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• How can I find the shortest path between two subgraphs of a larger graph?

  - by Pops

  I'm working with a weighted, undirected multigraph (loops not permitted; most node connections have multiplicity 1; a few node connections have multiplicity 2). I need to find the shortest path between two subgraphs of this graph that do not overlap with each other. There are no other restrictions on which nodes should be used as start/end points. Edges can be selectively removed from the graph at certain times (as explained in my previous question) so it's possible that for two given subgraphs, there might not be any way to connect them. I'm pretty sure I've heard of an algorithm for this before, but I can't remember what it's called, and my Google searches for strings like "shortest path between subgraphs" haven't helped. Can someone suggest a more efficient way to do this than comparing shortest paths between all nodes in one subgraph with all nodes in the other subgraph? Or at least tell me the name of the algorithm so I can look it up myself? For example, if I have the graph below, the nodes circled in red might be one subgraph and the nodes circled in blue might be another. The edges would all have positive integer weights, although they're not shown in the image. I'd want to find whatever path has the shortest total cost as long as it starts at a red node and ends at a blue node. I believe this means the specific node positions and edge weights cannot be ignored. (This is just an example graph I grabbed off Wikimedia and drew on, not my actual problem.)

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• Does concurrency inherently introduce "randomness" into a game?

  - by Jeff

  When a game is implemented with concurrency (as most games are), does this necessarily, by its very nature, introduce an element of randomness into the game that is outside of the players' control? Note that when I use the word "random", I'm not meaning to launch into a philosophical debate about the deterministic nature of the system. I understand that concurrency is deterministic in the sense that the operating system decides which processes to allow time on the CPU and in what order (or the JVM controls which Thread's turn it is to execute, etc). But my understanding of this is that there is no way to control or predict whether one thread's next command will execute before or after another. The reason I'm asking is because this seems like a fundamental difficulty for game development where a game is supposedly designed around a player's skill. Consider a game like League of Legends. Assume that two players are battling it out. It's a very close contest between the two and it's coming down to the wire -- so much so that whoever gets their last attack off will be the one to kill the other and win the game for their team. If the players are implemented using concurrency and the situation really was like this, is it essentially out of the players' hands at this point? Is the outcome of this match all up to whatever system is arbitrarily deciding which player's thread/process will execute next? If not, what am I misunderstanding about concurrency? If so, is there any way around this problem so that a game of skill can always be a game of skill, especially in those most crucial moments?

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• TotalPhase Aardvark driver's GPL license

  - by Philip

  I'm using an SPI host adapter for a project. The Aardvark from TotalPhase. And I did something crazy, I read that EULA license that everyone just clicks through. The driver installation license includes these bits: This driver installer package also includes a WIN32 driver that is entirely based on the libusb-win32 project (release 0.1.10.1). ... LICENSE: The software in this package is distributed under the following licenses: Driver: GNU General Public License (GPL) Library, Test Files: GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) Now, my understanding of of the GPL is that it's sticky and viral. If you include software then the whole project has to be released under the GPL (if you distribute it, you can do whatever you want with in-house projects). If the driver was like the library, and was licensed under the LGPL, it could be used by my closed source proprietary project, as long as it's source and license was passed along with it. But it's not, it's pure GPL. If I include this driver in my project and distribute it, am I required to release my project under the GPL?

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• Inheriting projects - General Rules? [closed]

  - by pspahn

  Possible Duplicate: When is a BIG Rewrite the answer? Software rewriting alternatives Are there any actual case studies on rewrites of software success/failure rates? When should you rewrite? We're not a software company. Is a complete re-write still a bad idea? Have you ever been involved in a BIG Rewrite? This is an area of discussion I have long been curious about, but overall, I generally lack the experience to give myself an answer that I would fully trust. We've all been there, a new client shows up with a half-complete project they are looking to finish and launch. For whatever reason, they fired their previous developer, and it's now up to you to save the day. I am just finishing up a code review for a new client, and in my estimation is would be better to scrap what the previous developers built since and start from scratch. There's a ton of reasons why I am leaning toward this way, but it still makes me nervous since the client isn't going to want to hear "those last guys built you a big turd, and I can either polish it, or throw it in the trash". What are your general rules for accepting these projects? How do you determine whether it will be better to start from scratch or continue with the existing code base? What other extra steps might you take to help control client expectations, since the previous developer may have inflated those expectations beyond a reasonable level? Any other general advice?

