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• Canonicalization of single, small pages like reviews or product categories [SEO]

  - by Valorized

  In general I pretty much like the idea of canonicalization. And in most cases, Google explains possible procedures in a clear way. For example: If I have duplicates because of parameters (eg: &sort=desc) it's clear to use the canonical for the site, provided the within the head-tag. However I'm wondering how to handle "small - no to say thin content - sites". What's my definition of a small site? An Example: On one of my main sites, we use a directory based url-structure. Let's see: example.com/ (root) example.com/category-abc/ example.com/category-abc/produkt-xy/ Moreover we provide on page, that includes all products example.com/all-categories/ (lists all products the same way as in the categories) In case of reviews, we use a similar structure: example.com/reviews/product-xy/ shows all review for one certain product example.com/reviews/product-xy/abc-your-product-is-great/ shows one certain review example.com/reviews/ shows all reviews for all products (latest first) Let's make it even more complicated: On every product site, there are the latest 2 reviews at the end of the page. So you see, a lot of potential duplicates. Q1: Should I create canonicals for a: example.com/category-abc/ to example.com/all-categories/ b: example.com/reviews/product-xy/abc-your-product-is-great/ to example.com/reviews/product-xy/ or to example.com/review/ or none of them? Q2: Can I link the collection of categories (all-categories/) and collection of all reviews (reviews/ and reviews/product-xy/) to the single category respectively to the single review. Example: example.com/reviews/ includes - let's say - 100 reviews. Can I somehow use a markup that tells search engines: "Hey, wait, you are now looking at a collection of 100 reviews - do not index this collection, you should rather prefer indexing every single review as a single page!". In HTML it might be something like that (which - of course - does not work, it's only to show you what I mean): <div class="review" rel="canonical" href="http://example.com/reviews/product-xz/abc-your-product-is-great/">HERE GOES THE REVIEW</div> Reason: I don't think it is a great user experience if the user searches for "your product is great" and lands on example.com/reviews/ instead of example.com/reviews/product-xy/abc-your-product-is-great/. On the first site, he will have to search and might stop because of frustration. The second result, however, might lead to a conversion. The same applies for categories. If the user is searching for category-Z, he might land on the all-categories page and he has to scroll down to the (last) category, to find what he searched for (Z). So what's best practice? What should I do? Thank you for your help!

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• Is inline SQL still classed as bad practice now that we have Micro ORMs?

  - by Grofit

  This is a bit of an open ended question but I wanted some opinions, as I grew up in a world where inline SQL scripts were the norm, then we were all made very aware of SQL injection based issues, and how fragile the sql was when doing string manipulations all over the place. Then came the dawn of the ORM where you were explaining the query to the ORM and letting it generate its own SQL, which in a lot of cases was not optimal but was safe and easy. Another good thing about ORMs or database abstraction layers were that the SQL was generated with its database engine in mind, so I could use Hibernate/Nhibernate with MSSQL, MYSQL and my code never changed it was just a configuration detail. Now fast forward to current day, where Micro ORMs seem to be winning over more developers I was wondering why we have seemingly taken a U-Turn on the whole in-line sql subject. I must admit I do like the idea of no ORM config files and being able to write my query in a more optimal manner but it feels like I am opening myself back up to the old vulnerabilities such as SQL injection and I am also tying myself to one database engine so if I want my software to support multiple database engines I would need to do some more string hackery which seems to then start to make code unreadable and more fragile. (Just before someone mentions it I know you can use parameter based arguments with most micro orms which offers protection in most cases from sql injection) So what are peoples opinions on this sort of thing? I am using Dapper as my Micro ORM in this instance and NHibernate as my regular ORM in this scenario, however most in each field are quite similar. What I term as inline sql is SQL strings within source code. There used to be design debates over SQL strings in source code detracting from the fundamental intent of the logic, which is why statically typed linq style queries became so popular its still just 1 language, but with lets say C# and Sql in one page you have 2 languages intermingled in your raw source code now. Just to clarify, the SQL injection is just one of the known issues with using sql strings, I already mention you can stop this from happening with parameter based queries, however I highlight other issues with having SQL queries ingrained in your source code, such as the lack of DB Vendor abstraction as well as losing any level of compile time error capturing on string based queries, these are all issues which we managed to side step with the dawn of ORMs with their higher level querying functionality, such as HQL or LINQ etc (not all of the issues but most of them). So I am less focused on the individual highlighted issues and more the bigger picture of is it now becoming more acceptable to have SQL strings directly in your source code again, as most Micro ORMs use this mechanism. Here is a similar question which has a few different view points, although is more about the inline sql without the micro orm context: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5303746/is-inline-sql-hard-coding

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• Creating the Completely Customized World Just for YOU

