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• What technology or skillset should I learn today in order to be able to charge $250+ / hr in 2-3 years? [closed]

  - by Ryan Waggoner

  I've been doing PHP freelance development for the last 4-5 years and I'm starting to max out my hourly rate. So in 2010 I decided to transition to a new language. I played with Python and Ruby, but ended up settling on iOS, for three reasons: I'm enjoying the challenge of working on a completely different type of development, instead of another flavor of web development The demand seems higher right now than for Ruby or Python I see iOS developers charging $150 - 250 / hr Whether these reasons are right or wrong, I've been learning iOS for the last year and I'm starting to get more work in that field. I feel confident that in six months (barring any major shifts in the ecosystem), I can be billing iOS work at $150 / hr or more. However, I'm feeling that I should have done this earlier, that I've missed the boat, and that iOS development is going to dry up or get much more commoditized. Whether this is true or not isn't really my question (though feel free to comment). What I want to know is: what should I start learning right now so that I can be ahead of the curve in a couple years when the demand is far outstripping supply? What technologies or skillsets are going to be so heavily in demand in 2-3 years that you'll be able to charge $250 / hr or more and stay busy? These don't have to be new technologies either...the answer could be iOS or COBOL or whatever.

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• How to associate all file types within Wine with its corresponding native application?

  - by MestreLion

  This is easily done for a single file type, as answered in How to associate a file type within Wine with a native application?, by creating a .reg for the desired filetype. But this is for AVI only. I use some wine apps (uTorrent, Soulseek, Eudora, to name a few) that can launch a wide range of files. Email attachments, for example, can be JPG, DOC, PDF, PPS... its impossible (and not desirable) to track down all possible file types that one may receive in an email or download in a torrent. So I neeed a solution to be more generic and broad. I need the file association to honor whatever native app is currently configured. And I want this to be done for all file types configured in my system. I've already figured out how to make the solution generic. Simply replacing the launched app in .reg for winebrowser, like this: [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.pdf] @="PDFfile" "Content Type"="application/pdf" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\PDFfile\Shell\Open\command] @="C:\\windows\\system32\\winebrowser.exe \"%1\"" Ive tested this and it works correctly. Since winebrowser uses xdg-open as a backend, and converts my windows path to a Unix one, the correct (Linux) app is launched. So I need a "batch" updater to wine's registry, sort of a wine-update-associations script that I can run whenever a new app is installed. Maybe a tool that can: List all Mime Types types in my system that have a default, installed app associated Extract all the needed info (glob, mime type, etc) Generate the .REG file in the above format The tricky part is: i've searched a LOT to find info about how association is done in Ubuntu 10.10 onwards, and documentation is scarce and confusing, to say the least. Freedesktop.org has no complete spec, and even Gnome docs are obsolete. So far I've gathered 4 files that contain association info, but im clueless on which (or why) to use, or how to use them to generate the .reg file: ~/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list ~/.local/share/applications/miminfo.cache /usr/share/applications/miminfo.cache /etc/gnome/defaults.list Any help, script or explanation would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

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• Incompatible group permissions in Linux - Is it a bug?

  - by Sachin

  I am on Ubuntu 11.04. I am creating another user and placing an existing user in the group of other user, hoping to write in the home directory of other user. # uname -a Linux vini 2.6.38-11-generic #50-Ubuntu SMP Mon Sep 12 21:18:14 UTC 2011 i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux # whoami sachin # su root # useradd -m -U foo // create user foo # usermod -a -G foo sachin // add user `sachin' to group `foo' # chmod 770 /home/foo/ # exit # whoami sachin # cd /home/foo/ bash: cd: /home/foo/: Permission denied # groups sachin sachin : sachin foo This is totally weird. Though user sachin is in group foo, and group bits for /home/foo/ is set to rwx, sachin can't chdir to /home/foo/. I am not able to understand this. But, if at the exit step, I switch to sachin user from root, this is what happens: # uname -a Linux vini 2.6.38-11-generic #50-Ubuntu SMP Mon Sep 12 21:18:14 UTC 2011 i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux # whoami sachin # su root # useradd -m -U foo // create user foo # usermod -a -G foo sachin // add user `sachin' to group `foo' # chmod 770 /home/foo/ # su sachin # whoami sachin # cd /home/foo/ # ls examples.desktop Now, whatever is happening here is totally incomprehensible. Does su sachin inherits some permissions from the root user at this step? Any explanations would be much appreciated.

