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  • Built in background-scheduling system in .NET?

    - by Lasse V. Karlsen
    I ask though I doubt there is any such system. Basically I need to schedule tasks to execute at some point in the future (usually no more than a few seconds or possibly minutes from now), and have some way of cancelling that request unless too late. Ie. code that would look like this: var x = Scheduler.Schedule(() => SomethingSomething(), TimeSpan.FromSeconds(5)); ... x.Dispose(); // cancels the request Is there any such system in .NET? Is there anything in TPL that can help me? I need to run such future-actions from various instances in a system here, and would rather avoid each such class instance to have its own thread and deal with this. Also note that I don't want this (or similar, for instance through Tasks): new Thread(new ThreadStart(() => { Thread.Sleep(5000); SomethingSomething(); })).Start(); There will potentially be a few such tasks to execute, they don't need to be executed in any particular order, except for close to their deadline, and it isn't vital that they have anything like a realtime performance concept. I just want to avoid spinning up a separate thread for each such action.

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  • How to increase my "advanced" knowledge of PHP further? (quickly)

    - by Kerry
    I have been working with PHP for years and gotten a very good grasp of the language, created many advanced and not-so-advanced systems that are working very well. The problem I'm running into is that I only learn when I find a need for something that I haven't learned before. This causes me to look up solutions and other code that handles the problem, and so I will learn about a new function or structure that I hadn't seen before. It is in this way that I have learned many of my better techniques (such as studying classes put out by Amazon, Google or other major companies). The main problem with this is the concept of not being able to learn something if you don't know it exists. For instance, it took me several months of programming to learn about the empty() function, and I simply would check the string length using strlen() to check for empty values. I'm now getting into building bigger and bigger systems, and I've started to read blogs like highscalability.com and been researching MySQL replication and server data for scaling. I know that structure of your code is very important to make full systems work. After reading a recent blog about reddit's structure, it made me question if there is some standard or "accepted systems" out there. I have looked into frameworks (I've used Kohana, which I regretted, but decided that PHP frameworks were not for me) and I prefer my own library of functions rather than having a framework. My current structure is a mix between WordPress, Kohana and my own knowledge. The ways I can see as being potentially beneficial are: Read blogs Read tutorials Work with someone else Read a book What would be the best way(s) to "get to the next level" the level of being a very good system developer?

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  • Winlibre - An Aptitude-Synaptic for Windows. Would that be useful?

    - by acadavid
    Hi everyone. Last year, in 2009 GSoC, I participated with an organization called Winlibre. The basic idea is having a project similar to Aptitude (or Apt-get) and a GUI like Synaptic but for Windows and just to hold (initially), only open source software. The project was just ok, we finished what we considered was a good starting point but unfortunately, due to different occupations of the developers, the project has been idle almost since GSoC finished. Now, I have some energy, time and interest to try to continue this development. The project was divided in 3 parts: A repository server (which i worked on, and which was going to store and serve packages and files), a package creator for developers, and the main app, which is apt-get and its GUI. I have been thinking about the project, and the first question that came to my mind is.. actually is this project useful for developers and Windows users? Keep in mind that the idea is to solve dependencies problems, and install packages "cleanly". I'm not a Windows developer and just a casual user, so i really don't have a lot of experience on how things are handled there, but as far as I have seen, all installers handle those dependencies. Will windows developers be willing to switch from installers to a packages way of handling installations of Open source Software? Or it's just ok to create packages for already existing installers? The packages concept is basically the same as .deb or .rpm files. I still have some other questions, but basically i would like to make sure that it's useful in someway to users and Windows developers, and if developers would find this project interesting. If you have any questions, feedback, suggestions or criticisms, please don't mind about posting them. Thanks!!

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  • XStream noclassdeffound error

    - by Jimmy
    I am attempting to run Xstream in a netbeans proof of concept project. I have the following code. XStream xstream = new XStream(); FileOutputStream fis = new FileOutputStream("Test.xml"); xstream.toXML(company, fis); The program is crashing on the first line of code with the following error. Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/xmlpull/v1/XmlPullParserException at com.thoughtworks.xstream.XStream.<init>(XStream.java:336) at Parser.XParser.Parse(XParser.java:24) at rejaxbtest.REJAXBTest.main(REJAXBTest.java:39) Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.xmlpull.v1.XmlPullParserException at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:366) at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:355) at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method) at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:354) at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:423) at sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Launcher.java:308) at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:356) ... 3 more Java Result: 1 I have seen one other thread with this problem, but the answer that was given was put the jar in the project lib directory, but netbeans has already correctly finished that task. Any other possible thing that would cause java not to recognize the Xstream class at runtime even though it is fine at compile time? Thanks Jimmy

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  • EF Query with conditional include that uses Joins

    - by makerofthings7
    This is a follow up to another user's question. I have 5 tables CompanyDetail CompanyContacts FK to CompanyDetail CompanyContactsSecurity FK to CompanyContact UserDetail UserGroupMembership FK to UserDetail How do I return all companies and include the contacts in the same query? I would like to include companies that contain zero contacts. Companies have a 1 to many association to Contacts, however not every user is permitted to see every Contact. My goal is to get a list of every Company regardless of the count of Contacts, but include contact data. Right now I have this working query: var userGroupsQueryable = _entities.UserGroupMembership .Where(ug => ug.UserID == UserID) .Select(a => a.GroupMembership); var contactsGroupsQueryable = _entities.CompanyContactsSecurity;//.Where(c => c.CompanyID == companyID); /// OLD Query that shows permitted contacts /// ... I want to "use this query inside "listOfCompany" /// //var permittedContacts= from c in userGroupsQueryable //join p in contactsGroupsQueryable on c equals p.GroupID //select p; However this is inefficient when I need to get all contacts for all companies, since I use a For..Each loop and query each company individually and update my viewmodel. Question: How do I shoehorn the permittedContacts variable above and insert that into this query: var listOfCompany = from company in _entities.CompanyDetail.Include("CompanyContacts").Include("CompanyContactsSecurity") where company.CompanyContacts.Any( // Insert Query here.... // b => b.CompanyContactsSecurity.Join(/*inner*/,/*OuterKey*/,/*innerKey*/,/*ResultSelector*/) ) select company; My attempt at doing this resulted in: var listOfCompany = from company in _entities.CompanyDetail.Include("CompanyContacts").Include("CompanyContactsSecurity") where company.CompanyContacts.Any( // This is concept only... doesn't work... from grps in userGroupsQueryable join p in company.CompanyContactsSecurity on grps equals p.GroupID select p ) select company;

