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• Why using the word "mechanism" in CS?

  - by Nick Rosencrantz

  I'm not sure about the usage of the word "mechanism" when in fact most of the time what is meant is an algorithm. For instance there's talk about Java's "thread-scheduling mechanism" - why not call it an algorithm and why borrow a term from mechanics where relations sometimes are the opposites than of computer science? I'm aware that an algorithm is considered a "mechanical solution" but is this really the case in fact when a lot of algorithm don't have mechanical representations for instance a file-sharing network that gets quicker and faster as the usage grows, that would be the reverse of a mechanical structure that would go slower when usage grows.

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• Automatic Generalization

  - by Nick Harrison

  I have been interested in functional programming since college. I played around a little with LISP back then, but I have not had an opportunity since then. Now that F# ships standard with VS 2010, I figured now is my chance. So, I was reading up on it a little over the weekend when I came across a very interesting topic. F# includes a concept called "Automatic Generalization". As I understand it, the compiler will look at your method and analyze how you are using parameters. It will automatically switch to a generic parameter if it is possible based on your usage. Wow! I am looking forward to playing with this. I have long been an advocate of using the most generic types possible especially when developing library classes. Use the highest level base class that you can get away with. Use an interface instead of a specific implementation. I don't advocate passing object around, but you get the idea. Tools like resharper, fxCop, and most static code analysis tools provide guidance to help you identify when a more generalized type is possible, but this is the first time I have heard about the compiler taking matters into its own hands. I like the sound of this. We'll see if it is a good idea or not. What are your thoughts? Am I missing the mark on what Automatic Generalization does in F#? How would this work in C#? Do you see any problems with this?

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• No GRUB Screen or recovery mode on Boot after 12.04 Upgrade

  - by Nick

  I tried the live boot CD and boot-repair, also loaded the Desktop install CD, and it looks like all partitions check out OK. However, when I try to boot Linux (the only bootable partition on the computer) I get a blank screen. Every so often the screen give me something akin to: Assuming write through cache Asking for cache data failed it appears to start booting, then hangs. Ctrl+Alt+Delete shuts down the machine The last message during boot is "STarting TiMidity++ ALSA midi emulation... [OK]" I used boot-repair to generate a boot info report. One thing looks odd to me- it reports a missing core.img on /dev/sda1. Here is the full info: Boot Info Script 0.61.full + Boot-Repair extra info [Boot-Info August 2nd 2012] ============================= Boot Info Summary: =============================== = Grub2 (v1.99) is installed in the MBR of /dev/sda and looks at sector 1 of the same hard drive for core.img. core.img is at this location and looks for (,msdos1)/boot/grub on this drive. = Windows is installed in the MBR of /dev/sdb. sda1: __________________________________________ File system: ext4 Boot sector type: Grub2 (v1.99) Boot sector info: Grub2 (v1.99) is installed in the boot sector of sda1 and looks at sector 18406911 of the same hard drive for core.img, but core.img can not be found at this location. Operating System: Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS Boot files: /boot/grub/grub.cfg /etc/fstab /boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf /boot/grub/core.img sda2: __________________________________________ File system: Extended Partition Boot sector type: - Boot sector info: sda5: __________________________________________ File system: swap Boot sector type: - Boot sector info: sdb1: __________________________________________ File system: ntfs Boot sector type: Windows XP: NTFS Boot sector info: No errors found in the Boot Parameter Block. Operating System: Boot files: ============================ Drive/Partition Info: ============================= Drive: sda _______________________________________ Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders, total 312581808 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Partition Boot Start Sector End Sector # of Sectors Id System /dev/sda1 * 63 307,339,514 307,339,452 83 Linux /dev/sda2 307,339,515 312,576,704 5,237,190 5 Extended /dev/sda5 307,339,578 312,576,704 5,237,127 82 Linux swap / Solaris Drive: sdb _______________________________________ Disk /dev/sdb: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders, total 625142448 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Partition Boot Start Sector End Sector # of Sectors Id System /dev/sdb1 2,048 625,142,447 625,140,400 7 NTFS / exFAT / HPFS "blkid" output: ____________________________________ Device UUID TYPE LABEL /dev/loop0 squashfs /dev/sda1 11b4d633-7863-40b2-a6ca-da5f82c3ad0b ext4 /dev/sda5 cb8d65f4-8cf9-4088-b804-e3dea2151033 swap /dev/sdb1 349E7C109E7BC8BE ntfs Personal1 ================================ Mount points: ================================= Device Mount_Point Type Options /dev/sdb1 /media/Personal1 fuseblk (rw,nosuid,nodev,allow_other,blksize=4096,default_permissions) /dev/sr0 /live/image iso9660 (ro,noatime) ...(a bunch of config file info- let me know if anyone wants to see it!) But usually I just get "Cannot Display This Video Mode", which I know means the video output is not usable by the monitor. I'm looking for a way to get into a recovery mode.I'd really like to avoid wiping the drive. Any thoughts?