  - by divya.malik

  OK so not a customized world, but do you know what goes into creating that customized web store front for you? How do you get those additional offers from vendors when you call in for service or when you are browsing a storefront. This is what is has been happening behind the scenes.  When a customer calls in a contact center for service, at the end of the conversation, they are offered a new product, or service. But what just transpired was that the CRM system that was in place had routed the call to the right agent, the agent got the pop up screen with the customer information, and the call request  was handled. Then came the decision point to cross-sell and up-sell, The agent got some recommended offers that were created based on analyzed data (this data had been put into a data warehouse, modeled, profiled and rules were implemented e.g.. People with profile X like product Y).  But with this system, what happens is that analytics can be applied to a very small subset. Now comes Real Time Decisioning (RTD), this helps companies make optimal decisions in the context of transactional systems. It enables companies to improve business processes with real time intelligence on every single transaction. RTD is like a service plug-in that you put at the back of your transactional systems and that you  ping to get a recommendation.  It listens to business process flows and data moving through the process, getting all that data, processes all that you can do with that data, and gives out out various offers. It takes a process centric view of analytics rather than just a data centric view. It continuously observes and learns from ever-changing customer behavior and applies those insights to providing real-time decisions and recommendations at any customer touch point. At Oracle we define Real Time Decisioning as “ The solution that addresses a business issue faced by all organizations : how to make accurate decisions, using the most up to date information, in real time…consistently and in large volumes”. Here is a video on recommendation engines that are benefiting from real time decisioning today and see how it is helping online vendors.

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• Canonicalization of single, small pages like reviews or product categories

  - by Valorized

  In general I pretty much like the idea of canonicalization. And in most cases, Google explains possible procedures in a clear way. For example: If I have duplicates because of parameters (eg: &sort=desc) it's clear to use the canonical for the site, provided the within the head-tag. However I'm wondering how to handle "small - no to say thin content - sites". What's my definition of a small site? An Example: On one of my main sites, we use a directory based url-structure. Let's see: example.com/ (root) example.com/category-abc/ example.com/category-abc/produkt-xy/ Moreover we provide on page, that includes all products example.com/all-categories/ (lists all products the same way as in the categories) In case of reviews, we use a similar structure: example.com/reviews/product-xy/ shows all review for one certain product example.com/reviews/product-xy/abc-your-product-is-great/ shows one certain review example.com/reviews/ shows all reviews for all products (latest first) Let's make it even more complicated: On every product site, there are the latest 2 reviews at the end of the page. So you see, a lot of potential duplicates. Q1: Should I create canonicals for a: example.com/category-abc/ to example.com/all-categories/ b: example.com/reviews/product-xy/abc-your-product-is-great/ to example.com/reviews/product-xy/ or to example.com/review/ or none of them? Q2: Can I link the collection of categories (all-categories/) and collection of all reviews (reviews/ and reviews/product-xy/) to the single category respectively to the single review. Example: example.com/reviews/ includes - let's say - 100 reviews. Can I somehow use a markup that tells search engines: "Hey, wait, you are now looking at a collection of 100 reviews - do not index this collection, you should rather prefer indexing every single review as a single page!". In HTML it might be something like that (which - of course - does not work, it's only to show you what I mean): <div class="review" rel="canonical" href="http://example.com/reviews/product-xz/abc-your-product-is-great/"> HERE GOES THE REVIEW</div> Reason: I don't think it is a great user experience if the user searches for "your product is great" and lands on example.com/reviews/ instead of example.com/reviews/product-xy/abc-your-product-is-great/. On the first site, he will have to search and might stop because of frustration. The second result, however, might lead to a conversion. The same applies for categories. If the user is searching for category-Z, he might land on the all-categories page and he has to scroll down to the (last) category, to find what he searched for (Z). So what's best practice? What should I do?

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• Is Java viable for serious game development?

  - by tehtros

  Ever since I was a little kid, my dream has been to develop games. Well, now that I am older, more mature, and have some programming experience, I would like to start. However, I would like to turn this into a career. The problem, is that my language of choice is Java. Now, I am not intending this to be a Java vs. C++ question, but rather, is Java an acceptable language for serious game development, instead of lower level languages like C++. By serious, I mean high quality graphics, and being able to play a game with said high quality graphics, without much lag on decent computers. Also, eventually, possible making it to consoles. I have scoured the internet, but there are not very many resources for Java game development, not nearly as many as C++. In fact, most engines are written in C++. Once, I tried to play a made with jMonkeyEngine. The game was terribly slow, to the point where my computer froze. I had no other Java applications running and nothing too resource intensive. Keep in mind, that my computer can play most modern 3D games with ease. So, I am really serious about game development, is Java still a viable choice? I have tried multiple times to learn C++, but I don't really like the language. I don't really know why, but usually, whenever I try to learn, I can never grasp the topics. Also, my most of my friends know Java, and one is even anti-C++, saying that no one knows how to use it right. Then, he goes to say that "there is no right way to use C++, that it can not be used correctly. The nature of the language prevents good code." Also, if I continue to learn and improve Java now, and it turns out that later I am required to learn C++, will making the switch be difficult? So, in short, can Java be taken serious, for serious game development. This includes heavy graphics, fast game play without lag, and possibly, and easy switch to consoles?

