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• Packaging MATLAB (or, more generally, a large binary, proprietary piece of software)

  - by nfirvine

  I'm trying to package MATLAB for internal distribution, but this could apply to any piece of software with the same architecture. In fact, I'm packaging multiple releases of MATLAB to be installed concurrently. Key things Very large installation size (~4 GB) Composed of a core, and several plugins (toolboxes) Initially, I created a single "source" package (matlab2011b) that builds several .debs (mainly matlab2011b-core and matlab2011b-toolbox-* for each toolbox). The control file is just the standard all: dh $@ There is no Makefile; only copying files. I use a number of debian/*.install files to specify files to copy from a copy of an installation to /usr/lib/. The problem is, every time I build the thing (say, to make a correction to the core package), it recopies every file listed in the *.install file to e.g debian/$packagename/usr/ (the build phase), and then has to bundle that into a .deb file. It takes a long time, on the order of hours, and is doing a lot of extra work. So my questions are: Can you make dh_install do a hardlink copy (like cp -l) to save time? (AFAICT from the man page, no.) Maybe I should just get it to do this in the Makefile? (That's gonna b e big Makefile.) Can you make debuild only rebuild .debs that need rebuilding? Or specify which .debs to rebuild? Is my approach completely stupid? Should I break each of the toolboxes into its own source package too? (I'll have to do some silly templating or something, because there's hundreds of them. :/)

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• Creating an in-house single source software development team

  - by alphadogg

  Our company wants to create a single department for all software development efforts (rather than having software development managed by each business unit). Business units would then "outsource" their software needs to this department. What would you setup as concerns/expectations that must be cleared before doing this? For example: Need agreement between units on how much actual time (FTE) is allocated to each unit Need agreement on scheduling of staff need agreement on request procedure if extra time is required by one party etc... Have you been in a situation like this as a manager of one unit destined to use this? If so, what were problems you experienced? What would you have or did implement? Same if you were the manager of the shared team. Please assume, for discussion, that the people concerned know that you can't swap devs in and out on a whim. I don't want to know the disadvantages of this approach; I know them. I want to anticipate issues and know how to mitigate the fallout.

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• Good podcasting solution?

  - by burnso

  I simply ask for the best, most common and simple way to set up a podcast? Please, I need an answer so I can close this question? I run a joomla-based website for a small church and now need a simple, cheap and effective solution for an audio podcast. I am looking for a solution that will do the following: User uploads audio files to service (preferably not to our own site) that is cheap, fast and simple to use. Dropbox for example? Files are easily embeddable into Joomla website articles to be played on the spot (through simple-to-use and media player). Preferably through RSS feeds (to make it easy to update every week). Files are downloadable. Files are viewable on iPhones and other smartphones. Solution can be broadcasted via iTunes. Solution doesn't need a lot of extra, new third party software. I'd rather keep it simple and familiar than have it be a complete new system but with a steep learning curve. At the moment we use vimeo to host the podcast, through video files. But we'd like to move to something simpler that doesn't involve a series of difficult steps to upload the files to the web.

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• How difficult is it for an artist to make their own artwork cohesive to another artists' style? [on hold]

  - by user36200

  I have a lot of artwork I purchased from a website, but the artist who drew the game assets is unavailable. I need to create additional artwork which fits with this style, but I am not an artist- nor do I have any idea of how artists work. Obviously, the solution is to find a new artist, who I can pay to draw this artwork while keeping it to look at certain way. I am scared of wasting money though. I don't want to contract an artist, only to find out it is extremely difficult for someone to match another person's art style. I don't need it to be identical, I just need it to be cohesive. I also want to know what I'm asking of people, before I ask them. Artists are workers just like me, and deserve to be understood when contracted. As an artist, is it extra difficult or time consuming to alter your artwork to match a certain style? Does it require a lot of talent to make a cohesive piece of art? To be specific, I am talking about structures, such as 2D symbols of towns for a map. They all have this "gritty" penciling effect to them and lots of saturated colors, which is what will be required when I say "cohesive". Along with looking like the architecture belongs in the same world.

