includes a Windows Phone component.  This brought up the questions of what are the important aspects to consider when building for this situation. Let’s break it down in to the points that are important to a company using a mobile application.  The company want to make sure that their proprietary software is safe from use by unauthorized users.  They also want to make sure that the data is secure on the device. The first point is a challenge.  There is no such thing as true private distribution in the Windows Phone ecosystem at this time.  What is available is the ability to specify you application for targeted distribution.  Even with targeted distribution you can’t ensure that only individuals within your organization will be able to load you application.  Because of this I am taking two additional steps.  The first is to register the phone’s DeviceUniqueId within your system.  Add a system sign-in and that should cover access to your application. The second half of the problem is securing the data on the phone.  This is where the ProtectedData API within the System.Security.Cryptography namespace comes in.  It allows you to encrypt your data before pushing it to isolated storage on the device. With the announcement of Windows Phone 8 coming this fall, many of these points will have different solutions.  Private signing and distribution of applications will be available.  We will also have native access to BitLocker.  When you combine these capabilities enterprise application development for Windows Phone will be much simpler.  Until then work with the above suggestions to develop your enterprise solutions. del.icio.us Tags: Windows Phone 7,Windows Phone,Corporate Deployment,Software Design,Mango,Targeted Applications,ProtectedData API,Windows Phone 8

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• Got Samba, Got PyNeighbourhood but still no connection. What else do I need?

  - by Frank A

  I am sure I had already hit post before but then could only find it by backing through browser. Was it deleted? is the question too dumb, sorry that I do not know the right jargon just trying to get answers to my problem anyway have reworded stuff a bit This seems to be a number one requirement for lots of people and 2 months on from setting up my Ubuntu pc, I am still unable to get a lasting connection in either direction. Adding a windows pc to a network is so easy... just a few clicks and get on with using it all. Using all command approaches and modifying configuration files is hardly user friendly. Googling brings up thousands of solutions but mostly they are too techy or assume the user is fully aware of how to use Linux. I do realise that their must be a lot of flavours for connecting to networks. So far I have installed Samba and fiddled with its config file. The day I did all that it worked from XP to Ubuntu. When I came back two days later to transfer my data over it would not connect. Although the the share does show up in Windows (XP) My Network Places. Today I installed PyNeighbourhood and this shows the Ubuntu box and all of the shares I had created at some point on Ubuntu and it even shows this under the XP workgroup name. But instructions on setting the connection up seem to relate to an earlier version and nothing seems to work there either. (I unshared most of those test folders but they still show up her but that is another question. When I click on mount- I can only click on one on the Ubuntu machine, there is one with no name so I assume this to be my attempt to add one XP Shared drive using ipaddress, I get errors. (gksu:9767): Gtk-WARNING **: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "pixmap", (gksu:9767): Gtk-WARNING **: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "pixmap", (gksu:9767): Gtk-WARNING **: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "pixmap", (gksu:9767): Gtk-WARNING **: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "pixmap", mount error(6): No such device or address Refer to the mount.cifs(8) manual page (e.g. man mount.cifs) OK tried to find the manual referred to... only an old comment that manual would be produced for future versions. I saw in another thread that Winbind is needed as well or at least I assume as well? Totally lost again? Please help, what else needs to be installed to connect to win pcs on the network.

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• C Minishell Command Expansion Printing Gibberish

