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  • R Tree 50,000 foot overview?

    - by roufamatic
    I'm working on a school project that involves taking a lat/long point and finding the top five closest points in a known list of places. The list is to be stored in memory, with the caveat that we must choose an "appropriate data structure" -- that is, we cannot simply store all the places in an array and compare distances one-by-one in a linear fashion. The teacher suggested grouping the place data by US State to prevent calculating the distance for places that are obviously too far away. I think I can do better. From my research online it seems like an R-Tree or one of its variants might be a neat solution. Unfortunately, that sentence is as far as I've gotten with understanding the actual technique, as the literature is simply too dense for my non-academic head. Can somebody give me a really high overview of what the process is for populating an R-Tree with lat/long data, and then traversing the tree to find those 5 nearest neighbors of a given point? Additionally the project is in C, and I don't have to reinvent the wheel on this, so if you've used an existing open source C implementation of an R Tree I'd be interested in your experiences.

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  • Framework or CMS for php web development?

    - by rocknroll
    Hi all, I am a C++,Unix developer who has never dabbled in web development apart from creating simple HTML pages. I am going to change that and develop a website at a personal level soon. I am going to use php,mysql on a linux machine. In this regard I am browsing through relevant literature. The language isn't a problem but reading about CMS's and frameworks is confusing. And since I am new to web development, the number of CMS's and Frameworks are overwhelming. ? My question is do I need to have knowledge of one or more CMS' and/or Frameworks like Drupal,Joomla,Zend,Wordpress etc. If yes which is the best open source CMS' and/or Framework suggested for a newbie. ?? If the answer to the above question is yes, does the choice changes if one delves into the realms of commercial web development? Note:- I will be developing on a Linux machine, using open source tools. Thanks in advance

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  • Trouble understanding the semantics of volatile in Java

    - by HungryTux
    I've been reading up about the use of volatile variables in Java. I understand that they ensure instant visibility of their latest updates to all the threads running in the system on different cores/processors. However no atomicity of the operations that caused these updates is ensured. I see the following literature being used frequently A write to a volatile field happens-before every read of that same field . This is where I am a little confused. Here's a snippet of code which should help me better explain my query. volatile int x = 0; volatile int y = 0; Thread-0: | Thread-1: | if (x==1) { | if (y==1) { return false; | return false; } else { | } else { y=1; | x=1; return true; | return true; } | } Since x & y are both volatile, we have the following happens-before edges between the write of y in Thread-0 and read of y in Thread-1 between the write of x in Thread-1 and read of x in Thread-0 Does this imply that, at any point of time, only one of the threads can be in its 'else' block(since a write would happen before the read)? It may well be possible that Thread-0 starts, loads x, finds it value as 0 and right before it is about to write y in the else-block, there's a context switch to Thread-1 which loads y finds it value as 0 and thus enters the else-block too. Does volatile guard against such context switches (seems very unlikely)?

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  • CS, SE, HCI, Information Science, Please recommendation for further education of the former performing art manager seeking career in IT industries? [on hold]

    - by Baek Seungjoo
    IT specialists there J Thank you very much for your collective efforts here, and I got huge help reading your professional comments and advices on each questions I have searched so far! This time, I would like to ask for your practical advices or recommendation on what I am struggling on at this moment. I am currently seeking higher education for my career transition from performing art manager and director to “IT software and/or service development and management specialist”. However, as this field is quite new to me, and there are lots of different work positions, I have no idea which grad major I better pursue in order to get qualification. Of course I know this question could sounds wired as it is kind of personal choice. But my lack of understanding on how IT software companies work in general, your practical and experience-based advice will be great help to me, who spent more than two months of self-research on net. OK. Before my question, here is my plan and history, which are quite different from those currently in IT industry I think… 1) Target Firstly, get career transition into IT service or products companies and get experiences. Eventually, pursue IT entrepreneurship in combination with my arts and cultural production and business expertise. 2) Background Career: performing arts director and manager in theatre-based scale opera and musical Art education in youth BA in literature and Chinese studies (Art & Humanities) MA in Cultural & Creative Industries (Art & Humanities) – dissertation with focus on digital prosumption and the lived experience of the prosumer. (a qualitative research on the agents in the digital world) 2) Personally Huge interest in IT hardware and software, and their trend. Skills to build up, repair, tune PCs -of course this is no more than personal hobby, but shows my interests in this field. 4) Problem Encounter a question “So, what do you think you can contribute practically in this position”. This question turn me down everytime I go through job interviews, and I decided more education in the relevant area. Here are my questions. 1) In terms of work positions in IT software companies, I wonder if I can put the comparison of what “Artists” is to “Arts Manager or Director” is what “Developer” is to “Product Manager”. (Of course, this stereotypical division of Artist-Art Manager is out of sense because the domain overlaps to some extent, and is blurring at least in my field, and they are in different contexts, but just speaking easily.) Normally, artist comes with special arts educations, and they live in their own world of artistic inspiration and creation, and they feel alive in practice and on stages. Meanwhile, from the point of staging and managing productions, the role of art manager is critical as well. Our role cares how the production appeals to the audience in effective way, how to make profit and future sustainable management through that, how to set up future strategy in consideration of the external conditions such as political and social circumstances, audience trend and level, other production trends from on-going and historical perspectives, how and what the production make voice to the society from political, economic, humanitarian stances. So, we need keen eyes on economic, political, and societal environment, have to understand human-being and their desires, must know how to make presentation and attract investors, must have sense in managing and fighting over the limited financial resource, how to extend networking and so on. It is common that the two agents create productions in collaboration (normally not in that ideal way but in conflict and fight though J ). So, we need to know each other’s expertise to some extent, for better production. What are the work positions in IT software industries equivalent to the role of “art manager” in performing arts? From my view, considering developers come with special education in the world of computer science, software engineering, or others (self-education sometimes), and they express themselves with the arts of coding, computer languages on the black screen, and make sort of their artistic production online to the audience, I guess there might be someone who collaborate with developers in creating, managing, and launching IT services or products. 2) Which education among CS, SE, HCI, Information Science, is needed for those seeking such work position? Especially for person like me. (At this moment, Information Science has the highest possibility to get in, since I lack Calculus and Math in undergrad educaiton. But please let me know irrespective of this concern, I think there are ways to back it up if CS or SE education needed in my case) 3) Which field between Information Science and HCI can be more practical background regarding job hungting? And which of them have more demands in job market? AS I checked, HCI is more close to CS than IS in its focus of study area. Thank you very much for your patience reading such a long inquiry, and I appreciate to your efforts in advance. Have a nice day in this beautiful summer.

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  • Plagued by multithreaded bugs

    - by koncurrency
    On my new team that I manage, the majority of our code is platform, TCP socket, and http networking code. All C++. Most of it originated from other developers that have left the team. The current developers on the team are very smart, but mostly junior in terms of experience. Our biggest problem: multi-threaded concurrency bugs. Most of our class libraries are written to be asynchronous by use of some thread pool classes. Methods on the class libraries often enqueue long running taks onto the thread pool from one thread and then the callback methods of that class get invoked on a different thread. As a result, we have a lot of edge case bugs involving incorrect threading assumptions. This results in subtle bugs that go beyond just having critical sections and locks to guard against concurrency issues. What makes these problems even harder is that the attempts to fix are often incorrect. Some mistakes I've observed the team attempting (or within the legacy code itself) includes something like the following: Common mistake #1 - Fixing concurrency issue by just put a lock around the shared data, but forgetting about what happens when methods don't get called in an expected order. Here's a very simple example: void Foo::OnHttpRequestComplete(statuscode status) { m_pBar->DoSomethingImportant(status); } void Foo::Shutdown() { m_pBar->Cleanup(); delete m_pBar; m_pBar=nullptr; } So now we have a bug in which Shutdown could get called while OnHttpNetworkRequestComplete is occuring on. A tester finds the bug, captures the crash dump, and assigns the bug to a developer. He in turn fixes the bug like this. void Foo::OnHttpRequestComplete(statuscode status) { AutoLock lock(m_cs); m_pBar->DoSomethingImportant(status); } void Foo::Shutdown() { AutoLock lock(m_cs); m_pBar->Cleanup(); delete m_pBar; m_pBar=nullptr; } The above fix looks good until you realize there's an even more subtle edge case. What happens if Shutdown gets called before OnHttpRequestComplete gets called back? The real world examples my team has are even more complex, and the edge cases are even harder to spot during the code review process. Common Mistake #2 - fixing deadlock issues by blindly exiting the lock, wait for the other thread to finish, then re-enter the lock - but without handling the case that the object just got updated by the other thread! Common Mistake #3 - Even though the objects are reference counted, the shutdown sequence "releases" it's pointer. But forgets to wait for the thread that is still running to release it's instance. As such, components are shutdown cleanly, then spurious or late callbacks are invoked on an object in an state not expecting any more calls. There are other edge cases, but the bottom line is this: Multithreaded programming is just plain hard, even for smart people. As I catch these mistakes, I spend time discussing the errors with each developer on developing a more appropriate fix. But I suspect they are often confused on how to solve each issue because of the enormous amount of legacy code that the "right" fix will involve touching. We're going to be shipping soon, and I'm sure the patches we're applying will hold for the upcoming release. Afterwards, we're going to have some time to improve the code base and refactor where needed. We won't have time to just re-write everything. And the majority of the code isn't all that bad. But I'm looking to refactor code such that threading issues can be avoided altogether. One approach I am considering is this. For each significant platform feature, have a dedicated single thread where all events and network callbacks get marshalled onto. Similar to COM apartment threading in Windows with use of a message loop. Long blocking operations could still get dispatched to a work pool thread, but the completion callback is invoked on on the component's thread. Components could possibly even share the same thread. Then all the class libraries running inside the thread can be written under the assumption of a single threaded world. Before I go down that path, I am also very interested if there are other standard techniques or design patterns for dealing with multithreaded issues. And I have to emphasize - something beyond a book that describes the basics of mutexes and semaphores. What do you think? I am also interested in any other approaches to take towards a refactoring process. Including any of the following: Literature or papers on design patterns around threads. Something beyond an introduction to mutexes and semaphores. We don't need massive parallelism either, just ways to design an object model so as to handle asynchronous events from other threads correctly. Ways to diagram the threading of various components, so that it will be easy to study and evolve solutions for. (That is, a UML equivalent for discussing threads across objects and classes) Educating your development team on the issues with multithreaded code. What would you do?

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  • Using GraphicsServices.h/GSEvent as well as compiling CLI iPhone tools with XCode

    - by Peter Hajas
    I sent this to KennyTM (has all the private framework headers on GitHub) but I figured I'd ask here too just in case someone has some good ideas or any way to help me out. I'm trying to write a command line utility that sends GSEvents to operate the keyboard, touch/drag elements onscreen, and operate hardware buttons (volume, home, sleep, etc.) I grabbed the MouseSupport code and tried to look through it, but I couldn't find the easiest way to send GSEvents. I'm hoping someone here can help me. First, what's the simplest way to declare a GSEvent and send it? I looked at the iPhone development wiki, but the documentation was very vague. I understand that there's a purple event port (?) that I have to send these events to, but I don't understand how to do that. Could someone offer examples for, say, touching at a coordinate, typing a certain key, or pressing a hardware button? Also, do I have to write or do anything special if I want this utility to operate all applications as well as Springboard? I don't know if this is a special case because I want it at the OS level. Ideally, I would SSH into the phone, start the program, and it would send GSEvents that would be handled by whatever application was open. As far as compiling this code, is there any way to do so under XCode? I don't know what sort of project template I should use (if any) and this is throwing me off. I don't need "build and go" support, I'm more than happy to scp the program over to the phone. I understand that compiling the code is also feasible on the phone. I have all of the headers from the SDK on my phone along with iphone-gcc, but when compiling some test programs I still get errors about not finding mach headers and CoreFoundation. Is there an easier way to do this? Lastly, are there other guides or pieces of literature that anyone can point me towards for learning more about this? I'm excited to get into open iPhone development (I have experience with the official SDK, but I want to go deeper). Thanks for any and all help people can offer!

