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• Music player with a few specific requirements

  - by Jordan Uggla

  I am looking for a music player with a few specific requirements: Must have a search function that whittles down results as you type, searching the entire library. Must start playing a song when double clicked, and not continue to another song when that song finishes. Must be approachable and immediately usable by people completely unfamiliar with the program. I think this is mostly covered by the first two requirements being met. I've tried many players but unfortunately every one has failed to meet at least one of the requirements. Rhythmbox meets 1 and 3, but continues to the next search result after the song which was double clicked ends. Banshee is basically the same as Rhythmbox. While it has an option to "Stop when finished" this cannot (as far as I can tell) be made the default when double clicking a song. Audacious (as far as I can tell) fails at 1. Muine meets requirements 1 and 2, but unfortunately I couldn't make the search dialog always shown like it is with Rhythmbox / Banshee which, despite its very simple interface, made Muine incomprehensible to people trying to use it for the first time. Amarok I could not configure to meet requirement 1, but I think it's likely I was just missing something, and with its configurability I'm confident that I can set it up to meet requirements 2 and 3.

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• 3D space game development

  - by user1693061

  I want to develop a 3D game (sci-fi type with spaceships) which can be played on multiplayer mode and by multiplayer i mean around 10 players for start as it will be a personal testing project and mostly educational. I have been searching for some days about the available languages and engines but i am kinda confused. Since i have been learning Java for my 1st year in I.T university and i have pretty good understanding i thought i would go with the Java language and develop that game on an applet so it could be played on a browser. After going through an applet game tutorial i understood how graphics work on an applet. So.. 1st question: Could an applet carry the burden of a 3D game especially on multiplayer? My thinking: It's a space game so the graphics should not be such a big problem since it wont be that crowded with entities apart from ships, planets and some effects. If the java applet is not the way for my project i would't mind "developing it on desktop"(i mean not making it a browser game). 2nd question: Should i use Unity engine for my purpose(space game)? If not name other language/engine combo.

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• Implementing a switch statement based on user input

  - by Dave Voyles

  I'm trying to delay the time it takes for the main menu screen to pop up after a user has won / lost a match. As it stands, the game immediately displays a message stating "you won / lost" and waits for 6 seconds before loading the menu screen. I would also like players to have the ability to press a key to advance to the menu screen immediately but thus far my switch statement doesn't seem to do the trick. I've included the switch statement, along with my (theoretical) inputs. What could I be doing wrong here? if (gamestate == GameStates.End) switch (input.IsMenuDown(ControllingPlayer)) { case true: ScreenManager.AddScreen(new MainMenuScreen(), null); // Draws the MainMenuScreen break; case false: if (screenLoadDelay > 0) { screenLoadDelay -= gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalSeconds; } ScreenManager.AddScreen(new MainMenuScreen(), null); // Draws the MainMenuScreen break; } /// <summary> /// Checks for a "menu down" input action. /// The controllingPlayer parameter specifies which player to read /// input for. If this is null, it will accept input from any player. /// </summary> public bool IsMenuDown(PlayerIndex? controllingPlayer) { PlayerIndex playerIndex; return IsNewKeyPress(Keys.Down, controllingPlayer, out playerIndex) || IsNewButtonPress(Buttons.DPadDown, controllingPlayer, out playerIndex) || IsNewButtonPress(Buttons.LeftThumbstickDown, controllingPlayer, out playerIndex); }

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• Collision detection - player gets stuck in platform when jumping

  - by Sun

  So I'm having some problems with my collision detection with my platformer. Take the image below as an example. When I'm running right I am unable to go through the platform, but when I hold my right key and jump, I end up going through the object as shown in the image, below is the code im using: if(shapePlatform.intersects(player.getCollisionShape())){ Vector2f vectorSide = new Vector2f(shapePlatform.getCenter()[0] - player.getCollisionShape().getCenter()[0], shapePlatform.getCenter()[1] - player.getCollisionShape().getCenter()[1]); player.setVerticleSpeed(0f); player.setJumping(false); if(vectorSide.x > 0 && !(vectorSide.y > 0)){ player.getPosition().set(player.getPosition().x-3, player.getPosition().y); }else if(vectorSide.y > 0){ player.getPosition().set(player.getPosition().x, player.getPosition().y); }else if(vectorSide.x < 0 && !(vectorSide.y > 0)){ player.getPosition().set(player.getPosition().x+3, player.getPosition().y); } } I'm basically getting the difference between the centre of the player and the centre of the colliding platform to determine which side the player is colliding with. When my player jumps and walks right on the platform he goes right through. The same can also be observed when I jump on the actual platform, should I be resetting the players y in this situation?