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  • Creating transparent PNG with exact RGBA values

    - by rrowland
    I'm color-coding a transparent image to be read programatically. However, the image seems to be getting compressed and my code is reading color values other than the ones I mean to pass it. Concept This is the output I get, exporting as PNG-24. I programatically check each pixel for one of the six colors I use in creating the image: 0x00000F 0x0000F0 0x000F00 0x00F000 0x0F0000 0xF00000 Each color represents a different texture to apply. Top right (0x00000F) will pull texture from the tile to its top right and blend it at a ratio equal to the opacity of the pixel. The end goal is to create a hex tiled grid with differing textures that blend smoothly. What's happening It seems that when converting to PNG, Photoshop will change the RGBA to make it smoother, or just to help compression size. Parts that should be 250 red range anywhere from 150 to 255. Question Whether using PNG or another web-compatible format, I need to be able to save these pixel values, essentially instructions, loss-less and still maintain transparency. Is this possible in any format or will I need to re-think my approach?

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  • What does Postgres do when BEGIN is run on a connection in autocommit mode?

    - by DNS
    I'm trying to better understand the concept of 'autocommit' when working with a Postgres (psycopg) connection. Let's say I have a fresh connection, set its isolation level to ISOLATION_LEVEL_AUTOCOMMIT, then run this SQL directly, without using the cursor begin/rollback methods (as an exercise; not saying I actually want to do this): INSERT A INSERT B BEGIN INSERT C INSERT D ROLLBACK What happens to INSERTs C & D? Is autocommit is purely an internal setting in psycopg that affects how it issues BEGINs? In that case, the above SQL is unafected; INSERTs A & B are committed as soon as they're done, while C & D are run in a transaction and rolled back. What isolation level is that transaction run under? Or is autocommit a real setting on the connection itself? In that case, how does it affect the handling of BEGIN? Is it ignored, or does it override the autocommit setting to actually start a transaction? What isolation level is that transaction run under? Or am I completely off-target?

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  • HTML5 card game [closed]

    - by ChrisCa
    I created a card game in silverlight a year or so ago in order to learn a bit about Silverlight. I am now wanting to make a HTML5 version of the game in an effort to learn a little bit more about that. I am thinking I'd like to take advantage of stuff like Knockout.js and WebSockets and the canvas element. Now what I'm confused about is how to lay out the cards on the screen. With Silverlight I was able to make a "Hand" control, which was made up of two sub controls - the cards the player has in their hand and the ones they have on the table. And they in turn were made up of Card controls. Now I don't believe there is the concept on a User Control in javascript. So I am possibly thinking about this in entirely the wrong way. So my question is - how could I lay out some cards on the table and perhaps make reuse of something for each player? I have a client side JSON object called game, which contains an array of players. Each player has a hand which is made up of an array of in-hand cards and on-table cards. Ideally I would like to bind these to something using Knockout.js - but I don't know what I could bind to. Would I simply position images (of cards) on a canvas? Is there a way to make some kind of Hand object that each player could have and that I could bind to? Any advice? Or sample code you've seen elsewhere?

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  • Proper way to communicate between divs in jquery?

    - by folder
    This is probably a simple question, and i'm just being dense. I've looked through a few jquery books and nothing has jumped out at me, i'm probably missing something. I'm looking for the 'proper', best practices way to communicate between divs/dom items on a page? For example, I have a page with 5 panels that display when a link is chosen, they hide/show/run some code that changes other pieces on the page. Something like this snippet: <ul> <li><div id="unique_name_1_anchor">Unique div 1</div></li> <li><div id="unique_name_2_anchor">Unique div 2</div></li> <li><div id="unique_name_3_anchor">Unique div 3</div></li> <li><div id="unique_name_4_anchor">Unique div 4</div></li> </ul> ...Somewhere else on the page <div id="unique_name_1_panel">Some panel 1 stuff here</div> <div id="unique_name_2_panel">Some panel2 stuff here<div> <div id="unique_name_3_panel">Some panel3 here</div> <div id="unique_name_4_panel">Some panel4 here</div> The concept being when as user clicks on a unique_name_X_anchor div, some action is performed on the corresponding panel (ie show/hide etc...). What I have been doing now is parsing the id ie ($(this).replace("_anchor","_panel") to get the div id of the other dom element. This just seems clunky and there must be a better/more proper way of doing this. Suggestions? Thanks

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  • Dependency Injection: How to pass DB around?

    - by Stephane
    Edit: This is a conceptual question first and foremost. I can make applications work without knowing this, but I'm trying to learn the concept. I've seen lots of videos with related classes and that makes sense, but when it comes to classes wrapping around other classes, I can't seem to grasp where things should be instantiated/passed around. =-=-=-=-=-=-= Question: Let's say I have a simple page that loads data from a table, manipulates the result and displays it. Simple. I'm going to use '=' for instantiating a class and '-' for passing a class in using constructor injection. It seems to me that the database has to be passed from one end of the application to the other which doesn't seem right. Here's how I would do it if I wanted to separate concerns: index =>Controller =>Model Layer =>Database =>DAO->Database I have this rule in my head that says I'm not supposed to create objects inside other objects. So what do I do with the Database? Or even the Model for that matter? I'm obviously missing something so basic about this. I would love a simplified example so that I can move forward in my code. I feel really hamstrung by this.

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  • Is it a bad practice to use divs for styling purposes?