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• Cannot boot: FGLRX 8.780 + Kernel 2.6.35-25

  - by pluc

  The situation before this all happened is pretty standard. I have a HP Pavillion dv5 laptop with an ATI Mobility Radeon 4200 series. It always worked fine with Ubuntu for as long as I can remember. However, at one point, something happened and truly made a majestic mess of things. It might've been extra repos I enabled with Ubuntu Tweak - I do not know. But something made it so that my system would not boot any longer. And when I say "won't boot", this is what I mean: - Durning a normal bootup, any entries (except Windows) selected with GRUB (or BURG, not even sure which one I'm using anymore) will spawn the Ubuntu loading screen - then try to start X (or GDM) 5 times. The screen goes to dark, black and back to the Ubuntu loading screen. Then it just stays there until I spawn another TTY. I have no idea what is happening or why. There are no errors in my logs, and I'm truly at a loss here. I've linked three files: Xorg.0.log, the output of dmesg and the GDM log: Xorg.0.log: http://ubuntu.pastebin.com/tpVKc2tc dmesg: ubuntu.pastebin.com/Nd5aYj45 gdm's :0.log: couldn't post due to lack of points :( Let me know if any of you more knowledgeable folks can restore some sanity in my life. Any help is greatly apreciated.

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• How to move from Programmer to Project Lead

  - by DoctaStooge

  At my job, I'm currently a programmer, but in the next few weeks I'll be taking control my own project. I was wondering if anyone else here has been in the same situation, and if so, what advice you can offer to help me be able to better run my project. Experience in dealing with contractors would be greatly appreciated. A little more info: Project will have 3 people including myself, with extra people coming in when needing testing. The project has been programmed mainly by 2 people I would like to contribute to the programming as I like doing it and think I can add to the program, but am afraid of how the contractors will react. I don't want to create bad feelings which may harm the project. EDIT: Forgot to mention that I'll have to be picking up communications with customers to make sure their needs are met. Any advice on talking to customers cold would be greatly appreciated. EDIT 2: This is not a new project, I'm picking it up around version 6. Sorry that I didn't make it clear before.

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• Tuning WebServer Response -

  - by Vedran Wex Maricevic

  I have this sam e question on StackOverflow and I was advised to ask it here hoping for more information. Here is the question: I am in rather unfavorable situation. I have aspdotneststore front e-commerce application and search addon called VibeTrib. I dont have source code for both of those. Store that runs on StoreFront and VibeTrib has close to 250k products. Also we have lots of filters. I spoke to ViTrib reps, and they want extra money so they could optimize Queries that they use. Money they require is nto a big deal, but the problem is I dont trust them anymore. What we got is much different then wha is being advertised. To cut the long story short. I am runing the store on Amazon AWS now, and regardless of what DB (MsSQL 2012) server I set (I tried 32GB RAM monsters instances) it is slow. Ajax search uses Full Text search and it displays search keywords relatively fast, but once the search is performed ( to display all results) it is still slow.!!! There is something that I could to do accelerate the speed on my own end? I do have full control over EC2 Instance (Web server Server 2012 and IIS 8). Can I set IIS to step in for the search and cache some of it? I was hoping to cache at least some most common words. My best bet is IIS 8 :) Is there any help in my case? Thanks

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• Case studies for successful service (project) based software development businesses without constant overtime from its employees [closed]

  - by Ryan Taylor

  I work for an IT company that is primarily services (project) based rather than product based. All software engineers are salaried. The company has set new expectations that everyone should work 48 hours per week instead of 40. Note, this isn't occasional overtime due to crunches. This is the new 40. The reasoning is that this enables the company to provide benefits to its employees such as monetary incentives and training because the company is more profitable. more hours worked = more billable hours = larger profit I understand the need for profitability and the occasional crunch time and have put in the extra hours when it was needed and beneficial to the project. However, I am also very sensitive to work life balance and have raised my concerns about the the new expectation. My employer is open to other methods to increase profitability so I hold hope that we can turn things around before it becomes a horrible place to work. How does a services based company become more profitable without increasing the number of hours expected from it's salaried employees? Are there any case studies showing the pros and cons of consistent overtime? Are there any case studies for a successful service based business model (for software development companies) that does not require consistent overtime from its employees?

