The Ultimate

With a fifth defeat in the last seven Tests looming Ricky Ponting is getting desperate and is suffering from just the same pressure that he hoped would derail England in this series. One number is worth remembering: so far, in fifteen innings on this tour, England´s bowlers have conceded more than 309 runs just once (that was in the 1st Test): the lead is already well past that and the pitch is showing signs of uneven bounce and some life. It is doubtful that even scoring 500 in the second innings Australia could save this match now and, so far, they have not managed that in the series even when not under pressure.

There are two things evident from this series.

1) UDRS does not solve any problems and if it does then it creates new problems as well;

2) Ponting should hang his boots after this series is over. I really could not understand Australia’s obsession with keeping Pontin

Ponting is living in denial. the Team composition is flawed.No where in the world people will accept Shane Watson as an opener, in-spite of the recent successful run he has enjoyed.Phil Hughes is still raw and needs more Sheffield exposure.Ricky is more bent on saving his trusted lieutenants career at the cost of his own. Australlia need to look at klinger, cos grove, Rogers as a stop gap arrangement.

Can’t understand why Stephen Smith is No 6 Batsman of Australia. If they need a fifth bowler why haven’t they picked up a specialist spinner. Never seen such a stupid decision from Australian Selectors before.

I love seeing the aussies getting worked over. No questions about that. If I remember right, wasnt Ricky the guy who wanted the fielders word to be taken as gospel in doubtful situations. I wonder why he started his lil tirade when all the technology proved the catch wasnt a catch at all.

I am disgusted at Ponting’s behavior today. What this shows the next generation of kids taking up the game is that its ok to argue the toss with officials. As “voluntary”level 2 umpire in another sport, i can only hope that the ICC throws the book at Ponting and gives him a holiday from the sport.

when i was thinking ponting is about to loose ashes, his captaincy & his place in the playing 11, he himself is adding his integrity to his loosing streak… he is the same guy who kept on saying that the fielder’s say should be the final say for a clean catch & not that of an umpire’s or whoever’s. here is the same guy who is not at all interested in accepting the umpire’s or the 3rd umpire’s who infact watches the replay again and again closely on a tv. i don’t know why people still call him the best captain… may be successful, but that happened because of the players & definitely not his captaincy.

It is time for the history to repeat itself after about forty years. Bill Lawry was sacked before the end of ASHES series. Ian Chappel took over. That was a new beginning for Australian cricket. Ponting has to go before Sydney test. Sadly Ponting has disgraced himself.

It is quite normal for Ponting to react the way he did, Old habits die hard

The film got a huge response in the first week of the release a treat for all movie fans across the world. According to the media and public reports the movie is still going very strong across the nation.

Buzz is there that on the 100th day mark there could be a big celeberations among fans and SUN network is planning for a never before event to embark the success of enthiran.

Enthiran could make a profit more than 500 Crore which is three times the cost of the production. With a film which has the fabulous technical brilliance like this, this is one movie that would surely be a super duper hit of all time.

“Kalanidhi Maran’s only goal was to produce India’s biggest movie, but it ultimately became Asia’s biggest movie,” said Hansraj Saxena, COO, Sun Pictures.

The film did make such huge collections  across the world not because of SUN network, not because of A.R Score, not because of the Technicians or the crew and not because of Shankar the fim’s creator. It was only one man – RajiniKanth. He pulls the crowd, regardless of the director or the crew or even the story. There is no one in Indian film industry who can create the magic that this man can do.

His fans love him not just for the things he does on screen but also for his humble personality in real life and what he does off screen.The flicks that he used to do with a cigarette (yes bad but really cool) and the way he put his sunglasses on (ultra cool) were nothing that were ever seen in Bollywood back in the days of growing up in the 80′s.

“He is no mere actor – he is a force of nature,” said Grady Hendrix, writing in the online magazine Slate. “If a tiger had sex with a tornado and then their tiger-nado baby got married to an earthquake, their offspring would be Rajinikanth.”

He is not just a superstar of Indian cinema, but GOD of Indian cinema whose movies are market blockbuster even before the release.

Mark Reinhold, Chief Architect of the Java Platform Group at Oracle, accepted in his September 8th blog that the current timeline for the release of Java 7 is a tad unrealistic, and that a full increment release shouldn’t be expected until the middle of 2012.

I am pretty much afraid my career in JAVA again with the lack of interest from the ORACLE guys and with james gosling leaving the entire java team due to indifference with ORACLE. The Future is goint to be RIA and JAFX has not even started looking at the ground where as Flex has started to rule the world.

But that said, I look forward to whatever Java 7/8 bring. Java and the JVM have had a profound impact on computing. It has most every major paradigm within its community today, much like Lisp does.

I hope that Oracle will duely step up to the plate.