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• How to manage drawing loop when changing render targets

  - by George Duckett

  I'm managing my game state by having a base GameScreen class with a Draw method. I then have (basically) a stack of GameScreens that I render. I render the bottom one first, as screens above might not completely cover the ones below. I now have a problem where one GameScreen changes render targets while doing its rendering. Anything the previous screens have drawn to the backbuffer is lost (as XNA emulates what happens on the xbox). I don't want to just set the backbuffer to preserve its contents as I want this to work on the xbox as well as PC. How should I manage this problem? A few ideas I've had: Render every GameScreen to its own render target, then render them all to the backbuffer. Create some kind of RenderAction queue where a game screen (and anything else I guess) could queue something to be rendered to the back buffer. They'd render whatever they wanted to any render target as normal, but if they wanted to render to the backbuffer they'd stick that in a queue which would get processed once all rendertarget rendering was done. Abstract away from render targets and backbuffers and have some way of representing the way graphics flows and transforms between render targets and have something manage/work out the correct rendering order (and render targets) given what rendering process needs as input and what it produces as output. I think each of my ideas have pros and cons and there are probably several other ways of approaching this general problem so I'm interested in finding out what solutions are out there.

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• Stuff you learned in school, that you have never used again?

  - by Mercfh

  Obviously we learn plenty of things in our University/College/Whatever that probably don't apply to everyday use, but is there anything that stands out particularly? Maybe something that was concentrated ALOT on? For me it was def. 2 things: OO Concepts and Pointers I still use OO, but not nearly to the amount people made it out to be, i can see where it'd be useful but in my line of work we don't have huge amounts of classes, maybe a couple at most. And there certainly isn't much OO reuse (i finally figured out what that means lol) Pointers are another thing, again I can see where they'd be useful...however I barely barely ever touch them, nor do the others I work with. I guess language choice has alot to do with that but still. What about you guys? edit: For those who are asking I work for a Large Printer company, and most of the Applications we work on are Java+XML and Actionscript for "Printer Apps". But we are moving towards other languages (think like webkits and stuff). So the Code amounts per parts are quite small. I never say OO wasn't useful I just said I personally havent seen it used in my workplace much.

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• Website Ethics / legal issues, image copyrights

  - by RailsN00b

  Ignoring the technical implementation of a website for a second, assume a website that is similar to twitter but with pictures. A user say something and puts a picture of whatever they said. As the nature of the internet, the images will most likely not be his/hers image. There are 2 options that I see for dealing with this: 1. The user will post a URL of the picture and the website will pull the picture from that URL everytime someone enters that page 2. The website will save the image in its own database of images and display the image to the visitors 'locally' The problem with option #1, while it saved storage, I see an issue with 'stealing' other websites bandwidth and if my website has many many visitors it could cost the image-hosting websites a lot and possible even crash it if the server can't handle the load. The problem with opion #2, while it saves the load to other websites, it practically takes pictures that could have copyright on them. Which option is better to implement in terms of legal issues and ethics? When do I need to contact another website to request permission to use the images from that site? Does anyone really care about that anymore. Where can I read about this?

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• Designing generic render/graphics component in C++?

  - by s73v3r

  I'm trying to learn more about Component Entity systems. So I decided to write a Tetris clone. I'm using the "style" of component-entity system where the Entity is just a bag of Components, the Components are just data, a Node is a set of Components needed to accomplish something, and a System is a set of methods that operates on a Node. All of my components inherit from a basic IComponent interface. I'm trying to figure out how to design the Render/Graphics/Drawable Components. Originally, I was going to use SFML, and everything was going to be good. However, as this is an experimental system, I got the idea of being able to change out the render library at will. I thought that since the Rendering would be fairly componentized, this should be doable. However, I'm having problems figuring out how I would design a common Interface for the different types of Render Components. Should I be using C++ Template types? It seems that having the RenderComponent somehow return it's own mesh/sprite/whatever to the RenderSystem would be the simplest, but would be difficult to generalize. However, letting the RenderComponent just hold on to data about what it would render would make it hard to re-use this component for different renderable objects (background, falling piece, field of already fallen blocks, etc). I realize this is fairly over-engineered for a regular Tetris clone, but I'm trying to learn about component entity systems and making interchangeable components. It's just that rendering seems to be the hardest to split out for me.

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• Submitting software to a competition, it becomes their property?

  - by myrkos

  So I'm about to submit a game to a competition, but as I looked through the rules a chunk grabbed my attention: All Entries become the sole and exclusive property of Sponsor and will not be acknowledged or returned. Sponsor shall own all right, title and interest in and to each Entry, including without limitation all results and proceeds thereof and all elements or constituent parts of Entry (including without limitation the Mobile App, the Design Documents, the Video Trailer, the Playable and all illustrations, logos, mechanicals, renderings, characters, graphics, designs, layouts or other material therein) and all copyrights and renewals and extensions of copyrights therein and thereto. Without limitation of the foregoing, each Eligible Entrant shall and hereby does absolutely and irrevocably assign and transfer all of his or her right, title and interest in his or her Entry to Sponsor, and Sponsor shall have the right and may authorize others to use, copy, sublicense, transmit, modify, manipulate, publish, delete, reproduce, perform, distribute, display and otherwise exploit the Entry (and to create and exploit derivative works thereof) in any manner, including without limitation to embody the Entry, in whole or in part, in apps and other works of any kind or nature created, developed, published or distributed by Sponsor and to and register as a trademark in any country in Sponsor’s name any component of the Entry, without such Eligible Entrant reserving any rights or claims with respect thereto. Sponsor shall have the exclusive right, in perpetuity, throughout the Territory to change, adapt, modify, use, combine with other material and otherwise exploit the Entry in all media now known or hereafter devised and in any manner, in its sole and absolute discretion, without the need for any payment or credit to Entrant. So the game will become the sponsor's property; however, they don't ask for source code. So will I still own the rights to the source code, whatever that means? And if it doesn't win said competition, will I be able to publish it myself without their trademarks? I am very new to software legality stuff, so I would appreciate any clarification. Since there's a possibility I won't even own the source, is it possible to make the game core engine open source software with a not-very-restrictive license and include that in the project, so I at least still own the game engine? Or does it not work that way?