  - by Optimus_Pwn

  I'm writing a unix minishell in C, and am at the point where I'm adding command expansion. What I mean by this is that I can nest commands in other commands, for example: $> echo hello $(echo world! ... $(echo and stuff)) hello world! ... and stuff I think I have it working mostly, however it isn't marking the end of the expanded string correctly, for example if I do: $> echo a $(echo b $(echo c)) a b c $> echo d $(echo e) d e c See it prints the c, even though I didn't ask it to. Here is my code: msh.c - http://pastebin.com/sd6DZYwB expand.c - http://pastebin.com/uLqvFGPw I have a more code, but there's a lot of it, and these are the parts that I'm having trouble with at the moment. I'll try to tell you the basic way I'm doing this. Main is in msh.c, here it gets a line of input from either the commandline or a shellfile, and then calls processline (char *line, int outFD, int waitFlag), where line is the line we just got, outFD is the file descriptor of the output file, and waitFlag tells us whether or not we should wait if we fork. When we call this from main we do it like this: processline (buffer, 1, 1); In processline, we allocate a new line: char expanded_line[EXPANDEDLEN]; We then call expand, in expand.c: expand(line, expanded_line, EXPANDEDLEN); In expand, we copy the characters literally from line to expanded_line until we find a $(, which then calls: static int expCmdOutput(char *orig, char *new, int *oldl_ind, int *newl_ind) orig is line, and new is expanded line. oldl_ind and newl_ind are the current positions in the line and expanded line, respectively. Then we pipe, and recursively call processline, passing it the nested command(for example, if we had "echo a $(echo b)", we would pass processline "echo b"). This is where I get confused, each time expand is called, is it allocating a new chunk of memory EXPANDEDLEN long? If so, this is bad because I'll run out of stack room really quickly(in the case of a hugely nested commandline input). In expand I insert a null character at the end of the expanded string, so why is it printing past it? If you guys need any more code, or explanations, just ask. Secondly, I put the code in pastebin because there's a ton of it, and in my experience people don't like it when I fill up several pages with code. Thanks.

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• Switch from back-end to front-end programming: I'm out of my comfort zone, should I switch back?

  - by ripper234

  I've been a backend developer for a long time, and I really swim in that field. C++/C#/Java, databases, NoSql, caching - I feel very much at ease around these platforms/concepts. In the past few years, I started to taste end-to-end web programming, and recently I decided to take a job offer in a front end team developing a large, complex product. I wanted to break out of my comfort zone and become more of an "all around developer". Problem is, I'm getting more and more convinced I don't like it. Things I like about backend programming, and missing in frontend stuff: More interesting problems - When I compare designing a server that handle massive data, to adding another form to a page or changing the validation logic, I find the former a lot more interesting. Refactoring refactoring refactoring - I am addicted to Visual Studio with Resharper, or IntelliJ. I feel very comfortable writing code as it goes without investing too much thought, because I know that with a few clicks I can refactor it into beautiful code. To my knowledge, this doesn't exist at all in javascript. Intellisense and navigation - I hate looking at a bunch of JS code without instantly being able to know what it does. In VS/IntelliJ I can summon the documentation, navigate to the code, climb up inheritance hiererchies ... life is sweet. Auto-completion - Just hit Ctrl-Space on an object to see what you can do with it. Easier to test - With almost any backend feature, I can use TDD to capture the requirements, see a bunch of failing tests, then implement, knowing that if the tests pass I did my job well. With frontend, while tests can help a bit, I find that most of the testing is still manual - fire up that browser and verify the site didn't break. I miss that feeling of "A green CI means everything is well with the world." Now, I've only seriously practiced frontend development for about two months now, so this might seem premature ... but I'm getting a nagging feeling that I should abandon this quest and return to my comfort zone, because, well, it's so comfy and fun. Another point worth mentioning in this context is that while I am learning some frontend tools, a lot of what I'm learning is our company's specific infrastructure, which I'm not sure will be very useful later on in my career. Any suggestions or tips? Do you think I should give frontend programming "a proper chance" of at least six to twelve months before calling it quits? Could all my pains be growing pains, and will they magically disappear as I get more experienced? Or is gaining this perspective is valuable enough, even if plan to do more "backend stuff" later on, that it's worth grinding my teeth and continuing with my learning?

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• 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.

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• Why wifi doesn't work in this case?

