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• Elo system behaves oddly in program I've created

  - by adc

  Alright, so I'm looking to build a small program (C# and XAML) that, essentially, does this: Generate array of players. Each player has a current rating and a true rating. I set current rating to 1200 as a starting point right now; I've also tried setting it to true rating and the average of the two. True rating is what their skill level actually is. Their true rating is calculated based on percentages from the current League of Legends rating system; generating an array of 970 thousand generates results very similar to the data from here: (removed due to URL limit - but trust me, the results are very similar). This array is of length specified by the user. If need be, sort the array from smallest to largest. Play X number of games, again specified by the user. This is done by taking the array of players (which is sorted by Current Rating after being created) and running through it in groups of 10. The first five are on team one, the second five are on team two. It then takes the True Rating of these players and calculates an expected chance to win using the Elo system. It generates a random double and compares it to the expected chance to win; if the number is lower, team one wins - otherwise team two wins. I then update the rating of the players via, again, the Elo system - giving the winning team a score of 1 and the losing team a score of 0. I use a K value of 36 (but have tried 12, 24, and even higher ones) and an F value of 400. After going through the entire loop of players (which I have conveniently forced to be a multiple of ten), it sorts the array - again via current rating. This, if my understanding of the Elo system is correct, runs properly. However, it doesn't seem to work. I have a running test telling me how many players of the full array are within 100 current rating of their true rating. I would expect some portion of the population to be outside this range (as probability is not always going to go in their favor), but a full 40-45% of the population is outside of this range. I also have it outputting the maximum difference between true and current rating - and I have never seen this drop below 500! It hovers between 550-600, occasionally going over or under. I'm at a loss as to what to change - I've fiddled with the K and F values, where I start all the players, etc. but nothing changes the fact that eventually a good 40% of the population is outside the range. And it isn't that I have it playing too few games - it's now run through over 60 thousand games and the problem never disappears or really fluctuates. The full C# code, including everything except the XAML file and the Player class (pastebin is being very slow and I can only post two links, so I can't link to the XAML file): http://pastebin.com/rFcZRL84 The Player class: http://pastebin.com/4cJTdTRu I guess my question is did I do anything wrong? Is there a problem with the way I implemented the system, or is it just that Riot uses a significantly modified Elo system? I don't think it's the latter, as that still wouldn't explain the massive true and current rating differences to me, however.

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• My .NET Technology picks for 2011

  - by shiju

  My Technology predictions for 2011 Cloud computing and Mobile application development will be the hottest trends for 2011. I hope that Windows Azure will be very hot in year 2011 and lot of cloud computing adoption will be happen with Windows Azure on 2011. Web application scalability will be the big challenge for Architects in the next year and architecture approaches like CQRS will get some attention on next year. Architects will look on different options for web application scalability and adoption of NoSQL and Document databases will be more in the year 2011. The following are the my technology picks for .Net stack Windows Azure Windows Azure will be one of the hottest technologies of 2011. Adoption of Cloud and Windows Azure will get big attention on next year. The Windows Azure platform is a flexible cloud–computing platform that lets you focus on solving business problems and addressing customer needs. No need to invest upfront on expensive infrastructure. Pay only for what you use, scale up when you need capacity and pull it back when you don’t. We handle all the patches and maintenance — all in a secure environment with over 99.9% uptime. Silverlight 5 Silverlight is becoming a common technology for variety of development platforms. You can develop Silverlight applications for web, desktop and windows phone. The new Silverlight 5 beta will be available during the starting quarter of the next year with new capabilities and lot of new features. Silverlight 5 will be powerful development platform for both web-based business apps and rich media solutions. We can expect final version of Silverlight 5 on end of 2011. Windows Phone 7 Development Tools Mobile application development will be very hot in year 2011 and Windows Phone 7 will be one of the hottest technologies of next year. You can get introduction on Windows Phone 7 Development Tools from somasegar’s blog post and MSDN documentation available from here. EF Code First I am a big fan of Entity Framework’s Code First approach and hope that Code First approach will attract more people onto Entity Framework 4. EF Code First lets you focus on domain model which will enable Domain-Driven Development for applications. I hope that DDD fans will love the EF Code First approach. The Entity Framework 4 now supports three types of approaches and these will attract different types of developer audience. ASP.NET MVC 3 The ASP.NET MVC 3 will be the hottest technology of Microsoft web stack on the next year. ASP.NET developers will widely move to the ASP.NET MVC Framework from their WebForms development. The new Razor view engine is great and it will increase the adoption of ASP.NET MVC 3. Razor the will improve the productivity when working with ASP.NET MVC 3 Views. You can build great web applications using ASP.NET MVC 3 and jQuery with better maintainability, generation of clean HTML and even better performance. In my opinion, the best technology stack for web development is ASP.NET MVC 3 and Entity Framework 4 Code First as ORM. On the next year, you can expect more articles from my blog on ASP.NET MVC 3 and Entity Framework 4 Code First. RavenDB NoSQL and Document databases will get more attention on the coming year and RavenDB will be the most notable document database in the .NET stack. RavenDB is an Open Source (with a commercial option) document database for the .NET/Windows platform developed by Ayende Rahien. RavenDB is .NET focused document database which comes with a fully functional .NET client API and supports LINQ. I have written few articles on RavenDB and you can read it from here. Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) Many people didn't realized the power of MEF. The MEF lets you create extensible applications and provides a great solution for the runtime extensibility problem. I hope that .NET developers will more adopt the MEF on the next year for their .NET applications. You can get an excellent introduction on MEF from Anoop Madhusudanan’s blog post MEF or Managed Extensibility Framework – Creating a Zoo and Animals

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• Java EE 7 Roadmap

  - by Linda DeMichiel

  The Java EE 6 Platform, released in December 2009, has seen great uptake from the community with its POJO-based programming model, lightweight Web Profile, and extension points. There are now 13 Java EE 6 compliant appserver implementations today! When we announced the Java EE 7 JSR back in early 2011, our plans were that we would release it by Q4 2012. This target date was slightly over three years after the release of Java EE 6, but at the same time it meant that we had less than two years to complete a fairly comprehensive agenda — to continue to invest in significant enhancements in simplification, usability, and functionality in updated versions of the JSRs that are currently part of the platform; to introduce new JSRs that reflect emerging needs in the community; and to add support for use in cloud environments. We have since announced a minor adjustment in our dates (to the spring of 2013) in order to accommodate the inclusion of JSRs of importance to the community, such as Web Sockets and JSON-P. At this point, however, we have to make a choice. Despite our best intentions, our progress has been slow on the cloud side of our agenda. Partially this has been due to a lack of maturity in the space for provisioning, multi-tenancy, elasticity, and the deployment of applications in the cloud. And partially it is due to our conservative approach in trying to get things "right" in view of limited industry experience in the cloud area when we started this work. Because of this, we believe that providing solid support for standardized PaaS-based programming and multi-tenancy would delay the release of Java EE 7 until the spring of 2014 — that is, two years from now and over a year behind schedule. In our opinion, that is way too long. We have therefore proposed to the Java EE 7 Expert Group that we adjust our course of action — namely, stick to our current target release dates, and defer the remaining aspects of our agenda for PaaS enablement and multi-tenancy support to Java EE 8. Of course, we continue to believe that Java EE is well-suited for use in the cloud, although such use might not be quite ready for full standardization. Even today, without Java EE 7, Java EE vendors such as Oracle, Red Hat, IBM, and CloudBees have begun to offer the ability to run Java EE applications in the cloud. Deferring the remaining cloud-oriented aspects of our agenda has several important advantages: It allows Java EE Platform vendors to gain more experience with their implementations in this area and thus helps us avoid risks entailed by trying to standardize prematurely in an emerging area. It means that the community won't need to wait longer for those features that are ready at the cost of those features that need more time. Because we have already laid some of the infrastructure for cloud support in Java EE 7, including resource definition metadata, improved security configuration, JPA schema generation, etc., it will allow us to expedite a Java EE 8 release. We therefore plan to target the Java EE 8 Platform release for the spring of 2015. This shift in the scope of Java EE 7 allows us to better retain our focus on enhancements in simplification and usability and to deliver on schedule those features that have been most requested by developers. These include the support for HTML 5 in the form of Web Sockets and JSON-P; the simplified JMS 2.0 APIs; improved Managed Bean alignment, including transactional interceptors; the JAX-RS 2.0 client API; support for method-level validation; a much more comprehensive expression language; and more. We feel strongly that this is the right thing to do, and we hope that you will support us in this proposed direction.

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• Is Your Company Social on the Inside?

  - by Mike Stiles

  As we talk about the extension of social from an outbound-facing marketing tool to a platform that will reach across the entire enterprise, servicing multiple functions of that enterprise, it might be time to take a look at how social can be effectively employed for internal communications. Remember the printed company newsletter? Yeah, nobody reads it. Remember the emailed company newsletter? Yeah, nobody reads it. Why not? Shouldn’t your employees care about the company more than anything else in life and be voraciously hungry for any information related to it? The more realistic prospect is that a company’s employees don’t behave much differently at work where information is concerned than they do in their personal lives. They “tune in” to information that’s immediately relevant to them, that peaks their interest, and/or that’s presented in a visually engaging way. That currently makes an internal social platform the most ideal way to communicate within the organization. It not only facilitates more immediate, more targeted (and thus more relevant) messaging from the company out to employees, it sets a stage for employees to communicate with each other and efficiently get answers to questions from peers. It’s a collaboration tool on steroids. If you build such an internal social portal and you do it right, will employees use it? Considering social media has officially been declared more addictive than cigarettes, booze and sex…probably. But what does it mean to do an internal social platform “right”? The bar has been set pretty high. Your employees are used to Twitter and Facebook, and would roll their eyes at anything less simple or harder to navigate than those. All the Facebook best practices would apply to your internal social as well, including the importance of managing posting frequency, using photos and video, moderation & response, etc. And don’t worry, you won’t be the first to jump in. WPP's global digital agency Possible has its own social network called Colab. Nestle has “The Nest.” Red Robin’s got one. I myself got an in-depth look at McGraw-Hill’s internal social platform at Blogwell NYC. Some of these companies are building their own platforms, others are buying them off the shelf or customizing readymade solutions. But you won’t be the last either. Prescient Digital Media and the IABC learned 39% of companies don’t offer employees any social tools. Not a social network, not discussion forums, not even IM. And a great many continue to ban the use of Facebook and Twitter on the premises. That’s pretty astonishing since social has become as essential a modern day communications tool as the telephone. But such holdouts will pay a big price for being mired in fear while competitors exploit social connections unchallenged. Fish where the fish are. If social has become the way people communicate and take in information, let that be the way communication is trafficked in the organization.