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  • Overloading *(iterator + n) and *(n + iterator) in a C++ iterator class?

    - by exscape
    (Note: I'm writing this project for learning only; comments about it being redundant are... uh, redundant. ;) I'm trying to implement a random access iterator, but I've found very little literature on the subject, so I'm going by trial and error combined with Wikpedias list of operator overload prototypes. It's worked well enough so far, but I've hit a snag. Code such as exscape::string::iterator i = string_instance.begin(); std::cout << *i << std::endl; works, and prints the first character of the string. However, *(i + 1) doesn't work, and neither does *(1 + i). My full implementation would obviously be a bit too much, but here's the gist of it: namespace exscape { class string { friend class iterator; ... public: class iterator : public std::iterator<std::random_access_iterator_tag, char> { ... char &operator*(void) { return *p; // After some bounds checking } char *operator->(void) { return p; } char &operator[](const int offset) { return *(p + offset); // After some bounds checking } iterator &operator+=(const int offset) { p += offset; return *this; } const iterator operator+(const int offset) { iterator out (*this); out += offset; return out; } }; }; } int main() { exscape::string s = "ABCDEF"; exscape::string::iterator i = s.begin(); std::cout << *(i + 2) << std::endl; } The above fails with (line 632 is, of course, the *(i + 2) line): string.cpp: In function ‘int main()’: string.cpp:632: error: no match for ‘operator*’ in ‘*exscape::string::iterator::operator+(int)(2)’ string.cpp:105: note: candidates are: char& exscape::string::iterator::operator*() *(2 + i) fails with: string.cpp: In function ‘int main()’: string.cpp:632: error: no match for ‘operator+’ in ‘2 + i’ string.cpp:434: note: candidates are: exscape::string exscape::operator+(const char*, const exscape::string&) My guess is that I need to do some more overloading, but I'm not sure what operator I'm missing.

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  • Help with jQuery Traversal

    - by Jack Webb-Heller
    Hi guys, I'm struggling a bit with traversing in jQuery. Here's the relevant markup: <ul id="sortable" class="ui-sortable"> <li> <img src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51Vza76tCxL._SL160_.jpg"> <div class="controls"> <span class="move">?</span> <span class="delete">?</span> </div> <div class="data"> <h1>War and Peace (Oxford World's Classics)</h1> <textarea>Published to coincide with the centenary of Tolstoy's death, here is an exciting new edition of one of the great literary works of world literature.</textarea> </div> </li> <li> <img src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51boZxm2seL._SL160_.jpg"> <div class="controls"> <span class="move">?</span> <span class="delete">?</span> </div> <div class="data"> <h1>A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Writings (Penguin Classics)</h1> <span>Optionally, write your own description in the box below.</span> <textarea>Dicken's Christmas writings-in a new, sumptuous, and delightful clothbound edition.</textarea> </div> </li> </ul> This is code for a jQuery UI 'Sortable' element. Here's what I want to happen. When the Delete thing is clicked ($('.delete')), I want the <li> item it's contained within to be removed. I've tried using $('.delete').parent().parent().remove(); but in the case of having two items, that seems to delete both of them. I'm a bit confused by this. I also tried using closest() to find the closest li, but that didn't seem to work either. How should I best traverse the DOM in this case? Thanks! Jack

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  • How to efficently build an interpreter (lexer+parser) in C?

    - by Rizo
    I'm trying to make a meta-language for writing markup code (such as xml and html) wich can be directly embedded into C/C++ code. Here is a simple sample written in this language, I call it WDI (Web Development Interface): /* * Simple wdi/html sample source code */ #include <mySite> string name = "myName"; string toCapital(string str); html { head { title { mySiteTitle; } link(rel="stylesheet", href="style.css"); } body(id="default") { // Page content wrapper div(id="wrapper", class="some_class") { h1 { "Hello, " + toCapital(name) + "!"; } // Lists post ul(id="post_list") { for(post in posts) { li { a(href=post.getID()) { post.tilte; } } } } } } } Basically it is a C source with a user-friendly interface for html. As you can see the traditional tag-based style is substituted by C-like, with blocks delimited by curly braces. I need to build an interpreter to translate this code to html and posteriorly insert it into C, so that it can be compiled. The C part stays intact. Inside the wdi source it is not necessary to use prints, every return statement will be used for output (in printf function). The program's output will be clean html code. So, for example a heading 1 tag would be transformed like this: h1 { "Hello, " + toCapital(name) + "!"; } // would become: printf("<h1>Hello, %s!</h1>", toCapital(name)); My main goal is to create an interpreter to translate wdi source to html like this: tag(attributes) {content} = <tag attributes>content</tag> Secondly, html code returned by the interpreter has to be inserted into C code with printfs. Variables and functions that occur inside wdi should also be sorted in order to use them as printf parameters (the case of toCapital(name) in sample source). I am searching for efficient (I want to create a fast parser) way to create a lexer and parser for wdi. Already tried flex and bison, but as I am not sure if they are the best tools. Are there any good alternatives? What is the best way to create such an interpreter? Can you advise some brief literature on this issue?

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  • Cepstral Analysis for pitch detection

    - by Ohmu
    Hi! I'm looking to extract pitches from a sound signal. Someone on IRC just explain to me how taking a double FFT achieves this. Specifically: take FFT take log of square of absolute value (can be done with lookup table) take another FFT take absolute value I am attempting this using vDSP I can't understand how I didn't come across this technique earlier. I did a lot of hunting and asking questions; several weeks worth. More to the point, I can't understand why I didn't think of it. I am attempting to achieve this with vDSP library. it looks as though it has functions to handle all of these tasks. However, I'm wondering about the accuracy of the final result. I have previously used a technique which scours the frequency bins of a single FFT for local maxima. when it encounters one, it uses a cunning technique (the change in phase since the last FFT) to more accurately place the actual peak within the bin. I am worried that this precision will be lost with this technique I'm presenting here. I guess the technique could be used after the second FFT to get the fundamental accurately. But it kind of looks like the information is lost in step 2. as this is a potentially tricky process, could someone with some experience just look over what I'm doing and check it for sanity? also, I've heard there is an alternative technique involving fitting a quadratic over neighbouring bins. Is this of comparable accuracy? if so, I would favour it, as it doesn't involve remembering bin phases. so questions: does this approach makes sense? Can it be improved? I'm a bit worried about And the log square component; there seems to be a vDSP function to do exactly that: vDSP_vdbcon however, there is no indication it precalculates a log-table -- I assume it doesn't, as the FFT function requires an explicit pre-calculation function to be called and passed into it. and this function doesn't. Is there some danger of harmonics being picked up? is there any cunning way of making vDSP pull out the maxima, biggest first? Can anyone point me towards some research or literature on this technique? the main question: is it accurate enough? Can the accuracy be improved? I have just been told by an expert that the accuracy IS INDEED not sufficient. Is this the end of the line? Pi PS I get SO annoyed (npi) when I want to create tags, but cannot. :| I have suggested to the maintainers that SO keep track of attempted tags, but I'm sure I was ignored. we need tags for vDSP, accelerate framework, cepstral analysis

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  • Persistent (purely functional) Red-Black trees on disk performance

    - by Waneck
    I'm studying the best data structures to implement a simple open-source object temporal database, and currently I'm very fond of using Persistent Red-Black trees to do it. My main reasons for using persistent data structures is first of all to minimize the use of locks, so the database can be as parallel as possible. Also it will be easier to implement ACID transactions and even being able to abstract the database to work in parallel on a cluster of some kind. The great thing of this approach is that it makes possible implementing temporal databases almost for free. And this is something quite nice to have, specially for web and for data analysis (e.g. trends). All of this is very cool, but I'm a little suspicious about the overall performance of using a persistent data structure on disk. Even though there are some very fast disks available today, and all writes can be done asynchronously, so a response is always immediate, I don't want to build all application under a false premise, only to realize it isn't really a good way to do it. Here's my line of thought: - Since all writes are done asynchronously, and using a persistent data structure will enable not to invalidate the previous - and currently valid - structure, the write time isn't really a bottleneck. - There are some literature on structures like this that are exactly for disk usage. But it seems to me that these techniques will add more read overhead to achieve faster writes. But I think that exactly the opposite is preferable. Also many of these techniques really do end up with a multi-versioned trees, but they aren't strictly immutable, which is something very crucial to justify the persistent overhead. - I know there still will have to be some kind of locking when appending values to the database, and I also know there should be a good garbage collecting logic if not all versions are to be maintained (otherwise the file size will surely rise dramatically). Also a delta compression system could be thought about. - Of all search trees structures, I really think Red-Blacks are the most close to what I need, since they offer the least number of rotations. But there are some possible pitfalls along the way: - Asynchronous writes -could- affect applications that need the data in real time. But I don't think that is the case with web applications, most of the time. Also when real-time data is needed, another solutions could be devised, like a check-in/check-out system of specific data that will need to be worked on a more real-time manner. - Also they could lead to some commit conflicts, though I fail to think of a good example of when it could happen. Also commit conflicts can occur in normal RDBMS, if two threads are working with the same data, right? - The overhead of having an immutable interface like this will grow exponentially and everything is doomed to fail soon, so this all is a bad idea. Any thoughts? Thanks! edit: There seems to be a misunderstanding of what a persistent data structure is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistent_data_structure

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  • Generating Unordered List with PHP + CodeIgniter from a MySQL Database

    - by Tim
    Hello Everyone, I am trying to build a dynamically generated unordered list in the following format using PHP. I am using CodeIgniter but it can just be normal php. This is the end output I need to achieve. <ul id="categories" class="menu"> <li rel="1"> Arts &amp; Humanities <ul> <li rel="2"> Photography <ul> <li rel="3"> 3D </li> <li rel="4"> Digital </li> </ul> </li> <li rel="5"> History </li> <li rel="6"> Literature </li> </ul> </li> <li rel="7"> Business &amp; Economy </li> <li rel="8"> Computers &amp; Internet </li> <li rel="9"> Education </li> <li rel="11"> Entertainment <ul> <li rel="12"> Movies </li> <li rel="13"> TV Shows </li> <li rel="14"> Music </li> <li rel="15"> Humor </li> </ul> </li> <li rel="10"> Health </li> And here is my SQL that I have to work with. -- -- Table structure for table `categories` -- CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `categories` ( `id` mediumint(8) NOT NULL auto_increment, `dd_id` mediumint(8) NOT NULL, `parent_id` mediumint(8) NOT NULL, `cat_name` varchar(256) NOT NULL, `cat_order` smallint(4) NOT NULL, PRIMARY KEY (`id`) ) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=1 ; So I know that I am going to need at least 1 foreach loop to generate the first level of categories. What I don't know is how to iterate inside each loop and check for parents and do that in a dynamic way so that there could be an endless tree of children. Thanks for any help you can offer. Tim

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  • Where should I go with hosting my site: VPS, GAE, another option?

