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I am currently working with CAVE systems and I'm looking into hooking up a pre-exisiting game engine in one. I know this is possible through Unity and the Unreal Engine as there is already research out there showcasing that it has been done.
Right now, I have not decided upon one game engine to use and I'm currently looking around and researching if it is possible with the likes of CryEngine and Valve's Source Engine. The one issue that I am going to face, however, is getting the image to correctly render across all four of the monitors / screens.
Thusly, as a result I have two questions:
1.Does anyone know of any good research / books on distrubuted rendering? It doesn't need to be specificly for games, just the topic in general would be very useful
2.Does anyone know if other developers have managed to get Source and the CryEngine to run in a CAVE system? Through all my research I haven't been able to find anything on this, but then my google skills aren't the greatest.
If anyone could spare the time to answer these questions, I'd be extremely greatful.
Thanks.
too late for an answer, but still, you might want to have a look at
Equalizer: http://www.equalizergraphics.com
IceT: http://icet.sandia.gov
Chromium
(and a few more referenced in related publications, websites)
I am working on some application wich will get HDD serial number and then i will use that HDD serial number for licence (cd-key) registration with product. Now the problems wich i can come to:
User have 2 HDD's and once my application gets its serial from first HDD it will register with it so what if user later changes order of HDD's? if the seccond HDD becomes a Master and the first one becomes slave? could be solved with getting both and combine them togather but what if later he removes one then? :D
What if user's HDD dies and he buys new one? Is still same pc only another HDD. So the licence wont be walid anymore just because is another HDD.
Is it possible to fake it? Example i am using VB.net 2010 and application is working on framework(.net) so there is some "dll" wich is responsible to get the serial of HDD so would be possible to replace this "dll" (crack it) so it returns some hardcoded serial of hdd?!?
Could be possible to get processor serial? that would be much batter but could it be done? and does the processor have serial, i mean probably have but is it possible to get it? and same question as abowe could it be faked through changing "dll" or something?
anny other suggestions or experiances?
I seen there are more questions like this but couldnt find some answers so now i ask here!
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As talked below i forgot all .net can be decompiled in few secconds! so...
Making own installer. Why?
if i make an installer in wich you enter serial and only if serial is ok to use then install software so what it does? it extracts my software to your computer and again you have ".net" exe wich you can easely decompile and make a crack for it so where is point in making installation with serial!? or if my software is "protected" with some obfuscator so then installation with serial is unneded here i could then simply include serial registration in my software and using some booleans store registered=1||0
i got email from one person here, btw. duno where you got my mail :) and he says some smart things and why some of you people dont respond to my question and this discussion and what he says is this: "scared that others will see my code and how bad it is." so then people just dont want to spent time on this. well thats not problem i know my code is big "minestrone", big mess much words(variables) some on english some on croatian so on well my software is working thats important and i know i suc* we all suc* everyone knows something(more or batter) that the other one. anyway, thats not problem, problem is that i dont want that the software is open source lets say my software is "photoshop" and now someone downloads click there and there and have the whole code and can easely copy paste change few things and no problem he made good application :)
custom compiler? anyone have experiances? would it be ok for some time? :)
what other solution or language would be good to use in future to avoid this "open source" .net! i been looking around so for vb.net, c#, c++ is all based on .net so is all same. vb6 wich i love again same thing. they all can easely be decompiled! what language could not be so easy to decompile? should i switch to assembler? :D i joke, i hope! :p
maybe i just too much stressed up, much work! duno you decide :)
PLEASE READ MY QUESTION AND PLEASE DONT ANSWER ME SOMETHING LIKE "PIRACY CANOT BE STOPED BLA BLA" AND THINGS LIKE THAT. THAT WASNT MY QUESTION! THANK YOU!
Sorry on bold big latters but some people read just title and then answer stupidities! If you want talk about it then read question and write otherwise dont post some stupidities please
Let me first answer your questions:
If the order of the HDDs changes, your application could still find that serial number within the system. However, in either case I would resort to a scheme where I use the device of the system partition or so.
If the HDD dies, the user will be in trouble. There is no good solution to that as long as you insist on your source for the uniqueness of the user's system: i.e. the HDD serial.
It's absolutely possible, yes. At different levels, though. A cracker would always choose the simplest method.
Yes. I'm afraid that will only work with unmanaged code, though. See Wikipedia. And yes, this could be circumvented again by DLL placement (see my comment on the question).
