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  • User Acceptance Testing Defect Classification when developing for an outside client

    - by DannyC
    I am involved in a large development project in which we (a very small start up) are developing for an outside client (a very large company). We recently received their first output from UAT testing of a fairly small iteration, which listed 12 'defects', triaged into three categories : Low, Medium and High. The issue we have is around whether everything in this list should be recorded as a 'defect' - some of the issues they found would be better described as refinements, or even 'nice-to-haves', and some we think are not defects at all. They client's QA lead says that it is standard for them to label every issues they identify as a defect, however, we are a bit uncomfortable about this. Whilst the relationship is good, we don't see a huge problem with this, but we are concerned that, if the relationship suffers in the future, these lists of 'defects' could prove costly for us. We don't want to come across as being difficult, or taking things too personally here, and we are happy to make all of the changes identified, however we are a bit concerned especially as there is a uneven power balance at play in our relationship. Are we being paranoid here? Or could we be setting ourselves up for problems down the line by agreeing to this classification?

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  • Transaction classification. Artificial intelligence

    - by Alex
    For a project, I have to classify a list of banking transactions based on their description. Supose I have 2 categories: health and entertainment. Initially, the transactions will have basic information: date and time, ammount and a description given by the user. For example: Transaction 1: 09/17/2012 12:23:02 pm - 45.32$ - "medicine payments" Transaction 2: 09/18/2012 1:56:54 pm - 8.99$ - "movie ticket" Transaction 3: 09/18/2012 7:46:37 pm - 299.45$ - "dentist appointment" Transaction 4: 09/19/2012 6:50:17 am - 45.32$ - "videogame shopping" The idea is to use that description to classify the transaction. 1 and 3 would go to "health" category while 2 and 4 would go to "entertainment". I want to use the google prediction API to do this. In reality, I have 7 different categories, and for each one, a lot of key words related to that category. I would use some for training and some for testing. Is this even possible? I mean, to determine the category given a few words? Plus, the number of words is not necesarally the same on every transaction. Thanks for any help or guidance! Very appreciated Possible solution: https://developers.google.com/prediction/docs/hello_world?hl=es#theproblem

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  • How to design highly scalable web services in Java?

    - by Kshitiz Sharma
    I am creating some Web Services that would have 2000 concurrent users. The services are offered for free and are hence expected to get a large user base. In the future it may be required to scale up to 50,000 users. There are already a few other questions that address the issue like - Building highly scalable web services However my requirements differ from the question above. For example - My application does not have a user interface, so images, CSS, javascript are not an issue. It is in Java so suggestions like using HipHop to translate PHP to native code are useless. Hence I decided to ask my question separately. This is my project setup - Rest based Web services using Apache CXF Hibernate 3.0 (With relevant optimizations like lazy loading and custom HQL for tune up) Tomcat 6.0 MySql 5.5 My questions are - Are there alternatives to Mysql that offer better performance for what I'm trying to do? What are some general things to abide by in order to scale a Java based web application? I am thinking of putting my Application in two tomcat instances with httpd redirecting the request to appropriate tomcat on basis of load. Is this the right approach? Separate tomcat instances can help but then database becomes the bottleneck since both applications access the same database? I am a programmer not a Db Admin, how difficult would it be to cluster a Mysql database (or, to cluster whatever database offered as an alternative to 1)? How effective are caching solutions like EHCache? Any other general best practices? Some clarifications - Could you partition the data? Yes we could but we're trying to avoid it. We need to run a lot of data mining algorithms and the design would evolve over time so we can't be sure what lines of partition should be there.

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  • What can go wrong with a GLIBC upgrade?

    - by Sevenless
    I recently installed a piece of software that my group needs for a research project starting next September. Turns out the software has a known crash bug when used with glibc 2.12.1. My boss asked if we can upgrade glibc on the server that's supposed to run it. Cue my skeptical silence.... At some point, I got it into my brain that messing with glibc was about as good an idea as messing with a hungry puma; however, I've been unable to determine the source of this belief. So, if I go ahead with this: Am I doing something flagrantly stupid (e.g. I won't fix my problem, I will brick my server, or I will initiate a zombie apocalypse)? What can go wrong? What is likely to go wrong? How do I avoid the answers to 2 and 3?

