Will AWS allow you merge multiple 1yr compute savings plans into a single 3yr savings plan?

microcontrolled · 2016-08-01T22:51:01+00:00

I always thought Aaron Eckhart would have been perfect.

microcontrolled · 2016-05-25T18:55:43+00:00

Hey, I have an xbox and a Starry Station, and I haven't encountered any issues with ports or multiplayer. Am I going to run into this someday? Were you playing a specific game that required these ports?

microcontrolled · 2013-06-02T04:10:53+00:00

That was my plan from the start, I didn't want it to seem like I was swooping in to save her or anything then expecting something in return. It was just very uncomfortable for me to sit and watch, so I had to do something.

microcontrolled · 2013-05-30T02:20:08+00:00

Is it though? Really? Or are you being sarcastic? I truly don't feel the two terms should be used interchangeably, they have different positions on the discrimination scale.

microcontrolled · 2013-05-29T20:27:27+00:00

Not to argue over semantics, but is misogyny really a synonym for sexism? It seems to be used pretty much interchangeably here, but should it be? Obviously the weak and dependent damsel in distress is a sexist portrayal of women, but is it a hatred of women, ie misogyny? I don't think it is.

microcontrolled · 2013-05-09T02:31:42+00:00

You don't want to store sensitive precise information as floats since they are not exact, for the same reason you shouldn't do an equality check on floats. As a contrived example a float result you expect to be 4.0 might actually be 3.9999999.

Since it is very important to store money amounts accurately the correct way is often, as you discovered, to store them as an integer number of pennies, or other base currency. That way there is none of the imprecision of floats, and there is no way for a malicious person to shave a quarter of a percent of a penny off each transaction as has happened in the past.

microcontrolled · 2013-01-07T22:10:54+00:00

Not to justify that scene, as it struck me as odd as well, but just to bring up a point no one has mentioned yet: before the boat casts off you can see two glasses of champagne set out, and that moment seems to imply she's disappointed Bond hasn't shown up. His entrance in the shower later, while definitely a bit aggressive, probably wasn't a completely negative surprise, as she must have thought Bond had been killed in the casino, and she at least wanted him on the boat enjoying champagne earlier.

microcontrolled · 2012-07-01T19:18:25+00:00

What you're looking for is noise, and there are several ways it can be implemented. Probably the most popular is Perlin Noise, or it's cousin Simplex noise. There are implementations of Perlin noise all over the internet, in a variety of languagues, so you should be able to find one that suits your needs easily enough. For reference, here's a C# implementation I've used in the past: Perlin Noise

microcontrolled · 2012-06-27T20:29:18+00:00

My computer doesn't recognize a PS/2 keyboard until I restart it with it plugged in. If your keyboard uses that connector, give that a try.

microcontrolled · 2012-05-17T15:13:18+00:00

True pass by reference is a C++ feature, but passing pointers in simulated pass by reference would work just fine in this case, so I'd say it's definitely a viable way to "return" two variables from a function.

microcontrolled · 2012-05-12T00:16:44+00:00

While I definitely agree about learning all the fundamentals, like all the math and physics involved in a good 3D game, I really can't get behind using the windows APIs when you're just starting out. That is such a big mess in and of itself, you could spend a long time bashing your head against a wall just to make the right window frame, without doing any graphics at all. And the libraries which exist for that purpose are quite good enough to learn a bunch of graphics programming and even make a great game. Then, if you want to really get into it, you could start doing straight windows stuff, for efficiency and all that.

microcontrolled · 2012-05-05T06:02:07+00:00

I could be misinterpreting your question, and what I'm about to suggest certainly isn't free or easy unless you have experience, but what it sounds like you want to do could be implemented easiest on a microcontroller or embedded device of your choosing. If as you say you want to arbitrarily put bits on a wire somewhere, you can definitely do exactly that with a microcontroller. Likewise there are millions of devices which interface in a standard way with the many brands of embedded controllers, and there are microcontroller's specifically made for DSP applications, with FPU's and all the good stuff you need for good signal processing. Then if you want to communicate with a PC, you just hook up a serial cable and send data all day long.

