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• Layout of mathematical views (iOS)

  - by William Jockusch

  I am trying to figure out the right way to encapsulate graphical information about mathematical objects. It is not simple. For example, a matrix can include square brackets around its entries, or not. Some things carry down to sub-objects -- for example, a matrix might track the font size to be used by its entries. Similarly, the font color and the background color would carry down to the entries. Other things do not carry down. For example, the entries of the matrix do not need to know whether or not the matrix has those square brackets. Based on all of the above, I need to calculate sizes for everything, then frames. All of this can depend on the properties stored above. The size of a matrix depends on the sizes of its entries, and also on whether or not it has those brackets. What I am having a hard time with is not the individual ways to calculate sensible frames for this or that. It is the overall organizational structure of the whole thing. How can I keep track of it all without going crazy. One particular obstacle is worth mentioning -- for reasons I don't want to go into here, I need to calculate the sizes and frames for everything before I instantiate any actual views. So, for example, if I have a Matrix object, I need to calculate its size before I make a MatrixView. If I have an equation, I need to calculate the size of the view for the equation before I create the actual view. So I clearly need separate objects for those calculations. But I can't figure out a sensible class structure for those objects. If I put them all into a single class, I get some advantages because copying then becomes easy. But I also end up with a bloated class that contains info that is irrelevant for some objects -- such as whether or not to include those brackets around the matrix. But if I use a lot of different classes, copying properties becomes a real pain. If it matters, this is all in Objective C, for an iOS environment. Any pointers would be greatly appreciated.

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• What economic books would you suggest for learning about economic valuation of goods and simulations thereof?

  - by Rushyo

  I'm looking to create an economic model for a game based on goods created procedurally. Every natural resource and produced good would be procedurally generated, with certain goods being assigned certain uses. Fakesium might be used for the production of Weapon A and produced from Fakesium factories which use Dilithium and Widgets as reagents, where Widgets are also the product of Foo and Bar The problem is not creating the resources and their various production utlities - but getting the game's AI empires and merchants to (Addendum: somewhat) correctly value the goods according to their scarcity, utility and production costs. I need to create a simulation of goods which allows the various game factions to assign a common value denominator (credits) to each resource, depending on how much its worth to that empire. I see the simulation being something like: "I have a high requirement for Weapon A. Since I don't have much of Fakesium, which is needed for Weapon A - I must have a high demand for Fakesium. If I can acquire Fakesium, devalue it. If not, increase its value - and also increase demand for Dilithium and Widgets too." This is very naive - because it may be much much cheaper for the empire to simply purchase Dilithium and Widgets directly rather than purchasing Fakesium, for example. Another example is two resources might allow the creation of Weapon A (Fakesium and Lieron), so we'd need to consider that. I've been scratching my head over the problem and it keeps growing. By the time the player joins the world, I'd expect enough iterations of this process to have occurred that prices would have largely normalised - and would then only trigger rarely to compensate for major changes (eg. if the player blows up the world's only Foo mine!) Could anyone suggest resources (books, largely) which outline this style of modelling, preferably in the context of simulations? Since this problem would never occur outside fantasy worlds, I figured this is probably the most likely place to find people who have encountered similar problems and I'm sure there's people who know of good places for Games Developers to start looking at less specific economic theory too. Additionally, does anyone know of any developers with blogs whose games or research applications perform similar modelling? EDIT: I think I should underline that I'm not looking for optimal solutions. I'm looking to make the actors impulsive - making rudimentary decisions based on fuzzy inputs about what they care about or don't. I'm aiming to understand the problem area better not derive answers. All the textbooks I've found seem to be about real-world economics or how to solve complex theoretical problems, neither of which are terribly relevant to the actor's decision making.

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• Interesting Topics in Comp. Sci. for New Students?

  - by SoulBeaver

  I hope this is the right forum to ask this question. Last friday I was in a discussion with my professors about the students' lack of motivation and interest in the field of Computer Science. All of the students are enrolled, but through questionnaires and other questions that my professor posed it was revealed that over 90% of all enrolled students are just in it for the reward of getting a job sometime in the future (since it's a growing field with high job potential) I asked my professor for the permission to take over the first couple of lectures and try and motivate, interest and inspire students for the field of Computer Science and programming in particular (this is the Intro to Programming course). This request was granted and I now have a week to come up with a lecture topic for my professor's five groups. My main goal isn't to teach, I just want to get students to be as interested in the field as I am. I want to show them what's possible, what awesome magical things have been done in the field, the future we are heading towards using programming and Comp. Sci. Therefore, I would like to pose this question: I have a few topics, materials and sample projects that I would like to talk about: -- Grace Hopper (It is my hope to interest the female programmers in the class. There are never more than two or three per group and they, more than males, are prone to jumping ship and abandoning Comp. Sci.) -- The Singularity Institute -- Alan Turing -- Robotics -- Programming not as a chore or a must, but the idea that we are, at our core, the nexus to which anything anybody does in the digital world is connected to. We are the problem solvers; we assemble all the parts together and we are the ones that, essentially, make the vision a reality. -- Give them an idea for a programming project which, through the help of the professor, could be significant to every student (I want students to not only feel interested in the topic, but they should feel important, that what they do here makes a difference) Do you have interesting topics worthy of discussion, something I can tell the students which they can get interested about? How would you approach the lecture? If you had 90 minutes worth of time to try and get students interested in the project, what would you do?

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• Please Help Me Install Firestorm?