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• How to become a good team player?

  - by Nick

  I've been programming (obsessively) since I was 12. I am fairly knowledgeable across the spectrum of languages out there, from assembly, to C++, to Javascript, to Haskell, Lisp, and Qi. But all of my projects have been by myself. I got my degree in chemical engineering, not CS or computer engineering, but for the first time this fall I'll be working on a large programming project with other people, and I have no clue how to prepare. I've been using Windows all of my life, but this project is going to be very unix-y, so I purchased a Mac recently in the hopes of familiarizing myself with the environment. I was fortunate to participate in a hackathon with some friends this past year -- both CS majors -- and excitingly enough, we won. But I realized as I worked with them that their workflow was very different from mine. They used Git for version control. I had never used it at the time, but I've since learned all that I can about it. They also used a lot of frameworks and libraries. I had to learn what Rails was pretty much overnight for the hackathon (on the other hand, they didn't know what lexical scoping or closures were). All of our code worked well, but they didn't understand mine, and I didn't understand theirs. I hear references to things that real programmers do on a daily basis -- unit testing, code reviews, but I only have the vaguest sense of what these are. I normally don't have many bugs in my little projects, so I have never needed a bug tracking system or tests for them. And the last thing is that it takes me a long time to understand other people's code. Variable naming conventions (that vary with each new language) are difficult (__mzkwpSomRidicAbbrev), and I find the loose coupling difficult. That's not to say I don't loosely couple things -- I think I'm quite good at it for my own work, but when I download something like the Linux kernel or the Chromium source code to look at it, I spend hours trying to figure out how all of these oddly named directories and files connect. It's a programming sin to reinvent the wheel, but I often find it's just quicker to write up the functionality myself than to spend hours dissecting some library. Obviously, people who do this for a living don't have these problems, and I'll need to get to that point myself. Question: What are some steps that I can take to begin "integrating" with everyone else? Thanks!

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• Agile Documentation

  - by Nick Harrison

  We all know that one of the premises of the agile manifesto is to value Working Software over Comprehensive Documentation. This is a wonderful idea and it takes a tremendous burden off of project implementations. I have seen as many projects fail because of the maintenance weight of the project documentations as I have for any reason. But this goal as important as it is may not always be practical. Sometimes the client will simply insist on tedious documentation despite the arguments against it. This may be to calm a nervous client. This may be to satisfy an audit / compliance requirement. This may be a non-too subtle attempt at sabotaging the project. Ok, it is probably not an all out attempt to sabotage the project, but it will probably feel that way. So what can we do to keep to the spirit of the Agile Manifesto but still meet the needs of the client wanting the documentation? This is a good question that I have been puzzling over lately! I hope to explore some possible answers more fully here. A common theme that my solutions are likely to follow is the same theme that I often follow with simplifying complex business logic. Make it table driven! My thought is that the sought after documentation could be a report or reports out of a metadata repository. Reports are much easier to maintain than hand written documentation. Here are a few additional advantages that we can explore over time: Reports will take advantage of the fact that different people have different needs and different format requirements Reports and the supporting metadata are more easily validated and the validation can be automated. If the application itself uses this metadata than there never has to be a question as to whether or not the metadata is up to date. It is up to date or the application would not work. In many cases we should be able to automatically gather most of the Meta data that we need using reflection, system tables, etc. I think that this will lower the total cost of ownership for the documentation and may provide something useful beyond having a pretty document to look at.  What are your thoughts?

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• How to get httpd to forward to multiple tomcats for different urls, including / ?