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• Software and/(x)or Hardware Projects for Pre-School Kids

  - by haylem

  I offered to participate at my kid's pre-school for various activities (yes, I'm crazy like that), and one of them is to help them discover extra-curricular (big word for a pre-school, but by lack of a better one... :)) hobbies, which may or may not relate to a professional activity. At first I thought that it wouldn't be really easy to have pre-schoolers relate to programming or the internal workings of a computer system in general (and I'm more used to teaching middle-school to university-level students), but then I thought there must be a way. So I'm trying to figure out ways to introduce very young kids (3yo) to computer systems in a fun and preferably educational way. Of course, I don't expect them to start smashing the stack for fun and profit right away (or at least not voluntarily, though I could use the occasion for some toddler tests...), but I'm confident there must be ways to get them interested in both: using the systems, becoming curious about understanding what they do, interacting with the systems to modify them. I guess this setting is not really relevant after all, it's pretty much the same as if you were aiming to achieve the same for your own kids at home. Ideas Considering we're talking 3yo pre-schoolers here, and that at this age some kids are already quite confident using a mouse (some even a keyboard, if not for typing, at least to press some buttons they've come to associate with actions) while others have not yet had any interaction with computers of any kind, it needs to be: rather basic, demonstrated and played with in less then 5 or 10 minutes, doable in in groups or alone, scalable and extendable in complexity to accommodate their varying abilities. The obvious options are: basic smallish games to play with, interactive systems like LOGO, Kojo, Squeak and clones (possibly even simpler than that), or thngs like Lego Systems. I guess it can be a thing to reflect on both at the software and the hardware levels: it could be done with a desktop or laptop machine, a tablet, a smartphone (or a crap-phone, for that matter, as long as you can modify it), or even get down to building something from scratch (Raspberry Pi and Arduino being popular options at the moment). I can probably be in the form of games, funny visualizations (which are pretty much games) w/ Prototype, virtual worlds to explore. I also thought on the moment (and I hope this won't offend anyone) that some approaches to teaching pets could work (reward systems, haptic feedback and such things could quickly point a kid in the right direction to understanding how things work, in a similar fashion - I'm not suggesting to shock the kids!). Hmm, Is There an Actual Question in There? What type of systems do you think might be a good fit, both in terms of hardware and software? Do you have seen such systems, or have anything in mind to work on? Are you aware of some research in this domain, with tangible results? Any input is welcome. It's not that I don't see options: there are tons, but I have a harder time pinpointing a more concrete and definite type of project/activity, so I figure some have valuable ideas or existing ones. Note: I am not advocating that every kid should learn to program, be interested in computer systems, or that all of them in a class would even care enough to follow such an introduction with more than a blank stare. I don't buy into the "everybody would benefit from learning to program" thing. Wouldn't hurt, but not necessary in any way. But if I can walk out of there with a few of them having smiled using the thing (or heck, cried because others took them away from them), that'd be good enough. Related Questions I've seen and that seem to complement what I'm looking for, but not exactly for the same age groups or with the same goals: Teaching Programming to Kids Recommendations for teaching kids math concepts & skills for programming?

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• Wicket, Spring and Hibernate - Testing with Unitils - Error: Table not found in statement [select re

