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• How much freedom should a programmer have in choosing a language and framework?

  - by Spencer

  I started working at a company that is primarily a C# oriented. We have a few people who like Java and JRuby, but a majority of programmers here like C#. I was hired because I have a lot of experience building web applications and because I lean towards newer technologies like JRuby on Rails or nodejs. I have recently started on a project building a web application with a focus on getting a lot of stuff done in a short amount of time. The software lead has dictated that I use mvc4 instead of rails. That might be OK, except I don't know mvc4, I don't know C# and I am the only one responsible for creating the web application server and front-end UI. Wouldn't it make sense to use a framework that I already know extremely well (Rails) instead of using mvc4? The two reasons behind the decision was that the tech lead doesn't know Jruby/rails and there would be no way to reuse the code. Counter arguments: He won't be contributing to the code and is frankly, not needed on this project. So, it doesn't really matter if he knows JRuby/rails or not. We actually can reuse the code since we have a lot of java apps that JRuby can pull code from and vice-versa. In fact, he has dedicated some resources to convert a Java library to C#, instead of just running the Java library on the JRuby on Rails app. All because he doesn't like Java or JRuby I have built many web applications, but using something unfamiliar is causing some spin-up and I am unable to build an awesome application in as short of a time that I'm used to. This would be fine, learning new technologies is important in this field. The problem is, for this project, we need to get a lot done in a short period of time. At what point should a developer be allowed to choose his tools? Is this dependent on the company? Does my company suck or is this considered normal? Do greener pastures exist? Am I looking at this the wrong way? Bonus: Should I just keep my head down and move along at a snails pace, or defy orders and go with what I know in order to make this project more successful? Edit: I had actually created a fully function rails application (on my own time) and showed it to the team and it did not seem to matter. I am currently porting it to mvc4 (slowly).

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• Development-led security vs administration-led security in a software product?

  - by haylem

  There are cases where you have the opportunity, as a developer, to enforce stricter security features and protections on a software, though they could very well be managed at an environmental level (ie, the operating system would take care of it). Where would you say you draw the line, and what elements do you factor in your decision? Concrete Examples User Management is the OS's responsibility Not exactly meant as a security feature, but in a similar case Google Chrome used to not allow separate profiles. The invoked reason (though it now supports multiple profiles for a same OS user) used to be that user management was the operating system's responsibility. Disabling Web-Form Fields A recurrent request I see addressed online is to have auto-completion be disabled on form fields. Auto-completion didn't exist in old browsers, and was a welcome feature at the time it was introduced for people who needed to fill in forms often. But it also brought in some security concerns, and so some browsers started to implement, on top of the (obviously needed) setting in their own preference/customization panel, an autocomplete attribute for form or input fields. And this has now been introduced into the upcoming HTML5 standard. For browsers that do not listen to this attribute, strange hacks* are offered, like generating unique IDs and names for fields to avoid them from being suggested in future forms (which comes with another herd of issues, like polluting your local auto-fill cache and not preventing a password from being stored in it, but instead probably duplicating its occurences). In this particular case, and others, I'd argue that this is a user setting and that it's the user's desire and the user's responsibility to enable or disable auto-fill (by disabling the feature altogether). And if it is based on an internal policy and security requirement in a corporate environment, then substitute the user for the administrator in the above. I assume it could be counter-argued that the user may want to access non-critical applications (or sites) with this handy feature enabled, and critical applications with this feature disabled. But then I'd think that's what security zones are for (in some browsers), or the sign that you need a more secure (and dedicated) environment / account to use these applications. * I obviously don't deny the ingeniosity of the people who were forced to find workarounds, just the necessity of said workarounds. Questions That was a tad long-winded, so I guess my questions are: Would you in general consider it to be the application's (hence, the developer's) responsiblity? Where do you draw the line, if not in the "general" case?

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• Does Your Customer Engagement Create an Ah Feeling?

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  An (Oracle CX Blog) article by Christina McKeon Companies that successfully engage customers all have one thing in common. They make it seem easy for the customer to get what they need. No one would argue that brands don’t want to leave customers with this “ah” feeling. Since 94% of customers who have a low-effort service experience will buy from that company again, it makes financial sense for brands.1 Some brands are thinking differently about how they engage their customers to create ah feelings. How do they do it? Toyota is a great example of using smart assistance technology to understand customer intent and answer questions before customers hit the submit button online. What is unique in this situation is that Toyota captures intent while customers are filling out email forms. Toyota analyzes the data in the form and suggests responses before the customer sends the email. The customer gets the right answer, and the email never makes it to your contact center — which makes you and the customer happy. Most brands are fully aware of chat as a service channel, but some brands take chat to a whole new level. Beauty.com, part of the drugstore.com and Walgreens family of brands, uses live chat to replicate the personal experience that one would find at high-end department store cosmetic counters. Trained beauty advisors, all with esthetician or beauty counter experience, engage in live chat sessions with online shoppers to share immediate advice on the best products for their personal needs. Agents can watch customer activity online and determine the right time to reach out and offer help, just as help would be offered in a brick-and-mortar store. And, agents can co-browse along with the customer helping customers with online check-out. These personal chat discussions also give Beauty.com the opportunity to present products, advertise promotions, and resolve customer issues when they arise. Beauty.com converts approximately 25% of chat sessions into product orders. Photobox, the European market leader in online photo services, wanted to deliver personal and responsive service to its 24 million members. It ensures customer inquiries on personalized photo products are routed based on agent knowledge so customers get what they need from the company experts. By using a queuing system to ensure that the agent with the most appropriate knowledge handles the query, agent productivity increased while response times to 1,500 customer queries per day decreased. A real-time dashboard prevents agents from being overloaded with queries. This approach has produced financial results with a 15% increase in sales to existing customers and a 45% increase in orders from newly referred customers.

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• Wifi disabled for Intel Centrino Wireless-N 1000 Intel in 12.04