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• Tap into MySQL's Amazing Performance Results with the Performance Tuning Course

  - by Antoinette O'Sullivan

  Want to leverage the high-speed load utilities, distinctive memory caches, full text indexes, and other performance-enhancing mechanisms that MySQL offers to fuel today's critical business systems. The authentic MySQL Performance Tuning course, in 4 days, teaches you to evaluate the MySQL architecture, learn to use the tools, configure the database for performance, tune application and SQL code, tune the server, examine the storage engines, assess the application architecture, and learn general tuning concepts. You can take this course in one the following three ways: Training-on-Demand: Access the streaming video, instructor delivery of this course from your own desk, at your own pace. Book time for hands-on practice when it suits you. Live-Virtual Class: Take this instructor-led class live from your own desk. With 700 events on the schedule you are sure to find a time and date to suit you! In-Class: Travel to a classroom to take this class. A sample of events on the schedule are as follows.  Location  Date  Delivery Language  Hamburg, Germany  22 October 2012  German  Prague, Czech Republic  1 October 2012  Czech  Warsaw, Poland  3 December 2012  Polish  London, England  19 November 2012  English  Rome, Italy  23 October 2012  Italian Lisbon, Portugal  6 November 2012  European Portugese  Aix en Provence, France  4 September 2012   French  Strasbourg, France 16 October 2012   French  Nieuwegein, Netherlands 26 November 2012   Dutch  Madrid, Spain 17 December 2012   Spanish  Mechelen, Belgium  1 October 2012  English  Riga, Latvia  10 December 2012  Latvian  Petaling Jaya, Malaysia  10 September 2012 English   Edmonton, Canada 10 December 2012   English  Vancouver, Canada 10 December 2012   English  Ottawa, Canada 26 November 2012   English  Toronto, Canada 26 November 2012   English  Montreal, Canada 26 November 2012   English  Mexico City, Mexico 10 September 2012   Spanish  Sao Paolo, Brazil 26 November 2012  Brazilian Portugese   Tokyo, Japan 19 November 2012   Japanese  Tokyo, Japan  19 November 2012  Japanese For further information on this class, or to register your interest in additional events, go to the Oracle University Portal: http://oracle.com/education/mysql

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• Big Data – Buzz Words: What is NewSQL – Day 10 of 21

  - by Pinal Dave

  In yesterday’s blog post we learned the importance of the relational database. In this article we will take a quick look at the what is NewSQL. What is NewSQL? NewSQL stands for new scalable and high performance SQL Database vendors. The products sold by NewSQL vendors are horizontally scalable. NewSQL is not kind of databases but it is about vendors who supports emerging data products with relational database properties (like ACID, Transaction etc.) along with high performance. Products from NewSQL vendors usually follow in memory data for speedy access as well are available immediate scalability. NewSQL term was coined by 451 groups analyst Matthew Aslett in this particular blog post. On the definition of NewSQL, Aslett writes: “NewSQL” is our shorthand for the various new scalable/high performance SQL database vendors. We have previously referred to these products as ‘ScalableSQL‘ to differentiate them from the incumbent relational database products. Since this implies horizontal scalability, which is not necessarily a feature of all the products, we adopted the term ‘NewSQL’ in the new report. And to clarify, like NoSQL, NewSQL is not to be taken too literally: the new thing about the NewSQL vendors is the vendor, not the SQL. In other words - NewSQL incorporates the concepts and principles of Structured Query Language (SQL) and NoSQL languages. It combines reliability of SQL with the speed and performance of NoSQL. Categories of NewSQL There are three major categories of the NewSQL New Architecture – In this framework each node owns a subset of the data and queries are split into smaller query to sent to nodes to process the data. E.g. NuoDB, Clustrix, VoltDB MySQL Engines – Highly Optimized storage engine for SQL with the interface of MySQ Lare the example of such category. E.g. InnoDB, Akiban Transparent Sharding – This system automatically split database across multiple nodes. E.g. Scalearc  Summary In simple words – NewSQL is kind of database following relational database principals and provides scalability like NoSQL. Tomorrow In tomorrow’s blog post we will discuss about the Role of Cloud Computing in Big Data. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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• How to port animation from one skeleton to another?

  - by shawn

  While I need to do this in a Blender3D modeler script, the math should be similar for other modelers or realtime engines. Blender3D specific terminology: Armature = skeleton EditBone = rest pose bone (stores the rest pose matrix) PoseBone = can store a different pose (animation matrix) for each frame of your animation I need to share animations (Blender Actions) between Armatures which have EditBones with same names and which have the same positions, but can have different (rest pose) angles and scales. Plus the Armatures might have different bone hierarchy (bone parenting/ no bone parenting). Why I need this: I've made an importer/exporter for a 3d format for a game. The format doesn't store enough info to connect/parent the bones, which makes posing/animating character models in a 3d modeller nearly impossible (original model files for the 3d modeler don't exist, this is for modding). As there are only 2 character skeleton types in the game, I decided to optionally allow to generate the bone from a hardcoded data in the model importer and undo that in the exporter. This allows to easily pose the model for checking weights, easily create weights, makes it easier for Blender to generate automatic weights and of course makes animating possible. This worked perfectly: the importer optionally generated the Armature itself and the exporter removed those changes, so the exported model works with existing animations in the game. But now I'm writing an importer and exporter for the game's animation format and here come the problems of: Trying to make original animations work in Blender with my "custom" (modified) Armature Trying to make animations created by using the "custom" (modified) Armature work with the original models in the game (and Blender). Constraints or bone snapping inside Blender won't work as they don't care that the bones have different angles in the rest pose, they will still face the same direction. It seems I just need to get the "difference" between the EditBone matrices of all EditBones for the two Armatures somehow and apply that difference to PoseBone matrices of all PoseBones, for all frames of my animation. I need to know how to get that difference and how to apply it. BTW, PoseBone matrices are relative to rest pose, they are by default [1.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000](matrix [row 0]) [0.000000, 1.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000](matrix [row 1]) [0.000000, 0.000000, 1.000000, 0.000000](matrix [row 2]) [0.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 1.000000](matrix [row 3]) So the question is: How to get the difference between two bone (EditBone) matrices to apply that difference to the animation matrices (PoseBone matrices)? Please be easy on the matrix math.