  - by John

  Hi there. I've been following a tutorial and a sample application, namely 5 Days of Wicket - Writing the tests: http://www.mysticcoders.com/blog/2009/03/10/5-days-of-wicket-writing-the-tests/ I've set up my own little project with a simple shoutbox that saves messages to a database. I then wanted to set up a couple of tests that would make sure that if a message is stored in the database, the retrieved object would contain the exact same data. Upon running mvn test all my tests fail. The exception has been pasted in the first code box underneath. I've noticed that even though my unitils.properties says to use the 'hdqldb'-dialect, this message is still output in the console window when starting the tests: INFO - Dialect - Using dialect: org.hibernate.dialect.PostgreSQLDialect. I've added the entire dump from the console as well at the bottom of this post (which goes on for miles and miles :-)). Upon running mvn test all my tests fail, and the exception is: Caused by: java.sql.SQLException: Table not found in statement [select relname from pg_class] at org.hsqldb.jdbc.Util.sqlException(Unknown Source) at org.hsqldb.jdbc.jdbcStatement.fetchResult(Unknown Source) at org.hsqldb.jdbc.jdbcStatement.executeQuery(Unknown Source) at org.apache.commons.dbcp.DelegatingStatement.executeQuery(DelegatingStatement.java:188) at org.hibernate.tool.hbm2ddl.DatabaseMetadata.initSequences(DatabaseMetadata.java:151) at org.hibernate.tool.hbm2ddl.DatabaseMetadata.(DatabaseMetadata.java:69) at org.hibernate.tool.hbm2ddl.DatabaseMetadata.(DatabaseMetadata.java:62) at org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.LocalSessionFactoryBean$3.doInHibernate(LocalSessionFactoryBean.java:958) at org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.HibernateTemplate.doExecute(HibernateTemplate.java:419) ... 49 more I've set up my unitils.properties file like so: database.driverClassName=org.hsqldb.jdbcDriver database.url=jdbc:hsqldb:mem:PUBLIC database.userName=sa database.password= database.dialect=hsqldb database.schemaNames=PUBLIC My abstract IntegrationTest class: @SpringApplicationContext({"/com/upbeat/shoutbox/spring/applicationContext.xml", "applicationContext-test.xml"}) public abstract class AbstractIntegrationTest extends UnitilsJUnit4 { private ApplicationContext applicationContext; } applicationContext-test.xml: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"? <beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:tx="http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx" xsi:schemaLocation=" http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-2.5.xsd http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx/spring-tx-2.5.xsd" <bean id="dataSource" class="org.unitils.database.UnitilsDataSourceFactoryBean"/ </beans and finally, one of the test classes: package com.upbeat.shoutbox.web; import org.apache.wicket.spring.injection.annot.test.AnnotApplicationContextMock; import org.apache.wicket.util.tester.WicketTester; import org.junit.Before; import org.junit.Test; import org.unitils.spring.annotation.SpringBeanByType; import com.upbeat.shoutbox.HomePage; import com.upbeat.shoutbox.integrations.AbstractIntegrationTest; import com.upbeat.shoutbox.persistence.ShoutItemDao; import com.upbeat.shoutbox.services.ShoutService; public class TestHomePage extends AbstractIntegrationTest { @SpringBeanByType private ShoutService svc; @SpringBeanByType private ShoutItemDao dao; protected WicketTester tester; @Before public void setUp() { AnnotApplicationContextMock appctx = new AnnotApplicationContextMock(); appctx.putBean("shoutItemDao", dao); appctx.putBean("shoutService", svc); tester = new WicketTester(); } @Test public void testRenderMyPage() { //start and render the test page tester.startPage(HomePage.class); //assert rendered page class tester.assertRenderedPage(HomePage.class); //assert rendered label component tester.assertLabel("message", "If you see this message wicket is properly configured and running"); } } Dump from console when running mvn test: [INFO] Scanning for projects... [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [INFO] Building shoutbox [INFO] task-segment: [test] [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [INFO] [resources:resources {execution: default-resources}] [WARNING] File encoding has not been set, using platform encoding Cp1252, i.e. build is platform dependent! [WARNING] Using platform encoding (Cp1252 actually) to copy filtered resources, i.e. build is platform dependent! [INFO] Copying 3 resources [INFO] Copying 4 resources [INFO] [compiler:compile {execution: default-compile}] [INFO] Nothing to compile - all classes are up to date [INFO] [resources:testResources {execution: default-testResources}] [WARNING] File encoding has not been set, using platform encoding Cp1252, i.e. build is platform dependent! [WARNING] Using platform encoding (Cp1252 actually) to copy filtered resources, i.e. build is platform dependent! [INFO] Copying 2 resources [INFO] [compiler:testCompile {execution: default-testCompile}] [INFO] Nothing to compile - all classes are up to date [INFO] [surefire:test {execution: default-test}] [INFO] Surefire report directory: F:\Projects\shoutbox\target\surefire-reports INFO - ConfigurationLoader - Loaded main configuration file unitils-default.properties from classpath. INFO - ConfigurationLoader - Loaded custom configuration file unitils.properties from classpath. INFO - ConfigurationLoader - No local configuration file unitils-local.properties found. ------------------------------------------------------- T E S T S ------------------------------------------------------- Running com.upbeat.shoutbox.web.TestViewShoutsPage Tests run: 1, Failures: 0, Errors: 1, Skipped: 0, Time elapsed: 0.02 sec INFO - Version - Hibernate Annotations 3.4.0.GA INFO - Environment - Hibernate 3.3.0.SP1 INFO - Environment - hibernate.properties not found INFO - Environment - Bytecode provider name : javassist INFO - Environment - using JDK 1.4 java.sql.Timestamp handling INFO - Version - Hibernate Commons Annotations 3.1.0.GA INFO - AnnotationBinder - Binding entity from annotated class: com.upbeat.shoutbox.models.ShoutItem INFO - QueryBinder - Binding Named query: item.getById = from ShoutItem item where item.id = :id INFO - QueryBinder - Binding Named query: item.find = from ShoutItem item order by item.timestamp desc INFO - QueryBinder - Binding Named query: item.count = select count(item) from ShoutItem item INFO - EntityBinder - Bind entity com.upbeat.shoutbox.models.ShoutItem on table SHOUT_ITEMS INFO - AnnotationConfiguration - Hibernate Validator not found: ignoring INFO - notationSessionFactoryBean - Building new Hibernate SessionFactory INFO - earchEventListenerRegister - Unable to find org.hibernate.search.event.FullTextIndexEventListener on the classpath. Hibernate Search is not enabled. INFO - ConnectionProviderFactory - Initializing connection provider: org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.LocalDataSourceConnectionProvider INFO - SettingsFactory - RDBMS: HSQL Database Engine, version: 1.8.0 INFO - SettingsFactory - JDBC driver: HSQL Database Engine Driver, version: 1.8.0 INFO - Dialect - Using dialect: org.hibernate.dialect.PostgreSQLDialect INFO - TransactionFactoryFactory - Transaction strategy: org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.SpringTransactionFactory INFO - actionManagerLookupFactory - No TransactionManagerLookup configured (in JTA environment, use of read-write or transactional second-level cache is not recommended) INFO - SettingsFactory - Automatic flush during beforeCompletion(): disabled INFO - SettingsFactory - Automatic session close at end of transaction: disabled INFO - SettingsFactory - JDBC batch size: 1000 INFO - SettingsFactory - JDBC batch updates for versioned data: disabled INFO - SettingsFactory - Scrollable result sets: enabled INFO - SettingsFactory - JDBC3 getGeneratedKeys(): disabled INFO - SettingsFactory - Connection release mode: auto INFO - SettingsFactory - Default batch fetch size: 1 INFO - SettingsFactory - Generate SQL with comments: disabled INFO - SettingsFactory - Order SQL updates by primary key: disabled INFO - SettingsFactory - Order SQL inserts for batching: disabled INFO - SettingsFactory - Query translator: org.hibernate.hql.ast.ASTQueryTranslatorFactory INFO - ASTQueryTranslatorFactory - Using ASTQueryTranslatorFactory INFO - SettingsFactory - Query language substitutions: {} INFO - SettingsFactory - JPA-QL strict compliance: disabled INFO - SettingsFactory - Second-level cache: enabled INFO - SettingsFactory - Query cache: enabled INFO - SettingsFactory - Cache region factory : org.hibernate.cache.impl.bridge.RegionFactoryCacheProviderBridge INFO - FactoryCacheProviderBridge - Cache provider: org.hibernate.cache.HashtableCacheProvider INFO - SettingsFactory - Optimize cache for minimal puts: disabled INFO - SettingsFactory - Structured second-level cache entries: disabled INFO - SettingsFactory - Query cache factory: org.hibernate.cache.StandardQueryCacheFactory INFO - SettingsFactory - Echoing all SQL to stdout INFO - SettingsFactory - Statistics: disabled INFO - SettingsFactory - Deleted entity synthetic identifier rollback: disabled INFO - SettingsFactory - Default entity-mode: pojo INFO - SettingsFactory - Named query checking : enabled INFO - SessionFactoryImpl - building session factory INFO - essionFactoryObjectFactory - Not binding factory to JNDI, no JNDI name configured INFO - UpdateTimestampsCache - starting update timestamps cache at region: org.hibernate.cache.UpdateTimestampsCache INFO - StandardQueryCache - starting query cache at region: org.hibernate.cache.StandardQueryCache INFO - notationSessionFactoryBean - Updating database schema for Hibernate SessionFactory INFO - Dialect - Using dialect: org.hibernate.dialect.PostgreSQLDialect INFO - XmlBeanDefinitionReader - Loading XML bean definitions from class path resource [org/springframework/jdbc/support/sql-error-codes.xml] INFO - SQLErrorCodesFactory - SQLErrorCodes loaded: [DB2, Derby, H2, HSQL, Informix, MS-SQL, MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, Sybase] INFO - DefaultListableBeanFactory - Destroying singletons in org.springframework.beans.factory.support.DefaultListableBeanFactory@3e0ebb: defining beans [propertyConfigurer,dataSource,sessionFactory,shoutService,shoutItemDao,wicketApplication,org.springframework.aop.config.internalAutoProxyCreator,org.springframework.transaction.annotation.AnnotationTransactionAttributeSource#0,org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.TransactionInterceptor#0,org.springframework.transaction.config.internalTransactionAdvisor,transactionManager]; root of factory hierarchy INFO - sPathXmlApplicationContext - Refreshing org.springframework.context.support.ClassPathXmlApplicationContext@a8e586: display name [org.springframework.context.support.ClassPathXmlApplicationContext@a8e586]; startup date [Tue May 04 18:19:58 CEST 2010]; root of context hierarchy INFO - XmlBeanDefinitionReader - Loading XML bean definitions from class path resource [com/upbeat/shoutbox/spring/applicationContext.xml] INFO - XmlBeanDefinitionReader - Loading XML bean definitions from class path resource [applicationContext-test.xml] INFO - DefaultListableBeanFactory - Overriding bean definition for bean 'dataSource': replacing [Generic bean: class [org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSource]; scope=singleton; abstract=false; lazyInit=false; autowireMode=0; dependencyCheck=0; autowireCandidate=true; primary=false; factoryBeanName=null; factoryMethodName=null; initMethodName=null; destroyMethodName=close; defined in class path resource [com/upbeat/shoutbox/spring/applicationContext.xml]] with [Generic bean: class [org.unitils.database.UnitilsDataSourceFactoryBean]; scope=singleton; abstract=false; lazyInit=false; autowireMode=0; dependencyCheck=0; autowireCandidate=true; primary=false; factoryBeanName=null; factoryMethodName=null; initMethodName=null; destroyMethodName=null; defined in class path resource [applicationContext-test.xml]] INFO - sPathXmlApplicationContext - Bean factory for application context [org.springframework.context.support.ClassPathXmlApplicationContext@a8e586]: org.springframework.beans.factory.support.DefaultListableBeanFactory@5dfaf1 INFO - pertyPlaceholderConfigurer - Loading properties file from class path resource [application.properties] INFO - DefaultListableBeanFactory - Pre-instantiating singletons in org.springframework.beans.factory.support.DefaultListableBeanFactory@5dfaf1: defining beans [propertyConfigurer,dataSource,sessionFactory,shoutService,shoutItemDao,wicketApplication,org.springframework.aop.config.internalAutoProxyCreator,org.springframework.transaction.annotation.AnnotationTransactionAttributeSource#0,org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.TransactionInterceptor#0,org.springframework.transaction.config.internalTransactionAdvisor,transactionManager]; root of factory hierarchy INFO - AnnotationBinder - Binding entity from annotated class: com.upbeat.shoutbox.models.ShoutItem INFO - QueryBinder - Binding Named query: item.getById = from ShoutItem item where item.id = :id INFO - QueryBinder - Binding Named query: item.find = from ShoutItem item order by item.timestamp desc INFO - QueryBinder - Binding Named query: item.count = select count(item) from ShoutItem item INFO - EntityBinder - Bind entity com.upbeat.shoutbox.models.ShoutItem on table SHOUT_ITEMS INFO - AnnotationConfiguration - Hibernate Validator not found: ignoring INFO - notationSessionFactoryBean - Building new Hibernate SessionFactory INFO - earchEventListenerRegister - Unable to find org.hibernate.search.event.FullTextIndexEventListener on the classpath. Hibernate Search is not enabled. INFO - ConnectionProviderFactory - Initializing connection provider: org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.LocalDataSourceConnectionProvider INFO - SettingsFactory - RDBMS: HSQL Database Engine, version: 1.8.0 INFO - SettingsFactory - JDBC driver: HSQL Database Engine Driver, version: 1.8.0 INFO - Dialect - Using dialect: org.hibernate.dialect.PostgreSQLDialect INFO - TransactionFactoryFactory - Transaction strategy: org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.SpringTransactionFactory INFO - actionManagerLookupFactory - No TransactionManagerLookup configured (in JTA environment, use of read-write or transactional second-level cache is not recommended) INFO - SettingsFactory - Automatic flush during beforeCompletion(): disabled INFO - SettingsFactory - Automatic session close at end of transaction: disabled INFO - SettingsFactory - JDBC batch size: 1000 INFO - SettingsFactory - JDBC batch updates for versioned data: disabled INFO - SettingsFactory - Scrollable result sets: enabled INFO - SettingsFactory - JDBC3 getGeneratedKeys(): disabled INFO - SettingsFactory - Connection release mode: auto INFO - SettingsFactory - Default batch fetch size: 1 INFO - SettingsFactory - Generate SQL with comments: disabled INFO - SettingsFactory - Order SQL updates by primary key: disabled INFO - SettingsFactory - Order SQL inserts for batching: disabled INFO - SettingsFactory - Query translator: org.hibernate.hql.ast.ASTQueryTranslatorFactory INFO - ASTQueryTranslatorFactory - Using ASTQueryTranslatorFactory INFO - SettingsFactory - Query language substitutions: {} INFO - SettingsFactory - JPA-QL strict compliance: disabled INFO - SettingsFactory - Second-level cache: enabled INFO - SettingsFactory - Query cache: enabled INFO - SettingsFactory - Cache region factory : org.hibernate.cache.impl.bridge.RegionFactoryCacheProviderBridge INFO - FactoryCacheProviderBridge - Cache provider: org.hibernate.cache.HashtableCacheProvider INFO - SettingsFactory - Optimize cache for minimal puts: disabled INFO - SettingsFactory - Structured second-level cache entries: disabled INFO - SettingsFactory - Query cache factory: org.hibernate.cache.StandardQueryCacheFactory INFO - SettingsFactory - Echoing all SQL to stdout INFO - SettingsFactory - Statistics: disabled INFO - SettingsFactory - Deleted entity synthetic identifier rollback: disabled INFO - SettingsFactory - Default entity-mode: pojo INFO - SettingsFactory - Named query checking : enabled INFO - SessionFactoryImpl - building session factory INFO - essionFactoryObjectFactory - Not binding factory to JNDI, no JNDI name configured INFO - UpdateTimestampsCache - starting update timestamps cache at region: org.hibernate.cache.UpdateTimestampsCache INFO - StandardQueryCache - starting query cache at region: org.hibernate.cache.StandardQueryCache INFO - notationSessionFactoryBean - Updating database schema for Hibernate SessionFactory INFO - Dialect - Using dialect: org.hibernate.dialect.PostgreSQLDialect INFO - DefaultListableBeanFactory - Destroying singletons in org.springframework.beans.factory.support.DefaultListableBeanFactory@5dfaf1: defining beans [propertyConfigurer,dataSource,sessionFactory,shoutService,shoutItemDao,wicketApplication,org.springframework.aop.config.internalAutoProxyCreator,org.springframework.transaction.annotation.AnnotationTransactionAttributeSource#0,org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.TransactionInterceptor#0,org.springframework.transaction.config.internalTransactionAdvisor,transactionManager]; root of factory hierarchy Tests run: 1, Failures: 0, Errors: 1, Skipped: 0, Time elapsed: 1.34 sec <<< FAILURE! Running com.upbeat.shoutbox.integrations.ShoutItemIntegrationTest Tests run: 1, Failures: 0, Errors: 1, Skipped: 0, Time elapsed: 0 sec <<< FAILURE! Running com.upbeat.shoutbox.mocks.ShoutServiceTest Tests run: 1, Failures: 0, Errors: 1, Skipped: 0, Time elapsed: 0.01 sec <<< FAILURE! Results : Tests in error: initializationError(com.upbeat.shoutbox.web.TestViewShoutsPage) testRenderMyPage(com.upbeat.shoutbox.web.TestHomePage) initializationError(com.upbeat.shoutbox.integrations.ShoutItemIntegrationTest) initializationError(com.upbeat.shoutbox.mocks.ShoutServiceTest) Tests run: 4, Failures: 0, Errors: 4, Skipped: 0 [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [ERROR] BUILD FAILURE [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [INFO] There are test failures. Please refer to F:\Projects\shoutbox\target\surefire-reports for the individual test results. [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [INFO] For more information, run Maven with the -e switch [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [INFO] Total time: 3 seconds [INFO] Finished at: Tue May 04 18:19:58 CEST 2010 [INFO] Final Memory: 13M/31M [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Any help is greatly appreciated.