    - by caisah
    I've seen lately a lot of discussions about this new concept called oocss and I was wondering if it is a bad practice to wrap your main tags in divs only for styling/page layout purposes. I'm asking this because I see some frameworks like Twitter Bootstrap use such a method. What are the implications of such a markup from a semantic and accessibility point of view? For example: <div class="container"> <div class="row"> <div class="span4"> <nav class="nav">...</nav> </div> <div class="span8"> <a href="#" class="btn btn-large">...</a> </div> </div> </div> instead of <div class="menu"> <nav class="nav">...</nav> <a href="#" class="bttn">...</a> </div>

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  • MVC and Checkboxes...leaves a bit to be desired

    - by Josh
    Here is my problem. I have a list of models that are displayed to the user. On the left is a checkbox for each model to indicate that the user wants to choose this model (in this case, we're building products a user can add to their shopping cart). The model has no concept of being chosen...it strictly has information about the product in question. I've talked with a few other developers after having gone through and the best I could come up with is getting the formcollection and string parsing the key values to determine whether the checkbox is checked or not. This doesn't seem ideal. I was thinking there would be something more strongly bound, but I can't figure out a way to do it. I tried creating another model that had a boolean property to represent being checked and a property of the model and passing a list of that model type to the view and creating a ActionResult on the controller that accepts a list of the new model / checked property, but it comes back null. Am I just thinking too much like web forms and should just continue on with parsing checkbox values?

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  • Generic Event Generator and Handler from User Supplied Types?

    - by JaredBroad
    I'm trying to allow the user to supply custom data and manage the data with custom types. The user's algorithm will get time synchronized events pushed into the event handlers they define. I'm not sure if this is possible but here's the "proof of concept" code I'd like to build. It doesn't detect T in the for loop: "The type or namespace name 'T' could not be found" class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { Algorithm algo = new Algorithm(); Dictionary<Type, string[]> userDataSources = new Dictionary<Type, string[]>(); // "User" adding custom type and data source for algorithm to consume userDataSources.Add(typeof(Weather), new string[] { "temperature data1", "temperature data2" }); for (int i = 0; i < 2; i++) { foreach (Type T in userDataSources.Keys) { string line = userDataSources[typeof(T)][i]; //Iterate over CSV data.. var userObj = new T(line); algo.OnData < typeof(T) > (userObj); } } } //User's algorithm pattern. interface IAlgorithm<TData> where TData : class { void OnData<TData>(TData data); } //User's algorithm. class Algorithm : IAlgorithm<Weather> { //Handle Custom User Data public void OnData<Weather>(Weather data) { Console.WriteLine(data.date.ToString()); Console.ReadKey(); } } //Example "user" custom type. public class Weather { public DateTime date = new DateTime(); public double temperature = 0; public Weather(string line) { Console.WriteLine("Initializing weather object with: " + line); date = DateTime.Now; temperature = -1; } } }

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  • How to write a cgi script in perl that accepts output (an image file) from a urlconnection in a Java applet and writes it to the server?

    - by Brad Rock
    I created a Java applet for my web page that creates an image file. I want users to be able to run the applet and create unique images, click a button, and have the image they created be saved to the web server. I think I have the code down for writing the image to a URLconnection in the Java applet itself after having successfully written a file while running the applet on my system rather than the web page and saving a file to the local disk, and then altering a few things to write to a URLConnection instead of to the local disk (although we shall see how that works too). I am now trying to write a cgi script in perl that takes the image output from the URLConnection and writes the image to a file on my web server (note: I am a newbie to perl). I have found many examples of how to do something similar with simple text coming from an applet and then writing it to a text file, but I want to know how to apply the same concept to an image. Particularly, how do I read in the image? I've seen text input get read by using read(STDIN, $some_variable)--does the same thing work with an image? Likewise, how do I write the image file? What function do I use? Thanks for your help. I know that I am rather naive about all of this.

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  • check if foler exists in the root jquery

    - by Dimal Chandrasiri
    I'm trying to load an image to a div background using the following file structure in the root. WebContent -- | zharaimages -- | [ItemID] -- | Image.jpg This is done by jQuery and the file structure is inside the root. The ItemID folder is dynamic and I have to check whether the path exists using jQuery and if the path is not valid, I should go to a default path to fetch the default image. How can I check the path is valid using jQuery. I'm hoping to this can be done without an ajax call. Can any one help me on a tutorial or an API I can use for this! UPDATE The files are on the server. The concept I have is that I have 100s of item elements & I want to load an image for each item element. The images are saved in the server ( a local host ) and the folder hierarchy is divided using the item ID as shown. What I want to do is check whether the image file exists before appending it to the background of the item element div. Is this possible. This is a web application developed using spring.

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  • way to change value of h2 on div hover

    - by user3624298
    So basically making some concept logic for a project I am working on. Basically it's a portfolio and each box will be a picture and I want to be able to change the value of a h2 to some type of description. Right now it's just a black box so 'square1, square2, square3...etc' will work for now. I looked up some stuff on jquery and found this link from an SO answer. Basically what I need but he is only shifting through one piece of information instead of many in my case. Wondering how I can achieve that via jquery. I imagine I would need to make an array with all the descriptions I need, and (this is where I am lost) somehow attach the value of array to the square and then from there change text of h2 to the array value. Thanks for any help in advance here's what I have so far (not much just did some foundation work). Not sure if this matters but if there is no hover I want the h2 to say nothing. HTML (makes me post code if I have jsfiddle) <div class="squares"> <div class="square1"></div> <div class="square2"></div> <div class="square3"></div> <div class="square4"></div> <div class="square5"></div> <h2 class="squareIdent"> </h2> </div>