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• iTorque for a simple arcade game

  - by Herfus

  I have a basic understanding of programming, but I am no programmer. I've had a couple of a semesters with java programming, so we're talking pretty basic here. I have some scripting experience with game editors where I've created a few (simple) encounters, boss AI, abilities, events and so on. I've mostly done level design with UDK, Source and several other toolsets for a few years now, but I'd like to divert some of the focus to iphone-development. I've participated in a few development projects (source, udk, daot) where I've had a variety of roles (yet never beyond simple scripting). I have just finished prototyping an Iphone game (using game maker) and begun a bit more precise planning on what I'll have to do for the real version. The game is fairly simple, perhaps the best comparison in scope and complexity would be Doodlejump for iPhone. The reason I created the prototype was not just to answer a few questions about the gameplay, but to get some insight into what kind of problems I might face when trying to develop the real thing. I've been looking for engines that I can use for this. iTorque looks, so far, like the best option with a scripting language and WYSIWYG-editor. However the price is fairly steep and I'd like to prepare myself as much as possible before jumping into this, which is why I'm going to ask a few questions here. What kind of difficulties do you think I might run into, considering what you've read so far? Not just with torque, but development in general. I'm making this question mostly to have someone to reality check me. I usually achieve to do what I'm trying to do with scripting, but something tells me there's a very big difference between scripting an AI or an event and creating game logic. Will it be too much of a leap? Just how simple is it to use the Torque scripting language? Obviously I don't expect to be prepared, I expect it to be a learning process. However, I'd still like to be at least a bit confident on the time I'll have to dedicate to this first.

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• Bullet Physics - Casting a ray straight down from a rigid body (first person camera)

  - by Hydrocity

  I've implemented a first person camera using Bullet--it's a rigid body with a capsule shape. I've only been using Bullet for a few days and physics engines are new to me. I use btRigidBody::setLinearVelocity() to move it and it collides perfectly with the world. The only problem is the Y-value moves freely, which I temporarily solved by setting the Y-value of the translation vector to zero before the body is moved. This works for all cases except when falling from a height. When the body drops off a tall object, you can still glide around since the translate vector's Y-value is being set to zero, until you stop moving and fall to the ground (the velocity is only set when moving). So to solve this I would like to try casting a ray down from the body to determine the Y-value of the world, and checking the difference between that value and the Y-value of the camera body, and disable or slow down movement if the difference is large enough. I'm a bit stuck on simply casting a ray and determining the Y-value of the world where it struck. I've implemented this callback: struct AllRayResultCallback : public btCollisionWorld::RayResultCallback{ AllRayResultCallback(const btVector3& rayFromWorld, const btVector3& rayToWorld) : m_rayFromWorld(rayFromWorld), m_rayToWorld(rayToWorld), m_closestHitFraction(1.0){} btVector3 m_rayFromWorld; btVector3 m_rayToWorld; btVector3 m_hitNormalWorld; btVector3 m_hitPointWorld; float m_closestHitFraction; virtual btScalar addSingleResult(btCollisionWorld::LocalRayResult& rayResult, bool normalInWorldSpace) { if(rayResult.m_hitFraction < m_closestHitFraction) m_closestHitFraction = rayResult.m_hitFraction; m_collisionObject = rayResult.m_collisionObject; if(normalInWorldSpace){ m_hitNormalWorld = rayResult.m_hitNormalLocal; } else{ m_hitNormalWorld = m_collisionObject->getWorldTransform().getBasis() * rayResult.m_hitNormalLocal; } m_hitPointWorld.setInterpolate3(m_rayFromWorld, m_rayToWorld, m_closestHitFraction); return 1.0f; } }; And in the movement function, I have this code: btVector3 from(pos.x, pos.y + 1000, pos.z); // pos is the camera's rigid body position btVector3 to(pos.x, 0, pos.z); // not sure if 0 is correct for Y AllRayResultCallback callback(from, to); Base::getSingletonPtr()->m_btWorld->rayTest(from, to, callback); So I have the callback.m_hitPointWorld vector, which seems to just show the position of the camera each frame. I've searched Google for examples of casting rays, as well as the Bullet documentation, and it's been hard to just find an example. An example is really all I need. Or perhaps there is some method in Bullet to keep the rigid body on the ground? I'm using Ogre3D as a rendering engine, and casting a ray down is quite straightforward with that, however I want to keep all the ray casting within Bullet for simplicity. Could anyone point me in the right direction? Thanks.