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• Ipad MPMovieplayerController video loads but automatically pauses when played

  - by slayerIQ

  Hello I am trying to get the MPMovieplayerController to work. I load a video everything goes wel i even see the first frame but then it automatically pauses, if i press play it pauses again. In the simulator it works perfectly but on the ipad device it gives the problem. I can even seek through the video and i see the frame i seeked to but nothing plays. This is some output from the console: 2010-06-08 22:16:13.145 app[3089:207] Using two-stage rotation animation. To use the smoother single-stage animation, this application must remove two-stage method implementations. [Switching to thread 12803] warning: Unable to read symbols for "/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/DeviceSupport/3.2 (7B367)/Symbols/System/Library/VideoDecoders/VCH263.videodecoder" (file not found). warning: Unable to read symbols for "/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/DeviceSupport/3.2 (7B367)/Symbols/System/Library/VideoDecoders/H264H2.videodecoder" (file not found). warning: Unable to read symbols for "/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/DeviceSupport/3.2 (7B367)/Symbols/System/Library/VideoDecoders/MP4VH2.videodecoder" (file not found). warning: Unable to read symbols for "/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/DeviceSupport/3.2 (7B367)/Symbols/System/Library/VideoDecoders/JPEGH1.videodecoder" (file not found). 2010-06-08 22:16:15.145 app[3089:207] setting file:///private/var/mobile/Applications/46CE5456-6338-4BBF-A560-DCEFF700ACE0/tmp/MediaCache/ I dont get those warning when using the simulator BTW. Does anyone know how to fix this ?

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• compiling iphone program in snow leopard wtih libsqlite3 library

  - by user360297

  Hi, I develop an iphone application which uses sqlite3 as a database. That time my OS X version was leopard. So add added libsqlite3.0.dylib to frameworks and compile without any problems it complied and with any problems I could run it on the device as well. This week I installed Snow Leopard on my Mac. Removing old Leopard version and install a fresh Snow leopard system. But my problem is now I cannot compile that program because it will give errors with sqlite3 library. I added sqlite3.0.dylib using selecting targets and then selecting file. Also tried adding selecting it from directly /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Developer/SDKs/iPhoneOS3.1.3.sdk/usr/lib I get two different errors when I compiled to device and to simulator when compiled to device, ld: warning: in /opt/local/lib/libsqlite3.0.dylib, file is not of required architecture* When compiled to simulator, ld: warning: in /opt/local/lib/libsqlite3.0.dylib, file was built for unsupported file format which is not the architecture being linked (i386) ld: warning: in /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Developer/SDKs/iPhoneOS3.1.3.sdk/usr/lib/libSystem.dylib, missing required architecture i386 in file ld: in /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Developer/SDKs/iPhoneOS3.1.3.sdk/usr/lib/libobjc.A.dylib, missing required architecture i386 in file Command /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/usr/bin/gcc-4.2 failed with exit code 1 i also tried with adding sqlite3.dylib (, I think sqlite3.0.dylib is linked to sqlite3.dylib.) but no luck. Could any one out there give me any help. I'm really trying to get this working. Please let me if you want more details. Thank you, Waruna

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• Multiple Out-of-Browser Applications in One Application

  - by Otaku

  I'm looking at a scenario where I need to create a single "master" Silverlight application and then add "child" applications for an out-of-browser Silverlight application. The scenario is something like this. A user will visit a gameboard web site and choose a game to play. Let's call it Checkers. He likes it, so then he installs the out-of-browser app to his desktop. He then finds Chess, and installs that too. For both games, while played on the site, he has stats (games played, win/loss records, etc.). For each game on the site, he navigates to a different page. But now he wants to play offline and view his stats and other cross-games information. He wants to have a single app to launch to play either game. From his single out-of-browser app, he sees that Go is also available, and he places a checkmark against it to download on his next connection. Does anyone have any experience at developing multiple out-of-browser Silverlight apps that reside within a single master app? What considerations need to be had for this type of design? How would this work in terms of install experience from different web pages?

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• Trying to compile x264 and ffmpeg for iPhone - "missing required architecture arm in file"

  - by jtrim

  I'm trying to compile x264 for use in an iPhone application. I see there are instructions on how to compile ffmpeg for use on the platform here: http://lists.mplayerhq.hu/pipermail/ffmpeg-devel/2009-October/076618.html , but I can't seem to find anything this complete for compiling x264 on the iPhone. I've found this source tree: http://gitorious.org/x264-arm that seems to have support for the ARM platform. Here is my config line: ./configure --cross-prefix=/usr/bin/ --host=arm-apple-darwin10 --extra-cflags="-B /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Developer/SDKs/iPhoneOS3.2.sdk/usr/lib/ -I /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Developer/SDKs/iPhoneOS3.2.sdk/usr/lib/" ...and inside configure I'm using the gas-preprocessor script (first link above) as my assembler: gas-preprocessor.pl gcc When I start compiling, it chunks away for a little while, then it spits out these warnings and a huge list of undefined symbols: ld: warning: option -s is obsolete and being ignored ld: warning: -force_cpusubtype_ALL will become unsupported for ARM architectures ld: warning: in /usr/lib/crt1.o, missing required architecture arm in file ld: warning: in /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.dylib, missing required architecture arm in file ld: warning: in /usr/lib/libm.dylib, missing required architecture arm in file ld: warning: in /usr/lib/libpthread.dylib, missing required architecture arm in file ld: warning: in /usr/lib/libgcc_s.1.dylib, missing required architecture arm in file ld: warning: in /usr/lib/libSystem.dylib, missing required architecture arm in file Undefined symbols: My guess would be that the problem has to do with the "missing required architecture arm in file" warning...any ideas?

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• Open source file upload with no timeout on IIS6 with ASP, ASP.NET 2.0 or PHP5

  - by Christopher Done

  I'm after a cross-platform cross-browser way of uploading files such that there is no timeout. Uploads aren't necessarily huge -- some just take a long time to upload because of the uploader's slow connection -- but the server times out anyway. I hear that there are methods to upload files in chunks so that somehow the server decides not to timeout the upload. After searching around all I can see is proprietary upload helpers and Java and Flash (SWFUpload) widgets that aren't cross-platform, don't upload in chunks, or aren't free. I'd like a way to do it in any of these platforms (ASP, ASP.NET 2.0 or PHP5), though I am not very clued up on all this .NET class/controller/project/module/visual studio/compile/etc stuff, so some kind of runnable complete project that runs on .NET 2.0 would be helpful. PHP and ASP I can assume will be more straight-forward. Unless I am completely missing something, which I suspect/hope I am, reasonable web uploads are bloody hard work in any language or platform. So my question is: how can I perform web browser uploads, cross-platform, so that they don't timeout, using free software? Is it possible at all?

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• WSMethodInvocationSetCallBack symbol not found after importing files generated from WSMakeStubs

  - by racingcow

  Hello, I am pretty new to Objective-C, and I am trying to write an iPhone app to call a simple web service. I used WSMakeStubs to point to my WSDL file, and it generated 4 files for me... WSGeneratedObj.h WSGeneratedObj.m CtServices2.h CtServices2.m I added only the WSGeneratedObj.h and WSGeneratedObj.m files into a new iPhone app, added in the mobile core services framework from... /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Developer/SDKs/iPhoneOS3.1.sdk/System/Library/Frameworks/MobileCoreServices.framework ...and then compiled. I get the following errors... Building target “iMagioSearch2” of project “iMagioSearch2” with configuration “Debug” Checking Dependencies Ld /Users/Teresa/Desktop/iMagioSearch2/iMagioSearch2/build/Debug-iphonesimulator/iMagioSearch2.app/iMagioSearch2 normal i386 cd /Users/Teresa/Desktop/iMagioSearch2/iMagioSearch2 setenv MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET 10.5 setenv PATH "/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/usr/bin:/Developer/usr/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin" /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/usr/bin/gcc-4.2 -arch i386 -isysroot /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/SDKs/iPhoneSimulator3.1.sdk -L/Users/Teresa/Desktop/iMagioSearch2/iMagioSearch2/build/Debug-iphonesimulator -F/Users/Teresa/Desktop/iMagioSearch2/iMagioSearch2/build/Debug-iphonesimulator -filelist /Users/Teresa/Desktop/iMagioSearch2/iMagioSearch2/build/iMagioSearch2.build/Debug-iphonesimulator/iMagioSearch2.build/Objects-normal/i386/iMagioSearch2.LinkFileList -mmacosx-version-min=10.5 -framework Foundation -framework UIKit -framework CoreGraphics -framework MobileCoreServices -o /Users/Teresa/Desktop/iMagioSearch2/iMagioSearch2/build/Debug-iphonesimulator/iMagioSearch2.app/iMagioSearch2 Undefined symbols: "_kWSSOAPBodyEncodingStyle", referenced from: _kWSSOAPBodyEncodingStyle$non_lazy_ptr in WSGeneratedObj.o "_WSMethodInvocationCreate", referenced from: -[WSGeneratedObj createInvocationRef:methodName:protocol:style:soapAction:methodNamespace:] in WSGeneratedObj.o "_kWSSOAPMethodNamespaceURI", referenced from: _kWSSOAPMethodNamespaceURI$non_lazy_ptr in WSGeneratedObj.o "_WSMethodInvocationUnscheduleFromRunLoop", referenced from: -[WSGeneratedObj getResultDictionary] in WSGeneratedObj.o -[WSGeneratedObj unscheduleFromRunLoop:mode:] in WSGeneratedObj.o "_WSMethodResultIsFault", referenced from: -[WSGeneratedObj isFault] in WSGeneratedObj.o "_kWSMethodInvocationResult", referenced from: _kWSMethodInvocationResult$non_lazy_ptr in WSGeneratedObj.o "_WSMethodInvocationSetProperty", referenced from: -[WSGeneratedObj createInvocationRef:methodName:protocol:style:soapAction:methodNamespace:] in WSGeneratedObj.o -[WSGeneratedObj createInvocationRef:methodName:protocol:style:soapAction:methodNamespace:] in WSGeneratedObj.o -[WSGeneratedObj createInvocationRef:methodName:protocol:style:soapAction:methodNamespace:] in WSGeneratedObj.o "_WSMethodInvocationScheduleWithRunLoop", referenced from: -[WSGeneratedObj getResultDictionary] in WSGeneratedObj.o -[WSGeneratedObj scheduleOnRunLoop:mode:] in WSGeneratedObj.o "_kWSHTTPExtraHeaders", referenced from: _kWSHTTPExtraHeaders$non_lazy_ptr in WSGeneratedObj.o "_WSMethodInvocationSetParameters", referenced from: -[WSGeneratedObj setParameters:values:names:] in WSGeneratedObj.o "_WSMethodInvocationSetCallBack", referenced from: -[WSGeneratedObj createInvocationRef:methodName:protocol:style:soapAction:methodNamespace:] in WSGeneratedObj.o ld: symbol(s) not found collect2: ld returned 1 exit status Does anyone know of anything I can check or why I might be getting this error? Thanks, David