    - by Jonathan Hayward
    My website, http://JonathansCorner.com/, began life before 1994 as www.imsa.edu/~jhayward/ and has been through various iterations and improvements to content, HTML, and the like, but remains a literature site that is from a web administrator's perspective fairly simple and primitive: a fair amount of static HTML and supporting files, a little bit of CGI and URI rewriting, .htaccess files providing Expires: headers and the like. An associated site demoes various CGI scripts that fall under the category of "and other creations"; the site as a whole has the purpose of sharing my creative works, and so far a fairly rudimentary use of Apache functionality, supported by Unix tools to, for instance, update RSS feed and the "starting point" link on the home page, has served that purpose fairly well. I looked around here on web hosting, and found the note on web host reccommendations as a good note for "What are some of people's favorite web hosts overall," but I wanted to ask a more focused question of "What are the best web hosts for criteria XYZ:" I am looking at a VPS so I will have root, be able to install stuff and edit Apache's config files etc., running Gentoo or other Linux, BSD, or the like. I would like a system that is secure enough that the host's vulnerabilities are mostly the ones that come along with what I am trying to do: that is, I won't be trying to administer and secure an ancient Linux like some have complained about at 1and1. I would like good uptime/reliability and competent support staff: if the level 1 help desk is going to tell me to go to "My Computer" on a Linux box, I'd like to be able to get past them. Ideally I would like a site hosted within some place that will have low latency for U.S. visitors in particular. I would like a hosting solution that will be with a stable business, one that will probably be around, and one unlikely to vanish without warning. With those things specified, I would be interested in knowing what are the less expensive options. (I expect that some of the things I've specified will knock out all of the cheapest options, but I'm still interested in price.) With all that stated, I'd like to back up a bit and look at whether I am asking the right question. I am concerned that the above is a very good way of asking, "How can I keep my site in line with the wave of the past?" I am wondering if it might be specifically wiser to look to adapt my site to newer technologies instead of trying to keep it on older technologies. For instance, while I would hardly portray my site as a way to show off the full power of Google App Engine, the main site at least should be a straightforward port if I were to do that. And beyond Google App Engine, my knowledge of cloud solutions is basic. If it is a better and more future-proof solution to port my site to another kind of solution, I would be interested in knowing where those future-proof solutions lie. So I would be interested in wisdom. If the question I asked in detail is still a good question to be asking, what would people suggest? Or if I should seriously consider porting my site to a newer basic option, what should I try there? Any thoughts would be appreciated.

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  • Network config / gear question

    - by mcgee1234
    I have been tasked with setting up a fairly straightforward rack in a data center (we do not even need a whole rack, but this is the smallest allotment available). In a nutshell, 4 to 6 servers need to be able to reach 2 (maybe 3) vendors. The servers needs to be reachable over the internet. A little more detail - the networks the servers need to reach are inside of the data center, and are "trusted". Connections to these networks will be achieved through intra data center cross connects. It is kind of like a manufacturing line where we receive data from one vendor (burst-able up to 200 Mbits), churn through it on the servers, and then send out data to another vendor (bursts up to 20 Mbits). This series of events is very latency sensitive, so much so that it is common practice not to use NAT or a firewall on these segments (or so I hear). To reach the servers over the internet, I plan to use a site to site VPN. (This part is only relevant as far as hardware selection goes). I have 2 configurations in mind: Cisco 2911 (2921) (with the additional wan ports module) and a layer 2 switch - in this scenario, I would use the router also for VPN. Cisco 3560 layer 3 switch to interconnect the networks inside of the data center and an ASA 5510 (which is total overkill, but the 5505 is not rack mountable) as a firewall for the Wan side (internet) and VPN. I envision the setup to be as follows: Internet - ASA - 3560 Vendors - 3560 - Servers The general idea is that the ASA acts as a firewall and VPN device and the 3560 does all the heavy lifting. The first is a fairly traditional setup but my concern is performance. The second is somewhat unorthodox in that the vendors are directly connected to the layer 3 switch without passing through a firewall. Based on my understanding however, a layer 3 switch will perform substantially better as it will do hardware (ASIC) vs. software switching. (Note that number 2 is a little over the budget, but not unworkable (double negative, ugh)) Since this is my first time dealing with a data center, I am not sure what the IP space is going to look like. I suspect I will retain a block(s) of public IPs, vlan them to individual interfaces for the vendor connections and the servers (which will not reachable from the wan side of course) and setup routing on the switch. So here are my questionss: Is there a substantial performance difference between 1 and 2, i.e. hardware based switching on a layer 3 vs a software base on the 2911? I have trolled the internet and found a lot of Cisco literature, but nothing that I could really use to get a good handle. The vendors we connect to are secure and trusted (famous last words) and as I understand it, it is common practice not to NAT or firewall these connections (because of the aforementioned latency sensitivity). But what what kind of latency are we really talking about if I push the data through a router (or even ASA for that matter)? For our purposes, 5 ms will not kill us, 20 or 30 can be very costly. Others measure in microseconds, but they are out of our league. Is there any issues with using public IPs on a layer 3 switch? I am certainly not married to either of these configs, and I am totally open to any ideas. My knowledge (and I use the term loosely) is largely from books so I welcome any advice / insight. Thanks in advance.

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  • Convert a DVD Movie Directly to AVI with FairUse Wizard 2.9

    - by DigitalGeekery
    Are you looking for a way to backup your DVD movie collection to AVI?  Today we’ll show you how to rip a DVD movie directly to AVI with FairUse Wizard. About FairUse Wizard FairUse Wizard 2.9 uses the DivX, Xvid, or h.264 codec to convert DVD to an AVI file. It comes in both a free version and commercial version. The free, or “Light” version, can create files up 700MB while the commercial version can output a 1400MB file. This will allow you to back up your movies to CD, or even multiple movies on a single DVD. FairUse Wizard states that it does not work on copy protected discs, but we’ve seen it work on all but some of the most recent copy protection. For this tutorial we’re using the free Light Edition to convert a DVD to AVI. They also offer a commercial version that you can get for $29.99 and it offers even more encoding possibilities for converting video to you portable digital devices. Installation and Configuration Download and install FairUse Wizard. (Download link below). Once the install is complete, open FairUse Wizard by going to Start > All Programs >  FairUse Wizard 2 >  FairUse Wizard 2.   FairUse Wizard will open on the new project screen. Select “Create a new project” and type a project name into the text box. This will be used as the file output name.  Ex: A project name of Simpsons Movie will give you an output file of Simpsons Movie.avi.   Next, browse for a destination folder for the output file and temp files. Note that you will need a minimum of 6 GB of free disk space for the conversion process. Note: Much of that 6 GB will be used for temporary files that we will delete after the conversion process.   Click on the Options button at the bottom.   Under Preferences, choose your preferred video codec and file output size. XviD and x264 are installed by default. If you prefer to use DivX, you will have to install it separately. Also note the “Two pass” option. Checking the “Two pass” box will encode your video twice for higher quality, but will take more time. Un-checking the box will speed up the conversion process.   Under Audio track, note that English subtitles are enabled by default, so to remove the subtitles, you will need to change the dropdown list so it shows only a dash (-). You can also select “Use TV Mode” if your primary playback will be on a 4:3 TV screen. Click “Next.” Full Auto Mode vs. Manual Mode You should now be back to the initial screen. Next, we’ll need to determine whether or not we can use “Full Auto Mode” to convert the movie. The difference is that “Full Auto Mode” will automatically perform a few steps that you will otherwise have to do manually. If you choose the “Full Auto Mode” option, FairUse Wizard will look for the video on the DVD with the longest duration and assume it is the chain that it should convert to AVI. It’s possible, however, your disc may contain a few chains of similar size, such as a theatrical cut and director’s cut, and the longest chain may not be the one you wish to convert. Make sure that “Full auto mode” is not checked yet, and click “Next.”   FairUse Wizard will parse the IFO files and display all video chains longer than 60  seconds. In most cases, you will only find that the largest chain is the one closely matching the duration of the movie. In these instances, you can use “Full Auto Mode.” If you find more than one chain that are close in duration to the length of the movie, consult the literature on the DVD case, or search online, to find the actual running time of the movie. If the proper file chain is not the longest chain, you won’t be able to use “Full Auto Mode.”   Full Auto Mode To use “Full Auto Mode,” simply click the “Back” button to return to the initial screen Now, place a check in the “Full auto mode” check box. Click “Next.” You will then be prompted to chose your DVD drive, then click “OK.” FairUse Wizard will parse the IFO files… … and then prompt you to Select your drive that contains the DVD one more time before beginning the conversion process. Click “OK.”   Manual Mode If you cannot (or don’t wish to) use Full Auto Mode, choose the appropriate video chain and click “Next.” FairUse Wizard will first go through the process of indexing the video. Note: If you get a runtime error during this portion of the process, it likely means that FairUse Wizard cannot handle the copy protection, and thus cannot convert the DVD. FairUse Wizard will automatically detect a cropping region. If necessary, you can edit the cropping region by adjusting the cropping region settings to the left. Click “Next.” Next, click “Auto Detect” to choose the proper field combination. Click “OK” on the pop up window that displays your Field Mode. Then click “Next.” This next screen is mainly comprised of settings from the Options screen. You can make changes at this point such as codec or output size. Click “Next” when ready.   Video Conversion Now the video conversion process will begin. This may take a few hours depending on your system’s hardware. Note: There is a check box to “Shutdown computer when done” if you choose to run the conversion overnight or before leaving for work. The first phase will be video encoding… Then the audio… If you chose the “Two Pass” option, your video video will be encoded again on 2nd pass. Then you’re finished. Unfortunately, FairUse Wizard doesn’t clean up after itself very well. After the process is complete, you’ll want to browse to your output directory and delete all the temporary files as they take up a considerable amount of hard drive space. Now you’re ready to enjoy your movie. Conclusion FairUse Wizard is a nice way to backup your DVD movies to good quality .avi files. You can store them on your hard drive, watch them on a media PC, or burn them to disc. Many DVD players even allow for playback of DivX or XviD encoded video from a CD or DVD. For those of you with children, you can burn that AVI file to CD for your kids, and keep your original DVDs stored safely out of harms way. Download Download FairUse Wizard 2.9 LE Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Kantaris is a Unique Media Player Based on VLCHow to Make/Edit a movie with Windows Movie Maker in Windows VistaAutomatically Mount and View ISO files in Windows 7 Media CenterTune Your ClearType Font Settings in Windows VistaAdd Images and Metadata to Windows 7 Media Center Movie Library TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Make your Joomla & Drupal Sites Mobile with OSMOBI Integrate Twitter and Delicious and Make Life Easier Design Your Web Pages Using the Golden Ratio Worldwide Growth of the Internet How to Find Your Mac Address Use My TextTools to Edit and Organize Text