  - by xRobot

  I have a brand new notebook where I have installed Windows 7 and Ubuntu 12.04 LTS 64bit in dual boot. In windows 7 wifi works but in Ubuntu not. Could you help me please ? iwconfig lo no wireless extensions. wlan0 IEEE 802.11bgn ESSID:off/any Mode:Managed Access Point: Not-Associated Tx-Power=20 dBm Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off Encryption key:off Power Management:off eth0 no wireless extensions. lshw -C network *-network description: Ethernet interface product: RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller vendor: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0 logical name: eth0 version: 07 serial: b4:b5:1f:1b:9a:56 size: 10Mbit/s capacity: 1Gbit/s width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress msix vpd bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp mii 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt 1000bt-fd autonegotiation configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=r8169 driverversion=2.3LK-NAPI duplex=half firmware=rtl8168e-3_0.0.4 03/27/12 latency=0 link=no multicast=yes port=MII speed=10Mbit/s resources: irq:41 ioport:3000(size=256) memory:c2404000-c2404fff memory:c2400000-c2403fff *-network description: Wireless interface product: Ralink corp. vendor: Ralink corp. physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:02:00.0 logical name: wlan0 version: 00 serial: 84:4b:f4:0a:3a:22 width: 32 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless configuration: broadcast=yes driver=rt2800pci driverversion=3.2.0-31-generic firmware=0.34 latency=0 link=no multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11bgn resources: irq:18 memory:c2500000-c250ffff lspci | grep -i net 01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 07) 02:00.0 Network controller: Ralink corp. Device 539a iwlist scan lo Interface doesn't support scanning. wlan0 Interface doesn't support scanning : Device or resource busy eth0 Interface doesn't support scanning. lsmod Module Size Used by rfcomm 47604 0 bnep 18281 2 bluetooth 180104 10 rfcomm,bnep parport_pc 32866 0 ppdev 17113 0 snd_hda_codec_hdmi 32474 1 snd_hda_codec_realtek 224173 1 joydev 17693 0 hp_wmi 18092 0 sparse_keymap 13890 1 hp_wmi snd_hda_intel 33773 3 snd_hda_codec 127706 3 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hda_intel snd_hwdep 13668 1 snd_hda_codec snd_pcm 97188 3 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec snd_seq_midi 13324 0 snd_rawmidi 30748 1 snd_seq_midi snd_seq_midi_event 14899 1 snd_seq_midi snd_seq 61896 2 snd_seq_midi,snd_seq_midi_event snd_timer 29990 2 snd_pcm,snd_seq snd_seq_device 14540 3 snd_seq_midi,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq psmouse 97362 0 snd 78855 16 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_hwdep,snd_pcm,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq,snd_timer,snd_seq_device arc4 12529 2 rt2800pci 18715 0 rt2800lib 58925 1 rt2800pci crc_ccitt 12667 1 rt2800lib rt2x00pci 14577 1 rt2800pci rt2x00lib 51144 3 rt2800pci,rt2800lib,rt2x00pci mac80211 506816 3 rt2800lib,rt2x00pci,rt2x00lib soundcore 15091 1 snd mac_hid 13253 0 uvcvideo 72627 0 videodev 98259 1 uvcvideo v4l2_compat_ioctl32 17128 1 videodev wmi 19256 1 hp_wmi i915 473240 3 cfg80211 205544 2 rt2x00lib,mac80211 eeprom_93cx6 12725 1 rt2800pci drm_kms_helper 46978 1 i915 drm 242038 4 i915,drm_kms_helper i2c_algo_bit 13423 1 i915 snd_page_alloc 18529 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm mei 41616 0 serio_raw 13211 0 video 19596 1 i915 lp 17799 0 parport 46562 3 parport_pc,ppdev,lp usbhid 47199 0 hid 99559 1 usbhid r8169 62099 0 rfkill list: # rfkill list 0: phy0: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no 1: hp-wifi: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no

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• No description for any page on the website is available in Google despite robots.txt allowing crawling