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• Control pdb file output from build defintion file

  - by Urvi

  Hello, I am trying to generate a release build with no pdb files generated. I have seen numerous posts that suggest right-clicking on the project, selecting Properties, going to the Build tab and then to the Advanced... butoon and changing Debug Info to none. This works and all, but I need to do this for a build of ~50 solutions which contain ~25 projects each! Other posts mention editing the appropriate .csproj file, but again, with so many projects, this would take a long time. Is there any way to achieve this via the TFSBuild.proj file? I have tried adding the following to the TFSBuild.proj file, with no luck. <PropertyGroup> <Configuration>Release</Configuration> <Platform>AnyCPU</Platform> </PropertyGroup> <PropertyGroup> <DebugSymbols>false</DebugSymbols> <DebugType>none</DebugType> <Optimize>true</Optimize> </PropertyGroup> The following line prints out Release|AnyCPU, none, and false, but I still see .pdb file in the $(OutputDir) folder. <Message Text="$Configuration|Platform): $(Configuration)|$(Platform)" /> <Message Text="DebugType is: $(DebugType)"/> <Message Text="DebugSymbols is: $(DebugSymbols)"/> Thanks in advance, Urvi

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• Android ADB has moved and Eclipse is looking in the old place

  - by Peter Nelson

  I did an SDK update last night and it moved adb.exe. In its place it left a file called "adb_has_moved.txt" saying The adb tool has moved to platform-tools/ If you don't see this directory in your SDK, launch the SDK and AVD Manager (execute the android tool) and install "Android SDK Platform-tools" Please also update your PATH environment variable to include the platform-tools/ directory, so you can execute adb from any location. So I did all that, including the PATH and now I can start adb.exe from any DOS prompt. But I still can't start it from Eclipse (Galileo 3.52). When I try it says Location of the Android SDK has not been set up in the preferences ... which is not true. The SDK IS set up in Preferences. The real problem is at the top of the Preferences window where it says "Could not find C:\SDK\android-sdk-windows\ tools \adb.exe!" ...No kidding - the update moved it to C:\SDK\android-sdk-windows\ platform-tools. Because it's specifying a specific (wrong) path Eclipse is bypassing the PATH variable. So how do I get Eclipse to look in the right place?

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• Quick MVC2 checkbox question

  - by kevinmajor1

  In order to get my EF4 EntityCollection to bind with check box values, I have to manually create the check boxes in a loop like so: <p> <%: Html.Label("Platforms") %><br /> <% for(var i = 0; i < Model.AllPlatforms.Count; ++i) { %> <%: Model.AllPlatforms[i].Platform.Name %> <input type="checkbox" name="PlatformIDs" value="<%: Model.AllPlatforms[i].Platform.PlatformID %>" /><br /> <% } %> </p> It works, but it doesn't automatically populate the group of check boxes with existing values when I'm editing a model entity. Can I fudge it with something like? <p> <%: Html.Label("Platforms") %><br /> <% for(var i = 0; i < Model.AllPlatforms.Count; ++i) { %> <%: Model.AllPlatforms[i].Platform.Name %> <input type="checkbox" name="PlatformIDs" value="<%: Model.AllPlatforms[i].Platform.PlatformID %>" checked=<%: Model.GameData.Platforms.Any(p => PlatformID == i) ? "true" : "false" %> /><br /> <% } %> </p> I figure there has to be something along those lines which will work, and am just wondering if I'm on the right track. EDIT: I'm purposely staying away from MVC's check box HTML helper methods as they're too inflexible for my needs. My check boxes use integers as their values by design.

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• Accepting more simultaneous keyboard inputs

  - by unknownthreat

  Sometimes, a normal computer keyboard will only accept user's inputs up to a certain key simultaneously. I got a logitech keyboard that can accept up to 3-4 key presses at the same time. The computer does not accept any more input if you press more than 4 keys for this keyboard. And it also depends on certain areas of your keyboard as well. Some locations allow more key to be pressed (like the arrow keys), while some locations permit you to press only 1-2 keys. This also differs from keyboard to keyboard as well. Some older keyboards only accept up 1-2 keys. This isn't problematic with usual office work, but when it comes to gaming. For instance, imagine a platform game, where you have to jump, attack, and control direction at the same time. This implies several key presses and some keyboards cannot accept such simultaneous input. However, I've tried this on several games and the amount of possible keyboard inputs seem to be also different. Therefore, we have two issues: Keyboards have different amount of simultaneous inputs. Some games can accept more keyboard inputs than other games. At first, I thought this is hardware only problem, but why do some programs behave differently? Why some programs can accept more keyboard inputs than other programs? So how can we write our programs to accept more keyboard inputs?

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• Developing a 2D Game for Windows Phone 8

  - by Vaccano

  I would like to develop a 2D game for Windows Phone 8. I am a professional Application Developer by day and this seems like a fun hobby. But I have been disapointed trying to get going. It seems that 2D games (far and away the majority of games) do not have any real support. It seems the Windows Phone makers did not include support for Direct2D. So unless you are planning to make a fully 3D app, you are out of luck. So, if you just wanted to make a nice 2D app, these are your choices: Write your game using Xaml and C# (Performance Issues?) Write your game using Direct3D and but only draw on one plane. Use the DirectX Took Kit found on codeplex. It allows you to use the dying XNA framework's API for development. Number 3 seems the best for my game. But I hate to waste my time learning the XNA api when Microsoft has clearly stated that it is not going to be supported going forward. Number 2 would work, but 3D development is really hard. I would rather not have to do all that to get the 2D effect. (Assuming Direct2D is easier. I have yet to look into that.) Number 1 seems the easiest, but I worry that my app will not run well if it is based off of xaml rendering rather than DirectX. What is the suggested method from Microsoft? And who decided that 2D games were going to get shortchanged?

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• Javascript storing properties and functions in variables

  - by richard

  Hello, I'm having trouble with my programming style and I hope to get some feedback here. I recently bought Javascript: The Good Parts and while I find this a big help, I'm still having trouble designing this application. Especially when it comes to writing function and methods. Example: I have a function that let's the user switches games in my app. This function updates game-specific information in the current view. var games = { active: Titanium.App.Properties.getString('active_game'), gameswitcher_positions: { 'Game 1': 0, 'Game 2': 1, 'Game 3': 2, 'Game 4': 3, 'Game 5': 4 }, change: function(game) { if (active_game !== game) { gameswitcher.children[this.gameswitcher_positions[this.active]].backgroundImage = gameswitcher.children[this.gameswitcher_positions[this.active]].backgroundImage.replace('_selected', ''); gameswitcher.children[this.gameswitcher_positions[game]].backgroundImage = gameswitcher.children[this.gameswitcher_positions[game]].backgroundImage.replace('.png', '_selected.png'); events.update(game); this.active = game; } }, init: function() { gameswitcher.children[this.gameswitcher_positions[this.active]].backgroundImage = gameswitcher.children[this.gameswitcher_positions[this.active]].backgroundImage.replace('.png', '_selected.png'); events.update(this.active); } }; gameswitcher is a container view which contains buttons to switch games. I am not satisfied with this approach but I cannot think of a better one. Should I place the gameswitcher_positions outside of the variable in a seperate variable instead of as a property? And what about the active game? Please give me feedback, what am I doing wrong?

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• Reading the .vcproj file with C#

  - by Dulantha Fernando

  We create the vcproj file with the makefileproj keyword so we can use our own build in VS. My question is, using C#, how do you read the "C++" from the following vcproj file: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="Windows-1252"?> <VisualStudioProject ProjectType="Visual C++" Version="8.00" Name="TestCSProj" ProjectGUID="{840501C9-6AFE-8CD6-1146-84208624C0B0}" RootNamespace="TestCSProj" Keyword="MakeFileProj" > <Platforms> <Platform Name="x64" /> <Platform Name="C++" ===> I need to read "C++" /> </Platforms> I used XmlNode and got upto the second Platform: String path = "C:\\blah\\TestCSProj\\TestCSProj\\TestCSProj.vcproj"; FileStream fs = new FileStream(path, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read, FileShare.ReadWrite); XmlDocument xmldoc = new XmlDocument(); xmldoc.Load(fs); XmlNodeList oldFiles = xmldoc.GetElementsByTagName("Platform"); XmlAttribute name = oldFiles[1].Attributes[0]; Console.WriteLine(name.Name); This will print Name, but I need "C++". How do I read that? Thank you very much in advance

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• PHP, MySQL, Memcache / Ajax Scaling Problem

  - by Jeff Andersen

  I'm building a ajax tic tac toe game in PHP/MySQL. The premise of the game is to be able to share a url like mygame.com/123 with your friends and you play multiple simultaneous games. The way I have it set up is that a file (reload.php) is being called every 3 seconds while the user is viewing their game board space. This reload.php builds their game boards and the output (html) replaces their current game board (thus showing games in which it is their turn) Initially I built it entirely with PHP/MySQL and had zero caching. A friend gave me a suggestion to try doing all of the temporary/quick read information through memcache (storing moves, and ID matchups) and then building the game boards from this information. My issue is that, both solutions encounter a wall when there is roughly 30-40 active users with roughly 40-50 games running. It is running on a VPS from VPS.net with 2 nodes. (Dedicated CPU: 1.2GHz, RAM: 752MB) Each call to reload.php peforms 3 selects and 2 insert queries. The size of the data being pulled is negligible. The same actions happen on index.php to build the boards for the initial visit. Now that the backstory is done, my question is: Would there be a bottleneck in that each user is polling the same file every 3 seconds to rebuild their gameboards, and that all users are sitting on index.php from which the AJAX calls are made within the HTML. If so, is it possible to spread the users' calls out over a set of files designated to building the game boards (eg. reload1.php 2, 3 etc) and direct users to the appropriate file. Would this relieve the pressure? A long winded explanation; however, I didn't have anywhere else to ask. Thanks very much for any insight.

