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• What Can Super Mario Teach Us About Graphics Technology?

  - by Eric Z Goodnight

  If you ever played Super Mario Brothers or Mario Galaxy, you probably thought it was only a fun videogame—but fun can be serious.  Super Mario has lessons to teach you might not expect about graphics and the concepts behind them. The basics of image technology (and then some) can all be explained with a little help from everybody’s favorite little plumber. So read on to see what we can learn from Mario about pixels, polygons, computers and math, as well as dispelling a common misconception about those blocky old graphics we remember from when me first met Mario. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC What Can Super Mario Teach Us About Graphics Technology? Windows 7 Service Pack 1 is Released: But Should You Install It? How To Make Hundreds of Complex Photo Edits in Seconds With Photoshop Actions How to Enable User-Specific Wireless Networks in Windows 7 How to Use Google Chrome as Your Default PDF Reader (the Easy Way) How To Remove People and Objects From Photographs In Photoshop Seas0nPass Now Offers Untethered Apple TV Jailbreaking Never Call Me at Work [Humorous Star Wars Video] Add an Image Properties Listing to the Context Menu in Chrome and Iron Add an Easy to View Notification Badge to Tabs in Firefox SpellBook Parks Bookmarklets in Chrome’s Context Menu Drag2Up Brings Multi-Source Drag and Drop Uploading to Firefox

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• The road to become a programmer [closed]

  - by user68991

  I'm looking for a 'career' change, I don't actually have a career at the moment since I haven't been able to find a job since I graduated with a degree in Materials Engineering. One of my loves has always been computers and programming, though I have never studied it seriously. When I was 11 I wrote a very basic graphical 'game' using notepad and HTML, where I drew each possible position of the main character on the different 'maze' level in MSPaint, using pictures of arrows as links to a new page with the character in a new position, and various other buttons would pop up 'search box', 'press button' etc. At the time I thought this was an amazing achievement of my programming skills. I've used a little bit of FORTRAN 90 whilst I was at university, which rekindled my interest in programming. When I was a kid I mainly used C and HTML, but only very basically as my 'game' suggests. I want to learn a new programming language, I'm not entirely sure where I want to go with it, but the number one contender at the moment is android apps. I'm looking at learning Java, but I've read that it's a difficult place to begin with; so I've also looked at learning Visual Basic, which I believe is also object oriented(?) but a little easier to understand? (not that I know what an object is anyway). Any information people could give me regarding which language to learn, and if there are any good online tutorial for that language I'd really appreciate it. Some of the tutorials I've used so far are full or jargon I can't understand. Also, I'm not afraid of maths having got an engineering degree. Thanks in advance for any help/advice. James

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• Intercept method calls in Groovy for automatic type conversion

  - by kerry

  One of the cooler things you can do with groovy is automatic type conversion.  If you want to convert an object to another type, many times all you have to do is invoke the ‘as’ keyword: def letters = 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz' as List But, what if you are wanting to do something a little fancier, like converting a String to a Date? def christmas = '12-25-2010' as Date ERROR org.codehaus.groovy.runtime.typehandling.GroovyCastException: Cannot cast object '12-25-2010' with class java.lang.String' to class 'java.util.Date' No bueno! I want to be able to do custom type conversions so that my application can do a simple String to Date conversion. Enter the metaMethod. You can intercept method calls in Groovy using the following method: def intercept(name, params, closure) { def original = from.metaClass.getMetaMethod(name, params) from.metaClass[name] = { Class clazz -> closure() original.doMethodInvoke(delegate, clazz) } } Using this method, and a little syntactic sugar, we create the following ‘Convert’ class: // Convert.from( String ).to( Date ).using { } class Convert { private from private to private Convert(clazz) { from = clazz } static def from(clazz) { new Convert(clazz) } def to(clazz) { to = clazz return this } def using(closure) { def originalAsType = from.metaClass.getMetaMethod('asType', [] as Class[]) from.metaClass.asType = { Class clazz -> if( clazz == to ) { closure.setProperty('value', delegate) closure(delegate) } else { originalAsType.doMethodInvoke(delegate, clazz) } } } } Now, we can make the following statement to add the automatic date conversion: Convert.from( String ).to( Date ).using { new java.text.SimpleDateFormat('MM-dd-yyyy').parse(value) } def christmas = '12-25-2010' as Date Groovy baby!

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• Correct level of abstraction for a 3d rendering component?