  - by Abhijit

  I seem to have the weirdest issue with Search Engine Optimization, and I asked the IT folks at my university, I asked people on Joomla forums and I am trying to sort this issue out using Google Webmaster Tools for more than 2 months to little avail. I want to know if I have some blatantly wrong configuration somewhere that is causing search engines to be unable to index this site. I noticed a similar issue with another website I searched for online (ECEGSA - The University of British Columbia at gsa.ece.ubc.ca), making me believe this might be a concern that people might be looking an answer for. Here are the details: The website in question is: http://gsa.ece.umd.edu/. It runs using Joomla 2.5.x (latest). The site was up since around mid December of 2013, and I noticed right from the get go that the site was not being indexed correctly on Google. Specifically I see the following message when I search for the website on Google: A description for this result is not available because of this site's robots.txt – learn more. The thing is in December till around March I used the default Joomla robots.txt file which is: User-agent: * Disallow: /administrator/ Disallow: /cache/ Disallow: /cli/ Disallow: /components/ Disallow: /images/ Disallow: /includes/ Disallow: /installation/ Disallow: /language/ Disallow: /libraries/ Disallow: /logs/ Disallow: /media/ Disallow: /modules/ Disallow: /plugins/ Disallow: /templates/ Disallow: /tmp/ Nothing there should stop Google from searching my website. And even more confusingly, when I go to Google Webmaster tools, under "Blocked URLs" tab, when I try many of the links on the site, they are all shown up as "Allowed". I then tried adding a sitemap, putting it in the robots.txt file. That did not help. Same exact search result, same behavior in the "Blocked URLs" tab on the webmaster tools. Now additionally, the "sitemaps" tab says for several links an error saying "URL is robotted out". I tried those exact links in the "Blocked URLs" and they are allowed! I then tried deleting the robots.txt file. No use. Same exact problem. Here is an example screenshot from Google's Webmaster Tools: At this point I cannot give a rational explanation to why this is happening and neither can anyone in the IT department here. No one on Joomla forums can seem to understand what is going on. Based on what I explained, does it seem that I have somehow set a setting in the robots.txt or in .htaccess or somewhere else, incorrectly?

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• Achieving decoupling in Model classes

  - by Guven

  I am trying to test-drive (or at least write unit tests) my Model classes but I noticed that my classes end up being too coupled. Since I can't break this coupling, writing unit tests is becoming harder and harder. To be more specific: Model Classes: These are the classes that hold the data in my application. They resemble pretty much the POJO (plain old Java objects), but they also have some methods. The application is not too big so I have around 15 model classes. Coupling: Just to give an example, think of a simple case of Order Header - Order Item. The header knows the item and the item knows the header (needs some information from the header for performing certain operations). Then, let's say there is the relationship between Order Item - Item Report. The item report needs the item as well. At this point, imagine writing tests for Item Report; you need have a Order Header to carry out the tests. This is a simple case with 3 classes; things get more complicated with more classes. I can come up with decoupled classes when I design algorithms, persistence layers, UI interactions, etc... but with model classes, I can't think of a way to separate them. They currently sit as one big chunk of classes that depend on each other. Here are some workarounds that I can think of: Data Generators: I have a package that generates sample data for my model classes. For example, the OrderHeaderGenerator class creates OrderHeaders with some basic data in it. I use the OrderHeaderGenerator from my ItemReport unit-tests so that I get an instance to OrderHeader class. The problem is these generators get complicated pretty fast and then I also need to test these generators; defeating the purpose a little bit. Interfaces instead of dependencies: I can come up with interfaces to get rid of the hard dependencies. For example, the OrderItem class would depend on the IOrderHeader interface. So, in my unit tests, I can easily mock the behaviour of an OrderHeader with a FakeOrderHeader class that implements the IOrderHeader interface. The problem with this approach is the complexity that the Model classes would end up having. Would you have other ideas on how to break this coupling in the model classes? Or, how to make it easier to unit-test the model classes?