  - by new_bie

  Laptop model - HP- dm4 - 2070. I had faced the same problem for wireless being disabled in case of 11.10. It had to do with the new kernel. I thought with 12.04 this problem will be handled but the problem persists. Is there no way to get the wireless working except for the way mentioned in the following link ?? Wifi for Centrino Wireless-N 1000 Intel Corporation (HP pavillion dm4 - 2070us) is not working Output for sudo lshw -class network *-network UNCLAIMED description: Network controller product: Centrino Wireless-N 1000 vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0 version: 00 width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress cap_list configuration: latency=0 resources: memory:c2500000-c2501fff *-network description: Ethernet interface product: AR8151 v2.0 Gigabit Ethernet vendor: Atheros Communications Inc. physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:08:00.0 logical name: eth0 version: c0 serial: 2c:41:38:07:f3:e3 size: 100Mbit/s capacity: 1Gbit/s width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress vpd bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt-fd autonegotiation configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=atl1c driverversion=1.0.1.0-NAPI duplex=full firmware=N/A ip=192.168.1.116 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes port=twisted pair speed=100Mbit/s resources: irq:43 memory:c1400000-c143ffff ioport:2000(size=128) Output for dmesg | grep iwl [ 14.742886] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16 [ 14.742897] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: setting latency timer to 64 [ 14.743013] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: pci_resource_len = 0x00002000 [ 14.743016] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: pci_resource_base = ffffc90000c78000 [ 14.743018] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: HW Revision ID = 0x0 [ 14.743119] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: irq 42 for MSI/MSI-X [ 14.743161] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: Detected Intel(R) Centrino(R) Wireless-N 1000 BGN, REV=0x6C [ 14.743229] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: L1 Enabled; Disabling L0S [ 14.765147] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: device EEPROM VER=0x15d, CALIB=0x6 [ 14.765151] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: Device SKU: 0X50 [ 14.765154] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: Valid Tx ant: 0X1, Valid Rx ant: 0X3 [ 14.765907] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: Tunable channels: 13 802.11bg, 0 802.11a channels [ 14.912840] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: request for firmware file 'iwlwifi-1000-5.ucode' failed. [ 14.914254] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: request for firmware file 'iwlwifi-1000-4.ucode' failed. [ 14.915718] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: request for firmware file 'iwlwifi-1000-3.ucode' failed. [ 14.916986] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: request for firmware file 'iwlwifi-1000-2.ucode' failed. [ 14.919391] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: request for firmware file 'iwlwifi-1000-1.ucode' failed. [ 14.919445] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: no suitable firmware found! [ 14.919783] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: PCI INT A disabled [ 2868.960807] Modules linked in: snd_hda_codec_hdmi snd_hda_codec_idt rfcomm bnep bluetooth parport_pc ppdev binfmt_misc hid_logitech_dj usbhid hid joydev snd_hda_intel snd_hda_codec snd_hwdep snd_pcm snd_seq_midi snd_rawmidi snd_seq_midi_event snd_seq hp_wmi sparse_keymap hp_accel lis3lv02d input_polldev snd_timer snd_seq_device wmi iwlwifi snd mac80211 i915 cfg80211 rts_pstor(C) drm_kms_helper drm uvcvideo videodev psmouse soundcore mei(C) v4l2_compat_ioctl32 mac_hid serio_raw snd_page_alloc i2c_algo_bit video lp parport atl1c

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• Windows Azure Diagnostics: Next to Useless?

  - by Your DisplayName here!

  To quote my good friend Christian: “Tracing is probably one of the most discussed topics in the Windows Azure world. Not because it is freaking cool – but because it can be very tedious and partly massively counter-intuitive.” <rant> The .NET Framework has this wonderful facility called TraceSource. You define a named trace and route that to a configurable listener. This gives you a lot of flexibility – you can create a single trace file – or multiple ones. There is even nice tooling around that. SvcTraceViewer from the SDK let’s you open the XML trace files – you can filter and sort by trace source and event type, aggreate multiple files…blablabla. Just what you would expect from a decent tracing infrastructure. Now comes Windows Azure. I was already were grateful that starting with the SDK 1.2 we finally had a way to do tracing and diagnostics in the cloud (kudos!). But the way the Azure DiagnosticMonitor is currently implemented – could be called flawed. The Azure SDK provides a DiagnosticsMonitorTraceListener – which is the right way to go. The only problem is, that way this works is, that all traces (from all sources) get written to an ETW trace. Then the DiagMon listens to these traces and copies them periodically to your storage account. So far so good. But guess what happens to your nice trace files: the trace source names get “lost”. They appear in your message text at the end. So much for filtering and sorting and aggregating (regex #fail or #win??). Every trace line becomes an entry in a Azure Storage Table – the svclog format is gone. So much for the existing tooling. To solve that problem, one workaround was to write your own trace listener (!) that creates svclog files inside of local storage and use the DiagMon to copy those. Christian has a blog post about that. OK done that. Now it turns out that this mechanism does not work anymore in 1.3 with FullIIS (see here). Quoting: “Some IIS 7.0 logs not collected due to permissions issues...The root cause to both of these issues is the permissions on the log files.” And the workaround: “To read the files yourself, log on to the instance with a remote desktop connection.” Now then have fun with your multi-instance deployments…. </rant>

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• add collision detection to sprite?

  - by xBroak

  bassically im trying to add collision detection to the sprite below, using the following: self.rect = bounds_rect collide = pygame.sprite.spritecollide(self, wall_list, False) if collide: # yes print("collide") However it seems that when the collide is triggered it continuously prints 'collide' over and over when instead i want them to simply not be able to walk through the object, any help? def update(self, time_passed): """ Update the creep. time_passed: The time passed (in ms) since the previous update. """ if self.state == Creep.ALIVE: # Maybe it's time to change the direction ? # self._change_direction(time_passed) # Make the creep point in the correct direction. # Since our direction vector is in screen coordinates # (i.e. right bottom is 1, 1), and rotate() rotates # counter-clockwise, the angle must be inverted to # work correctly. # self.image = pygame.transform.rotate( self.base_image, -self.direction.angle) # Compute and apply the displacement to the position # vector. The displacement is a vector, having the angle # of self.direction (which is normalized to not affect # the magnitude of the displacement) # displacement = vec2d( self.direction.x * self.speed * time_passed, self.direction.y * self.speed * time_passed) self.pos += displacement # When the image is rotated, its size is changed. # We must take the size into account for detecting # collisions with the walls. # self.image_w, self.image_h = self.image.get_size() global bounds_rect bounds_rect = self.field.inflate( -self.image_w, -self.image_h) if self.pos.x < bounds_rect.left: self.pos.x = bounds_rect.left self.direction.x *= -1 elif self.pos.x > bounds_rect.right: self.pos.x = bounds_rect.right self.direction.x *= -1 elif self.pos.y < bounds_rect.top: self.pos.y = bounds_rect.top self.direction.y *= -1 elif self.pos.y > bounds_rect.bottom: self.pos.y = bounds_rect.bottom self.direction.y *= -1 self.rect = bounds_rect collide = pygame.sprite.spritecollide(self, wall_list, False) if collide: # yes print("collide") elif self.state == Creep.EXPLODING: if self.explode_animation.active: self.explode_animation.update(time_passed) else: self.state = Creep.DEAD self.kill() elif self.state == Creep.DEAD: pass #------------------ PRIVATE PARTS ------------------# # States the creep can be in. # # ALIVE: The creep is roaming around the screen # EXPLODING: # The creep is now exploding, just a moment before dying. # DEAD: The creep is dead and inactive # (ALIVE, EXPLODING, DEAD) = range(3) _counter = 0 def _change_direction(self, time_passed): """ Turn by 45 degrees in a random direction once per 0.4 to 0.5 seconds. """ self._counter += time_passed if self._counter > randint(400, 500): self.direction.rotate(45 * randint(-1, 1)) self._counter = 0 def _point_is_inside(self, point): """ Is the point (given as a vec2d) inside our creep's body? """ img_point = point - vec2d( int(self.pos.x - self.image_w / 2), int(self.pos.y - self.image_h / 2)) try: pix = self.image.get_at(img_point) return pix[3] > 0 except IndexError: return False def _decrease_health(self, n): """ Decrease my health by n (or to 0, if it's currently less than n) """ self.health = max(0, self.health - n) if self.health == 0: self._explode() def _explode(self): """ Starts the explosion animation that ends the Creep's life. """ self.state = Creep.EXPLODING pos = ( self.pos.x - self.explosion_images[0].get_width() / 2, self.pos.y - self.explosion_images[0].get_height() / 2) self.explode_animation = SimpleAnimation( self.screen, pos, self.explosion_images, 100, 300) global remainingCreeps remainingCreeps-=1 if remainingCreeps == 0: print("all dead")