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• Computer Bugs - Etymology and Entomology

  - by PointsToShare

  Whatever bugs you My wife and I used to take some of our summer vacation I a cabin on the shore of Lake Atsion in NJ. I t is a delightful place in the Wharton forest with Brown yet fresh water, where we would canoe, swim and enjoy true rest. Alas, in the last few years, yellow flies also discovered the area’s pastoral delights and came in hoards to bug us. So much so that we had to give up. As a computer programmer I abhor bugs. The bugs that bug me – except the pesky yellow flies – are program bugs , a specific variety of computer bugs. You can find an excellent take on the etymology of the word ‘bug” in this delightful monogram: http://www.jamesshuggins.com/h/tek1/first_computer_bug.htm In my youth, I worked on Burroughs computers. Unlike their IBM brethren, the Burroughs used a 96 column card. The cards were much smaller than the 80 column IBM cards. We wrote our programs on coding sheets and then a key-punch operator transcribed them into punched cards. These were fed into a card reader and compiled. The compiler would notify us of compiler errors or bugs, but it was not always easy to get the meaning of the message. My friend Mark Wildt, also a Burroughs veteran, gave me an old punched card from one of his programs. Obviously a bug!! Here It Is!! That’s All Folks!

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• Can web apps allow fast data-typists to "type-ahead"?

  - by user61852

  In some data entry contexts, I've seen data typists, type really fast and know so well the app they use, and have a mechanic quality in their work so that they can "type ahead", ie continue typing and "tab-bing" and "enter-ing" faster than the display updates, so that in many occasions they are typing in the data for the next form before it draws itself. Then when this next entry form appears, their keystrokes fill the text boxes and they continue typing, selecting etc. In contexts like this, this speed is desirable, since this persons are really productive. I think this "type ahead of time" is only possible in desktop apps, but I may be wrong. My question is whether this way of handling the keyboard buffer (which in desktop apps require no extra programming) is achievable in web apps, or is this impossible because of the way web apps work, handle sessions, etc (network latency and the overhead of generating new web pages ) ? Edit: By "type ahead" I mean "keyboard type ahead" (typing faster than the next entry form can load), not suggets-as-you-type-like-google type ahead. Typeahead is a feature of computers and software (and some typewriters) that enables users to continue typing regardless of program or computer operation—the user may type in whatever speed he or she desires, and if the receiving software is busy at the time it will be called to handle this later. Often this means that keystrokes entered will not be displayed on the screen immediately. This programming technique for handling user what is known as a keyboard buffer.

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• Keyboard freezes / stuck if a key pressed repeatedly

  - by Aziz Rahmad

  I use Acer 4530. This problem has happened long since Ubuntu 10.10 and now that I use 11.04 dual booted with Linux Mint 10. Everytime I press one key repeatedly, like when I read a long article in a website/ebook or when I play games which required me to press arrow keys repeatedly, it would randomly freeze. That is, whatever I press on keyboard has no effect, and that also happens with touchpad. However, the USB mouse works just fine. I later found out that it's not actually freeze but more like it's like the key stuck. For example when I play tetris which I usually press w (down) button repeatedly, after some times it would freeze. And if I put the cursor in, say, browser's address bar, it would type "wwww....." infinitely. The only way I could fix it is by suspend the laptop, either by using mouse or by closing the lid. And instead of suspended, in that case the laptop would automatically wake up and everything will be fine. (Usually my laptop would wake up after suspended by pressing any key) It has happened since the first time I use Ubuntu, 10.10, and it also happens in Linux Mint 10, and until now in Ubuntu 11.04. It never happened when I use Windows, though. Anyone has ever encounter similar problem? Anyone know how to fix it permanently?