Now let me give you an advice that worked fine for me. Use the SID of the machine account (not to be confused with SYSTEM, which has a well-known SID). And before you counter with NewSid (which, by the way has been retired by MS), this is much more effort to change, especially in domain environments and can have very nasty and unforeseen effects. Therefore if you want to tie your application to a Windows installation, the SID will be sufficient. The SID has the same advantages as a UUID you could create, but it's not as easy to manipulate as a UUID that you store in the registry or a file.
Oh, and before I forget to mention it. Yes, even using the SID can be "cracked" in various ways. But it balances convenience for the user with your demand for security.
Yes, you have to be aware of that. You'll need several fall back methods to take care of this
You have to be aware of that as well.
Everything is fakeable with some energy behind it. However, why fake such an id if you simply can manipulate the program itself? All .net code can be disassembled and manipulated
I think this is possible as well, but would have the same problem behind it.
Other suggestion:
Just because there is piracy, don't make the experience bad for your customer. Use something that is reuseable (like a serial number or keyfile), invest in a good obfuscator to make it harder for somebody to inspect your code, but beyond all: Make your application stand out so people buy it. And even though you didn't ask for it, I have to say it - you can't stop piracy by enforcing orwellian-like surveillance of your program. This will drive customers away as it is a pain in the *ss to work with your application. With a serial or keyfile you still have some sort of protection, the customer likes it because it is easy to use, he doesn't have to call you/write a support ticket if his computer fails or the stars align unfavourable. Pirates will break it eventually, but your customer is happy, and that is what counts.
Anything you rely on which is in userland can and will be spoofed if it is worthwhile to the end user/attacker. So locking the licence to an HDD serial number will not put of attackers, but it will seriously upset your customers.
The same goes for processor serial numbers - it is too easy to pop some code inline to change what your application will read.
Your only reasonable bet will be dongles - ie specific hardware, or a way to get them to register and run with an online connection, so you can validate them using elements you control (although in saying that, if your app is high enough value, expect the dongle to be hacked/replicated too!)
Your biggest problem may be overdoing the security - if you get it wrong in any way you will alienate your customer base.
People regularly upgrade failed hard drives, or those which are too small, as well as most other components in their computers. If you stop them using your product, even for a couple of days, they are likely to look elsewhere!
You can do what you are suggesting, but there are issues. What you are suggesting is called "machine binding" in the licensing world. There are commercial tools that do this for you (disclaimer: I work for one such provider Wibu-Systems). What YOU are proposing has some pros and cons:
Pros: requires no separate hardware (dongle), you can roll your own, easy solution to implement at a basic level.
Cons: can be cracked in a matter of minutes, will create problems for users when they change the HW config or move the app to a new PC, rolling your own will introduce the oppty for new bugs in an area you apparently have no prior experience with.
Why not use a commercial solution? Would you write your own setup program, too? How about your own compiler, linker, and debugger?
I try to devote certain time everyday to learn new skills while also improve the older skills that I've gained. But, I'm not hitting the sweet spot where I learn what I want and get things done.
So, I was just curious to know how you guys spend time everyday and "hit the spot".
I use Google reader and just add more and more tech blogs as I find them. Then, I read them in the morning with coffee. This site provides quite a bit of education as well.
I read technical websites everyday. I like to use Google reader as well since it tracks what I've read and allows me to easily continue where I left off from any computer I happen to have access to.
I started out with the basics : Slashdot, Ars Technica
, and Dr. Dobb's Journal. These sites will frequently lead to other great sources of information.
When following sites like this using an RSS feed, you don't have to read every article that comes through. Just scan them over and read the ones that catch your interest. Without realizing it, you will store away alot of information that will pop back into your head when you encounter a situation that triggers it.
You won't necessarily be a master of everything you read but you will be at least aware of current developments and technologies.
The second part is to practice. I usually have some simple and enjoyable programming project on the go at home all the time. I may not actually complete anything useful but I use it as a basis to try out new things. Alot of times I will encounter a problem at work and find that I've already explored some of the solutions at home or at least thought about them and will be able to make a much more informed decision.
Tech blogs are a great way to find out basic information on new material and sometimes they will even have a more in-depth feature that can leave you with some take-away knowledge than just another tech headline.
What works best for me is to identify topics that I have read in tech blogs that interest me and then find sources that provide me with more advanced information on the subject. Then as the week goes by spend however much time needed to digest the information learning the material.
Just browsing tech headlines all day, in my opinion, won't leave you with any distilled information beyond basic advances in technology. Actually diving in and spending X amount of time each day learning material that is interesting to you will be infinitely better.
I find the key to getting things done is to manage distrations. I process email in batches only once or twice per day, and try to avoid phone calls, meetings and IM where I can. This leaves me bigger chinks of time available for development.