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  • jquery plugin: creation

    - by user1542535
    The output am expecting is an unordered list which am creating with jquery...which takes in put from a json file (which works fine when i dont create it as a plugin). Am very new with the concept of building a plugin. i've tried to create one which doesnt output my unordered list json file structure { "Categories": [ { "cat_id":"1", "name":"Main Menu1", "sub_categories":[ { "cat_id":"10", "name":" Sub Menu11", "sub_level_one_link":"http:\/\/one.com" }, my js file //create plugin jQuery.fn.emrMenu= function (options) { myoptions = jQuery.extend ({ url: "error" }, options); if (myoptions.url=="error") { alert("Error:No data recieved"); return false; } $(this).html (myoptions.url); return this.each (function () { //alert(myoptions.url+this.id); $.getJSON(myoptions.url, function(data) { $.each(data.Categories, function(i, category) { alert("test1"); //get all sub menu items in list indexes var submenudata=''; $.each(category.sub_categories, function(i, sub_categories) { submenudata += "<li><a href='"+sub_categories.sub_level_one_link+"' <span>"+sub_categories.name+"</span></a></li>"; }); var menudata ="<li id='"+category.cat_id+"' class='has-sub '><a href='#'><span>"+category.name+"</span></a><ul>"+submenudata+"</ul></li>"; //stringify unordered list and bind to div var menu="<ul>"+menudata+"</ul>"; // $(menu).appendTo("#"this.id); }); }); //alert (this.id); }); } and am calling the plugin: <script> $(document).ready(function() { $('#menu_n').emrMenu ({ url: "menu_data.json"}); }); </script> I'am pretty confused at this point any help is greatly appreciated cheers!