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• Fight for your rights as a video gamer.

  - by Chris Williams

  Soon, the U.S. Supreme Court may decide whether to hear a case that could have a lasting impact on computer and video games. The case before the Court involves a law passed by the state of California attempting to criminalize the sale of certain computer and video games. Two previous courts rejected the California law as unconstitutional, but soon the Supreme Court could have the final say. Whatever the Court's ruling, we must be prepared to continue defending our rights now and in the future. To do so, we need a large, powerful movement of gamers to speak with one voice and show that we won't sit back while lawmakers try to score political points by scapegoating video games and treating them differently than books, movies, and music. If the Court decides to hear the case, we're going to need thousands of activists like you who can help defend computer and video games by writing letters to editors, calling into talk radio stations, and educating Americans about our passion for and appreciation of computer and video games. You can help build this movement right now by inviting all your friends and fellow gamers to join the Video Game Voters Network. Use our simple tool to send an email to everyone you know asking them to stand up for gaming rights: http://videogamevoters.org/movement You can also help spread the word through Facebook and Twitter, or you can simply forward this email to everyone you know and ask them to sign up at videogamevoters.org. Time after time, courts continue to reject politicians' efforts to restrict the sale of computer and video games. But that doesn't mean the politicians will stop trying anytime soon -- in fact, it means they're likely to ramp up their efforts even more. To stop them, we must make it clear that gamers will continue to stand up for free speech -- and that the numbers are on our side. Help make sure we're ready and able to keep fighting for our gaming rights. Spread the word about the Video Game Voters Network right now: http://videogamevoters.org/movement Thank you. -- Video Game Voters Network

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• Sorting versus hashing

  - by Paul Siegel

  My problem is as follows. I have an array of n strings with m < n of them distinct. I want to create a one-to-one function which assigns each of the m distinct strings to the numbers 0 ... m-1. For example, if my strings are: Bob, Amy, Bob, Charlie, Amy then the function: Bob -> 0, Amy -> 1, Charlie -> 2 would meet my needs. I have thought of three possible approaches: Sort the list of strings, remove duplicates, and construct the function using a search algorithm. Create a hash table and check each string to see if it is already in the table before inserting it. Sort the list of strings, remove duplicates, and put the resulting list into a hash table. My code will be written in Java, and I will likely use standard Java algorithms: merge sort for sorting, binary search for searching, and whatever the standard Java hash table algorithm is. Question: Assume that after creating the function I will have to evaluate it on each of the n original strings. Which of the three approaches is fastest? Is there a better way? Part of the problem is that I don't really know what's going on "under the hood" in standard hashing algorithms. Any help would be appreciated.

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• Where could Distributed Version Control Systems currently be in Gartner's hype cycle?

  - by dukeofgaming

  Edit: Given the recent downvoting (+8/-6 at this point) it was made clear to me that Gartner's lifecycle is a biased metric from a programmer's perspective. This is something that is part of a paper I'm going to present to management, and management types are part of Gartner's audience. Giving DVCS exposure & enthusiasm (that "could" be deemed as hype, or at least attacked as such), think about the following question when reading this one: "how could I use Gartner's hype cycle to convince management that DVCSs are ready (or ready-enough) for us, and that it is not just hype" Just asking if DVCSs is hype wouldn't be constructive, Gartner's hype cycle is a more objective instrument than just asking that (even if this instrument is regarded as biased). If you know any other instrument please, by all means, mention it. Edit #2: I agree that Gartner's Life Cycle is not for every technology, but I consider it may have generated enough buzz to be considered hype by some, so it maybe deserves to be at least evaluated/pondered as such by using this instrument in order to prove/disprove it to whatever degree. I'm an advocate of DVCS, BTW. I'm doing research for a whitepaper I'm writing in favor of DVCS adoption at company and I stumbled upon the concept of social proof. I want to prove that the social proof of DVCS adoption is not necessarily cargo cult and doing further research I now stumbled upon Gartner's hype cycle which describes technology maturity in 5 phases. My question is: what could be an indicator of the current location of Distributed Version Control Systems (I mean git, mercurial, bazaar, etc. in general) at a particular phase in the hype cycle?... in other (less convoluted) words, would you say that currently expectations of DVCSs are a) starting, b)inflated, c)decreasing (disillusionment), d)increasing (enlightenment) or e)stabilizing (mature) and (more importantly) why? I know it is a hard question and there is subjectivity involved, but I'll grant the answer (and the traditional cookie) to the clearest argument/evidence for a particular phase.