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• PL/SQL to delete invalid data from token Strings

  - by Jie Chen

  Previous article describes how to delete the duplicated values from token string in bulk mode. This one extends it and shows the way to delete invalid data. Scenario Support we have page_two and manufacturers tables in database and the table DDL is: SQL> desc page_two; Name NULL? TYPE ----------------------------------------- -------- ------------------------ MULTILIST04 VARCHAR2(765) SQL> SQL> desc manufacturers; Name NULL? TYPE ----------------------------------------- -------- ------ ID NOT NULL NUMBER NAME VARCHAR In table page_two, column multilist04 stores a token string splitted with common. Each token represent a valid ID in manufacturers table. My expectation is to delete invalid token strings from page_two.multilist04, which have no mapping id in manufacturers.id. For example in below SQL result: ,6295728,33,6295729,6295730,6295731,22, , value 33 and 22 are invalid data because there is no ID equals to 33 or 22 in manufacturers table. So I need to delete 33 and 22. SQL> col rowid format a20; SQL> col multilist04 format a50; SQL> select rowid, multilist04 from page_two; ROWID MULTILIST04 -------------------- -------------------------------------------------- AAB+UrADfAAAAhUAAI ,6295728,6295729,6295730,6295731, AAB+UrADfAAAAhUAAJ ,1111,6295728,6295729,6295730,6295731, AAB+UrADfAAAAhUAAK ,6295728,111,6295729,6295730,6295731, AAB+UrADfAAAAhUAAL ,6295728,6295729,6295730,6295731,22, AAB+UrADfAAAAhUAAM ,6295728,33,6295729,6295730,6295731,22, SQL> select id, encode_name from manufacturers where id in (1111,11,22,33); No rows selected SQL> Solution As there is no existing SPLIT function or related in PL/SQL, I should program it by myself. I code Split intermediate function which is used to get the token value between current splitter and next splitter. Next program is main entry point, it get each column value from page_two.multilist04, process each row based on cursor. When it get each multilist04 value, it uses above Split function to get each token string stored to singValue variant, then check if it exists in manufacturers.id. If not found, set fixFlag to 1, pending to be deleted.

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• Perfect is the enemy of “Good Enough”

  - by Daniel Moth

  This is one of the quotes that I was against, but now it is totally part of my core beliefs: "Perfect is the enemy of Good Enough" Folks used to share this quote a lot with me in my early career and my frequent interpretation was that they were incompetent people that were satisfied with mediocrity, i.e. I ignored them and their advice. (Yes, I went through an arrogance phase). I later "grew up" and "realized" that they were missing the point, so instead of ignoring them I would retort: "Of course we have to aim for perfection, because as human beings we'll never achieve perfection, so by aiming for perfection we will indeed achieve good enough results". (Yes, I went through a smart ass phase). Later I grew up a bit more and "understood" that what I was really being told is to finish my work earlier and move on to other things because by trying to perfect that one thing, another N things that I was responsible for were suffering by not getting my attention - all things on my plate need to move beyond the line, not just one of them to go way over the line. It is really a statement of increasing scale and scope. To put it in other words, getting PASS grades on 10 things is better than getting an A+ with distinction on 1-2 and a FAIL on the rest. Instead of saying “I am able to do very well these X items” it is best if you can say I can do well enough on these X * Y items”, where Y > 1. That is how breadth impact is achieved. In the future, I may grow up again and have a different interpretation, but for now - even though I secretly try to "perfect" things, I try not to do that at the expense of other responsibilities. This means that I haven't had anybody quote that saying to me in a while (or perhaps my quality of work has dropped so much that it doesn't apply to me any more - who knows :-)). Wikipedia attributes the quote to Voltaire and it also makes connections to the “Law of diminishing returns”, and to the “80-20 rule” or “Pareto principle”… it commonly takes 20% of the full time to complete 80% of a task while to complete the last 20% of a task takes 80% of the effort …check out the Wikipedia entry on “Perfect is the enemy of Good” and its links. Also use your favorite search engine to search and see what others are saying (Bing, Google) – it is worth internalizing this in a way that makes sense to you… Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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• Cone of Uncertainty in classic and agile projects