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• ubuntu 13.04 recognizes usb mobile broadband modem as ethernet connection

  - by Bence Mihalka

  When I plug in my usb mobile broadband modem (ZTE MF-667), in the network manager instead of a mobile broadband connection, I get an ethernet connection, called: Ethernet Network (ZTE WCDMA Technologies MSM), which of course doesn't work. Here is my lsusb output and the relevant parts of dmesg output: lsusb: Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0cf3:3005 Atheros Communications, Inc. AR3011 Bluetooth Bus 001 Device 004: ID 04f2:b1b9 Chicony Electronics Co., Ltd Asus Integrated Webcam Bus 001 Device 005: ID 058f:6366 Alcor Micro Corp. Multi Flash Reader Bus 002 Device 004: ID 19d2:1405 ZTE WCDMA Technologies MSM dmesg: [ 195.328467] usb 2-1.1: new high-speed USB device number 3 using ehci-pci [ 195.423545] usb 2-1.1: New USB device found, idVendor=19d2, idProduct=1225 [ 195.423555] usb 2-1.1: New USB device strings: Mfr=3, Product=2, SerialNumber=4 [ 195.423561] usb 2-1.1: Product: ZTE WCDMA Technologies MSM [ 195.423567] usb 2-1.1: Manufacturer: ZTE,Incorporated [ 195.423572] usb 2-1.1: SerialNumber: P680A1ZTED000000 [ 195.426319] scsi7 : usb-storage 2-1.1:1.0 [ 196.425354] scsi 7:0:0:0: CD-ROM CWID USB SCSI CD-ROM 2.31 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2 [ 197.447919] usb 2-1.1: USB disconnect, device number 3 [ 197.457582] sr0: scsi3-mmc drive: 243x/186x xa/form2 cdda pop-up [ 197.457594] cdrom: Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.20 [ 197.459058] sr 7:0:0:0: Attached scsi CD-ROM sr0 [ 197.459483] sr 7:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 5 [ 197.759186] usb 2-1.1: new high-speed USB device number 4 using ehci-pci [ 197.854543] usb 2-1.1: New USB device found, idVendor=19d2, idProduct=1405 [ 197.854556] usb 2-1.1: New USB device strings: Mfr=4, Product=3, SerialNumber=5 [ 197.854564] usb 2-1.1: Product: ZTE WCDMA Technologies MSM [ 197.854572] usb 2-1.1: Manufacturer: ZTE,Incorporated [ 197.854579] usb 2-1.1: SerialNumber: P680A1ZTED010000 [ 197.957739] scsi8 : usb-storage 2-1.1:1.2 [ 198.076554] cdc_ether 2-1.1:1.0 eth1: register 'cdc_ether' at usb-0000:00:1d.0-1.1, CDC Ethernet Device, 00:a0:c6:00:00:00 [ 198.076583] usbcore: registered new interface driver cdc_ether [ 198.955985] scsi 8:0:0:0: CD-ROM CWID USB SCSI CD-ROM 2.31 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2 [ 198.956797] scsi 8:0:0:1: Direct-Access ZTE MMC Storage 2.31 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2 I created the appropriate mobile broadband connection manually, but I cannot enable it in network manager, since the device is not recognized as mobile broadband. Any tips how to make it work?

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• How to generate xorg.conf? (X -configure segfaults)

  - by Nicolas Raoul

  My video card is working fine, I have no screen problem. I am trying to generate an xorg.conf so I did: [ Logout ] sudo service gdm stop [ Move away xorg.conf.back and xorg.conf.fglrx-0 that were in /etc/X11 ] sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg sudo X -configure But this last command segfaults: X.Org X Server 1.7.6 Release Date: 2010-03-17 X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0 Build Operating System: Linux 2.6.24-27-server i686 Ubuntu Current Operating System: Linux nico 2.6.32-25-generic #44-Ubuntu SMP Fri Sep 17 20:26:08 UTC 2010 i686 Kernel command line: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-25-generic root=UUID=7447ab16-3406-442d-81e5-bb6a2d795205 ro quiet splash Build Date: 21 July 2010 12:47:34PM xorg-server 2:1.7.6-2ubuntu7.3 (For technical support please see http://www.ubuntu.com/support) Current version of pixman: 0.16.4 Before reporting problems, check http://wiki.x.org to make sure that you have the latest version. Markers: (--) probed, (**) from config file, (==) default setting, (++) from command line, (!!) notice, (II) informational, (WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown. (==) Log file: "/var/log/Xorg.0.log", Time: Fri Oct 15 16:06:11 2010 List of video drivers: i740 ark geode siliconmotion mach64 s3 r128 apm intel neomagic vesa trident chips s3virge fglrx sis savage rendition i128 tseng ztv mga openchrome radeon ati nv v4l vmware cirrus tdfx nouveau sisusb voodoo fbdev (EE) Can't load FireGL DRM library (libfglrxdrm.so). Backtrace: 0: X (xorg_backtrace+0x3b) [0x80e938b] 1: X (0x8048000+0x61c8d) [0x80a9c8d] 2: (vdso) (__kernel_rt_sigreturn+0x0) [0x34d410] 3: X (xf86CallDriverProbe+0x182) [0x80b82d2] 4: X (DoConfigure+0x1c8) [0x816b898] 5: X (InitOutput+0x1da) [0x80b98aa] 6: X (0x8048000+0x1ebbb) [0x8066bbb] 7: /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6 (__libc_start_main+0xe6) [0x467bd6] 8: X (0x8048000+0x1e961) [0x8066961] Segmentation fault at address (nil) Caught signal 11 (Segmentation fault). Server aborting Please consult the The X.Org Foundation support at http://wiki.x.org for help. Please also check the log file at "/var/log/Xorg.0.log" for additional information. ddxSigGiveUp: Closing log Note the line Can't load FireGL DRM library (libfglrxdrm.so) Note: I do have file /usr/lib/fglrx/xorg/modules/linux/libfglrxdrm.so It is strange that it segfaults whereas I can use Gnome with no problem but well... Might be related: I tried to install the driver from ATI's website recently, and from then glxgears crashes at start. How can I generate xorg.conf in those conditions? It might or might not involve solving the segfault problem.

