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• Questions about Code Reviews

  - by bamboocha

  My team plans to do Code Review and asked me to make a concept what and how we are going to make our Code Reviews. We are a little group of 6 team members. We use an SVN repository and write programs in different languages (mostly: VB.NET, Java, C#), but the reviews should be also possible for others, yet not defined. Basically I am asking you, how are you doing it, to be more precise I made a list of some questions I got: 1. Peer Meetings vs Ticket System? Would you tend to do meetings with all members, rather than something like a ticket system, where the developer can add a new code change and some or all need to check and approve it? 1. What tool? I made some researches on my own and it showed that Rietveld seems to be the program to use for non-git solutions. Do you agree/disagree and why? 2. A good workflow to follow? 3. Are there good ways to minimize the effort for those meetings even more? 4. What are good questions, every code reviewer should follow? I already made a list with some questions, what would you append/remove? are there any magic numbers in the code? do all variable and method names make sense and are easily understandable? are all querys using prepared statement? are all objects disposed/closed when they are not needed anymore? 5. What are your general experiences with it? What's important? Things to consider/prevent/watch out?

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• Should a Parent with Children have a DefaultChild, or should a Child have a Default property?

  - by Stijn

  Which of the following two models makes more sense? I'm leaning towards the first one because there can only be one default child. The examples are in C# but I think it can apply to other languages too. Here DefaultChild holds one of the items in Children. class Parent { int ID { get; set; } Child DefaultChild { get; set; } IEnumerable<Child> Children { get; set; } } class Child { int ID { get; set; } } Here one of the items in Children has Default set to true while the others have it set to false. class Parent { int ID { get; set; } IEnumerable<Child> Children { get; set; } } class Child { int ID { get; set; } bool Default { get; set; } } A concrete situation: a User in our system has one or more Customers attached. When logging in, if said User has a default Customer, they are immediately working under this Customer. If they don't, they have to select a Customer to work under. While logged in, they can switch between Customers.

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• Choosing Technology To Include In Software Design

  How many of us have been forced to select one technology over another when designing a new system? What factors do we and should we consider? How can we ensure the correct business decision is made? When faced with this type of decision it is important to gather as much information possible regarding each technology being considered as well as the project itself. Additionally, I tend to delay my decision about the technology until it is ultimately necessary to be made. The reason why I tend to delay such an important design decision is due to the fact that as the project progresses requirements and other factors can alter a decision for selecting the best technology for a project. Important factors to consider when making technology decisions: Time to Implement and Maintain Total Cost of Technology (including Implementation and maintenance) Adaptability of Technology Implementation Team’s Skill Sets Complexity of Technology (including Implementation and maintenance) orecasted Return On Investment (ROI) Forecasted Profit on Investment (POI) Of the factors to consider the ROI and POI weigh the heaviest because the take in to consideration the other factors when calculating the profitability and return on investments.For a real world example let us consider developing a web based lead management system for a new company. This system can either be hosted on Microsoft Windows based web server or on a Linux based web server. Important Factors for this Example Implementation Team’s Skill Sets Member 1  Skill Set: Classic ASP, ASP.Net, and MS SQL Server Experience: 10 years Member 2  Skill Set: PHP, MySQL, Photoshop and MS SQL Server Experience: 3 years Member 3  Skill Set: C++, VB6, ASP.Net, and MS SQL Server Experience: 12 years Total Cost of Technology (including Implementation and maintenance) Linux Initial Year: $5,000 (Random Value) Additional Years: $3,000 (Random Value) Windows Initial Year: $10,000 (Random Value) Additional Years: $3,000 (Random Value) Complexity of Technology Linux Large Learning Curve with user driven documentation Estimated learning cost: $30,000 Windows Minimal based on Teams skills with Microsoft based documentation Estimated learning cost: $5,000 ROI Linux Total Cost Initial Total Cost: $35,000 Additional Cost $3,000 per year Windows Total Cost Initial Total Cost: $15,000 Additional Cost $3,000 per year Based on the hypothetical numbers it would make more sense to select windows based web server because the initial investment of the technology is much lower initially compared to the Linux based web server.