  - by JohnB

  I've seen lots of questions around this area but not this exact question so apologies if this is a duplicate. I'm making a small 3d game. Well to be honest, it's just a little hobby project and likely won't turn out to be an actual game, I'll be happy to make a nice graphics demo and learn about 3d rendering and c++ design. My intent is to use direct3d9 for rendering as I have some little experience of it, and it seems to meet my requirements. However if I've learned one thing as a programmer it's to ask "is there any conceivable reason that this component might be replaced by a different implmentation" and if the answer is yes then I need to design a proper abstraction and interface to that component. So even though I intend to implment d3d9 I need to design a 3d interface that could be implemented for d3d11, opengl... My question then is what level is it best to do this at? I'm thinking that an interface capable of creating and later drawing Vertex buffers and index buffers Textures Vertex and Pixel "shaders" Some representation of drawing state (blending modes etc...) In other words a fairly low level interface where my code to draw for example an animated model would use the interface to obtain abstract vertex buffers etc. I worry though that it's too low level to abstract out all the functionallity I need efficiently. The alternative is to do this at a higher level where the interface can draw objects, animations, landscapes etc, and implement them for each system. This seems like more work, but it more flexible I guess. So that's my question really, when abstracting out the drawing system, what level of interface works best?

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• From physics to Java programmer?

  - by inovaovao

  I'm a physics phd with little actual programming experience. I've always liked programming and played around with Basic and Pascal (also VB and Delphi) as a teen, but the largest actual project I completed was an assignement for the introductory computer science class in university where I wrote a nice little program (about 1500 lines of pascal) to display functions of 2 variables in 3D. I've had also a couple other projects of a few hundred lines range, but during my phd I didn't have (or take) the time to program more (string theory is hard guys!), beside playing around with ruby. Now I've decided that I'm more interested in programming than in physics and started to learn Java (hoping to pass the certification exam next week) and OO design. Still, I have trouble deciding on what to focus next (Java EE? Web development? algorithms and C programming?) in order to maximize my employement chances. Bear in mind that I'm aiming (mostly) at the swedish job market and that I'm 30 years old. So for the questions: Do you think that I have any chances to start and make a career in IT and programming coming from physics? What would be the best strategy to maximize my value in the field? Do you have suggestions as to where my physics background might be useful?

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• KERPOOOOW!

  - by Matt Christian

  Recently I discovered the colorful world of comic books.  In the past I've read comics a few times but never really got into them.  When I wanted to start a collection I decided either video games or comics yet stayed away from comics because I am less familiar with them. In any case, I stopped by my local comic shop and picked up a few comics and a few trade paperbacks.  After reading them and understanding their basic flow I began to enjoy not only the stories but the art styles hiding behind those little white bubbles of text (well, they're USUALLY white).  My first stop at the comic store I ended up with: - Nemesis #1 (cover A) - Shuddertown #1 (cover A I think) - Daredevil: King of Hell's Kitchen Trade Paperback - Peter Parker: Spiderman - One Small Break Trade Paperback It took me about 3-4 days to read all of that including re-reading the single issues and glancing over the beginning of Daredevil again.  After a week of looking around online I knew a little more about the comics I wanted to pick up and the kind of art style I enjoyed.  While Peter Parker: Spiderman was ok, I really enjoyed the detailed, realistic look of Daredevil and Shuddertown. Now, a few years back I picked up the game The Darkness for PS3.  I knew it was based off a comic but never read the comic.  I decided I'd pick up a few issues of it and ended up with: - The Darkness #80 (cover A) - The Darkness #81 (cover A) - The Darkness #82 (cover A) - The Darkness #83 (cover A) - The Darkness Shadows and Flame #1  (one-shot; cover A) - The Darkness Origins: Volume 1 Trade Paperback (contains The Darkness #1-6) - New Age boards and bags for storing my comics The Darkness is relatively good though jumping from issue #6 to issue #80 I lost a bit on who the enemy in the current series is.  I think out of all of them, issue #83 was my favorite of them. I'm signed up at the local shop to continue getting Nemesis, The Darkness, and Shuddertown, and I'll probably pick up a few different ones this weekend...

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• Static classes and/or singletons -- How many does it take to become a code smell?