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• Strange traffic on fresh Ubuntu Server install

  - by Fishy

  I've just installed Ubuntu Server on my home box after becoming partially familiar with it at work and wanting to train up as a Pen Tester. I installed the latest version on a logical partition (the main one contained Win7), and selected none of the extra modules (I think). I installed ngrep and fired it up (along with TCPdump) and immediately saw some strange traffic which I am unable to identify. My pc is sending out UDP packets every couple of seconds to a seemingly random series of IP addresses, all on the same port (47669 - though I did also see it use another port for a while). I watched it do this for about 20 mins, whilst trying to work out why it was doing it. The only other traffic was the odd ARP request for the router and SSDP UPnP broadcasts from the router. Anyone know what this is, or have any advice on how best to find out? Thanks. EDIT: Actually, it's not my box generating the traffic. It's receiving the traffic on that port, from a series of IP addresses, and returning 'port unreachable' messages.

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• Is the addition of a duration to a date-time defined in ISO 8601?

  - by Benjamin

  I've writing a date-time library, and need to implement the addition of a duration to a date-time. If I add a 1 month duration: P1M to the 31st March 2012: 2012-03-31, does the standard define what the result is? Because the resulting date (31st April) does not exist, there are at least two options: Fall back to the last day of the resulting month. This is the approach currently taken by the ThreeTen API, the (alpha) reference implementation of JSR-310: ZonedDateTime date = ZonedDateTime.parse("2012-03-31T00:00:00Z"); Period duration = Period.parse("P1M"); System.out.println(date.plus(duration).toString()); // 2012-04-30T00:00Z Carry the extra day to the next month. This is the approach taken by the DateTime class in PHP: $date = new DateTime('2012-03-31T00:00:00Z'); $duration = new DateInterval('P1M'); echo $date->add($duration)->format('c'); // 2012-05-01T00:00:00+00:00 I'm surprised that two date-time libraries contradict on this point, so I'm wondering whether the standard defines the result of this operation?

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• How do I find the correct Modeline to connect my computer to my Televsion

  - by Mikelane

  I've been trying to hook up a Ubuntu computer with my Panasonic TH-42PA60A Plasma television for weeks now. My original question was asked here, which includes all the specifications about the Television in detail and how I've connected the computer to the televsion. So far, I've tried hooking up three other computers; 2 Ubuntu computers with fairly new graphic cards, and a Windows XP computer. None of them have been able to display an image on the television. The closest I've come to getting a picture up is with my small laptop running Ubuntu, however the image came out all purple and distorted. I had gotten the image by adding extra modes via the xrandr command, using a process similar to described here. I realize it might be possible to get this working if I had the correct modeline. I've checked the Modeline database, but the Panasonic TH-42PA60A is not listed. How can I find the correct modeline for my television. What commands can I use? I've read that there may be a danger of damaging my TV when doing things like this. What things should I avoid to prevent damaging my television?

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• Can I make a business in teaching home users Ubuntu [on hold]