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• How do I convince my boss that it's OK to use an application to access an outside website?

  - by Cyberherbalist

  That is, if you agree that it's OK. We have a need to maintain an accurate internal record of bank routing numbers, and my boss wants me to set up a process where once a week someone goes to the Federal Reserve's website, clicks on the link to get the list of routing numbers (or the link giving the updates since a particular date), and then manually uploads the resultant text file to an application that will make the update to our data. I told him that a manual process was not at all necessary, and that I could write a routine that would access the FED's routing numbers in the application that keeps our data updated, and put it on whatever schedule was appropriate. But he is greatly opposed to doing this, and calls it "hacking the Federal Reserve website." I think he's afraid that the FED is going to get after us. I showed him the FED's robot.txt file, and the only thing it forbids is an automated indexing of pages with extension .cf*: User-agent: * # applies to all robots Disallow: CF # disallow indexing of all CF* directories and pages This says nothing about accessing the same data automatically that you could access manually. Anyone have a good counterargument to the idea that we'd be "hacking" the FED?

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• Which programming language should i choose? (much more info inside) [closed]

  - by Andreas

  I am not completely sure if this is the right place to put this question, but since it's the programming thread I guessed that there's many experienced programmers here. :) Ok, hello! My name is Andreas and I am a 16 years old guy from Norway. For some time now I've wanted to learn a programming language. Six months ago I started learning C++, but quit withing a week due to lack of motivation. The same thing happend only 2 months ago when I tried to learn Lua. I wanted to program mods to the game Garry's mod, and was really motivated. Then I stopped playing the game, and the programming stopped with it. Today though I am ready again. The only difference is that I am not completely sure what I want to do with the language. I only want to create something, and I miss the progress of failing and enduring hard work until I finally solve the problem I've worked on for hours. What I am trying to say is; Is there any program out there that allows me, a complete noob (I didn't learn that much in a week, so I like to call myself a beginner), to create apps, mods or something similar but at the same time being qualified as a first time language? I was thinking of Java, because Android, Minecraft and many other applications and games use it. But I've heard that it is going to be replaced by a program called HTML 5 (whatever that is), is this true? I certainly don't want to spend many hours of my life on something that is useless in a year or two. Hopefully I didn't make this too complicated. I know that it is hard to recommend something when I don't have a goal, but I really don't know what to say. Have a good day kind folks! - Andreas EDIT:* I did not know that this was an off topic question, really sorry!

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• Floating point undesireable in highly critical code?

  - by Kirt Undercoffer

  Question 11 in the Software Quality section of "IEEE Computer Society Real-World Software Engineering Problems", Naveda, Seidman, lists fp computation as undesirable because "the accuracy of the computations cannot be guaranteed". This is in the context of computing acceleration for an emergency braking system for a high speed train. This thinking seems to be invoking possible errors in small differences between measurements of a moving object but small differences at slow speeds aren't a problem (or shouldn't be), small differences between two measurements at high speed are irrelevant - can there be a problem with small roundoff errors during deceleration for an emergency braking system? This problem has been observed with airplane braking systems resulting in hydroplaning but could this actually happen in the context of a high speed train? The concern about fp errors seems to not be well-founded in this context. Any insight? The fp is used for acceleration so perhaps the concern is inching over a speed limit? But fp should be just fine if they use a double in whatever implementation language. The actual problem in the text states: During the inspection of the code for the emergency braking system of a new high speed train (a highly critical, real-time application), the review team identifies several characteristics of the code. Which of these characteristics are generally viewed as undesirable? The code contains three recursive functions (well that one is obvious). The computation of acceleration uses floating point arithmetic. All other computations use integer arithmetic. The code contains one linked list that uses dynamic memory allocation (second obvious problem). All inputs are checked to determine that they are within expected bounds before they are used.