  - by Earlz

  In my projects I use quite a lot of static classes. These are usually classes that naturally seem to fit into a single-instance type of thing. Many times I use static classes and recently I've started using some singletons. How many of these does it take to become a code smell? For instance, in my recent project which has a lot of static classes is an Authentication library for ASP.Net. I use a static class for a helper class that fixes ASP.Net error codes so it can be used like CustomErrorsFixer.Fix(Context); Or my authentication class itself is a static class //in global.asax's begin_application Authentication.SomeState="blah"; Authentication.SomeOption=true; //etc //in global.asax's begin_request Authentication.Authenticate(); When are static or singleton classes bad to use? Am I doing it wrong, or am I just in a project that by definition has very little per-instance state associated with it? The only per-instance state I have is stored in HttpContext.Current.Items like so: /// <summary> /// The current user logged in for the HTTP request. If there is not a user logged in, this will be null. /// </summary> public static UserData CurrentUser{ get{ return HttpContext.Current.Items["fscauth_currentuser"] as UserData; //use HttpContext.Current as a little place to persist static data for this request } private set{ HttpContext.Current.Items["fscauth_currentuser"]=value; } }

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• How do search engines handle hyphenated words?

  - by NinjaKC

  I am not sure my title fully explains what I mean. I thought this might be an interesting question. If I had a set of keywords, broken with a dash or 2, will search engines consider the dashed split keyword as maybe a full keyword? Say I have a site that sort of breaks words down, like the dictionary sites do. So a keyword for that page, might end up in the page, and / or the URL, as broken by dashes. Key-word = keyword Co-op-er-at-ive = cooperative Pho-to-gra-phy = Photography www.example.com/key-word/ www.example.com/co-op-er-at-ive/ www.example.com/pho-to-gra-phy/ I know search engines will consider a dash (at least Google) as a space, and understand it as multiple words. But in the English language, a dash can also break a word down (at least I think it can, can't it?), so will search engines also take this into consideration? I did a 'little' research, I Googled some words and placed random dashes, and it returned the words I searched for, but this could be considered a typo from the user on Google's search end, so really I am wondering if I can purposely put a dash in a keyword, and have the search engine spiders still catch that keyword as the real word without dashes? I've done a little Googling and looking here on Stackoverflow, but everything comes down to dashes for multiple words, not really the specific thing I'm trying to figure out. Hopefully that makes sense, I am not an expert in SEO, yet, but get the basics and have been playing, and this is just really a random question to satisfy my knowledge of playing :P

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• Play Updated Retro Arcade Games for Free Courtesy of Microsoft

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  As part of a promotion for Internet Explorer 10, Microsoft comissioned Atari to update several classic retro games from the arcade and the Atari consoles. Fortunately for those of us looking for a retro gaming fix, you can play the games in any HTML5-enabled browser. While game play is really smooth on most games there are a few little quirks that using Internet Explorer 10 does take care of. First, if you’re not on IE10, you’ll see a little advertisement before you begin playing each game. Second, some games call on some of the new touch/motion variable functionality built into IE10 for the Windows 8 tablet experience and they’ll stall out when they reach the point in the game they need to call that variable. That said, we played quite a few games without any hiccups at all. Hit up the link below to play classics like Asteroids, Lunar Lander, Pong, Super Breakout, and more. Atari IE10 Promo Gallery [Atari] HTG Explains: Why Do Hard Drives Show the Wrong Capacity in Windows? Java is Insecure and Awful, It’s Time to Disable It, and Here’s How What Are the Windows A: and B: Drives Used For?

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• Programmer + Drugs =? [closed]

  - by sytycs

  I just read this quote from Steve Jobs: "Doing LSD was one of the two or three most important things I have done in my life." Now I'm wondering: Has there ever been a study where programmers have been given drugs to see if they could produce "better" code? Is there a programming concept, which originated from people who where drug-users? Do you know of a piece of code, which was written by someone under the influence? EDIT So I did a little more research and it turns out Dennis R. Wier actually documented how he took LSD to wrap his head around a coding project: "At one point in the project I could not get an overall viewpoint for the operation of the entire system. It really was too much for my brain to keep all the subtle aspects and processing nuances clear so I could get a processing and design overview. After struggling with this problem for a few weeks, I decided to use a little acid to see if it would enable a breakthrough, because otherwise, I would not be able to complete the project and be certain of a consistent overall design"[1] There is also an interesting article on wired about Kevin Herbet, who used LSD to solve tough technical problems and chemist Kary Mullis even said "...that LSD had helped him develop the polymerase chain reaction that helps amplify specific DNA sequences." [2]