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  • .NET Code Evolution

    - by Alois Kraus
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/akraus1/archive/2013/07/24/153504.aspxAt my day job I do look at a lot of code written by other people. Most of the code is quite good and some is even a masterpiece. And there is also code which makes you think WTF… oh it was written by me. Hm not so bad after all. There are many excuses reasons for bad code. Most often it is time pressure followed by not enough ambition (who cares) or insufficient training. Normally I do care about code quality quite a lot which makes me a (perceived) slow worker who does write many tests and refines the code quite a lot because of the design deficiencies. Most of the deficiencies I do find by putting my design under stress while checking for invariants. It does also help a lot to step into the code with a debugger (sometimes also Windbg). I do this much more often when my tests are red. That way I do get a much better understanding what my code really does and not what I think it should be doing. This time I do want to show you how code can evolve over the years with different .NET Framework versions. Once there was  time where .NET 1.1 was new and many C++ programmers did switch over to get rid of not initialized pointers and memory leaks. There were also nice new data structures available such as the Hashtable which is fast lookup table with O(1) time complexity. All was good and much code was written since then. At 2005 a new version of the .NET Framework did arrive which did bring many new things like generics and new data structures. The “old” fashioned way of Hashtable were coming to an end and everyone used the new Dictionary<xx,xx> type instead which was type safe and faster because the object to type conversion (aka boxing) was no longer necessary. I think 95% of all Hashtables and dictionaries use string as key. Often it is convenient to ignore casing to make it easy to look up values which the user did enter. An often followed route is to convert the string to upper case before putting it into the Hashtable. Hashtable Table = new Hashtable(); void Add(string key, string value) { Table.Add(key.ToUpper(), value); } This is valid and working code but it has problems. First we can pass to the Hashtable a custom IEqualityComparer to do the string matching case insensitive. Second we can switch over to the now also old Dictionary type to become a little faster and we can keep the the original keys (not upper cased) in the dictionary. Dictionary<string, string> DictTable = new Dictionary<string, string>(StringComparer.OrdinalIgnoreCase); void AddDict(string key, string value) { DictTable.Add(key, value); } Many people do not user the other ctors of Dictionary because they do shy away from the overhead of writing their own comparer. They do not know that .NET has for strings already predefined comparers at hand which you can directly use. Today in the many core area we do use threads all over the place. Sometimes things break in subtle ways but most of the time it is sufficient to place a lock around the offender. Threading has become so mainstream that it may sound weird that in the year 2000 some guy got a huge incentive for the idea to reduce the time to process calibration data from 12 hours to 6 hours by using two threads on a dual core machine. Threading does make it easy to become faster at the expense of correctness. Correct and scalable multithreading can be arbitrarily hard to achieve depending on the problem you are trying to solve. Lets suppose we want to process millions of items with two threads and count the processed items processed by all threads. A typical beginners code might look like this: int Counter; void IJustLearnedToUseThreads() { var t1 = new Thread(ThreadWorkMethod); t1.Start(); var t2 = new Thread(ThreadWorkMethod); t2.Start(); t1.Join(); t2.Join(); if (Counter != 2 * Increments) throw new Exception("Hmm " + Counter + " != " + 2 * Increments); } const int Increments = 10 * 1000 * 1000; void ThreadWorkMethod() { for (int i = 0; i < Increments; i++) { Counter++; } } It does throw an exception with the message e.g. “Hmm 10.222.287 != 20.000.000” and does never finish. The code does fail because the assumption that Counter++ is an atomic operation is wrong. The ++ operator is just a shortcut for Counter = Counter + 1 This does involve reading the counter from a memory location into the CPU, incrementing value on the CPU and writing the new value back to the memory location. When we do look at the generated assembly code we will see only inc dword ptr [ecx+10h] which is only one instruction. Yes it is one instruction but it is not atomic. All modern CPUs have several layers of caches (L1,L2,L3) which try to hide the fact how slow actual main memory accesses are. Since cache is just another word for redundant copy it can happen that one CPU does read a value from main memory into the cache, modifies it and write it back to the main memory. The problem is that at least the L1 cache is not shared between CPUs so it can happen that one CPU does make changes to values which did change in meantime in the main memory. From the exception you can see we did increment the value 20 million times but half of the changes were lost because we did overwrite the already changed value from the other thread. This is a very common case and people do learn to protect their  data with proper locking.   void Intermediate() { var time = Stopwatch.StartNew(); Action acc = ThreadWorkMethod_Intermediate; var ar1 = acc.BeginInvoke(null, null); var ar2 = acc.BeginInvoke(null, null); ar1.AsyncWaitHandle.WaitOne(); ar2.AsyncWaitHandle.WaitOne(); if (Counter != 2 * Increments) throw new Exception(String.Format("Hmm {0:N0} != {1:N0}", Counter, 2 * Increments)); Console.WriteLine("Intermediate did take: {0:F1}s", time.Elapsed.TotalSeconds); } void ThreadWorkMethod_Intermediate() { for (int i = 0; i < Increments; i++) { lock (this) { Counter++; } } } This is better and does use the .NET Threadpool to get rid of manual thread management. It does give the expected result but it can result in deadlocks because you do lock on this. This is in general a bad idea since it can lead to deadlocks when other threads use your class instance as lock object. It is therefore recommended to create a private object as lock object to ensure that nobody else can lock your lock object. When you read more about threading you will read about lock free algorithms. They are nice and can improve performance quite a lot but you need to pay close attention to the CLR memory model. It does make quite weak guarantees in general but it can still work because your CPU architecture does give you more invariants than the CLR memory model. For a simple counter there is an easy lock free alternative present with the Interlocked class in .NET. As a general rule you should not try to write lock free algos since most likely you will fail to get it right on all CPU architectures. void Experienced() { var time = Stopwatch.StartNew(); Task t1 = Task.Factory.StartNew(ThreadWorkMethod_Experienced); Task t2 = Task.Factory.StartNew(ThreadWorkMethod_Experienced); t1.Wait(); t2.Wait(); if (Counter != 2 * Increments) throw new Exception(String.Format("Hmm {0:N0} != {1:N0}", Counter, 2 * Increments)); Console.WriteLine("Experienced did take: {0:F1}s", time.Elapsed.TotalSeconds); } void ThreadWorkMethod_Experienced() { for (int i = 0; i < Increments; i++) { Interlocked.Increment(ref Counter); } } Since time does move forward we do not use threads explicitly anymore but the much nicer Task abstraction which was introduced with .NET 4 at 2010. It is educational to look at the generated assembly code. The Interlocked.Increment method must be called which does wondrous things right? Lets see: lock inc dword ptr [eax] The first thing to note that there is no method call at all. Why? Because the JIT compiler does know very well about CPU intrinsic functions. Atomic operations which do lock the memory bus to prevent other processors to read stale values are such things. Second: This is the same increment call prefixed with a lock instruction. The only reason for the existence of the Interlocked class is that the JIT compiler can compile it to the matching CPU intrinsic functions which can not only increment by one but can also do an add, exchange and a combined compare and exchange operation. But be warned that the correct usage of its methods can be tricky. If you try to be clever and look a the generated IL code and try to reason about its efficiency you will fail. Only the generated machine code counts. Is this the best code we can write? Perhaps. It is nice and clean. But can we make it any faster? Lets see how good we are doing currently. Level Time in s IJustLearnedToUseThreads Flawed Code Intermediate 1,5 (lock) Experienced 0,3 (Interlocked.Increment) Master 0,1 (1,0 for int[2]) That lock free thing is really a nice thing. But if you read more about CPU cache, cache coherency, false sharing you can do even better. int[] Counters = new int[12]; // Cache line size is 64 bytes on my machine with an 8 way associative cache try for yourself e.g. 64 on more modern CPUs void Master() { var time = Stopwatch.StartNew(); Task t1 = Task.Factory.StartNew(ThreadWorkMethod_Master, 0); Task t2 = Task.Factory.StartNew(ThreadWorkMethod_Master, Counters.Length - 1); t1.Wait(); t2.Wait(); Counter = Counters[0] + Counters[Counters.Length - 1]; if (Counter != 2 * Increments) throw new Exception(String.Format("Hmm {0:N0} != {1:N0}", Counter, 2 * Increments)); Console.WriteLine("Master did take: {0:F1}s", time.Elapsed.TotalSeconds); } void ThreadWorkMethod_Master(object number) { int index = (int) number; for (int i = 0; i < Increments; i++) { Counters[index]++; } } The key insight here is to use for each core its own value. But if you simply use simply an integer array of two items, one for each core and add the items at the end you will be much slower than the lock free version (factor 3). Each CPU core has its own cache line size which is something in the range of 16-256 bytes. When you do access a value from one location the CPU does not only fetch one value from main memory but a complete cache line (e.g. 16 bytes). This means that you do not pay for the next 15 bytes when you access them. This can lead to dramatic performance improvements and non obvious code which is faster although it does have many more memory reads than another algorithm. So what have we done here? We have started with correct code but it was lacking knowledge how to use the .NET Base Class Libraries optimally. Then we did try to get fancy and used threads for the first time and failed. Our next try was better but it still had non obvious issues (lock object exposed to the outside). Knowledge has increased further and we have found a lock free version of our counter which is a nice and clean way which is a perfectly valid solution. The last example is only here to show you how you can get most out of threading by paying close attention to your used data structures and CPU cache coherency. Although we are working in a virtual execution environment in a high level language with automatic memory management it does pay off to know the details down to the assembly level. Only if you continue to learn and to dig deeper you can come up with solutions no one else was even considering. I have studied particle physics which does help at the digging deeper part. Have you ever tried to solve Quantum Chromodynamics equations? Compared to that the rest must be easy ;-). Although I am no longer working in the Science field I take pride in discovering non obvious things. This can be a very hard to find bug or a new way to restructure data to make something 10 times faster. Now I need to get some sleep ….

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  • Automating video generation by adding an intro and a trailing video to the main video