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• Player sprite moving slower on iPhone 4

  - by nvillec

  I just finished getting movement/jump animation for a player sprite in Xcode using Cocos2D. The basic movement algorithm is a timer that updates every 0.01 sec, changing the sprite position to (sprite.position.x + xVel, sprite.position.y + yVel). Each time a movement button is tapped, the appropriate velocity (initialized to 0) is changed to whatever speed I choose, then a stop movement button returns the velocity to 0. It's not an ideal solution but I'm very new at this and stoked to at least have that working with little help from the internet. So I may not have explained that perfectly, but it is in fact working to my satisfaction in Xcode's iPhone Simulator, however when I build it for my device and run it on my phone, the sprite's movement speed is noticeably slower than in Xcode. At first I thought it must have to do with the resolution of the iPhone 4, making the sprite's movement path twice as long, but I found that if I pull up the multitask bar, then return to the app the speed will sometimes jump back to normal. My second theory was that the code is just inefficient and is bogging the processes down, but I would see this reflected in the frame rate wouldn't I? It stays at 59-60 the whole time, and the spritesheet animation runs at the correct speed. Has anyone experienced this? Is this a really obvious issue that I'm completely missing? Any help (or tips for optimizing my approach to movement) would be much appreciated!

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• Android Card Game Database for Deck Building

  - by Singularity222

  I am making a card game for Android where a player can choose from a selection of cards to build a deck that would contain around 60 cards. Currently, I have the entire database of cards created that the user can browse. The next step is allowing the user to select cards and create a deck with whatever cards they would like. I have a form where the user can search for specific cards based off a few different attributes. The search results are displayed in a List Activity. My thought about deck creation is to add the primary key of each card the user selects to a SQLite Database table with the amount they would like in the deck. This way as the user performs searches for cards they can see the state of the deck. Once the user decides to save the deck. I'll export the card list to XML and wipe the contents of the table. If the user wanted to make changes to the deck, they would load it, it would be parsed back into the table so they could make the changes. A similar situation would occur when the eventually load the deck to play a game. I'm just curious what the rest of you may think of this method. Currently, this is a personal project and I am the only one working on it. If I can figure out the best implementation before I even begin coding I'm hoping to save myself some time and trouble.

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• Mono is frequently used to say "Yes, .NET is cross-platform". How valid is that claim?

  - by Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen

  In What would you choose for your project between .NET and Java at this point in time? I say that I would consider the "Will you always deploy to Windows?" the single most important (EDIT: technical) decision to make up front in a new web project, and if the answer is "no", I would recommend Java instead of .NET. A very common counter-argument is that "If we ever want to run on Linux/OS X/Whatever, we'll just run Mono", which is a very compelling argument on the surface, but I don't agree for several reasons. OpenJDK and all the vendor supplied JVM's have passed the official Sun TCK ensuring things work correctly. I am not aware of Mono passing a Microsoft TCK. Mono trails the .NET releases. What .NET-level is currently fully supported? Does all GUI elements (WinForms?) work correctly in Mono? Businesses may not want to depend on Open Source frameworks as the official plan B. I am aware that with the new governance of Java by Oracle, the future is unsafe, but e.g. IBM provides JDK's for many platforms, including Linux. They are just not open sourced. So, under which circumstances is Mono a valid business strategy for .NET-applications? Edit: Mark H summarized it as: "If the claim is that "I have a windows application written in .NET, it should run on mono", then not, it's not a valid claim - but Mono has made efforts to make porting such applications simpler.".

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• How to show or direct a business analyst to do data modelling?

  - by AaronLS

  Our business analysts pushed hard to collect data through a spreadsheet. I am the programmer responsible for importing that data. Usually when they push hard for something like this, I never know how well it will work out until a few weeks later when I have time assigned to work on the task of programming the import of the data. I have tried to do as much as possible along the way, named ranges, data validations, etc. But I usually don't have time to take a detailed look at all the data and compare to the destination in the database to determine how well it matches up. A lot of times there will be maybe a little table of items that somehow I have to relate to something else in the database, but there are not natural or business keys present that would allow me to do so. Make the best of this, trying to write something that can compare strings and make a best guess at it and then go through the effort of creating interfaces for a user to match the imported data to the destination. I feel like if the business analyst was actually creating a data model, they would be forced to think about these relationships, and have an appreciation for the need of natural or business keys to be part of the spreadsheet for the purposes of smoothly importing the data. The closest they come to business analysis is a big flat list of fields, and that would be fine if it were like any other data dictionary and include data types+relationships, but it isn't. They are just a bunch of names. No indication of what type of data they might hold, and it is up to me to guess. When I have pushed for more detail, they say that it is just busy work. How can I explain the importance of data modelling? How can I tell them what it is and how to do it? It feels impossible, because they don't have an appreciation for its importance. They do however, usually have an interest in helping out in whatever way they can, it's just this in particular has never gotten a motivated response.