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• Best practices for using namespaces in C++.

  - by Dima

  I have read Uncle Bob's Clean Code a few months ago, and it has had a profound impact on the way I write code. Even if it seemed like he was repeating things that every programmer should know, putting them all together and putting them into practice does result in much cleaner code. In particular, I found breaking up large functions into many tiny functions, and breaking up large classes into many tiny classes to be incredibly useful. Now for the question. The book's examples are all in Java, while I have been working in C++ for the past several years. How would the ideas in Clean Code extend to the use of namespaces, which do not exist in Java? (Yes, I know about the Java packages, but it is not really the same.) Does it make sense to apply the idea of creating many tiny entities, each with a clearly define responsibility, to namespaces? Should a small group of related classes always be wrapped in a namespace? Is this the way to manage the complexity of having lots of tiny classes, or would the cost of managing lots of namespaces be prohibitive?

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• Self Service Reporting With PowerPivot

  - by blakmk

  There are so many cool new features in Sql 2008 release 2 it was difficult for me to pick a topic for T-SQL Tuesday . But the one that I am now a secret fan of, I once resented for its creation. Let me explain, for years I have encountered reporting systems cobbled together in tools like Access and Excel built by "database hobbyists" who had no formal training in database design or best practices. They would take their monstrosities as far as they could go before ultimatley it stopped working or the person that wrote it left the company. At that point it would become the resident DBA's problem to support it as a Live application. So when I first heard of Power Pivot, a sense of Deja Vu overtook me and I felt like the guy in the Ausin Powers movie , knowing the inevitable is coming but somehow unsure how to get out of the way. But when I eventually saw it in action, I quickly realised that it is a very powerful tool. It has a much smaller "time to market" than traditional BI architectures. Combined with the new features of Excel, some pretty impressive dashboards can be produced.Of course PowerPivot is not a magic bullet and along with potential scalability issues there are the usual issues such as master data management and data quality that cannot be overcome easily with power pivot. As a tool though, it has potential. Traditional BI is expensive, both in terms of time and the amount of resources it takes to deliver the system. The time lag between an analyst or a commercial accountant requesting reports and the report being delivered can make a huge commercial difference. I have observed companies where empowered end users become extremely productive when allowed to plough in to various disperate datasets. It may not be the correct way or the most sustainable but its cheap and quick. In these times when budgets are being slashed and we are forced to deliver more with less, why not empower the end user in a tool that is designed for exactly this task.... @blakmk  

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• Drupal 7 Advice Needed: "Portal" Creation

  - by WernerCD

  Question: What is the best game plan for building what I want. I'm rebuilding the company intranet and am trying to get our "Portals" system re-created in Drupal. I'm trying to learn Panels, because thats what I think would do this, but I just can't seem to get it working. Menu at top, drop down lists for various webpages, tools, internal applications... and Department Portals. When you click on a department portal, you get the same menu at top... and on the main part of the page you have a menu on the left, with content on the right. Menu stays on the left, content loads next to it. Each Portal has its own menu and content (least of which is "Home"). Ultimately, I'd like to be able to say - users with role "Foo" can add/edit/delete Portal Bar. - Each Portal starts with a "Home" - Each Portal has its own Menu tree's. (Picture 2 above has a < ul for video tutorials that would be a second level menu. So more than one deep.) - Content on the right side of the portal should be flexible (Video, PDF via fileviewer, etc) - Portal Bar should have its own Folder to contain it's content. I'm trying to do this in Panels, but I can't seem to put the pieces together in my mind and in practice. I hope I'm making sense, because the dizzying array of stuff is killing me lol.

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• What does your Lisp workflow look like?