  - by Elle Caszatt

  I have been trying for hours just to install one program. In this time, I've tried my best to follow directions and not screw everything up but I have. I'm new to Linux. I tried to install Firestorm and this is what happened: parent@ubuntu:~$ sudo '/home/parent/Downloads/Phoenix_Firestorm-Release_i686_4.2.1.29803/install.sh' [sudo] password for parent: Enter the desired installation directory [/opt/firestorm-install]: /home/parent/downloads - Installing to /home/parent/downloads /home/parent/Downloads/Phoenix_Firestorm-Release_i686_4.2.1.29803/install.sh: line 80: /home/parent/downloads/etc/refresh_desktop_app_entry.sh: Permission denied parent@ubuntu:~$ sudo opt/firestorm-install sudo: opt/firestorm-install: command not found parent@ubuntu:~$ ./etc/refresh_desktop_app_entry.sh bash: ./etc/refresh_desktop_app_entry.sh: No such file or directory parent@ubuntu:~$ sudo '/home/parent/Downloads/Phoenix_Firestorm-Release_i686_4.2.1.29803/install.sh' Enter the desired installation directory [/opt/firestorm-install]: /home/parent - Backing up previous installation to /home/parent.backup-2012-08-27 - Installing to /home/parent cp: cannot stat `/home/parent/Downloads/Phoenix_Firestorm-Release_i686_4.2.1.29803/*': No such file or directory Failed parent@ubuntu:~$ Now whenever I go into my files it says it can't find anything. Like Cannot find home/parent/Downloads. Now, I KNOW there are downloads. I don't know why it's doing this all of a sudden. I'm so frustrated that I'm ready to just go back to Windows. I've already had to uninstall/reinstall Ubuntu once today. It's looking like I"m going to have to do it again. How can I fix my file problem that I'm now having and can someone please, please tell me how to install Firestorm? I mean they don't even have their repository listed. It's ridiculous to have to go through this over a program. Spotify wasn't hard at all to install so why is this? Someone please help, and I'm sorry if I sound like a total idiot. I'm pretty tech savvy but I'm honestly pretty upset after struggling with this for hours. Edit Okay, I see the problem with the directory files (showing the error I mentioned above when I try to click on them). I can only access my downloads, desktop, ect, through the backup that was created when I tried to install Firestorm. It's like that's the real home now. How can I get it back to the way it was? Edit Ubuntu has stopped working for me on reboot now. It doesn't go past the login screen. This is exactly what happened when I had to uninstall it before after trying to install Firestorm. Maybe I'm giving up too easily but I think I'm just going to go back to Windows. If this is what's going to happen every time I innocently try to install a program then it's just not worth it. I installed it specifically to run Firestorm because Windows sucks up a lot of CPU and causes lag. I still appreciate any input but this is just too much hassle for something that shouldn't be hard.

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• How can I diagnose/debug "maximum number of clients reached" X errors?

  - by jmtd

  Hi, I'm hitting a problem whereby X prevents processes from creating windows, uttering something like the following into ~/.xsession-errors: cannot open display: :0.0 Maximum number of clients reached Searching around there are lots of examples of people facing this problem, and sometimes people identify which program they are running is using up all the client slots. See e.g. LP 70872 (Firefox), LP 263211 (gnome-screensaver). For what it's worth, I run gnome-terminal, thunderbird, chromium-browser, empathy, tomboy and virtualbox nearly all the time, on top of the normal stuff you get with the GNOME desktop, and occasionally some other bits and pieces. However my question is not "which of my programs is causing this problem" but rather, how can one go about diagnosing this problem? In the above (and other) bugs, forum reports, etc., a number of tools are suggested: xlsclients - lists the client applications for the given display, but I don't think that corresponds to 'X clients' xrestop - a top-style X resources tool, one row per X client. Lots of '' clients, not shown in xlsclients output xwininfo -root -children lists X window objects From what I can gather, the problem might not be too many clients at all, but rather resources kept around in the X server for clients who have long-since detached. But it would also appear that you cannot (easily?) relate X resources back to their client. Can one effectively diagnose this issue once it has started to occur, or is a tedious divide-and-conquer approach for the apps I run the only approach open to me? Update Jan 2011: I think I have resolved this issue. For the benefit of anyone stumbling across this, nautilus and/or compiz or something in that chain of software was segfaulting due to a wallpaper I had. I had chosen an XML file as my wallpaper, which defined a rotating gallery of images. It was hand-made, but based on /usr/share/backgrounds/contest/background-1.xml or similar. Disabling the wallpaper and I have not had a crash since. I'm not marking this as answered yet, since the actual specific problem was not my question, but how to diagnose it was. Unfortunately this was mostly trial-and-error which sucks.

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• career planning advice [closed]

  - by JDB

  Possible Duplicate: Are certifications worth it? I am at the point in my career where people start to veer off into either management-type roles or they focus on solidifying their technical skills to stay in the development game for the long-haul. Here's my story: I've got a degree in economics, an MA in Political Science and an MBA in Finance and Management. In addition, I've done coursework in advanced math and software development (although no degree in math or software). All-in-all, I've got 13 years of post-secondary education under my belt. I, however, currently work as a software developer using C# for desktop, Silverlight, Flex and javascript for web, and objective c for mobile. I've been in software development for the past 3.3 years, and it seems like it comes pretty easy to me. I work in a field called "geospatial information systems," which just involves customization and manipulation of geospatial data. Right now I am looking at one of several certifications. Given this background, which of these certifications has the highest ceiling? CFA PMP various development/technological certifications from Microsoft, etc. Other? My academic and work experience are all heavy on the analytical/development side, esp. so given the MBA and the B.S. in Econ. The political science degree was really a lot of stats. So it seems that I would be good pursuing more of the CFA/analytical role. This is a difficult path, however, because I have no work experience in the financial sector, and the developers in finance are all "quants," which again, I am OK with, but I haven't done much statistical modeling in the past 3.3 years. The PMP would require knowledge of best practices as it pertains explicitly to software development. I also don't enjoy a lot of business travel, a common theme for most PMP jobs I've seen. If certifications is the route, which would you recommend? Anything else? I've thought about going back to try to knock out a B.S. in C.S., but I wasn't sure how long that would take, or what would be involved. Thoughts or recommendations? Thanks in advance! I turn 32 this weekend, which is what has forced me to think about these issues.