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• My Graduate Experience at Oracle by Mayuri Khinvasara

  - by david.talamelli

  My experience at Oracle. I still vividly remember the day, when my name was announced in the campus hiring list of Oracle at my college. I was proud of myself but at the same time, I was getting goose bumps!!! A new world had arrived before me and the anxiousness of whether I could survive it or not had gripped me. Nervous about moving into an unknown city, I came to visit Hyderabad with my father. One look at the Oracle Campus and I felt some kind of magnetism pulling me towards it. And then, I joined Oracle in June 2009, with a lot of apprehensions in my mind. The HR Rep made us really comfortable in the first week itself. I met so many new people, managers, HR folks and most importantly 20 other Campus Hires like me. Then we had our team bonding sessions, team parties etc. I didn’t realize when the transition from campus to corporate happened. And I had started loving it. The confidence the HR Reps gave us and the bonding our managers imbibed in us, made us all ready for the new life ahead. Then started the rigorous training sessions, the excitement about our new work, new cubicles, new desktops, our first business cards, our first conference call and so on. I made new friends which were now my extended family, the freedom and courage of living alone. I was enjoying all that. As I was getting totally immersed into my regular work schedule I started getting to know the innumerable Oracle products, their functionalities, implementations and realizing the brand that Oracle is. Work pressure started increasing and so did the challenges to understand and deliver. I Didn’t realize how days and soon months passed by. Then came a golden chance to visit the Oracle Headquarters in US for 45 days training in November 2009. Once again, the excitement was enormous about the counter team-mates in HQ, the trainings ahead, the US work culture and my stay there. I felt so privileged for the company I was working. Boarding an international flight for the first time and visiting famous US cities which I had just seen in movies, was now a reality. It was a totally amazing experience. Work pressure kept me really busy, with learning new things every day, the immense satisfaction of delivering something, the nightmares of debugging a mistake, only to realize how silly it was.  I was enjoying the process. Soon a year passed by. I had transformed into this corporate software professional, I couldn’t believe I could be. Today, I complete 1 year and 8 months at Oracle and continue to look forward to the enriching experience I will have here. Truly one of the Top Companies in the World. Mayuri Khinvasara

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• Misadventures at Radio Shack

  - by Chris Williams

  While I'm waiting for my Arduino kits to show up, I started reading the Getting Started With Arduino book from O'Reilly (review coming later) and I'm about 40 pages in when I get to a parts list for one of the first projects. Looks pretty straightforward, and even has Radio Shack part numbers next to almost everything. So on my lunch today, I decided to run out to "The Shack" (seriously, that's their rebranding?) to pick up some basics, like a couple resistors, a breadboard, a momentary switch and a pack of pre-cut jumper wires. I found the resistors without any difficulty, and while they didn't have the exact switch I wanted, it was easy enough to find one that would do. That's where my good luck abruptly ended. I was surprised that I couldn't find a breadboard or any jumper wires, so while I was looking around, a guy came up and asked me if I needed some help. I told him I did, explained what I needed and even gave him the Radio Shack part number for the pack of jumper wires. After a couple minutes he says he can't find anything in the system, which was unfortunate but not the end of the world.  So then I asked him about the breadboard, and he pointed me to some blank circuitboards (which are not the same thing) and I said (nicely) that those weren't breadboards and attempted to explain (again) what I needed, at which point he says to me "I don't even know what the hell you're looking for!" I stood there for a moment and tried to process his words. About that time, another salesperson came up and asked what I was trying to find. I told her I needed a breadboard, and she pointed to the blank circuit boards and said "they're right in front of you..." After seeing the look on my face, she thought for a minute and said... "OH! you mean those white things. We don't have those anymore." I thanked her, set everything down on the counter and left. (I wasn't going to buy only half the stuff I needed.. and I was pretty sure I was never going to be buying ANYTHING at that particular location ever again.) Guess I'll be ordering more stuff online at this point. It's a shame really, because I used to LOVE going to Radio Shack as a kid, and looking through all the cool electronics components and stuff, even if I didnt understand what most of them were at the time. Seems like the only thing they carry in any quantity/variety now is cell phones and random stereo connectors.

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• Dealing with coworkers when developing, need advice [closed]

  - by Yippie-Kai-Yay

  I developed our current project architecture and started developing it on my own (reaching something like, revision 40). We're developing a simple subway routing framework and my design seemed to be done extremely well - several main models, corresponding views, main logic and data structures were modeled "as they should be" and fully separated from rendering, algorithmic part was also implemented apart from the main models and had a minor number of intersection points. I would call that design scalable, customizable, easy-to-implement, interacting mostly based on the "black box interaction" and, well, very nice. Now, what was done: I started some implementations of the corresponding interfaces, ported some convenient libraries and wrote implementation stubs for some application parts. I had the document describing coding style and examples of that coding style usage (my own written code). I forced the usage of more or less modern C++ development techniques, including no-delete code (wrapped via smart pointers) and etc. I documented the purpose of concrete interface implementations and how they should be used. Unit tests (mostly, integration tests, because there wasn't a lot of "actual" code) and a set of mocks for all the core abstractions. I was absent for 12 days. What do we have now (the project was developed by 4 other members of the team): 3 different coding styles all over the project (I guess, two of them agreed to use the same style :), same applies to the naming of our abstractions (e.g CommonPathData.h, SubwaySchemeStructures.h), which are basically headers declaring some data structures. Absolute lack of documentation for the recently implemented parts. What I could recently call a single-purpose-abstraction now handles at least 2 different types of events, has tight coupling with other parts and so on. Half of the used interfaces now contain member variables (sic!). Raw pointer usage almost everywhere. Unit tests disabled, because "(Rev.57) They are unnecessary for this project". ... (that's probably not everything). Commit history shows that my design was interpreted as an overkill and people started combining it with personal bicycles and reimplemented wheels and then had problems integrating code chunks. Now - the project still does only a small amount of what it has to do, we have severe integration problems, I assume some memory leaks. Is there anything possible to do in this case? I do realize that all my efforts didn't have any benefit, but the deadline is pretty soon and we have to do something. Did someone have a similar situation? Basically I thought that a good (well, I did everything that I could) start for the project would probably lead to something nice, however, I understand that I'm wrong. Any advice would be appreciated, sorry for my bad english.

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• iwlwifi on lenovo z570 disabled by hardware switch

  - by Kevin Gallagher

  It was working fine with windows 7. The hardware switch is not disabled. I've toggled it back and forth dozens of times. The wifi light never turns on and it always lists as hardware disabled. I have the latest updates installed. I've been searching for solutions, but none of them seem to work for me. I've tried removing acer-wmi. I've tried setting 11n_disable=1. I've tried resetting the bios. I've tried using rfkill to unblock (only removes soft block). I've rebooted dozens of times. The wifi light turns off as soon as grub loads. Edit: I have a usb edimax wireless nic. It shows hardware disabled as well (although rfkill lists as unblocked). If I unload iwlwifi the usb nic works fine. uname -a `Linux xxx-Ideapad-Z570 3.2.0-55-generic #85-Ubuntu SMP Wed Oct 2 12:29:27 UTC 2013 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linu`x rfkill list 19: phy18: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: yes dmesg [43463.022996] Intel(R) Wireless WiFi Link AGN driver for Linux, in-tree: [43463.023002] Copyright(c) 2003-2011 Intel Corporation [43463.023107] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 17 [43463.023190] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: setting latency timer to 64 [43463.023253] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: pci_resource_len = 0x00002000 [43463.023257] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: pci_resource_base = ffffc900057c8000 [43463.023261] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: HW Revision ID = 0x0 [43463.023797] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: irq 43 for MSI/MSI-X [43463.024013] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Detected Intel(R) Centrino(R) Wireless-N 1000 BGN, REV=0x6C [43463.024250] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: L1 Enabled; Disabling L0S [43463.045496] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: device EEPROM VER=0x15d, CALIB=0x6 [43463.045501] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Device SKU: 0X50 [43463.045504] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Valid Tx ant: 0X1, Valid Rx ant: 0X3 [43463.045542] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Tunable channels: 13 802.11bg, 0 802.11a channels [43463.045744] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: RF_KILL bit toggled to disable radio. [43463.047652] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: loaded firmware version 39.31.5.1 build 35138 [43463.047823] Registered led device: phy18-led [43463.047895] cfg80211: Ignoring regulatory request Set by core since the driver uses its own custom regulatory domain [43463.048037] ieee80211 phy18: Selected rate control algorithm 'iwl-agn-rs' [43463.055533] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlan0: link is not ready nm-tool State: connected (global) - Device: wlan0 ---------------------------------------------------------------- Type: 802.11 WiFi Driver: iwlwifi State: unavailable Default: no HW Address: 74:E5:0B:4A:9F:C2 Capabilities: Wireless Properties WEP Encryption: yes WPA Encryption: yes WPA2 Encryption: yes Wireless Access Points lshw -C network *-network DISABLED description: Wireless interface product: Centrino Wireless-N 1000 [Condor Peak] vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:03:00.0 logical name: wlan0 version: 00 serial: 74:e5:0b:4a:9f:c2 width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless configuration: broadcast=yes driver=iwlwifi driverversion=3.2.0-55-generic firmware=39.31.5.1 build 35138 latency=0 link=no multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11bg resources: irq:43 memory:f1500000-f1501fff lspci 03:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Centrino Wireless-N 1000 [Condor Peak]