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  • OpenGL CPU vs. GPU

    - by Nitrex88
    So I've always been under the impression that doing work on the GPU is always faster than on the CPU. Because of this, in OpenGL, I usually try to do intensive tasks in shaders so they get the speed boost from the GPU. However, now I'm starting to realize that some things simply work better on the CPU and actually perform worse on the GPU (particularly when a geometry shader is involved). For example, in a recent project I did involving procedurally generated terrain, I tried passing a grid of single triangles into a geometry shader, and tesselated each of these triangles into quads with 400 vertices whose height was determined by a noise function. This worked fine, and looked great, but easily maxed out the GPU with only 25 base triangles and caused a very slow framerate. I then discovered that tesselating on the CPU instead, and setting the height (using noise function) in the vertex shader was actually faster! This prompted me to question the benefits of using the GPU as much as possible... So, I was wondering if someone could describe the general pros and cons of using the GPU vs CPU for intensive graphics tasks. I know this mainly comes down to what your trying to achieve, so if necessary, use the above scenario to discuss why the "CPU + vertex shader" was actually faster than doing everything in the geometry shader on the GPU. It's possible my hardware (newest macbook pro) isn't optomized well for the geometry shader (thus causing the slow framerate). Also, I read that the vertex shader is very good with parallelism, and would love a quick explanation of how this may have played a role in speeding up my procedural terrain. Any info/advice about CPU/GPU/shaders would be awesome!

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  • What are the best ways to professionally increase your online presence?

    - by Rob S.
    I've been hunting around the job market for a little bit now and I've been shocked by some of the things I am seeing. Software developers who make themselves more "known" online are getting far more and far better positions than people competing against them who are not as well "known" online. After doing some reading on the subject I realized that I actually shouldn't be so shocked by this. We are living in the most fast paced era of mankind and employers want to be able to learn as much as they can about a potential employee before they hire them. The easier we as software developers make it for us to be found it seems the better are chances of landing that dream job become. In some cases, employers are even finding us instead of us applying to them. So what are some of the best ways for me as a software developer to increase my online presence? I already hang around stack exchange sites such as programmers and stack overflow increasing my rep whenever I can. I maintain many open source projects as both a committer and project owner on Google Code and Github. I have a Twitter account, a website, and a blog. What else can I do to give myself a bigger online presence? Additionally, are there any good do's and don'ts for handling your web presence? Bashing your employer is an obvious don't but I'm interested in everything from the most basic to most subtle suggestions to give yourself a more appealing online presence. Thank you very much in advance for your time.

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  • Our New Website Header (& Other Tweaks)

    - by justin.kestelyn
    Last week, the Oracle Technology Network Website went fixed-width. There are several reasons for this, most relating to providing a consistent user experience, easier management of Website content, etc. Furthermore, it's fairly standard for developer portals these days - java.sun.com, MSDN, and IBM DeveloperWorks are also all fixed-width sites. (My apologies to everyone who is unhappy about this change, but it really is an overall positive one.) Today, we have rolled out a brand-new header, the first step in what we call the "Mosaic" project - which is an effort to make the user experience across all Oracle Websites more consistent. To summarize the impact: The "pull-down" menus on the OTN site disappear; most of them move into a "flyout" button in the header. You can access the OTN flyout from any page on Oracle.com or the OTN site. Great for our page views. :) You also have direct access to the Downloads index from anywhere on Oracle.com. If you so desire, you can directly access product overviews, Oracle University and Support info, Oracle Store, etc etc from the OTN site now. Due to limited space in the flyout we cannot accommodate *all* the pull-down items, but they are all no more than 1 or 2 clicks away. This approach has been validated in extensive user testing over the last few months; I welcome your feedback now in comments. There are many other changes in train, with the next one being: A major homepage redesign, the first in 4 or 5 years.