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• difference between Casini [IIS express] and VS Development server or Expression web

  - by anirudha

  MVC3 project can be run within Expression web and Visual studio as opened like a website not a project. they work same even if you open blogengine.net project in VS they take a time when you have more theme but expression web debug them in a second. well because theme design not matter for code. Expression web is a good because they save time for compile the code. even changes we make a little in design nothing in backend code.   i found a little difference between Casini and VS development server that if image putted in wrong way like <img src=”//img.png”/> instead of <img src=”/img.png”/> the error we make // instead of / that’s not worked in Expression web or Visual studio debugging but in Cassini it’s work fine.   Well i found that debug Blogengine.net in Expression web is a great thing because in VS they take a time like a minute to debug when you trying to debug first time. Expression Web save a time when we design themes within them and that’s much good option because web is also maked for design.   Well if you want to debug application faster then use casini but Expression web debugging is a good option when they take a long time to debug in Visual studio and EW debug them in a seconds.

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• Any good C++ Component/Entity frameworks?

  - by Pat

  (Skip to the bold if you want to get straight to my question :) ) I've been dabbling in the different technologies available out there to use. I tried Unity and component based design, managing to get a little guy up and running around a map with basic pathfinding. I really loved how easy it was to program using components, but I wanted a bit more control and something more 2D friendly, so I went with LibGDX. I looked around and found 2 good frameworks for Java, which are Artemis and Apollo. I didn't like Artemis much, so I went with Apollo, which I loved. I managed to integrate it with Box2D and get a little guy running around bouncing balls. Great! But since I want to try out most of the options, there is still C++/SFML that I haven't tried yet. Coming from a Java/C# background, I've always wanted to get my hands dirty with C++. But then, after some looking around, I noticed there aren't any Component-Based frameworks for me to use. There's a somewhat done porting of Artemis, but, aside from not being completely finished, I didn't quite like Artemis even in Java. I found Apollo's approach much more.. logical. So, my question is, are there any good Component/Entity frameworks for C++ that I can use that are similar to Artemis, or preferably, Apollo?

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• MightyMintyBoost Is a 3-in-1 Gadget Charger

  - by ETC

  If you’re looking for a versatile battery booster, this DIY 3-in-1 solar/usb/wall current charger known as the MightyMintyBoost will top of your phone, mp3 player, and other gadgets with ease. Instructables user Honus didn’t just build the MightMintyBoost to geek out and show off his electronics project skills (although it’s certainly a nifty little project to do so), he’s serious about solar power and the impact clean energy has: Apple has sold over 30 million iPodTouch/iPhone units- imagine charging all of them via solar power…. If every iPhone/iPodTouch sold was fully charged every day (averaging the battery capacity) via solar power instead of fossil fuel power we would save approximately 50.644gWh of energy, roughly equivalent to 75,965,625 lbs. of CO2 in the atmosphere per year. Granted that’s a best case scenario (assuming you can get enough sunlight per day and approximately 1.5 lbs. CO2 produced per kWh used.) Of course, that doesn’t even figure in all the other iPods, cell phones, PDAs, microcontrollers (I use it to power my Arduino projects) and other USB devices that can be powered by this charger- one little solar cell charger may not seem like it can make a difference but add all those millions of devices together and that’s a lot of energy! His MightyMintyBoost is a battery booster for devices that can charge via USB and it accepts incoming current from the solar panel on top (or, on cloudy days can be charged via a wall charger or the USB port on your computer). Hit up the link below to see his full build guide and create your own MightyMintyBoost. MightyMintyBoost [Instructables] Latest Features How-To Geek ETC Internet Explorer 9 RC Now Available: Here’s the Most Interesting New Stuff Here’s a Super Simple Trick to Defeating Fake Anti-Virus Malware How to Change the Default Application for Android Tasks Stop Believing TV’s Lies: The Real Truth About "Enhancing" Images The How-To Geek Valentine’s Day Gift Guide Inspire Geek Love with These Hilarious Geek Valentines MyPaint is an Open-Source Graphics App for Digital Painters Can the Birds and Pigs Really Be Friends in the End? [Angry Birds Video] Add the 2D Version of the New Unity Interface to Ubuntu 10.10 and 11.04 MightyMintyBoost Is a 3-in-1 Gadget Charger Watson Ties Against Human Jeopardy Opponents Peaceful Tropical Cavern Wallpaper

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• Two things I learned this week...

