After a clean install of Windows 7, trying to use compc and/or mxmlc from the Flex SDK through command line may yield a “System Error” message:

It seems like Microsoft somehow forgot to ship this Microsoft C Runtime Library DLL in Windows 7. When installing some programs, this DLL may be installed by the respective installers. If you encounter this missing DLL problem, the only way to fix it is to install one of these programs, or otherwise grab hold of the DLL from somewhere and place it in the correct folder:

For Windows 7 32-bit, place the DLL in
C:\Windows\System32

For Windows 7 64-bit, place it in
C:\Windows\SysWOW64

WARNING: Do not install DLL obtained from untrusted sources. You can actually copy the DLL from one of your old Windows OS installations. If you want to use my copy, here it is.

The seemingly controversial topic received some interesting comments. Due to certain fallacies introduced by a commenter, I thought I should clarify those points for the benefit of any reader who might become confused after reading his comments. My reply got a little too long, so I am posting it here.

Permutations
pantelis wrote:
“if you have 2 objects there are 2 possible arrangements of them. If you have 3 there are 6 and if you have 52 there are 52! (1*2*3*…*52). So, the probability of a particular hand (consisting of 52 cards) is 1/52! According to your math the probability of a given sequence is (1/52)^52 which means that there are 52^52 possible arrangements. and that is simply wrong.”

pantelis wrote:
“your math is wrong. i already gave you a counter proof of that: 52 items can be arranged in 52! ways. this is a fact of life, ever since pascal, bernoulli, and poisson (and their gambling habits) have founded statistics. therefore, the probability of one particular hand (it doesn’t matter which) is 1/52! your math results in (1/52)^52.”

Actually, my math results in 51!.

I never quite understood how pantelis arrived at the 52^52 permutations (he was reminded about “remaining cards” and he seems to understand the concept of “drawing without replacement”).

When you shuffle an array of 52 items, the number of ways they can be arranged is 52!.

When you randomly select and remove one item from an array until all items have been removed, the number of ways that the items can be arranged is still 52!.

When you randomly select an item from an array without removing it for the next selection, then for a sequence of 52 picks, there are 52^52 permutations.

In any case, for our discussion on “shuffle and draw from top” vs “random pick on demand”, the number of permutations does not really matter. It is the distribution of probabilities for each card that matters.

Probabilities
pantelis wrote:
“we agree that the probability of a particular card be drawn first is 1/52. after the first card is drawn, there is no such thing as “for a card to be drawn as the second card, it must not be drawn as the first card – got that? The chance of that happening is 98.08% (51/52)”. pardon me, but, i haven’t got that.”

pantelis wrote:
“the probability of a particular card to be drawn second is equal to 1/51, because there is only one favorable outcome (that particular card) and 51 possible outcomes, to be drawn third is 1/50 and so on.”

That is where pantelis went wrong. That is exactly the misconception I highlighted in the original post. It is wrong to think that if you randomly pick and remove a card from a deck of 52 cards, the distribution of probabilities will be skewed.

Consider an example.

The probability of a certain card, say Ace of Spades, being drawn as the third card is the compounded probability of three events that MUST occur:
(i) Aces of Spades NOT being drawn as first card (51/52 chance); and
(i) Aces of Spades NOT being drawn as second card (50/51 chance); and
(ii) Aces of Spades bring drawn as third card (1/50 chance).

Therefore, the chance of a particular card (eg. Ace of Spades) being drawn as the third card is
51/52 x 50/51 x 1/50 = 1/52.

pantelis wrote:
“after the first card is drawn the probability of the second card not been drawn as the first card is 1 (because we are certain that the second card was not drawn first).”

That is a bad twist of words resulting in the wrong framing of the problem at hand, which led to the wrong math. We are interested in the probability of “a particular card not being drawn as the first card”, not “the second card not being drawn as the first card”.

pantelis wrote:
“according to your logic the probability of a particular card been drawn first, second, or last is 1/52… “

Yes, that is exactly what I am saying.

The distribution of probabilities for each card must be statistically fair, and it is. Whether you shuffle the deck and draw the cards sequentially, or you pick a card at random each time, the distribution of the probabilities remain the same.

Consider the following scenarios:
(i) You take a fresh deck of 52 cards, shuffle it, draw 2 cards from the top of the deck and discard them. What is the chance of the next card drawn (ie 3rd card) from the top of the deck to be Ace of Spades?

(ii) You take a fresh deck of 52 cards, shuffle it, draw 1 card from the top of the deck and discard it. Shuffle the deck again, draw another card from the top of the deck and discard it. Shuffle the deck again. What is the chance of the next card drawn from the top of the deck to be Ace of Spades?