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• How do you keep cool when production system goes down?

  - by Mag20

  This has happened to most of us... You come to work one day. Everything seems normal: the sun is shining, birds are chirping, but you notice a couple of weird things on your way to work like deja vu with cat in matrix. You get into office, there are a lot of phones ringing, but could be that they are just doing a new sales promotion. You settle in, when you notice a dark cloud hovering over you. It takes you a couple of moments, but you recognize the cloud is your boss. Usually he checks on you every morning with his "Soooo Peeeeter, how about those TCP/IP reports?" routine, but today he forgot everything about common manners and rudely invaded your personal space. No "Good Morning", just some drooling, grunts and curses. He reminds you a bit of neanderthal who is trying to get away from cyber tooth tiger, fear and panic all compressed in a tight ball. You try to decipher the new language that he created since yesterday and you start understanding that something bad happened overnight - production system went down. Now, your system is usually used by clients during regular working hours from 9-5, but for whatever reason you didn't get any alerts on your beeper (for people under 30 - beeper was like a mobile phone that could only ring and tell you who beeped you). Need to remember to charge it next time. So it is 8:45am, the system MUST be up at 9am. Every 10 seconds, your boss lets out yet another curse which communicates to you that another customer is having problems getting into the system. Also several account managers are now hovering over your boss trying to make him understand how clients are REALLY REALLY suffering. Everyone is depending on you to get the system up ASAP and at the same time hinder your progress by constantly distracting you. How do you keep cool in a situation like this?

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• Social IT guy barrier [closed]

  - by sergiol

  Possible Duplicate: How do you deal with people who ask you to fix their computer? Hello. Almost every person that deserves the title of being a programmer as faced the problem of persons that do not even remember the mere existence of those professionals, unless they have serious problems in their computer or some other IT related problem. May be my post will be considered off-topic, but I think it is a very important question. As Joel Spolsky says, IT guys are not Asperger geeks, and they need social life like everybody. But the people that is always asking for favors from us, can ruin deeply our social and personal life. I could experience this by myself. This fact as generated articles like http://www.lifereboot.com/2007/10-reasons-it-doesnt-pay-to-be-the-computer-guy/ and http://ecraazul.wordpress.com/2009/01/29/o-gajo-da-informatica-de-a-a-z/ (I received this one in my mailbox. It is in Portuguese, but I believe it is translated from English). Basically the idea is to criticize people that is always asking us favors. It is even more annoying if you are person very specialized in some subject and a person asks you a completely out-of-that-context question. For example, you are a VBA programmer and somebody says you to that his/her Mobile Internet Pen stopped to work five days ago and needs your help to put it working again. When you go to a doctor to fix your legs, you don't go to an ophthalmologist. You go to an orthopedist. And you pay. I don't how it works in other countries, but in Portugal being a doctor is so an overvalued job, that they earn very much money and almost nobody asks them free favors. So, my question is: what kind of social barrier (or whatever else) do you use to protect yourself from that situation?