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• starting up with VPS or cloud hosting? [closed]

  - by FlyOn

  Possible Duplicate: How to find web hosting that meets my requirements? Summary: I want to start hosting my product. I'd like to register domains (at some point). I'm a linux beginner. Thinking about scalability and price, I'm thinking am I better off on a VPN to get started or would some form of cloud hosting be better (not being familiar with either). Full question: I'm creating a product where people can create their own 3D representations of whatever data / info they have, and (re)organise that data. The product is coming along beautifully on my local environment, but it's about time I start getting some form of hosting ready, and I could really use some advice where / how to get started: I'd like people to be able to move/register their own domains on my server. I could start without this just to demo the product, but it would be the very first on the todo list. I'd like to automatically copy some files / install databases etc for each domain. I probably want to see if I can let users manage their own subdomains at some points, but for now: I'd like start as simple as possible. I've always on a windows machine, so my linux experience is quite basic. I really don't mind getting into it, but I'm thinking it's better to get my product out first of all and see where to go from there. Although... I'd like things to be scalable. If I set up some reseller VPN now which only scales to 100 domains or so, which means I have to set up something else / move again when I pass that level, or which means that I'm in trouble if I suddenly get lots of new customers... hmm. Finally, I need to start cheap. I'm putting all I have into starting this company, and live on very little. So before I have any customers, 50 dollars a month is a fair bit and 100 dollars a month may be too much. If anyone has some tips to help get me started I'd be really grateful.

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• Is it unethical to sell the award of a competition? [closed]

  - by Ahmet Yildirim

  This summer, i won a competition held by microsoft & nokia... Winners from each uni. received an high-end smartphone... Knowing that particular "high-end smartphone" had not much user to develop for, as soon as i receive it, i put an ad on a ebay-like site to sell it. Eventually i exchanged it with a tablet which had high developer demand & many many users to develop for , so i could make money by developing for it. I also email microsoft asking, when something technical goes wrong with the device , can i get it fixed by warranty. Which i never received a respond. Later on, after a while... I got some feedback from a connection i have from nokia, regarding sale of the device & asking for the warranty.. He says and i quote : " They say, they werent happy that you sold the device and got offended that you asked for warranty. You should not expect anything at all from microsoft or nokia in the future. " I was like what the frak, they didnt gave it to me as a gift, i won it in a competition as an award , it is my right to do whatever i want. How ethical is that , they dont respond to my email directly? Is it unethical to sell a gadget you won in a competition? Is it unethical to ask for warranty on award?

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• Farseer tutorial for the absolute beginners