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  • Why the recent shift to removing/omitting semicolons from Javascript?

    - by Jonathan
    It seems to be fashionable recently to omit semicolons from Javascript. There was a blog post a few years ago emphasising that in Javascript, semicolons are optional and the gist of the post seemed to be that you shouldn't bother with them because they're unnecessary. The post, widely cited, doesn't give any compelling reasons not to use them, just that leaving them out has few side-effects. Even GitHub has jumped on the no-semicolon bandwagon, requiring their omission in any internally-developed code, and a recent commit to the zepto.js project by its maintainer has removed all semicolons from the codebase. His chief justifications were: it's a matter of preference for his team; less typing Are there other good reasons to leave them out? Frankly I can see no reason to omit them, and certainly no reason to go back over code to erase them. It also goes against (years of) recommended practice, which I don't really buy the "cargo cult" argument for. So, why all the recent semicolon-hate? Is there a shortage looming? Or is this just the latest Javascript fad?

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  • Understanding Visitor Pattern

    - by Nezreli
    I have a hierarchy of classes that represents GUI controls. Something like this: Control-ContainerControl-Form I have to implement a series of algoritms that work with objects doing various stuff and I'm thinking that Visitor pattern would be the cleanest solution. Let take for example an algorithm which creates a Xml representaion of a hierarchy of objects. Using 'classic' approach I would do this: public abstract class Control { public virtual XmlElement ToXML(XmlDocument document) { XmlElement xml = document.CreateElement(this.GetType().Name); // Create element, fill it with attributes declared with control return xml; } } public abstract class ContainerControl : Control { public override XmlElement ToXML(XmlDocument document) { XmlElement xml = base.ToXML(document); // Use forech to fill XmlElement with child XmlElements return xml; } } public class Form : ContainerControl { public override XmlElement ToXML(XmlDocument document) { XmlElement xml = base.ToXML(document); // Fill remaining elements declared in Form class return xml; } } But I'm not sure how to do this with visitor pattern. This is the basic implementation: public class ToXmlVisitor : IVisitor { public void Visit(Form form) { } } Since even the abstract classes help with implementation I'm not sure how to do that properly in ToXmlVisitor. Perhaps there is a better solution to this problem. The reason that I'm considering Visitor pattern is that some algorithms will need references not available in project where the classes are implemented and there is a number of different algorithms so I'm avoiding large classes. Any thoughts are welcome.

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  • Repurpose Old Phones As Intercoms

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    If you’ve got some old wired telephones laying around for want of a project, this simple hack turns two wired phones into an intercom. Over at Hack A Day, Caleb Kraft shares his simple phone hack inspired by his VW bus. He writes: In case you haven’t noticed from my many comments on the subject, I drive a VW bus. It is a 1976 Westfalia camper with sage green paint and green plaid upholstery. I absolutely love it and so does the rest of my family. We go for drives in the country as well as camping regularly. We have found that the kids have a hard time communicating with us while we’re going higher speeds. These things aren’t the quietest automobiles in the world. Pushing this bread loaf shaped hunk of steel down the road with an engine that might top out at 75hp results in wind noise, engine noise, and of course, vibration. I decided to employ a really old hack to put two functional telephones in the bus so my kids can talk to my wife (or whoever the passenger is) without screaming quite so loud. This hack is extremely easy, fairly cheap, and can be done in just a few minutes. The result is a functional intercom that you could use pretty much anywhere! For more pics of his setup (and a neat video of his rather retro ride), check out the link below. Hack Your Kindle for Easy Font Customization HTG Explains: What Is RSS and How Can I Benefit From Using It? HTG Explains: Why You Only Have to Wipe a Disk Once to Erase It

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  • Streaming Flash Video - getting my feet wet

    - by Travis
    I'm working on a project that will involve having a couple thousand short videos online. I haven't done anything with online video before and this is all a bit new to me, so I am looking for some general advice... I would like to use Flowplayer, and I would like to encode the videos as H264s. I am enamoured with Flowplayer's slow motion feature, which if I understand correctly, is only available using a Wowza server. I'm wondering: Is it advisable to use a delivery network of some sort? (Flowplayer seems to have a partnership with HDDN, and recommends them. http://www.hddn.com/) Or would I be better off purchasing Wowza and installing it on our own server? (At first glance, it looks as though signing up with a network like HDDN is much simpler, but perhaps there are problems that come along with this...?) Any tips / warnings of imminent peril would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

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  • How broad should a computer science/engineering student go?

