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  • The partition table is corrupt

    - by Tim
    I have a corrupt the partition table on the laptop that is running Ubunutu 10.4. Before the partition table was corrupt I had the following partitions: 2 primary partitions: 1st - NTFS 2nd - Extended 4 logical partitons that are built within 2nd extended: 1st NTFS (68 Gib) 2nd Linux (19 Gib) 3rd Swap (1.4 Gib) 4th Linux (24 Gib) The physical order of these partitions was the following: ( 4th Linux ) - ( 1st NTFS ) - ( 2nd Linux ) - ( 3rd Swap ) The logical order of the partition was different: ( 1st NTFS ) - ( 2nd Linux ) - ( 3rd Swap ) ( 4th Linux ) NTFS partition was big and it resided between 2 Linux partitions, neither of these partitions had enough space to install Oracle 11g. Therefore, I decided to a) either move the NTFS partion to the left or b) remove it completely and extend partition where Linux resides. As I tool I have chosen GParted. But unfortunately it was not able to move the partition because he found that in NTFS partition there are some blocks that are referenced multiple times. Also it was not able to remove the partition neither, because in this case the partitions that follow it ( 2nd Linux ) - ( 3rd Swap ) have to be in his opinion also removed, because the organization of extended partition is a linked list. Since GParted was not able to do such thing I was trying to find another tool. I found diskdrake tool on PSLinuxOS distribution of linux. That tool silently deleted ( 1st NTFS ) partition and I thought that everything was fine. But diskdrake has damaged the partition in a way that I am not able either to boot from the hard disk nor to see the partitions with GParted and even with diskdrake itself! Fortunately I have a live CD of Ubuntu 8.10 and I am able to boot and see hard disk. I have 2 ideas how I can solve the problem: 1) Manually change disk partitions and point them to the correct partitions. 2) Create partition table with GParted that as much as possible is the same with the previous one I find the 2nd approach less time consuming but some data will be lost because of it is not possible to place borders of the partitions exactly how it was before. And moreover I am not sure if such approach would work, for example, if the OS is able to locate files after repartitioning. I feel like that it will but not 100% sure. Are there some ideas how the problem may be solved?

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  • Does the Ubuntu One sync work?

    - by bisi
    I have been on this for several hours now, trying to get a simple second folder to sync with my (paid) account. I cannot tell you how many times I removed all devices, removed stored passwords, killed all processes of u1, logged out and back in online...and still, the tick in the file browser (Synchronize this folder) is loading and loading and loading. Also, I have logged out, rebooted countless times. And this is after me somehow managing to get the u1 preferences to finally "connect" again. I have also checked the status of your services, and none are close to what I am experiencing. And I have checked the suggested related questions above! So please, just confirm whether it is a problem on my side, or a problem on your side. EDIT: In the mean time, here is what has changed, on top of what is mentioned just above. • My files went from 0MB to 71.9MB, and is still rising. • My first folder of 400.2MB is being filled with the data as I write this. The second folder has the folder sub-structure in place. • Both folders now show in the File Browser that it will be synchronized. I believe that right now, it is all back to normal and working fine, and I guess that's what a good night's sleep can do ;). And we're now only back to the point where synchronizing is slow, but will pick up with the release of Natty (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuOne/FAQ/WhyIsItTakingSoLongForMyFilesToSync). But to get to the questions: My about says I use 11.04, Natty Narwhal, but I am quite sure the last distribution I installed was 10.10. Folder A is 400.2MB, and Folder B is 29.5MB I am on a DSL line, behind a regular fritz.box setting. No proxy servers in use, and I did not install any particular firewall features. No physical firewall, just the router (on which I have a TV signal as well), and 2 switches to get to this floor. Status: inactive The ubuntuone-indicator runs the same window as when I click on my name on the top-right corner and select Ubuntu one, or in the Control Center choose Ubuntu one. It wasn't supposed to go further than this was it?

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  • HTML5 game programming style

    - by fnx
    I am currently trying learn javascript in form of HTML5 games. Stuff that I've done so far isn't too fancy since I'm still a beginner. My biggest concern so far has been that I don't really know what is the best way to code since I don't know the pros and cons of different methods, nor I've found any good explanations about them. So far I've been using the worst (and propably easiest) method of all (I think) since I'm just starting out, for example like this: var canvas = document.getElementById("canvas"); var ctx = canvas.getContext("2d"); var width = 640; var height = 480; var player = new Player("pic.png", 100, 100, ...); also some other global vars... function Player(imgSrc, x, y, ...) { this.sprite = new Image(); this.sprite.src = imgSrc; this.x = x; this.y = y; ... } Player.prototype.update = function() { // blah blah... } Player.prototype.draw = function() { // yada yada... } function GameLoop() { player.update(); player.draw(); setTimeout(GameLoop, 1000/60); } However, I've seen a few examples on the internet that look interesting, but I don't know how to properly code in these styles, nor do I know if there are names for them. These might not be the best examples but hopefully you'll get the point: 1: Game = { variables: { width: 640, height: 480, stuff: value }, init: function(args) { // some stuff here }, update: function(args) { // some stuff here }, draw: function(args) { // some stuff here }, }; // from http://codeincomplete.com/posts/2011/5/14/javascript_pong/ 2: function Game() { this.Initialize = function () { } this.LoadContent = function () { this.GameLoop = setInterval(this.RunGameLoop, this.DrawInterval); } this.RunGameLoop = function (game) { this.Update(); this.Draw(); } this.Update = function () { // update } this.Draw = function () { // draw game frame } } // from http://www.felinesoft.com/blog/index.php/2010/09/accelerated-game-programming-with-html5-and-canvas/ 3: var engine = {}; engine.canvas = document.getElementById('canvas'); engine.ctx = engine.canvas.getContext('2d'); engine.map = {}; engine.map.draw = function() { // draw map } engine.player = {}; engine.player.draw = function() { // draw player } // from http://that-guy.net/articles/ So I guess my questions are: Which is most CPU efficient, is there any difference between these styles at runtime? Which one allows for easy expandability? Which one is the most safe, or at least harder to hack? Are there any good websites where stuff like this is explained? or... Does it all come to just personal preferance? :)

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  • Link instead of Attaching