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• DTLoggedExec 1.1.2008.4 Released!

  - by Davide Mauri

  Today I've relased the latest version of my DTExec replacement tool, DTLoggedExec. The main changes are the following: Used a new strategy for version numbers. Now it will follow the following pattern Major.Minor.TargetSQLServerVersion.Revision Added support for Auto Configurations Fixed a bug that reported incorrect number of errors and warnings to Log Providers Fixed a buf that prevented correct casting of values when using /Set and /Param options Errors and Warnings are now counted more precisely. Updated database and log import scripts to categorize logs by projects and sections. E.g.: Project: MyBIProject; Sections: Staging, Datawarehouse Removed unused report stored procedures from database Updated Samples: 12 samples are now available to show ALL DTLoggedExec features From this version only SSIS 2008 will be supported http://dtloggedexec.codeplex.com/releases/view/62218  It useful to say something more on a couple of specific points: From this version only SSIS 2008 will be supportedYes, Integration Services 2005 are not supported anymore. The latest version capable of running SSIS 2005 Packages is the 1.0.0.2. Updated database and log import scripts to categorize logs by projects and sectionsWhen you import a log file, you can now assign it to a Project and to a Section of that project. In this way it's easier to gather statistical information for an entire project or a subsection of it. This also allows to store logged data of package belonging to different projects in the same database. For example:  Updated SamplesA complete set of samples that shows how to use all DTLoggedExec features are now shipped with the product. Enjoy! Added support for Auto ConfigurationsThis point will have a post on its own, since it's quite important and is by far the biggest new feature introduced in this release. To explain it in a few words, I can just say that you don't need to waste time with complex DTS configuration files or options, since a package will configure itself automatically. You just need to write a single statement as a parameter for DTLoggedExec. This feature can simplify deployment *a lot* :)   I the next days I'll write the mentioned post on Auto-Configurations and i'll update the documentation available on theDTLoggedExec website:   http://dtloggedexec.davidemauri.it/MainPage.ashx

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• Configurable tables in sql database

  - by dot

  I have the following tables in my database: Config Table: ====================================== Start_Range | End Range | Config_id 10 | 15 | 1 ====================================== Available_UserIDs ========================== ID | UserID | Used_YN | 1 | 10 | t | 1 | 11 | f | 1 | 12 | f | 1 | 13 | f | 1 | 14 | f | 1 | 15 | f | ========================== Users ========================== UserId | FName | LName | 10 |John | Doe | ========================== This is used in a reservation system of sorts... which lets an administrator specify a range of numbers that will be assigned to users in the config table. Once the range has been defined, the system then populates the Available_userIDs table with all the numbers in between the range, and sets the Used_YN flag to false As users sign up, they grab the next user_id number that's not in use... and reserve it. Then the system adds a record to the Users table. Once the admin has specified a range, it is possible that they can change it. For example, they can start with 10-15... and then when the range is used up, they should be able to specify another range like 16 - 99. I've put a unique constraint on the Available_UserIDs table, as well as on the Users table - to ensure that UserIds can't be duplicated. My questions are as follows: What's the best way to prevent the admins from using a range that's already in use? I thought of the following options: -- check either the Users table to see if the start range or ending range numbers are being used. If they are, assume that all the numbers in between are in use too, and reject the range. -- let them specify whatever they want, try to populate the Available_UserIDs table. If there are duplicates, just ignore that specific error message from the database and continue on. How do I find gaps in the number ranges? For example, if they specify 10-15, and then 20-25, it'd be nice to be able to somehow suggest on my web page that 16-19 is currently available. I found this article: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1312101/how-to-find-a-gap-in-running-counter-with-sql But it only seems to return the first available number... so in my example above, it would only return the number 16. I'm sure there's a simpler way to do things that I'm overlooking!

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• Once installed geos library (C++, and C), and then trying to install rgeos package (R), it reports geos-config missing!

  - by user1873888

  Knowing that the package rgeos, from the R language, requieres a prior installation of geos libraries, I installed, both, libgeos and libgeos-c1 (3.2.2), using the synaptic installer in my Ubuntu 12.04 (32 bit) machine. Then I tried to install rgeos directly from the R console, and it issued a message in the sense that geos-config was not found. The output is as follows: > install.packages("rgeos") Installing package(s) into ‘/home/checo/R/i486-pc-linux-gnu-library/2.15’ (as ‘lib’ is unspecified) also installing the dependency ‘sp’ probando la URL 'http://cran.rstudio.com/src/contrib/sp_1.0-9.tar.gz' Content type 'application/x-gzip' length 882102 bytes (861 Kb) URL abierta ================================================== downloaded 861 Kb probando la URL 'http://cran.rstudio.com/src/contrib/rgeos_0.2-19.tar.gz' Content type 'application/x-gzip' length 221471 bytes (216 Kb) URL abierta ================================================== downloaded 216 Kb * installing *source* package ‘sp’ ... ** package ‘sp’ successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked ** libs gcc -std=gnu99 -I/usr/share/R/include -DNDEBUG -fpic -O3 -pipe -g -c R centroid.c -o Rcentroid.o gcc -std=gnu99 -I/usr/share/R/include -DNDEBUG -fpic -O3 -pipe -g -c gcdist.c -o gcdist.o gcc -std=gnu99 -I/usr/share/R/include -DNDEBUG -fpic -O3 -pipe -g -c init.c -o init.o gcc -std=gnu99 -I/usr/share/R/include -DNDEBUG -fpic -O3 -pipe -g -c pip.c -o pip.o gcc -std=gnu99 -I/usr/share/R/include -DNDEBUG -fpic -O3 -pipe -g -c pip2.c -o pip2.o gcc -std=gnu99 -I/usr/share/R/include -DNDEBUG -fpic -O3 -pipe -g -c sp_xports.c -o sp_xports.o gcc -std=gnu99 -I/usr/share/R/include -DNDEBUG -fpic -O3 -pipe -g -c surfaceArea.c -o surfaceArea.o gcc -std=gnu99 -I/usr/share/R/include -DNDEBUG -fpic -O3 -pipe -g -c zerodist.c -o zerodist.o gcc -std=gnu99 -shared -o sp.so Rcentroid.o gcdist.o init.o pip.o pip2.o sp_xports.o surfaceArea.o zerodist.o -L/usr/lib/R/lib -lR installing to /home/checo/R/i486-pc-linux-gnu-library/2.15/sp/libs ** R ** data ** demo ** inst ** preparing package for lazy loading ** help *** installing help indices ** building package indices ** installing vignettes ‘intro_sp.Rnw’ ‘over.Rnw’ ** testing if installed package can be loaded * DONE (sp) * installing *source* package ‘rgeos’ ... ** package ‘rgeos’ successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked configure: CC: gcc -std=gnu99 configure: CXX: g++ configure: rgeos: 0.2-17 checking for /usr/bin/svnversion... no configure: svn revision: 394 checking geos-config usability... ./configure: line 1385: geos-config: command not found no configure: error: geos-config not usable ERROR: configuration failed for package ‘rgeos’ * removing ‘/home/checo/R/i486-pc-linux-gnu-library/2.15/rgeos’ Warning in install.packages : installation of package ‘rgeos’ had non-zero exit status Forgive my ignorance, but I don't know where this file, "geos-config", comes from: should it be generated by the gcc compilations above, or should it be previously installed when the libgeos libraries were intalled? I learnt, from another machine, that "geos-config" is an executable and that it should be installed in /usr/bin. Do you have any idea on what's wrong with my procedure? Thanks, -Sergio.