  - by Duncan Bayne

  I'm learning Lisp at the moment, coming from a language progression that is Locomotive BASIC - Z80 Assembler - Pascal - C - Perl - C# - Ruby. My approach is to simultaneously: write a simple web-scraper using SBCL, QuickLisp, closure-html, and drakma watch the SICP lectures I think this is working well; I'm developing good 'Lisp goggles', in that I can now read Lisp reasonably easily. I'm also getting a feel for how the Lisp ecosystem works, e.g. Quicklisp for dependencies. What I'm really missing, though, is a sense of how a seasoned Lisper actually works. When I'm coding for .NET, I have Visual Studio set up with ReSharper and VisualSVN. I write tests, I implement, I refactor, I commit. Then when I'm done enough of that to complete a story, I write some AUATs. Then I kick off a Release build on TeamCity to push the new functionality out to the customer for testing & hopefully approval. If it's an app that needs an installer, I use either WiX or InnoSetup, obviously building the installer through the CI system. So, my question is: as an experienced Lisper, what does your workflow look like? Do you work mostly in the REPL, or in the editor? How do you do unit tests? Continuous integration? Packaging & deployment? When you sit down at your desk, steaming mug of coffee to one side and a framed photo of John McCarthy to the other, what is it that you do? Currently, I feel like I am getting to grips with Lisp coding, but not Lisp development ...

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• Lessons From OpenId, Cardspace and Facebook Connect

  - by mark.wilcox

  (c) denise carbonell I think Johannes Ernst summarized pretty well what happened in a broad sense in regards to OpenId, Cardspace and Facebook Connect. However, I'm more interested in the lessons we can take away from this. First  - "Apple Lesson" - If user-centric identity is going to happen it's going to require not only technology but also a strong marketing campaign. I'm calling this the "Apple Lesson" because it's very similar to how Apple iPad saw success vs the tablet market. The iPad is not only a very good technology product but it was backed by a very good marketing plan. I know most people do not want to think about marketing here - but the fact is that nobody could really articulate why user-centric identity mattered in a way that the average person cared about. Second - "Facebook Lesson" - Facebook Connect solves a number of interesting problems that is easy for both consumer and service providers. For a consumer it's simple to log-in without any redirects. And while Facebook isn't perfect on privacy - no other major consumer-focused service on the Internet provides as much control about sharing identity information. From a developer perspective it is very easy to implement the SSO and fetch other identity information (if the user has given permission). This could only happen because a major company just decided to make a singular focus to make it happen. Third - "Developers Lesson" -  Facebook Social Graph API is by far the simplest API for accessing identity information which also is another reason why you're seeing such rapid growth in Facebook enabled Websites. By using a combination of URL and Javascript - the power a single HTML page now gives a developer writing Web applications is simply amazing. For example It doesn't get much simpler than this "http://api.facebook.com/mewilcox" for accessing identity. And while I can't yet share too much publicly about the specifics - the social graph API had a profound impact on me in designing our next generation APIs.  Posted via email from Virtual Identity Dialogue

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• What to Return with Async CRUD methods

  - by RualStorge

  While there is a similar question focused on Java, I've been in debates with utilizing Task objects. What's the best way to handle returns on CRUD methods (and similar)? Common returns we've seen over the years are: Void (no return unless there is an exception) Boolean (True on Success, False on Failure, exception on unhandled failure) Int or GUID (Return the newly created objects Id, 0 or null on failure, exception on unhandled failure) The updated Object (exception on failure) Result Object (Object that houses the manipulated object's ID, Boolean or status field to with success or failure indicated, Exception information if there was one, etc) The concern comes into play as we've started moving over to utilizing C# 5's Async functionality, and this brought the question up of how we should handle CRUD returns large-scale. In our systems we have a little of everything in regards to what we return, we want to make these returns standardized... Now the question is what is the recommended standard? Is there even a recommended standard yet? (I realize we need to decide our standard, but typically we do so by looking at best practices, see if it makes sense for us and go from there, but here we're not finding much to work with)

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• Precising definition of programming paradigm