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• Parsing an header with two different version [ID3] avoiding code duplication?

  - by user66141

  I really hope you could give me some interesting viewpoints for my situation, my ways to approach my issue are not to my liking . I am writing an mp3 parser , starting with an ID3v2 parser . Right now I`m working on the extended header parsing , my issue is that the optional header is defined differently in version 2.3 and 2.4 of the tag . The 2.3 version optional header is defined as follows : struct ID3_3_EXTENDED_HEADER{ DWORD dwExtHeaderSize; //Extended header size (either 6 or 8 bytes , excluded) WORD wExtFlags; //Extended header flags DWORD dwSizeOfPadding; //Size of padding (size of the tag excluding the frames and headers) }; While the 2.4 version is defined : struct ID3_4_EXTENDED_HEADER{ DWORD dwExtHeaderSize; //Extended header size (synchsafe int) BYTE bNumberOfFlagBytes; //Number of flag bytes BYTE bFlags; //Flags }; How could I parse the header while minimizing code duplication ? Using two different functions to parse each version sounds less great , using a single function with a different flow for each occasion is similar , any good practices for this kind of issues ? any tips for avoiding code duplication ? anything would be great .

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• Banshee gapless playback does not work when playing mp3s

  - by ComputerGuy505

  Even though I have gapless playback enabled in Banshee's settings menu, there is a very short pause between songs. This might be due to the fact that my hard drive's partitions seem wierd. fdisk -l produces this output: Disk /dev/sda: 750.2 GB, 750156374016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 91201 cylinders, total 1465149168 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes Disk identifier: 0x4a73c3cb Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 * 2048 409599 203776 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT /dev/sda2 409600 724153740 361872070+ 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT /dev/sda3 1456826368 1465145343 4159488 c W95 FAT32 (LBA) /dev/sda4 724154366 1456826367 366336001 5 Extended Partition 4 does not start on physical sector boundary. /dev/sda5 1440159744 1456826367 8333312 82 Linux swap / Solaris /dev/sda6 724154368 1440159743 358002688 83 Linux Partition table entries are not in disk order Playing mp3's from /dev/sda2 or /dev/sda6 produces this problem. I don't seem to have gapless playback on Rhythmbox or Clementine either, if those media players are supposed to have it. I'm not sure what other info to provide. This is just annoying to me. Thanks for any help.

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• World Location issues with camera and particle

  - by Joe Weeks

  I have a bit of a strange question, I am adapting the existing code base including the tile engine as per the book: XNA 4.0 Game Development by example by Kurt Jaegers, particularly the aspect that I am working on is the part about the 2D platformer in the last couple of chapters. I am creating a platformer which has a scrolling screen (similar to an old school screen chase), I originally did not have any problems with this aspect as it is simply a case of updating the camera position on the X axis with game time, however I have since added a particle system to allow the players to fire weapons. This particle shot is updated via the world position, I have translated everything correctly in terms of the world position when the collisions are checked. The crux of the problem is that the collisions only work once the screen is static, whilst the camera is moving to follow the player, the collisions are offset and are hitting blocks that are no longer there. My collision for particles is as follows (There are two vertical and horizontal): protected override Vector2 horizontalCollisionTest(Vector2 moveAmount) { if (moveAmount.X == 0) return moveAmount; Rectangle afterMoveRect = CollisionRectangle; afterMoveRect.Offset((int)moveAmount.X, 0); Vector2 corner1, corner2; // new particle world alignment code. afterMoveRect = Camera.ScreenToWorld(afterMoveRect); // end. if (moveAmount.X < 0) { corner1 = new Vector2(afterMoveRect.Left, afterMoveRect.Top + 1); corner2 = new Vector2(afterMoveRect.Left, afterMoveRect.Bottom - 1); } else { corner1 = new Vector2(afterMoveRect.Right, afterMoveRect.Top + 1); corner2 = new Vector2(afterMoveRect.Right, afterMoveRect.Bottom - 1); } Vector2 mapCell1 = TileMap.GetCellByPixel(corner1); Vector2 mapCell2 = TileMap.GetCellByPixel(corner2); if (!TileMap.CellIsPassable(mapCell1) || !TileMap.CellIsPassable(mapCell2)) { moveAmount.X = 0; velocity.X = 0; } return moveAmount; } And the camera is pretty much the same as the one in the book... with this added (as an early test). public static void Update(GameTime gameTime) { position.X += 1; }