  - by Bil Simser

  This post is inspired (and somewhat a direct copy) of a couple of posts Emanuele Feronato wrote back in 2009 about Box2D (his tutorial was ActionScript 3 based for Box2D, this is C# XNA for the Farseer Physics Engine). Here’s what we’re building: What is Farseer The Farseer Physics Engine is a collision detection system with realistic physics responses to help you easily create simple hobby games or complex simulation systems. Farseer was built as a .NET version of Box2D (based on the Box2D.XNA port of Box2D). While the constructs and syntax has changed over the years, the principles remain the same. This tutorial will walk you through exactly what Emanuele create for Flash but we’ll be doing it using C#, XNA and the Windows Phone platform. The first step is to download the library from its home on CodePlex. If you have NuGet installed, you can install the library itself using the NuGet package that but we’ll also be using some code from the Samples source that can only be obtained by downloading the library. Once you download and unpacked the zip file into a folder and open the solution, this is what you will get: The Samples XNA WP7 project (and content) have all the demos for Farseer. There’s a wealth of info here and great examples to look at to learn. The Farseer Physics XNA WP7 project contains the core libraries that do all the work. DebugView XNA contains an XNA-ready class to let you view debug data and information in the game draw loop (which you can copy into your project or build the source and reference the assembly). The downloaded version has to be compiled as it’s only available in source format so you can do that now if you want (open the solution file and rebuild everything). If you’re using the NuGet package you can just install that. We only need the core library and we’ll be copying in some code from the samples later. Your first Farseer experiment Start Visual Studio and create a new project using the Windows Phone template can call it whatever you want. It’s time to edit Game1.cs 1 public class Game1 : Game 2 { 3 private readonly GraphicsDeviceManager _graphics; 4 private DebugViewXNA _debugView; 5 private Body _floor; 6 private SpriteBatch _spriteBatch; 7 private float _timer; 8 private World _world; 9 10 public Game1() 11 { 12 _graphics = new GraphicsDeviceManager(this) 13 { 14 PreferredBackBufferHeight = 800, 15 PreferredBackBufferWidth = 480, 16 IsFullScreen = true 17 }; 18 19 Content.RootDirectory = "Content"; 20 21 // Frame rate is 30 fps by default for Windows Phone. 22 TargetElapsedTime = TimeSpan.FromTicks(333333); 23 24 // Extend battery life under lock. 25 InactiveSleepTime = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(1); 26 } 27 28 protected override void LoadContent() 29 { 30 // Create a new SpriteBatch, which can be used to draw textures. 31 _spriteBatch = new SpriteBatch(_graphics.GraphicsDevice); 32 33 // Load our font (DebugViewXNA needs it for the DebugPanel) 34 Content.Load<SpriteFont>("font"); 35 36 // Create our World with a gravity of 10 vertical units 37 if (_world == null) 38 { 39 _world = new World(Vector2.UnitY*10); 40 } 41 else 42 { 43 _world.Clear(); 44 } 45 46 if (_debugView == null) 47 { 48 _debugView = new DebugViewXNA(_world); 49 50 // default is shape, controller, joints 51 // we just want shapes to display 52 _debugView.RemoveFlags(DebugViewFlags.Controllers); 53 _debugView.RemoveFlags(DebugViewFlags.Joint); 54 55 _debugView.LoadContent(GraphicsDevice, Content); 56 } 57 58 // Create and position our floor 59 _floor = BodyFactory.CreateRectangle( 60 _world, 61 ConvertUnits.ToSimUnits(480), 62 ConvertUnits.ToSimUnits(50), 63 10f); 64 _floor.Position = ConvertUnits.ToSimUnits(240, 775); 65 _floor.IsStatic = true; 66 _floor.Restitution = 0.2f; 67 _floor.Friction = 0.2f; 68 } 69 70 protected override void Update(GameTime gameTime) 71 { 72 // Allows the game to exit 73 if (GamePad.GetState(PlayerIndex.One).Buttons.Back == ButtonState.Pressed) 74 Exit(); 75 76 // Create a random box every second 77 _timer += (float) gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalSeconds; 78 if (_timer >= 1.0f) 79 { 80 // Reset our timer 81 _timer = 0f; 82 83 // Determine a random size for each box 84 var random = new Random(); 85 var width = random.Next(20, 100); 86 var height = random.Next(20, 100); 87 88 // Create it and store the size in the user data 89 var box = BodyFactory.CreateRectangle( 90 _world, 91 ConvertUnits.ToSimUnits(width), 92 ConvertUnits.ToSimUnits(height), 93 10f, 94 new Point(width, height)); 95 96 box.BodyType = BodyType.Dynamic; 97 box.Restitution = 0.2f; 98 box.Friction = 0.2f; 99 100 // Randomly pick a location along the top to drop it from 101 box.Position = ConvertUnits.ToSimUnits(random.Next(50, 400), 0); 102 } 103 104 // Advance all the elements in the world 105 _world.Step(Math.Min((float) gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalMilliseconds*0.001f, (1f/30f))); 106 107 // Clean up any boxes that have fallen offscreen 108 foreach (var box in from box in _world.BodyList 109 let pos = ConvertUnits.ToDisplayUnits(box.Position) 110 where pos.Y > _graphics.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Height 111 select box) 112 { 113 _world.RemoveBody(box); 114 } 115 116 base.Update(gameTime); 117 } 118 119 protected override void Draw(GameTime gameTime) 120 { 121 GraphicsDevice.Clear(Color.FromNonPremultiplied(51, 51, 51, 255)); 122 123 _spriteBatch.Begin(); 124 125 var projection = Matrix.CreateOrthographicOffCenter( 126 0f, 127 ConvertUnits.ToSimUnits(_graphics.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Width), 128 ConvertUnits.ToSimUnits(_graphics.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Height), 0f, 0f, 129 1f); 130 _debugView.RenderDebugData(ref projection); 131 132 _spriteBatch.End(); 133 134 base.Draw(gameTime); 135 } 136 } 137 Lines 4: Declare the debug view we’ll use for rendering (more on that later). Lines 8: Declare _world variable of type class World. World is the main object to interact with the Farseer engine. It stores all the joints and bodies, and is responsible for stepping through the simulation. Lines 12-17: Create the graphics device we’ll be rendering on. This is an XNA component and we’re just setting it to be the same size as the phone and toggling it to be full screen (no system tray). Lines 34: We create a SpriteFont here by adding it to the project. It’s called “font” because that’s what the DebugView uses but you can name it whatever you want (and if you’re not using DebugView for your production app you might have several fonts). Lines 37-44: We create the physics environment that Farseer uses to contain all the objects by specifying it here. We’re using Vector2.UnitY*10 to represent the gravity to be used in the environment. In other words, 10 units going in a downward motion. Lines 46-56: We create the DebugViewXNA here. This is copied from the […] from the code you downloaded and provides the ability to render all entities onto the screen. In a production release you’ll be doing the rendering yourself of each object but we cheat a bit for the demo and let the DebugView do it for us. The other thing it can provide is to render out a panel of debugging information while the simulation is going on. This is useful in tracking down objects, figuring out how something works, or just keeping track of what’s in the engine. Lines 49-67: Here we create a rigid body (Farseer only supports rigid bodies) to represent the floor that we’ll drop objects onto. We create it by using one of the Farseer factories and specifying the width and height. The ConvertUnits class is copied from the samples code as-is and lets us toggle between display units (pixels) and simulation units (usually metres). We’re creating a floor that’s 480 pixels wide and 50 pixels high (converting them to SimUnits for the engine to understand). We also position it near the bottom of the screen. Values are in metres and when specifying values they refer to the centre of the body object. Lines 77-78: The game Update method fires 30 times a second, too fast to be creating objects this quickly. So we use a variable to track the elapsed seconds since the last update, accumulate that value, then create a new box to drop when 1 second has passed. Lines 89-94: We create a box the same way we created our floor (coming up with a random width and height for the box). Lines 96-101: We set the box to be Dynamic (rather than Static like the floor object) and position it somewhere along the top of the screen. And now you created the world. Gravity does the rest and the boxes fall to the ground. Here’s the result: Farseer Physics Engine Demo using XNA Lines 105: We must update the world at every frame. We do this with the Step method which takes in the time interval. [more] Lines 108-114: Body objects are added to the world but never automatically removed (because Farseer doesn’t know about the display world, it has no idea if an item is on the screen or not). Here we just loop through all the entities and anything that’s dropped off the screen (below the bottom) gets removed from the World. This keeps our entity count down (the simulation never has more than 30 or 40 objects in the world no matter how long you run it for). Too many entities and the app will grind to a halt. Lines 125-130: Farseer knows nothing about the UI so that’s entirely up to you as to how to draw things. Farseer is just tracking the objects and moving them around using the physics engine and it’s rules. You’ll still use XNA to draw items (using the SpriteBatch.Draw method) so you can load up your usual textures and draw items and pirates and dancing zombies all over the screen. Instead in this demo we’re going to cheat a little. In the sample code for Farseer you can download there’s a project called DebugView XNA. This project contains the DebugViewXNA class which just handles iterating through all the bodies in the world and drawing the shapes. So we call the RenderDebugData method here of that class to draw everything correctly. In the case of this demo, we just want to draw Shapes so take a look at the source code for the DebugViewXNA class as to how it extracts all the vertices for the shapes created (in this case simple boxes) and draws them. You’ll learn a *lot* about how Farseer works just by looking at this class. That’s it, that’s all. Simple huh? Hope you enjoy the code and library. Physics is hard and requires some math skills to really grok. The Farseer Physics Engine makes it pretty easy to get up and running and start building games. In future posts we’ll get more in-depth with things you can do with the engine so this is just the beginning. Enjoy!