Array is a data structure consisting of a group of elements that are accessed via indexing. It can store simple data types such as number, boolean, string or even complex data type such as other objects or other Arrays.

[codesyntax lang="actionscript3"]

private var myArray:Array = new Array();
myArray[0] = "vinoth"; // string
myArray[1] = 2; // number
myArray[2] = new Object(); // object

[/codesyntax]

The above example shows how we define an Array in ActionScript. Now that we have declared an array, lets see how we can retrive the value.

[codesyntax lang="actionscript3"]

// retrieving the value of an array element
private var name:String = myArray[0];

[/codesyntax]

Arrays are dynamic and, therefore, can be resized simply by adding or removing elements.

[codesyntax lang="actionscript3"]

// adds an element to the end of an array and increases the array length by one
myArray.push("Vijay");

// removes the last element from an array and decreases the array length by one
myArray.pop();

[/codesyntax]

Arrays can also be built using MXML:

[codesyntax lang="php"]

<mx:Array id="myArray"/> <!--creates an array with zero elements-->

<mx:Array id="myArray"> <!--creates an array with three elements-->
   <mx:String>Vinoth</mx:String> <!--string-->
   <mx:Number>98</mx:Number> <!--floating-point number-->
   <mx:Object name="Vijay" age="25"/> <!--object-->
</mx:Array>

[/codesyntax]

Array is an object and as such it contains some usefel properties and methods. The length property represents the number of array elements.

[codesyntax lang="actionscript3"]

private var myArray:Array = new Array(10);
private var numberOfArrayElements:uint = myArray.length; // 10

[/codesyntax]

By utilizing the methods of the Array class, you can perform a number of operations on the Array elements or the Array itself. Popular Array methods include:

* filter
* indexOf
* join
* push
* reverse
* slice
* sort
* toString

Though Array has powerful features, but the inability to support data binding is a significant shortcoming. For this we have something called ArrayCollection.

Array Collection

Array Collection is a “wrapper class that exposes an Array as a collection that can be accessed and manipulated using the methods and properties of the ICollectionView or IList interfaces”.

To participate in data binding, an object must be able to:

1. It should dispatch event when something changes in the object.
2. It should allow other objects to listen and respond to events.

[codesyntax lang="actionscript3"]

// creates a bindable ArrayCollection with zero elements
[Bindable] private var myArrayCollection:ArrayCollection = new ArrayCollection();

[/codesyntax]

An ArrayCollection can be created in one of three ways:

[codesyntax lang="actionscript3"]

// creating ArrayCollection with zero elements
private var myArrayCollection:ArrayCollection = new ArrayCollection();
// passing an existing Array into an ArrayCollection via the constructor
private var myArrayCollection:ArrayCollection = new ArrayCollection(myArray);
// assigning an existing Array to the source property of an ArrayCollection
private var myArrayCollection:ArrayCollection = new ArrayCollection();
myArrayCollection.source = myArray;

[/codesyntax]

Extending the ListCollectionView class that implements the ICollectionView and IList interfaces, an ArrayCollection inherits a handful of properties, methods and events. Therefore, your plain old Array now has a new set of functionality.

New properties include (but not limited to):

* filterFunction
* length
* list
* sort
* source

New methods include (but not limited to):

* addEventListener
* addItem
* addItemAt
* contains
* getItemAt
* getItemIndex
* refresh
* removeAll
* removeItemAt
* setItemAt

Once an Array is wrapped inside an ArrayCollection, the properties and methods of the Array class are no longer accessible unless you access them through the Array object directly. For example, if you really want to use the Array’s push method, you could do the following:

[codesyntax lang="actionscript3"]
myArrayCollection.source.push("new element");
[/codesyntax]

Using an ArrayCollection in place of or in tandem with an existing Array provides Flex developers with a valuable and responsive data storage and retrieval mechanism.

Microsoft has refused to publicly comment about the leak but, if it’s a fake, it’s very good one. I wonder if the tab bar will spill over on to the next line like floated elements in css. Also there is no bookmarks bar or status bar

The names of actual implementing classes are not needed to be known at the client side. Because of the isolation, you can change the implementation from one factory to another. This means that the abstract factory returns the factory of classes.

Since being a die hard fan of RajiniKanth, let me get into his style of explaining things with an example. Let us go with an requirement where we are choosing our team for the current project.

[codesyntax lang="java5"]

public abstract class ResourceManager {
public abstract Specs getTeamSize();
public abstract Specs getTeamsManager();
public abstract Specs getTechnology();
}// End of class

[/codesyntax]

This class, as you can see, has three methods all returning different Specs of Resources Needed. They all return a method called Specs . The specification will be different for different types of Projects. Let’s have a look at the class Specs .