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, May 23, 2010

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, May 23, 2010New ProjectsA2Command: Apple 2 port of CBM-Command (http://cbmcommand.codeplex.com)AgUnit: AgUnit is a plugin for Jetbrains ReSharper (R#) that allows you to run and debug Silverlight unit tests from within Visual Studio.BSonPosh Powershell Module: A collection of useful Powershell functions I have written and collected over the years. It is a Powershell v2 Module composed of mostly scripts.DB Restriker: Simple tool for lookup, parsing, searching some standard databases using wildcards and pattern recognition.Entity Framework Repository & Unit of Work Template: T4 Template for Entity Framework 4 for creating a data access layer using the repository and unit of work patterns. Designed to work well with dep...Fiction Catalog: A catalog project designed to store information about fictional literature.Giving a Presentation: Useful for people doing presentations, this application hides desktop icons, disables screensaver, closes chosen programs when presentation starts,...glueless: Glueless is a local message bus which allows architect to design highly decoupled systems and applications. Glueless is a step beyond dependency i...HtmlCodeIt: Take any code and format it so that it can be viewed properly on a web browser, blog post or website.just testproject :): just have a test!KanbanTaskboard: The aim of the project is to design and implement a functional prototype for visualizing and operating a multi-platform virtual "Kanban Taskboard”Life System: Life SystemOaSys Project: Project Oasys is a project that aims to help solve desertification. Scoring of pingPong Game: Scoring of pingPong GameSilverlight Web Comic: The Silverlight Web Comic makes easier for the people create your own comic with your own pictures o drawings, and add the globes of text like the ...TickSharp: C# Wrapper for http://TickSpot.com RESTful API.Traductor: El Traductor es una aplicación de escritorio para traducción de frases entre distintos idiomas basada en la plataforma Silverlight Out Of Browser y...WatchersNET.SkinObjects.ModulActionsMenu: Displays the Module Actions Menu as a Unsorted CSS Menu.xxfd1r4w96: testingNew ReleasesAgUnit: AgUnit 0.1: Initial release of AgUnit. Copy the extracted files from AgUnit-0.1.zip into the "Bin\Plugins\" folder of your ReSharper installation (default C:...ASP.NET MVC | SCAFFOLD: ASP.NET MVC SCAFFOLD - Beta 1.0: Release versão betaBizTalk Server 2006 Documenter: Documenter_v3.4.0.0: This is the new release of the documenter which has the following highlights Support for 64 bit systems Support for SxS scenarios (so now the sys...CassiniDev - Cassini 3.5/4.0 Developers Edition: CassiniDev 3.5.1 Beta 2- VS 2008 Replacement: The CassiniDev Visual Studio build is a fully compatibly Visual Studio 2008/2010 Development server drop-in replacement with all CassiniDev enhance...CBM-Command: 2010-05-22 Beta: Release Notes - 2010-05-22 BetaNew Features Simple text file viewer. Now when you use SHIFT-RETURN to open a file, it will ask if you want to view...Easy Validation: Documentation: Documentation for easyVal was created and presented at University of Texas at Austin in May of 2010.Entity Framework Repository & Unit of Work Template: 1.0: Initial ReleaseFrotz.NET: FrotzNet 1.0 beta: Many, many changes, including: - Got Adaptive Palette working for graphics - Got undo working - Implemented all zcodes - Added scripting as well as...Giving a Presentation: CTP: This release includes basic extensibility infrastructure and three extensions: hides desktop icons, disables screensaver, closes chosen programs wh...Gov 2.0 Kit: SharePoint 2010 MyPeeps Mysite Accelerators: SharePoint 2010 MyPeeps Mysite Accelerators. Attached are the installation and documentations files.HKGolden Express: HKGoldenExpress (Build 201005221900): New features: (None) Bug fix: Hong Kong special characters now can be posted without encoding problem. Improvements: (None) Other changes: (None) K...Intellibox - A WPF auto complete textbox search control: Beta 2: Updated the namespace of the Intellibox control from "System.Windows.Controls" to "FeserWard.Controls". Empty binding Path properties now work on...MDownloader: MDownloader-0.15.14.59111: Fixed DepositFile provider. Fixed FileFactory provider. Added simple fakeness detector (can check if .rar, .zip, .7z files have valid signature...Mute4: V1: Initial version of Mute4NLog - Advanced .NET Logging: Nightly Build 2010.05.22.003: Changes since the last build:No changes. Unit test results:Passed 191/191 (100%) Passed 191/191 (100%) Passed 214/214 (100%) Passed 216/216 (100%)...NSIS Autorun: NSIS Autorun 0.1.9: This release includes source code, executable binaries and example materials.Silverlight Gantt Chart: Silverlight Gantt Chart 1.3 (SL4): The latest release mainly makes the Gantt Chart useful in Silverlight 4 applications.SqlServerExtensions: V 0.2 beta: V 0.2 Beta release: New features available TrimStart - trim leading characters TrimEnd - trim trailing characters Remove - remove characters f...Traductor: Version 3.1: Nuevo en esta versión: El Traductor ahora permite escoger entre los motores de Microsoft y Google. El Text to Speech is es ahora habilitado por...VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30522.0: Automatic drop of latest buildVDialer Add-In for Outlook 2007 & 2010 - Dial your Vonage phone from Outlook: VDialer Add-In 1.0.3: This release adds new features related to Journal and use of Vonage API Changes in version 1.0.3 Added configurable option to automatically open J...WatchersNET.SkinObjects.ModulActionsMenu: ModulActionsMenu 01.00.00: First Release For Informations How To Install, the Skin Object Read the DocumentationMost Popular ProjectsCodeComment.NETRawrWBFS ManagerAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)patterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryPHPExcelMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesMost Active ProjectsRawrpatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryCaliburn: An Application Framework for WPF and Silverlightpatterns & practices: Windows Azure Security GuidanceCassiniDev - Cassini 3.5/4.0 Developers EditionGMap.NET - Great Maps for Windows Forms & PresentationNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog ModuleSQL Server PowerShell ExtensionsBlogEngine.NETCodeReview

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  • Using pfSense, OpenVPN Connects but Still Can't See the Network

    - by nicorellius
    I am having an OpenVPN issue. I have a pfSense box at home configured to allow traffic through a VPN tunnel. The client computer is Windows XP Home, behind a standard Comcast connection and a Netgear wireless router. I use OpenVPN to access my work network (from where I am trying to get out of in this post) from home (with an XP Pro machine behind pfSense), and this works fine. The client config is similar but has the changes specific to my setup... Here is my XP Home config: client dev tun proto tcp remote pfsense.*.org 1194 (starred out by me) resolv-retry infinite nobind persist-key persist-tun ca ca.crt cert client.crt key client.key ns-cert-type server comp-lzo verb 3 When I launch the OpenVPN GUI, the Tunnel TAP network connection turns red, and I can right-click that to connect to the server. Everything seems to work fine until I browse for the actual network. The Tunnel TAP connection turns green and it says connected to 10.1.1.6 (I have tried different IP pools here too with no luck). I can see the internal network fine, but my home network behind pfSense is not there. I have tried browsing there by using Tools Map Network Drive, using the browser, with no success. When I open the command line on the client and use the ipconfig -all command, I get the following: Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : Description . . . . . . . . . . . : TAP-Win32 Adapter V9 Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : *** (starred out by me) Dhcp Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 10.1.1.6 Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.252 Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : 10.1.1.5 Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : Monday, March 15, 2010 1:18:37 PM Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : Tuesday, March 15, 2011 1:18:37 PM I noticed that the default gateway is not present. Could this be my problem? I am still relatively new to firewalls, VPN, and network configuration so I'm sure I am messing up something simple. Oh yah, I should note that I have firewall rules configured for pfSense to allow traffic through the WAN and the LAN. At first there was just the WAN firewall rule, because that is what I got from the literature I was reading. I then created a LAN rule as well, but I'm not sure if this was correct. Neither way works, though. Screen shots below: Any help is much appreciated.

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  • Ada and 'The Book'