  - by Dorgaldir

  I was thinking about a way to bring Ubuntu to the bigger public, since it has great advantages for people in the lower income class that only use a PC for basic usage. They pay for a windows licence without actually needing windows because 95% of what they do is in a browser and the other 5% is typing a word document or making a simpel Excel sheet. So for these people something like Ubuntu is ideal, they can prolong the life of their old PC or laptop with Ubuntu and thus saving extra money. And as we all know, saving money is not only interesting for the lowest of income but for most of us. But when I talk to people they don't want to use Ubuntu because they know Windows and they don't know this, they'll complain about having to adapt to windows 8 but adapting to Ubuntu seems a bridge too far. But what if someone in the neighborhood gave simple Ubuntu courses. Teaching people about Ubuntu, stuff like: What is an OS What is Ubuntu How do I obtain Ubuntu How do I install Ubuntu How do I set up my email in Ubuntu How do I make a text document in Ubuntu How do I update my facebook wall in Ubuntu ... Simple basic PC usage, but within Ubuntu. But as much as I would like to work for free all day, I can't do this for free for people outside of my social circle. So I was wondering if it is possible to make a business and make money with giving Ubuntu courses, or are their steps to be taken before this is possible. However... Do I need an Ubuntu or Canonical license? Do I need to get a certificate? Do I have to make some kind of deal or contract with Canonical? Just to be clear this is all just an idea in my head at this point, I'm just gathering information. I'm not a teacher at a school, just a programmer that is thinking about options in life. Thanks in advance!

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• When creating a GUI wizard, should all pages/tabs be of the same size? [closed]

  - by Job

  I understand that some libraries would force me to, but my question is general. If I have a set of buttons at the bottom: Back, Next, Cancel?, (other?), then should their location ever change? If the answer is no, then what do I do about pages with little content? Do I stretch things? Place them in the lone upper left corner? According to Steve Krug, it does not make sense to add anything to GUI that does not need to be there. I understand that there are different approaches to wizards - some have tabs, others do not. Some tabs are lined horizontally at the top; others - vertically on the left. Some do not show pages/tabs, and are simply sequences of dialogs. This is probably a must when the wizard is "non-linear", e.g. some earlier choices can result in branching. Either way the problem is the same - sacrifice on the consistency of the "big picture" (outline of the page/tab + location of buttons), or the consistency of details (some tabs might be somewhat packed; others having very little content). A third choice, I suppose is putting extra effort in the content in order to make sure that organizing the content such that it is more or less evenly distributed from page to page. However, this can be difficult to do (say, when the very first tab contains only a choice of three things, and then branches off from there; there are probably other examples), and hard to maintain this balance if any of the content changes later. Can you recommend a good approach? A link to a relevant good blog post or a chapter of a book is also welcome. Let me know if you have questions.

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• How to avoid the GameManager god object?

  - by lorancou

  I just read an answer to a question about structuring game code. It made me wonder about the ubiquitous GameManager class, and how it often becomes an issue in a production environment. Let me describe this. First, there's prototyping. Nobody cares about writing great code, we just try to get something running to see if the gameplay adds up. Then there's a greenlight, and in an effort to clean things up, somebody writes a GameManager. Probably to hold a bunch of GameStates, maybe to store a few GameObjects, nothing big, really. A cute, little, manager. In the peaceful realm of pre-production, the game is shaping up nicely. Coders have proper nights of sleep and plenty of ideas to architecture the thing with Great Design Patterns. Then production starts and soon, of course, there is crunch time. Balanced diet is long gone, the bug tracker is cracking with issues, people are stressed and the game has to be released yesterday. At that point, usually, the GameManager is a real big mess (to stay polite). The reason for that is simple. After all, when writing a game, well... all the source code is actually here to manage the game. It's easy to just add this little extra feature or bugfix in the GameManager, where everything else is already stored anyway. When time becomes an issue, no way to write a separate class, or to split this giant manager into sub-managers. Of course this is a classical anti-pattern: the god object. It's a bad thing, a pain to merge, a pain to maintain, a pain to understand, a pain to transform. What would you suggest to prevent this from happening?

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• Is there a better strategy than relying on the compiler to catch errors?

  - by koan

  I've been programming in C and C++ for some time, although I would say I'm far from being an expert. For some time, I've been using various strategies to develop my code such as unit tests, test driven design, code reviews and so on. When I wrote my first programs in BASIC, I typed in long blocks before finding they would not run and they were a nightmare to debug. So I learned to write a small bit and then test it. These days, I often find myself repeatedly writing a small bit of code then using the compiler to find all the mistakes. That's OK if it picks up a typo but when you start adjusting the parameters types etc just to make it compile you can screw up the design. It also seems that the compiler is creeping into the design process when it should only be used for checking syntax. There's a danger here of over reliance on the compiler to make my programs better. Are there better strategies than this? I vaguely remember some time ago an article on a company developing a type of C compiler where an extra header file also specified the prototypes. The idea was that inconsistencies in the API definition would be easier to catch if you had to define it twice in different ways.