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• Some Problems Can't Be Outsourced

  - by mikef

  More and more companies are becoming attracted to the idea of Infrastructure as a Service (or IaaS). It would seem that you can outsource the provisioning and management of your services, encompassing everything from Email, through to your servers, workstations and software, all the way down to your LAN and internet services. This type of outsourcing can be a very attractive option for companies who have tight budgets who are short of technical skills or don't have the means to provide long-term IT support. Essentially, they can outsource your services at low short-term costs that are knowable and controllable, are quickly and easily scalable, and generate a minimum of hassle for your internal staff. If you want to get a sophisticated IT infrastructure set up in a hurry without the usual high buy-in costs, or the task of finding and hiring the right specialists. It would seem the way to go, particularly when their salesmen are hypnotizing you with oleaginous phrases such as "we are closely aligned with our client organization's core business requirements, providing agile services". It sounds too good to be true, and so it is. Whereas the costs will have initially been calculated on the annual renewal fees and service fees for ongoing support, there are other charges too which aren't so obvious. It can end up costing far more than the conventional solution once you take into account the extra costs, the fees for customization and upgrades. The Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) only becomes apparent when it is too late to extract the company easily from the arrangement. After a few years, these annual fees can add up to more than the initial cost of implementing a traditional in-house system. Worse than that is that you can then lose your power to determine your priorities: When you become reliant on this company, with its own schedule of priorities, to implement every change, however simple, you have effectively lost control of your technical infrastructure. This will make senior management very nervous. There is definitely a requirement for this sort of service. If you urgently need an exceptionally high class of service or more expertise than you currently possess, then outsourcing is probably for you. You and your IT colleagues will always have something to do, be it user assistance, smoothing out integrations with an external provider, or working on something entirely new. Heck, if you outsource to IBM, the SysAdmins can go along for the ride and polish their expertise. What you need to figure out is how much your time is worth, because time is ultimately all that outsourcing will buy you and your organization. Now you just need to convince your nervous CEO. Cheers, Michael

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• Perfect is the enemy of “Good Enough”

  - by Daniel Moth

  This is one of the quotes that I was against, but now it is totally part of my core beliefs: "Perfect is the enemy of Good Enough" Folks used to share this quote a lot with me in my early career and my frequent interpretation was that they were incompetent people that were satisfied with mediocrity, i.e. I ignored them and their advice. (Yes, I went through an arrogance phase). I later "grew up" and "realized" that they were missing the point, so instead of ignoring them I would retort: "Of course we have to aim for perfection, because as human beings we'll never achieve perfection, so by aiming for perfection we will indeed achieve good enough results". (Yes, I went through a smart ass phase). Later I grew up a bit more and "understood" that what I was really being told is to finish my work earlier and move on to other things because by trying to perfect that one thing, another N things that I was responsible for were suffering by not getting my attention - all things on my plate need to move beyond the line, not just one of them to go way over the line. It is really a statement of increasing scale and scope. To put it in other words, getting PASS grades on 10 things is better than getting an A+ with distinction on 1-2 and a FAIL on the rest. Instead of saying “I am able to do very well these X items” it is best if you can say I can do well enough on these X * Y items”, where Y > 1. That is how breadth impact is achieved. In the future, I may grow up again and have a different interpretation, but for now - even though I secretly try to "perfect" things, I try not to do that at the expense of other responsibilities. This means that I haven't had anybody quote that saying to me in a while (or perhaps my quality of work has dropped so much that it doesn't apply to me any more - who knows :-)). Wikipedia attributes the quote to Voltaire and it also makes connections to the “Law of diminishing returns”, and to the “80-20 rule” or “Pareto principle”… it commonly takes 20% of the full time to complete 80% of a task while to complete the last 20% of a task takes 80% of the effort …check out the Wikipedia entry on “Perfect is the enemy of Good” and its links. Also use your favorite search engine to search and see what others are saying (Bing, Google) – it is worth internalizing this in a way that makes sense to you… Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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• Changing Your Design for Testability

  Sometimes I come across a way of putting something that it is pithy good, not Hallmark trite, but an impactful and concise way of clarifying a previously obscure concept. A recent one of these happy occurrences was when I was reading the excellent Art of Unit Testing by Roy Osherove. After going through the basics of why youd want to test code and how to do it, Roy confronts a frequent objection to having unit tests, that it ends up changing how you design your components: When we write unit tests for our code, we are adding another end user (the test) to the object model. That end user is just as important as the original one, but it has different goals when using the model.  The test has specific requirements from the object model that seem to defy the basic logic behind a couple of object-oriented principles, mainly encapsulation. [emphasis added by me] When I read this, something clicked for me. I used to find it persuasive that because unit tests caused you to change your design they were more disruptive than they were worth. The counter argument I heard is that the disruption was OK, because testable design was just obviously better. That argument was not convincing as it seemed like delusional arrogance to suggest that any one of type of design was just inherently better for the particular applications I was building. What was missing was that I was not thinking of unit tests as an additional and equal end user to my design. If I accepted that proposition, than it was indeed obvious that a testable design was better because now all users of my component would be satisfied. Have I accepted that proposition? Id phrase it slightly different. I find more and more that having unit tests helps me write better, less buggy code before it gets to production or QA. As I write more unit tests, it gets easier to see how to create testable components, so I dont feel like its taking me as much extra time up front. I pick and choose components that seem most likely to benefit from automated tests and it is working out nicely. If you already implement Test Driven Development, this whole post was probably a waste of your time <g> If you hate the idea of unit tests, well, probably not a great value prop for you either. However, if you are somewhere in between, at least take a minute and check out a sample chapter from Roys book at: http://www.manning.com/osherove/.Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Complete Beginner to Game Programming and Unreal Engine 4, Looking For Advice [on hold]