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• General questions regarding open-source licensing

  - by ndg

  I'm looking to release an open-source iOS software project but I'm very new to the licensing side of the things. While I'm aware that the majority of answers here will not lawyers, I'd appreciate it if anyone could steer me in the right direction. With the exception of the following requirements I'm happy for developers to largely do whatever they want with the projects source code. I'm not interested in any copyleft licensing schemes, and while I'd like to encourage attribution in derivative works it is not required. As such, my requirements are as follows: Original source can be distributed and re-distributed (verbatim) both commercially and non-commercially as long as the original copyright information, website link and license is maintained. I wish to retain rights to any of the multi-media distributed as part of the project (sound effects, graphics, logo marks, etc). Such assets will be included to allow other developers to easily execute the project, but cannot be re-distributed in any manner. I wish to retain rights to the applications name and branding. Futher to selecting an applicable license, I have the following questions: The project makes use of a number of third-party libraries (all licensed under variants of the MIT license). I've included individual licenses within the source (and application) and believe I've met all requirements expressed in these licenses, but is there anything else that needs to be done before distributing them as part of my open-source project? Also included in my project is a single proprietary, close-sourced library that's used to power a small part of the application. I'm obviously unable to include this in the source release, but what's the best way of handling this? Should I simply weak-link the project and exclude it entirely from the Git project?

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• Exadata X3 In-Memory Database Machine: To be or not to be

  - by Luis Moreno Campos

  Since Larry Ellison announced Oracle Exadata X3 as the new generation of the Database Machine, he established the product in the In-Memory Database arena. And that annoyed some people. We all know that In-Memory Databases are the ones that *only* execute in memory and use the other layers of storage for persistency (mainly disk). Oracle database has always been a technology that uses memory as a caching mechanism and that hasn't change nor it will change with Oracle Database 12c. So this is the central point of fuss when it comes to announcing an Engineered Systems as In-Memory Database, when in fact it still runs Oracle Database, not vanilla but still the same product. Let me tell you purist people out there: when you find no new ground breaking point to get all excited about you decide to bash it, and go against its claims. It's not like a car manufacturer that launches a mini-van in the market and calls it a Sports Car, we are talking about a fundamental change in the ILM stack: level 2 of caching is now self sufficient. It's not DRAM? Who cares, still let's you put in flash amounts of data not done up until now, so I guess Oracle can name it whatever Larry wants because in the end it's something never done before. Now let's imagine that you hop on the pure In-Memory Database bandwagon. You would be stuck with a database technology that lags behind the Oracle Database hundreds of light years in man/hours innovations and features. Do you really want to travel back in time? Remember, the first rule about time travelling is that "Security is not Guaranteed". Your choice. LMC

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• What kind of code would Kent Beck avoid unit testing?

  - by tieTYT

  I've been watching a few of the Is TDD Dead? talks on youtube, and one of the things that surprised me is Kent Beck seems to acknowledge that there are just some kinds of programs that aren't worth unit testing. For example, right here DHH says that Kent Beck is ... very happy to say "Well, TDD doesn't fit in this case, I'm just going to bail" It's frustrating to me that Kent Beck seems to acknowledge this, but nobody asks him to elaborate on it or give concrete examples. I'd like to know the situations where Kent Beck thinks TDD is a bad fit. Nobody can read his mind or speak for him, but I'm hoping he's been transparent enough through his books/tweets/whatever for someone to be able to answer. I'm not necessarily going to take what he says as gospel, but it would be useful to know that the times I've tried TDD and it just felt impossible/useless are situations that he would have bailed on it himself. Or, if it turned out he would have tested that code it'd suggest to me that I was approaching the process very wrong. I also think it would be enlightening to understand why he would bail on such projects. My opinion on why this is not a duplicate of "When is it appropriate to not unit test?" After skimming those answers I'm not satisfied. For example, look at UncleBob's answer. He doesn't even acknowledge that such a situation exists. I really think there's value in understanding Kent Beck's position, not just a general, "What's your opinion?" type of question. After all, he's the father of TDD.

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• Is there a visual web application builder or rapid webapp prototyping framework?