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• Ubuntu Dependency Problem in Activity log Manager

  - by Incredible

  incredible@incredible-Inspiron-N5010:~$ sudo apt-get -f install [sudo] password for incredible: Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done Correcting dependencies... Done The following extra packages will be installed: activity-log-manager The following packages will be upgraded: activity-log-manager 1 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 287 not upgraded. 1 not fully installed or removed. Need to get 0 B/60.3 kB of archives. After this operation, 29.7 kB disk space will be freed. Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of activity-log-manager: activity-log-manager depends on activity-log-manager-common (= 0.9.4-0ubuntu3); however: Version of activity-log-manager-common on system is 0.9.4-0ubuntu3.1. activity-log-manager-control-center (0.9.4-0ubuntu3.1) breaks activity-log-manager (<< 0.9.4-0ubuntu3.1) and is installed. Version of activity-log-manager to be configured is 0.9.4-0ubuntu3. dpkg: error processing activity-log-manager (--configure): dependency problems - leaving unconfigured No apport report written because the error message indicates its a followup error from a previous failure. Errors were encountered while processing: activity-log-manager E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

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• Using the RadTransitionControl in Task-It

  Download Source Code NOTE: To run the source code provided your will need to update to the RC (release candidate) versions of Silverlight 4 and VisualStudio 2010.  In a recent Ask the Experts webinar I showed a simple solution that had similarities to one that I had used in my recent MVVM post, but had a few extra twists on it. I have since been asked if I could post the source code for this demo, so here it is (I am using similar techniques in my Task-It application). The database Before running the code for this app you will need to create the database. First, create a database called MVVMProject in SQL Server, then run MVVMProject.sql in the MVVMProjectDemo/Database directory of your downloaded .zip file. This should give you a Task table with 3 records in it. You will also need to update the connection string in web.config to point to your database ...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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• MVC and delegation

  - by timjver

  I am a beginning iOS programmer and use the Model-View-Controller model as a design pattern: my model doesn't know anything about my view (in order to make it compatible with any view), my view doesn't know anything about my model so they interact via my controller. A very usual way for a view to interact with the controller is through delegation: when the user interacts with the app, my view will notify my controller, which can call some methods of my model and update my view, if necessary. However, would it make sense to also make my controller the delegate of my model? I'm not convinced this is the way to go. It could be handy for my model to notify my controller of some process being finished, for example, or to ask for extra input of the user if it doesn't have enough information to complete the task. The downside of this, though, is that my controller would be the delegate for both my controller and my model, so there wouldn't be really a proper way to notify my model of changes in my view, and vice versa. (correct me if I'm wrong.) Conclusion: I don't really think it's a good idea to to have my controller to be the delegate of my model, but just being the delegate of my view would be fine. Is this the way most MVC models handle? Or is there a way to have the controller be the delegate of both the controller and the model, with proper communication between them? Like I said, I'm a beginner, so I want to do such stuff the right way immediately, rather than spending loads of hours on models that won't work anyway. :)

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• How do I use LibreOffice's 3d transitions in Impress?