    - by Daniel Moth
    With email storage not being an issue in many companies (I think I currently have 25GB of storage on my email account, I don’t even think about storage), this encourages bad behaviors such as liberally attaching office documents to emails instead of sharing a link to the document in SharePoint or SkyDrive or some file share etc. Attaching a file admittedly has its usage scenarios too, but it should not be the default. I thought I'd list the reasons why sharing a link can be better than attaching files directly. In no particular order: Better Review. It allows multiple recipients to review the file and their comments are aggregated into a single document. The alternative is everyone having to detach the document, add their comments, then send back to you, and then you have to collate. Wirth the alternative, you also potentially miss out on recipients reading comments from other recipients. Always up to date. The attachment becomes a fork instead of an always up to date document. For example, you send the email on Thursday, I only open it on Tuesday: between those days you could have made updates that now I am missing because you decided to share a link instead of an attachment. Better bookmarking. When I need to find that document you shared, you are forcing me to search through my email (I may not even be running outlook), instead of opening the link which I have bookmarked in my browser or my collection of links in my OneNote or from the recent/pinned links of the office app on my task bar, etc. Can control access. If someone accidentally or naively forwards your link to someone outside your group/org who you’d prefer not to have access to it, the location of the document can be protected with specific access control. Can add more recipients. If someone adds people to the email thread in outlook, your attachment doesn't get re-attached - instead, the person added is left without the attachment unless someone remembers to re-attach it. If it was a link, they are immediately caught up without further actions. Enable Discovery. If you put it on a share, I may be able to discover other cool stuff that lives alongside that document. Save on storage. So this doesn't apply to me given my opening statement, but if in your company you do have such limitations, attaching files eats up storage on all recipients accounts and will also get "lost" when those people archive email (and lose completely at some point if they follow the company retention policy). Like I said, attachments do have their place, but they should be an explicit choice for explicit reasons rather than the default. Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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  • Problem Solving vs. Solution Finding

    - by ryanabr
    By enlarge, most developers fall into these two camps I will try to explain what I mean by way of example. A manager gives the developer a task that is communicated like this: “Figure out why control A is not loading on this form”. Now, right there it could be argued that the manager should probably have given better direction and said something more like: “Control A is not loading on the Form, fix it”. They might sound like the same thing to most people, but the first statement will have the developer problem solving the reason why it is failing. The second statement should have the developer looking for the solution to make it work, not focus on why it is broken. In the end, they might be the same thing, but I usually see the first approach take way longer than the second approach. The Problem Solver: The problem solver’s approach to fixing something that is broken is likely to take the error or behavior that is being observed and start to research it using a tool like Google, or any other search engine. 7/10 times this will yield results for the most common of issues. The challenge is in the other 30% of issues that will take the problem solver down the rabbit hole and cause them not to surface for days on end while every avenue is explored for the cause of the problem. In the end, they will probably find the cause of the issue and resolve it, but the cost can be days, or weeks of work. The Solution Finder: The solution finder’s approach to a problem will begin the same way the Problem Solver’s approach will. The difference comes in the more difficult cases. Rather than stick to the pure “This has to work so I am going to work with it until it does” approach, the Solution Finder will look for other ways to get the requirements satisfied that may or may not be using the original approach. For example. there are two area of an application of externally equivalent features, meaning that from a user’s perspective, the behavior is the same. So, say that for whatever reason, area A is now not working, but area B is working. The Problem Solver will dig in to see why area A is broken, where the Solution Finder will investigate to see what is the difference between the two areas and solve the problem by potentially working around it. The other notable difference between the two types of developers described is what point they reach before they re-emerge from their task. The problem solver will likely emerge with a triumphant “I have found the problem” where as the Solution Finder will emerge with the more useful “I have the solution”. Conclusion At the end of the day, users are what drives features in software development. With out users there is no need for software. In todays world of software development with so many tools to use, and generally tight schedules I believe that a work around to a problem that takes 8 hours vs. the more pure solution to the problem that takes 40 hours is a more fruitful approach.

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  • Box2D Difference Between WorldCenter and Position

    - by Free Lancer
    So this problem has been brothering for a couple of days now. First off, what is the difference between say Body.getWorldCenter() and Body.getPosition(). I heard that WorldCenter might have to do with the center of gravity or something. Second, When I create a Box2D Body for a sprite the Body is always at the lower left corner. I check it by printing a Rectangle of 1 pixel around the box.getWorldCenter(). From what I understand the Body should be in the center of the Sprite and its bounding box should wrap around the Sprite, correct? Here's an image of what I mean (The Sprite is Red, Body Blue): Here's some code: Body Creator: public static Body createBoxBody( final World pPhysicsWorld, final BodyType pBodyType, final FixtureDef pFixtureDef, Sprite pSprite ) { float pRotation = 0; float pCenterX = pSprite.getX() + pSprite.getWidth() / 2; float pCenterY = pSprite.getY() + pSprite.getHeight() / 2; float pWidth = pSprite.getWidth(); float pHeight = pSprite.getHeight(); final BodyDef boxBodyDef = new BodyDef(); boxBodyDef.type = pBodyType; //boxBodyDef.position.x = pCenterX / Constants.PIXEL_METER_RATIO; //boxBodyDef.position.y = pCenterY / Constants.PIXEL_METER_RATIO; boxBodyDef.position.x = pSprite.getX() / Constants.PIXEL_METER_RATIO; boxBodyDef.position.y = pSprite.getY() / Constants.PIXEL_METER_RATIO; Vector2 v = new Vector2( boxBodyDef.position.x * Constants.PIXEL_METER_RATIO, boxBodyDef.position.y * Constants.PIXEL_METER_RATIO ); Gdx.app.log("@Physics", "createBoxBody():: Box Position: " + v); // Temporary Box shape of the Body final PolygonShape boxPoly = new PolygonShape(); final float halfWidth = pWidth * 0.5f / Constants.PIXEL_METER_RATIO; final float halfHeight = pHeight * 0.5f / Constants.PIXEL_METER_RATIO; boxPoly.setAsBox( halfWidth, halfHeight ); // set the anchor point to be the center of the sprite pFixtureDef.shape = boxPoly; final Body boxBody = pPhysicsWorld.createBody(boxBodyDef); Gdx.app.log("@Physics", "createBoxBody():: Box Center: " + boxBody.getPosition().mul(Constants.PIXEL_METER_RATIO)); boxBody.createFixture(pFixtureDef); boxBody.setTransform( boxBody.getWorldCenter(), MathUtils.degreesToRadians * pRotation ); boxPoly.dispose(); return boxBody; } Making the Sprite: public Car( Texture texture, float pX, float pY, World world ) { super( "Car" ); mSprite = new Sprite( texture ); mSprite.setSize( mSprite.getWidth() / 6, mSprite.getHeight() / 6 ); mSprite.setPosition( pX, pY ); mSprite.setOrigin( mSprite.getWidth()/2, mSprite.getHeight()/2); FixtureDef carFixtureDef = new FixtureDef(); // Set the Fixture's properties, like friction, using the car's shape carFixtureDef.restitution = 1f; carFixtureDef.friction = 1f; carFixtureDef.density = 1f; // needed to rotate body using applyTorque mBody = Physics.createBoxBody( world, BodyDef.BodyType.DynamicBody, carFixtureDef, mSprite ); }