  - by onemic

  I am currently a 2nd year programming student(Just finished my first year so I will be starting my second year in September) and have mainly learned C and C++ in my classes. In terms of what I know of C++, I know about general inheritance, polymorphism, overloading operators, iterators, a little bit about templates(only class and function templates) etc. but not of the more advanced topics like linked lists and other sequential containers(containers in general I guess), enumerations, most of the standard library(other than like strings and vectors), and probably a bunch of other stuff I dont even know about yet. I subscribed to Unreal Engine 4 as I was very intrigued by their Unreal Tournament announcement earlier this month, especially after hearing that UE4 is going completely C++. Of course my end goal in doing this programming program is to eventually go into game/graphics programming. Since it's my summer off, I thought what better way then to actually apply some of my skills to a personal project so I actually have a firmer understanding of C++ past what my professors tell me. My questions are this: What would be the best way to start off making a small personal game in UE4 as a project for the summer? What should I be aiming for, especially for someone that is still learning C++? Should I focus on making a simple 2D game rather than a 3D one to get started? Seeing the Flappy Chicken showcase intrigued me because before I thought the UE engine was pretty much pigeonholed into being for FPS games What should my expectations be going into UE4 and a game engine for the first time?(UE4 will be my first foray into making a game) What can I expect to gain from making things in UE4, in terms of making games and in terms of further fleshing out my knowledge of C++? Would you recommend I start off 100% using C++ for scripting or using the visual blueprints? Since I'm not a designer, how would I be able to add objects and designs to my game? For someone at my level is retaining the UE4 subscription worth it or is it better to cancel and resub when I learn enough about UE4 and C++? Lastly is there anything to be gained in terms of knowledge/insight through me looking at the source code for UE4? I opened it in VS2013, but noticed that most of the files were C# files and not cpp's. Thanks in advance for taking the time to answer.

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• Oredev 2012: Summary and source code

  - by Laurent Bugnion

  This week, I had the pleasure to be invited to talk at Oredev, a really cool conference taking place in Malmo, Sweden. The whole event is awesome, including a very special dinner on Monday including sauna and swimming in a 6 degrees cold Baltic sea, and a reception with dinner at the town hall, including the mayor himself. Considering Malmo is a town of 300'000 inhabitants, it is a pretty nice occasion and the historical building itself is really worth seeing. For those interested, I placed my pictures on my Flickr account. I had a workshop on Tuesday morning about Windows 8 development with XAML/C#, and then a session on Wednesday about MVVM in Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8, of course using MVVM Light. I was very nervous because I reworked some of my demos as recently as this morning, in the wake of the Build conference last week and the release of both the Windows Phone SDK and MVVM Light V4.1. Everything went well however, and if I judge by the people I talked t after the talk, and Twitter, everything went pretty well. Before my talk on Tuesday, I had the pleasure to see a talk by Iris Classon (@irisclasson) on the challenges of being a "n00b" and a woman in software development. I especially appreciated her research and conclusions on the lack of women I our industry, a topic that is dear to my heart (because I want the best possible future for my two daughters, and also because I really enjoy working with women on projects, and getting a different insight on the art of software development. I really want to thank the excellent organization committee for their hard work and their fantastic welcome to Malmo. In particular Emily Holweck did a wonderful job and was super helpful throughout the preparation and the conference itself. I made a few pictures during my stay, all with the new Nokia Lumia 920, and hope you will enjoy them too. The source code and the slides… The source code is available for download from Skydrive. You will find the following: Windows 8 workshop slides. MVVM Applied slides Source code package with Win8Demo: The demo I built during the 4 hours workshop, with some light MVVM, web services (JSON), GridView, Design time data (Blend / Visual Studio designer), Bing maps integration, location sensor, Search pane integration. SemanticZoomSample: a sample I put together to demonstrate the SemanticZoom control, with two GridViews and of course full design time data for Blend work. Due to time constraints, I was not able to show this demo during the workshop, but I publish it anyway, hoping it will be useful to someone. PictureUploader: The demo I built during my 50 minutes session about MVVM Applied in Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8. Code sharing, design time data, MVVM Light are used in Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 apps. And in video… You can also see the video of my MVVM talk thanks to the good services of the Oredev team! MVVM Applied in Windows Phone and Windows 8 from Øredev Conference on Vimeo.   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

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• Innovation for Retailers

  - by David Dorf

  One of my main objectives for this blog is to point out emerging technologies and how they might apply to the retail industry.  But ideas are just the beginning; retailers either have to rely on vendors or have their own lab to explore these ideas and see which ones work.  (A healthy dose of both is probably the best solution.)  The Nordstrom Innovation Lab is a fine example of dedicating resources to cultivate ideas and test prototypes. The video below, from 2011, is a case study in which the team builds an iPad app that helps customers purchase sunglasses in the store.  Customers take pictures of themselves wearing different sunglasses, then can do side-by-side comparisons. There are a few interesting take-aways from their process.  First, they are working in the store alongside employees and customers.  There's no concept of documenting all the requirements then building the product.  Instead, they work closely with those that will be using the app in order to fully understand what's needed.  When they find an issue, they change the software onsite and try again.  This iterative prototyping ensures their product hits the mark.  Feels like Extreme Programming if you recall that movement. Second, they have time-boxed the project to one week.  Either it works or it doesn't, and either way they've only expended a week's worth of resources.  Innovation always entails failure, and those that succeed are often good at detecting failure quickly then adjusting.  Fail fast and fail often. Third, its not always about technology.  I was impressed they used paper designs to walk through user stories and help understand the needs of the customer.  Pen and paper is the innovator's most powerful tool. Our Retail Applied Research (RAR) team uses some of these concepts in our development process.  (Calling it a process is probably overkill.)  We try to give life to concepts quickly so the rest of organization can help us decide if we're heading the right direction.  It takes many failures before finding a successful product.