  - by DigiMortal

  David Starr from Scrum.org made interesting session in TechEd Europe 2012 - Implementing Scrum Using Team Foundation Server 2012. One of interesting things for me was how Cone of Uncertainty looks like in agile projects (or how agile methodologies distort the cone we know from waterfall projects). This posting illustrates two cones – one for waterfall and one for agile world. Cone of Uncertainty Cone of Uncertainty was introduced to software development community by Steve McConnell and it visualizes how accurate are our estimates over project timeline. Here is the Cone of Uncertainty when we deal with waterfall and Big Design Up-Front (BDUF). Cone of Uncertainty. Taken from MSDN Library page Estimating. The closer we are to project end the more accurate are our estimates. When project ends we know exactly how much every task took time. As we can see then cone is wide when we usually have to give our estimates – it happens somewhere between Initial Project Concept and Requirements Complete. Don’t ask me why Initial Project Concept is the stage where some companies give their best estimates – they just do it every time and doesn’t learn a thing later. This cone is inevitable for software development and agile methodologies that try to make software world better are also able to change the cone. Cone of Uncertainty in agile projects Agile methodologies usually try to avoid BDUF, waterfalls and other things that make all our mistakes highly expensive. Of course, we are not the only ones who make mistakes – don’t also forget our dear customers. Agile methodologies take development as creational work and focus on making it better. One main trick is to focus on small and short iterations. What it means? We are estimating functionalities that are easier for us to understand and implement. Therefore our estimates are more accurate. As we move from few big iterations to many small iterations we also distort and slice Cone of Uncertainty. This is how cone looks when agile methodologies are used. Cone of Uncertainty in agile projects. We have more cones to live with but they are way smaller. I don’t have any numbers to put here because I found any but still this “chart” should give you the point: more smaller iterations cause more but way smaller cones of uncertainty. We can handle these small uncertainties because steps we take to complete small tasks are more predictable and doesn’t grow very often above our heads. One more note. Consider that both of charts given in this posting describe exactly the same phase of same project – just uncertainties are different.

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• MOSSLover Lives On&hellip;

  - by MOSSLover

  A while back, maybe 6 months, I got some bad news about 2010.  Microsoft was removing Office from the MOSS equivalent of 2010, so basically my alias would be obsolete the second 2010 caught on in the community.  I thought about it for some time.  I had some discussions with friends in the community.  I even noticed that the MOSSMan changed his twitter id.  I started my blog around a WSS 3.0 project when I worked for LRS in there St. Louis Office in February/March 2007.  So I think it’s fitting to keep the name, because my community involvement centers around 2007.  My first ever speaking ordeal was at the Kansas City Office Geeks meeting in November of 2007 on Disaster Recovery where about three people attended.  The first user group meeting I ever attended was around the month of June 2007 at the KC .Net User Group about two weeks after my braces were installed.  It’s definitely fitting to say that 2007 paved the way for everything that happened in the past 2/2 1/2 years.  If anyone asks what MOSSLover means I added a description on twitter and I also added my name.  I added my name for other reasons, because I’m sick of people thinking I am the guy in the photo.  Also, I’d like people to recognize me for who I am.  Everyone should expect less of the hat in the upcoming year and more of my hair.  I’ve taken a vow to wear the hat less and less this year.  I am sick of buying hats, plus I want to move forward to gain more self confidence.  The hat does not really help.  I will still wear a t-shirt and jeans in most of my presentations.  That is who I am and it will not change any time soon.  If you expect to see me in a skirt good luck with that as it won’t be happening unless I am forced at gun point.  I hope you guys have a good weekend.  Later all… Technorati Tags: MOSSLover,Cardinal's Hat,Becky Isserman

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• New computer hangs on shutdown/reboot, how to troubleshoot?