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  • Are they asking too much of me?

    - by Tesserex
    Or am I just whining? Background: I work for a "startup," which I put in air quotes because the company has been around for 4 years. We have about 40 employees in three offices, 9 here plus some part time. We have a good amount of investment and bring in about 75% of what we spend (so not profitable just yet.) Standard work week is supposed to be about 60 hours, but they justify that as we have to be online when our international (Taiwan and Vietnam) offices are awake. When I started the job 6 months ago, I spent about a month prototyping an iphone app and did really well on my own. They also found out about my facebook applications and how many users they got. Putting 2 and 2 together (and winding up at -7) they realized 1. I'm independent and innovative (because I was able to use stackoverflow to answer my iOS questions instead of bugging my superiors) and 2. I must have an eye for marketing (since my fb apps grew totally organically without me doing any advertising), and assigned me to a project optimizing adwords campaigns. Today I got reviewed, and then chewed out, by our CEO for not totally rocking this project. Now I thought I was doing ok, but the CEO said the project is stagnant and they're expecting more from me. But since it's a startup, they play loose with job roles and I've had plenty of other things to do in the past three months. Every time I ask what's most important, I get conflicting responses depending who I ask, and the end result is that almost everything has equal priority - high. I could go on about how I don't think adwords is worthwhile for us since our profit margin is so slim, and how we should be trying to improve our website first, but that's not the point. I also have explained to the office director (who originally assigned me the project, not the CEO) that I don't actually know anything about marketing, I'm just a decent programmer, but they think my general smarts will prove capable of tackling this challenge. The CEO also clarified that he wants a more technical and algorithmic approach to the problem. So is there something I can do to address this? Combined with my existing and confusing workload, should I be raising an issue? Or should I do the grown up thing and give it my all, asking for help when I need it and hoping for the best? Sorry if this is very rant-ish.

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  • fdisk shows overlapping partitions

    - by Campa
    At every boot to start Ubuntu, a partition gets re-mounted more than 1 times, sometimes causing very long boots. Example below: > dmesg ... [ 21.472020] EXT4-fs (sda5): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro ... [ 42.021537] EXT4-fs (sda5): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro,commit=0 ... I suspect there is a problem of overlapping partitions here, regarding sda4 and sda5: > sudo fdisk -l Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 63 610469 305203+ de Dell Utility /dev/sda2 612352 32069631 15728640 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT /dev/sda3 * 32069632 238979788 103455078+ 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT /dev/sda4 238983166 625141759 193079297 5 Extended /dev/sda5 238983168 612630527 186823680 83 Linux /dev/sda6 612632576 625141759 6254592 82 Linux swap / Solaris Further details: > more /etc/fstab ... # <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass> proc /proc proc nodev,noexec,nosuid 0 0 # / was on /dev/sda6 during installation UUID=b33be99b-5c9e-449e-ad48-be608aeff001 / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1 # swap was on /dev/sda7 during installation UUID=7c9071cc-b77b-40da-9f80-6b8a9a220cb1 none swap sw and > mount /dev/sda5 on / type ext4 (rw,errors=remount-ro,commit=0) proc on /proc type proc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev) sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev) fusectl on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw) none on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw) none on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw) udev on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,mode=0755) devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=0620) tmpfs on /run type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,size=10%,mode=0755) none on /run/lock type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,size=5242880) none on /run/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev) binfmt_misc on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev) gvfs-fuse-daemon on /home/piero/.gvfs type fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=piero) I am Running Ubuntu Oneiric + LXDE on Dell Studio XPS machine 64-bit, dual booting with Windows 7. A months ago, I resized the Ubuntu partition and maybe I messed up something by doing that. Do you have any idea, why this long booting is happening?

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  • PASS Summit for SQL Starters