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• Pretty URL in ADF Faces of JDeveloper 11.1.2.2

  - by Frank Nimphius

  Many features planned for Oracle JDeveloper 12c find their way into current releases of Oracle JDeveloper 11g R1 and JDeveloper 11g R2. One example of such a feature is "pretty URL" - or "clean URL" as the Oracle JDeveloper 11g R2 (11.1.2.2) documentation puts it. "A.2.3.24 Clean URLs Historically, ADF Faces has used URL parameters to hold information, such as window IDs and state. However, URL parameters can prevent search engines from recognizing when URLs are actually the same, and therefore interfere with analytics. URL parameters can also interfere with bookmarking. By default, ADF Faces removes URL parameters using the HTML5 History Management API. If that API is unavailable, then session cookies are used.You can also manually configure how URL parameters are removed using the context parameter oracle.adf.view.rich.prettyURL.OPTIONS. Set the parameter to off so that no parameters are removed. Set the parameter to useHistoryApi to only use the HTML5 History Management API. If a browser does not support this API, then no parameters will be removed. Set the parameter to useCookies to use session cookies to remove parameters. If the browser does not support cookies, then no parameters will be removed." See: http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E26098_01/web.1112/e16181/ap_config.htm#ADFUI12856 So basically, what this part in the documentation says is: In JDeveloper 11g R2 (11.1.2.2), Oracle ADF Faces automatically removes its internally used dynamic parameters from the URL You can influence the setting with the prettyURL.OPTIONS context option, which however is not recommended you to do because the default behavior is able to detect if the browser client supports HTML 5 History management or not. In the latter case it the uses a session cookie and if this doesn't work, falls back to the "old" URL parameter adding. The information that is not so explicit and clearly mentioned in the documentation is that this is only for ADF Faces parameters (such as _afrLoop, Adf-Window-Id, etc.), but not the ADF controller token (_adf.ctrl-state)! Removing the ADF controller token is an enhancement request that will be implemented in Oracle JDeveloper 12c

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• Is there a pedagogical game engine?

  - by K.G.

  I'm looking for a book, website, or other resource that gives modern 3D game engines the same treatment as Operating Systems: Design and Implementation gave operating systems. I have read Jason Gregory's Game Engine Architecture, which I enjoyed. However, by intent the author treated components of the architecture as atomic units, whereas what I'm interested in is the plumbing between those units that makes a coherent whole out of ideally loosely coupled parts. In books such as these, one usually reads that "that's academic," but that's the point! I have also read Julian Gold's Object-oriented Game Development, which likewise was good, but I feel is beginning to show its age. Since even mobile platforms these days are multicore and have fast video memory, those kinds of things (concurrency, display item buffering) would ideally be covered. There are other resources, such as the Doom 3 source code, which is highly instructive for its being a shipped product. The problem with those is as follows: float Q_rsqrt( float number ) { long i; float x2, y; const float threehalfs = 1.5F; x2 = number * 0.5F; y = number; i = * ( long * ) &y; // evil floating point bit level hacking i = 0x5f3759df - ( i >> 1 ); // what the f***? y = * ( float * ) &i; y = y * ( threehalfs - ( x2 * y * y ) ); // 1st iteration // y = y * ( threehalfs - ( x2 * y * y ) ); // 2nd iteration, this can be removed return y; } To wit, while brilliant, this kind of source requires more enlightenment than I can usually muster upon first read. In summary, here's my white whale: For an adult reader with experience in programming. I wish I could save all the trees killed by every. Single. Game Programming book ever devoting the first two chapters to "Now just what is a variable anyway?" In C or C++, very preferably C++. Languages that are more concise are fantastic for teaching, except for when what you want to learn is how to cope with a verbose language. There is also the benefit of the guardrails that C++ doesn't provide, such as garbage collection. Platform agnostic. I'm sincerely afraid that this book is out there and it's Visual C++/DirectX oriented. I'm a Linux guy, and I'd do what it takes, but I would very much like to be able to use OpenGL. Thanks for everything! Before anyone gets on my case about it, Fast inverse square root was from Quake III Arena, not Doom 3!

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• 3 Reasons You Need To Know Something About Every Technology

  - by Tim Murphy

  I make my living as a consultant and a general technologist.  I credit my success to the fact that I have never been afraid to pick up any product, language or platform needed to get the job done.  While Microsoft technologies I my mainstay, I have done work on mainframe and UNIX platforms and have worked with a wide variety of database engines.  Each one has it’s use and most times it is less expensive to find a way to communicate with an existing system than to replace it. So what are the main benefits of expending the effort to learn a new technology? New ways to solve problems Accelerate development Advise clients and get new business opportunities By new technology I mean ones that you haven’t had experience with before.  They don’t have to be the the one that just came out yesterday.  As they say, those who do not learn from history are bound to repeat it.  If you can learn something from an older technology it can be just as valuable as the shiny new one.  Either way, when you add another tool to your kit you get a new view on each problem you face.  This makes it easier to create a sound solution. The next thing you can learn from working with different products and techniques is how to more efficiently develop solve problems.  Many times if you are working with a new language you will find that there are specific design patterns that are used with it in normal use.  These can usually be applied with most languages.  You just needed to be exposed to them. The last point is about helping your clients and helping yourself.  If you can get in on technologies early you will have advantage over your competition in the market.  You will also be able to honestly advise you client on why they should or should not go with a new product.  Being able to compare products and their features is always an ability that stake holders appreciate. You don’t need to learn every detail of a product.  Learn enough to function and get an idea of how to use the technology.  Keep eating those technology Wheaties and you will be ready to go the distance in any project. del.icio.us Tags: Technology,technologists,technology generalist,Software Architecture

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

  - by Abhijit

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

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• 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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• Calculating a circle or sphere along a vector