  - by Kazark

  Wikipedia defines programming paradigm thus: a fundamental style of computer programming which is echoed in the descriptive text of the paradigms tag on this site. I find this a disappointing definition. Anyone who knows the words programming and paradigm could do about that well without knowing anything else about it. There are many styles of computer programming at many level of abstraction; within any given programming paradigm, multiple styles are possible. For example, Bob Martin says in Clean Code (13), Consider this book a description of the Object Mentor School of Clean Code. The techniques and teachings within are the way that we practice our art. We are willing to claim that if you follow these teachings, you will enjoy the benefits that we have enjoyed, and you will learn to write code that is clean and professional. But don't make the mistake of thinking that we are somehow "right" in any absolute sense. Thus Bob Martin is not claiming to have the correct style of Object-Oriented programming, even though he, if anyone, might have some claim to doing so. But even within his school of programming, we might have different styles of formatting the code (K&R, etc). There are many styles of programming at many levels. Sp how can we define programming paradigm rigorously, to distinguish it from other categories of programming styles? Fundamental is somewhat helpful, but not specific. How can we define the phrase in a way that will communicate more than the separate meanings of each of the two words—in other words, how can we define it in a way that will provide additional meaning for someone who speaks English but isn't familiar with a variety of paradigms?

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• MMORPG design for time-limited players

  - by Philipp

  I believe that there is a significant market of players who would enjoy the exploration and interaction aspects of MMORPGs, but simply don't have the time for the endless grinding marathons which are part of the average MMORPG. MMORPGs are all about interaction between players. But when different players have different amounts of time to invest into a game, those with less time to spend will soon lack behind their power-leveling friends and won't be able to interact with them anymore. One way to solve this would be to limit the progress a player can achieve per day, so that it simply doesn't make sense to play more than one or two hours a day. But even the busiest casual players sometimes like to spend a whole sunday afternoon playing a video game. Just stopping them after two hours would be really frustrating. It also creates a pressure to use the daily progress limit every day, because otherwise the player would feel like wasting something. This pressure would be detrimental for casual gamers. What else could be done to level the playing field between those players who play 40+ hours a week and those who can't play more than 10?

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• 10.10 boots to command line login prompt

  - by greggory.hz

  I recently installed Ubuntu 10.10 on a computer that was previously running 10.04 (that worked fine). Now, each time I boot up, it starts up in a command line login prompt. I can login and it stays at the command line (as expected). I can then manually start gdm with sudo start gdm and it works fine. I can also enable compiz (using proprietary nvidia drivers) so I'm reasonably confident that it's not a driver problem (at least not in the sense that the drivers just flat out aren't working). Interestingly, if I leave it at the command prompt without logging in, after about 5 or 10 minutes, gnome starts up on its own. I'm not sure what is causing this. This is what dmesg | tail gives me after a manual start of gdm: [ 15.664166] NVRM: loading NVIDIA UNIX x86_64 Kernel Module 270.18 Tue Jan 18 21:46:26 PST 2011 [ 15.991304] type=1400 audit(1297543976.953:11): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" name="/usr/share/gdm/guest-session/Xsession" pid=990 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 16.606986] eth0: link up, 100Mbps, full-duplex, lpa 0xCDE1 [ 18.798506] EXT4-fs (sda1): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro,commit=0 [ 26.740010] eth0: no IPv6 routers present [ 90.444593] EXT4-fs (sda1): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro,commit=0 [ 189.252208] audit_printk_skb: 21 callbacks suppressed [ 189.252213] type=1400 audit(1297544150.218:19): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_replace" name="/usr/lib/cups/backend/cups-pdf" pid=1876 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 189.252584] type=1400 audit(1297544150.218:20): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_replace" name="/usr/sbin/cupsd" pid=1876 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 351.159585] lo: Disabled Privacy Extensions

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• Flickering when accessing texture by offset