    - by Davide Mauri
    I’ve received a buch of emails from PASS Summit “First Timers” that are also somehow new to SQL Server (for “somehow” I mean people with less than 6 month experience but with some basic knowledge of SQL Server engine) or are catching up from SQL Server 2000. The common question regards the session one should not miss to have a broad view of the entire SQL Server platform have some insight into some specific areas of SQL Server Given that I’m on (semi-)vacantion and that I have more free time (not true, I have to prepare slides & demos for several conferences, PASS Summit  - Building the Agile Data Warehouse with SQL Server 2012 - and PASS 24H - Agile Data Warehousing with SQL Server 2012 - among them…but let’s pretend it to be true), I’ve decided to make a post to answer to this common questions. Of course this is my personal point of view and given the fact that the number and quality of session that will be delivered at PASS Summit is so high that is very difficoult to make a choice, fell free to jump into the discussion and leave your feedback or – even better – answer with another post. I’m sure it will be very helpful to all the SQL Server beginners out there. I’ve imposed to myself to choose 6 session at maximum for each Track. Why 6? Because it’s the maximum number of session you can follow in one day, and given that all the session will be on the Summit DVD, they are the answer to the following question: “If I have one day to spend in training, which session I should watch?”. Of course a Summit is not like a Course so a lot of very basics concept of well-established technologies won’t be found here. Analysis Services, Integration Services, MDX are not part of the Summit this time (at least for the basic part of them). Enough with that, let’s start with the session list ideal to have a good Overview of all the SQL Server Platform: Geospatial Data Types in SQL Server 2012 Inside Unstructured Data: SQL Server 2012 FileTable and Semantic Search XQuery and XML in SQL Server: Common Problems and Best Practice Solutions Microsoft's Big Play for Big Data Dashboards: When to Choose Which MSBI Tool Microsoft BI End-User Tools 360° for what concern Database Development, I recommend the following sessions Understanding Transaction Isolation Levels What to Look for in Execution Plans Improve Query Performance by Fixing Bad Parameter Sniffing A Window into Your Data: Using SQL Window Functions Practical Uses and Optimization of New T-SQL Features in SQL Server 2012 Taking MERGE Beyond the Basics For Business Intelligence Information Delivery Analyzing SSAS Data with Excel Building Compelling Power View Reports Managed Self-Service BI PowerPivot 101  SharePoint for Business Intelligence The Best Microsoft BI Tools You've Never Heard Of and for Business Intelligence Architecture & Development BI Power Hour Building a Tabular Model Database Enterprise Information Management: Bringing Together SSIS, DQS, and MDS SSIS Design Patterns Storing Columnstore Indexes Hadoop and Its Ecosystem Components in Action Beside the listed sessions, First Timers should also take a look the the page PASS set up for them: http://www.sqlpass.org/summit/2012/Connect/FirstTimers.aspx See you at PASS Summit!

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  • Multi-Part Map Troubleshooting

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

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  • New grad; To overcome complete lack of experience, should I ditch a creative pet project in lieu of one that would demonstrate more applicable skills?

    - by Hart Simha
    I am currently working on a project on github that I think would be a good demonstration of my initiative, creativity and enthusiasm. It is an educational game I am developing in pygame that enables the user to learn to improve their development productivity by using vim, specifically with python, though learning to code faster with vim should be transferable to any language. I think this is something that might have a mass appeal and benefit to a lot of people in a measurable way. -However- I am graduating from college in a month (my degree is computer science with a minor in English), with no experience that is relevant to helping me get any kind of job in the field, and a gpa that doesn't tout my merits. I could pursue a career in game development, but it's not necessarily what I'm most interested in, and see myself applying to startups around the country. To the places I am looking at applying, showing that I have experience with pygame is going to be largely irrelevant, except in demonstration of my ability to code, period. A lot of skills that ARE more marketable, such a data modeling, GIS, mobile application, development, javascript, .net framework, and various web development technologies, are not going to be showcased by this project (on the upside, employers do like to see familiarity with git and python). I'm wondering if I should sink all my free time in the next couple of months into this project, since I'm motivated and interested in it, and if the value of being able to demonstrate ambition and 'good ideas' (for lack of a better term, and in my own opinion) will compensate for the absence of demonstrating more sought-after skills. I am probably at a point where I should either commit fully to this project now, or put it on the backburner in favor of something else, and I am leaning towards continuing with what I am already working on, because I think it's a great idea, and something achievable to me with enough dedication over the next couple months. But the most important thing to me is being able to get a job out of college, which I am exceedingly concerned about as the professional landscape which I am navigating for the first time is a lot more intimidating than I could have anticipated, with almost every job (even short-term contract positions) requiring years of experience which I lack. So in brief, the common denominator to answering the question "How can I overcome experience requirements for a job" seems to be "Show off your own project." I want to know WHICH project I should work on to best increase my chances of getting a job out of college, keeping in mind that I have no experience. I believe this question is applicable to any new grad that lacks demonstrable experience.

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  • Innovation for Retailers

    - by David Dorf
    One of my main objectives for this blog is to point out emerging technologies and how they might apply to the retail industry.  But ideas are just the beginning; retailers either have to rely on vendors or have their own lab to explore these ideas and see which ones work.  (A healthy dose of both is probably the best solution.)  The Nordstrom Innovation Lab is a fine example of dedicating resources to cultivate ideas and test prototypes. The video below, from 2011, is a case study in which the team builds an iPad app that helps customers purchase sunglasses in the store.  Customers take pictures of themselves wearing different sunglasses, then can do side-by-side comparisons. There are a few interesting take-aways from their process.  First, they are working in the store alongside employees and customers.  There's no concept of documenting all the requirements then building the product.  Instead, they work closely with those that will be using the app in order to fully understand what's needed.  When they find an issue, they change the software onsite and try again.  This iterative prototyping ensures their product hits the mark.  Feels like Extreme Programming if you recall that movement. Second, they have time-boxed the project to one week.  Either it works or it doesn't, and either way they've only expended a week's worth of resources.  Innovation always entails failure, and those that succeed are often good at detecting failure quickly then adjusting.  Fail fast and fail often. Third, its not always about technology.  I was impressed they used paper designs to walk through user stories and help understand the needs of the customer.  Pen and paper is the innovator's most powerful tool. Our Retail Applied Research (RAR) team uses some of these concepts in our development process.  (Calling it a process is probably overkill.)  We try to give life to concepts quickly so the rest of organization can help us decide if we're heading the right direction.  It takes many failures before finding a successful product.