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• Enterprise with eyes on NoSQL

  - by thegreeneman

  Since joining Oracle a few months back, I have had the fortune of being able to interact with a number of large enterprise organizations and discuss their current state of adoption for NoSQL database technology.   It is worth noting that a large percentage of these organizations do have some NoSQL use and have been steadily increasing their understanding of its applicability for certain data management workloads.   Thru those discussions I’ve learned that it seems one of the biggest issues confronting enterprise adoption of NoSQL databases is the lack of standards for access, administration and monitoring.    This was not so much of an issue with the early adopters of NoSQL technology because they employed a highly DevOps centric approach to application deployment leaving a select few highly qualified developers with the task of managing the production of the system that they designed and implemented. However, as NoSQL technology moves out of the startup and into the hands of larger corporate entities, developers with a broad skill set that are capable of both development and I.T. type production management are in short supply and quickly get moved on to do new projects, often moving to different roles within the company.  This difference in the way smaller more agile startups operate as compared to more established companies is revealing a gap in the NoSQL technology segment that needs to get addressed.    This is one of places that a company such as Oracle has a leg up in the NoSQL Database front.  A combination of having gone thru a past database maturization process,  combined with a vast set of corporate relationships that have grown hand in hand to solve these types of issues, Oracle is in a great place to lead the way in closing the requirements gap for NoSQL technology.  Oracle's understanding of the needs specific to mature organizations have already made their way into the Oracle’s NoSQL Database offering with features such as:  One click cluster deployment with visual topology planning,  standards based monitoring protocols such as SNMP, support for data access for reporting via standard SQL  and integration with emerging standards for data access such as MapReduce.  Given the exciting developments we’re driving in the Oracle NoSQL Database group, I will have a lot more to say about this topic as we move into the second half of the year.

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• TechEd 2010 Day Three: The Database Designer (Isn't)

  - by BuckWoody

  Yesterday at TechEd 2010 here in New Orleans I worked the front-booth, answering general SQL Server questions for the masses. I was actually a little surprised to find most of the questions I got were from folks that wanted to know more about Stream Insight and Master Data Services. In past conferences I've been asked a lot of "free consulting" questions, about problems folks have had from older products. I don't mind that a bit - in fact, I'm always happy to help in any way I can. But this time people are really interested in the new features in the product, and I like that they are thinking ahead, not just having to solve problems in production. My presentation was on "Database Design in an Hour". We had the usual fun, and SideShow Bob made an appearance - I kid you not. The guy in the back of the room looked just like Sideshow Bob, so I quickly held a "bes thair" contest, and he won. Duing the presentation, I explain the tools you can use to design databases. I also explain that the "Database Designer" tool in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) isn't truly a desinger - it uses non-standard notation, doesn't have a meta-data dictionary, and worst of all, it works at the physical level. In other words, whatever you do in SSMS will automatically change the field/table/relationship structures in the database. We fixed this in SSMS 2008 and higher by adding an option to block that, but the tool is not a good design function nonetheless. To be fair, no one I know of at Microsoft recommends that it is - but I was shocked to hear so many developers in the room defending it as a good tool. I think the main issue for someone who doesn't have to work with Relational Systems a great deal is that it can be difficult to figure out Foreign Keys. The syntax makes them look "backwards", so it's just easier to grab a field and place it on the table you want to point to. There are options. You can download a couple of free tools (CA has a community edition of ER-WIN, Quest has one, and Embarcadero also has one) and if you design more than one or two databases a year, it may be worth buying a true design tool. For years I used Visio, but we changed it so that it doesn't forward-engineer (create the DDL) any more, so it isn't a true design tool either. So investigate those free and not-so-free tools. You'll find they help you in your job - but stay away from the Database Designer in SSMS. Or I'll send Sideshow Bob over there to straighten you out. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Strategy for avoiding duplicate object ids for data shared across devices using iCloud

  - by rmaddy

  I have a data intensive iOS app that is not using CoreData nor does it support iCloud synching (yet). All of my objects are created with unique keys. I use a simple long long initialized with the current time. Then as I need a new key I increment the value by 1. This has all worked well for a few years with the app running isolated on a single device. Now I want to add support for automatic data sync across devices using iCloud. As my app is written, there is the possibility that two objects created on two different devices could end up with the same key. I need to avoid this possibility. I'm looking for ideas for solving this issue. I have a few requirements that the solution must meet: 1) The key needs to remain a single integral data type. Converting all existing keys to a compound key or to a string or other type would affect the entire code base and likely result in more bugs than it's worth. 2) The solution can't depend on an Internet connection. A user must be able to run the app and add data even with no Internet connection. The data should still resolve properly later when the data syncs through iCloud once a connection is available. I'll accept one exception to this rule. If no other option is available, I may be open to requiring an Internet connection the first time the app's data is initialized. One idea I have been toying around with in my head is logically splitting the integer key into two parts. The high 4 or 5 bits could be used as some sort of device id while the rest represents the actual key. The fuzzy part is figuring out how to come up with non-conflicting device ids that fit in a few bits. This should be viable since I don't need to deal will millions of devices. I just need to deal with the few devices that would be shared by a given iCloud account. I'm open to suggestions. Thanks.

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• Adding JavaScript to your code dependent upon conditions

  - by DavidMadden

  You might be in an environment where you code is source controlled and where you might have build options to different environments.  I recently encountered this where the same code, built on different configurations, would have the website at a different URL.  If you are working with ASP.NET as I am you will have to do something a bit crazy but worth while.  If someone has a more efficient solution please share. Here is what I came up with to make sure the client side script was placed into the HEAD element for the Google Analytics script.  GA wants to be the last in the HEAD element so if you are doing others in the Page_Load then you should do theirs last. The settings object below is an instance of a class that holds information I collection.  You could read from different sources depending on where you stored your unique ID for Google Analytics. *** This has been formatted to fit this screen. *** if (!IsPostBack) { if (settings.GoogleAnalyticsID != null || settings.GoogleAnalyticsID != string.Empty) { string str = @"//<!CDATA[ var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', '"  + settings.GoogleAnalyticsID + "']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);  (function () {  var ga = document.createElement('script');  ga.type = 'text/javascript';  ga.async = true;  ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol  ? 'https://ssl' :  'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0];  s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);})();"; System.Web.UI.HtmlControls.HtmlGenericControl si =  new System.Web.UI.HtmlControls.HtmlGenericControl(); si.TagName = "script"; si.Attributes.Add("type", @"text/javascript"); si.InnerHtml = sb.ToString(); this.Page.Header.Controls.Add(si); } } The code above will prevent the code from executing if it is a PostBack and then if the ID was not able to be read or something caused the settings to be lost by accident. If you have larger function to declare, you can use a StringBuilder to separate the lines. This is the most compact I wished to go and manage readability.