(iii) You take a fresh deck of 52 cards. Now, don’t shuffle it. Let’s ask Paul the Octopus, who is completely innocent and ignorant of the way a fresh deck of cards is prearranged, to truly randomly pick one card from the deck and discard it. Ask him/it to do it again a second time, also completely randomly without bias. What is the chance of the third card Paul picks, truly randomly without bias, from the deck of remaining cards to be Ace of Spades?

The answer: 1/52. Same for (i), (ii) and (iii).

Now, do the above again, this time revealing the cards as they are drawn. Assuming that neither the first nor second card is Ace of Spades, what is the chance that the third card would be Ace of Spades?

The answer: 1/50. Unlike in (i), (ii) and (iii), there is a stipulated condition here that Ace of Spades is not picked as the 1st or 2nd card.

As the above shows, whether you shuffle a deck and then draw from the top, or pick cards at random, or shuffle and reshuffle multiple times, the probability of a particular card being drawn at a particular position remains the same.

I hope that clears things up about permutations and probabilities.

Psychology
jason wrote:
“When shuffling a deck (or multiple decks) of cards in the “real” world (ok, so we don’t live in the Matrix), once the cards are shuffled they stay in that order until they’re dealt (or reshuffled). So randomly picking a card at deal-time does not actually maintain the “reality” of shuffling prior to dealing any cards, though it nets a similar result. Ultimately, I’d agree there’s no serious issue with this, but…it feels “righter” to me to go the pre-shuffle route.”

jason brought up a completely valid point – one of psychological barrier. People get so caught up with “shuffling”, that they forgot the real purpose behind it. It “feels” right to go the shuffle route only because that is what we do in the non-digital world.

The reason behind the “shuffle” in non-digital games is to introduce randomness. There was no other way. Computers can implement their own randomizers, thus my question for the need for a shuffle. I will also debate that the way computer shuffles an array of cards typically does not maintain the “reality” too, because the algorithm will not accurately simulate shuffling by hand.

Does it really matter for cards to stay in a predefined order? It only serves to give players a false sense of fairness where distribution of “luck” is concerned. It only matters to players who superstitiously believes that shuffling the deck changes the distribution of luck for a given round of game. When a deck is shuffled, players believe that their “luck” is fixed for that round of game. However, where probabilities are concerned, they remain the same.

The order of the cards will matter to players who can somehow see the sequence of the cards. But that is akin to hackers who employ memory inspection to see the sequence of a shuffled deck (another reason for not doing shuffles in software).

The only time having cards stay in a predefined order will be for situations where the sequence of the cards is revealed. But that is also equivalent to picking one card randomly until all cards are drawn and revealed.

I agree that the psychological barrier can be tough to crack. After all, most people do not define “luck” as “the probability of achieving a favorable outcome”.

However, the mental beast is one that can be tamed and re-programmed. In the past, dealers in casinos used to shuffle by hand. Nowadays, (continuous) shuffling machines are used. The human touch is missing (where is the “cut” which some gamblers believe affects the distribution of luck?), but it has not affected the traffic. Patrons have been re-programmed to accept the new system. Likewise for slot machines, the game has been digitized and degenerated to simple presses of a button rather than the pulling of levers. These changes have warped “reality” and have actually made games run faster (and casinos make more money running more games per minute).

The “reality” has changed, only because mindsets have.

On the Mac, I have lost much work and time due to the Mac OSX intrusively restarting on its own. Drafts not saved? Say farewell – lost forever. Downloads disrupted – start over (unless resume miraculously works). This is especially exasperating, considering that Apple requires you to update the iPhone SDK/Xcode by re-downloading the whole package. Not patching, but re-downloading a 2GB+ file.

So, why exactly is the Mac restarting on its own, even when it is not idle such as having a download-in-progress?

Turns out that this is due to a rather useless Security feature. Ridiculously, the “Log out after 30 minutes of inactivity” setting is the culprit. So, to save yourself some agony, make sure you turn it off:

If your Mac has been suffering from this problem, hope the above helps!

Seriously, I have no idea what purpose this Security feature serves, other than to make you lose progress in your work. By comparison, on Windows, if the OS logs you out due to inactivity, it actually restores your session with your work-in-progress intact the next time you log in. You can even safely switch between user accounts on Windows, and log back into an account with its last session intact.

P/S: As far as security goes, you should just check the “Require password” option.

I have finally disabled Spaces on Mac OSX. It’s a little painful to disable it, because I had considered it a very crucial feature, considering that without it the desktop gets cluttered quickly with the way the Mac OS presents applications and their respective windows (all mixed together in one very confusing bucket). However, the slide animation that occurs every time Spaces switches from one space to another has become really nauseating.

It was cool at first, but now it is painful to watch.