    - by DevDewboy
    I have a video project I am trying to compile. Here is the overview: I have many videos which are 5 minute training sessions - Main video. The Intro Video will be a standard 5 second video that will have the Video title and Author. This will be concatenated to the main video. The Trailing Video will pretty much be a stock video that will be concatenated to the main video and have all the legaleze etc. The Intro Vid will smoothly fade into the main vid as well as when you get to end of the main video it will fade into the Trailing video nicely. The product is a new video with a Intro, Main & Trailer video all in one! The concept is really that simple. In fact I found an example of a person who has solved this and is doing exactly what I want. This solution is a Bash script that takes a config file that has the title, author, etc. and generates the Intro, the Ending and creates the resulting video with them concatenated. I am using Ubuntu 12.04 Server. I have been trying to take this as a sample and just running it with no luck because of incompatibility errors. I even attempted to convert it using .MP4 containers or .MKV. I am running into error after error or incompatibility issues. I went as far as changing out the ffmpeg binary using the 25 Oct 2013 version from http://ffmpeg.gusari.org/static/64bit/ which I like as I don't have to worry about rebuilding the binary. Almost successful but again I have some error which I cannot solve. I know part of the problem is the fact that video production, codecs, formats is a completely new field for me so I am attempting to work through this new territory. Perhaps an expert here has something similar that I can use as a guideline that uses MP4 or h.264 format. Or take the solution above from the URL and make it work with a more up-to-date version of ffmpeg. I will include the script and its parameter file and the output (abbreviated because of limitation) below. Basically as the script stands right now, when run I get the error [matroska,webm @ 0x27bbee0] Read error. This error is return from the 'reasembleVideo' routine from the first ffmpeg command. The following is the Parameter File: #!/bin/bash INPUTFILE="ssh_main.mp4" LOGO="logo.png" LOGOLENGTH="1" SPEAKER="Jason" TITLE="Basic SSH Video" DATE="October 28, 2013" SCENESTART="00:00:01" SCENEDURATION="00:00:09" OUTPUTFILE="ssh_basic_1" } The following is the script I am running. The ${OUTPUTFILE} being used is a small 2 minute video I create in screen-o-matic in MP4 format. Script on PasteBin (too long for Super User post)

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  • Reality behind wireless security - the weakness of encrypting

    - by Cawas
    I welcome better key-wording here, both on tags and title, and I'll add more links as soon as possible. For some years I'm trying to conceive a wireless environment that I'd setup anywhere and advise for everyone, including from big enterprises to small home networks of 1 machine. I've always had the feeling using any kind of the so called "wireless security" methods is actually a bad design. I'm talking mostly about encrypting and pass-phrasing (which are actually two different concepts), since I won't even considering hiding SSID and mac filtering. I understand it's a natural way of thinking. With cable networking nobody can access the network unless they have access to the physical cable, so you're "secure" in the physical way. In a way, encrypting is for wireless what walling (building walls) is for the cables. And giving pass-phrases is adding a door with a key. But the cabling without encryption is also insecure. Someone just need to plugin and get your data! And while I can see the use for encrypting data, I don't think it's a security measure in wireless networks. As I said elsewhere, I believe we should encrypt only sensitive data regardless of wires. And passwords should be added to the users, always, not to wifi. For securing files, truly, best solution is backup. Sure all that doesn't happen that often, but I won't consider the most situations where people just don't care. I think there are enough situations where people actually care on using passwords on their OS users, so let's go with that in mind. For being able to break the walls or the door someone will need proper equipment such as a hammer or a master key of some kind. Same is true for breaking the wireless walls in the analogy. But, I'd say true data security is at another place. I keep promoting the Fonera concept as an instance. It opens up a free wifi port, if you choose so, and anyone can connect to the internet through that, without having any access to your LAN. It also uses a QoS which will never let your bandwidth drop from that public usage. That's security, and it's open. And who doesn't want to be able to use internet freely anywhere you can find wifi spots? I have 3G myself, but that's beyond the point here. If I have a wifi at home I want to let people freely use it for internet as to not be an hypocrite and even guests can easily access my files, just for reading access, so I don't need to keep setting up encryption and pass-phrases that are not whole compatible. I'll probably be bashed for promoting the non-usage of WPA 2 with AES or whatever, but I wanted to know from more experienced (super) users out there: what do you think? Is there really a need for encryption to have true wireless security?

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  • An alternative to Google Talk, AIM, MSN, et al [closed]

    - by mkaito
    I'm not entirely sure whether this part of stack exchange is the most adequate for my question, but it would seem to me that people sharing this kind of concern would converge either here, or possibly on a more unix-specific sub site. Either way, here goes. Background Feel free to skip to The Question, below. This should, however, help those interested understand where I'm coming from, and where I expect to get, messaging-wise. My online talking place-to-go has been IRC for the last fifteen years. I think it's a great protocol, and clients out there are very good. I still use, and will always continue to use IRC for most of my chat needs. But then, there is private instant messaging. While IRC can solve this with queries and DCC chats, the protocol just isn't meant to work too well on intermittent connections, such as a mobile device, where you can often walk around places with low signal. I used MSN for a while, but didn't like it. The concept was awesome, but I think Microsoft didn't get the implementation quite right. When they started adding all that eye candy, and my buddies started flooding me with custom icons and buzzing my screen to it's knees, I shut my account and told folks that missed me to just email or call me. Much whining happened, I got called many weird things for not using MSN, but folks eventually got over it. Next, Google Talk came along, and seemed to be a lot better than MSN ever was. The protocol was open, so I could use whatever client I felt a fancy for. With the advent of smart phones, I just got myself a gtalk client on the phone, and have had a really decent integrated mostly-universal IM solution. Over the last few months, all Google services have been feeling flaky. IMs will often arrive anywhere between twenty minutes and one hour after being sent, clients will randomly disconnect, client priorities seem to work sometimes, and sometimes just a random device of those connected will get an IM. I think the time has come to look for greener grass. The Question It's rather hard to put what I'm looking for into precise words. I guess I just want something that is kind of like MSN/Gtalk, but that doesn't let me down when I need it. IRC is pretty much perfect, but the protocol just isn't designed to work well on mobile devices. Really, at this point I'm considering sticking to IRC for desktop messaging, and SMS/email on the phone, but I hope that in this day and age there is something better out there.