I learn new skills in a couple of different ways... Firstly reading a load of developmetn related tech blogs via an RSS reader. This allows me to absorb a continuous flow of new ideas without necessarily "learning" a lot, but saves me a lot of time on research later. Then when I run into something new, chances are something I've already read will be of assistance and I can dig in an "learn" something in more detail.
e.g. Through regular RSS reading I became aware that a significant number of javascript frameworks had been developed and it seemed to make more sense to use a js framework than coding DOM manipulation by hand. Later when I started a new project that was going to be heavy on Ajax, I was able to name a couple of frameworks off the top of my head,quickly pick one and really dig in and get to know it.
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I'm not a full-time software guy. In fact, in the last ten years, 90 % of my work was either on the hardware or doing low-level (embedded) code.
But the other 10% involves writing shell scripts for development tools, making kernel changes to add special features, and writing GUI applications for end-users.
The problem is that I find myself facing significant holes in my knowledge, often because it's been years since I've done "X", and I've either forgotten, or the environment has changed.
Every so often, there are threads on TheDailyWTF.com along the lines of "WTF: the guy spent all day writing tons of code, when he could have called foobar() in library baz". I've been there myself, because I don't remember much beyond the #include <stdio.h> stuff (for example), and my quick search somehow missed the right library.
What methods have you found effective to crash-learn and/or crash-refresh yourself in programming environments that you rarely touch?
Ask developers you know that work in the environment that you are interested in.
Search the web a lot.
Ask specific questions in relevant IRC channels (Freenode is great).
Ask specific questions on StackOverflow and other sites.
There really isn't any substitue for being "in the daily flow" of the programming environment in question. Having a good feel for the current state of the art is something you only get from experience, as I'm sure you can verify in you own areas of expertise.
i try to keep up with general news about languages i'm interested in but aren't necessarily using at the moment. being able to follow the general changes helps a lot for when you have to pick it up again.
beyond that, i personally find it easiest to grab an up to date reference book, and code a few basic things to get me used to the environment again, ie as a web programmer i'd make a simple crud app, or a quick web service/client.
For frameworks/APIs (such as a JavaScript framework or a widget library):
Quickly scan through the entire API documentation; get a glimpse of all that's out there instead of picking the first method that seems to fit your needs.
If available, glance at the source code of the
framework to see how the
API was intended to be used. Seeing what's behind the curtain helps. And also
some of the methods will have been used
internally, showcasing their true intents.
Don't necessarily always trust existing code (Googled, from co-workers, from books) since not everyone does the due diligence to find out the most proper way to use an API. Sometimes even samples in API documentation can be out-of-date.
In newer full-featured environments like Java, .NET, and Python, there are library solutions to almost every common problem. Don't think "how can I program this in plain C", but "which library solves this problem for me?" It's an attitude shift. As far as resources, the library documentation for the three environments I mentioned are all good.
The best solution I think is to get a book on the topic / environment you need to catch up on.
Ask questions from developers who you know who have the experience in that area.
You can also check out news groups (Google Groups makes this easy) and forums. You can ask questions, but even reading 10 minutes of the latest popular questions for a particular topic / environment will keep you a little bit "in the know".
The same thing can go for blogs too if you can find a focussed blog. These are pretty rare though and I personally don't look to blogs to keep me "in the know" on a particular environment. (I personally find blogs most popular and interesting in the "here's something neat" or "here's how I failed and you can avoid it" or "general practice" areas.)
In addition to the answers above, I think what you are asking for will take a significant amount of your time, and you must be willing to spend that time to achieve your goals. My method would be pretty much the same as Owen's answer; get a reference book or tutorial and work through the examples hacking in changes as you go to experiment with how any given thing works. I'd say as a bare minimum, allocate a hour to do this every other day, in a time that you know you won't be interrupted. Any less, and you'll probably continue to struggle.
The best way to crash-learn is simple, simply do it, use google to search for X tutorial, open your favorite browser and start typing away. Once you reached a certain level of feeling with X, do look at other people things, there is lots of open source out there and there must be someboby who has used X before, look at how they solved certain problems and learn from this, this is an easy way to verify that you are 'on the right track' or that you're doing things or thinking in patterns that other people would define as 'common sense'.
Crash-refreshing something is much easier since you have a suspended learning curve already, the way I do this is to keep some of the example you did while writing or keep some projects you did. Then you can easily refresh and use your own examples.
The library issue you mention here well, only improving your search skills will improve that one (although looking on how others solved this will help as well)
Don't try and pick up every environment.
Focus on the one that's useful and/or interesting, and then pick a few quality blogs to regularly read or podcasts to listen to. You'll pick up the current state of the environment fairly quickly.