  - by noreply(at)blogger.com (Thomas Kyte)

  I often say "I learn something new about Oracle every day".  It really is true - there is so much to know about it, it is hard to keep up sometimes.Here are the two new things I learned - the first is regarding temporary tablespaces.  In the past - when people have asked "how can I shrink my temporary tablespace" I've said "create a new one that is smaller, alter your database/users to use this new one by default, wait a bit, drop the old one".  Actually I usually said first - "don't, it'll just grow again" but some people really wanted to make it smaller.Now, there is an easier way:http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E11882_01/server.112/e26088/statements_3002.htm#SQLRF53578Using alter tablespace temp shrink space .The second thing is just a little sqlplus quirk that I probably knew at one point but totally forgot.  People run into problems with &'s in sqlplus all of the time as sqlplus tries to substitute in for an &variable.  So, if they try to select '&hello world' from dual - they'll get:ops$tkyte%ORA11GR2> select '&hello world' from dual;Enter value for hello: old   1: select '&hello world' from dualnew   1: select ' world' from dual'WORLD------ worldops$tkyte%ORA11GR2> One solution is to "set define off" to disable the substitution (or set define to some other character).  Another oft quoted solution is to use chr(38) - select chr(38)||'hello world' from dual.  I never liked that one personally.  Today - I was shown another wayhttps://asktom.oracle.com/pls/apex/f?p=100:11:0::::P11_QUESTION_ID:4549764300346084350#4573022300346189787 ops$tkyte%ORA11GR2> select '&' || 'hello world' from dual;'&'||'HELLOW------------&hello worldops$tkyte%ORA11GR2>just concatenate '&' to the string, sqlplus doesn't touch that one!  I like that better than chr(38) (but a little less than set define off....)

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• Is there any evidence that drugs can actually help programmers produce "better" code? [closed]

  - by sytycs

  I just read this quote from Steve Jobs: "Doing LSD was one of the two or three most important things I have done in my life." Also a quote from that article: He was hardly alone among computer scientists in his appreciation of hallucinogenics and their capacity to liberate human thought from the prison of the mind. Now I'm wondering if there's any evidence to support the theory that drugs can help make a "better" programmer. Has there ever been a study where programmers have been given drugs to see if they could produce "better" code? Is there a well-known programming concept or piece of code which originated from people who were on drugs? EDIT So I did a little more research and it turns out Dennis R. Wier actually documented how he took LSD to wrap his head around a coding project: "At one point in the project I could not get an overall viewpoint for the operation of the entire system. It really was too much for my brain to keep all the subtle aspects and processing nuances clear so I could get a processing and design overview. After struggling with this problem for a few weeks, I decided to use a little acid to see if it would enable a breakthrough, because otherwise, I would not be able to complete the project and be certain of a consistent overall design"[1] There is also an interesting article on wired about Kevin Herbet, who used LSD to solve tough technical problems and chemist Kary Mullis even said "...that LSD had helped him develop the polymerase chain reaction that helps amplify specific DNA sequences." [2]

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• Hallmarks of a Professional PHP Programmer

  - by Scotty C.

  I'm a 19 year old student who really REALLY enjoys programming, and I'm hoping to glean from your years of experience here. At present, I'm studying PHP every chance I get, and have been for about 3 years, although I've never taken any formal classes. I'd love to some day be a programmer full time, and make a good career of it. My question to you is this: What do you consider to be the hallmarks or traits of a professional programmer? Mainly in the field of PHP, but other, more generalized qualifications are also more than welcome, as I think PHP is more of a hobbyist language and may not be the language of choice in the eyes of potential employers. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Above all, I don't want to wast time on something that isn't worth while. I'm currently feeling pretty confident in my knowledge of PHP as a language, and I know that I could build just about anything I need and have it "work", but I feel sorely lacking in design concepts and code structure. I can even write object oriented code, but in my personal opinion, that isn't worth a hill of beans if it isn't organized well. For this reason, I bought Matt Zandstra's book "PHP Objects, Patterns, and Practice" and have been reading that a little every day. Anyway, I'm starting to digress a little here, so back to the original question. What advice would you give to an aspiring programmer who wants to make an impact in this field? Also, on a side note, I've been working on a project with a friend of mine that would give a fairly good idea of where I'm at coding wise. I'm gonna give a link, I don't want anyone to feel as though I'm pushing or spamming here, so don't click it if you don't want to. But if you are interested on giving some feedback there as well, you can see the code on github. I'm known as The Craw there. https://github.com/PureChat/PureChat--Beta-/tree/