    - by AskQuestions
    I have less than 2 years of college left and I still don't know what to focus on. But this is not about me, this is about being a future developer. I realize that questions like "Which language should I learn next?" are not really popular, but I think my question is broader than that. I often see people write things like "You have to learn many different things. Being a developer is not about learning one programming language / technology and then doing that for the rest of your life". Well, sure, but it's impossible to really learn everything thoroughly. Does that mean that one should just learn the basics of everything and then learn some things more thoroughly AFTER getting a particular job? I mean, the best way to learn programming is by actually programming stuff... But projects take time. Does an average developer really switch between (for example) being a web developer, doing artificial intelligence and machine learning related stuff and programming close to the hardware? I mean, I know a lot of different things, but I don't feel proficient in any of those things. If I want to find a job as a web developer (that's just an example) after I finish college, shouldn't I do some web related project (maybe using something I still don't know) rather than try to learn functional programming? So, the question is: How broad should a computer science student's field of focus be? One programming language is surely far too narrow, but what is too broad?

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  • New Oracle.com global navigation

    - by tim.bonnemann
    This is a guest post by Michal Kopec, Senior User Experience Architect her at Oracle Marketing Brand and Creative. We have just refreshed the Oracle.com global navigation to serve you better with Oracle related information and news. Highlights 1. Updated, user-oriented and business information balanced navigational categories. Say hello to the new categories: Downloads, Education and Oracle Technology Network. Oracle Partner Network navigation received a facelift too. 2. Brand new flyout based navigation - mouse over Partners for instance - providing both a high level content overview as well as shortcut links for most popular website destinations 3. Introducing audience based - I'm a... - and - I want to... - task-based navigation. Now you can navigate based on who you are or what is you want to accomplish. Please note this is an initial step - we want to build out those based on your opinions and feedback. 4. Adjusted Oracle Technology Network horizontal navigation to match Oracle.com. Oracle Technology Network users can now benefit from OTN content being accessible from anywhere during their Oracle.com and OTN visits of course :) 5. Last but not least - we applied the same refreshed global navigation to a couple of country sites - starting with Oracle Brazil and Oracle China. More to come. The project internal code name is Mosaic. It is an effort to provide you with unified user and brand experience during your Oracle websites visit. Every time you hear Mosaic expect great things to happen. With that - please let us know what you think. We value your opinion.

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  • Slow to sync music files?

    - by pst007x
    I have created a folder in the Ubuntu One sync folder and called it music. I have added various albums and the folder has started to sync. However the files were added back in October and still only the folders have synced and no music files. I tested this service before and added a single music file directly into the Ubuntu One folder (no sub folders) and within a few days it synced, however it seems anything in sub folders seem to stall or take a very long time. My ubuntu One program always says syncing and the progression bar creeps, but still no files synced. I know there are issues with speed but a month and going to sync? I recently tested the same files with Dropbox and it took 9 hours. I have port forwarded the https (443) port both in the software firewall and in my router, I tried disabling both firewalls too, either way it makes no difference. I have also tried both from home and the office on different Ubuntu systems. Is there anything anyone has done to improve this service? I am trying to integrate Ubuntu One service into the office to share project files but the syncing is taking to long. I am using the latest Ubuntu 10.10 (fully updated, fresh install), I love Ubuntu and wish to continue to support it anyway I can, so a solution would be good :-) Any help would be appreciated. Thanks Paul

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  • Automate #include refactoring in C++ [on hold]