    - by Phil Factor
    The long friendship between Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace created one of the most exciting and mysterious of collaborations ever to have resulted in a technological breakthrough. The fireworks that created by the collision of two prodigious mathematical and creative talents resulted in an invention, the Analytical Engine, which went on to change society fundamentally. However, beyond that, we just don't know what the bulk of their collaborative work was about:;  it was done in strictest secrecy. Even the known outcome of their friendship, the first programmable computer, was shrouded in mystery. At the time, nobody, except close friends and family, had any idea of Ada Byron's contribution to the invention of the ‘Engine’, and how to program it. Her great insight was published in August 1843, under the initials AAL, standing for Ada Augusta Lovelace, her title then being the Countess of Lovelace. It was contained in a lengthy ‘note’ to her translation of a publication that remains the best description of Babbage's amazing Analytical Engine. The secret identity of the person behind those enigmatic initials was finally revealed by Prince de Polignac who, seventy years later, wrote to Ada's daughter to seek confirmation that her mother had, indeed, been the author of the brilliant sentences that described so accurately how Babbage's mechanical computer could be programmed with punch-cards. L.F. Menabrea's paper on the Analytical Engine first appeared in the 'Bibliotheque Universelle de Geneve' in October 1842, and Ada translated it anonymously for Taylor's 'Scientific Memoirs'. Charles Babbage was surprised that she had not written an original paper as she already knew a surprising amount about the way the machine worked. He persuaded her to at least write some explanatory notes. These notes ended up extending to four times the length of the original article and represented the first published account of how a machine could be programmed to perform any calculation. Her example of programming the Bernoulli sequence would have worked on the Analytical engine had the device’s construction been completed, and gave Ada an unassailable claim to have invented the art of programming. What was the reason for Ada's secrecy? She was the only legitimate child of Lord Byron, who was probably the best known celebrity of the age, so she was already famous. She was a senior aristocrat, with titles, a fortune in money and vast estates in the Midlands. She had political influence, and was the cousin of Lord Melbourne, who was the Prime Minister at that time. She was friendly with the young Queen Victoria. Her mathematical activities were a pastime, and not one that would be considered by others to be in keeping with her roles and responsibilities. You wouldn't dare to dream up a fictional heroine like Ada. She was dazzlingly beautiful and talented. She could speak several languages fluently, and play some musical instruments with professional skill. Contemporary accounts refer to her being 'accomplished in science, art and literature'. On top of that, she was a brilliant mathematician, a talent inherited from her mother, Annabella Milbanke. In her mother's circle of literary and scientific friends was Charles Babbage, and Ada's friendship with him dates from her teenage zest for Mathematics. She was one of the first people he'd ever met who understood what he had attempted to achieve with the 'Difference Engine', and with whom he could converse as intellectual equals. He arranged for her to have an education from the most talented academics in the country. Ada melted the heart of the cantankerous genius to the point that he became a faithful and loyal father-figure to her. She was one of the very few who could grasp the principles of the later, and very different, ‘Analytical Engine’ which was designed from the start to tackle a variety of tasks. Sadly, Ada Byron's life ended less than a decade after completing the work that assured her long-term fame, in November 1852. She was dying of cancer, her gambling habits had caused her to run up huge debts, she'd had more than one affairs, and she was being blackmailed. Her brilliant but unempathic mother was nursing her in her final illness, destroying her personal letters and records, and repaying her debts. Her husband was distraught but helpless. Charles Babbage, however, maintained his steadfast paternalistic friendship to the end. She appointed her loyal friend to be her executor. For years, she and Babbage had been working together on a secret project, known only as 'The Book'. We have a clue to what it was in a letter written by her nine years earlier, on 11th August 1843. It was a joint project by herself and Lord Lovelace, her husband, and was intended to involve Babbage's 'undivided energies'. It involved 'consulting your Engine' (it required Babbage’s computer). The letter gives no hint about the project except for the high-minded nature of its purpose, and its highly mathematical nature.  From then on, the surviving correspondence between the two gives only veiled references to 'The Book'. There isn't much, since Babbage later destroyed any letters that could have damaged her reputation within the Establishment. 'I cannot spare the book today, which I am very sorry for. At the moment I want it for constant reference, but I think you can have it tomorrow' (Oct 1844)  And 'I will send you the book directly, and you can say, when you receive it, how long you will want to keep it'. (Nov 1844)  The two of them were obviously intent on the work: She writes, four years later, 'I have an engagement for Wednesday which will prevent me from attending to your wishes about the book' (Dec 1848). This was something that they both needed to work on, but could not do in parallel: 'I will send the book on Tuesday, and it can be left with you till Friday' (11 Feb 1849). After six years work, it had been so well-handled that it was beginning to fall apart: 'Don't forget the new cover you promised for the book. The poor book is very shabby and wants one' (20 Sept 1849). So what was going on? The word 'book' was not a code-word: it was a real book, probably a 'printer's blank', plain paper, but properly bound so printers and publishers could show off how the published work might look. The hints from the correspondence are of advanced mathematics. It is obvious that the book was travelling between them, back and forth, each one working on it for less than a week before passing it back. Ada and her husband were certainly involved in gambling large sums of money on the horses, and so most biographers have concluded that the three of them were trying to calculate the mathematical odds on the horses. This theory has three large problems. Firstly, Ada's original letter proposing the project refers to its high-minded nature. Babbage was temperamentally opposed to gambling and would scarcely have given so much time to the project, even though he was devoted to Ada. Secondly, Babbage would have very soon have realized the hopelessness of trying to beat the bookies. This sort of betting never attracts his type of intellectual background. The third problem is that any work on calculating the odds on horses would not need a well-thumbed book to pass back and forth between them; they would have not had to work in series. The original project was instigated by Ada, along with her husband, William King-Noel, 1st Earl of Lovelace. Charles Babbage was invited to join the project after the couple had come up with the idea. What could William have contributed? One might assume that William was a Bertie Wooster character, addicted only to the joys of the turf, but this was far from the truth. He was a scientist, a Cambridge graduate who was later elected to be a Fellow of the Royal Society. After Eton, he went to Trinity College, Cambridge. On graduation, he entered the diplomatic service and acted as secretary under Lord Nugent, who was Lord Commissioner of the Ionian Islands. William was very friendly with Babbage too, able to discuss scientific matters on equal terms. He was a capable engineer who invented a process for bending large timbers by the application of steam heat. He delivered a paper to the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1849, and received praise from the great engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel. As well as being Lord Lieutenant of the County of Surrey for most of Victoria's reign, he had time for a string of scientific and engineering achievements. Whatever the project was, it is unlikely that William was a junior partner. After Ada's death, the project disappeared. Then, two years later, Babbage, through one of his occasional outbursts of temper, demonstrated that he was able to decrypt one of the most powerful of secret codes, Vigenère's autokey cipher.  All contemporary diplomatic and military messages used a variant of this cipher. Babbage had made three important discoveries, namely, the mathematical law of this cipher, the principle of the key periodicity, and the technique of the symmetry of position. The technique is now known as the Kasiski examination, also called the Kasiski test, but Babbage got there first. At one time, he listed amongst his future projects, the writing of a book 'The Philosophy of Decyphering', but it never came to anything. This discovery was going to change the course of history, since it was used to decipher the Russians’ military dispatches in the Crimean war. Babbage himself played a role during the Crimean War as a cryptographical adviser to his friend, Rear-Admiral Sir Francis Beaufort of the Admiralty. This is as much as we can be certain about in trying to make sense of the bulk of the time that Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace worked together. Nine years of intensive work, involving the 'Engine' and a great deal of mathematics and research seems to have been lost: or has it? I've argued in the past http://www.simple-talk.com/community/blogs/philfactor/archive/2008/06/13/59614.aspx that the cracking of the Vigenère autokey cipher, was a fundamental motive behind the British Government's support and funding of the 'Difference Engine'. The Duke of Wellington, whose understanding of the military significance of being able to read enemy dispatches, was the most steadfast advocate of the project. If the three friends were actually doing the work of cracking codes by mathematical techniques that used the techniques of key periodicity, and symmetry of position (the use of a book being passed quickly to and fro is very suggestive), intending to then use the 'Engine' to do the routine cracking of each dispatch, then this is a rather different story. The project was Ada and William's idea. (William had served in the diplomatic service and would be familiar with the use of codes). This makes Ada Lovelace the initiator of a project which, by giving both Britain, and probably the USA, a diplomatic and military advantage in the second part of the Nineteenth century, changed world history. Ada would never have wanted any credit for cracking the cipher, and developing the method that rendered all contemporary military and diplomatic ciphering techniques nugatory; quite the reverse. And it is clear from the gaps in the record of the letters between the collaborators that the evidence was destroyed, probably on her request by her irascible but intensely honorable executor, Charles Babbage. Charles Babbage toyed with the idea of going public, but the Crimean war put an end to that. The British Government had a valuable secret, and intended to keep it that way. Ada and Charles had quite often discussed possible moneymaking projects that would fund the development of the Analytic Engine, the first programmable computer, but their secret work was never in the running as a potential cash cow. I suspect that the British Government was, even then, working on the concealment of a discovery whose value to the nation depended on it remaining so. The success of code-breaking in the Crimean war, and the American Civil war, led to the British and Americans  subsequently giving much more weight and funding to the science of decryption. Paradoxically, this makes Ada's contribution even closer to the creation of Colossus, the first digital computer, at Bletchley Park, specifically to crack the Nazi’s secret codes.

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, November 03, 2013

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, November 03, 2013Popular ReleasesuComponents: uComponents v6.0.0: This release of uComponents will compile against and support the new API in Umbraco v6.1.0. What's new in uComponents v6.0.0? New DataTypesImage Point XML DropDownList XPath Templatable List New features / Resolved issuesThe following workitems have been implemented and/or resolved: 14781 14805 14808 14818 14854 14827 14868 14859 14790 14853 14790 DataType Grid 14788 14810 14873 14833 14864 14855 / 14860 14816 14823 Drag & Drop support for rows Su...SmartStore.NET - Free ASP.NET MVC Ecommerce Shopping Cart Solution: SmartStore.NET 1.2.1: New FeaturesAdded option Limit to current basket subtotal to HadSpentAmount discount rule Items in product lists can be labelled as NEW for a configurable period of time Product templates can optionally display a discount sign when discounts were applied Added the ability to set multiple favicons depending on stores and/or themes Plugin management: multiple plugins can now be (un)installed in one go Added a field for the HTML body id to store entity (Developer) New property 'Extra...WPF Extended DataGrid: WPF Extended DataGrid 2.0.0.9 binaries: Fixed issue with ICollectionView containg null values (AutoFilter issue)Community TFS Build Extensions: October 2013: The October 2013 release contains Scripts - a new addition to our delivery. These are a growing library of PowerShell scripts to use with VS2013. See our documentation for more on scripting. VS2010 Activities(target .NET 4.0) VS2012 Activities (target .NET 4.5) VS2013 Activities (target .NET 4.5.1) Community TFS Build Manager VS2012 Community TFS Build Manager VS2013 The Community TFS Build Managers for VS2010, 2012 and 2013 can also be found in the Visual Studio Gallery where upda...WMI Inventory Client: WMI Inventory Client: WMI Inventory Client ?????????????? ?????????????? ?? WMISuperSocket, an extensible socket server framework: SuperSocket 1.6 stable: Changes included in this release: Process level isolation SuperSocket ServerManager (include server and client) Connect to client from server side initiatively Client certificate validation New configuration attributes "textEncoding", "defaultCulture", and "storeLocation" (certificate node) Many bug fixes http://docs.supersocket.net/v1-6/en-US/New-Features-and-Breaking-ChangesFile System Explorer: Beta 1: Try me and please give feedback via Discussions and issues Installation: Download the zip file Unblock it Unzip to a suitable location Just run Filesystemexplorer.exe Enjoy Updates: V1.1 Beta: Fixed some low level file search issuesBarbaTunnel: BarbaTunnel 8.1: Check Version History for more information about this release.Mugen MVVM Toolkit: Mugen MVVM Toolkit 2.1: v 2.1 Added the 'Should' class instead of the 'Validate' class. The 'Validate' class is now obsolete. Added 'Toolkit.Annotations' to support the Mugen MVVM Toolkit ReSharper plugin. Updated JetBrains annotations within the project. Added the 'GlobalSettings.DefaultActivationPolicy' property to represent the default activation policy. Removed the 'GetSettings' method from the 'ViewModelBase' class. Instead of it, the 'GlobalSettings.DefaultViewModelSettings' property is used. Updated...SharePoint User Permission Check: SP User Permission Check: Modified Current.Web.Title in output label.TFS Event Workflows: TFS Event Workflows 0.10.41576.0 - TFS 2012-2013: Supports TFS 2012 and TFS 2013 For a TFS 2010 version look at https://tfseventworkflows.codeplex.com/releases/view/102444 New Features multiple application tiers storage of workflows, configurations and activities in the version control support for async execution in TFS job agent selection of collection/project filters in config file simple disable in config file simplified configurationCrowd CMS: Crowd CMS FREE - Official Release: This is the original source files for Crowd CMS Free (v1.0.0) and is the latest stable release which has been bug-tested and fixed.Sea Dragon AJAX Viewer Web Part: Sea Dragon Ajax Web Part: The Seadragon Viewer WSP and companion literature. There are three seperate guides that explain how to get up and running: - Seadragon Viewer Web Part Installation Guide Creating Deep Zoom Images for Seadragon Viewer Bringing it all together These guides are currently very basic and are offered as guides for getting full usage out Seadragon. Please post any suggestions for further documentation in the discussions forumProject Nonnon: 2013_10_30: ----------==========----------==========----------==========---------- "No news is good news." ----------==========----------==========----------==========---------- Change Log 2013/10/30 BUGFIX win32/explorer.c n_explorer_path_get() : comment OLD : typo NEW : fixed Felis Win8 or latert : Link Maker OLD : not function in some cases NEW : fixed Nyaurism Formatter : byte count label : when resized OLD : text will be broken NEW : fixed NEW_FEATURE win...NAudio: NAudio 1.7: full release notes available at http://mark-dot-net.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/naudio-17-release-notes.htmlFormula Calculation Toolkit: FCT Library: Alfa release for Formula Calculation Toolkit.WebExtras: v1.3.0 Beta: Enh: Adding support for Bootstrap 3.x Enh: Adding support for Gumby 2.5.x Enh: Adding a new string extension Remove() to remove occurences of given string Enh: Adding a ToDictionary() for name value collections Enh: The dataTable sort extension is now a little more intelligent and robust Enh: General under the hood code enhancements Fix: Hyperlink extensions now handle MVC Areas Fix: Marking JsFunc as serializable otherwise when using the ASP.NET State Server, the object does no...DirectX Tool Kit: October 2013: October 28, 2013 Updated for Visual Studio 2013 and Windows 8.1 SDK RTM Added DGSLEffect, DGSLEffectFactory, VertexPositionNormalTangentColorTexture, and VertexPositionNormalTangentColorTextureSkinning Model loading and effect factories support loading skinned models MakeSpriteFont now has a smooth vs. sharp antialiasing option: /sharp Model loading from CMOs now handles UV transforms for texture coordinates A number of small fixes for EffectFactory Minor code and project cleanup ...ExtJS based ASP.NET Controls: FineUI v4.0beta1: +2013-10-28 v4.0 beta1 +?????Collapsed???????????????。 -????:window/group_panel.aspx??,???????,???????,?????????。 +??????SelectedNodeIDArray???????????????。 -????:tree/checkbox/tree_checkall.aspx??,?????,?????,????????????。 -??TimerPicker???????(????、????ing)。 -??????????????????????(???)。 -?????????????,??type=text/css(??~`)。 -MsgTarget???MessageTarget,???None。 -FormOffsetRight?????20px??5px。 -?Web.config?PageManager??FormLabelAlign???。 -ToolbarPosition??Left/Right。 -??Web.conf...CODE Framework: 4.0.31028.0: See change notes in the documentation section for details on what's new. Note: If you download the class reference help file with, you have to right-click the file, pick "Properties", and then unblock the file, as many browsers flag the file as blocked during download (for security reasons) and thus hides all content.New Projects.NET Site Storage: Write .NET code to use an abstract storage system that can work with a variety of storage, such as local file system and Azure blob.Asp.net Mvc Ajax Infinite Scroll: Asp.net Mvc 4 Ajax Json Infinite Scrollblueblue: tetCar: CArCSharp Generic Data Access: Yet another generic data access for .NETDotNet Manuals: DotNet Manuals aims to provide developers an easy way to create, manage and distribute manuals and various documentation for their applications and libraries.EIB Watcher .Net Library: .Net Library for EIB/NKX bus accessopenGamification: This intends to become an open source gamification framework based on TypeScript.PaginaWebCursoNetAcc: aSimple Person Manager: The application accepts POST requests with JSON data about a Person, stored the values in Azure Table Storage and accepts GET requests to retrieve it back.Stock Track: If you have a small retail store with simple stock management and tracking requirements, this program might work for you. Stock Track easily categorises your ptrapawebapp: testVisualStateManager: This is a simple, but quite powerful mechanism allowing you to separate the application UI from application logic in Windows Forms.Yet Another VirtualBox ToolSet: This is going to be another VirtualBox Toolset.Zodinet: Co ca ngua