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• Not allowed to upload .HTML files to my own DNN Site: Is it normal?

  - by Jake M

  My Question: Our webhost provider wont make it so we can upload .html files to our DNN site trhough the DNN File Manager page. Is that normal, should I push them to allow me to do this? We have recently transferred our website to a Dot Net Nuke run website. We originally had our website on a Linux server with Python scripts handling the backend. Obviously we now have a Windows server running .NET with ASP .NET code on the backend. Our webhost is a local Australian company. And they are saying we cant upload any .html files to the main part of the server, ie, www.ourdomain.com/Portals/0/. They are saying that the only place I can upload .html files is via FTP to this folder *www.ourdomain.com/Portals/0/html_content* This is a major problem for me because I am trying to upload my own skin which means I need to upload a main.html file to www.ourdomain.com/Portals/0/skins/myskin/ but they wont let me?! I guess what I am asking is, is this normal practice, why would they not allow this? As an experienced web admin for Linux servers and as someone who is used to being able to do whatever I want on my OWN server this is someing that really pis$%s me off!

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• Agile Data Book from O'Reilly Media

  - by Compudicted

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/Compudicted/archive/2013/07/01/153309.aspxAs part of my ongoing self-education and approaching of some free time, yeah, both is a must for every IT person and geek! I have carefully examined the latest trends in the Computersphere with whatever tools I had at my disposal (nothing really fancy was used) and came to a conclusion that for a database pro the *hottest* topic today is undoubtedly the #BigData and all the rapidly growing and spawning ecosystem around it. Having recently immersed myself into the NoSQL world (let me tell here right away NoSQL means Not Only SQL) one book really stood out of the crowd: Book site: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920025054.doDespite being a new book I am sure it will end up on the tables of many Big Data Generalists.In a few dozen words, it is primarily for two reasons:1) The author understands that a  typical business today cannot wait for a Data Scientist for too long to deliver results demanding as usual a very quick turnaround on investments (ROI), and 2) The book covers all the needed and proven modern brick and mortar offerings to get the job done by a relatively newcomer to the Big Data World.It certainly enables such a professional to grow and expand based on the acquired knowledge, and one can truly do it very fast.