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• How can I create a flexible system for tiling a 2D RPG map?

  - by CptSupermrkt

  Using libgdx here. I've just finished learning some of the basics of creating a 2D environment and using an OrthographicCamera to view it. The tutorials I went through, however, hardcoded their tiled map in, and none made mention of how to do it any other way. By tiled map, I mean like Final Fantasy 1, where the world map is a grid of squares, each with a different texture. So for example, I've got a 6 tile x 6 tile map, using the following code: Array<Tile> tiles = new Array<Tile>(); tiles.add(new Tile(new Vector2(0,5), TileType.FOREST)); tiles.add(new Tile(new Vector2(1,5), TileType.FOREST)); tiles.add(new Tile(new Vector2(2,5), TileType.FOREST)); tiles.add(new Tile(new Vector2(3,5), TileType.GRASS)); tiles.add(new Tile(new Vector2(4,5), TileType.STONE)); tiles.add(new Tile(new Vector2(5,5), TileType.STONE)); //... x5 more times. Given the random nature of the environment, for loops don't really help as I have to start and finish a loop before I was able to do enough to make it worth setting up the loop. I can see how a loop might be helpful for like tiling an ocean or something, but not in the above case. The above code DOES get me my final desired output, however, if I were to decide I wanted to move a piece or swap two pieces out, oh boy, what a nightmare, even with just a 6x6 test piece, much less a 1000x1000 world map. There must be a better way of doing this. Someone on some post somewhere (can't find it now, of course) said to check out MapEditor. Looks legit. The question is, if that is the answer, how can I make something in MapEditor and have the output map plug in to a variable in my code? I need the tiles as objects in my code, because for example, I determine whether or not a tile is can be passed through or collided with based on my TileTyle enum variable. Are there alternative/language "native" (i.e. not using an outside tool) methods to doing this?

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• Oracle OpenWorld is on the Horizon

  - by Matthew Haavisto

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Oracle OpenWorld 2012 is only a few months away, and we're excited about our slate of sessions and other activities scheduled this year.  PeopleSoft sessions are perennially among the best attended and well-received sessions, and we plan to keep that trend going. We have a full complement of sessions planned, from updates for some of your yearly favorites to lots of completely new topics.  Some of the long-standing favorites include the PeopleSoft Technology Roadmap, PeopleTools Tips and Techniques and a number of candid panel discussions. Coverage of the latest trends include new sessions on PeopleSoft on mobile platforms, PeopleSoft's new user experience and interaction model, advances in reporting and analytics and employing virtualization to reduce costs.  The PeopleTools team is also working closely with Applications groups this year to demonstrate to users how advances in PeopleTools will have a direct and beneficial impact on the latest applications releases.  There are plenty of sessions for developers and administrators as well, from sessions on enhancing, integrating, maintaining, and securing your applications, to tuning for performance.  We'll also update you on the latest platform roadmap. In addition to these conventional sessions, we will of course be manning the demo pods, where you'll be able to see the latest functionality first hand. We plan to engage in lots of direct customer interaction.  One of the highlights each year for our team as well as attendees is the session in which a panel of senior PeopleTools leaders talks candidly and engages in open Q&A with customers about our products.  This is definitely a discussion worth joining in on. Keep your eyes on this blog in the coming weeks for details on many of the sessions we have planned.  We look forward to seeing you at OpenWorld 2012!

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• I'm graduating with a Computer Science degree but I don't feel like I know how to program.

  - by wp123

  I'm graduating with a Computer Science degree but I see websites like Stack Overflow and search engines like Google and don't know where I'd even begin to write something like that. During one summer I did have the opportunity to work as a iPhone developer, but I felt like I was mostly gluing together libraries that other people had written with little understanding of the mechanics happening beneath the hood. I'm trying to improve my knowledge by studying algorithms, but it is a long and painful process. I find algorithms difficult and at the rate I am learning a decade will have passed before I will master the material in the book. Given my current situation, I've spent a month looking for work but my skills (C, Python, Objective-C) are relatively shallow and are not so desirable in the local market, where C#, Java, and web development are much higher in demand. That is not to say that C and Python opportunities do not exist but they tend to demand 3+ years of experience I do not have. My GPA is OK (3.0) but it's not high enough to apply to the large companies like IBM or return for graduate studies. Basically I'm graduating with a Computer Science degree but I don't feel like I've learned how to program. I thought that joining a company and programming full-time would give me a chance to develop my skills and learn from those more experienced than myself, but I'm struggling to find work and am starting to get really frustrated. I am going to cast my net wider and look beyond the city I've grown up in, but what have other people in similar situation tried to do? I've worked hard but don't have the confidence to go out on my own and write my own app. (That is, become an indie developer in the iPhone app market.) If nothing turns up I will need to consider upgrading and learning more popular skills or try something marginally related like IT, but given all the effort I've put in that feels like copping out. EDIT: Thank you for all the advice. I think I was premature because of unrealistic expectations but the comments have given me a dose of reality. I will persevere and continue to code. I have a project in mind, although well beyond my current capabilities it will challenge me to hone my craft and prove my worth to myself (and potential employers). Had I known there was a career overflow I would have posted there instead. Thanks again!

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• Why is Java the lingua franca at so many institutions?