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  • Creating a Reverse Proxy using Jpcap

    - by Ramon Marco Navarro
    I need to create a program that receives HTTP request and forwards those requests to the web servers. I have successfully made this using only Java Sockets but the client needed the program to be implemented in Jpcap. I'd like to know if this is possible and what literature I should be reading for this project. This is what I have now by stitching together pieces from the Jpcap tutorial: import java.net.InetAddress; import java.io.*; import jpcap.*; import jpcap.packet.*; public class Router { public static void main(String args[]) { //Obtain the list of network interfaces NetworkInterface[] devices = JpcapCaptor.getDeviceList(); //for each network interface for (int i = 0; i < devices.length; i++) { //print out its name and description System.out.println(i+": "+devices[i].name + "(" + devices[i].description+")"); //print out its datalink name and description System.out.println(" datalink: "+devices[i].datalink_name + "(" + devices[i].datalink_description+")"); //print out its MAC address System.out.print(" MAC address:"); for (byte b : devices[i].mac_address) System.out.print(Integer.toHexString(b&0xff) + ":"); System.out.println(); //print out its IP address, subnet mask and broadcast address for (NetworkInterfaceAddress a : devices[i].addresses) System.out.println(" address:"+a.address + " " + a.subnet + " "+ a.broadcast); } int index = 1; // set index of the interface that you want to open. //Open an interface with openDevice(NetworkInterface intrface, int snaplen, boolean promics, int to_ms) JpcapCaptor captor = null; try { captor = JpcapCaptor.openDevice(devices[index], 65535, false, 20); captor.setFilter("port 80 and host 192.168.56.1", true); } catch(java.io.IOException e) { System.err.println(e); } //call processPacket() to let Jpcap call PacketPrinter.receivePacket() for every packet capture. captor.loopPacket(-1,new PacketPrinter()); captor.close(); } } class PacketPrinter implements PacketReceiver { //this method is called every time Jpcap captures a packet public void receivePacket(Packet p) { JpcapSender sender = null; try { NetworkInterface[] devices = JpcapCaptor.getDeviceList(); sender = JpcapSender.openDevice(devices[1]); } catch(IOException e) { System.err.println(e); } IPPacket packet = (IPPacket)p; try { // IP Address of machine sending HTTP requests (the client) // It's still on the same LAN as the servers for testing purposes. packet.dst_ip = InetAddress.getByName("192.168.56.2"); } catch(java.net.UnknownHostException e) { System.err.println(e); } //create an Ethernet packet (frame) EthernetPacket ether=new EthernetPacket(); //set frame type as IP ether.frametype=EthernetPacket.ETHERTYPE_IP; //set source and destination MAC addresses // MAC Address of machine running reverse proxy server ether.src_mac = new MacAddress("08:00:27:00:9C:80").getAddress(); // MAC Address of machine running web server ether.dst_mac = new MacAddress("08:00:27:C7:D2:4C").getAddress(); //set the datalink frame of the packet as ether packet.datalink=ether; //send the packet sender.sendPacket(packet); sender.close(); //just print out a captured packet System.out.println(packet); } } Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

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  • Wrapping a paragraph inside a div?

    - by LOD121
    How do I make my paragraph wrap inside my div? It is currently overflowing outside of the div and I have no idea how to stop the paragraph from overflowing over the edge. I do not want a scroll bar with: overflow: scroll; and the other overflow options don't seem to help here either... I have the following code: div { width: 1200px; margin: 0 auto; } .container { overflow: hidden; } .content { width: 1000px; float: left; margin-left: 0; text-align: left; } .rightpanel { width: 190px; float: right; margin-right: 0; } <div class="container"> <div class="content"> <p>Some content flowing over more than one line</p> </div> <div class="rightpanel"> <!-- content --> </div> </div> Edit: <div class="container"> <div class="content"> <div class="leftcontent"> </div> <div class="newsfeed"> <div class="newsitem"> <p>Full age sex set feel her told. Tastes giving in passed direct me valley as supply. End great stood boy noisy often way taken short. Rent the size our more door. Years no place abode in no child my. Man pianoforte too solicitude friendship devonshire ten ask. Course sooner its silent but formal she led. Extensive he assurance extremity at breakfast. Dear sure ye sold fine sell on. Projection at up connection literature insensible motionless projecting.<br><br>Be at miss or each good play home they. It leave taste mr in it fancy. She son lose does fond bred gave lady get. Sir her company conduct expense bed any. Sister depend change off piqued one. Contented continued any happiness instantly objection yet her allowance. Use correct day new brought tedious. By come this been in. Kept easy or sons my it done.</p> </div> </div> </div> <div class="rightpanel"> </div>

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  • Agile: User Stories for Machine Learning Project?

    - by benjismith
    I've just finished up with a prototype implementation of a supervised learning algorithm, automatically assigning categorical tags to all the items in our company database (roughly 5 million items). The results look good, and I've been given the go-ahead to plan the production implementation project. I've done this kind of work before, so I know how the functional components of the software. I need a collection of web crawlers to fetch data. I need to extract features from the crawled documents. Those documents need to be segregated into a "training set" and a "classification set", and feature-vectors need to be extracted from each document. Those feature vectors are self-organized into clusters, and the clusters are passed through a series of rebalancing operations. Etc etc etc etc. So I put together a plan, with about 30 unique development/deployment tasks, each with time estimates. The first stage of development -- ignoring some advanced features that we'd like to have in the long-term, but aren't high enough priority to make it into the development schedule yet -- is slated for about two months worth of work. (Keep in mind that I already have a working prototype, so the final implementation is significantly simpler than if the project was starting from scratch.) My manager said the plan looked good to him, but he asked if I could reorganize the tasks into user stories, for a few reasons: (1) our project management software is totally organized around user stories; (2) all of our scheduling is based on fitting entire user stories into sprints, rather than individually scheduling tasks; (3) other teams -- like the web developers -- have made great use of agile methodologies, and they've benefited from modelling all the software features as user stories. So I created a user story at the top level of the project: As a user of the system, I want to search for items by category, so that I can easily find the most relevant items within a huge, complex database. Or maybe a better top-level story for this feature would be: As a content editor, I want to automatically create categorical designations for the items in our database, so that customers can easily find high-value data within our huge, complex database. But that's not the real problem. The tricky part, for me, is figuring out how to create subordinate user stories for the rest of the machine learning architecture. Case in point... I know that the algorithm requires two major architectural subdivisions: (A) training, and (B) classification. And I know that the training portion of the architecture requires construction of a cluster-space. All the Agile Development literature I've read seems to indicate that a user story should be the "smallest possible implementation that provides any business value". And that makes a lot of sense when designing a piece of end-user software. Start small, and then incrementally add value when users demand additional functionality. But a cluster-space, in and of itself, provides zero business value. Nor does a crawler, or a feature-extractor. There's no business value (not for the end-user, or for any of the roles internal to the company) in a partial system. A trained cluster-space is only possible with the crawler and feature extractor, and only relevant if we also develop an accompanying classifier. I suppose it would be possible to create user stories where the subordinate components of the system act as the users in the stories: As a supervised-learning cluster-space construction routine, I want to consume data from a feature extractor, so that I can exist. But that seems really weird. What benefit does it provide me as the developer (or our users, or any other stakeholders, for that matter) to model my user stories like that? Although the main story can be easily divided along architectural-component boundaries (crawler, trainer, classifier, etc), I can't think of any useful decomposition from a user's perspective. What do you guys think? How do you plan Agile user stories for sophisticated, indivisible, non-user-facing components?

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  • Flow-Design Cheat Sheet &ndash; Part I, Notation