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• usb mouse/keyboard doesn't work with 3.11.0-12-generic kernel

  - by x-yuri

  I can't use my usb keyboard/mouse after upgrade from raring to saucy. The keyboard works in grub menu and if I boot with the previous kernel version (3.8.0-31-generic). My new kernel version is 3.11.0-12-generic. I've got Mad Catz R.A.T.7 wired USB mouse, Canyon CNL-MBMSO02 wired usb mouse and Logitech diNovo Edge wireless keyboard, connected to computer through Logitech Unifying Receiver. Using PS/2 keyboard I've managed to get some information. dmesg says: [ 0.166273] ACPI: bus type USB registered [ 0.166273] usbcore: registered new interface driver usbfs [ 0.166273] usbcore: registered new interface driver hub [ 0.166273] usbcore: registered new device driver usb ... [ 3.534226] ehci_hcd: USB 2.0 'Enhanced' Host Controller (EHCI) Driver [ 3.534228] ehci-pci: EHCI PCI platform driver [ 3.534291] ehci-pci 0000:00:1a.7: setting latency timer to 64 [ 3.534299] ehci-pci 0000:00:1a.7: EHCI Host Controller [ 3.534304] ehci-pci 0000:00:1a.7: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 1 [ 3.534315] ehci-pci 0000:00:1a.7: debug port 1 [ 3.538218] ehci-pci 0000:00:1a.7: cache line size of 64 is not supported [ 3.538231] ehci-pci 0000:00:1a.7: irq 18, io mem 0xd3325400 [ 3.548017] ehci-pci 0000:00:1a.7: USB 2.0 started, EHCI 1.00 [ 3.548042] usb usb1: New USB device found, idVendor=1d6b, idProduct=0002 [ 3.548045] usb usb1: New USB device strings: Mfr=3, Product=2, SerialNumber=1 [ 3.548048] usb usb1: Product: EHCI Host Controller [ 3.548050] usb usb1: Manufacturer: Linux 3.11.0-12-generic ehci_hcd [ 3.548053] usb usb1: SerialNumber: 0000:00:1a.7 [ 3.548155] hub 1-0:1.0: USB hub found [ 3.548159] hub 1-0:1.0: 6 ports detected [ 3.548311] ehci-pci 0000:00:1d.7: setting latency timer to 64 [ 3.548319] ehci-pci 0000:00:1d.7: EHCI Host Controller [ 3.548323] ehci-pci 0000:00:1d.7: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 2 [ 3.548333] ehci-pci 0000:00:1d.7: debug port 1 [ 3.552228] ehci-pci 0000:00:1d.7: cache line size of 64 is not supported [ 3.552239] ehci-pci 0000:00:1d.7: irq 23, io mem 0xd3325000 [ 3.564014] ehci-pci 0000:00:1d.7: USB 2.0 started, EHCI 1.00 [ 3.564044] usb usb2: New USB device found, idVendor=1d6b, idProduct=0002 [ 3.564047] usb usb2: New USB device strings: Mfr=3, Product=2, SerialNumber=1 [ 3.564050] usb usb2: Product: EHCI Host Controller [ 3.564052] usb usb2: Manufacturer: Linux 3.11.0-12-generic ehci_hcd [ 3.564056] usb usb2: SerialNumber: 0000:00:1d.7 [ 3.564163] hub 2-0:1.0: USB hub found [ 3.564167] hub 2-0:1.0: 6 ports detected [ 3.564274] ehci-platform: EHCI generic platform driver [ 3.564280] ohci_hcd: USB 1.1 'Open' Host Controller (OHCI) Driver [ 3.564281] ohci-platform: OHCI generic platform driver [ 3.564287] uhci_hcd: USB Universal Host Controller Interface driver [ 3.564345] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1a.0: setting latency timer to 64 [ 3.564347] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1a.0: UHCI Host Controller [ 3.564352] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1a.0: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 3 [ 3.564378] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1a.0: irq 16, io base 0x0000f0c0 [ 3.564402] usb usb3: New USB device found, idVendor=1d6b, idProduct=0001 [ 3.564404] usb usb3: New USB device strings: Mfr=3, Product=2, SerialNumber=1 [ 3.564406] usb usb3: Product: UHCI Host Controller [ 3.564408] usb usb3: Manufacturer: Linux 3.11.0-12-generic uhci_hcd [ 3.564410] usb usb3: SerialNumber: 0000:00:1a.0 [ 3.564478] hub 3-0:1.0: USB hub found [ 3.564482] hub 3-0:1.0: 2 ports detected [ 3.564589] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1a.1: setting latency timer to 64 [ 3.564592] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1a.1: UHCI Host Controller [ 3.564597] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1a.1: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 4 [ 3.564623] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1a.1: irq 21, io base 0x0000f0a0 [ 3.564647] usb usb4: New USB device found, idVendor=1d6b, idProduct=0001 [ 3.564649] usb usb4: New USB device strings: Mfr=3, Product=2, SerialNumber=1 [ 3.564651] usb usb4: Product: UHCI Host Controller [ 3.564653] usb usb4: Manufacturer: Linux 3.11.0-12-generic uhci_hcd [ 3.564654] usb usb4: SerialNumber: 0000:00:1a.1 [ 3.564727] hub 4-0:1.0: USB hub found [ 3.564730] hub 4-0:1.0: 2 ports detected [ 3.564834] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1a.2: setting latency timer to 64 [ 3.564837] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1a.2: UHCI Host Controller [ 3.564843] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1a.2: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 5 [ 3.564863] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1a.2: irq 18, io base 0x0000f080 [ 3.564885] usb usb5: New USB device found, idVendor=1d6b, idProduct=0001 [ 3.564887] usb usb5: New USB device strings: Mfr=3, Product=2, SerialNumber=1 [ 3.564889] usb usb5: Product: UHCI Host Controller [ 3.564891] usb usb5: Manufacturer: Linux 3.11.0-12-generic uhci_hcd [ 3.564892] usb usb5: SerialNumber: 0000:00:1a.2 [ 3.564962] hub 5-0:1.0: USB hub found [ 3.564966] hub 5-0:1.0: 2 ports detected [ 3.565073] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: setting latency timer to 64 [ 3.565076] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: UHCI Host Controller [ 3.565081] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 6 [ 3.565101] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: irq 23, io base 0x0000f060 [ 3.565124] usb usb6: New USB device found, idVendor=1d6b, idProduct=0001 [ 3.565127] usb usb6: New USB device strings: Mfr=3, Product=2, SerialNumber=1 [ 3.565128] usb usb6: Product: UHCI Host Controller [ 3.565130] usb usb6: Manufacturer: Linux 3.11.0-12-generic uhci_hcd [ 3.565132] usb usb6: SerialNumber: 0000:00:1d.0 [ 3.565195] hub 6-0:1.0: USB hub found [ 3.565198] hub 6-0:1.0: 2 ports detected [ 3.565303] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.1: setting latency timer to 64 [ 3.565306] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.1: UHCI Host Controller [ 3.565310] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.1: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 7 [ 3.565329] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.1: irq 19, io base 0x0000f040 [ 3.565352] usb usb7: New USB device found, idVendor=1d6b, idProduct=0001 [ 3.565354] usb usb7: New USB device strings: Mfr=3, Product=2, SerialNumber=1 [ 3.565356] usb usb7: Product: UHCI Host Controller [ 3.565358] usb usb7: Manufacturer: Linux 3.11.0-12-generic uhci_hcd [ 3.565359] usb usb7: SerialNumber: 0000:00:1d.1 [ 3.565424] hub 7-0:1.0: USB hub found [ 3.565427] hub 7-0:1.0: 2 ports detected [ 3.565534] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.2: setting latency timer to 64 [ 3.565537] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.2: UHCI Host Controller [ 3.565541] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.2: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 8 [ 3.565560] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.2: irq 18, io base 0x0000f020 [ 3.565584] usb usb8: New USB device found, idVendor=1d6b, idProduct=0001 [ 3.565587] usb usb8: New USB device strings: Mfr=3, Product=2, SerialNumber=1 [ 3.565588] usb usb8: Product: UHCI Host Controller [ 3.565590] usb usb8: Manufacturer: Linux 3.11.0-12-generic uhci_hcd [ 3.565592] usb usb8: SerialNumber: 0000:00:1d.2 [ 3.565658] hub 8-0:1.0: USB hub found [ 3.565661] hub 8-0:1.0: 2 ports detected ... [ 4.120014] usb 2-3: new high-speed USB device number 2 using ehci-pci ... [ 4.468908] usb 2-3: New USB device found, idVendor=046d, idProduct=0825 [ 4.468912] usb 2-3: New USB device strings: Mfr=0, Product=0, SerialNumber=2 [ 4.468914] usb 2-3: SerialNumber: AF582E10 ... [ 5.284019] usb 5-2: new full-speed USB device number 2 using uhci_hcd [ 5.465903] usb 5-2: New USB device found, idVendor=046d, idProduct=0b04 [ 5.465908] usb 5-2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0 [ 5.465911] usb 5-2: Product: Logitech BT Mini-Receiver [ 5.465914] usb 5-2: Manufacturer: Logitech [ 5.468948] hub 5-2:1.0: USB hub found [ 5.470898] hub 5-2:1.0: 3 ports detected [ 5.476096] Switched to clocksource tsc [ 5.712099] usb 7-2: new full-speed USB device number 2 using uhci_hcd [ 5.896366] usb 7-2: New USB device found, idVendor=046d, idProduct=c52b [ 5.896370] usb 7-2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0 [ 5.896372] usb 7-2: Product: USB Receiver [ 5.896374] usb 7-2: Manufacturer: Logitech [ 6.140016] usb 8-1: new full-speed USB device number 2 using uhci_hcd [ 6.324597] usb 8-1: New USB device found, idVendor=0738, idProduct=1708 [ 6.324603] usb 8-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0 [ 6.324605] usb 8-1: Product: Mad Catz R.A.T.7 Mouse [ 6.324608] usb 8-1: Manufacturer: Mad Catz [ 6.564012] usb 8-2: new low-speed USB device number 3 using uhci_hcd [ 6.746602] usb 8-2: New USB device found, idVendor=1d57, idProduct=0010 [ 6.746608] usb 8-2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0 [ 6.746610] usb 8-2: Product: usb mouse with wheel [ 6.746613] usb 8-2: Manufacturer: HID-Compliant Mouse [ 7.337898] usb 5-2.2: new full-speed USB device number 3 using uhci_hcd [ 7.490902] usb 5-2.2: New USB device found, idVendor=046d, idProduct=c713 [ 7.490907] usb 5-2.2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3 [ 7.490910] usb 5-2.2: Product: Logitech BT Mini-Receiver [ 7.490913] usb 5-2.2: Manufacturer: Logitech [ 7.490915] usb 5-2.2: SerialNumber: 001F203BD6A7 [ 7.569898] usb 5-2.3: new full-speed USB device number 4 using uhci_hcd [ 7.722901] usb 5-2.3: New USB device found, idVendor=046d, idProduct=c714 [ 7.722906] usb 5-2.3: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3 [ 7.722909] usb 5-2.3: Product: Logitech BT Mini-Receiver [ 7.722911] usb 5-2.3: Manufacturer: Logitech [ 7.722913] usb 5-2.3: SerialNumber: 001F203BD6A7 lsusb (more output): Bus 002 Device 002: ID 046d:0825 Logitech, Inc. Webcam C270 Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 008 Device 003: ID 1d57:0010 Xenta Bus 008 Device 002: ID 0738:1708 Mad Catz, Inc. Bus 008 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 007 Device 002: ID 046d:c52b Logitech, Inc. Unifying Receiver Bus 007 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 005 Device 004: ID 046d:c714 Logitech, Inc. diNovo Edge Keyboard Bus 005 Device 003: ID 046d:c713 Logitech, Inc. Bus 005 Device 002: ID 046d:0b04 Logitech, Inc. Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub More background. Before that I had a problem with logging in to GNOME. During which I upgraded all the packages at one point (apt-get upgrade) and it stopped booting at all (it didn't get to login screen). Then I fixed PATH issue and now I've got this usb-not-working issue. I tried reinstalling kernel, to no effect. Is there anything else I can do to fix or diagnose the problem?