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• A simple example of movement prediction

  - by Daniel

  I've seen lots of examples of theory about the reason for client-side prediction, but I'm having a hard time converting it into code. I was wondering if someone knows of some specific examples that share some of the code, or can share their knowledge to shed some light into my situation. I'm trying to run some tests to get a the movement going (smoothly) between multiple clients. I'm using mouse input to initiate movement. I'm using AS3 and C# on a local Player.IO server. Right now I'm trying to get the Client side working, as I'm only forwarding position info with the client. I have 2 timers, one is an onEnterFrame and the other is a 100ms Timer, and one on mouseClick listener. When I click anywhere with a mouse, I update my player class to give it a destination point On every enterFrame Event for the player, it moves towards the destination point At every 100ms it sends a message to the server with the position of where it should be in a 100ms. The distance traveled is calculated by taking the distance (in Pixels) that the player can travel in one second, and dividing it by the framerate for the onEnterFrame handler, and by the update frequency (1/0.100s) for the server update. For the other Players, the location is interpolated and animated on every frame based on the new location. Is this the right way of doing it?

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• How To Figure Out Your PC’s Host Name From the Command Prompt

  - by The Geek

  If you’re doing any work with networking, you probably need to know the name of your computer. Rather than diving into Control Panel, there’s a really simple way to do this from the command prompt. Note: If you haven’t already, be sure to read our complete guide to networking Windows 7 with XP and Vista. To see the hostname… all you have to do is type hostname at the command prompt. Go figure, eh? The same thing works in Linux or OS X, though you can see that most of the time the hostname is part of the prompt anyway. Note: you can also change the hostname by simply typing “hostname <newhostname>”. Of course, the easiest way to see your computer name in Windows is to just hit the Win+Break key combination, which will pop up the System pane from Control Panel.   If you want to change it instead, you can always change your computer name easily through Control Panel. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips MySql: Give Root User Logon Permission From Any HostUse "Command Prompt Here" in Windows VistaKeyboard Ninja: Scrolling the Windows Command Prompt With Only the KeyboardVerify the Integrity of Windows Vista System FilesFind Path of Application Running on Solaris, Ubuntu, Suse or Redhat Linux TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Home Networks – How do they look like & the problems they cause Check Your IMAP Mail Offline In Thunderbird Follow Finder Finds You Twitter Users To Follow Combine MP3 Files Easily QuicklyCode Provides Cheatsheets & Other Programming Stuff Download Free MP3s from Amazon

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• Microsoft is Top Pick for ALM

  - by Arkham

  Investigating the market for a new software product can be a daunting task. Sometimes it’s difficult to even uncover all of the players. There’s no shortage of rhetoric on each vendor’s web site, but how can today’s CTO get objective information about how a software package ranks against it’s peers in a given space? Every year, Gartner releases what they call a Magic Quadrant report evaluating various products in a given space. This past week, Gartner released their analysis of products in the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) arena. It is very exciting to see us in the top spot as a thought leader and for our ability to execute. If you are interested in ALM, you can read through an entire reprint of the report here. There’s plenty of new competitors listed and some of the existing competitors have shifted quite a bit. And this comes prior to the release of Team Foundation Server 2012! I suppose with all of the new features in 2012, they could just add another square to the upper-right. It’s beyond awesome! It’s be-awesome!

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• How can I remove unmounted SD Card icons from my desktop?

  - by user75286

  I have been using some audio utilities in Ubuntu 11.10 to tweak .mp3 files on my phone (Motorola Photon 4G). I connect via USB... both my phone and the internal SD card are mounted as two separate drives. The SD card has an unusual drive name with some odd characters. When I'm finished, I unmount my phone (or "safely remove drive"), but the SD card can't be unmounted. I've mounted and unmounted my phone on 4 occasions now, and there are now 4 SD card drive icons that I can't remove from the desktop. I tried using the gconf-editor/apps/nautilus/desktop trick to make drives invisible and it's not working. Right-clicking on the icons and selecting "unmount" produced the following error message; (I can't type the unusual drive name characters... replaced with xxx) Unable to unmount xxx umount: /media/xxx is not mounted (according to mtab) How can I remove the unwanted icons from the desktop and is there a method for avoiding this problem in the future? Thanks!