  - by Lvkz

  How can I get the 3D transitions working on Impress? I got a presentation coming soon, and as a requirement of the course the professor want us to use transitions on our "Power Point" chapter, obviously I have been using LibreOffice in every exercise but the native transitions are kind of lame, so when I install the newer version of Ubuntu, always install the extra package to the transitions - I had installed the 3D package: libreoffice-ogltrans 1:3.4.3-3ubuntu2 In previous versions of Ubuntu and worked perfectly, but for some reason is not working in this release. I got LibreOffice 3.4.3, Ubuntu Oneiric Ocelot (11.10) and my hardware is not relevant because I had it working before on previous releases. I know is not critical, but for my class is a pretty important deal, and can be a perfect opportunity to show the class that the cool stuff are not only in Windows. As a recomendation of one of Eliah Kagan, I'm putting the output of: sudo lshw -C video *-display:0 description: VGA compatible controller product: Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 2 bus info: pci@0000:00:02.0 version: 07 width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: msi pm vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom configuration: driver=i915 latency=0 resources: irq:46 memory:f6c00000-f6ffffff memory:e0000000-efffffff ioport:efe8(size=8) *-display:1 UNCLAIMED description: Display controller product: Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 2.1 bus info: pci@0000:00:02.1 version: 07 width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm bus_master cap_list configuration: latency=0 resources: memory:f6b00000-f6bfffff And I'm not using Unity - it don't there anyways -, I'm using instead Gnome Shell.

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• Accidentally Changed Dual Monitor Setup and don't know how to reset it

  - by user203783

  I have a dual monitor setup with my laptop and an external Asus monitor running under Ubuntu 11.10. When I first started using Ubuntu, it synced both screens. What showed up on my laptop showed up on my eternal monitor. Last night, I accidentally knocked the HDMI cable from its port (not that unusual in the tight space I work in). When I plugged it back in, as usual, the external monitor only displayed my wallpaper. Usually, I just restart Ubuntu and it resets, but last night what I now realize was the display console came up and somehow I changed the setup. Now the two screens show different jobs so to speak. Also, the external monitor doesn't display the ribbon, making switching between Firefox tabs and windows or apps jarring. I write for a living and need to quickly check bits of research, notes or sources while writing and the extra switching between mouse pad and external mouse to get one or the other screen to respond interrupts my work flow. The only technical help I can offer is when the display console popped up, the graphical representation of the screens was that the external screen appeared layered over by about one-quarter of the laptop screen. Again, these were icons. I tried to replicate that after I obviously screwed things up. If someone could help. I would appreciate it. If I have to use terminal, that's fine. I started using computers for writing back when they were green DOS prompts. There's a certain elegance to prompt commands to me. Maybe it's the writer in me. Again, if anyone can help me return my screens to sync under Ubuntu 11.10, I would greatly appreciate it.

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• Domain model integration using JSON capable DTOs

  - by g-makulik

  I'm a bit confused about architectural choices for the java/web-applications world. The background is I have a system with certain hardware components (that introduce system immanent active behavior) and a configuration database for system meta and HW-components configuration data (these are even usually self contained, since the HW-components persist configuration data anyway). For realization of the configuration/status data exchange protocol with the HW-components we have chosen the Google Protobuf format, which works well for the directly wired communication with these components. Now we want to develop an abstract model (domain model) for those HW-components and I have the feeling that a plain Java class model would fit best for this (c++ implementation seems to have too much implementation/integration overhead with viable language-bridge interfaces). Google Protobuf message definitions could still serve well to describe DTO objects used to interact with a domain model API. But integrating Google Protobuf messages client side for e.g. data binding in the current view doesn't seem to be a good choice. I'm thinking about some extra serialization features, e.g. for JSON based data exchange with the views/controllers. Most lightweight solutions seem to involve a python based presentation layer using JSON based data transfer (I'm at least not sure to be fully informed about this). Is there some lightweight (applicable for a limited ARM Linux platform) framework available, supporting such architecture to realize a web-application?