  - by Sparky

  Updated this post and the one at Math SE (http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/127866/calculating-a-circle-or-sphere-along-a-vector), hope this makes more sense. I previously posted a question (about half an hour ago) involving computations along line segments, but the question and discussion were really off track and not what I was trying to get at. I am trying to work with an FPS engine I am attempting to build in Java. The problem I am encountering is with hitboxing. I am trying to calculate whether or not a "shot" is valid. I am working with several approaches and any insight would be helpful. I am not a native speaker of English nor skilled in Math so please bear with me. Player position is at P0 = (x0,y0,z0), Enemy is at P1 = (x1,y1,z1). I can of course compute the distance between them easily. The target needs a "hitbox" object, which is basically a square/rectangle/mesh either in front of, in, or behind them. Here are the solutions I am considering: I have ruled this out...doesn't seem practical. [Place a "hitbox" a small distance in front of the target. Then I would be able to find the distance between the player and the hitbox, and the hitbox and the target. It is my understanding that you can compute a circle with this information, and I could simply consider any shot within that circle a "hit". However this seems not to be an optimal solution, because it requires you to perform a lot of calculations and is not fully accurate.] Input, please! Place the hitbox "in" the player. This seems like the better solution. In this case what I need is a way to calculate a circle along the vector, at whatever position I wish (in this case, the distance between the two objects). Then I can pick some radius that encompasses the whole player, and count anything within this area a "hit". I am open to your suggestions. I'm trying to do this on paper and have no familiarity with game engines. If any software folk out there think I'm doing this the hard way, I'm open to help! Also - Anyone with JOGL/LWJGL experience, please chime in. Is this making sense?

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• I'm graduating with a Computer Science degree but I don't feel like I know how to program.

  - by wp123

  I'm graduating with a Computer Science degree but I see websites like Stack Overflow and search engines like Google and don't know where I'd even begin to write something like that. During one summer I did have the opportunity to work as a iPhone developer, but I felt like I was mostly gluing together libraries that other people had written with little understanding of the mechanics happening beneath the hood. I'm trying to improve my knowledge by studying algorithms, but it is a long and painful process. I find algorithms difficult and at the rate I am learning a decade will have passed before I will master the material in the book. Given my current situation, I've spent a month looking for work but my skills (C, Python, Objective-C) are relatively shallow and are not so desirable in the local market, where C#, Java, and web development are much higher in demand. That is not to say that C and Python opportunities do not exist but they tend to demand 3+ years of experience I do not have. My GPA is OK (3.0) but it's not high enough to apply to the large companies like IBM or return for graduate studies. Basically I'm graduating with a Computer Science degree but I don't feel like I've learned how to program. I thought that joining a company and programming full-time would give me a chance to develop my skills and learn from those more experienced than myself, but I'm struggling to find work and am starting to get really frustrated. I am going to cast my net wider and look beyond the city I've grown up in, but what have other people in similar situation tried to do? I've worked hard but don't have the confidence to go out on my own and write my own app. (That is, become an indie developer in the iPhone app market.) If nothing turns up I will need to consider upgrading and learning more popular skills or try something marginally related like IT, but given all the effort I've put in that feels like copping out. EDIT: Thank you for all the advice. I think I was premature because of unrealistic expectations but the comments have given me a dose of reality. I will persevere and continue to code. I have a project in mind, although well beyond my current capabilities it will challenge me to hone my craft and prove my worth to myself (and potential employers). Had I known there was a career overflow I would have posted there instead. Thanks again!

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• Response: Agile's Second Chasm

  - by Malcolm Anderson

  William Pietri over at Agile Focus has written an interesting article entitled, "Agile’s Second Chasm (and how we fell in)" in which he talks about how agile development has fallen into a common trap where large companies are now spending a lot of money hiring agile (Scrum) consultants just so that they can say they are agile, but all the while avoiding any change that is required by Scrum.   It echoes the questions that I've been asking for a while, "Can a fortune 500 company actually do agile development?"  I'm starting to think that the answer is "usually not"   William ask 3 questions at the end of his article that I will answer here.   1) Have I seen agile development brought in and then preemptively customized (read: made into ScrummerFall)?   Yes, Scrum is hard and disruptive.  It's a spotlight on company dysfunction.  In a low trust environment like most fortune 500 companies Scrum will be subverted by anyone who has ever seen "transparency" translate into someone being laid off.   2) If I had to do it all over again, would I change anything?  No, this is a natural progression, but the agile principles are powerful enough, that the companies that don't adopt them will no longer be competitive and will start to fail.   3) Is this situation solvable?  I think it is.  I think that one of the issues is that you often see companies implementing Scrum, but avoiding the agile engineering practices.  I believe that you cannot do one without the other.  Scrum keeps the ship sailing in smooth deep waters.  The agile engineering practices keep the engine running smoothly and cleanly.  If you implement agile engineering practices without Scrum, you run the risk of ending up with a great running piece of software that is useful to no one.  On the other hand, implementing cargo-cult Scrum without the agile engineering practices and you end up (especially in a fortune 500 company) being steered in the right direction, but with your development practices coming to a dead halt because you have code that can not keep up with the changes in requirements.   If you are trying to do Scrum, make sure that you hire some agile engineering coaches, or else you may find your deveolpment engines grinding to a dead halt in the middle of the open ocean.