    - by Mikhail
    I have a big project with hundreds of files. And as it often happens to C++ projects, #include directives are in messed up. I want to refactor them to increase clarity, decrease compilation time and simplify analysis. For each .h file I want to make sure that: It have #include directives only for types it is using But it have only forward declarations of types that are used as T* or T& For each .cpp file I want to make sure that: It have #include directives only for types it is using and not already included by another headers (no indirect includes when possible) I'm looking for a tool which will help me to automate this refactoring. For now I only know of tools that helps to remove redundant includes, they are many: PC-lint include-what-you-use cppclean ProFactor IncludeManager But I know of no tools to help me to move necessary includes in .h files or replace includes with forward declarations. Any ideas? Tools for Windows and Visual Studio are preferred. Update. Considered to be off-topic. Please, follow the link on Software Recommendations http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/q/4461/3331

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  • How do I learn IPSec VPN implementation on FreeBSD from pfSense

    - by Lang Hai
    I've been trying to figure out a complete working solution for IPSec VPN implementation on FreeBSD but with no luck till now. pfSense seems did a fantastic job on supporting IPSec and even for mobile clients, so I downloaded and installed pfSense hoping to figure out how it works, or at least see some configuration examples, but I couldn't find anything interesting maybe because I'm not familiar with pfSense, so I'd like to ask for help. How pfSense implements IPSec, what tools are used? Where does pfSense store all its configuration files? And since pfSense has its own kernel mods and acts as a different OS, there's no way for us to install it on top of an existing FreeBSD box, and plus that it is such a great project combining those fantastic features, so my question can kinda be extended as: How do we learn from pfSense, and implement its features on top of a regular FreeBSD server?

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  • What is the correlation between programming language and experience/skills of their users?

    - by Petr Pudlák
    I'm sure there is such a correlation, because experience and skill leads good programmers to picking languages that are better for them, in which they're more productive, and working in a language forms how programmers think and influences their methods and skills. Is there any research or some statistical data of this phenomenon? Perhaps this is not a purely academic question. For example, if someone is starting a new project, it could be worth considering a language (among other criteria of course) for which there is a higher chance of finding or attracting experienced programmers. Update: Please don't fixate on the last paragraph. It's not my intention to choose a language based on this criterion, and I know there are other far more important ones. My interested is mostly academic. It comes from the (subjective) observation and I wonder if someone has researched it a bit. Also, I'm talking about a correlation, not about a rule. Sure there are both great and terrible programmers in every language. Just that in general it seems to me there is a correlation.

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  • Inheriting projects - General Rules? [closed]

    - by pspahn
    Possible Duplicate: When is a BIG Rewrite the answer? Software rewriting alternatives Are there any actual case studies on rewrites of software success/failure rates? When should you rewrite? We're not a software company. Is a complete re-write still a bad idea? Have you ever been involved in a BIG Rewrite? This is an area of discussion I have long been curious about, but overall, I generally lack the experience to give myself an answer that I would fully trust. We've all been there, a new client shows up with a half-complete project they are looking to finish and launch. For whatever reason, they fired their previous developer, and it's now up to you to save the day. I am just finishing up a code review for a new client, and in my estimation is would be better to scrap what the previous developers built since and start from scratch. There's a ton of reasons why I am leaning toward this way, but it still makes me nervous since the client isn't going to want to hear "those last guys built you a big turd, and I can either polish it, or throw it in the trash". What are your general rules for accepting these projects? How do you determine whether it will be better to start from scratch or continue with the existing code base? What other extra steps might you take to help control client expectations, since the previous developer may have inflated those expectations beyond a reasonable level? Any other general advice?