  - by Billy ONeal

  EDIT: This question at first seems to be bashing Java, and I guess at this point it is a bit. However, the bigger point I am trying to make is why any one single language is chosen as the one end all be all solution to all problems. Java happens to be the one that's used so that's the one I had to beat on here, but I'm not intentionality ripping Java a new one :) I don't like Java in most academic settings. I'm not saying the language itself is bad -- it has several extremely desirable aspects, most importantly the ability to run without recompilation on most any platform. Nothing wrong with using the language for Your Next App ^TM. (Not something I would personally do, but that's more because I have less experience with it, rather than it's design being poor) I think it is a waste that high level CS courses are taught using Java as a language. Too many of my co-students cannot program worth a damn, because they don't know how to work in a non-garbage-collected world. They don't fundamentally understand the machines they are programming for. When someone can work outside of a garbage collected world, they can work inside of one, but not vice versa. GC is a tool, not a crutch. But the way it is used to teach computer science students is a as a crutch. Computer science should not teach an entire suite of courses tailored to a single language. Students leave with the idea that all good design is idiomatic Java design, and that Object Oriented Design is the ONE TRUE WAY THAT IS THE ONLY WAY THINGS CAN BE DONE. Other languages, at least one of them not being a garbage collected language, should be used in teaching, in order to give the graduate a better understanding of the machines. It is an embarrassment that somebody with a PHD in CS from a respected institution cannot program their way out of a paper bag. What's worse, is that when I talk to those CS professors who actually do understand how things operate, they share feelings like this, that we're doing a disservice to our students by doing everything in Java. (Note that the above would be the same if I replaced it with any other language, generally using a single language is the problem, not Java itself) In total, I feel I can no longer respect any kind of degree at all -- when I can't see those around me able to program their way out of fizzbuzz problems. Why/how did it get to be this way?

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• Employer admits that its developers are underpaid and undervalued. Time to part ways?

  - by Psionic

  My employer recently posted an opening for a C# Developer with 3-5 years of experience. The requirements and expectations for the position were fair, up until the criteria for salary determination. It was stated clearly that compensation would depend ONLY on experience with C#, and that years of programming experience with other languages & frameworks would be considered irrelevant and not factored in. I brought up my concern with HR that good candidates would see this as a red flag and steer away. I attempted to explain that software development is about much more than specific languages, and that paying someone for their experience in a single language is a very shortsighted approach to hiring good developers (I'm telling this to the HR dept of a software company). The response: "We are tired of wasting time interviewing developers who expect 'big salaries' because they have lots of additional programming experience in languages other than what we require." The #1 issue here is that 'big salaries' = Market Rate. After some serious discussion, they essentially admitted that nobody at the company is paid near market rate for their skills, and there's nothing that can be done about it. The C-suite has the mentality that employees should only be paid for skills proven over years under their watch. Entry-level developers are picked up for less than $38K and may reach 50K after 3 years, which I'm assuming is around what they plan on offering candidates for the C# position. Another interesting discovery (not as relevant) - people 'promoted' to higher responsibilities do not get raises. The 'promotion' is considered an adjustment of the individuals' roles to better suit their 'strengths', which is what they're already being paid for. After hearing these hard truths straight from HR, I would assume that most people who are looking out for themselves would quickly begin searching for a new employer that has a better idea of what they're doing in the industry (this company fails in many other ways, but I don't want to write a book). Here is my dilemma however: This is the first official software development position I've held, for barely 1 year now. My previous position of 3 years was with a very small company where I performed many duties, among them software development (not in my official job description, but I tried very hard to make it so). I've identified local openings that I'm currently qualified for, most paying at least 50% more than I'm getting now. Question is, is it too soon for a jump? I am getting valuable experience in my current position, with no shortage of exciting projects. The work environment is very comfortable, and I'm told by many that I'm in the spotlight of the C-level guys for the stuff that I've been able to accomplish during my short time (for what that's worth). However, there is a clear opportunity cost to staying, knowing now with certainty that I will have to wait 3-5 years only to be capped at what I could potentially be earning elsewhere this year. I am also aware that 'job hopper' is a dangerous label to have, regardless of the reasons.

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• Insert Or update (aka Replace or Upsert)

  - by Davide Mauri

  The topic is really not new but since it’s the second time in few days that I had to explain it different customers, I think it’s worth to make a post out of it. Many times developers would like to insert a new row in a table or, if the row already exists, update it with new data. MySQL has a specific statement for this action, called REPLACE: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/replace.html or the INSERT …. ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE option: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/insert-on-duplicate.html With SQL Server you can do the very same using a more standard way, using the MERGE statement, with the support of Row Constructors. Let’s say that you have this table: CREATE TABLE dbo.MyTargetTable (     id INT NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY IDENTITY,     alternate_key VARCHAR(50) UNIQUE,     col_1 INT,     col_2 INT,     col_3 INT,     col_4 INT,     col_5 INT ) GO INSERT [dbo].[MyTargetTable] VALUES ('GUQNH', 10, 100, 1000, 10000, 100000), ('UJAHL', 20, 200, 2000, 20000, 200000), ('YKXVW', 30, 300, 3000, 30000, 300000), ('SXMOJ', 40, 400, 4000, 40000, 400000), ('JTPGM', 50, 500, 5000, 50000, 500000), ('ZITKS', 60, 600, 6000, 60000, 600000), ('GGEYD', 70, 700, 7000, 70000, 700000), ('UFXMS', 80, 800, 8000, 80000, 800000), ('BNGGP', 90, 900, 9000, 90000, 900000), ('AMUKO', 100, 1000, 10000, 100000, 1000000) GO If you want to insert or update a row, you can just do that: MERGE INTO     dbo.MyTargetTable T USING     (SELECT * FROM (VALUES ('ZITKS', 61, 601, 6001, 60001, 600001)) Dummy(alternate_key, col_1, col_2, col_3, col_4, col_5)) S ON     T.alternate_key = S.alternate_key WHEN     NOT MATCHED THEN     INSERT VALUES (alternate_key, col_1, col_2, col_3, col_4, col_5) WHEN     MATCHED AND T.col_1 != S.col_1 THEN     UPDATE SET         T.col_1 = S.col_1,         T.col_2 = S.col_2,         T.col_3 = S.col_3,         T.col_4 = S.col_4,         T.col_5 = S.col_5 ; If you want to insert/update more than one row at once, you can super-charge the idea using Table-Value Parameters, that you can just send from your .NET application. Easy, powerful and effective

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• PHP or C++? I just want to choose a language and focus on it!