  - by Torben Gundtofte-Bruun

  My system is working perfectly but it freezes during shutdown/reboot/suspend/hibernate: All windows and the menu bar disappear but the desktop wallpaper remains. It doesn't even show the shutdown screen (the one with the animated dots) where I could hit ESC and watch the shutdown console text. The system is brand-new and fully updated using Update Manager. How can I determine what is causing the freeze? Is there a log I can investigate? How can I fix this? I see no obvious cause of the freeze. The only USB attachment is a mouse/keyboard; I don't have any external storage attached; and I don't have any programs running (the machine freezes even when doing shutdown right from the login screen). What I've tried so far: Based on other questions (this, this, and this) that suggest some ACPI settings, I've tried sudo shutdown -h now to see whether the shutdown console text display offers any hints, but the system doesn't even get that far - it still freezes while the screen shown the desktop background image, without any toolbars. Only sudo shutdown --force works, but that's not a solution. Editing the grub menu to add acpi=off to the kernel didn't help. I guess there's not much point in trying the other (lesser) ACPI suggestions? Adding noapic to the grub entry had no discernible effect. Adding nolapic instead did something (I had removed the quiet option) - the system managed to continue further with the shutdown, right until the line Checking for running unattended-upgrades: which were the last characters on the screen. I've also checked the system BIOS, especially regarding power options, but didn't see anything out of the ordinary. Switching the BIOS standby setting from S3 to S1 didn't help. The standby setting can't be disabled, and there are no other ACPI-related settings AFAIK. BIOS reset didn't help. Not surprised; hadn't changed anything. I tried going to a virtual console (CtrlAltF1) as suggested by djeikyb and from there did a shutdown -h now and it froze there too, after this console output. I didn't try killing processes one at a time because I'm still too newbie to figure out how to do that. Booting with kernel 2.6.35.22 rather than 2.6.35.25 didn't help. Disabling the Nvidia drivers didn't help. Booting from Live CD (USB stick in fact) didn't help; it freezes the same way. Booting from Live CD, with acpi=off noapic nolapic didn't help either. Neither did just nolapic. So evidently this is not some custom setting in my install, but some sort of basic issue. MemTest competed in 1 hour without errors.

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• Turn-Based RPG Battle Instance Layout For Larger Groups

  - by SoulBeaver

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

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• Get AutoHotkey Script To Run As Admin At Startup

  - by deadlydog

  A few weeks back I posted some problems with running AutoHotkey (AHK) in Windows 8, and that the solution was to run your AHK script as admin.  I also showed how to have the script start automatically when you logged into Windows.  What I didn’t realize at the time though was that the method only worked because I had disabled UAC in the registry (which prevents most Metro apps from working in Windows 8, and likely isn’t acceptable for most people). So here is a Windows 8, UAC-friendly method to accomplish the same task (also works in previous versions of Windows).  The trick is to use the Task Scheduler: 1. Open the Task Scheduler (also known as “Schedule tasks” in Windows 8 Settings).   2. Create a new Basic Task. 3. Give it a name and description (something like “launch AutoHotkey script at login”), and then specify to have it run “When I log on”.  Then specify that you want it to “Start a program”, and then point it towards your AutoHotkey script.  Before you finish the wizard, check off “Open the Properties dialog for this task when I click Finish”.   4. When that Properties dialog opens up, go to the Conditions tab and make sure none of the checkboxes under the Power category are checked off; this will ensure the script still launches if you are on a laptop and not plugged into AC power.   5. Now here is the important part; To have your script “Run as admin”, on the General tab check off “Run with highest privileges”. Now your AHK script should start automatically as soon as you log into Windows; even when UAC is enabled   6. If your AHK script uses an #Include statement to include other files, you may get an error similar to this one when your task runs: “#Include file … cannot be opened. The program will exit.” The solution to this is to tell your AHK script to start in the same directory as the file that you want to include.  So you will need to edit your scheduled task’s Action to specify the Start In directory. Happy coding!

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