So much for Apple’s acclaimed emphasis on the “user experience”. Does nobody in the UX team ever stop to think that not everyone likes gimmicky animation stuff for frequent tasks, and there should be an easy way to disable such animations? Unfortunately, there is just no way to disable the animations – I hope to be proven wrong, but my searches have come up fruitless. A quick google visit shows there are other users who wish to get rid of the animation too (and apparently I am not the only one suffering from motion sickness, although most simply want to get rid of the animation just to save time, keeping multitasking slick and snappy).

So, now that I have disabled Spaces, what do I do now with the cluttered desktop? I am currently solving the issue with a little AppleScript and implementation of keyboard shortcuts via Spark – a free utility to create Hot Keys to launch applications and documents, execute AppleScript, etc.

First, you can use simple AppleScript to hide all other applications except the one you are working on:

tell application "Finder"
	set visible of every process whose visible is true and frontmost is not true to false
end tell

If you are already using a Hot Key utility to execute other AppleScript, you already know the routine. If not, you can download Spark, launch it, and then assign the above AppleScript to a keyboard shortcut.

(click on the Shortcut input field and then type the keyboard shortcut to assign the Hot Key)

With the above, F1 has been assigned as the Hot Key – pressing F1 when any application has focus will hide all other windows except the currently active application (or in AppleScript’s terminology, “frontmost” application).

But that only got rid of the clutter, albeit momentarily (as the clutter builds up, I hit F1 again).

What about jumping around applications? That was what Spaces allowed me to do, and now I need to replicate that functionality. Luckily, it is easy enough to do that with Spark. You can once again write AppleScript, such as the following:

tell application "Finder"
	set visible of every process to false
end tell
 
tell application "Xcode"
	activate
	set visible to true
end tell

However, you don’t even need to do that – Spark allows you to assign Hot Keys to Applications, so let’s do that:

As you can see, the above assigns Command-F1 to Xcode, and Command-F2 to Firefox. With that set up, when you are in another application, hitting Command-F1 will jump to Xcode immediately. If Xcode is not yet launched, it will automatically launch first. Spark also provides the options for hiding all applications when your desired program is launched:

So, that is that. A little manual work to assign frequently used applications to Hot Keys. But at least it no longer gets dizzy working on Mac OSX now.

Small caps are typically used for titles, headlines, column headings, etc. They are also good for any text that you would usually use all capitals. This is because the use of small caps makes the run of capital letters seem less jarring, and would also often require less space than all caps.

While many word processors and text formatting systems include an option to format text in small caps (which leaves uppercase letters as they are but converts lowercase letters to small caps), this is a feature that is lacking in most graphics editing software.

Some fonts have inherent small caps, ie they use smaller capital letters in place of the lowercase characters. These fonts are useful when you wish to use small caps to bring distinction to your designs.

Here are some fonts with inherent small caps:

The sample text used is:
“The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Fox”

• Berlin Small Caps
  
• Copperplate Gothic Bold
  
• Copperplate Gothic Light
  
• Lithos Pro Regular
  
• Orator Std
  
• Trajan Pro
  
• Pericles
  
• Pericles Light
  

Please feel free to leave a comment to mention any other small caps font(s) not listed above.

Thanks!

If you are looking to compile SWFs into cross-platform desktop applications, leveraging powerful desktop-only APIs, you may want to consider MDM Zinc 3.0. Available for Windows & Mac OSX, Zinc™ 3.0 is the fastest, most powerful and most feature-rich Rapid Application Development Tool for Adobe® Flash® and Flex®. With Zinc 3.0, you can rapidly create stunning commercial Applications, Screensavers, Widgets, CD Roms, DVD’s, Kiosks and More.

There is no better time than now to consider picking up Zinc 3.0 – MDM is currently offering a 25% discount for the following products:

• Zinc 3.0 Plug-In Windows
• Zinc 3.0 Plug-In Mac OSX
• Zinc 3.0 Plug-In Linux
• Zinc 3.0 Development Suite (contains Windows/Mac OSX/Linux Plug-Ins)

Promotion ends 23:59 GMT 30th December 2009.

http://www.multidmedia.com/shop/

Source: http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html

I have always found Objective-C a bizarre language, and there are probably many who will concur. Despite its strange syntax though, interest in the language (which presumably translate to adoption of the language) is apparently climbing fast (see the chart below), especially following the release of iPhone OS 3.0. This probably shouldn’t come as a surprise though, considering the ever increasing number of applications in the Apple App Store. With the growth in Objective-C developer base, it is also no surprise that iPhone, Mac sales continue to propel Apple forward (in my opinion no coincidental correlation here).

Source: http://www.tiobe.com/content/paperinfo/tpci/Objective-C.html