Concrete example: I've been out of the Java world for a long time, but I've been put on a Java project in the last few months. Since then I've listened to the Java Posse podcast and read a few blogs, and although I'm far from a Java guru I've got back up to speed without too much trouble.
Just a though. While we are working on our code we know that we need to work very hard to optimize the critical path, but on non critical path we usually don't spend to much effort to optimize.
From your description you are working 90% on embedded and 10% on rest, lets assume that in 50% of the rest you are spending more time that needed. So according to my calculation you are optimizing about 5% of your work flow ...
Of course the usual google/SO/forums search is useful before you doing something new, but investing more than just that is waste of time for my opinion, unless you want to waste some time just for fun or general education ... :), but this is another story.
By the way I'm in same position and last time i needed some GUI and used MFC (because i used it sometimes 10 years ago :) ) and i perfectly understand that i probably will get better results with C# and friends, but the learning curve just not justify this especially knowing that i need mix the C code with GUI.
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I work on a complex application where different teams work on their own modules with a degree of overlap. A while back we got a Mediawiki instance set up, partly at my prompting. I have a hard job getting people to actually use it, let alone contribute.
I can see a lot of benefit in sharing information. It may at least reduce the times we reinvent the wheel.
The wiki is not very structured, but I'm not sure that is a problem as long as you can search for what you need.
Any hints?
Some tips:
Any time someone sends information by email that really should be in a wiki, make a page for that topic and add what they put in the email. Then reply "Thanks for that info, I've put it into the wiki here so that it's easier to find in the future."
Likewise, if you have information you need to share that should be in the wiki, put it there and just send an email with a link to it, rather than email people.
When you ask people for information, phrase it so that putting such documentation in the wiki should be considered the default or standard: "I searched in the wiki but I couldn't find it. Have you put that info up there yet?"
If you are the "wiki champion", make sure other people know how to use it, e.g. "Did I go through how to create a new page with you yet?"
Edit the sidebar to make sure it is relevant to your work.
Use "nav box" style templates on related pages for easier navigation.
Put something like {{Special:NewPages/5}} on the front page, or recent changes, so that people can see the activity.
Take a peek at Recent changes every few days or week, and if you notice someone adding information without being prodded, send them an email or drop by and give them a little compliment.
As I mentioned before, a Wiki is very unorganized.
However, if that is the only argument from your developers, then invest some effort to create a simple index page and keep it updated (either do it yourself or ask people to link their contributions to the index). That way, the Wiki might grow into a very nice and quite comprehensive collection of documentation for all your work.
We've been using a wiki in some form or another for a while now, but it does take a while for people to get on board. You might find that you will be the only one writing articles for some time, but bear with it, other people will come on board eventually.
If someone sends an email around that contains information related to the project then helpfully point them in the direction of the wiki - and keep doing that - they should get the hint.
We have a SharePoint portal and use the wiki from there - we customised it with our own branding so that it "looks the part" - I really feel this has helped to improve the uptake of it.
Make sure that everyone is aware that the wiki is even more informal than email.... because there will be a "fear factor" that people may think anything they add to the wiki will be over-analysed.
I think most of the answers so far are spot on - the more you plug away at it yourself, the larger the body of useful information will become, so slowly but surely people will naturally start to use it.
The other approach you could use is this: Suggest that every time someone asks another team member a question about the project, they should answer the question as normal, but also add the answer to a section of the Wiki. This may take a few minutes extra, but it will mean that the next time someone asks the same question (which they inevitably will), you can save time by pointing them at the Wiki. This, in turn, should help people to start using the Wiki as a first source of information and help overall up-take.
You can't force developers to do something they do not have an incentive of using for; unfortunately wikis, like documentation (well, in fact wikis are documentation) rarely have any "cool" value for developers. Besides, they're already deep into dev work -- could you really bother them with a wiki?
That being said, the people who pushed for the wiki (e.g., you) should be primarily responsible for updating it, and you really would have a lot of work cut out for you if you're serious about it.
You might also try the ff:
It's not very structured you say -- a lot of people get turned off from ill-structured (hard-to-search/browse) wikis. So maybe you can fix that first
Maybe you can ask lead developers/project managers to populate it with things that are issues for them: things like code conventions and API design for your particular project
Lead by example: religiously document your part of the system. Setting a precedent may encourage others to do the same
Sell the idea of using the wiki to the developers. You've identified some benefits, share those with the developers. If they can see that they'll get something of value out of it they'll start using it.
Example advantages from What Is a Wiki
Good for writing down quick ideas or longer ones, giving you more time for formal writing and editing.