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• Too Many Kittens To Juggle At Once

  - by Bil Simser

  Ahh, the Internet. That crazy, mixed up place where one tweet turns into a conversation between dozens of people and spawns a blogpost. This is the direct result of such an event this morning. It started innocently enough, with this: Then followed up by a blog post by Joel here. In the post, Joel introduces us to the term Business Solutions Architect with mad skillz like InfoPath, Access Services, Excel Services, building Workflows, and SSRS report creation, all while meeting the business needs of users in a SharePoint environment. I somewhat disagreed with Joel that this really wasn’t a new role (at least IMHO) and that a good Architect or BA should really be doing this job. As Joel pointed out when you’re building a SharePoint team this kind of role is often overlooked. Engineers might be able to build workflows but is the right workflow for the right problem? Michael Pisarek wrote about a SharePoint Business Architect a few months ago and it’s a pretty solid assessment. Again, I argue you really shouldn’t be looking for roles that don’t exist and I don’t suggest anyone create roles to hire people to fill them. That’s basically creating a solution looking for problems. Michael’s article does have some great points if you’re lost in the quagmire of SharePoint duties though (and I especially like John Ross’ quote “The coolest shit is worthless if it doesn’t meet business needs”). SharePoinTony summed it up nicely with “SharePoint Solutions knowledge is both lacking and underrated in most environments. Roles help”. Having someone on the team who can dance between a business user and a coder can be difficult. Remember the idea of telling something to someone and them passing it on to the next person. By the time the story comes round the circle it’s a shadow of it’s former self with little resemblance to the original tale. This is very much business requirements as they’re told by the user to a business analyst, written down on paper, read by an architect, tuned into a solution plan, and implemented by a developer. Transformations between what was said, what was heard, what was written down, and what was developed can be distant cousins. Not everyone has the skill of communication and even less have negotiation skills to suit the SharePoint platform. Negotiation is important because not everything can be (or should be) done in SharePoint. Sometimes it’s just not appropriate to build it on the SharePoint platform but someone needs to know enough about the platform and what limitations it might have, then communicate that (and/or negotiate) with a customer or user so it’s not about “You can’t have this” to “Let’s try it this way”. Visualize the possible instead of denying the impossible. So what is the right SharePoint team? My cromag brain came with a fairly simpleton answer (and I’m sure people will just say this is a cop-out). The perfect SharePoint team is just enough people to do the job that know the technology and business problem they’re solving. Bridge the gap between business need and technology platform and you have an architect. Communicate the needs of the business effectively so the entire team understands it and you have a business analyst. Can you get this with full time workers? Maybe but don’t expect miracles out of the gate. Also don’t take a consultant’s word as gospel. Some consultants just don’t have the diversity of the SharePoint platform to be worth their value so be careful. You really need someone who knows enough about SharePoint to be able to validate a consultants knowledge level. This is basically try for any consultant, not just a SharePoint one. Specialization is good and needed. A good, well-balanced SharePoint team is one of people that can solve problems with work with the technology, not against it. Having a top developer is great, but don’t rely on them to solve world hunger if they can’t communicate very well with users. An expert business analyst might be great at gathering requirements so the entire team can understand them, but if it means building 100% custom solutions because they don’t fit inside the SharePoint boundaries isn’t of much value. Just repeat. There is no silver bullet. There is no silver bullet. There is no silver bullet. A few people pointed out Nick Inglis’ article Excluding The Information Professional In SharePoint. It’s a good read too and hits home that maybe some developers and IT pros need some extra help in the information space. If you’re in an organization that needs labels on people, come up with something everyone understands and go with it. If that’s Business Solutions Architect, SharePoint Advisor, or Guy Who Knows A Lot About Portals, make it work for you. We all wish that one person could master all that is SharePoint but we also know that doesn’t scale very well and you quickly get into the hit-by-a-bus syndrome (with the organization coming to a full crawl when the guy or girl goes on vacation, gets sick, or pops out a baby). There are too many gaps in SharePoint knowledge to have any one person know it all and too many kittens to juggle all at once. We like to consider ourselves experts in our field, but trying to tackle too many roles at once and we end up being mediocre jack of all trades, master of none. Don't fall into this pit. It's a deep, dark hole you don't want to try to claw your way out of. Trust me. Been there. Done that. Got the t-shirt. In the end I don’t disagree with Joel. SharePoint is a beast and not something that should be taken on by newbies. If you just read “Teach Yourself SharePoint in 24 Hours” and want to go build your corporate intranet or the next killer business solution with all your new found knowledge plan to pony up consultant dollars a few months later when everything goes to Hell in a handbasket and falls over. I’m not saying don’t build solutions in SharePoint. I’m just saying that building effective ones takes skill like any craft and not something you can just cobble together with a little bit of cursory knowledge. Thanks to *everyone* who participated in this tweet rush. It was fun and educational.

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• The APEX of Business Value...or...the Business Value of APEX? Oracle Cloud Takes Oracle APEX to New Heights!

  - by Gene Eun

  The attraction of Oracle Application Express (APEX) has increased tremendously with the recent launch of the Oracle Cloud. APEX already supported departmental development and deployment of business applications with minimal involvement from the IT department. Positioned as the ideal replacement for MS Access, APEX probably has managed better to capture the eye of developers and was used for enterprise application development at least as much as for the kind of tactical applications that Oracle strategically positioned it for. With APEX as PaaS from the Oracle Cloud, a leap is made to a much higher level of business value. Now the IT department is not even needed to make infrastructure available with a database running  on it. All the business needs is a credit card. And the business application that is developed, managed and used from the cloud through a standard browser can now just as easily be accessed by users from around the world as by users from the business department itself. As a bonus – the development of the APEX application is also done in the cloud – with no special demands on the location or the enterprise access privileges of the developers. To sum it up: APEX from Oracle Cloud Database Service get the development environment up and running in minutes no involvement from the internal IT department required (not for infrastructure, platform, or development) superior availability and scalability is offered by Oracle users from anywhere in the world can be invited to access the application developers from anywhere in the world can participate in creating and maintaining the application In addition: because the Oracle Cloud platform is the same as the on-premise platform, you can still decide to move the APEX application between the cloud and the local environment – and back again. The REST-ful services that are available through APEX allow programmatic interaction with the database under the APEX application. That means that this database can be synchronized with on premise databases or data stores in (other) clouds. Through the Oracle Cloud Messaging Service, the APEX application can easily enter into asynchronous conversations with other APEX applications, Fusion Middleware applications (ADF, SOA, BPM) and any other type of REST-enabled application. In my opinion, now, for the first time perhaps, APEX offers the attraction to the business that has been suggested before: because of the cloud, all the business needs is  a credit card (a budget of $175 per month), an internet-connection and a browser. Not like before, with a PC hidden under a desk or a database running somewhere in the data center. No matter how unattended: equipment is needed, power is consumed, the database needs to be kept running and if Oracle Database XE does not suffice, software licenses are required as well. And this set up always has a security challenge associated with it. The cloud fee for the Oracle Cloud Database Service includes infrastructure, power, licenses, availability, platform upgrades, a collection of reusable application components and the development and runtime environments containing the APEX platform. Of course this not only means that business departments can move quickly without having to convince their IT colleagues to move along – it also means that small organizations that do not even have IT colleagues can do the same. Getting tailored applications or applications up and running to get in touch with users and customers all over the world is now within easy reach for small outfits – without any investment. My misunderstanding For a long time, I was under the impression that the essence of APEX was that the business could create applications themselves – meaning that business ‘people’ would actually go into APEX to create the application. To me APEX was too much of a developers’ tool to see that happen – apart from the odd business analyst who missed his or her calling as an IT developer. Having looked at various other cloud based development offerings – including Force.com, Mendix, WaveMaker, WorkXpress, OrangeScape, Caspio and Cordys- I have come to realize my mistake. All these platforms are positioned for 'the business' but require a fair amount of coding and technical expertise. However, they make the business happy nevertheless, because they allow the  business to completely circumvent the IT department. That is the essence. Not having to go through the red tape, not having to wait for IT staff who (justifiably) need weeks or months to provide an environment, not having to deal with administrators (again, justifiably) refusing to take on that 'strange environment'. Being able to think of an initiative and turn into action right away. The business does not have to build the application - it can easily hire some external developers or even that nerdy boy next door. They can get started, get an application up and running and invite users in – especially external users such as customers. They will worry later about upgrades and life cycle management and integration. To get applications up and running quickly and start turning ideas into action and results rightaway. That is the key selling point for all these cloud offerings, including APEX from the Cloud. And it is a compelling story. For APEX probably even more so than for the others. While I consider APEX a somewhat proprietary framework compared with ‘regular’ Java/JEE web development (or even .NET and PHP  development), it is still far more open than most cloud environments. APEX is SQL and PL/SQL based – nothing special about those languages – and can run just as easily on site as in the cloud. It has been around since 2004 (that is not including several predecessors that fed straight into APEX) so it can be considered pretty mature. Oracle as a company seems pretty stable – so investments in its technology are bound to last for some time to come. By the way: neither APEX nor the other Cloud DevaaS offerings are targeted at creating applications with enormous life times. They fit into a trend of agile development and rapid life cycle management, with fairly light weight user interfaces that quickly adapt to taste, technology trends and functional requirements and that are easily replaced. APEX and ADF – a match made in heaven?! (or at least in the sky) Note that using APEX only for cloud based database with REST-ful Services is also a perfectly viable scenario: any UI – mobile or browser based – capable of consuming REST-ful services can be created against such a business tier. Creating an ADF Mobile application for example that runs aginst REST-ful services is a best practice for mobile development. Such REST-ful services can be consumed from any service provider – including the Cloud based APEX powered REST-ful services running against the Oracle Cloud Database Service! The ADF Mobile architecture overview can easily be morphed to fit the APEX services in – allowing for a cloud based mobile app: Want to learn more about Oracle Database Cloud Service or Oracle Cloud, just visit cloud.oracle.com  or oracle.com/cloud. Repost of a blog entry by Rick Greenwald, Director of Product Management, Oracle Database Cloud Service.