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• How to refactor my design, if it seems to require multiple inheritance?

  - by Omega

  Recently I made a question about Java classes implementing methods from two sources (kinda like multiple inheritance). However, it was pointed out that this sort of need may be a sign of a design flaw. Hence, it is probably better to address my current design rather than trying to simulate multiple inheritance. Before tackling the actual problem, some background info about a particular mechanic in this framework: It is a simple game development framework. Several components allocate some memory (like pixel data), and it is necessary to get rid of it as soon as you don't need it. Sprites are an example of this. Anyway, I decided to implement something ala Manual-Reference-Counting from Objective-C. Certain classes, like Sprites, contain an internal counter, which is increased when you call retain(), and decreased on release(). Thus the Resource abstract class was created. Any subclass of this will obtain the retain() and release() implementations for free. When its count hits 0 (nobody is using this class), it will call the destroy() method. The subclass needs only to implement destroy(). This is because I don't want to rely on the Garbage Collector to get rid of unused pixel data. Game objects are all subclasses of the Node class - which is the main construction block, as it provides info such as position, size, rotation, etc. See, two classes are used often in my game. Sprites and Labels. Ah... but wait. Sprites contain pixel data, remember? And as such, they need to extend Resource. But this, of course, can't be done. Sprites ARE nodes, hence they must subclass Node. But heck, they are resources too. Why not making Resource an interface? Because I'd have to re-implement retain() and release(). I am avoiding this in virtue of not writing the same code over and over (remember that there are multiple classes that need this memory-management system). Why not composition? Because I'd still have to implement methods in Sprite (and similar classes) that essentially call the methods of Resource. I'd still be writing the same code over and over! What is your advice in this situation, then?

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• Problems uploading package to launchpad

  - by user74513

  I'm having a lot of problems uploading my showdown project to a PPA. I've setup correctly PGP keys and my public ssh key to launchpad. I've packaged with debuild my C++ project, producing a source package lintian gave me only those two warnings that I think are ok for the showdown rules: W: massren source: native-package-with-dash-version W: massren source: binary-nmu-debian-revision-in-source 1.0-0extras12.04.1~ppa2 Producing a binary package works to and the package installs without problem on my ubuntu 12.04 machine, I only have a few more lintian warnings about the fact I'm installing in /opt/extras.ubuntu.com/ I'm uploading with: dput ppa:gabrielegreco/massren massren_1.0-0extras12.04.1~ppa2_source.changes When I upload with dput I have no errors, signatures seems ok, and public key seems accepted to (since the upload goes on without asking passwords...): dput ppa:gabrielegreco/massren massren_1.0-0extras12.04.1~ppa2_source.changes Checking signature on .changes gpg: Signature made Mon 02 Jul 2012 10:00:38 AM CEST using RSA key ID 49982576 gpg: Good signature from "Gabriele Greco " Good signature on /home/gabry/no-backup/massren_1.0-0extras12.04.1~ppa2_source.changes. Checking signature on .dsc gpg: Signature made Mon 02 Jul 2012 10:00:33 AM CEST using RSA key ID 49982576 gpg: Good signature from "Gabriele Greco " Good signature on /home/gabry/no-backup/massren_1.0-0extras12.04.1~ppa2.dsc. Uploading to ppa (via ftp to ppa.launchpad.net): Uploading massren_1.0-0extras12.04.1~ppa2.dsc: done. Uploading massren_1.0-0extras12.04.1~ppa2.tar.gz: done. Uploading massren_1.0-0extras12.04.1~ppa2_source.changes: done. Successfully uploaded packages. At the moment I'm not receiving responses from launchpad site, but the upload does not show in the ppa page. Previous attempts gave me response e-mails with different kind of errors: File massren_1.0-0extras12.04.1~ppa1.tar.gz mentioned in the changes has a checksum mismatch. 1503fa155226cbc4aba2f8ba9aa11a75 != 294a5e0caf3fe95b0b007a10766e9672 File massren_1.0-0extras12.04.1~ppa1.tar.gz mentioned in the changes has a checksum mismatch. 1503fa155226cbc4aba2f8ba9aa11a75 != 294a5e0caf3fe95b0b007a10766e9672 Or more cryptic: GPG verification of /srv/launchpad.net/ppa-queue/incoming/upload-ftp-20120629-163320-001135/~gabrielegreco/massren/ubuntu/massren_1.0-0extras12.04.1~ppa1.dsc failed: Verification failed 3 times: ["(7, 58, u'No data')", "(7, 58, u'No data')", "(7, 58, u'No data')"] Further error processing not possible because of a critical previous error. Any idea how can I solve this problem? I'm new to ubuntu packaging, so I may miss some step... There is an alternative to dput (aka manual upload)?