  - by TravisG

  I have this simple compute shader that basically just takes the input from one image and writes it to another. Both images are 128/128/128 in size and glDispatchCompute is called with (128/8,128/8,128/8). The source images are cleared to 0 before this compute shader is executed, so no undefined values should be floating around in there. (I have the appropriate memory barrier on the C++ side set before the 3D texture is accessed). This version works fine: #version 430 layout (location = 0, rgba16f) uniform image3D ping; layout (location = 1, rgba16f) uniform image3D pong; layout (local_size_x = 8, local_size_y = 8, local_size_z = 8) in; void main() { ivec3 sampleCoord = gl_GlobalInvocationID.xyz; imageStore(pong, imageLoad(ping,sampleCoord)); } Reading values from pong shows that it's just a copy, as intended. However, when I load data from ping with an offset: #version 430 layout (location = 0, rgba16f) uniform image3D ping; layout (location = 1, rgba16f) uniform image3D pong; layout (local_size_x = 8, local_size_y = 8, local_size_z = 8) in; void main() { ivec3 sampleCoord = gl_GlobalInvocationID.xyz; imageStore(pong, imageLoad(ping,sampleCoord+ivec3(1,0,0))); } The data that is written to pong seems to depend on the order of execution of the threads within the work groups, which makes no sense to me. When reading from the pong texture, visible flickering occurs in some spots on the texture. What am I doing wrong here?

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• Prevent oversteering catastrophe in racing games

  - by jdm

  When playing GTA III on Android I noticed something that has been annoying me in almost every racing game I've played (maybe except Mario Kart): Driving straight ahead is easy, but curves are really hard. When I switch lanes or pass somebody, the car starts swiveling back and forth, and any attempt to correct it makes it only worse. The only thing I can do is to hit the brakes. I think this is some kind of oversteering. What makes it so irritating is that it never happens to me in real life (thank god :-)), so 90% of the games with vehicles inside feel unreal to me (despite probably having really good physics engines). I've talked to a couple of people about this, and it seems either you 'get' racing games, or you don't. With a lot of practice, I did manage to get semi-good at some games (e.g. from the Need for Speed series), by driving very cautiously, braking a lot (and usually getting a cramp in my fingers). What can you do as a game developer to prevent the oversteering resonance catastrophe, and make driving feel right? (For a casual racing game, that doesn't strive for 100% realistic physics) I also wonder what games like Super Mario Kart exactly do differently so that they don't have so much oversteering? I guess one problem is that if you play with a keyboard or a touchscreen (but not wheels and pedals), you only have digital input: gas pressed or not, steering left/right or not, and it's much harder to steer appropriately for a given speed. The other thing is that you probably don't have a good sense of speed, and drive much faster than you would (safely) in reality. From the top of my head, one solution might be to vary the steering response with speed.

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• CheckMemoryAllocationGame Sample

  - by Michael B. McLaughlin

  Many times I’ve found myself wondering how much GC memory some operation allocates. This is primarily in the context of XNA games due to the desire to avoid generating garbage and thus triggering a GC collection. Many times I’ve written simple programs to check allocations. I did it again recently. It occurred to me that many XNA developers find themselves asking this question from time to time. So I cleaned up my sample and published it on my website. Feel free to download it and put it to use. It’s rather thoroughly commented. The location where you insert the code you wish to check is in the Update method found in Game1.cs. The default that I put in is a line of code that generates a new Guid using Guid.NewGuid (which, if you’re curious, does not create any heap allocations). Read all of the comments in the Update method (at the very least) to make sure that your code is measured properly. It’s important to make sure that you meaningfully reference any thing you create after the second call to get the memory or else (in Release configuration at least) you will likely get incorrect results. Anyway, it should make sense when you read the comments and if not, feel free to post a comment here or ask me on Twitter. You can find my utilities and code samples page here: http://www.bobtacoindustries.com/developers/utils/Default.aspx To download CheckMemoryAllocationGame’s source code directly: http://www.bobtacoindustries.com/developers/utils/CheckMemoryAllocationGame.zip (If you’re looking to do this outside of the context of an XNA game, the measurement code in the Update method can easily be adapted into, e.g., a C# Windows Console application. In the past I mostly did that, actually. But I didn’t feel like adding references to all the XNA assemblies this time and… anyway, if you want you can easily convert it to a console application. If there’s any demand for it, I’ll do it myself and update this post when I get a chance.)

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• Is `break` and `continue` bad programming practice?