  - by Jesper Mortensen

  Question: Is there such a thing as a self-hosted framework or CMS especially tailored towards the creation of interactive web applications without -- or with an absolute minimum of -- programming? (Substantially less programming than say a simple Rails app or a plugin for Wordpress, Joomla etc would require.) As for desired features I'd settle for whatever is available, but some ideas could be: A User authentication and Permissions system. A GUI-driven input form builder. A GUI-driven template / visual site design builder. A simple scripting language (think AppleScript-like simplicity) A highly modular architecture, with high-level business objects (users, forms data, etc) exposed for easy re-use. If something like the above doesn't exist, then what comes near this? Need: This is for self-hosted rapid prototyping of web applications, and limited user testing of webapp user interface designs in a closed user test. Notes: I know about Ruby on Rails (Rails), Django, Pyramid etc. I'm looking for something much faster to work in, for making prototypes. I know about CMS's in general but find that most of them are tailored towards displaying information to the end users. If there is an exceptionally easy-to-master CMS with easy scripting (lets say much more so than for example Wordpress) then I'd be interested.

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• Should GeeksWithBlogs move to the Wordpress Platform?

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  Geekswithblogs was my first ever blog and my first post was on 22nd June 2006. Since then very little functionality has been added. This is not a complaint, but rather an observation that it is very hard to keep up with all of the blogging capabilities that people want. My point would be: “Why bother!” Vote now for a migration of the awesome Geekswithblogs content from SubText to Wordpress. Having been a long time user of GWB I have been worried of late by my envy of other blogging platforms. I made a number of requests around 10 months ago for things that almost all blogging platforms provide, but which are not available on GWB. Support other comment frameworks – The current comment system is so antiquated that it does not even have the common filters like Facebook, twitter or Google login to help prevent spam. Tags are not listed in the RSS – This can prevent you from getting the Google juice that you deserve 301 redirects to a single URL– If you use a custom URL then all your posts are split between both the GWB URL and the custom one. This is VERY bas for SEO. I realise that it is difficult to find time to add all of the features that all the uber geeks on this site want, so why bother… lets move to the most popular and moded platform available and allow everyone to add whatever widgets they like. Figure: Vote for Geekswithblogs moving to Wordpress Why would I want this? There are over 13k plugins available Easy augmentation model Full mobile support Regular releases lots more… This could be a turning point in the legendary history of Geeks With Blogs, be part of it… What can I do to make this happen? I need your help to make this happen: Vote for it Discuss it

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• Similar domains using my business' content, and stealing SEO results

  - by Murciano

  I've been hired to create a website for a restaurant in my city, let's call it "Flying Dragon" Chinese restaurant. The restaurant has never had a website, though the business itself is about ten years old. However, if you Google the restaurant's name, the first site that comes up seems to be affiliated with the restaurant itself, even though it is not. This site - let's say, flyingdragonchinese.com - is also the one that Google has apparently selected, in its results, to be the official website of the restaurant - in essence, the first Google result is flyingdragonchinese.com, and directly beneath it, within the same entry, are the Google reviews and contact information. Upon visiting flyingdragonchinese.com (again, not the actual name), I see that the website has taken the menu content from the restaurant, in the same manner that Yelp does, but it also seems (to the untrained eye) to be the restaurant's official site. Basically, someone has created a fake website for the business (I am not sure why) using its actual menu and contact information, and is hogging the search results. The concept is similar to a "scraping site" except that the information seems to have been stolen manually. The main problem is that visitors to this site will have an inaccurate impression of the restaurant. I feel like the obvious solution is to register a new domain for my site, and simply beat out this competitor (or whatever it is) with smarter SEO and business verification with Google. However, the Conan-the-Barbarian-web-designer part of me wants to somehow bash this other site (deservedly?) into oblivion. But I don't know what I can really do, besides maybe issuing a cease-and-desist letter, or trying to contact the web host for the site, although there is no contact information available on this "fake" site for the site owner. Has anyone ever experienced something like this? Is there any solution?