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  • Our own Daily WTF

    - by Dennis Vroegop
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/dvroegop/archive/2014/08/20/our-own-daily-wtf.aspxIf you're a developer, you've probably heard of the website the DailyWTF. If you haven't, head on over to http://www.thedailywtf.com and read. And laugh. I'll wait. Read it? Good. If you're a bit like me probably you've been wondering how on earth some people ever get hired as a software engineer. Most of the stories there seem to weird to be true: no developer would write software like that right? And then you run into a little nugget of code one of your co-workers wrote. And then you realize: "Hey, it happens everywhere!" Look at this piece of art I found in our codebase recently: public static decimal ToDecimal(this string input) {     System.Globalization.CultureInfo cultureInfo = System.Globalization.CultureInfo.InstalledUICulture;     var numberFormatInfo = (System.Globalization.NumberFormatInfo)cultureInfo.NumberFormat.Clone();     int dotIndex = input.IndexOf(".");     int commaIndex = input.IndexOf(",");     if (dotIndex > commaIndex)         numberFormatInfo.NumberDecimalSeparator = ".";     else if (commaIndex > dotIndex)         numberFormatInfo.NumberDecimalSeparator = ",";     decimal result;     if (decimal.TryParse(input, System.Globalization.NumberStyles.Float, numberFormatInfo, out result))         return result;     else         throw new Exception(string.Format("Invalid input for decimal parsing: {0}. Decimal separator: {1}.", input, numberFormatInfo.NumberDecimalSeparator)); }  Me and a collegue have been looking long and hard at this and what we concluded was the following: Apparently, we don't trust our users to be able to correctly set the culture in Windows. Users aren't able to determine if they should tell Windows to use a decimal point or a comma to display numbers. So what we've done here is make sure that whatever the user enters, we'll translate that into whatever the user WANTS to enter instead of what he actually did. So if you set your locale to US, since you're a US citizen, but you want to enter the number 12.34 in the Dutch style (because, you know, the Dutch are way cooler with numbers) so you enter 12,34 we will understand this and respect your wishes! Of course, if you change your mind and in the next input field you decide to use the decimal dot again, that's fine with us as well. We will do the hard work. Now, I am all for smart software. Software that can handle all sorts of input the user can think of. But this feels a little uhm, I don't know.. wrong.. Or am I too old fashioned?

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  • Documenting sp_ssiscatalog

    - by jamiet
    What is the best way to document an API? Moreover, what is the best way to document a T-SQL API? Before I try to answer those questions I should explain what I mean by “a T-SQL API”. I think of an API as being a collection of well-defined, known, code modules that provide some notion of a service to whomever uses it; in T-SQL terms I tend to think of a collection of stored procedures and functions as a form of API. Its a loose definition, I admit, and in SQL Server circles we don’t tend to think of stored procedures collectively as an API but if you think about it that’s exactly what they are. The question of how to document a T-SQL API came to my mind as I worked on sp_ssiscatalog. How could I make it easy for people to learn about the capabilities of sp_ssiscatalog without forcing them to dig through the code and find out for themselves? My opening gambit was to write documentation pages on the wiki at http://ssisreportingpack.codeplex.com. That’s kinda useful but it does suffer the disadvantage that someone using sp_ssiscatalog needs to go visit a webpage to read it – I want the documentation to be available wherever the user is using sp_ssiscatalog. Moreover, maintaining the wiki is a real PITA. Intellisense works up to a point, I guess: but that only shows whatever SQL Server knows about the various parameters, which isn’t all that much! I wanted a better way for my API users to learn about its capabilities and so I hit upon the idea of simply using PRINT statements within the code itself to inform the user what options are available; hence I added such PRINT statements in the latest check-in. Now when you execute (for example): EXEC sp_ssiscatalog @operation_type='execs' you can hit F6 a few times to view the messages pane and you shall see something like this: Notice that I’m returning information about all the parameters that can be used to affect the results that just got returned. I really do think this will be very useful to anyone using sp_ssiscatalog; I myself am always forgetting what the parameters are and I wrote the damn thing so I can’t really expect anyone else to remember them. I have not yet made available a release that has these changes in it but when I do I’ll blog about it right here. At the time of writing the latest available release of sp_ssiscatalog is DB v1.0.1.0 but if you want to the latest and greatest simply download it straight from source. Feedback is welcome as always. @Jamiet

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  • Rending 2D Tile World (With Player In The Middle)

    - by Mick
    What I have at the moment is a series of data structures I'm using, and I would like to render the world onto the screen (just the visible parts). I've actually already done this several times (lots of rewrites), but it's a bit buggy (rounding seems to make the screen jump ever so slightly every x tiles the player walks past). Basically I've been confusing myself heavily on what I feel should be a pretty simple problem... so here I am asking for some help! OK! So I have a 50x50 array holding the tiles of the world. I have the player position as 2 floats, x ([0, 49]) and y ([0, 49]) in that array. I have the application size exactly in pixels (x and y). I have an arbitrary TILE_SIZE static int (based on screen pixels). What I think is heavily confusing me is using a 2d orthogonal projection in opengl which maps (0,0) to the top left of the screen and (SCREEN_SIZE_X, SCREEN_SIZE_Y) to the bottom right of the screen. gl.glMatrixMode(GL.GL_PROJECTION); gl.glLoadIdentity(); glu.gluOrtho2D(0, getActualWidth(), getActualHeight(), 0); gl.glMatrixMode(GL.GL_MODELVIEW); gl.glLoadIdentity(); The map tiles are set so that the (0,0) in the array is the bottom left. And the player has to be in the middle on the screen (SCREEN_SIZE_X/2, SCREEN_SIZE_Y/2). What I've been doing so far is trying to render 1-2 tiles more all around what would be displayed on the screen so that I don't have to worry about figuring out rendering half a tile from the top left, depending where the player is. It seems like such an easy problem but after spending about 40+hours on it rewriting it many times I think I'm at a point where I just can't think clearly anymore... Any help would be appreciated. It would be great if someone can provide some very basic pseudo code on keeping the player in the middle when your projection is mapped to screen coordinates and only rendering basically the tiles that you would be any be see. Thanks!

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  • What does path finding in internet routing do and how is it different from A*?

    - by alan2here
    Note: If you don't understand this question then feel free to ask clarification in the comments instead of voting down, it might be that this question needs some more work at the moment. I've been directed here from the Stack Excange chat room Root Access because my question didn't fit on Super User. In many aspects path finding algorithms like A star are very similar to internet routing. For example: A node in an A* path finding system can search for a path though edges between other nodes. A router that's part of the internet can search for a route though cables between other routers. In the case of A*, open and closed lists are kept by the system as a whole, sepratly from any individual node as well as each node being able to temporarily store a state involving several numbers. Routers on the internet seem to have remarkable properties, as I understand it: They are very performant. New nodes can be added at any time that use a free address from a finite (not tree like) address space. It's real routing, like A*, there's never any doubling back for example. Similar IP addresses don't have to be geographically nearby. The network reacts quickly to changes to the networks shape, for example if a line is down. Routers share information and it takes time for new IP's to be registered everywhere, but presumably every router doesn't have to store a list of all the addresses each of it's directions leads most directly to. I'm looking for a basic, general, high level description of the algorithms workings from the point of view of an individual router. Does anyone have one? I presume public internet routers don't use A* as the overheads would be to large, and scale to poorly. I also presume there is a single method worldwide because it seems as if must involve a lot of transferring data to update and communicate a reasonable amount of state between neighboring routers. For example, perhaps the amount of data that needs to be stored in each router scales logarithmically with the number of routers that exist worldwide, the detail and reliability of the routing is reduced over increasing distances, there is increasing backtracking involved in parts of the network that are less geographically uniform or maybe each router really does perform an A* style search, temporarily maintaining open and closed lists when a packet arrives.