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• RTS Game Style Application [closed]

  - by Daniel Wynand van Wyk

  My question may seem somewhat odd, but I hope that my specifications will clarify EXACTLY what it is that I am after. I need some help choosing the right tooling for a particular endeavour. My background is in desktop application development and large back-end systems. I have worked primarily on the Microsoft stack using C# and the .Net framework. My goal is to develop a 2D, RTS style, interactive office simulation. The simulation will model various office spaces, office equipment, employees and their interactions with one another. The idea is to abstract the concept of an office completely. Under the hood the application will do many things that are nothing like a game. This includes P2P networking, VPN tunnelling, streaming video, instant messaging, document collaboration, remote screen sharing, file-sharing, virus scanning, VOIP, document scanning, faxing, emailing, distributed computing, content management and much more! A somewhat similar thing has been attempted by IBM, where they created a virtual office in second life. If their attempt was a game, the game-play would be notably horrible, to say the least! The users/players will drive and control my application through the various objects modelled in the simulation. A single application capable of performing all of these various tasks would be a nightmare to navigate for even the most expert user. Using the concept of a game, I can easily separate functionality by assigning them to objects that relate 1-1 with their real world counter-parts. This can greatly simplify computing for novice users, with many added benefits in terms of visibility, transparency of process and centralized configuration. My hope is to make complex computing tasks accessible to all kinds of users and to greatly reduce the cognitive load associated with using the many different utilities and applications inside office settings. The complexity is therefore limited to the complexity of the space in which you find yourself. I want the application to target as many platforms as possible and run on computers that have no accelerated graphics capabilities. The simulation won't contain any of the fancy eye-candy you find in modern games, to the contrary, my "game" will purposefully be clean and simple. The closest thing I could imagine would be an old game like "Theme Hospital" or the first instalment of "The Sims". All the content will be pre-created and not user-generated like Second Life. New functionality will be added via a plugin system. Given my background and nature of my "game", I would like to spend most of my time writing code that does not have to do with the simulated office, as the "game" is really just a glorified application menu. I have done much reading about existing engines, frameworks and tools. I need the help of an experienced game developer who has tried and tested various products over the years who can guide me in the right direction given my very particular needs. I would appreciate any help I can get!

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• Collision in PyGame for spinning rectangular object.touching circles

  - by OverAchiever

  I'm creating a variation of Pong. One of the differences is that I use a rectangular structure as the object which is being bounced around, and I use circles as paddles. So far, all the collision handling I've worked with was using simple math (I wasn't using the collision "feature" in PyGame). The game is contained within a 2-dimensional continuous space. The idea is that the rectangular structure will spin at different speed depending on how far from the center you touch it with the circle. Also, any extremity of the rectangular structure should be able to touch any extremity of the circle. So I need to keep track of where it has been touched on both the circle and the rectangle to figure out the direction it will be bounced to. I intend to have basically 8 possible directions (Up, down, left, right and the half points between each one of those). I can work out the calculation of how the objected will be dislocated once I get the direction it will be dislocated to based on where it has been touch. I also need to keep track of where it has been touched to decide if the rectangular structure will spin clockwise or counter-clockwise after it collided. Before I started coding, I read the resources available at the PyGame website on the collision class they have (And its respective functions). I tried to work out the logic of what I was trying to achieve based on those resources and how the game will function. The only thing I could figure out that I could do was to make each one of these objects as a group of rectangular objects, and depending on which rectangle was touched the other would behave accordingly and give the illusion it is a single object. However, not only I don't know if this will work, but I also don't know if it is gonna look convincing based on how PyGame redraws the objects. Is there a way I can use PyGame to handle these collision detections by still having a single object? Can I figure out the point of collision on both objects using functions within PyGame precisely enough to achieve what I'm looking for? P.s: I hope the question was specific and clear enough. I apologize if there were any grammar mistakes, English is not my native language.

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• What arguments can I use to "sell" the BDD concept to a team reluctant to adopt it?

  - by S.Robins

  I am a bit of a vocal proponent of the BDD methodology. I've been applying BDD for a couple of years now, and have adopted StoryQ as my framework of choice when developing DotNet applications. Even though I have been unit testing for many years, and had previously shifted to a test-first approach, I've found that I get much more value out of using a BDD framework, because my tests capture the intent of the requirements in relatively clear English within my code, and because my tests can execute multiple assertions without ending the test halfway through - meaning I can see which specific assertions pass/fail at a glance without debugging to prove it. This has really been the tip of the iceberg for me, as I've also noticed that I am able to debug both test and implementation code in a more targeted manner, with the result that my productivity has grown significantly, and that I can more easily determine where a failure occurs if a problem happens to make it all the way to the integration build due to the output that makes its way into the build logs. Further, the StoryQ api has a lovely fluent syntax that is easy to learn and which can be applied in an extraordinary number of ways, requiring no external dependencies in order to use it. So with all of these benefits, you would think it an easy to introduce the concept to the rest of the team. Unfortunately, the other team members are reluctant to even look at StoryQ to evaluate it properly (let alone entertain the idea of applying BDD), and have convinced each other to try and remove a number of StoryQ elements from our own core testing framework, even though they originally supported the use of StoryQ, and that it doesn't impact on any other part of our testing system. Doing so would end up increasing my workload significantly overall and really goes against the grain, as I am convinced through practical experience that it is a better way to work in a test-first manner in our particular working environment, and can only lead to greater improvements in the quality of our software, given I've found it easier to stick with test first using BDD. So the question really comes down to the following: What arguments can I use to really drive the point home that it would be better to use StoryQ, or at the very least apply the BDD methodology? Can you point me to any anecdotal evidence that I can use to support my argument to adopt BDD as our standard method of choice? What counter arguments can you think of that could suggest that my wish to convert the team efforts to BDD might be in error? Yes, I'm happy to be proven wrong provided the argument is a sound one. NOTE: I am not advocating that we rewrite our tests in their entirety, but rather to simply start working in a different manner for all future testing work.

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• Changing Your Design for Testability

  Sometimes I come across a way of putting something that it is pithy good, not Hallmark trite, but an impactful and concise way of clarifying a previously obscure concept. A recent one of these happy occurrences was when I was reading the excellent Art of Unit Testing by Roy Osherove. After going through the basics of why youd want to test code and how to do it, Roy confronts a frequent objection to having unit tests, that it ends up changing how you design your components: When we write unit tests for our code, we are adding another end user (the test) to the object model. That end user is just as important as the original one, but it has different goals when using the model.  The test has specific requirements from the object model that seem to defy the basic logic behind a couple of object-oriented principles, mainly encapsulation. [emphasis added by me] When I read this, something clicked for me. I used to find it persuasive that because unit tests caused you to change your design they were more disruptive than they were worth. The counter argument I heard is that the disruption was OK, because testable design was just obviously better. That argument was not convincing as it seemed like delusional arrogance to suggest that any one of type of design was just inherently better for the particular applications I was building. What was missing was that I was not thinking of unit tests as an additional and equal end user to my design. If I accepted that proposition, than it was indeed obvious that a testable design was better because now all users of my component would be satisfied. Have I accepted that proposition? Id phrase it slightly different. I find more and more that having unit tests helps me write better, less buggy code before it gets to production or QA. As I write more unit tests, it gets easier to see how to create testable components, so I dont feel like its taking me as much extra time up front. I pick and choose components that seem most likely to benefit from automated tests and it is working out nicely. If you already implement Test Driven Development, this whole post was probably a waste of your time <g> If you hate the idea of unit tests, well, probably not a great value prop for you either. However, if you are somewhere in between, at least take a minute and check out a sample chapter from Roys book at: http://www.manning.com/osherove/.Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Nails vs Screws (C# List vs Dictionary)