  - by Mikhail

  My boss keeps mentioning nonchalantly that bad programmers use break and continue in loops. I use them all the time because they make sense; let me show you the inspiration: function verify(object) { if (object->value < 0) return false; if (object->value > object->max_value) return false; if (object->name == "") return false; ... } The point here is that first the function checks that the conditions are correct, then executes the actual functionality. IMO same applies with loops: while (primary_condition) { if (loop_count > 1000) break; if (time_exect > 3600) break; if (this->data == "undefined") continue; if (this->skip == true) continue; ... } I think this makes it easier to read & debug; but I also don't see a downside. Please comment.

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• Personalisation of the Ubuntu interface

  - by Ben

  It's quite hard to phrase this question as the answer is very subjective and I don't know the right terminology to ask for what I want, but I will try my best. I love linux and would love to use it full-time as my main OS but the one think I have a problem with is the look of it. In my opinion it looks like it was designed for a child and I like my computer to look stylish rather than dated (this is opinion obviously). I like the look of OSX but there are certain things that I don't like, so no, I am not asking the age old question of "how do I make ubunutu look like OSX"...most of the attempts I have seen of this have been pretty poor when put up against the real thing so I just want to take certain things from it. Things I'd like to take from OSX: Spotlight (I don't like the Unity dashboard-esque thingy) Expose Spaces Dock (at the bottom) Icons (apart from the apple one) Look of file manager - its more pleasant to navigate around the file system. Closing an application window doesn't actually quit the program, so when you next launch it - it is instantaneous. Global menu (at the top) What are the latest Ubuntu alternatives to these? When it comes to actually changing the look of Ubuntu what should I be looking at? I know the following exists: Shell theme Icons Fonts ...but is there anything else I need to look into to actually change the look? I hear the term "Window Manager" thrown around, but I don't actually know what that is. What are good sources for reviews/links to the latest and greatest customisation techniques? Ubuntu now comes with Unity which I don't like very much. What are my alternatives? Should I look into Gnome3 or switch to classic desktop which is Gnome2 if I recall correctly? I hope I haven't put too much in one question and that it makes sense. Thanks.

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• Thick models Vs. Business Logic, Where do you draw the distinction?

  - by TokenMacGuy

  Today I got into a heated debate with another developer at my organization about where and how to add methods to database mapped classes. We use sqlalchemy, and a major part of the existing code base in our database models is little more than a bag of mapped properties with a class name, a nearly mechanical translation from database tables to python objects. In the argument, my position was that that the primary value of using an ORM was that you can attach low level behaviors and algorithms to the mapped classes. Models are classes first, and secondarily persistent (they could be persistent using xml in a filesystem, you don't need to care). His view was that any behavior at all is "business logic", and necessarily belongs anywhere but in the persistent model, which are to be used for database persistence only. I certainly do think that there is a distinction between what is business logic, and should be separated, since it has some isolation from the lower level of how that gets implemented, and domain logic, which I believe is the abstraction provided by the model classes argued about in the previous paragraph, but I'm having a hard time putting my finger on what that is. I have a better sense of what might be the API (which, in our case, is HTTP "ReSTful"), in that users invoke the API with what they want to do, distinct from what they are allowed to do, and how it gets done. tl;dr: What kinds of things can or should go in a method in a mapped class when using an ORM, and what should be left out, to live in another layer of abstraction?

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• How to handle multiple effect files in XNA