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  • How do I randomly generate a top-down 2D level with separate sections and is infinite?

    - by Bagofsheep
    I've read many other questions/answers about random level generation but most of them deal with either randomly/proceduraly generating 2D levels viewed from the side or 3D levels. What I'm trying to achieve is sort of like you were looking straight down on a Minecraft map. There is no height, but the borders of each "biome" or "section" of the map are random and varied. I already have basic code that can generate a perfectly square level with the same tileset (randomly picking segments from the tileset image), but I've encountered a major issue for wanting the level to be infinite: Beyond a certain point, the tiles' positions become negative on one or both of the axis. The code I use to only draw tiles the player can see relies on taking the tiles position and converting it to the index number that represents it in the array. As you well know, arrays cannot have a negative index. Here is some of my code: This generates the square (or rectangle) of tiles: //Scale is in tiles public void Generate(int sX, int sY) { scaleX = sX; scaleY = sY; for (int y = 0; y <= scaleY; y++) { tiles.Add(new List<Tile>()); for (int x = 0; x <= scaleX; x++) { tiles[tiles.Count - 1].Add(tileset.randomTile(x * tileset.TileSize, y * tileset.TileSize)); } } } Before I changed the code after realizing an array index couldn't be negative my for loops looked something like this to center the map around (0, 0): for (int y = -scaleY / 2; y <= scaleY / 2; y++) for (int x = -scaleX / 2; x <= scaleX / 2; x++) Here is the code that draws the tiles: int startX = (int)Math.Floor((player.Position.X - (graphics.Viewport.Width) - tileset.TileSize) / tileset.TileSize); int endX = (int)Math.Ceiling((player.Position.X + (graphics.Viewport.Width) + tileset.TileSize) / tileset.TileSize); int startY = (int)Math.Floor((player.Position.Y - (graphics.Viewport.Height) - tileset.TileSize) / tileset.TileSize); int endY = (int)Math.Ceiling((player.Position.Y + (graphics.Viewport.Height) + tileset.TileSize) / tileset.TileSize); for (int y = startY; y < endY; y++) { for (int x = startX; x < endX; x++) { if (x >= 0 && y >= 0 && x <= scaleX && y <= scaleY) tiles[y][x].Draw(spriteBatch); } } So to summarize what I'm asking: First, how do I randomly generate a top-down 2D map with different sections (not chunks per se, but areas with different tile sets) and second, how do I get past this negative array index issue?

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  • Wireless connection by using command screen

    - by Amadeus
    I installed Ubuntu 12.04 armhf to my beagleboard-xm and now trying to connect to a wireless network. First, I checked if I can search for available networks: ubuntu@arm:~$ iwlist scan lo Interface doesn't support scanning. usb0 Interface doesn't support scanning. wlan0 Scan completed : Cell 01 - Address: EA:7D:EF:60:C9:0B Channel:1 Frequency:2.412 GHz (Channel 1) Quality=70/70 Signal level=-23 dBm Encryption key:on ESSID:"ghostrider" Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 11 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s 24 Mb/s; 36 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s Bit Rates:6 Mb/s; 9 Mb/s; 12 Mb/s; 48 Mb/s Mode:Ad-Hoc Extra:tsf=000000005a1ab50e Extra: Last beacon: 6242ms ago IE: Unknown: 000A67686F73747269646572 IE: Unknown: 010882848B962430486C IE: Unknown: 030101 IE: Unknown: 06020000 IE: Unknown: 2A0100 IE: Unknown: 2F0100 IE: Unknown: 32040C121860 IE: Unknown: 2D1A2C181BFF00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 IE: Unknown: 3D16010800000000FF000000000000000000000000000000 IE: Unknown: DD09001018020000000000 Then I edited /etc/network/interfaces file to the following: root@arm:/etc/wpa_supplicant# cat /etc/network/interfaces auto lo iface lo inet loopback # The primary network interface auto eth0 iface eth0 inet dhcp # Example to keep MAC address between reboots #hwaddress ether DE:AD:BE:EF:CA:FE # WiFi Example auto wlan0 iface wlan0 inet dhcp wpa-ssid "ghostrider" wpa-psk "b34d373eb2fb836a43b0afffe783c7d0af694724506c9e77b06d1021302905bf" But I cannot still connect to the wireless network: root@arm:/etc/wpa_supplicant# iwconfig lo no wireless extensions. usb0 no wireless extensions. wlan0 IEEE 802.11bgn ESSID:off/any Mode:Managed Access Point: Not-Asociated Tx-Power=20 dBm Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off Encryption key:off Power Management:on eth0 no wireless extensions. root@arm:/etc/network# ifup wlan0 Failed to bring up wlan0. What is wrong? Should I change any other files also? But I think it was enough. By the way if you are curious about where that wpa-psk came from: zero@ghostrider:~$ wpa_passphrase ghostrider 34bddf67c2 network={ ssid="ghostrider" #psk="34bddf67c2" psk=b34d373eb2fb836a43b0afffe783c7d0af694724506c9e77b06d1021302905bf } I will appreciate any effort to help. Regards, Amadeus ps: Also I tried to connect manually: root@arm:/etc/network# iwconfig wlan0 essid ghostrider key s:34bddf67c2 But this did not solve my problem also.