Instantly collaborative without emailing documents, keeping the group in sync.
Accessible from anywhere with a web connection (if you don't mind writing in web-browser text forms).
Your archive, because every page revision is kept.
Exciting, immediate, and empowering--everyone has a say.
I have done some selling and even run some training sessions. I think some people are turned off by the lack of WYSIWYG editing and ability to paste formatted text from Word or Outlook. I know there are some tools to work around these, but they are still barriers.
There are some areas where the wiki is being used to log certain areas, but people who update those are not doing anything else with it.
I will use the wiki to document my specialised area regardless as it acts as a convenient brain extension. When starting a new development I use it as a notepad for ideas that I can expand on as it progresses.
It would help if management would give it some vocal support, even if it is not made mandatory.
I have a hard job getting people to actually use it, let alone contribute.
One of the easiest ways to get people to contribute to a wiki, is to actually have them provide contents in a wiki-suitable fashion, i.e. so that whatever they post using their usual channels of communications (newsgroups, mailing lists, forums, issue trackers, chat), is basically suitable for inclusion on the wiki.
So that others (users/volunteers) can simply take such contents and put them on the wiki.
This sounds more complicated than it really is, it's mostly about generalizing questions and answers, so that they are not necessarily part of a conversation, but can be comprehensible, meaningful and useful in a standalone fashion.
For example a question like the following:
how do I get git to clone a remote repository???
Can be answered like this:
Hello,
Just use git clone git://...
But questions can also be answered in a less personal style:
In order to clone a git repository, you will want to use the clone parameter to git:
git clone git://....
What I am trying to say is that most discussions in a project can and should be easily used to become documentation eventually. With this sort of mindset, your documentation can actually grow rather rapidly. You only need to get people to keep in mind that useful information should be ideally provided in a fashion that is suitable for wiki inclusion.
I have witnessed several instances where open source projects started to use this approach to some extent and while some people (largely new users) complained that answers were not very personal, the body of documentation was increasing steadily, because other people simply monitored such discussions and started to copy/paste such responses to the wiki.
Basically, this is one of the easiest ways to get people to contribute to a wiki, without requiring them to actually use it themselves, the only thing that's required of them is a shift in thinking.
If the developers still need to maintain 'real' documentation (s.a. Word documents), I see no way to meaningfully duplicate that on a Wiki.
It does not make sense for people to write twice
Any duplicated data is prone to get out of sync, soon.
What my current customer has done is move all this to Wiki. So I only document once, and I do it on the Wiki.
This is okay. Working with Wiki is more tedious than with Word, but at least the doc is online and others can mix-and-match with it.
Another working solution (imho) would be to store docs alongside the source, on subversion. But then the merging system needs to be able to cope with rich text etc. as well. I don't know, if any solution for that exists (other than using HTML or LaTex, which actually would not be bad picks).
Find "sticky" items (sub-3 pg. docs / diagrams / etc) something that the team seems to be creating again and again & post it on the wiki. Make sure everyone has access to the wiki and knows its there - set up a notification mechanism if possible. With some luck, the next time they have to access, rather than dig it out of version control or their machines - they should hit the wiki.
If they still don't, try to see if the team has enough slack to actually use the wiki - Subtler issues may lie beneath their reluctance.
Take a look at the advice at http://www.ikiw.org/ Grow your Wiki
Just to add to some of the excellent advice being offered here...
As a dev in a small company that does largely gov't contract work in the 6-24 month range, I find that my time is often split between development and writing status reports (right up there with writing documentation, only worse!) Having a wiki to slap down unorganized thoughts and notes as we go along has made report-writing a lot less painful (not pain-LESS, but better all the same).
Further, if you're already in the Mediawiki world, you might want to look at SemanticMediawiki. It allows you to take the organization of your data to another level by semantically tagging it. That doesn't mean a lot on its own, I know, but I can tell you (for example) that it can drastically improve the relevance of the data returned from searches. It is definitely worth a look.
Generally good advice here. I'd like to add:
You really need a champion - someone pushing this to developers and management (without being pushy - that's a challenge!) and providing support & tutorials when possible. This person also needs to be a peer (so a fellow developer, not someone in a remote IT department) and really customer focused i.e. ready to make changes when requested.
Speaking of changes, some people here say wikis are unstructured. I disagree. Our MediaWiki installation is structured using categories, particularly with two extensions:WarnNoCategories (to require users to add a category when saving a page) and CategoryTree to show how all the categories fit together (this can be linked to from the sidebar). I've got more tips on how we keep this low threshold, if you're interested.