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  • The Koyal Group Info Mag News¦Charged building material could make the renewable grid a reality

    - by Chyler Tilton
    What if your cell phone didn’t come with a battery? Imagine, instead, if the material from which your phone was built was a battery. The promise of strong load-bearing materials that can also work as batteries represents something of a holy grail for engineers. And in a letter published online in Nano Letters last week, a team of researchers from Vanderbilt University describes what it says is a breakthrough in turning that dream into an electrocharged reality. The researchers etched nanopores into silicon layers, which were infused with a polyethylene oxide-ionic liquid composite and coated with an atomically thin layer of carbon. In doing so, they created small but strong supercapacitor battery systems, which stored electricity in a solid electrolyte, instead of using corrosive chemical liquids found in traditional batteries. These supercapacitors could store and release about 98 percent of the energy that was used to charge them, and they held onto their charges even as they were squashed and stretched at pressures up to 44 pounds per square inch. Small pieces of them were even strong enough to hang a laptop from—a big, fat Dell, no less. Although the supercapacitors resemble small charcoal wafers, they could theoretically be molded into just about any shape, including a cell phone’s casing or the chassis of a sedan. They could also be charged—and evacuated of their charge—in less time than is the case for traditional batteries. “We’ve demonstrated, for the first time, the simple proof-of-concept that this can be done,” says Cary Pint, an assistant professor in the university’s mechanical engineering department and one of the authors of the new paper. “Now we can extend this to all kinds of different materials systems to make practical composites with materials specifically tailored to a host of different types of applications. We see this as being just the tip of a very massive iceberg.” Pint says potential applications for such materials would go well beyond “neat tech gadgets,” eventually becoming a “transformational technology” in everything from rocket ships to sedans to home building materials. “These types of systems could range in size from electric powered aircraft all the way down to little tiny flying robots, where adding an extra on-board battery inhibits the potential capability of the system,” Pint says. And they could help the world shift to the intermittencies of renewable energy power grids, where powerful batteries are needed to help keep the lights on when the sun is down or when the wind is not blowing. “Using the materials that make up a home as the native platform for energy storage to complement intermittent resources could also open the door to improve the prospects for solar energy on the U.S. grid,” Pint says. “I personally believe that these types of multifunctional materials are critical to a sustainable electric grid system that integrates solar energy as a key power source.”

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  • Unable to connect to SVN server on VPS : Subversion Configuration Problem

    - by Pritam Barhate
    Hello everybody, I purchased a VPS account (centos-5-x86_64) from Hostgator mainly for the purpose of setting up an online Subversion Server. This is the first time I am managing a VPS and my linux skills are not so great, but I have basic knowledge of the OS and have been using it on and off as desktop from last few years. So after foxing through a few tutorials online, as the first step I logged in using SSH root account provided by Hostgator and tried to run, yum install mod_dav_svn subversion As it turns out my account has Cpanel/WHM and since it some concept of easy apache straight forward procedure of yum install mod_dav_svn subversion won't work. After that I found out how it can be worked out by compiling the source and stuff. But the whole procedure looked long and scary. [I am just a linux nub]. so I decided I would just skip whole apache integration stuff and just access the server using svn:// protocol, anyways that's how I configure svn on our LAN. So I installed subversion using yum install subversion It installed fine. Then I created a folder /svn_repos/testproject and ran svnadmin create /svn_repos/testproject/ No Problems Using vi I changed svnserve.conf and passwd files for the repository and added a user with my name. Anonymous users don't have any access, authenticated users have write access. Then I started svnserve using svnserve -d then in same terminal window svn list svn://localhost/svn_repos/testproject Asks for authentication for realm, provided root password then for svn username and password. Provided both. The command returns nothing but exists properly. Returns nothing is understood I didn't import anything. But if try to access svn remotely using in another terminal: svn list svn://ip.add.of.server/svn_repos/testproject svn: Can't connect to host 'ip.add.of.server': Operation timed out Is what I get. Parallels Power Panel that I got from Hostgator reports that: The firewall is not active now. To activate the firewall, choose one of the firewall operation modes. So if firewall is not running and I can access svn using localhost, why the operation is timing out when I try to access svn from a remote machine? Experienced network admins please help. Thanks in advance. Also please suggest a good book which gives detailed information on configuring Dedicated servers + WHM and CPanel.

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  • Drawing lines between views in a TableLayout

    - by RiThBo
    Firstly - sorry if you saw my other question which I deleted. My question was flawed. Here is a better version If I have two views, how do I draw a (straight) line between them when one of them is touched? The line needs to be dynamic so it can follow the finger until it reaches the second view where it "locks on". So, when view1 is touched a straight line is drawn which then follows the finger until it reaches view2. I created a LineView class that extends view, but I don't how to proceed. I read some tutorials but none show how to do this. I think I need to get the coordinates of both view, and then create a path which "updates" on MotionEvent. I can get the coordinates and the ids of the views I want to draw a line between, but the line that I try to draw between them either goes above it, or the line does not reach past the width and height of the view. Any advice/code/clarity would be much appreciated! Here is some code: My layout. I want to draw a line between two views contained in theTableLayout.# <RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" android:id="@+id/activity_game_relative_layout" android:layout_width="match_parent" android:layout_height="match_parent" android:orientation="vertical" > <TableLayout android:layout_marginTop="35dp" android:layout_marginBottom="35dp" android:id="@+id/tableLayout1" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:layout_centerInParent="true" > <TableRow android:id="@+id/table_row_1" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:padding="5dip" > <com.example.view.DotView android:id="@+id/game_dot_1" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:layout_marginBottom="10dp" android:layout_marginLeft="10dp" android:layout_marginRight="10dp" android:layout_marginTop="10dp" /> <com.example.view.DotView android:id="@+id/game_dot_2" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:layout_marginBottom="10dp" android:layout_marginLeft="10dp" android:layout_marginRight="10dp" android:layout_marginTop="10dp" /> <com.example.view.DotView android:id="@+id/game_dot_3" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:layout_marginBottom="10dp" android:layout_marginLeft="10dp" android:layout_marginRight="10dp" android:layout_marginTop="10dp" /> </TableRow> <TableRow android:id="@+id/table_row_2" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:padding="5dip" > <com.example.view.DotView android:id="@+id/game_dot_7" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:layout_marginBottom="10dp" android:layout_marginLeft="10dp" android:layout_marginRight="10dp" android:layout_marginTop="10dp" /> <com.example.view.DotView android:id="@+id/game_dot_8" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:layout_marginBottom="10dp" android:layout_marginLeft="10dp" android:layout_marginRight="10dp" android:layout_marginTop="10dp" /> <com.example.dotte.DotView android:id="@+id/game_dot_9" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:layout_marginBottom="10dp" android:layout_marginLeft="10dp" android:layout_marginRight="10dp" android:layout_marginTop="10dp" /> </TableRow> </TableLayout> </RelativeLayout> This is my LineView class. I use this to try and draw the actual line between the points. public class LineView extends View { Paint paint = new Paint(); float startingX, startingY, endingX, endingY; public LineView(Context context) { super(context); // TODO Auto-generated constructor stub paint.setColor(Color.BLACK); paint.setStrokeWidth(10); } public void setPoints(float startX, float startY, float endX, float endY) { startingX = startX; startingY = startY; endingX = endX; endingY = endY; invalidate(); } @Override public void onDraw(Canvas canvas) { canvas.drawLine(startingX, startingY, endingX, endingY, paint); } } And this is my Activity. public class Game extends Activity { DotView dv1, dv2, dv3, dv4, dv5, dv6, dv7; @Override protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); setContentView(R.layout.activity_game); getWindow().getDecorView().setSystemUiVisibility( View.SYSTEM_UI_FLAG_LOW_PROFILE); findDotIds(); RelativeLayout rl = (RelativeLayout) findViewById(R.id.activity_game_relative_layout); LineView lv = new LineView(this); lv.setPoints(dv1.getLeft(), dv1.getTop(), dv7.getLeft(), dv7.getTop()); rl.addView(lv); // TODO: Get the coordinates of all the dots in the TableLayout. Use view tree observer. } private void findDotIds() { // TODO Auto-generated method stub dv1 = (DotView) findViewById(R.id.game_dot_1); dv2 = (DotView) findViewById(R.id.game_dot_2); dv3 = (DotView) findViewById(R.id.game_dot_3); dv4 = (DotView) findViewById(R.id.game_dot_4); dv5 = (DotView) findViewById(R.id.game_dot_5); dv6 = (DotView) findViewById(R.id.game_dot_6); dv7 = (DotView) findViewById(R.id.game_dot_7); } } The views I want to draw lines between are in the TableLayout.