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• Visual WebGui launches a new prize-winning challenge for developers

  - by Webgui

  Gizmox is announcing a ListView Challenge where developers can participate by creating and submitting their own implementations of the new extended ListView. "its quite amazing what you can do with it. It opens a lot of new ways to present data in a better and more userfriendly way," says one of the VWG community members who built a three level hierarchal ListView. Watch the hierarchal ListView demo by Visualizer Those ListView implementations will be reviewed and rated and the winner will win a free Professional Studio license $750 worth. The 5 top rated codes will entitle their developers for a cool new T-shirt. The new v6.4 introduces new capabilities with its extended ListView Control. Enter the Challenge The Collapsible Panel enhancement of the ListView Control, along with the Column Type Control, open up the possibilities for potential usage of the ListView control for data display, data entry and as the Collapsible Panel can contain whatever control you like, it can as well contain other ListView controls, thus making it possible to create Hierarchial ListView display of unlimited number of levels. The first enhancement is the introduction of a new column type Control which opens up the possibility for a ListView cell to contain controls like CheckBox, ComboBox, ListBox or even TabControl, Form or another ListView as the contents of that particular cell. This means that the ListView is no longer a display-only control, but has the full potential of being a full blown data entry control as well. The second major enhancement is the introduction of ListViewPanelItem. The ListViewPanelItem behaves exactly the same as it‘s predecessor, the ListViewItem, and in additon it has a Panel Control attached to it, seperate panel for each row in the ListView. This new Panel can be either expanded (visible) or not (hidden) and when expanded, will fill the full width of the ListView, but has adjustable height. Watch a webcast about the extended ListView

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• Progress bar in Super Hexagon using OpenGL ES 2 (Android)

  - by user16547

  I'm wondering how the progress bar in Super Hexagon was made. (see image, top left) Actually I am not very sure how to implement a progress bar at all using OpenGL ES 2 on Android, but I am asking specifically about the one used in Super Hexagon because it seems to me less straightforward / obvious than others: the bar changes its colour during game play. I think one possibility is to use the built-in Android progress bar. I can see from some Stackoverflow questions that you can change the default blue colour to whatever you want, but I'm not sure whether you can update it during the game play. The other possibility I can think of for implementing a progress bar is to have a small texture that starts with a scale of 0 and that you keep scaling until it reaches the maximum size, representing 100%. But this suffers from the same problem as before: you'll not be able to update the colour of the texture during run-time. It's fixed. So what's the best way to approach this problem? *I'm assuming he didn't use a particular library, although if he did, it would be interesting to know. I'm interested in a pure OpenGL ES 2 + Android solution.

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• Consolidating multiple domain names

  - by Mike

  I have a client that has three separately hosted copies of their website, each on a separate domain name. The websites are all essentially the same, bar a few discrepancies caused by badly managed updates in the past. I will soon be launching a completely new website for them, at which point, all three domain names are to resolve to the same web server. One domain name will become the default domain name that they refer to in all their literature, and the other two will simply be used as catch-alls for old links, bookmarks, and so on. I would like to know what people consider the best route to achieve this. My plan so far is: Get the new site up and running on the new webserver. Change the relevant A record of the default domain name to point to the new webserver. a) Keep the existing hosting accounts in operation. Create a list of 301 redirects from old page names on the old site to new page names on the new site. or b) Configure CNAME records for the non-default domain names, each pointing to the new webserver. Create a list of 301 redirects on the new site that redirect from old page names to new page names. If my understanding is correct, 3a will help to maintain whatever search engine rankings the sites already have (I know it's not going to be perfect), while at the same time informing search engines that the old domain names are no longer in use. What's a good approach to take here?

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• SQL Source Control with Vault Support Officially Released

  - by Ajarn Mark Caldwell

  HOORAY!  It is officially here!  Today, Red-Gate officially released SQL Source Control version 2.1 with support for Vault. While we have been happily and successfully running the beta version (a.k.a. the Early Access release) of Red-Gate SQL Source Control with support for Vault for quite a while, it is good to have the official RTM (or GOLD, or PROD, or whatever you call your “no-longer-in-beta”) release of the product. As a courtesy to those who have not already read the series, allow me to provide you with these links to my previous posts about this fantastic tool. Using SQL Source Control with Fortress or Vault – Part 1 – Introduction and initial thoughts about the tool and source controlling SQL code in general. Using SQL Source Control with Fortress or Vault – Part 2 – Additional details about included features and a few warnings. Source Control and SQL Development – Part 3 – How we did it in the good ol’ days before this product came along. Using SQL Source Control and Vault Professional Part 4 – A few closing thoughts.

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• What data should be cached in a multiplayer server, relative to AI and players?

  - by DevilWithin

  In a virtual place, fully network driven, with an arbitrary number of players and an arbitrary number of enemies, what data should be cached in the server memory, in order to optimize smooth AI simulation? Trying to explain, lets say player A sees player B to E, and enemy A to G. Each of those players, see player A, but not necessarily each other. Same applies to enemies. Think of this question from a topdown perspective please. In many cases, for example, when a player shoots his gun, the server handles the sound as a radial "signal" that every other entity within reach "hear" and react upon. Doing these searches all the time for a whole area, containing possibly a lot of unrelated players and enemies, seems to be an issue, when the budget for each AI agent is so small. Should every entity cache whatever enters and exits from its radius of awareness? Is there a great way to trace the entities close by without flooding the memory with such caches? What about other AI related problems that may arise, after assuming the previous one works well? We're talking about environments with possibly hundreds of enemies, a swarm.

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