  - by user19177

  I love C++, but I feel I don't know if I should focus on web, so PHP, or C++. It's just an hard choice because right now I want to focus on one language and don't want to switch it a few months later. With C++ I'd program in SDL, while with PHP I don't know yet. I am not a very advanced programmer but I know basics of programming and can get going very well if determined. The problem is I just don't know.. I'm like OK! I'll go for C++! Then a minute later, wait what if I went with C#? Why this that.. ! I've read milion threads about C vs VB C# Python Ruby etc, all of them which I could find! It got me nowhere. The problem is probably I need to know something from some experts I guess.. I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels/felt like I do right now yeah? Uhm... I guess I might help you with some details so your answer may be easier to write! ( And also, if you want to say something else which is not related to PHP or C++, you can do that, I've just got to the conclusion that C++ and PHP are the ones that are worth it but yeah. C# I've discarded due to some stuff I read which says in future the projects I'd start now could just be useless and stuff like that.. ) Ok well : I'm 18 years old, and I program as hobby right now, but I do hope to go to a programming college in future. ( That would be in 2 years ). Hmm, I like programming games, and I'm mostly bothered by the fact "this language could be useless to what I need to do" ( I don't know how to explain this feeling! ) I don't know which other details I could add... I hope you guys can help me choose my path, this is really stressing me I'm wasting my time not doing anything right now because I don't know which language to use..! Thanks!

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• How to set up an rsync backup to Ubuntu securely?

  - by ws_e_c421

  I have been following various other tutorials and blog posts on setting up a Ubuntu machine as a backup "server" (I'll call it a server, but it's just running Ubuntu desktop) that I push new files to with rsync. Right now, I am able to connect to the server from my laptop using rsync and ssh with an RSA key that I created and no password prompt when my laptop is connected to my home router that the server is also connected to. I would like to be able to send files from my laptop when I am away from home. Some of the tutorials I have looked at had some brief suggestions about security, but they didn't focus on them. What do I need to do to let my laptop with send files to the server without making it too easy for someone else to hack into the server? Here is what I have done so far: Ran ssh-keygen and ssh-copy-id to create a key pair for my laptop and server. Created a script on the server to write its public ip address to a file, encrypt the file, and upload to an ftp server I have access to (I know I could sign up for a free dynamic DNS account for this part, but since I have the ftp account and don't really need to make the ip publicly accessible I thought this might be better). Here are the things I have seen suggested: Port forwarding: I know I need to assign the server a fixed ip address on the router and then tell the router to forward a port or ports to it. Should I just use port 22 or choose a random port and use that? Turn on the firewall (ufw). Will this do anything, or will my router already block everything except the port I want? Run fail2ban. Are all of those things worth doing? Should I do anything else? Could I set up the server to allow connections with the RSA key only (and not with a password), or will fail2ban provide enough protection against malicious connection attempts? Is it possible to limit the kinds of connections the server allows (e.g. only ssh)? I hope this isn't too many questions. I am pretty new to Ubuntu (but use the shell and bash scripts on OSX). I don't need to have the absolute most secure set up. I'd like something that is reasonably secure without being so complicated that it could easily break in a way that would be hard for me to fix.

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• Helicon ISAPI Rewrite Proxy 500 Internal Server Error

  - by Rob Stevenson-Leggett

  Hi, I have a website running at www.domain.com. The client now wants the website to appear to be running under www.otherdomain.com/whatson/brand/ Since the website is umbraco it won't run under a subfolder. I wanted to use ISAPI rewrite to proxy requests to www.domain.com using the following rule in a .htaccess at www.otherdomain.com/whatson/brand/ RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [P,L] However, when I apply this I get an ugly 500 Internal Server Error. There's nothing in the event log. So I turned on ISAPI logging and can see the following 111.111.111.111 111.111.111.111 Tue, 12-Jan-2010 13:05:24 GMT [www.otherdomain.com/sid#2045305275][rid#26337200/initial] (2) init rewrite engine with requested uri /whatson/brand/home.aspx Then it testing all the other rewrite rules on the server. Then this 111.111.111.111 111.111.111.111 Tue, 12-Jan-2010 13:05:24 GMT [www.otherdomain.com/sid#2045305275][rid#26337200/initial] (1) Htaccess process request w:\websites\otherdomain.com\docs2\whatson\brand\.htaccess 111.111.111.111 111.111.111.111 Tue, 12-Jan-2010 13:05:24 GMT [www.otherdomain.com/sid#2045305275][rid#26337200/initial] (3) applying pattern '^(.*)$' to uri 'home.aspx' 111.111.111.111 111.111.111.111 Tue, 12-Jan-2010 13:05:24 GMT [www.otherdomain.com/sid#2045305275][rid#26337200/initial] (2) forcing proxy-throughput with http://www.domain.com/home.aspx 111.111.111.111 111.111.111.111 Tue, 12-Jan-2010 13:05:24 GMT [www.otherdomain.com/sid#2045305275][rid#26337200/initial] (1) go-ahead with proxy request http://www.domain.com/home.aspx [OK] 111.111.111.111 111.111.111.111 Tue, 12-Jan-2010 13:05:24 GMT [www.otherdomain.com/sid#2045305275][rid#26337200/initial] (2) rewrite 'home.aspx' -> '/whatson/brand/home.aspxx.rwhlp?p=0' 111.111.111.111 111.111.111.111 Tue, 12-Jan-2010 13:05:24 GMT [www.otherdomain.com/sid#2045305275][rid#26337200/initial] (2) internal redirect with /whatson/brand/home.aspxx.rwhlp?p=0 [INTERNAL REDIRECT] So it appears to work according to the logs, but I'm not seeing the page come through.. It's worth noting that www.domain.com and www.otherdomain.com are on the same box. LogLevel is 3 and RewriteLogLevel is 3 (I've tried with 9 and debug but there is too much traffic going through the other sites on the box) Any ideas?

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