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• Reduce Bookmarks in Chrome to Toolbar Icons

  - by Asian Angel

  Do you want to make the most efficient use of the space in Chrome’s Bookmarks Toolbar? Now you can reduce the bookmarks to icons with just a few minutes work. Note: You may or may not wish to do some reorganizing with your bookmarks before-hand. Condensing the Bookmarks If your browser is anything like ours then it has not taken long to fill up your Bookmarks Toolbar. Accessing the drop-down section often throughout the day is not too fun. The bookmarks are the easiest part of your collection to condense. Right-click on each bookmark and select “Edit…” to open the Edit Bookmark Window. Delete the text, click OK, and you are finished. You still have a useable bookmark that looks nice and takes up very little room. These are our bookmarks from the first screenshot above…no problems with accessing all of them now. With just a few minutes work you can have a beautiful and compact Bookmarks Toolbar. If you have been looking for a more efficient and compact Bookmarks Toolbar in Chrome, then this little hack will certainly be useful for you. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Reduce Your Bookmarks Toolbar to a Toolbar ButtonAccess Your Bookmarks with a Toolbar Button in Google ChromeConvert Chrome Bookmark Toolbar Folders to IconsAdd the Bookmarks Menu to Your Bookmarks Toolbar with Bookmarks UI ConsolidatorCompact Toolbar Buttons in Firefox 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 VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Creating a Password Reset Disk in Windows Bypass Waiting Time On Customer Service Calls With Lucyphone MELTUP – "The Beginning Of US Currency Crisis And Hyperinflation" Enable or Disable the Task Manager Using TaskMgrED Explorer++ is a Worthy Windows Explorer Alternative Error Goblin Explains Windows Error Codes

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• Moodle 2 pages loading up to 2000% faster

  - by TJ

  On average our Moodle 2 pages were loading in 2.8 seconds, now they load in as little as 0.12 seconds, so that’s like 2333.333% faster!What was it I hear you say?Well it was the database connection, or more correctly the database library. I was using FreeTDS http://docs.moodle.org/22/en/Installing_MSSQL_for_PHP, but now I’m using the new Microsoft Drivers 3.0 for PHP for SQL Server http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=20098. I’m in a Windows Server IT department, and in both our live and development environments, we have Moodle 2.2.3, IIS 7.5, and PHP 5.3.10 running on two Windows Server 2008 R2 servers and using MS Network Load Balancing.Since moving to Moodle 2, the pages have always loaded much more slowly than they did in Moodle 1.9, I’ve been chasing this issue for quite a while. I had previously tried the Microsoft Drivers for PHP for SQL Server 2.0, but my testing showed it was slower than the FreeTDS driver.Then yesterday I found Microsoft had released the new version, Microsoft Drivers 3.0 for PHP for SQL Server, so I thought I’d give it a run, and wow what a difference it made.Pages that were loading in 2.8 seconds, now they load in as little as 0.12 seconds, 2333.333% faster…I have more testing to do, but so far it’s looking good, I have scheduled multi user load testing for early next week (fingers crossed).To make the change all I need to do was,download the driverscopy the relevant files to PHP\ext (for us they were php_pdo_sqlsrv_53_nts.dll and php_sqlsrv_53_nts.dll) install the Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Native Client x64 http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=29065 add to PHP.ini, extension=php_pdo_sqlsrv_53_nts.dll, extension=php_sqlsrv_53_nts.dllremove form PHP.ini, extension=php_dblib.dllvchange in PHP.ini, mssql.textlimit = 20971520 and mssql.textsize = 20971520change Moodle config.php, $CFG->dbtype = 'sqlsrv'; and 'dbpersist' => Trueand then reboot and test…I've browsed courses, backed up/restored some really large and complicated courses, deleted courses etc. etc. all good.Still more testing to do but, hey this is good start...Hope this helps anyone experiencing the same slowness…

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• How can I justify software testing to management?