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  • Authentication system brainstorm

    - by gansbrest
    Hi. We got multiple small websites (microsites) and one main high traffic one with big users base. Right now the requirement is to build authentication system which should allow users to loign with the same identity across the network. All website are running on different domains, powered by Drupal 6 CMS and have separate databases (so sharing tables with prefix is not an option + it creates a huge mess in the db). Here is the set of core requirements I came up with: Users should be able to login with the same credentials to all sites within the network User’s data sharing between Main site (storage) and all micro sites within the network Data synchronization across the network when user changes the data (update email or password for example) The login/registration process should be seamless and consistent Register on any of the sites across the network and use that identity to login later on. In the future there might be a need to add openid authentication options. Basically we are looking at something similar stackexchange does, but not sure if they have central users base on not. I was thinking about custom solution which will include 2 parts (modules), one will be stored on the Main site for users data storing and responding to requests from clients. Second part (module) will be placed on each microsite, which is going to send requests to the Master. Some kind of client - server setup. One of the complications I see right away is #3. Data Synhcronization across the network. I just don't want to reinvent the wheel and maybe some work is already done in this direction. Looking forward to your ideas on how to approach this project. EDIT: We use MySQL database

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  • Activate Your Monitor via Motion Trigger

    - by ETC
    Most people are in the habit of jiggling their mouse or tapping their keyboard when they want to wake their monitor. This clever electronics hack adds a sensor to your computer for motion-based monitor activation. At the DIY and electronics blog Radio Etcetera they tackled an interesting project and shared the build guide. Their local volunteer fire department needed a monitor on for quick information checks but they didn’t need it on all the time and they didn’t want to have to walk over and activate the monitor when they needed it. The solution involved hacking a simple infrared security sensor and wiring it via USB to send a mouse command when motion is detected in the room. Fire fighter walks in, monitor turns on and displays information; fire fighter leaves and the monitor goes back to sleep. Hit up the link below to see additional photos, schematics, and the complete build guide. Motion Activated PC Monitor [Radio Etcetera via Hack A Day] Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How To Make Hundreds of Complex Photo Edits in Seconds With Photoshop Actions How to Enable User-Specific Wireless Networks in Windows 7 How to Use Google Chrome as Your Default PDF Reader (the Easy Way) How To Remove People and Objects From Photographs In Photoshop Ask How-To Geek: How Can I Monitor My Bandwidth Usage? Internet Explorer 9 RC Now Available: Here’s the Most Interesting New Stuff Lucky Kid Gets Playable Angry Birds Cake [Video] See the Lord of the Rings Epic from the Perspective of Mordor [eBook] Smart Taskbar Is a Thumb Friendly Android Task Launcher Comix is an Awesome Comics Archive Viewer for Linux Get the MakeUseOf eBook Guide to Speeding Up Windows for Free Need Tech Support? Call the Star Wars Help Desk! [Video Classic]

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  • Inheriting projects - General Rules?

    - by pspahn
    This is an area of discussion I have long been curious about, but overall, I generally lack the experience to give myself an answer that I would fully trust. We've all been there, a new client shows up with a half-complete project they are looking to finish and launch. For whatever reason, they fired their previous developer, and it's now up to you to save the day. I am just finishing up a code review for a new client, and in my estimation is would be better to scrap what the previous developers built since and start from scratch. There's a ton of reasons why I am leaning toward this way, but it still makes me nervous since the client isn't going to want to hear "those last guys built you a big turd, and I can either polish it, or throw it in the trash". What are your general rules for accepting these projects? How do you determine whether it will be better to start from scratch or continue with the existing code base? What other extra steps might you take to help control client expectations, since the previous developer may have inflated those expectations beyond a reasonable level? Any other general advice?

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  • Double VPN Network Authentication

    - by Pyromanci
    I have a project I'm working on and looking for some info. Right now I have a VPN network using Cisco Pix 501's for the vpn clients and a Cisco VPN Concentrator 3000 for the VPN Server. Since the Pix is constantly connected to the vpn, I want to add a extra level of authentication. Meaning when the user on the other end goes to access anything on the VPN they are asked for a username password before the connection is established. I've never done this sort of structure before. So I'm not even sure where to really being or even if my current hardware can do something like this, or if i need to through in some sort of radius/LDAP/Active Directory type server into the mix.