  - by Nick Foote

  Ok So I've got multiple tomcat instances setup on several AJP ports, I also have Apache httpd listening on port 8090 (cos I've got another app already using 8080 at the moment). I've successfully mapped urls such as mydomain.com:8090/demo and mydomain.com:8090/preprod to their respective tomcat instances using Jk Mount and the following vhosts config; <VirtualHost *:8090> JkMount /preprod* preprod JkMount /demo* demo </VirtualHost> But I also want the "root" address to map to another tomcat instance, what will become live/production, ie I want mydomain.com:8090/ to map a 3rd tomcat instance. At the moment nothing happens or changes if I just add to the above config a line; JkMount /* rootwar if I browse to mydomain.com:8090 I just get the same boring apache httpd landing page letting me know its running (ie index.html in httpd/htdocs) Is it possible to use JkMount to redirect the "root" address stuff to a tomcat instance? I can see that a rule like /* will also match URLs like mydomain.com/preprod but I was hoping the rules are applied in order so if /* appears at the end it effectively would be a "if its not one of the other environments, then direct to root/production" Just to be clear I'm trying to setup the following; mydomain.com:8090/preprod --> myApp running in tomcat1 mydomain.com:8090/demo --> myApp running in tomcat2 mydomain.com:8090 --> myApp running in tomcat3

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• Sub Domain tracking with Analytics filters

  - by Nick

  Hi All, We currently have Analytics tracking codes running throughout our site including our Sub Domains. What I would like to do is create different Profiles under the same account segmenting the sub domains by means of filters. Currently I am just excluding the hostname of the main website by using the following custom filter: Exclude: Hostname Filter pattern: ^www.mydomain.co.za(.*) I know this isn't the proper method of doing this though and have some of the main domains links coming through in the data. Ideally I would just like to include anything from: sub.domain.co.za Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

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• What is the right level of granularity for code commenting?

  - by Nick

  Commenting in code I believe is very important but recently I've been reviewing code that has left me wondering particular this one. //due to lack of confidence with web programming leaving this note in for now What is the right level of granularity for code commenting? EDIT: Obviously the above comment is shocking hence why I'm asking the question. I've recently noticed the inline comments in the code at my work place annoying. Instead of getting angry I want discovery the acceptable level of granularity for code commenting in the community.

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• Scrum - how to carry over a partially complete User Story to the next Sprint without skewing the backlog

  - by Nick

  We're using Scrum and occasionally find that we can't quite finish a User Story in the sprint in which it was planned. In true Scrum style, we ship the software anyway and consider including the User Story in the next sprint during the next Sprint Planning session. Given that the User Story we are carrying over is partially complete, how do we estimate for it correctly in the next Sprint Planning session? We have considered: a) Adjusting the number of Story Points down to reflect just the work which remains to complete the User Story. Unfortunately this will mess up reporting the Product Backlog. b) Close the partially-completed User Story and raise a new one to implement the remainder of that feature, which will have fewer Story Points. This will affect our ability to retrospectively see what we didn't complete in that sprint and seems a bit time consuming. c) Not bother with either a or b and continue to guess during Sprint Planning saying things like "Well that User Story may be X story points, but I know it's 95% finished so I'm sure we can fit it in."

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• What kind of physics to choose for our arcade 3D MMO?

  - by Nick

  We're creating an action MMO using Three.js (WebGL) with an arcadish feel, and implementing physics for it has been a pain in the butt. Our game has a terrain where the character will walk on, and in the future 3D objects (a house, a tree, etc) that will have collisions. In terms of complexity, the physics engine should be like World of Warcraft. We don't need friction, bouncing behaviour or anything more complex like joints, etc. Just gravity. I have managed to implement terrain physics so far by casting a ray downwards, but it does not take into account possible 3D objects. Note that these 3D objects need to have convex collisions, so our artists create a 3D house and the player can walk inside but can't walk through the walls. How do I implement proper collision detection with 3D objects like in World of Warcraft? Do I need an advanced physics engine? I read about Physijs which looks cool, but I fear that it may be overkill to implement that for our game. Also, how does WoW do it? Do they have a separate raycasting system for the terrain? Or do they treat the terrain like any other convex mesh? A screenshot of our game so far:

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• Is it bad practice to output from within a function?

  - by Nick

  For example, should I be doing something like: <?php function output_message($message,$type='success') { ?> <p class="<?php echo $type; ?>"><?php echo $message; ?></p> <?php } output_message('There were some errors processing your request','error'); ?> or <?php function output_message($message,$type='success') { ob_start(); ?> <p class="<?php echo $type; ?>"><?php echo $message; ?></p> <?php return ob_get_clean(); } echo output_message('There were some errors processing your request','error'); ?> I understand they both achieve the same end result, but are there benefits doing one way over the other? Or does it not even matter?