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• Pure functional programming and game state

  - by Fu86

  Is there a common technique to handle state (in general) in a functional programming language? There are solutions in every (functional) programming language to handle global state, but I want to avoid this as far as I could. All state in a pure functional manner are function parameters. So I need to put the whole game state (a gigantic hashmap with the world, players, positions, score, assets, enemies, ...)) as a parameter to all functions which wants to manipulate the world on a given input or trigger. The function itself picks the relevant information from the gamestate blob, do something with it, manipulate the gamestate and return the gamestate. But this looks like a poor mans solution for the problem. If I put the whole gamestate into all functions, there is no benefit for me in contrast to global variables or the imperative approach. I could put just the relevant information into the functions and return the actions which will be taken for the given input. And one single function apply all the actions to the gamestate. But most functions need a lot of "relevant" information. move() need the object position, the velocity, the map for collision, position of all enemys, current health, ... So this approach does not seem to work either. So my question is how do I handle the massive amount of state in a functional programming language -- especially for game development?

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• What sort of data should be sent for mouse-based movement in a multiplayer game?

  - by Daniel

  I'm new to the Multiplayer Rodeo here so please bear with me... I am just getting started and I'm trying to figure out how to deal with movement. I've looked at the question Best way to implement mouse-based movement in MMOG which gives me a pretty good idea, but I'm still struggling with what kind of data should be sent to the server. If a player is on position [x:0, y:0] and I click with the mouse on [x:40, y:40] to start movement, what information should I send to the server? Should I calculate the position based on velocity on client side and just send the expected location? Or should I send current location and velocity and direction? When the server is updating the clients on the players' whereabouts, should the position be sent only, and the clients expected to interpolate/predict movement, or can the direction sent from the client (instead of just coordinates) be used. My concern(or confusion) is regarding the ping/lag frequency of data update and use of a predictive algorithm, as I'd like the movement to be smooth even with a high latency, and prevent ability to cheat(though that's not the top priority).

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• One-way platform collision

  - by TheBroodian

  I hate asking questions that are specific to my own code like this, but I've run into a pesky roadblock and could use some help getting around it. I'm coding floating platforms into my game that will allow a player to jump onto them from underneath, but then will not allow players to fall through them once they are on top, which require some custom collision detection code. The code I have written so far isn't working, the character passes through it on the way up, and on the way down, stops for a moment on the platform, and then falls right through it. Here is the code to handle collisions with floating platforms: protected void HandleFloatingPlatforms(Vector2 moveAmount) { //if character is traveling downward. if (moveAmount.Y > 0) { Rectangle afterMoveRect = collisionRectangle; afterMoveRect.Offset((int)moveAmount.X, (int)moveAmount.Y); foreach (World_Objects.GameObject platform in gameplayScreen.Entities) { if (platform is World_Objects.Inanimate_Objects.FloatingPlatform) { //wideProximityArea is just a rectangle surrounding the collision //box of an entity to check for nearby entities. if (wideProximityArea.Intersects(platform.CollisionRectangle) || wideProximityArea.Contains(platform.CollisionRectangle)) { if (afterMoveRect.Intersects(platform.CollisionRectangle)) { //This, in my mind would denote that after the character is moved, its feet have fallen below the top of the platform, but before he had moved its feet were above it... if (collisionRectangle.Bottom <= platform.CollisionRectangle.Top) { if (afterMoveRect.Bottom > platform.CollisionRectangle.Top) { //And then after detecting that he has fallen through the platform, reposition him on top of it... worldLocation.Y = platform.CollisionRectangle.Y - frameHeight; hasCollidedVertically = true; } } } } } } } } In case you are curious, the parameter moveAmount is found through this code: elapsed = (float)gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalSeconds; float totalX = 0; float totalY = 0; foreach (Vector2 vector in velocities) { totalX += vector.X; totalY += vector.Y; } velocities.Clear(); velocity.X = totalX; velocity.Y = totalY; velocity.Y = Math.Min(velocity.Y, 1000); Vector2 moveAmount = velocity * elapsed;

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• Rythmbox in Ubuntu 12.04 and Ipod touch