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• How to correct a junior, but encourage him to think for himself? [closed]

  - by Phil

  I am the lead of a small team where everyone has less than a year of software development experience. I wouldn't by any means call myself a software guru, but I have learned a few things in the few years that I've been writing software. When we do code reviews I do a fair bit of teaching and correcting mistakes. I will say things like "This is overly complex and convoluted, and here's why," or "What do you think about moving this method into a separate class?" I am extra careful to communicate that if they have questions or dissenting opinions, that's ok and we need to discuss. Every time I correct someone, I ask "What do you think?" or something similar. However they rarely if ever disagree or ask why. And lately I've been noticing more blatant signs that they are blindly agreeing with my statements and not forming opinions of their own. I need a team who can learn to do things right autonomously, not just follow instructions. How does one correct a junior developer, but still encourage him to think for himself? Edit: Here's an example of one of these obvious signs that they're not forming their own opinions: Me: I like your idea of creating an extension method, but I don't like how you passed a large complex lambda as a parameter. The lambda forces others to know too much about the method's implementation. Junior (after misunderstanding me): Yes, I totally agree. We should not use extension methods here because they force other developers to know too much about the implementation. There was a misunderstanding, and that has been dealt with. But there was not even an OUNCE of logic in his statement! He thought he was regurgitating my logic back to me, thinking it would make sense when really he had no clue why he was saying it.

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• Random generation of interesting puzzle levels?

  - by monsterfarm

  I'm making a Sokoban-like game i.e. there's a grid that has some crates on it you can push and you have to get the crates on crosses to win the level (although I'm going to add some extra elements to it). Are there any general algorithms or reading material I can look at for how I could go about generating interesting (as in, not trivial to solve) levels for this style of game? I'm aware that random level generators exist for Sokoban but I'm having trouble finding the algorithm descriptions. I'm interested in making a game where the machine can generate lots of levels for me, sorted by difficulty. I'm even willing to constrain the rules of the game to make the level generation easier (e.g. I'll probably limit the grid size to about 7x7). I suspect there are some general ways to do level generation here as I've seen e.g. Traffic Jam-like games (where you have to move blocks around the free some block) with 1000s of levels where each one has a unique solution. One idea I had was to generate a random map in its final state (i.e. where all crates are on top of their crosses) and then the computer would pull (instead of push) these crates around to create a level. The nice property here is that we know the level is solvable. However, I'd need some heuristics to ensure the level was interesting.

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• ubuntu 13.10 liveboot/installer loads dots, then does nothing

  - by user200245

  Problem: When I load an Ubuntu 13.10 (64-bit) live USB / installer on my laptop, the purple Ubuntu screen with the white dots appears, the dots turn orange (indicating its loading), then after a few seconds the screen turns completely black and nothing else happens. I can not install Ubuntu 13.10 on this computer. What I've Tried: I've re-downloaded the .iso file from canonical. I've burned the .iso to the USB using the default linux usb image writer, and the Windows programs YUMI and Linux Live USB Creator; same thing happens each time. Yes, I'm sure my computer is 64 bit. I'm currently running Linux Mint 15 on it, which runs perfectly. It's a Sager NP7330 / Clevo w230st. extra info A few months I installed Ubuntu 13.04 on this machine, which installed perfectly. Normally I'd install that then dist-upgrade to 13.10, HOWEVER this computer is only a few months old and the wireless/network drivers for my network card were not implemented until kernel 3.11 (which comes w ith 13.10). I tried manually downloading kernel 3.11 and installing it (on 13.04), however the wireless card nor ethernet card still did work with Ubuntu 13.04. So my only real hope is to get 13.10 working. Does anyone know what's up with this?

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• Should sanity be a property of a programmer or a program?

  - by toplel32

  I design and implement languages, that can range from object notations to markup languages. In many cases I have considered restrictions in favor of sanity (common knowledge), like in the case of control characters in identifiers. There are two consequences to consider before doing this: It takes extra computation It narrows liberty I'm interested to learn how developers think of decisions like this. As you may know Microsoft C# is very open on the contrary. If you really want to prefix your integer as Long with 'l' instead of 'L' and so risk other developers of confusing '1' and 'l', no problem. If you want to name your variables in non-latin script so they will contrast with C#'s latin keywords, no problem. Or if you want to distribute a string over multiple lines and so break a series of indentation, no problem. It is cheap to ensure consistency with restrictions and this makes it tempting to implement. But in the case of disallowing non-latin characters (concerning the second example), it means a discredit to Unicode, because one would not take full advantage of its capacity.

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