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• Emit Knowledge - social network for knowledge sharing

  - by hajan

  Emit Knowledge, as the words refer - it's a social network for emitting / sharing knowledge from users by users. Those who can benefit the most out of this network is perhaps all of YOU who have something to share with others and contribute to the knowledge world. I've been closely communicating with the core team of this very, very interesting, brand new social network (with specific purpose!) about the concept, idea and the vision they have for their product and I can say with a lot of confidence that this network has real potential to become something from which we will all benefit. I won't speak much about that and would prefer to give you link and try it yourself - http://www.emitknowledge.com Mainly, through the past few months I've been testing this network and it is getting improved all the time. The user experience is great, you can easily find out what you need and it follows some known patterns that are common for all social networks. They have some real good ideas and plans that are already under development for the next updates of their product. You can do micro blogging or you can do regular normal blogging… it’s up to you, and the way it works, it is seamless. Here is a short Question and Answers (QA) interview I made with the lead of the team, Marijan Nikolovski: 1. Can you please explain us briefly, what is Emit Knowledge? Emit Knowledge is a brand new knowledge based social network, delivering quality content from users to users. We believe that people’s knowledge, experience and professional thoughts compose quality content, worth sharing among millions around the world. Therefore, we created the platform that matches people’s need to share and gain knowledge in the most suitable and comfortable way. Easy to work with, Emit Knowledge lets you to smoothly craft and emit knowledge around the globe. 2. How 'old' is Emit Knowledge? In hamster’s years we are almost five years old start-up :). Just kidding. We’ve released our public beta about three months ago. Our official release date is 27 of June 2012. 3. How did you come up with this idea? Everything started from a simple idea to solve a complex problem. We’ve seen that the social web has become polluted with data and is on the right track to lose its base principles – socialization and common cause. That was our start point. We’ve gathered the team, drew some sketches and started to mind map the idea. After several idea refactoring’s Emit Knowledge was born. 4. Is there any competition out there in the market? Currently we don't have any competitors that share the same cause. What makes our platform different is the ideology that our product promotes and the functionalities that our platform offers for easy socialization based on interests and knowledge sharing. 5. What are the main technologies used to build Emit Knowledge? Emit Knowledge was built on a heterogeneous pallet of technologies. Currently, we have four of separation: UI – Built on ASP.NET MVC3 and Knockout.js; Messaging infrastructure – Build on top of RabbitMQ; Background services – Our in-house solution for job distribution, orchestration and processing; Data storage – Build on top of MongoDB; What are the main reasons you've chosen ASP.NET MVC? Since all of our team members are .NET engineers, the decision was very natural. ASP.NET MVC is the only Microsoft web stack that sticks to the HTTP behavioral standards. It is easy to work with, have a tiny learning curve and everyone who is familiar with the HTTP will understand its architecture and convention without any difficulties. 6. What are the main reasons for choosing ASP.NET MVC? Since all of our team members are .NET engineers, the decision was very natural. ASP.NET MVC is the only Microsoft web stack that sticks to the HTTP behavioral standards. It is easy to work with, have a tiny learning curve and everyone who is familiar with the HTTP will understand its architecture and convention without any difficulties. 7. Did you use some of the latest Microsoft technologies? If yes, which ones? Yes, we like to rock the cutting edge tech house. Currently we are using Microsoft’s latest technologies like ASP.NET MVC, Web API (work in progress) and the best for the last; we are utilizing Windows Azure IaaS to the bone. 8. Can you please tell us shortly, what would be the benefit of regular bloggers in other blogging platforms to join Emit Knowledge? Well, unless you are some of the smoking ace gurus whose blogs are followed by a large number of users, our platform offers knowledge based segregated community equipped with tools that will enable both current and future users to expand their relations and to self-promote in the community based on their activity and knowledge sharing. 10. I see you are working very intensively and there is already integration with some third-party services to make the process of sharing and emitting knowledge easier, which services did you integrate until now and what do you plan do to next? We have “reemit” functionality for internal sharing and we also support external services like: Twitter; LinkedIn; Facebook; For the regular bloggers we have an extra cream, Windows Live Writer support for easy blog posts emitting. 11. What should we expect next? Currently, we are working on a new fancy community feature. This means that we are going to support user groups to be formed. So for all existing communities and user groups out there, wait us a little bit, we are coming for rescue :). One of the top next features they are developing is the Community Feature. It means, if you have your own User Group, Community Group or any other Group on which you and your users are mostly blogging or sharing (emitting) knowledge in various ways, Emit Knowledge as a platform will help you have everything you need to promote your group, make new followers and host all the necessary stuff that you have had need of. I would invite you to try the network and start sharing knowledge in a way that will help you gather new followers and spread your knowledge faster, easier and in a more efficient way! Let’s Emit Knowledge!

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• Christmas in the Clouds

  - by andrewbrust

  I have been spending the last 2 weeks immersing myself in a number of Windows Azure and SQL Azure technologies.  And in setting up a new business (I’ll speak more about that in the future), I have also become a customer of Microsoft’s BPOS (Business Productivity Online Services).  In short, it has been a fortnight of Microsoft cloud computing. On the Azure side, I’ve looked, of course, at Web Roles and Worker Roles.  But I’ve also looked at Azure Storage’s REST API (including coding to it directly), I’ve looked at Azure Drive and the new VM Role; I’ve looked quite a bit at SQL Azure (including the project “Houston” Silverlight UI) and I’ve looked at SQL Azure labs’ OData service too. I’ve also looked at DataMarket and its integration with both PowerPivot and native Excel.  Then there’s AppFabric Caching, SQL Azure Reporting (what I could learn of it) and the Visual Studio tooling for Azure, including the storage of certificate-based credentials.  And to round it out with some user stuff, on the BPOS side, I’ve been working with Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and LiveMeeting. I have to say I like a lot of what I’ve been seeing.  Azure’s not perfect, and BPOS certainly isn’t either.  But there’s good stuff in all these products, and there’s a lot of value. Azure Goes Deep Most people know that Web and Worker roles put the platform in charge of spinning virtual machines up and down, and keeping them up to date. But you can go way beyond that now.  The still-in-beta VM Role gives you the power to craft the machine (much as does Amazon’s EC2), though it takes away the platform’s self-managing attributes.  It still spins instances up and down, making drive storage non-durable, but Azure Drive gives you the ability to store VHD files as blobs and mount them as virtual hard drives that are readable and writeable.  Whether with Azure Storage or SQL Azure, Azure does data.  And OData is everywhere.  Azure Table Storage supports an OData Interface.  So does SQL Azure and so does DataMarket (the former project “Dallas”).  That means that Azure data repositories aren’t just straightforward to provision and configure…they’re also easy to program against, from just about any programming environment, in a RESTful manner.  And for more .NET-centric implementations, Azure AppFabric caching takes the technology formerly known as “Velocity” and throws it up into the cloud, speeding data access even more. Snapping in Place Once you get the hang of it, this stuff just starts to work in a way that becomes natural to understand.  I wasn’t expecting that, and I was really happy to discover it. In retrospect, I am not surprised, because I think the various Azure teams are the center of gravity for Redmond’s innovation right now.  The products belie this and so do my observations of the product teams’ motivation and high morale.  It is really good to see this; Microsoft needs to lead somewhere, and they need to be seen as the underdog while doing so.  With Azure, both requirements are in place.   BPOS: Bad Acronym, Easy Setup BPOS is about products you already know; Exchange, SharePoint, Live Meeting and Office Communications Server.  As such, it’s hard not to be underwhelmed by BPOS.  Until you realize how easy it makes it to get all that stuff set up.  I would say that from sign-up to productive use took me about 45 minutes…and that included the time necessary to wrestle with my DNS provider, set up Outlook and my SmartPhone up to talk to the Exchange account, create my SharePoint site collection, and configure the Outlook Conferencing add-in to talk to the provisioned Live Meeting account. Never before did I think setting up my own Exchange mail could come anywhere close to the simplicity of setting up an SMTP/POP account, and yet BPOS actually made it faster.   What I want from my Azure Christmas Next Year Not everything about Microsoft’s cloud is good.  I close this post with a list of things I’d like to see addressed: BPOS offerings are still based on the 2007 Wave of Microsoft server technologies.  We need to get to 2010, and fast.  Arguably, the 2010 products should have been released to the off-premises channel before the on-premise sone.  Office 365 can’t come fast enough. Azure’s Internet tooling and domain naming, is scattered and confusing.  Deployed ASP.NET applications go to cloudapp.net; SQL Azure and Azure storage work off windows.net.  The Azure portal and Project Houston are at azure.com.  Then there’s appfabriclabs.com and sqlazurelabs.com.  There is a new Silverlight portal that replaces most, but not all of the HTML ones.  And Project Houston is Silvelright-based too, though separate from the Silverlight portal tooling. Microsoft is the king off tooling.  They should not make me keep an entire OneNote notebook full of portal links, account names, access keys, assemblies and namespaces and do so much CTRL-C/CTRL-V work.  I’d like to see more project templates, have them automatically reference the appropriate assemblies, generate the right using/Imports statements and prime my config files with the right markup.  Then I want a UI that lets me log in with my Live ID and pick the appropriate project, database, namespace and key string to get set up fast. Beta programs, if they’re open, should onboard me quickly.  I know the process is difficult and everyone’s going as fast as they can.  But I don’t know why it’s so difficult or why it takes so long.  Getting developers up to speed on new features quickly helps popularize the platform.  Make this a priority. Make Azure accessible from the simplicity platforms, i.e. ASP.NET Web Pages (Razor) and LightSwitch.  Support .NET 4 now.  Make WebMatrix, IIS Express and SQL Compact work with the Azure development fabric. Have HTML helpers make Azure programming easier.  Have LightSwitch work with SQL Azure and not require SQL Express.  LightSwitch has some promising Azure integration now.  But we need more.  WebMatrix has none and that’s just silly, now that the Extra Small Instance is being introduced. The Windows Azure Platform Training Kit is great.  But I want Microsoft to make it even better and I want them to evangelize it much more aggressively.  There’s a lot of good material on Azure development out there, but it’s scattered in the same way that the platform is.   The Training Kit ties a lot of disparate stuff together nicely.  Make it known. Should Old Acquaintance Be Forgot All in all, diving deep into Azure was a good way to end the year.  Diving deeper into Azure should a great way to spend next year, not just for me, but for Microsoft too.

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