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• Apache logging issues

  - by Dan

  I'm trying to parse apache log files, but I'm finding some strange results and I'm not sure what they mean. Hopefully someone can provide some insight. (all of the IP addresses were altered. none actually start with 192, I didn't figure the search engines mattered though.) In the first example, multiple ip addresses are showing up in the host field: 192.249.71.25 - - [04/Aug/2009:04:21:44 -0500] "GET /publications/example.pdf HTTP/1.1" 200 2738 192.0.100.93, 192.20.31.86 - - [04/Aug/2009:04:21:22 -0500] "GET /docs/another.pdf HTTP/1.0" 206 371469 What causes this? Does it have to do with proxy servers? Is there a way to have Apache only log one? In the second example, a bunch of information is just completely missing! What would cause this? msnbot-65-55-207-50.search.msn.com - - [29/Dec/2009:15:45:16 -0600] "GET /publications/example.pdf HTTP/1.1" 200 3470073 "-" "msnbot/2.0b (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)" 266 3476792 - - - - "-" - - "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; InfoPath.1)" 285 594 - - - - "-" - - "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; InfoPath.1)" 285 4195 - - - - "-" - - "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; InfoPath.1)" 299 109218 crawl-17c.cuil.com - - [29/Dec/2009:15:45:46 -0600] "GET /publications/another.pdf HTTP/1.0" 200 101481 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Twiceler-0.9 http://www.cuil.com/twiceler/robot.html)" 253 101704 My CustomLog configuration says: LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %s %b \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-agent}i\" %I %O" common

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• Software to capture 3d geometry?

  - by user712092

  Programs I found I found these programs to capture OpenGL 3D scene : 3D Ripper, OpenGL and D3D geometry capture, there are some solved problems with 3D Ripper GLIntercept captures OpenGL function calls OpenGL Extractor captures 3d geometry; should work as plugin for GLIntercept another tool to capture OpenGL 3D data EDIT: There is also HijackGL which changes how a scene is rendered so it probably can be used to capture geometry; it is backed up by a academic paper; it is just just a nice program, not related to what I want i think (or it would might be hard to change it to be for what I want, because it would require programming). 3D Ripper captures geometry, textures and shaders. OpenGL Extractor captures just geometry ... General questions about such programs What is Your experience with these programs? Which of these programs would You recommmend? Do You know other such programs? Were there any problems with them, or are there problems with them in general? Are there programs which work best overall, or is it specific to certain 3d applications? What I need to do? I am looking to program which can capture 3d geometry for study purposes. And also for a program to capture 3D animation (frames of 3d animation). I tried only 3D Ripper because application I try to capture data from is on Direct 3D. 3D Ripper works with at least Direct 3D 9, this application has Direct 3D 6. Are there applications which work with older version of Direct 3D? Thank You very much. :) (I was verbose in link names because I want them to be indexed better by search engines.)

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• How can I run Gnome or KDE locally in Cygwin?

  - by John Peter Thompson Garcés

  Apparently it is possible to do this using cygwin ports, as can be seen in screenshots. I followed this how-to to get apt-cygports set up, and I used it to install gnome-session. This how-to supposedly gives the commands needed to run Gnome or KDE, but whenever I try to run Gnome, a blank X-window pops up and then quickly disappears. Here is the terminal output: $ startx /usr/bin/dbus-launch gnome-session xauth: file /home/jpthomps/.serverauth.4168 does not exist Welcome to the XWin X Server Vendor: The Cygwin/X Project Release: 1.10.3.0 OS: Windows 7 Service Pack 1 [Windows NT 6.1 build 7601] (WoW64) Package: version 1.10.3-12 built 2011-08-22 XWin was started with the following command line: /usr/bin/X :0 -auth /home/jpthomps/.serverauth.4168 (II) xorg.conf is not supported (II) See http://x.cygwin.com/docs/faq/cygwin-x-faq.html for more information LoadPreferences: /home/jpthomps/.XWinrc not found LoadPreferences: Loading /etc/X11/system.XWinrc LoadPreferences: Done parsing the configuration file... winDetectSupportedEngines - DirectDraw installed, allowing ShadowDD winDetectSupportedEngines - Windows NT, allowing PrimaryDD winDetectSupportedEngines - DirectDraw4 installed, allowing ShadowDDNL winDetectSupportedEngines - Returning, supported engines 0000001f winSetEngine - Using Shadow DirectDraw NonLocking winScreenInit - Using Windows display depth of 32 bits per pixel winFinishScreenInitFB - Masks: 00ff0000 0000ff00 000000ff Screen 0 added at virtual desktop coordinate (0,0). MIT-SHM extension disabled due to lack of kernel support XFree86-Bigfont extension local-client optimization disabled due to lack of shared memory support in the kernel (II) AIGLX: Loaded and initialized /usr/lib/dri/swrast_dri.so (II) GLX: Initialized DRISWRAST GL provider for screen 0 winPointerWarpCursor - Discarding first warp: 637 478 (--) 5 mouse buttons found (--) Setting autorepeat to delay=500, rate=31 (--) Windows keyboard layout: "00000409" (00000409) "US", type 4 (--) Found matching XKB configuration "English (USA)" (--) Model = "pc105" Layout = "us" Variant = "none" Options = "none" Rules = "base" Model = "pc105" Layout = "us" Variant = "none" Options = "none" winBlockHandler - pthread_mutex_unlock() winProcEstablishConnection - winInitClipboard returned. winClipboardProc - DISPLAY=:0.0 winClipboardProc - XOpenDisplay () returned and successfully opened the display. xinit: XFree86_VT property unexpectedly has 0 items instead of 1 xinit: connection to X server lost waiting for X server to shut down winClipboardProc - winClipboardFlushWindowsMessageQueue trapped WM_QUIT message, exiting main loop. winClipboardProc - XDestroyWindow succeeded. winClipboardProc - Clipboard disabled - Exit from server winDeinitMultiWindowWM - Noting shutdown in progress