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• ecryptfs - decrypt and mount at boot with USB key

  - by Josh McGee

  I have a system running Ubuntu Server as a testbed for some services that I want to get familiar with. I decided to let the installation procedure set up encryption. I knew all along that I would have to decrypt it with the passphrase in order to get the system booted, but I assumed it wouldn't matter since it will only boot once or twice a month. However, my brother has informed me that he is a victim of power outages at the residence where this server is located. This means we have to explain to his girlfriend how to turn on the computer, attach a keyboard, connect a monitor (she just can't understand that she can type to the computer without a display, so whatever) and input the passphrase for us, while we are at work. I have arrived at the conclusion that I should just put together a USB key that can be plugged in before powering on the computer, to avoid all the trouble. Is this possible with ecryptfs? Is there a tutorial or simple list of instructions available so that I can knock this out and focus back on the stuff I care about? EDIT: I am aware that this is possible with LUKS and dm-crypt, but unfortunately the magical encryption that Ubuntu hands you during the installation is only ecryptfs so my question is specific to that.

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• Grid-Based 2D Lighting Problems

  - by Lemoncreme

  I am aware this question has been asked before, but unfortunately I am new to the language, so the complicated explanations I've found do not help me in the least. I need a lighting engine for my game, and I've tried some procedural lighting systems. This method works the best: if (light[xx - 1, yy] > light[xx, yy]) light[xx, yy] = light[xx - 1, yy] - lightPass; if (light[xx, yy - 1] > light[xx, yy]) light[xx, yy] = light[xx, yy - 1] - lightPass; if (light[xx + 1, yy] > light[xx, yy]) light[xx, yy] = light[xx + 1, yy] - lightPass; if (light[xx, yy + 1] > light[xx, yy]) light[xx, yy] = light[xx, yy + 1] - lightPass; (Subtracts adjacent values by 'lightPass' variable if they are more bright) (It's in a for() loop) This is all fine and dandy except for a an obvious reason: The system favors whatever comes first in the for() loop This is what the above code looks like applied to my game: If I could get some help on creating a new procedural or otherwise lighting system I would really appreciate it!

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• Where should I put bindings for dependency injection?

  - by Mike G

  I'm new to dependency injection and though I've really liked it so far, I'm not sure where bindings should go. I'm using Guice in Java, so some of what I say might be specific to just Guice. As I see it, there's two options: Accompanying the class(s) its needed for. Then, just write install(OtherClassModule.class) in whatever other modules want to be able to use said class. As I see it, the advantage of this is that classes that want to use it (or manage classes that want to use it) don't need to know any of the implementation detail. The issue I see is that what if two classes want to use two different versions of the same class? There's a lot of customization possible because of DI and this seems to restrict it a lot. Implemented in the module of the class(s) its needed for. It's the flip of what I said above. Now you have customization, but not encapsulation. Is there a third option? Am I misunderstanding something obvious? What's the best practice?

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• Standards for how developers work on their own workstations

  - by Jon Hopkins

  We've just come across one of those situations which occasionally comes up when a developer goes off sick for a few days mid-project. There were a few questions about whether he'd committed the latest version of his code or whether there was something more recent on his local machine we should be looking at, and we had a delivery to a customer pending so we couldn't wait for him to return. One of the other developers logged on as him to see and found a mess of workspaces, many seemingly of the same projects, with timestamps that made it unclear which one was "current" (he was prototyping some bits on versions of the project other than his "core" one). Obviously this is a pain in the neck, however the alternative (which would seem to be strict standards for how each developer works on their own machine to ensure that any other developer can pick things up with a minimum of effort) is likely to break many developers personal work flows and lead to inefficiency on an individual level. I'm not talking about standards for checked-in code, or even general development standards, I'm talking about how a developer works locally, a domain generally considered (in my experience) to be almost entirely under the developers own control. So how do you handle situations like this? Are the one of those things that just happens and you have to deal with, the price you pay for developers being allowed to work in the way that best suits them? Or do you ask developers to adhere to standards in this area - use of specific directories, naming standards, notes on a wiki or whatever? And if so what do your standards cover, how strict are they, how do you police them and so on? Or is there another solution I'm missing? [Assume for the sake of argument that the developer can not be contacted to talk through what he was doing here - even if he could knowing and describing which workspace is which from memory isn't going to be simple and flawless and sometimes people genuinely can't be contacted and I'd like a solution which covers all eventualities.]