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  • How do I account for changed or forgotten tasks in an estimate?

    - by Andrew
    To handle task-level estimates and time reporting, I have been using (roughly) the technique that Steve McConnell describes in Chapter 10 of Software Estimation. Specifically, when the time comes for me to create task-level estimates (right before coding begins on a project), I determine the tasks at a fairly granular level so that, whenever possible, I have no tasks with a single-point, 50%-confidence estimate greater than four hours. That way, the task estimation process helps with constructing the software while helping me not to forget tasks during estimation. I come up with a range of hours possible for each task also, and using the statistical calculations that McConnell describes along with my historical accuracy data, I can generate estimates at other confidence levels when desired. I feel like this method has been working fairly well for me. We are required to put tasks and their estimates into TFS for tracking, so I use the estimates at the percentage of confidence I am told to use. I am unsure, however, what to do when I do forget a task, or I end up needing to do work that does not neatly fall within one of the tasks I estimated. Of course, trying to avoid this situation is best, but how do I account for forgotten/changed tasks? I want to have the best historical data I can to help me with future estimates, but right now, I basically am just calculating whether I made the 50%-confidence estimate and whether I made it inside the ranged estimate. I'll be happy to clarify what I'm asking if needed -- let me know what is unclear.

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  • Comparing the Performance of Visual Studio's Web Reference to a Custom Class

    As developers, we all make assumptions when programming. Perhaps the biggest assumption we make is that those libraries and tools that ship with the .NET Framework are the best way to accomplish a given task. For example, most developers assume that using ASP.NET's Membership system is the best way to manage user accounts in a website (rather than rolling your own user account store). Similarly, creating a Web Reference to communicate with a web service generates markup that auto-creates a proxy class, which handles the low-level details of invoking the web service, serializing parameters, and so on. Recently a client made us question one of our fundamental assumptions about the .NET Framework and Web Services by asking, "Why should we use proxy class created by Visual Studio to connect to a web service?" In this particular project we were calling a web service to retrieve data, which was then sorted, formatted slightly and displayed in a web page. The client hypothesized that it would be more efficient to invoke the web service directly via the HttpWebRequest class, retrieve the XML output, populate an XmlDocument object, then use XSLT to output the result to HTML. Surely that would be faster than using Visual Studio's auto-generated proxy class, right? Prior to this request, we had never considered rolling our own proxy class; we had always taken advantage of the proxy classes Visual Studio auto-generated for us. Could these auto-generated proxy classes be inefficient? Would retrieving and parsing the web service's XML directly be more efficient? The only way to know for sure was to test my client's hypothesis. Read More >

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  • OpenGL CPU vs. GPU

    - by Nitrex88
    So I've always been under the impression that doing work on the GPU is always faster than on the CPU. Because of this, in OpenGL, I usually try to do intensive tasks in shaders so they get the speed boost from the GPU. However, now I'm starting to realize that some things simply work better on the CPU and actually perform worse on the GPU (particularly when a geometry shader is involved). For example, in a recent project I did involving procedurally generated terrain, I tried passing a grid of single triangles into a geometry shader, and tesselated each of these triangles into quads with 400 vertices whose height was determined by a noise function. This worked fine, and looked great, but easily maxed out the GPU with only 25 base triangles and caused a very slow framerate. I then discovered that tesselating on the CPU instead, and setting the height (using noise function) in the vertex shader was actually faster! This prompted me to question the benefits of using the GPU as much as possible... So, I was wondering if someone could describe the general pros and cons of using the GPU vs CPU for intensive graphics tasks. I know this mainly comes down to what your trying to achieve, so if necessary, use the above scenario to discuss why the "CPU + vertex shader" was actually faster than doing everything in the geometry shader on the GPU. It's possible my hardware (newest macbook pro) isn't optomized well for the geometry shader (thus causing the slow framerate). Also, I read that the vertex shader is very good with parallelism, and would love a quick explanation of how this may have played a role in speeding up my procedural terrain. Any info/advice about CPU/GPU/shaders would be awesome!

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