  - by leousa

  I don't know if anyone else is experiencing something similar to this. I have an Ipod touch bought 3.5 years ago. It received the last software update a year ago. After that update I had no problems syncing it in Ubuntu 11.04 and 11.10 (two different laptops). Transfer of music albums was flawless with banshee and it would even convert files to the right format automatically. Now, the same ipod touch, without any further software or firmware update does not work in Ubuntu 12.04 rythmbox. The device is mounted and recognized there, but when you drag/drop an album towards the device it does nothing. Before you guys tell me to do it, yes, I have tried with Banshee and gtkpod. The first also brings up an error message saying that the ipod does not support mp3 files, and gtkpod simply crashes all the time. The result is the same. What is going on here? Why a device that worked before does not work now in 12.04? I purchased some music in the Ubuntuone store, and would love to have it transferred to my ipod. Please no links to outdated online manuals with older versions of rythmbox or banshee (I've read them all). And again, nothing wrong with the ipod as it worked in 11.04 and 11.10 and it has not been updated since then. I would strongly appreciate any help provided. thank you

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• How to implement behavior in a component-based game architecture?

  - by ghostonline

  I am starting to implement player and enemy AI in a game, but I am confused about how to best implement this in a component-based game architecture. Say I have a following player character that can be stationary, running and swinging a sword. A player can transit to the swing sword state from both the stationary and running state, but then the swing must be completed before the player can resume standing or running around. During the swing, the player cannot walk around. As I see it, I have two implementation approaches: Create a single AI-component containing all player logic (either decoupled from the actual component or embedded as a PlayerAIComponent). I can easily how to enforce the state restrictions without creating coupling between individual components making up the player entity. However, the AI-component cannot be broken up. If I have, for example, an enemy that can only stand and walk around or only walks around and occasionally swing a sword, I have to create new AI-components. Break the behavior up in components, each identifying a specific state. I then get a StandComponent, WalkComponent and SwingComponent. To enforce the transition rules, I have to couple each component. SwingComponent must disable StandComponent and WalkComponent for the duration of the swing. When I have an enemy that only stands around, swinging a sword occasionally, I have to make sure SwingComponent only disables WalkComponent if it is present. Although this allows for better mix-and-matching components, it can lead to a maintainability nightmare as each time a dependency is added, the existing components must be updated to play nicely with the new requirements the dependency places on the character. The ideal situation would be that a designer can build new enemies/players by dragging components into a container, without having to touch a single line of engine or script code. Although I am not sure script coding can be avoided, I want to keep it as simple as possible. Summing it all up: Should I lob all AI logic into one component or break up each logic state into separate components to create entity variants more easily?

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• Best way to calculate unit deaths in browser game combat?

  - by MikeCruz13

  My browser game's combat system is written and mechanically functioning well. It's written in PHP and uses a SQL database. I'm happy with the unit balance in relation to one another. I am, however, a little worried about how I'm calculating unit deaths when one player attacks another because the deaths seem to pile up a little fast for my taste. For this system, a battle doesn't just trigger, calculate winner, and end. Instead, it is allowed to go for several rounds (say one round every 15 mins.) until one side passes a threshold of being too strong for the other player and allows players to send reinforcements between rounds. Each round, units pair up and attack each other. Essentially what I do is calculate the damage: AP = Attack Points HP = Hit Points Units AP * Quantity * Random Factors * other factors (such as attrition) I take that and divide by the defending unit's HP to find the number of casualties of defending units. So, for example (simplified to take out some factors), if I have: 500 attackers with 50 AP vs 1000 defenders with 100 HP = 250 deaths. I wonder if that last step could be handled better to reduce the deaths piling up. Some ideas: I just change all the units with more HP? I make sure to set the Attacking unit's AP to be a max of the defender's HP to make sure they only kill 1 unit. (is that fair if I have less huge units vs many small units?) I spread the damage around more by including the defending unit's quantity more? i.e. in that scenario some are dead and some are 50% damage. (How would I track this every round?) Other better mathematical approaches?