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• unmet dependencies updating Intel graphics driver

  - by Nick Jacobs

  I am trying to update my graphics driver by running: sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-intel But I keep getting this message: Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable distribution that some required packages have not yet been created or been moved out of Incoming. The following information may help to resolve the situation: The following packages have unmet dependencies: xserver-xorg-video-intel : Depends: xorg-video-abi-11 E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages. When I run: sudo apt-get install -f Nothing happens, because the program doesn't even get half way to installing. I am running Lubuntu 12.04 on a HP Mini 110 netbook. I have tried changing to several different ppa's but that doesn't work. I want to update my driver so that my mouse stops flickering and ScummVM stops flickering every minute.

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• How can I support the creation and rendering of both interior and exterior environments?

  - by Nick

  Say I already have a renderer that can support outdoor terrain and environment rendering. How would I go about adding support for interior environments (for example, like World of Warcraft's dungeons) to my game? I'm interested both in how I should fit the interiors into my content creation process (for example, I thought about leaving holes in the terrain mesh into which I can "paste" the interior dungeon mesh at runtime) and how to render them (it seems like I'd want a different rendering flow other than a blended texture rendering phase that terrain uses).

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• First time using Ubuntu, need help with drivers!

  - by Nick

  I have just successfully built my first computer last night. I went through the boot menu and got Ubuntu 12.10 installed properly and everything. My question is...now what? There has to be some sort of drivers I need to install right? I can't connect to wi-fi or anything of that sort. I have an ASUS motherboard, model number M4N98TD EVO , and an NVIDIA Geforce GTX 650 grpahics card. I guess my main question is, can someone run me through step by step what I need to do after I install Ubuntu?

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• Way to make video-thumbnails generate from VLC instead of Totem?

  - by nick

  I'm suffering from problem that video-thumbnails do not appear in nautilus for some video files. I just found this bug typefinding: some mpeg files are not identified as mpeg files which seems to address the problem. I don't understand the specifics as reported in this bug report, but it sounds like it's a problem with Totem's interaction with Gstreamer. Since all my videos play fine with VLC (and they don't all play with Totem), I don't use Totem very much. Is there a way to make VLC generate the video-thumbnails instead of having to rely on the buggy gstreamer/totem? I made VLC my default video player but this had no effect on the display of video-thumbnails. If Totem can't play the video file, then I get no thumbnail. But VLC can play the videos fine, so why can't VLC create a video-thumbnail for it?

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• Learning good OOP design & unlearning some bad habits

  - by Nick

  I have been mostly a C programmer so far in my career with knowledge of C++. I rely on C++ mostly for the convenience STL provides and I hardly ever focus on good design practices. As I have started to look for a new job position, this bad habit of mine has come back to haunt me. During the interviews, I have been asked to design a problem (like chess, or some other scenario) using OOP and I doing really badly at that (I came to know this through feedback from one interview). I tried to google stuff and came up with so many opinions and related books that I don't know where to begin. I need a good through introduction to OOP design with which I can learn practical design, not just theory. Can you point me to any book which meets my requirements ? I prefer C++, but any other language is fine as long as I can pick-up good practices. Also, I know that books can only go so far. I would also appreciate any good practice project ideas that helped you learn and improve your OOP concepts. Thanks.

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• Can we compare programming languages ergonomically?

  - by Nick Rosencrantz

  For instance, would Python be a more ergonomic programming language since it doesn't force you to make curly braces which requires the AltGr key. Also Python usually requires less code to achieve the same or am I being biased towards Python and PHP actually is an ergonomical and comfortable language despite forcing the programmer to use the AltGr key? Isn't forcing the programmer to use the AltGr key not very ergonomical?

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• Problem with setting up a bootable USB on corrupted OSX

  - by Nick

  I cant access the desktop because my harddrive is corrupted. Therefore I want to make a bootable USB stick so i can transfer all of my important files to my External HD. Problem is that Im stuck on Step 3 --- http://www.ubuntu.com/download/help/create-a-usb-stick-on-mac-osx . Im not sure of what i should change this to: hdiutil convert -format UDRW -o ~/path/to/target.img ~/path/to/ubuntu.iso It says convert failed - No such file or directory. Obviously the problem is that i dont know the path to the USB, maybe you know how to find out? Please help me. Thanks. ps. Ive downloaded the ubuntu desktop amd64+mac. pps. Unetbootin is a different alternative, but i dont know if it works?

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• How does Minecraft render its sunset and sky?

  - by Nick

  In Minecraft, the sunset looks really beautiful and I've always wanted to know how they do it. Do they use several skyboxes rendered over eachother? That is, one for the sky (which can turn dark and light depending on the time of the day), one for the sun and moon, and one for the orange horizon effect? I was hoping someone could enlighten me... I wish I could enter wireframe or something like that but as far as I know that is not possible.