    - by Ralf Westphal
    You want to avoid the pitfalls of object oriented design? Then this is the right place to start. Use Flow-Oriented Analysis (FOA) and –Design (FOD or just FD for Flow-Design) to understand a problem domain and design a software solution. Flow-Orientation as described here is related to Flow-Based Programming, Event-Based Programming, Business Process Modelling, and even Event-Driven Architectures. But even though “thinking in flows” is not new, I found it helpful to deviate from those precursors for several reasons. Some aim at too big systems for the average programmer, some are concerned with only asynchronous processing, some are even not very much concerned with programming at all. What I was looking for was a design method to help in software projects of any size, be they large or tiny, involing synchronous or asynchronous processing, being local or distributed, running on the web or on the desktop or on a smartphone. That´s why I took ideas from all of the above sources and some additional and came up with Event-Based Components which later got repositioned and renamed to Flow-Design. In the meantime this has generated some discussion (in the German developer community) and several teams have started to work with Flow-Design. Also I´ve conducted quite some trainings using Flow-Orientation for design. The results are very promising. Developers find it much easier to design software using Flow-Orientation than OOAD-based object orientation. Since Flow-Orientation is moving fast and is not covered completely by a single source like a book, demand has increased for at least an overview of the current state of its notation. This page is trying to answer this demand by briefly introducing/describing every notational element as well as their translation into C# source code. Take this as a cheat sheet to put next to your whiteboard when designing software. However, please do not expect any explanation as to the reasons behind Flow-Design elements. Details on why Flow-Design at all and why in this specific way you´ll find in the literature covering the topic. Here´s a resource page on Flow-Design/Event-Based Components, if you´re able to read German. Notation Connected Functional Units The basic element of any FOD are functional units (FU): Think of FUs as some kind of software code block processing data. For the moment forget about classes, methods, “components”, assemblies or whatever. See a FU as an abstract piece of code. Software then consists of just collaborating FUs. I´m using circles/ellipses to draw FUs. But if you like, use rectangles. Whatever suites your whiteboard needs best.   The purpose of FUs is to process input and produce output. FUs are transformational. However, FUs are not called and do not call other FUs. There is no dependency between FUs. Data just flows into a FU (input) and out of it (output). From where and where to is of no concern to a FU.   This way FUs can be concatenated in arbitrary ways:   Each FU can accept input from many sources and produce output for many sinks:   Flows Connected FUs form a flow with a start and an end. Data is entering a flow at a source, and it´s leaving it through a sink. Think of sources and sinks as special FUs which conntect wires to the environment of a network of FUs.   Wiring Details Data is flowing into/out of FUs through wires. This is to allude to electrical engineering which since long has been working with composable parts. Wires are attached to FUs usings pins. They are the entry/exit points for the data flowing along the wires. Input-/output pins currently need not be drawn explicitly. This is to keep designing on a whiteboard simple and quick.   Data flowing is of some type, so wires have a type attached to them. And pins have names. If there is only one input pin and output pin on a FU, though, you don´t need to mention them. The default is Process for a single input pin, and Result for a single output pin. But you´re free to give even single pins different names.   There is a shortcut in use to address a certain pin on a destination FU:   The type of the wire is put in parantheses for two reasons. 1. This way a “no-type” wire can be easily denoted, 2. this is a natural way to describe tuples of data.   To describe how much data is flowing, a star can be put next to the wire type:   Nesting – Boards and Parts If more than 5 to 10 FUs need to be put in a flow a FD starts to become hard to understand. To keep diagrams clutter free they can be nested. You can turn any FU into a flow: This leads to Flow-Designs with different levels of abstraction. A in the above illustration is a high level functional unit, A.1 and A.2 are lower level functional units. One of the purposes of Flow-Design is to be able to describe systems on different levels of abstraction and thus make it easier to understand them. Humans use abstraction/decomposition to get a grip on complexity. Flow-Design strives to support this and make levels of abstraction first class citizens for programming. You can read the above illustration like this: Functional units A.1 and A.2 detail what A is supposed to do. The whole of A´s responsibility is decomposed into smaller responsibilities A.1 and A.2. FU A thus does not do anything itself anymore! All A is responsible for is actually accomplished by the collaboration between A.1 and A.2. Since A now is not doing anything anymore except containing A.1 and A.2 functional units are devided into two categories: boards and parts. Boards are just containing other functional units; their sole responsibility is to wire them up. A is a board. Boards thus depend on the functional units nested within them. This dependency is not of a functional nature, though. Boards are not dependent on services provided by nested functional units. They are just concerned with their interface to be able to plug them together. Parts are the workhorses of flows. They contain the real domain logic. They actually transform input into output. However, they do not depend on other functional units. Please note the usage of source and sink in boards. They correspond to input-pins and output-pins of the board.   Implicit Dependencies Nesting functional units leads to a dependency tree. Boards depend on nested functional units, they are the inner nodes of the tree. Parts are independent, they are the leafs: Even though dependencies are the bane of software development, Flow-Design does not usually draw these dependencies. They are implicitly created by visually nesting functional units. And they are harmless. Boards are so simple in their functionality, they are little affected by changes in functional units they are depending on. But functional units are implicitly dependent on more than nested functional units. They are also dependent on the data types of the wires attached to them: This is also natural and thus does not need to be made explicit. And it pertains mainly to parts being dependent. Since boards don´t do anything with regard to a problem domain, they don´t care much about data types. Their infrastructural purpose just needs types of input/output-pins to match.   Explicit Dependencies You could say, Flow-Orientation is about tackling complexity at its root cause: that´s dependencies. “Natural” dependencies are depicted naturally, i.e. implicitly. And whereever possible dependencies are not even created. Functional units don´t know their collaborators within a flow. This is core to Flow-Orientation. That makes for high composability of functional units. A part is as independent of other functional units as a motor is from the rest of the car. And a board is as dependend on nested functional units as a motor is on a spark plug or a crank shaft. With Flow-Design software development moves closer to how hardware is constructed. Implicit dependencies are not enough, though. Sometimes explicit dependencies make designs easier – as counterintuitive this might sound. So FD notation needs a ways to denote explicit dependencies: Data flows along wires. But data does not flow along dependency relations. Instead dependency relations represent service calls. Functional unit C is depending on/calling services on functional unit S. If you want to be more specific, name the services next to the dependency relation: Although you should try to stay clear of explicit dependencies, they are fundamentally ok. See them as a way to add another dimension to a flow. Usually the functionality of the independent FU (“Customer repository” above) is orthogonal to the domain of the flow it is referenced by. If you like emphasize this by using different shapes for dependent and independent FUs like above. Such dependencies can be used to link in resources like databases or shared in-memory state. FUs can not only produce output but also can have side effects. A common pattern for using such explizit dependencies is to hook a GUI into a flow as the source and/or the sink of data: Which can be shortened to: Treat FUs others depend on as boards (with a special non-FD API the dependent part is connected to), but do not embed them in a flow in the diagram they are depended upon.   Attributes of Functional Units Creation and usage of functional units can be modified with attributes. So far the following have shown to be helpful: Singleton: FUs are by default multitons. FUs in the same of different flows with the same name refer to the same functionality, but to different instances. Think of functional units as objects that get instanciated anew whereever they appear in a design. Sometimes though it´s helpful to reuse the same instance of a functional unit; this is always due to valuable state it holds. Signify this by annotating the FU with a “(S)”. Multiton: FUs on which others depend are singletons by default. This is, because they usually are introduced where shared state comes into play. If you want to change them to be a singletons mark them with a “(M)”. Configurable: Some parts need to be configured before the can do they work in a flow. Annotate them with a “(C)” to have them initialized before any data items to be processed by them arrive. Do not assume any order in which FUs are configured. How such configuration is happening is an implementation detail. Entry point: In each design there needs to be a single part where “it all starts”. That´s the entry point for all processing. It´s like Program.Main() in C# programs. Mark the entry point part with an “(E)”. Quite often this will be the GUI part. How the entry point is started is an implementation detail. Just consider it the first FU to start do its job.   Patterns / Standard Parts If more than a single wire is attached to an output-pin that´s called a split (or fork). The same data is flowing on all of the wires. Remember: Flow-Designs are synchronous by default. So a split does not mean data is processed in parallel afterwards. Processing still happens synchronously and thus one branch after another. Do not assume any specific order of the processing on the different branches after the split.   It is common to do a split and let only parts of the original data flow on through the branches. This effectively means a map is needed after a split. This map can be implicit or explicit.   Although FUs can have multiple input-pins it is preferrable in most cases to combine input data from different branches using an explicit join: The default output of a join is a tuple of its input values. The default behavior of a join is to output a value whenever a new input is received. However, to produce its first output a join needs an input for all its input-pins. Other join behaviors can be: reset all inputs after an output only produce output if data arrives on certain input-pins

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, November 02, 2011

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, November 02, 2011Popular ReleasesWYGIWYS Driver: 1.1.2.0 release: Win32, x86, kernel mode driver.Reset IPv6: 1.0.0.0: First release. Only works for Spanish and English operating system editions.BExplorer (Better Explorer): Better Explorer 2.0.0.631 Alpha: Changelog: Added: Some new functions in ribbon Added: Possibility to choose displayed columns Added: Basic Search Fixed: Some bugs after navigation Fixed: Attempt to fix slow navigation and slow start Known issues: - BreadcrumbBar fails on some situations - Basic search not work quite well in some situations Please if anyone find bugs be kind and report them at the Issue Tracker! Thanks!DotNetNuke® Community Edition: 05.06.04: Major Highlights Fixed issue with upgrades on systems that had upgraded the Telerik library to 6.0.0 Fixed issue with Razor Host upgrade to 5.6.3 The logic for module administration checks contains incorrect logic in 1 place, opening the possibility of a user with edit permissions gaining access to functionality they should not have through a particularly crafted url Security FixesBrowsers support the ability to remember common strings such as usernames/addresses etc. Code was adde...Terminals: Version 2.0 - Beta 2 Release: The team has finally put the nail into the official release date for version 2.0. As bugs are winding down on the 2.0 Roadmap we decided to push out another build - the first 2.0 Beta build. Please take time to use and abuse this release. We left logging in place, and this is a debug build so be sure to submit your logs on each bug reported, and please do report all bugs! Check the source code page on the site, this beta includes all commits since (and including) the 90428 check-in back i...iTuner - The iTunes Companion: iTuner 1.4.4322: Added German (unverified, apologies if incorrect) Properly source invariant resources with correct resIDs Replaced obsolete lyric providers with working providers Fix Pseudolater to correctly morph every third char Fix null reference in CatalogBaseTrack Folder Changes: Track Folder Changes 1.0: Track Folder Changes 1.0 (binary)Windows Workflow Foundation on Codeplex: Microsoft.Activities v1.8.8: Microsoft.Activities Overview How do I install Microsoft.Activities? Updates in this release9318Technical Analysis Engine for .NET: Technical Analysis Engine 1.25: What's new in the 1.25 release (2011-11-01): - Added Williams %R indicator - Added Moving Average Envelopes indicatorBF3Rcon.NET: BF3Rcon 3.0: This release is targeted for RCON documentation based on R3. Everything should be beta stable, but it's alpha because I haven't been able to fully test it. When a stable release is ready, a proper changelog will be kept. Important Edit: There's one method that will keep this from working in Mono. GeneratePasswordHash uses void HashAlgorithm.Dispose(), which isn't in Mono. This will have to be changed to Clear() in the next release. If anyone needs a Mono version of this immediately, you can...BoxWorld: BoxWorld_2011.10.30: BoxWorld - 8.0.1110.30 This is the initial release of BoxWorld. I'd recommend downloading the installer as it contains the compiled code and everything all nicely contained. By default, you end up with this directory structure: C:\Program Files\ViperWorks\BoxWorld C:\Program Files\ViperWorks\BoxWorld\Data C:\Program Files\ViperWorks\BoxWorld\Interface C:\Program Files\ViperWorks\BoxWorld\Source In the root you have the compiled EXE files, one for the main release, one for the LITE release ...VidCoder: 1.2.1: Fixed a couple regressions: video encoder was blank in queue and crashes with the High Profile preset when opening the Settings window. Fixed problem with auto-update introduced in 1.2.0. If you have 1.2.0 you will need to update manually to get this.Koober: Koober - The Ebook Creator 0.2: The official release of Koober as Open source. Koober is a ebook creator for Windows, and Koob Reader is the reader.patterns & practices: Enterprise Library Contrib: Enterprise Library Contrib - 5.0 (Oct 2011): This release of Enterprise Library Contrib is based on the Microsoft patterns & practices Enterprise Library 5.0 core and contains the following: Common extensionsTypeConfigurationElement<T> - A Polymorphic Configuration Element without having to be part of a PolymorphicConfigurationElementCollection. AnonymousConfigurationElement - A Configuration element that can be uniquely identified without having to define its name explicitly. Data Access Application Block extensionsMySql Provider - ...Network Monitor Open Source Parsers: Network Monitor Parsers 3.4.2748: The Network Monitor Parsers packages contain parsers for more than 400 network protocols, including RFC based public protocols and protocols for Microsoft products defined in the Microsoft Open Specifications for Windows and SQL Server. NetworkMonitor_Parsers.msi is the base parser package which defines parsers for commonly used public protocols and protocols for Microsoft Windows. In this release, NetowrkMonitor_Parsers.msi continues to improve quality and fix bugs. It has included the fo...Media Companion: MC 3.420b Weekly: Ensure .NET 4.0 Full Framework is installed. (Available from http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=17718) Ensure the NFO ID fix is applied when transitioning from versions prior to 3.416b. (Details here) Movies Fixed: Fanart and poster scraping issues TV Shows (Re)Added: Rebuild single show Fixed: Issue when shows are moved from original location Ability to handle " for actor nicknames Crash when episode name contains "<" (does not scrape yet) Clears fanart when switch...patterns & practices - Unity: Unity 3.0 for .NET4.5 Preview: The Unity 3.0.1026.0 Preview enables Unity to work on .NET 4.5 with both the WinRT and desktop profiles. The major changes include: Unity projects updated to target .NET 4.5. Dynamic build plans modified to use compiled lambda expressions instead of Reflection.Emit Converting reflection to use the new TypeInfo for reflection. Projects updated to work with the Microsoft Visual Studio 2011 Preview Notes/Known Issues: The Microsoft.Practices.Unity.UnityServiceLocator class cannot be use...Managed Extensibility Framework: MEF 2 Preview 4: Detailed information on this release is available on the BCL team blog.AcDown????? - Anime&Comic Downloader: AcDown????? v3.6: ?? ● AcDown??????????、??????,??????????????????????,???????Acfun、Bilibili、???、???、???、Tucao.cc、SF???、?????80????,???????????、?????????。 ● AcDown???????????????????????????,???,???????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??,????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7 ????????????? ??:????????Windows XP???,?????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)?.NET Framework 2.0???(x64),?????"?????????"??? ??????????????,??????????: ??"AcDown?????"????????? ?? v3.6?? ??“????”...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.33: Add JSParser.ParseExpression method to parse JavaScript expressions rather than source-elements. Add -strict switch (CodeSettings.StrictMode) to force input code to ECMA5 Strict-mode (extra error-checking, "use strict" at top). Fixed bug when MinifyCode setting was set to false but RemoveUnneededCode was left it's default value of true.New ProjectsAlgorithms: algorithms, ACM C++ programs, Electronic design automation algorithmsAll-In-One: Ein Programm - Alle Funktionen Einfach Komponente erstellen - und schon gibt es eine Funktion mehr!Bar Code File Copy: Bar Code File Copy is a mobile app that allows user to initiate file transfer from a PC to another with the help of barcodes and Windows Phone 7.BlekBoox: Google Books API CF-Soft: this is my workspace to study C# programming.CodePaste.NET Tray Application: A simple tray application to create snippets on CodePaste.NET. Right click the app and select New Snippet. A snippet will be created, the contents of your clipboard will be pasted and your clipboard will be replaced with the URL after the code snippet is successfully posted.Common libs of fanthos: Fanthos.Libs.Controls provides panel and button with special draw and special events. 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It then takes the XAML file and parses through it to create mock objects that can be used to render controls to the screen in XNA. These mock objects can also be used to pass data to any GUI system you choose.???-?????????? ?? ????????????? ????????? ??????????? ??????? ???: Under construction