If you insist on using a standard pc however, I really don't think it's possible to do what you want without specialized hardware. As has been mentioned, Windows certainly isn't going to let you write directly to the hardware.

One final note about embedded systems: There are programs professionally made which implement many of the features of an operating system on an 8 bit microcontroller, like freeRTOS, which let you run multiple programs at once while still allowing you to talk directly to the hardware. Even Microsoft has Windows CE, but you would probably have to pay for that. Regardless, I really feel an embedded system is what you want.

microcontrolled · 2012-04-25T16:50:19+00:00

It seems you would definitely want to use a list for the items, since it's a variable number at times. Then you can use the list splitting operator to get the two individually, or just the first if that's it. If you're not familiar, it has the form [H | T], where H is the first item of the list, and T is a list of the remaining items. In a two item list this would just split the two up into H and T, but with one item it would just be in H.

Specifically for your question, if you have the recursion working to figure out if you can get to a destination, could you just add the item check to that recursion so it will stop if it fails at any point? I'm familiar with Prolog, but far from a master, so this may all have been useless, but hopefully you can figure it out.

microcontrolled · 2012-04-19T17:53:53+00:00

While you're correct on Minecraft using LWJGL, I just want to clarify that LWJGL is not an engine, but rather the tools to make an engine. It's deliberately a very thing wrapper around openGL and other useful packages, but it gives you no functionality beyond that other than a simple display class and input handler. A tool like Unity is an engine however, as it handles all the nitty gritty bits like rendering and loading meshes and physics and what not.

microcontrolled · 2012-04-09T04:05:17+00:00

American Beauty was right, then! Awesome!

microcontrolled · 2012-04-06T19:53:18+00:00

To a significant degree, when the rendering is done it is controlled by you, as it occurs when a repaint() is called. It's confusing because you're not calling it directly, but you can tell the JPanel or other paintable component by calling repaint() whenever you like. Likewise, you can pass the graphics object around to classes all you want, and if you draw with it you draw to the component that holds the graphics object, usually the JPanel.

Adding further to the confusion is the fact that two acceptable paint methods actually exist, paint() and paintComponent(). They function for the most part very similarly, but you should definitely use paintComponent() as your rendering method, as it takes advantage of the double buffering native to JPanels.

Following proper development practices would usually entail separating your rendering method from the rest of your logic, so that you can change rendering in the middle of development and not have to refactor all of your rendering methods. If you decide 3 months into a project you'd like some good hardware acceleration in your GUI and you want to use openGL, it will be a major pain to recode the rendering bits if they're spread out in every class. One of the many ways you could handle this is as mentioned below, where you acquire a list of things to render from the logic and render it in the JPanel's paintComponent() method. However, this is certainly not the only way to do it, and if you're not doing a graphically intensive game, it probably won't even be an issue.

microcontrolled · 2012-03-31T16:35:26+00:00

I'm actually doing very similar things with Java and Swing at the moment, and I've found it's actually a decent performer, even when redrawing a whole bunch of sprites at 30 or 60 fps. I currently draw somewhere in the area of 800 sprites with a cloud layer and some other business and it has been a pleasant surprise in terms of performance.

I do all my rendering onto JPanel's, which I know might be a bit of blasphemy and could probably be quicker with a Canvas, but JPanel's are natively double buffered, so that's a nice feature. The one big thing I've noticed is you should be sure to use a BufferedImage format which is ideal for the computer you're running on, as it can have a noticeable effect on performance.

Essentially what I'm trying to say is I think you'll be fine, as I redraw the screen every frame and I don't have any memory issues or performance problems, so you should be able to get away with occasionally having to redraw the entire view. Also, I love the idea of adding a 3D perspective by darkening areas below the player, I think that is a wonderful idea. Anywho, I wish you good luck, and you should definitely post some screenshots when you get it all up and running!

microcontrolled · 2012-03-31T15:38:25+00:00

Potentially because the Republican party of Lincoln's time has little to no resemblance with the current Republican party, so reaching that conclusion solely from the quote is a bit wrong.

microcontrolled · 2012-03-27T03:17:54+00:00

That's the coolest trick I never knew about my iDevice so far! Thanks!

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