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  • Problem trying to lock framerate at 60 FPS

    - by shad0w
    I've written a simple class to limit the framerate of my current project. But it does not work as it should. Here is the code: void FpsCounter::Process() { deltaTime = static_cast<double>(frameTimer.GetMsecs()); waitTime = 1000.0/fpsLimit - deltaTime; frameTimer.Reset(); if(waitTime <= 0) { std::cout << "error, waittime: " << waitTime << std::endl; } else { SDL_Delay(static_cast<Uint32>(waitTime)); } if(deltaTime == 0) { currFps = -1; } else { currFps = 1000/deltaTime; } std::cout << "--Timings--" << std::endl; std::cout << "Delta: \t" << deltaTime << std::endl; std::cout << "Delay: \t" << waitTime << std::endl; std::cout << "FPS: \t" << currFps << std::endl; std::cout << "-- --" << std::endl; } Timer::Timer() { startMsecs = 0; } Timer::~Timer() { // TODO Auto-generated destructor stub } void Timer::Start() { started = true; paused = false; Reset(); } void Timer::Pause() { if(started && !paused) { paused = true; pausedMsecs = SDL_GetTicks() - startMsecs; } } void Timer::Resume() { if(paused) { paused = false; startMsecs = SDL_GetTicks() - pausedMsecs; pausedMsecs = 0; } } int Timer::GetMsecs() { if(started) { if(paused) { return pausedMsecs; } else { return SDL_GetTicks() - startMsecs; } } return 0; } void Timer::Reset() { startMsecs = SDL_GetTicks(); } The "FpsCounter::Process()" Method is called everytime at the end of my gameloop. I've got the problem that the loop is correctly delayed only every second frame, so it runs one frame delayed at 60 FPS and the next without delay at over 1000 fps. I am searching the error quite a while now, but I do not find it. I hope somebody can point me in the right direction.

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  • Is IE9 a modern browser?

    - by anirudha
    Is IE9 a modern browser? i show you a post who compare IE as well as they compare chrome. Is IE9 a modern browser? well Are you thing that they make something bettter then thing another that what Firefox and chrome do whenever Microsoft do this. that's point that Microsoft always blast IE because they make version upon version not upon update like Firefox make 3.6.14 after 3.6.13 and chrome give update soon as possible but IE not come soon. they will thing for making 10 instead of giving update on 9. well what they tell us new. they make fool public everytime i believe they make fool public as same as today they maked for version 9 they show developer tool in 9 have three new tabs or pael are this enough. whenever  in chrome and firefox their is many plugin who make development easier IE still have a developer tool who not have enough power like Firebug in Firefox. they show performance but forget luna user [window xp] and their IE never runs on other plateform but chrome and firefox can. no customization in IE whenever chrome and firefox have uncountable plugin and addons. show features now in IE who already implemented in firefox very early. well their is no rule that static goes right every time not sure that IE and Firefox both are right in their language. their is no one predict what thing goes better in future. so well keep a thing in mind never wasted time and also thing to make task easier even you need to use sollution opensource or closesoure inside or outside MS does not matter. well everyone tell you much more then they do even IE and some other. they never tell you this thing not in IE but in another can be found they never tell you use other whenever you need a thing and never can be found in their software. you need to more beware of IE because they make them commorcial not really for public if really then why they stop wxp user to use them as well firefox and chrome never force. because they need a thing that force more then more copy of windows sale. so they thing to add a thing in window 8. the IE9 they thing to make before that they thing to make  this for windows 8. they always force user to purchase this for this. this for this. and this trick sell their software. well outside MS Mozilla and Chrome all behave better with user and their feedback. they respect user their privacy and feedback. if you not believe that how much problem you found in IE and they got solved soon as in chrome and firefox bug kill soon. because IE not opensource we need to  boycutt them secondly their is no customization then they make user task easier even with twitter and facebook.

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  • Unintentional run-in with C# thread concurrency

    - by geekrutherford
    For the first time today we began conducting load testing on a ASP.NET application already in production. Obviously you would normally want to load test prior to releasing to a production environment, but that isn't the point here.   We ran a test which simulated 5 users hitting the application doing the same actions simultaneously. The first few pages visited seemed fine and then things just hung for a while before the test failed. While the test was running I was viewing the performance counters on the server noting that the CPU was consistently pegged at 100% until the testing tool gave up.   Fortunately the application logs all exceptions including those unhandled to the database (thanks to log4net). I checked the log and low and behold the error was:   System.ArgumentException: An item with the same key has already been added. (The rest of the stack trace intentionally omitted)   Since the code was running with debug on the line number where the exception occured was also provided. I began inspecting the code and almost immediately it hit me, the section of code responsible for the exception is trying to initialize a static class. My next question was how is this code being hit multiple times when I have a rudimentary check already in place to prevent this kind of thing (i.e. a check on a public variable of the static class before entering the initializing routine). The answer...the check fails because the value is not set before other threads have already made it through.   Not being one who consistently works with threading I wasn't quite sure how to handle this problem. Fortunately a co-worker recalled having to lock a section of code in the past but couldn't recall exactly how. After a quick search on Google the solution is as follows:   Object objLock = new Object(); lock(objLock) { //logic requiring lock }   The lock statement takes an object and tells the .NET runtime that the current thread has exclusive access while the code within brackets is executing. Once the code completes, the lock is released for another thread to utilize.   In my case, I only need to execute the inner code once to initialize my static class. So within the brackets I have a check on a public variable to prevent it from being initialized again.

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  • TechEd 2010 Day Three: The Database Designer (Isn't)

    - by BuckWoody
    Yesterday at TechEd 2010 here in New Orleans I worked the front-booth, answering general SQL Server questions for the masses. I was actually a little surprised to find most of the questions I got were from folks that wanted to know more about Stream Insight and Master Data Services. In past conferences I've been asked a lot of "free consulting" questions, about problems folks have had from older products. I don't mind that a bit - in fact, I'm always happy to help in any way I can. But this time people are really interested in the new features in the product, and I like that they are thinking ahead, not just having to solve problems in production. My presentation was on "Database Design in an Hour". We had the usual fun, and SideShow Bob made an appearance - I kid you not. The guy in the back of the room looked just like Sideshow Bob, so I quickly held a "bes thair" contest, and he won. Duing the presentation, I explain the tools you can use to design databases. I also explain that the "Database Designer" tool in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) isn't truly a desinger - it uses non-standard notation, doesn't have a meta-data dictionary, and worst of all, it works at the physical level. In other words, whatever you do in SSMS will automatically change the field/table/relationship structures in the database. We fixed this in SSMS 2008 and higher by adding an option to block that, but the tool is not a good design function nonetheless. To be fair, no one I know of at Microsoft recommends that it is - but I was shocked to hear so many developers in the room defending it as a good tool. I think the main issue for someone who doesn't have to work with Relational Systems a great deal is that it can be difficult to figure out Foreign Keys. The syntax makes them look "backwards", so it's just easier to grab a field and place it on the table you want to point to. There are options. You can download a couple of free tools (CA has a community edition of ER-WIN, Quest has one, and Embarcadero also has one) and if you design more than one or two databases a year, it may be worth buying a true design tool. For years I used Visio, but we changed it so that it doesn't forward-engineer (create the DDL) any more, so it isn't a true design tool either. So investigate those free and not-so-free tools. You'll find they help you in your job - but stay away from the Database Designer in SSMS. Or I'll send Sideshow Bob over there to straighten you out. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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  • June 2013 release of SSDT contains a minor bug that you should be aware of