[codesyntax lang="java5"]

package creational.abstractfactory;
public class Specs {
public String specification;
public Specs (String specification) {
this.specification = specification;
}
public String getSpecification() {
return specification;
}
}// End of class

[/codesyntax]

And now lets go to the sub-classes of ResourceManager . They are Google, Davita and Yahoo.

[codesyntax lang="java5"]

package creational.abstractfactory;
public class Google extends ResourceManager {
public Specs getTeamSize() {
return new Specs ("25");
}
public Specs getTeamsManager() {
return new Specs ("Vivek");
}
public Specs getTechnology() {
return new Specs ("Java");
}
}// End of class

[/codesyntax]

[codesyntax lang="java5"]

public class Davita extends ResourceManager {
public Specs getTeamSize() {
return new Specs ("30");
}
public Specs getTeamsManager() {
return new Specs ("Vinothbabu");
}
public Specs getTechnology() {
return new Specs ("Flex");
}
}// End of class

[/codesyntax]

[codesyntax lang="java5"]

public class Yahoo extends ResourceManager {
public Specs getTeamSize() {
return new Specs ("10");
}
public Specs getTeamsManager() {
return new Specs ("Padmanaban");
}
public Specs getTechnology() {
return new Specs ("DOT NET");
}
}// End of class

[/codesyntax]

Now let’s have a look at the Abstract factory which returns a factory “ResourceManager ”. We call the class ResourceType.

[codesyntax lang="java5"]

package creational.abstractfactory;
public class ResourceType {
private ResourceManager resm;
public static void main(String[] args) {

ResourceType type = new ResourceType();
//ResourceManager resourceManager = type.getClientName("Google");
System.out.println("Monitor: "+computer.getTeamSize().getSpecification());
System.out.println("RAM: "+computer.getTeamsManager().getSpecification());
System.out.println("Processor: "+computer.getTechnology().getSpecification());
}
public Computer getClientName(String resourceType) {

if (resourceType.equals("Google"))
resm = new Google();
else if(computerType.equals("Davita"))
resm = new Davita();
else if(computerType.equals("Yahoo"))
resm = new Yahoo();
return resm;
  }
}// End of class

[/codesyntax]

Conclusion:

Abstract factory pattern centralizes decision of what factory to instantiate. Abstract Factory can be used as an alternative to Facade to hide platform-specific classes.

We write a public static getter or access method to get the instance of the Singleton Object at runtime. First time the object is created inside this method as it is null. Subsequent calls to this method returns the same object created as the object is globally declared (private) and the hence the same referenced object is returned.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<mx:Application xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml"
 creationComplete="creationCompleteHandler()">

 <mx:Script>
 <![CDATA[

 import flash.display.DisplayObject;
 import mx.core.UIComponent;
 import mx.controls.ComboBox; ComboBox;
 import mx.controls.RadioButton; RadioButton;
 import mx.controls.CheckBox; CheckBox;
 import mx.controls.TextArea; TextArea;

 protected function creationCompleteHandler():void
 {
 var components:Array = getComponentsFromXML(xml.component);
 var i:int = 0;
 var n:int = components.length;
 for (i; i < n; i++)
 {
 panel.addChild(components[i] as DisplayObject);
 }
 }

 /**
 *  Parses an XML string, returns array of new components.
 */
 public function getComponentsFromXML(components:XMLList):Array
 {
 var result:Array = [];
 var child:Object;
 var component:UIComponent;
 var type:String;
 var clazz:Class;
 var i:int = 0;
 var n:int = components.length();
 for (i; i < n; i++)
 {
 child = components[i];
 type = child.@type;
 try {
 clazz = flash.utils.getDefinitionByName(type) as Class;
 } catch (error:ReferenceError) {
 traceImportError(type);
 }

 component = new clazz(); // dynamic

 var properties:XMLList = child.elements();
 var property:XML;
 var name:String;
 var value:Object;

 // for each child node
 for each (property in properties)
 {
 name = property.localName();
 value = property.toString();
 // create a more generic method to convert
 // strings to numbers and whatnot
 // this is a regular expression matching any digit
 // check out rubular.com
 if (/\d+/.test(value.toString()))
 value = Number(value);

 if (property.attribute("isStyle") == "true")
 component.setStyle(name, value);
 else
 component[name] = value;
 }
 result.push(component);
 }
 return result;
 }

 protected function traceImportError(type:String):void
 {
 trace("Please include the class '" + type + "' in the swf.");
 var names:Array = type.split(".");
 var last:String = names[names.length - 1];
 trace("import " + type + "; " + last + ";");
 }

 ]]>
 </mx:Script>

 <!-- sample data -->
 <mx:XML id="xml" source="components.xml" />

 <!-- sample container -->
 <mx:Panel id="panel" width="100%" height="100%"/>

</mx:Application>

[/codesyntax]

Live Demo

Application source