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• 2D platformers: why make the physics dependent on the framerate?

  - by Archagon

  "Super Meat Boy" is a difficult platformer that recently came out for PC, requiring exceptional control and pixel-perfect jumping. The physics code in the game is dependent on the framerate, which is locked to 60fps; this means that if your computer can't run the game at full speed, the physics will go insane, causing (among other things) your character to run slower and fall through the ground. Furthermore, if vsync is off, the game runs extremely fast. Could those experienced with 2D game programming help explain why the game was coded this way? Wouldn't a physics loop running at a constant rate be a better solution? (Actually, I think a physics loop is used for parts of the game, since some of the entities continue to move normally regardless of the framerate. Your character, on the other hand, runs exactly [fps/60] as fast.) What bothers me about this implementation is the loss of abstraction between the game engine and the graphics rendering, which depends on system-specific things like the monitor, graphics card, and CPU. If, for whatever reason, your computer can't handle vsync, or can't run the game at exactly 60fps, it'll break spectacularly. Why should the rendering step in any way influence the physics calculations? (Most games nowadays would either slow down the game or skip frames.) On the other hand, I understand that old-school platformers on the NES and SNES depended on a fixed framerate for much of their control and physics. Why is this, and would it be possible to create a patformer in that vein without having the framerate dependency? Is there necessarily a loss of precision if you separate the graphics rendering from the rest of the engine? Thank you, and sorry if the question was confusing.

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• Implementing a multilanguage AI contest platform

  - by Alejandro Piad

  This is a followup to this question. To sum: I'm implementing an AI contest site, where each user may submit several AI implementations for different games. Think about Google AI Challenge but instead of just having a big event once a year, I would like it more on a league fashion, with all virtual players playing with each other every some close period of time. I want to support as many programming languages as possible. I've seen that contest sites (like codeforces) ask you to submit a source code and interact through stdin and stdout. The first question is: what is the best way of supporting multiple languages? As I see it, I can either ask people to upload some binary/script, and interact either through stdin/*stdout*, or sockets, or the file system; or ask people to submit source code, and wrap it with whatever is necessary for the interaction. I would like to skip the need to compile the code by myself (in the server, I mean), but I am willing to do it if its the "best" choice. I need to comunicate virtual players with each other, or even better, with some intermediary arbiter. The second question is regarding security. If I'm going to be running user code in my server, I want to ensure strict security conditions, like no file system access, no networking, etc. Otherwise it would be a safe heaven for hackers. I will be implementing the engine/arbiter in .NET. I would like to support at least C#, C++, Java and Python for the user's implementations. I'm willing to write interfaces for each of these languages to simplify the user interaction with the system. Thanks in advance.

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• What is the proper SEO handling of pages appearing in popups using IFRAMEs?

  - by Alexis Wilke

  I am working on a CMS which makes use of IFRAMEs to display some forms, for illustration, say a Search form. So the user clicks the Search button and the website reacts by opening a popup window which includes an IFRAME to the actual Search form. This means I have a "bare"¹ page with the search form. Page which, obviously, is directly accessible via its own URI. In terms of SEO, the forms have no content worthy of being indexed, so I was thinking to mark them as NOINDEX. Is that the correct way to handle such pages? From what I read on some other question, Google suggests to put links from IFRAMEs to other pages. However, I definitively do not want a user visible link to the Home page, or whatever page in link with the form, in the content of my forms because that could be misinterpreted by the user. However, if <link> tags would work too, which one should I use? (i.e. "top" would work, right? with the home page in there?) ¹ By bare I mean that the normal theme is not show, it will be a plain white background with just and only the simplest form.

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