  - by MarkPearl

  General This may sound like a typical noob statement, but I’m finding out in a very real way that just because you have a solution to a problem, doesn’t necessarily mean it is the best solution. This was reiterated to me when a friend of mine suggested I look at using Dictionaries instead of Lists for a particular problem – he was right, I have always just assumed that because lists solved my problem I did not need to look elsewhere. So my new manifesto to counter this ageless problem is as follows… Look for a solution that will logically work Once you have a solution look for possible alternatives Decide why your current solution is the best approach compared to the alternatives If it is.. use it till something better comes along, if it isnt…. change What’s the difference between Lists & Dictionaries Both lists and dictionaries are used to store collections of data. Assume we had the following declarations… var dic = new Dictionary<string, long>(); var lst = new List<long>(); long data;   With a list, you simply add the item to the list and it will add the item to the end of the list. lst.Add(data); With a dictionary, you need to specify some sort of key and the data you want to add so that it can be uniquely identified. dic.Add(uniquekey, data);   Because with a dictionary you now have unique identifier, in the background they provide all sort’s of optimized algorithms to find your associated data. What this means is that if you are wanting to access your data it is a lot faster than a List. So when is it appropriate to use either class? For me, if I can guarantee that each item in my collection will have a unique identifier, then I will use Dictionaries instead of Lists as there is a considerable performance benefit when accessing each data item. If I cannot make this sort of guarantee, then by default I will use a list. I know this is all really basic, and I hope I haven’t missed some fundamental principle… If anyone would like to add their 2 cents, please feel free to do so…

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• JCP.next.3: time to get to work

  - by Patrick Curran

  As I've previously reported in this blog, we planned three JSRs to improve the JCP’s processes and to meet our members’ expectations for change. The first - JCP.next.1, or more formally JSR 348: Towards a new version of the Java Community Process - was completed in October 2011. This focused on a small number of simple but important changes to make our process more transparent and to enable broader participation. We're already seeing the benefits of these changes as new and existing JSRs adopt the new requirements. However, because we wanted to complete this JSR quickly we deliberately postponed a number of more complex items, including everything that would require modifying the JSPA (the legal agreement that members sign when they join the organization) to a follow-on JSR. The second JSR (JSR 355: JCP Executive Committee Merge) is in progress now and will complete later this year. This JSR is even simpler than the first, and is focused solely on merging the two Executive Committees into one for greater efficiency and to encourage synergies between the Java ME and Java SE platforms. Continuing the momentum to move Java and the JCP forward we have just filed the third JSR (JCP.next.3) as JSR 358: A major revision of the Java Community Process. This JSR will modify the JSPA as well as the Process Document, and will tackle a large number of complex issues, many of them postponed from JSR 348. For these reasons we expect to spend a considerable amount of time working on it - at least a year, and probably more. The current version of the JSPA was created back in 2002, although some minor changes were introduced in 2005. Since then the organization and the environment in which we operate have changed significantly, and it is now time to revise our processes to ensure that they meet our current needs. We have a long list of topics to be considered, including the role of independent implementations (those not derived from the Reference Implementation), licensing and open source, ensuring that our new transparency requirements are implemented correctly, compatibility policy and TCKs, the role of individual members, patent policy, and IP flow. The Expert Group for JSR 358, as with all process-change JSRs, consists of all members of the Executive Committees. Even though the JSR has just been filed we started discussions on the various topics several months ago (see the EC's meeting minutes for details) and our EC members - including the new members who joined within the last year or two - are actively engaged. Now it's your opportunity to get involved. As required by version 2.8 of our Process (introduced with JSR 348) we will conduct all our business in the open. We have a public java.net project where you can follow and participate in our work. All of our deliberations will be copied to a public Observer mailing list, we'll track our issues on a public Issue Tracker, and all our documents (meeting agendas and minutes, task lists, working drafts) will be published in our Document Archive. We're just getting started, but we do want your input. Please visit us on java.net where you can learn how to participate. Let's get to work...

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• MySQL Workbench 6.2.1 BETA has been released

  - by user12602715

  The MySQL Workbench team is announcing availability of the first beta release of its upcoming major product update, MySQL  Workbench 6.2. MySQL Workbench 6.2 focuses on support for innovations released in MySQL 5.6 and MySQL 5.7 DMR (Development Release) as well as MySQL Fabric 1.5, with features such as: A new spatial data viewer, allowing graphical views of result sets containing GEOMETRY data and taking advantage of the new GIS capabilities in MySQL 5.7. Support for new MySQL 5.7.4 SQL syntax and configuration options. Metadata Locks View shows the locks connections are blocked or waiting on. MySQL Fabric cluster connectivity - Browsing, view status, and connect to any MySQL instance in a Fabric Cluster. MS Access migration Wizard - easily move to MySQL Databases. Other significant usability improvements were made, aiming to raise productivity for advanced and new users: Direct shortcut buttons to commonly used features in the schema tree. Improved results handling. Columns have better auto-sizing and their widths are saved. Fonts can also be customized. Results "pinned" to persist viewing data. A convenient Run SQL Script command to directly execute SQL scripts, without loading them first. Database Modeling has been updated to allow changes to the formatting of note objects and attached SQL scripts can now be included in forward engineering and synchronization scripts. Integrated Visual Explain within the result set panel. Visual Explain drill down for large to very large explain plans. Shared SQL snippets in the SQL Editor, allowing multiple users to share SQL code by storing it within a MySQL instance. And much more. The list of provided binaries was updated and MySQL Workbench binaries now available for: Windows 7 or newer Mac OS X Lion or newer Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and Ubuntu 14.04 Fedora 20 Oracle Linux 6.5 Oracle Linux 7 Sources for building in other Linux distributions For the full list of changes in this revision, visit http://dev.mysql.com/doc/relnotes/workbench/en/changes-6-2.html For discussion, join the MySQL Workbench Forums: http://forums.mysql.com/index.php?151 Download MySQL Workbench 6.2.1 now, for Windows, Mac OS X 10.7+, Oracle Linux 6 and 7, Fedora 20, Ubuntu 12.04 and Ubuntu 14.04 or sources, from: http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/tools/workbench/ On behalf of the MySQL Workbench and the MySQL/ORACLE RE Team.

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• What will be the better way for data retrieval on application that needs to handle limited amount of data.?

  - by Milanix

  This is not really a coding question since, I am not adding any code in here. Since, adding my code snippets itself would make this question really long. Instead, I am pretty interested in knowing a better ways for data retrieval on application that needs to handle limited amount of data which isn't updated regularly. Let's take this example: I am writing an application which gets a schedule as an XML from server. I have written a logic in order to parse XML version and update database only if the version is newer than the local version. Although the update is checked automatically/manually on daily basis based on user preference, the actual version update happens only once per few months or so. Since, this is done by some other authority which doesn't provide API but, rather inform publicly on their changes. The actual XML contains a "(n number of groups)(days in a week) (n number of schedule)" . The group is usually 6 and the number of schedule is usually 2. So basically there would usually be only around 100 strings. Now although I have used SQLite at the moment. I want to know how to make update on database. Should I show progress dialog that the application is updating and exit the app when it's done? Since, my updates are infrequent i don't think this will really harm user experience but, is there any better ways to do it? Because I don't want update to be made when user is searching which is done using database. This will cause an database already open exception. Atleast I have faced this problem before. Is it better to rather parse XML every time when user wants to view certain things or to use SQLite? Since, I make lots of use of adapter in my app to create lists, will that degrade the performance? It would really be a great help if anyone can give me better overview about it. Or may be counter argument against each. Many thanks!

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