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• Need Info on the Hidden Switch in SET - "/S" How to implement

  - by ttyl

  I am having some problems doing a proper search of "SET/S" or "SET /S" on google and other search providers. The difficulty arises with the SLASH "/", it is commonly used in search engines to add a "nearness" to the search parameter. I have found no way to escape the SLASH when searching for a SLASH. For those on this community, try searching this domain with the two search terms listed above. It just doesn't work, it ends up looking for SET S instead. But I digress. So Im asking the uber-guru's on this board to help me find out about the documentation of /S and how to implement SET /S in a batch file. SET is an internal DOS/cmd commandand allows many things incuding prompting the user, integer math and writing environment strings. in looking at this link: http://www.robvanderwoude.com/os2set.php it appears that the /S is only for OS2 but im thinking that this might not be the case, due to this: http://www.dostips.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2704, apparently used with substings and macros. any help is much appreciated

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• Redmine plug-in fails at rake db:migrate_plugins

  - by Drew

  Hey, First post, so hope I'm in the right place. While trying to install the Redmine plug-in 'Wiki Extensions', I keep getting stuck when I try to run the "rake db:migrate_plugins RAILS_ENV=production" command. I am moving server and I'm in bit over my head. Haven't found anything on Google that has helped me much, though I might have missed something. I have pasted in the output with --trace: (in /srv/www/vastpark.org/redmine) ** Invoke db:migrate_plugins (first_time) ** Invoke environment (first_time) ** Execute environment ** Execute db:migrate_plugins Migrating engines... Migrating acts_as_activity_provider... Migrating acts_as_attachable... Migrating acts_as_customizable... Migrating acts_as_event... Migrating acts_as_list... Migrating acts_as_searchable... Migrating acts_as_tree... Migrating acts_as_versioned... Migrating acts_as_watchable... Migrating awesome_nested_set... Migrating classic_pagination... Migrating coderay-0.9.2... Migrating gravatar... Migrating open_id_authentication... Migrating prepend_engine_views... Migrating redmine_wiki_extensions... == CreateWikiExtensionsComments: migrating =================================== -- create_table(:wiki_extensions_comments) rake aborted! An error has occurred, all later migrations canceled: Mysql::Error: Table 'wiki_extensions_comments' already exists: CREATE TABLE 'wiki_extensions_comments' ('id' int(11) DEFAULT NULL auto_increment PRIMARY KEY, 'wiki_page_id' int(11), 'key_word' varchar(255), 'user_id' int(11), 'comment' text, 'created_at' datetime, 'updated_at' datetime) ENGINE=InnoDB

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• should i link to a blog site or install my own blog engine?

  - by dc

  we're setting up a company blog. Our technology stack is .NET. Should we just use blogger/wordpress for the blog and redirect to it from our site? or should i install a blog engine directly on our site (e.g. blogEngine.NET)? some considerations i'd like feedback on are: 1.SEO - if you host your blog on wordpress/blogger instead of installing it on your site - will you get better page rankings? (if the content was the exact same) 2.scalability - i've read that dotNetBlogEngine doesnt scale well on web farms etc. our website is setup to be stateless. 3.security - presumably a hosted blog site has the advantage of having regular security updates. how easy is it to keep an installed blog engine patched? 4.examples of installed blog engines - dotNetBlogEngine seems to be the best but has a couple of limitations. can anyone suggest another one (n/a if you're advice is to host the blog on blogger/wordpress) 5.any other comments/issues/concerns we should be aware of? thanks for your feedback!

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• Redirect 301 fails with a path as destination

  - by Martijn Heemels

  I'm using a large number of Redirect 301's which are suddenly failing on a new webserver. We're in pre-production tests on the new webserver, prior to migrating the sites, but some sites are failing with 500 Internal Server Error. The content, both databases and files, are mirrored from the old to the new server, so we can test if all sites work properly. I traced this problem to mod_alias' Redirect statement, which is used from .htaccess to redirect visitors and search engines from old content to new pages. Apparently the Apache server requires the destination to be a full url, including protocol and hostname. Redirect 301 /directory/ /target/ # Not Valid Redirect 301 /main.html / # Not Valid Redirect 301 /directory/ http://www.example.com/target/ # Valid Redirect 301 /main.html http://www.example.com/ # Valid This contradicts the Apache documentation for Apache 2.2, which states: The new URL should be an absolute URL beginning with a scheme and hostname, but a URL-path beginning with a slash may also be used, in which case the scheme and hostname of the current server will be added. Of course I verified that we're using Apache 2.2 on both the old and the new server. The old server is a Gentoo box with Apache 2.2.11, while the new one is a RHEL 5 box with Apache 2.2.3. The workaround would be to change all paths to full URL's, or to convert the statements to mod_rewrite rules, but I'd prefer the documented behaviour. What are your experiences?

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