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• Deferred rendering order?

  - by Nick Wiggill

  There are some effects for which I must do multi-pass rendering. I've got the basics set up (FBO rendering etc.), but I'm trying to get my head around the most suitable setup. Here's what I'm thinking... The framebuffer objects: FBO 1 has a color attachment and a depth attachment. FBO 2 has a color attachment. The render passes: Render g-buffer: normals and depth (used by outline & DoF blur shaders); output to FBO no. 1. Render solid geometry, bold outlines (as in toon shader), and fog; output to FBO no. 2. (can all render via a single fragment shader -- I think.) (optional) DoF blur the scene; output to the default frame buffer OR ELSE render FBO2 directly to default frame buffer. (optional) Mesh wireframes; composite over what's already in the default framebuffer. Does this order seem viable? Any obvious mistakes?

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• Understanding Asynchronous Programming with .NET Reflector

  - by Nick Harrison

  When trying to understand and learn the .NET framework, there is no substitute for being able to see what is going on behind at the scenes inside even the most confusing assemblies, and .NET Reflector makes this possible. Personally, I never fully understood connection pooling until I was able to poke around in key classes in the System.Data assembly. All of a sudden, integrating with third party components was much simpler, even without vendor documentation!With a team devoted to developing and extending Reflector, Red Gate have made it possible for us to step into and actually debug assemblies such as System.Data as though the source code was part of our solution. This maybe doesn’t sound like much, but it dramatically improves the way you can relate to and understand code that isn’t your own.Now that Microsoft has officially launched Visual Studio 2012, Reflector is also fully integrated with the new IDE, and supports the most complex language feature currently at our command: Asynchronous processing.Without understanding what is going on behind the scenes in the .NET Framework, it is difficult to appreciate what asynchronocity actually bring to the table and, without Reflector, we would never know the Arthur C. Clarke Magicthat the compiler does on our behalf.Join me as we explore the new asynchronous processing model, as well as review the often misunderstood and underappreciated yield keyword (you’ll see the connection when we dive into how the CLR handles async).Read more here

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• BDD in a .NET environment

  - by Nick

  I've seen BDD in action (in this case using SpecFlow and Selenium in a .NET environment) for a small test project. I was very impressed - mainly due to the fact that the language used to specify the acceptance tests meant they engaged with the product owner much more easily. I'm now keen to bring this into my current organisation. However I'm asked 'who else uses this?' and 'show me some case-studies'. Unfortunately I cannot find any 'big names' (or even 'small names' for that matter!) of companies who are actively using BDD. I have two questions really: Is BDD adopted by companies out there? Who are they? How can BDD be implemented in an agile .NET environment and are there any significant drawbacks to doing it?

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• In a browser, is it best to use one huge spritesheet or many (10000) different PNG's?

  - by Nick

  I'm creating a game in jQuery, where I use about 10000 32x32 tiles. Until now, I have been using them all separately (no sprite sheet). An average map uses about 2000 tiles (sometimes re-used PNG's but all separate divs) and the performance ranges from stable (Chrome) to a bit laggy (Firefox). Each of these divs are positioned absolutely using CSS. They do not need to be updated every tick, just when a new map is loaded. Would it be better for performance to use spritesheet methods for the divs using CSS background-positioning, like gameQuery does? Thank you in advance!

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• How do I control how often search engines visit my site?

  - by Nick

  I've been using the following line in the <head> of my sites for years: <meta name="revisit-after" content="3 days" /> I recently discovered that it's not one of the meta tags that Google understands, which I take to mean that there's no point in including it, and that it's been doing no good at all for years. How often do search engines crawl a website by default, and what reliable ways are there to increase or decrease that frequency?

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• Rendering citations and references in HTML using PHP/Perl/Python/

  - by Nick

  Is there a PHP/Perl/Python/... library for picking citations out of an HTML file and rendering a nice list of references at the bottom, like in Wikipedia? I'm developing a website with heavily-sourced content, and I'd really like to have automatically-generated lists of formatted references, like in Wikipedia. (Check out their philosophy page, and see how the superscript numbered citations interact with the references at the bottom. This is all dynamically generated, automatically ordered & linked.) They do it really well: the citations are linked to the references (which are backlinked to the citations), when you click on one of the links, the target is highlighted, etc. I'm tempted to build the site on MediaWiki just for this one feature, but it seems like overkill. Do I have any options?

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