    - by jamiet
    I have discovered what seems, to me, like a bug in the June 2013 release of SSDT and given the problems that it created yesterday on my current gig I thought it prudent to write this blog post to inform people of it. I’ve built a very simple SSDT project to reproduce the problem that has just two tables, [Table1] and [Table2], and also a procedure [Procedure1]: The two tables have exactly the same definition, both a have a single column called [Id] of type integer. CREATE TABLE [dbo].[Table1] (     [Id] INT NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY ) My stored procedure simply joins the two together, orders them by the column used in the join predicate, and returns the results: CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[Procedure1] AS     SELECT t1.*     FROM    Table1 t1     INNER JOIN Table2 t2         ON    t1.Id = t2.Id     ORDER BY Id Now if I create those three objects manually and then execute the stored procedure, it works fine: So we know that the code works. Unfortunately, SSDT thinks that there is an error here: The text of that error is: Procedure: [dbo].[Procedure1] contains an unresolved reference to an object. Either the object does not exist or the reference is ambiguous because it could refer to any of the following objects: [dbo].[Table1].[Id] or [dbo].[Table2].[Id]. Its complaining that the [Id] field in the ORDER BY clause is ambiguous. Now you may well be thinking at this point “OK, just stick a table alias into the ORDER BY predicate and everything will be fine!” Well that’s true, but there’s a bigger problem here. One of the developers at my current client installed this drop of SSDT and all of a sudden all the builds started failing on his machine – he had errors left right and centre because, as it transpires, we have a fair bit of code that exhibits this scenario.  Worse, previous installations of SSDT do not flag this code as erroneous and therein lies the rub. We immediately had a mass panic where we had to run around the department to our developers (of which there are many) ensuring that none of them should upgrade their SSDT installation if they wanted to carry on being productive for the rest of the day. Also bear in mind that as soon as a new drop of SSDT comes out then the previous version is instantly unavailable so rolling back is going to be impossible unless you have created an administrative install of SSDT for that previous version. Just thought you should know! In the grand schema of things this isn’t a big deal as the bug can be worked around with a simple code modification but forewarned is forearmed so they say! Last thing to say, if you want to know which version of SSDT you are running check my blog post Which version of SSDT Database Projects do I have installed? @Jamiet

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  • Storing hierarchical template into a database

    - by pduersteler
    If this title is ambiguous, feel free to change it, I don't know how to put this in a one-liner. Example: Let's assume you have a html template which contains some custom tags, like <text_field />. We now create a page based on a template containing more of those custom tags. When a user wants to edit the page, he sees a text field. he can input things and save it. This looks fairly easy to set up. You either have something like a template_positions table which stores the content of those fields. Case: I now have a bit of a blockade keeping things as simple as possible. Assume you have the same tag given in your example, and additionally, <layout> and <repeat> tags. Here's an example how they should be used: <repeat> <layout name="image-left"> <image /> <text_field /> </layout> <layout name="image-right"> <text_field /> <image /> </layout> </repeat> We now have a block which can be repeated, obviously. This means: when creting/editing a page containing such a template block, I can choose between a layout image-left and image-right which then gets inserted as content element (where content for <image /> and <text_field /> gets stored). And because this is inside a <repeat>, content elements from the given layouts can be inserted multiple times. How do you store this? Simply said, this could be stored with the same setup I've wrote in the example above, I just need to add a parent_id or something similiar to maintain a hierarchy. but I think I am missing something. At least the relation between an inserted content element and the origin/insertion point is missing. And what happens when I update the template file? Do I have to give every custom tag that acts as editable part of a template an identifier that matches an identifier in the template to substitue them correctly? Or can you think of a clean solution that might be better?

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  • Designing Snake AI

    - by Ronald
    I'm new to this gamedev stackechange but have used the math and cs sites before. So, I'm in a competition to create AI for a snake that will compete with 3 other snakes in 5 minute rounds where the rules are much like the traditional Nokia snake game except that there are 4 snakes, the board is 50x50 and there are a number of small obstacles on the field. Like the Nokia game, your snake grows when you get to the fruit and if you crash into yourself, another snake or the wall you die. The game runs with a 50ms delay between moves and the server sends the new game state every 50ms which the code must analyze and what not and output the next move. The winner is the snake who had the longest length at any point in the game. Tie breakers are decided by kills. So far what I have done is implemented an A* graph search from each snake to determine if my snake is the closest to the apple and if it is, it goes for the apple. Otherwise, I made a neat little algorithm to determine the emptiest area of the board, which my snake goes for, to anticipate the next apple. Other than this I have some small survivability checks to ensure my snake isn't walking into a trap that it can't get out and if it does get stuck, I have something to give it a better chance of getting out. ... Anyway, I've tested my snake on a test server and it does quite well. Generally, my strategy of only going for the apple when its a sure thing and finding space when its not makes it grow faster than any other snakes (some snakes do a similar thing but often just go to the middle or a corner) sometimes it wins these trial games but is more often than not beaten by the same snake who seems to have the edge on survivability(my snake grows quicker but then dies somehow and this other snake just plods slowly along and wins on consistency. So I was wondering about any ideas anyone has to try and improve my snake. Or maybe ideas at a new approach to take. My functions and classes are good so changes that might seem drastic shouldn't be too bad. I encourage all ideas. Any thoughts ??

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