  - by Adam 'Pi' Burch

  So I'm using ModelMesh and it's built in Effects parameter to draw a mesh with some shaders I'm playing with. I have a simple GUI that lets me change these parameters to my heart's desire. My question is, how do I handle shaders that have unique parameters? For example, I want a 'shiny' parameter that affects shaders with Phong-type specular components, but for an environment mapping shader such a parameter doesn't make a lot of sense. How I have it right now is that every time I call the ModelMesh's Draw() function, I set all the Effect parameters as so foreach (ModelMesh m in model.Meshes) { if (isDrawBunny == true)//Slightly change the way the world matrix is calculated if using the bunny object, since it is not quite centered in object space { world = boneTransforms[m.ParentBone.Index] * Matrix.CreateScale(scale) * rotation * Matrix.CreateTranslation(position + bunnyPositionTransform); } else //If not rendering the bunny, draw normally { world = boneTransforms[m.ParentBone.Index] * Matrix.CreateScale(scale) * rotation * Matrix.CreateTranslation(position); } foreach (Effect e in m.Effects) { Matrix ViewProjection = camera.ViewMatrix * camera.ProjectionMatrix; e.Parameters["ViewProjection"].SetValue(ViewProjection); e.Parameters["World"].SetValue(world); e.Parameters["diffuseLightPosition"].SetValue(lightPositionW); e.Parameters["CameraPosition"].SetValue(camera.Position); e.Parameters["LightColor"].SetValue(lightColor); e.Parameters["MaterialColor"].SetValue(materialColor); e.Parameters["shininess"].SetValue(shininess); //e.Parameters //e.Parameters["normal"] } m.Draw(); Note the prescience of the example! The solutions I've thought of involve preloading all the shaders, and updating the unique parameters as needed. So my question is, is there a best practice I'm missing here? Is there a way to pull the parameters a given Effect needs from that Effect? Thank you all for your time!

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• Find points whose pairwise distances approximate a given distance matrix

  - by Stephan Kolassa

  Problem. I have a symmetric distance matrix with entries between zero and one, like this one: D = ( 0.0 0.4 0.0 0.5 ) ( 0.4 0.0 0.2 1.0 ) ( 0.0 0.2 0.0 0.7 ) ( 0.5 1.0 0.7 0.0 ) I would like to find points in the plane that have (approximately) the pairwise distances given in D. I understand that this will usually not be possible with strictly correct distances, so I would be happy with a "good" approximation. My matrices are smallish, no more than 10x10, so performance is not an issue. Question. Does anyone know of an algorithm to do this? Background. I have sets of probability densities between which I calculate Hellinger distances, which I would like to visualize as above. Each set contains no more than 10 densities (see above), but I have a couple of hundred sets. What I did so far. I did consider posting at math.SE, but looking at what gets tagged as "geometry" there, it seems like this kind of computational geometry question would be more on-topic here. If the community thinks this should be migrated, please go ahead. This looks like a straightforward problem in computational geometry, and I would assume that anyone involved in clustering might be interested in such a visualization, but I haven't been able to google anything. One simple approach would be to randomly plonk down points and perturb them until the distance matrix is close to D, e.g., using Simulated Annealing, or run a Genetic Algorithm. I have to admit that I haven't tried that yet, hoping for a smarter way. One specific operationalization of a "good" approximation in the sense above is Problem 4 in the Open Problems section here, with k=2. Now, while finding an algorithm that is guaranteed to find the minimum l1-distance between D and the resulting distance matrix may be an open question, it still seems possible that there at least is some approximation to this optimal solution. If I don't get an answer here, I'll mail the gentleman who posed that problem and ask whether he knows of any approximation algorithm (and post any answer I get to that here).

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• WordPress injection?

  - by saul

  I don't really know how to express my problem, so bear with me. This is a bit hard to explain. I have a Wordpress installation, the latest, and often (once a day) my site redirects users to the /wp-admin/install.php file. Asking for my login credentials of course. I have tried reinstalling WordPress and still have not been able to figure what they are doing. That happens regularly. Also, a few hours later, I am able to see my site normally. Hope this makes sense. I suspect there myst be some database DoS that allows them to inject a redirect of some sort into my admin area, thus redirecting the user to said directory (install.php). But that's just me. I really have no clue what else could they be doing. I looked at the source code from several php files and noted some of them don't include a ? tag. Could that be an issue? My hosting company is iPage, I've contacted them and they say there's nothing wrong with my files. Anyone have a clue? I can paste the code to any source file.