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• Bad Performance With Games Under Wine in Ubuntu 12.04

  - by Pandem

  I'm somewhat new to Linux. I've dabbled with it before but never more than just experimentation in a VM or dual boot where I almost always reverted back to Windows soon after (more due to a lack of commitment than a dislike for the OS). Anyway my problem is that in the two games (Guild Wars and Team Fortress 2) I've tried so far I get fairly bad performance. Despite both games having a "Platinum" rating I've still been forced to run both in DirectX 8, otherwise they either crash, have texture defects or the UI is missing. By "bad performance" I mean sub-30 FPS where there are some players and regular large framerate drops with video settings on low. Currently in my mind I believe the performance issues are just a problem with the drivers because my graphics card is a AMD 7850 which is virtually brand new and probably not properly supported yet but I'm unsure and would appreciate advice or tips to improve things. I have Ubuntu 12.04 installed and I am usually logged in a Gnome Classic session. I have installed AMD's proprietary drivers (Catalyst version 12.4) and have Wine 1.4 installed. I have used Winetricks to install DX9/DX10 dlls and other things.

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• Why is my USB data transfer so slow?

  - by Dave M G

  Whenever I do any kind of file transfer using USB, whether to a USB stick, or with my Android phone, or anything else, it is ridiculously slow. It says 59.8 KB/sec, which would be an awesome speed if this were 1991 and I was using a modem to dial up to my local BBS. Surely USB technology is better than that...? 37 seconds to move less data than the equivelent of 1 MP3 file? Also, regardless of what it says about speed and time, the reality is much, much slower. I routinely see it say something like "37 seconds left" and have to wait for minutes. Sometimes, if I want to move large amounts of files, it can say it will take 8 hours or more. Is this normal? My computer may not be the most awesome on the market, and about a year old, but it's an i5 with 4GB RAM and modern components, so surely this isn't the hardware's fault. What can I do to get better USB data transfer performance? Also, I did look at this question, but my newbie eyes don't see anything that look like an actual solution, just a lot of discussion about what transfer rates could or should be. Update: As requested in the comments, I've generated a whole bunch of output from the command line, and put it on Ubuntu Pastebin. Please see it here.

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• JavaOne 2012 in Review

  - by Janice J. Heiss

  Noted freelance writer Steve Meloan has a new article up on otn/java, titled, “JavaOne 2012 Review: Make the Future Java” in which he summarizes the happenings at JavaOne 2012. Along the way, he reminds us that if the future turns out to be anything like the past, Java will do fine: The repeated theme for this year's conference was ‘Make the Future Java,’ and according to recent stats, the groundwork is already firmly in place:    There are 9 million Java developers worldwide.    Three billion devices run Java.    Five billion Java Cards are in use.    One hundred percent of Blu-ray Disc players ship with Java.    Ninety-seven percent of enterprise desktops run Java.    Eighty-nine percent of PC desktops run Java.This year's content curriculum program was organized under seven technical tracks:    Core Java Platform    Development Tools and Techniques    Emerging Languages on the JVM    Enterprise Service Architectures and the Cloud    Java EE Web Profile and Platform Technologies    Java ME, Java Card, Embedded, and Devices    JavaFX and Rich User Experiences”Meloan artfully reminds us of how JavaOne makes learning fun. Have a look at the article here.

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• What packages are safe to uninstall to reduce installation size?

  - by mathematician1975

  This question is similar to a previous question I asked How can I turn my desktop Ubuntu 8.04 into a command line only install?. I was wondering if anyone can recommend any other bulky packages from the standard 8.04 installation that can reduce the size on disk of my installation. All I really require is socket functionality, g++ and gcc, some kind of text editor and SSH client and server. Things that I don't require are things like media players, audio packages, and the more "superficial" kind of desktop niceties. Is there anything particularly large in a standard install that is safe for me to remove without compromising my requirements above? I am a bit apprehensive about trying to uninstall items and I am not totally confident about removal of particular things having a negative effect on the functionality of any other things I might need (an example is would it be safe for me to remove everything to do with Perl, or does the system/kernel/other processes require this) ??? Basically I would like to be left with the kind of items that would have been installed in the CLI version of 8.04 (had the alternative iso image not been faulty). Any help/suggestions would be gratefully received.