  - by Nate

  I work for a small company (less than 200 employees) whose software group only makes up a small part of our staff (4 employees, occasionally with a few contractors). The four of us have been making strides in transitioning to better practices, and one of the next logical steps is to improve our testing. As anyone who has done any meaningful tests knows, testing takes a lot of time - and at my company, it takes too much time to justify to management, so we generally do what little we do on the sly. I don't think this is serving us well, as we keep coming up against otherwise avoidable problems when we ship under-tested software. I would like to be able to come to management with a justification for hiring a dedicated software test engineer (someone who can both write automated tests and perform manual ones). Are there any good published studies that show the benefits of adding such a position to a small company? Where can I find information about costs associated with the position? I plan on doing a little number crunching on our own history, but having some external sources to point to would help bolster my case.

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• unit/integration testing web service proxy client

  - by cori

  I'm rewriting a PHP client/proxy library that provides an interface to a SOAP-based .Net webservice, and in the process I want to add some unit and integration tests so future modifications are less risky. The work the library I'm working on performs is to marshall the calls to the web service and do a little reorganizing of the responses to present a slightly more -object-oriented interface to the underlying service. Since this library is little else than a thin layer on top of web service calls, my basic assumption is that I'll really be writing integration tests more than unit tests - for example, I don't see any reason to mock away the web service - the work that's performed by the code I'm working on is very light; it's almost passing the response from the service right back to its consumer. Most of the calls are basic CRUD operations: CreateRole(), CreateUser(), DeleteUser(), FindUser(), &ct. I'll be starting from a known database state - the system I'm using for these tests is isolated for testing purposes, so the results will be more or less predictable. My question is this: is it natural to use web service calls to confirm the results of operations within the tests and to reset the state of the application within the scope of each test? Here's an example: One test might be createUserReturnsValidUserId() and might go like this: public function createUserReturnsValidUserId() { // we're assuming a global connection to the service $newUserId = $client->CreateUser("user1"); assertNotNull($newUserId); assertNotNull($client->FindUser($newUserId); $client->deleteUser($newUserId); } So I'm creating a user, making sure I get an ID back and that it represents a user in the system, and then cleaning up after myself (so that later tests don't rely on the success or failure of this test w/r/t the number of users in the system, for example). However this still seems pretty fragile - lots of dependencies and opportunities for tests to fail and effect the results of later tests, which I definitely want to avoid. Am I missing some options of ways to decouple these tests from the system under test, or is this really the best I can do? I think this is a fairly general unit/integration testing question, but if it matters I'm using PHPUnit for the testing framework.

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• What methods should save/load a game state

  - by vedi

  There are a lot of articles about how to save a state of a game and they are pretty good. But I have one conceptual misunderstanding where should I save the state? My game has number of screens and pair of them are MainMenuScreen and MainSceneScreen these are inherited from Screen class. MainMenuScreen is shown at start of the game the MainSceneScreen little later. What is the problem? I navigated to MainSceneScreen, forced Android to stop the application (I change a language settings on the device to achieve it, please let me know if I'm wrong). After that I select the application again and I can see MainMenuScreen is shown. But I want MainSceneScreen to be shown. I suppose I should override resume method. But what class I should override? I have class PsGame that extends Game class of libgdx. I put breakpoints to its resume method and it turned out that method was not called. I investigated the problem and I've found little strange code in onResume method of AndroidApplication class of libgdx: if (!firstResume) graphics.resume(); else firstResume = false; My debugger said firstResume was true and didn't go to *graphics.resume()*line. Sorry for a lot of words but could you answer following question: What did I do wrong? What methods should I override? Thank you in advance.

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• External table and preprocessor for loading LOBs

  - by David Allan

  I was using the COLUMN TRANSFORMS syntax to load LOBs into Oracle using the Oracle external which is a handy way of doing several stuff - from loading LOBs from the filesystem to having constants as fields. In OWB you can use unbound external tables to define an external table using your own arbitrary access parameters - I blogged a while back on this for doing preprocessing before it was added into OWB 11gR2. For loading LOBs using the COLUMN TRANSFORMS syntax have a read through this post on loading CLOB, BLOB or any LOB, the files to load can be specified as a field that is a filename field, the content of this file will be the LOB data. So using the example from the linked post, you can define the columns; Then define the access parameters - if you go the unbound external table route you can can put whatever you want in here (your external table get out of jail free card); This will let you read the LOB files fromn the filesystem and use the external table in a mapping. Pushing the envelope a little further I then thought about marrying together the preprocessor with the COLUMN TRANSFORMS, this would have let me have a shell script for example as the preprocessor which listed the contents of a directory and let me read the files as LOBs via an external table. Unfortunately that doesn't quote work - there is now a bug/enhancement logged, so one day maybe. So I'm afraid my blog title was a little bit of a teaser....