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• How do I get wireless and video working on a Sony Vaio vpc-z21x9r

  - by Alex

  OS: Ubuntu 11.10 Kernel: 2.6.37.6 Laptop: sony vaio vpc-z21x9r The problem: I can't change level of screen backlight; also can't enable wi-fi. While using 3.0 kernel everything is ok, but the laptop discharges too quickly. Results for lspci 02:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Centrino Wireless-N + WiMAX 6150 (rev 5f) VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09) there is no wlan0 in ifconfig -a too. I've fount that kernel should already have drivers for this graphics controller, but when i load up in restore mode, it writes "fall" while trying to load up some video drivers. To change the level of backlight i've alrady tried: xbacklight -set XX , smartdimmer -s XX and got this init_ nvclock() failed! also sudo setpci -s 00:02.0 F4.B=XX with no results. As for wi-fi, i've found driver but i don't understand how to install it. Here it is How can I fix these problems? Thank you for your help and time! Also tried to fix problems with backlight writing GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash nomodeset acpi_backlight=vendor Still no results. Is there any sense in recompiling kernel, I mean 2.6.37.6. Can it make any improvements in the situation?

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• Floodfill algorithm for GO

  - by user1048606

  The floodfill algorithm is used in the bucket tool in MS paint and photoshop, but it can also be used for GO and minesweeper. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_fill In go you can capture groups of stones, this website portrays it with two stones. http://www.connectedglobe.com/mindy/cap6.html This is my floodfill method in Java, it is not capturing a group of stones and I have no idea why because to me it makes sense. public void floodfill(int turn, int col, int row){ for(int a = col; a<19; a++){ for(int b = row; b<19; b++){ if(turn == black){ if(stones[col][row] == white){ stones[col][row] = 0; floodfill(black, col-1, row); floodfill(black, col+1, row); floodfill(black, col, row-1); floodfill(black, col, row+1); } } } } } It searches up, down, left, right for all the stones on the board. If the stones are white it captures them by making them 0, which represents empty.

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• SOA Forcing A Shift In IT Governance

  As more and more companies adopt a service oriented approach to developing and maintaining existing enterprise systems, IT governance also needs to shift its philosophies to fit the emerging development paradigm. When I first started programming companies placed an emphasis on “Code and Go” software development style. They only developed for current problems and did not really take a look at how the company could leverage some of the code we were developing across the entire enterprise system.  The concept of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) has dramatically shifted how we develop enterprise software with emphasizing software processes as company assets. This has driven some to start developing new components as processes strictly for the possibility of future integration of existing and new systems. I personally like this new paradigm because it truly promotes code reusability. However, most enterprise level IT governance polices were created prior to the introduction of SOA in their respected organization. This can create a sense of the Wild West for developers working on projects related to SOA. This is due to the fact that a lot of the standards and polices implemented by enterprise IT governing boards were initially for developing under the “Code and Go” paradigm and do not take in to account idiosyncrasies found in the SOA/integration based development. As IT governance moves forward its focus should aim more for “Develop to Integrate” versus “Code and Go” philosophies. Examples of “Develop to Integrate” Philosophy: Defining preferred data transfer methodologies (XML vs. JSON), and when to use them Updating security best practices for exposing public services based on existing standard security policies Define when to use create new SOA project vs. implementing localized components that could be reused elsewhere in the enterprise.

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• Best practice for designing a risk-style board game

  - by jyanks

  I'm just trying to figure out how to set up the code for a game like risk... I would like it to be extensible, so that I can have multiple maps (ie- World, North America, Eurasia, Africa) so hardcoding in the map doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense I'm a bit confused on how/where items should be stored/accessed. Here are the objects I see the game theoretically using: -Countries/Territories -Cities (Can be contained within territories) -Capitols -Connections -Continents -Map -Troops At the moment, I feel like: -A map should have a list of continents and countries. The continents would be more of a 'logical' thing where the continents would just be lists of countries that are checked for bonuses at the start of turns -Countries should have a list of countries that they're connected to for the connections What I can't figure out is: Where do I store the troops? Do I have an object for every single troop or do I just store the number of troops on a country object as an integer? What about capitols and cities? Do those just have a reference to the country they reside in? Is there anything I'm not seeing here that's going to screw me over in the long run with the way that I'm thinking about things now? Any advice would be appreciated.

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