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  • Abstracting functionality

    - by Ralf Westphal
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/theArchitectsNapkin/archive/2014/08/22/abstracting-functionality.aspxWhat is more important than data? Functionality. Yes, I strongly believe we should switch to a functionality over data mindset in programming. Or actually switch back to it. Focus on functionality Functionality once was at the core of software development. Back when algorithms were the first thing you heard about in CS classes. Sure, data structures, too, were important - but always from the point of view of algorithms. (Niklaus Wirth gave one of his books the title “Algorithms + Data Structures” instead of “Data Structures + Algorithms” for a reason.) The reason for the focus on functionality? Firstly, because software was and is about doing stuff. Secondly because sufficient performance was hard to achieve, and only thirdly memory efficiency. But then hardware became more powerful. That gave rise to a new mindset: object orientation. And with it functionality was devalued. Data took over its place as the most important aspect. Now discussions revolved around structures motivated by data relationships. (John Beidler gave his book the title “Data Structures and Algorithms: An Object Oriented Approach” instead of the other way around for a reason.) Sure, this data could be embellished with functionality. But nevertheless functionality was second. When you look at (domain) object models what you mostly find is (domain) data object models. The common object oriented approach is: data aka structure over functionality. This is true even for the most modern modeling approaches like Domain Driven Design. Look at the literature and what you find is recommendations on how to get data structures right: aggregates, entities, value objects. I´m not saying this is what object orientation was invented for. But I´m saying that´s what I happen to see across many teams now some 25 years after object orientation became mainstream through C++, Delphi, and Java. But why should we switch back? Because software development cannot become truly agile with a data focus. The reason for that lies in what customers need first: functionality, behavior, operations. To be clear, that´s not why software is built. The purpose of software is to be more efficient than the alternative. Money mainly is spent to get a certain level of quality (e.g. performance, scalability, security etc.). But without functionality being present, there is nothing to work on the quality of. What customers want is functionality of a certain quality. ASAP. And tomorrow new functionality needs to be added, existing functionality needs to be changed, and quality needs to be increased. No customer ever wanted data or structures. Of course data should be processed. Data is there, data gets generated, transformed, stored. But how the data is structured for this to happen efficiently is of no concern to the customer. Ask a customer (or user) whether she likes the data structured this way or that way. She´ll say, “I don´t care.” But ask a customer (or user) whether he likes the functionality and its quality this way or that way. He´ll say, “I like it” (or “I don´t like it”). Build software incrementally From this very natural focus of customers and users on functionality and its quality follows we should develop software incrementally. That´s what Agility is about. Deliver small increments quickly and often to get frequent feedback. That way less waste is produced, and learning can take place much easier (on the side of the customer as well as on the side of developers). An increment is some added functionality or quality of functionality.[1] So as it turns out, Agility is about functionality over whatever. But software developers’ thinking is still stuck in the object oriented mindset of whatever over functionality. Bummer. I guess that (at least partly) explains why Agility always hits a glass ceiling in projects. It´s a clash of mindsets, of cultures. Driving software development by demanding small increases in functionality runs against thinking about software as growing (data) structures sprinkled with functionality. (Excuse me, if this sounds a bit broad-brush. But you get my point.) The need for abstraction In the end there need to be data structures. Of course. Small and large ones. The phrase functionality over data does not deny that. It´s not functionality instead of data or something. It´s just over, i.e. functionality should be thought of first. It´s a tad more important. It´s what the customer wants. That´s why we need a way to design functionality. Small and large. We need to be able to think about functionality before implementing it. We need to be able to reason about it among team members. We need to be able to communicate our mental models of functionality not just by speaking about them, but also on paper. Otherwise reasoning about it does not scale. We learned thinking about functionality in the small using flow charts, Nassi-Shneiderman diagrams, pseudo code, or UML sequence diagrams. That´s nice and well. But it does not scale. You can use these tools to describe manageable algorithms. But it does not work for the functionality triggered by pressing the “1-Click Order” on an amazon product page for example. There are several reasons for that, I´d say. Firstly, the level of abstraction over code is negligible. It´s essentially non-existent. Drawing a flow chart or writing pseudo code or writing actual code is very, very much alike. All these tools are about control flow like code is.[2] In addition all tools are computationally complete. They are about logic which is expressions and especially control statements. Whatever you code in Java you can fully (!) describe using a flow chart. And then there is no data. They are about control flow and leave out the data altogether. Thus data mostly is assumed to be global. That´s shooting yourself in the foot, as I hope you agree. Even if it´s functionality over data that does not mean “don´t think about data”. Right to the contrary! Functionality only makes sense with regard to data. So data needs to be in the picture right from the start - but it must not dominate the thinking. The above tools fail on this. Bottom line: So far we´re unable to reason in a scalable and abstract manner about functionality. That´s why programmers are so driven to start coding once they are presented with a problem. Programming languages are the only tool they´ve learned to use to reason about functional solutions. Or, well, there might be exceptions. Mathematical notation and SQL may have come to your mind already. Indeed they are tools on a higher level of abstraction than flow charts etc. That´s because they are declarative and not computationally complete. They leave out details - in order to deliver higher efficiency in devising overall solutions. We can easily reason about functionality using mathematics and SQL. That´s great. Except for that they are domain specific languages. They are not general purpose. (And they don´t scale either, I´d say.) Bummer. So to be more precise we need a scalable general purpose tool on a higher than code level of abstraction not neglecting data. Enter: Flow Design. Abstracting functionality using data flows I believe the solution to the problem of abstracting functionality lies in switching from control flow to data flow. Data flow very naturally is not about logic details anymore. There are no expressions and no control statements anymore. There are not even statements anymore. Data flow is declarative by nature. With data flow we get rid of all the limiting traits of former approaches to modeling functionality. In addition, nomen est omen, data flows include data in the functionality picture. With data flows, data is visibly flowing from processing step to processing step. Control is not flowing. Control is wherever it´s needed to process data coming in. That´s a crucial difference and needs some rewiring in your head to be fully appreciated.[2] Since data flows are declarative they are not the right tool to describe algorithms, though, I´d say. With them you don´t design functionality on a low level. During design data flow processing steps are black boxes. They get fleshed out during coding. Data flow design thus is more coarse grained than flow chart design. It starts on a higher level of abstraction - but then is not limited. By nesting data flows indefinitely you can design functionality of any size, without losing sight of your data. Data flows scale very well during design. They can be used on any level of granularity. And they can easily be depicted. Communicating designs using data flows is easy and scales well, too. The result of functional design using data flows is not algorithms (too low level), but processes. Think of data flows as descriptions of industrial production lines. Data as material runs through a number of processing steps to be analyzed, enhances, transformed. On the top level of a data flow design might be just one processing step, e.g. “execute 1-click order”. But below that are arbitrary levels of flows with smaller and smaller steps. That´s not layering as in “layered architecture”, though. Rather it´s a stratified design à la Abelson/Sussman. Refining data flows is not your grandpa´s functional decomposition. That was rooted in control flows. Refining data flows does not suffer from the limits of functional decomposition against which object orientation was supposed to be an antidote. Summary I´ve been working exclusively with data flows for functional design for the past 4 years. It has changed my life as a programmer. What once was difficult is now easy. And, no, I´m not using Clojure or F#. And I´m not a async/parallel execution buff. Designing the functionality of increments using data flows works great with teams. It produces design documentation which can easily be translated into code - in which then the smallest data flow processing steps have to be fleshed out - which is comparatively easy. Using a systematic translation approach code can mirror the data flow design. That way later on the design can easily be reproduced from the code if need be. And finally, data flow designs play well with object orientation. They are a great starting point for class design. But that´s a story for another day. To me data flow design simply is one of the missing links of systematic lightweight software design. There are also other artifacts software development can produce to get feedback, e.g. process descriptions, test cases. But customers can be delighted more easily with code based increments in functionality. ? No, I´m not talking about the endless possibilities this opens for parallel processing. Data flows are useful independently of multi-core processors and Actor-based designs. That´s my whole point here. Data flows are good for reasoning and evolvability. So forget about any special frameworks you might need to reap benefits from data flows. None are necessary. Translating data flow designs even into plain of Java is possible. ?

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