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• Noise Canceling Earphones

  - by Mark Treadwell

  I travel a lot. The hours spent droning through the sky can be made more tolerable with an MP3 player and a set of noise-cancelling headphones. Reducing the sound of the airflow and engines is a great relief. For a year or two, I used a pair of folding Sony MDR-NC5 Noise Canceling Headphones, the ear foam covers self-destructed. I replaced them with old washcloth material and was happy, but the DW thought it looked bad.  I switched to a new set of Sony MDR-NC6 Noise Canceling Headphones.  These worked equally well, although they did not fold as small as the MDR-NC5 headphones. Over four years of use, the MDR-NC6 headphones started cutting out and making popping noises.  This was not surprising considering the beating they took on travel in my backpack.  It looked like I needed another new set. The older MDR-NC5 headphones were still on the shelf with the hated washcloth covers.  A quick search online showed a vibrant business in selling replacement ear foams, often at exorbitant prices.  Nowhere did I see ear foam covers made for the oblong MDR-NC5.  I then realized that foam is stretchable and that the shape should not matter.  After another search and some consideration, I purchased 2-5/16" foam pad ear covers that were able to stretch over the MDR-NC5's strange shape.  Problem solved for less than $5.

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• What is involved with writing a lobby server?

  - by Kira

  So I'm writing a Chess matchmaking system based on a Lobby view with gaming rooms, general chat etc. So far I have a working prototype but I have big doubts regarding some things I did with the server. Writing a gaming lobby server is a new programming experience to me and so I don't have a clear nor precise programming model for it. I also couldn't find a paper that describes how it should work. I ordered "Java Network Programming 3rd edition" from Amazon and still waiting for shipment, hopefully I'll find some useful examples/information in this book. Meanwhile, I'd like to gather your opinions and see how you would handle some things so I can learn how to write a server correctly. Here are a few questions off the top of my head: (may be more will come) First, let's define what a server does. It's primary functionality is to hold TCP connections with clients, listen to the events they generate and dispatch them to the other players. But is there more to it than that? Should I use one thread per client? If so, 300 clients = 300 threads. Isn't that too much? What hardware is needed to support that? And how much bandwidth does a lobby consume then approx? What kind of data structure should be used to hold the clients' sockets? How do you protect it from concurrent modification (eg. a player enters or exists the lobby) when iterating through it to dispatch an event without hurting throughput? Is ConcurrentHashMap the correct answer here, or are there some techniques I should know? When a user enters the lobby, what mechanism would you use to transfer the state of the lobby to him? And while this is happening, where do the other events bubble up? Screenshot : http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/695/sansrewyh.png/

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• Sprite batching in OpenGL

  - by Roy T.

  I've got a JAVA based game with an OpenGL rendering front that is drawing a large amount of sprites every frame (during testing it peaked at 700). Now this game is completely unoptimized. There is no spatial partitioning (so a sprite is drawn even if it isn't on screen) and every sprite is drawn separately like this: graphics.glPushMatrix(); { graphics.glTranslated(x, y, 0.0); graphics.glRotated(degrees, 0, 0, 1); graphics.glBegin(GL2.GL_QUADS); graphics.glTexCoord2f (1.0f, 0.0f); graphics.glVertex2d(half_size , half_size); // upper right // same for upper left, lower left, lower right graphics.glEnd(); } graphics.glPopMatrix(); Currently the game is running at +-25FPS and is CPU bound. I would like to improve performance by adding spatial partitioning (which I know how to do) and sprite batching. Not drawing sprites that aren't on screen will help a lot, however since players can zoom out it won't help enough, hence the need for batching. However sprite batching in OpenGL is a bit of mystery to me. I usually work with XNA where a few classes to do this are built in. But in OpenGL I don't know what to do. As for further optimization, the game I'm working on as a few interesting characteristics. A lot of sprites have the same texture and all the sprites are square. Maybe these characteristics will help determine an efficient batching technique?

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• What online games would let me practice AI development?

  - by Myn

  I am working on a project experimenting with Artificial Intelligence design methodologies for online world avatars. Online world here is quite open to interpretation; Second Life is just as applicable as Counter Strike, for example. To carry out these experiments, I must first develop an intelligent agent for the world in question. However, I am honestly quite stuck as to which game I could use for this. My preference was to develop an intelligent "bot" to play an MMORPG, but the legal restrictions of such games prevent me. Likewise with most FPS games the use of an intelligent agent in place of a human player is considered cheating. The alternative, of course, is to create an NPC bot; an intelligent agent that populates the world alongside the player(s) rather than replacing a particular player. However, I'm struggling to find a game that would enable me to create an intelligent opponent either. I suppose the main requirements would be a game allows a third party program to use the function calls usually utilised by players and read feedback on the state of the world. Quake III and Unreal Tournament have been suggested before, but they have already been the subject of work on this research project. Short of writing my own online game from scratch, what games would allow me, through middleware, an API, or otherwise, to create either an artificially intelligent player or a bot?

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