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• Unity: parallel vectors and cross product, how to compare vectors

  - by Heisenbug

  I read this post explaining a method to understand if the angle between 2 given vectors and the normal to the plane described by them, is clockwise or anticlockwise: public static AngleDir GetAngleDirection(Vector3 beginDir, Vector3 endDir, Vector3 upDir) { Vector3 cross = Vector3.Cross(beginDir, endDir); float dot = Vector3.Dot(cross, upDir); if (dot > 0.0f) return AngleDir.CLOCK; else if (dot < 0.0f) return AngleDir.ANTICLOCK; return AngleDir.PARALLEL; } After having used it a little bit, I think it's wrong. If I supply the same vector as input (beginDir equal to endDir), the cross product is zero, but the dot product is a little bit more than zero. I think that to fix that I can simply check if the cross product is zero, means that the 2 vectors are parallel, but my code doesn't work. I tried the following solution: Vector3 cross = Vector3.Cross(beginDir, endDir); if (cross == Vector.zero) return AngleDir.PARALLEL; And it doesn't work because comparison between Vector.zero and cross is always different from zero (even if cross is actually [0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f]). I tried also this: Vector3 cross = Vector3.Cross(beginDir, endDir); if (cross.magnitude == 0.0f) return AngleDir.PARALLEL; it also fails because magnitude is slightly more than zero. So my question is: given 2 Vector3 in Unity, how to compare them? I need the elegant equivalent version of this: if (beginDir.x == endDir.x && beginDir.y == endDir.y && beginDir.z == endDir.z) return true;

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• Full screen blackout using allegro in codeblocks

  - by Armando Ortiz

  I'm very interested in game programming and I'm taking my first steps alone. So I installed allegro. Although Dev-C++ didn't work, Code::Blocks compiled successfully. I started out with this basic program: #include <allegro.h> int main(){ allegro_init(); install_keyboard(); set_gfx_mode( GFX_AUTODETECT, 640, 480, 0, 0); readkey(); return 0; } END_OF_MAIN(); The problem comes in when I try to run it. It opens the little window as always, but rapidly blacks out my whole screen. I press any key and it takes me back to the little window telling me that it finished, which means the program worked. But I try any other program with allegro, like: #include <allegro.h> int x = 10; int y = 10; int main(){ allegro_init(); install_keyboard(); set_gfx_mode( GFX_AUTODETECT, 640, 480, 0, 0); while ( !key[KEY_ESC] ){ clear_keybuf(); acquire_screen(); textout_ex( screen, font, " ", x, y, makecol( 0, 0, 0), makecol( 0, 0, 0) ); if (key[KEY_UP]) --y; else if (key[KEY_DOWN]) ++y; else if (key[KEY_RIGHT]) ++x; else if (key[KEY_LEFT]) --x; textout_ex( screen, font, "@", x, y, makecol( 255, 0, 0), makecol( 0, 0, 0) ); release_screen(); rest(50); } return 0; } END_OF_MAIN(); And the same thing happens over and over again! Is there something I'm doing wrong?

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• Do programmers need a union? [closed]

  - by James A. Rosen

  In light of the acrid responses to the intellectual property clause discussed in my previous question, I have to ask: why don't we have a programmers' union? There are many issues we face as employees, and we have very little ability to organize and negotiate. Could we band together with the writers', directors', or musicians' guilds, or are our needs unique? Has anyone ever tried to start one? If so, why did it fail? (Or, alternatively, why have I never heard of it, despite its success?) later: Keith has my idea basically right. I would also imagine the union being involved in many other topics, including: legal liability for others' use/misuse of our work, especially unintended uses evaluating the quality of computer science and software engineering higher education programs -- unlike many other engineering disciplines, we are not required to be certified on receiving our Bachelor's degrees evangelism and outreach -- especially to elementary school students certification -- not doing it, but working with the companies like ISC(2) and others to make certifications meaningful and useful continuing education -- similar to previous conferences -- maintain a go-to list of organizers and other resources our members can use I would see it less so as a traditional trade union, with little emphasis on: pay -- we tend to command fairly good salaries outsourcing and free trade -- most of use tend to be pretty free-market oriented working conditions -- we're the only industry with Aeron chairs being considered anything like "standard"

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