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  • linux thread synchronization

    - by johnnycrash
    I am new to linux and linux threads. I have spent some time googling to try to understand the differences between all the functions available for thread synchronization. I still have some questions. I have found all of these different types of synchronizations, each with a number of functions for locking, unlocking, testing the lock, etc. gcc atomic operations futexes mutexes spinlocks seqlocks rculocks conditions semaphores My current (but probably flawed) understanding is this: semaphores are process wide, involve the filesystem (virtually I assume), and are probably the slowest. Futexes might be the base locking mechanism used by mutexes, spinlocks, seqlocks, and rculocks. Futexes might be faster than the locking mechanisms that are based on them. Spinlocks dont block and thus avoid context swtiches. However they avoid the context switch at the expense of consuming all the cycles on a CPU until the lock is released (spinning). They should only should be used on multi processor systems for obvious reasons. Never sleep in a spinlock. The seq lock just tells you when you finished your work if a writer changed the data the work was based on. You have to go back and repeat the work in this case. Atomic operations are the fastest synch call, and probably are used in all the above locking mechanisms. You do not want to use atomic operations on all the fields in your shared data. You want to use a lock (mutex, futex, spin, seq, rcu) or a single atomic opertation on a lock flag when you are accessing multiple data fields. My questions go like this: Am I right so far with my assumptions? Does anyone know the cpu cycle cost of the various options? I am adding parallelism to the app so we can get better wall time response at the expense of running fewer app instances per box. Performances is the utmost consideration. I don't want to consume cpu with context switching, spinning, or lots of extra cpu cycles to read and write shared memory. I am absolutely concerned with number of cpu cycles consumed. Which (if any) of the locks prevent interruption of a thread by the scheduler or interrupt...or am I just an idiot and all synchonization mechanisms do this. What kinds of interruption are prevented? Can I block all threads or threads just on the locking thread's CPU? This question stems from my fear of interrupting a thread holding a lock for a very commonly used function. I expect that the scheduler might schedule any number of other workers who will likely run into this function and then block because it was locked. A lot of context switching would be wasted until the thread with the lock gets rescheduled and finishes. I can re-write this function to minimize lock time, but still it is so commonly called I would like to use a lock that prevents interruption...across all processors. I am writing user code...so I get software interrupts, not hardware ones...right? I should stay away from any functions (spin/seq locks) that have the word "irq" in them. Which locks are for writing kernel or driver code and which are meant for user mode? Does anyone think using an atomic operation to have multiple threads move through a linked list is nuts? I am thinking to atomicly change the current item pointer to the next item in the list. If the attempt works, then the thread can safely use the data the current item pointed to before it was moved. Other threads would now be moved along the list. futexes? Any reason to use them instead of mutexes? Is there a better way than using a condition to sleep a thread when there is no work? When using gcc atomic ops, specifically the test_and_set, can I get a performance increase by doing a non atomic test first and then using test_and_set to confirm? *I know this will be case specific, so here is the case. There is a large collection of work items, say thousands. Each work item has a flag that is initialized to 0. When a thread has exclusive access to the work item, the flag will be one. There will be lots of worker threads. Any time a thread is looking for work, they can non atomicly test for 1. If they read a 1, we know for certain that the work is unavailable. If they read a zero, they need to perform the atomic test_and_set to confirm. So if the atomic test_and_set is 500 cpu cycles because it is disabling pipelining, causes cpu's to communicate and L2 caches to flush/fill .... and a simple test is 1 cycle .... then as long as I had a better ratio of 500 to 1 when it came to stumbling upon already completed work items....this would be a win.* I hope to use mutexes or spinlocks to sparilngly protect sections of code that I want only one thread on the SYSTEM (not jsut the CPU) to access at a time. I hope to sparingly use gcc atomic ops to select work and minimize use of mutexes and spinlocks. For instance: a flag in a work item can be checked to see if a thread has worked it (0=no, 1=yes or in progress). A simple test_and_set tells the thread if it has work or needs to move on. I hope to use conditions to wake up threads when there is work. Thanks!

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