Posts by EnderX

i agree that death is less bad then life in prison. but for that exact reason death penalties should not be carried out as soon as possible.

if a person commits two crimes of which only one deserves the death penalty then he should finish the time for the other one first.

Assume it's only one crime, the DP-level one. Would you then be in favor of executing swiftly?

And am I getting the general consensus here is for justice over mercy to the convict?

The evidence I've seen tends to indicate that global warming is a natural event, not a man-made one. It's possible the warming is changing things, I'll agree, but to blame that on mankind is excessive. And as to extinctions: Most of the species that have gone extinct over time did so well before man stuck his collective nose into the mix. I'll give you one man-driven extinction, the Passenger Pigeon, and one man-assisted extinction, the Mauritian Dodo. What others do you claim are our fault?

erm... fire?

Sorry, nope.

Again, the closest answer is one of Serunson's earlier ones. Quick clue: The answer I'm thinking of is on the right track, just not specific enough.

@MidiMagic: The usual version of this riddle has a change due to inclement weather as well. If this is the case, I believe I have the solution; if not, then I'm stumped.

@Me2-BFD: You do realize, I hope, that by doing nothing but parroting the now-traditional socioliberal talking points in this manner you're simply indicating that you would prefer to echo what others say as opposed to attempting to think through the issues yourself. I seriously hope that this is not the case. A well thought out discussion, even if it's one that I happen to disagree with, I admire and respect. (Again, it may be respectfully disagreeing, but...) A discussion that does nothing but repeat already-answered commentary with no apparent new thought I do not respect. Make of this what you will.

I like C.S. Lewis.

I wouldn't know...I haven't met the man yet. I do enjoy his written works, though.

Yes. It does.

Wikipedia lists Yam Suph as being the modern Hebrew name for the Red Sea. Anybody know someone Jewish we could verify this against?

Any other changes?

I've been asked to look into a project with a TcxMaskEdit component that's throwing some problems. The main one is this:

The user is expected to hit tab to move between fields. The TcxMaskEdit in question is the last field, and it is suspected that the user will hit enter at this point to enter the record. It is possible for this field to be left blank, so in the OnExit event, if the field is empty a popup dialogue is given, asking whether or not this was intended. (Might have been done accidentally.) If the dialogue is answered with 'no', then the focus is supposed to be set back to the TcxMaskEdit field. Otherwise, focus is set to the submit button.

On leaving the TcxMaskEdit field with a Tab, the field remains enabled, and the SetFocus call works nicely. On leaving the field with an Enter, the field becomes disabled, causing the SetFocus call to throw an error. (Can't set focus to an invisible or disabled object.) Anyone have any clue why this difference occurs, or what needs to be done to stop it? I've cludged in an automatic component.enabled event right before the SetFocus call, but I'd prefer to find some way of not having to use that if possible.

Any suggestions?

Edit: Just noticed another change. Hitting Tab to exit the box, then cancelling at the popup, will leave the data in the other fields. Hitting Exit then cancelling appears to clear them …

I'm a bit skeptical of the article you quoted, mostly because of the attribution given by the author for the King James Version of the scriptures (KJV).

Now the simple fact is, we do not know exactly what body of water is referenced by yam suph in Scripture, which is the origin of much of the debate. The translation "Red Sea" is simply a traditional translation introduced into English by the King James Version through the second century BC Greek Septuagint and the later Latin Vulgate. It then became a traditional translation of the Hebrew terms. However, many modern translations either translate yam suph as "Sea of Reeds" or use the traditional translation and add a footnote for the Hebrew meaning.

It is my understanding that the team of translators retained by King James were working from the Hebrew texts for the old testament, not the Septuagint. (The Septuagint is a greek-language version of the Old Testament, which I believe had the books of the Apocrypha scattered within it. It should be noted that, outside the Roman church, the books of the Apocrypha are not considered to be Canon...they're, well, apocryphal.) In addition, although the usual date for this supposed translation is given, as here, as being ~2,3 hundred years BC, this rests upon a historical document called the letter of Aristeas, from what I've seen, and what I've heard of this document leads me to believe that it is riddled with historical inaccuracies.

Additionally, it is my …

Not the first time that kind of thing has happened. I just dredged this out of wikipedia:

The Tet offensive was a country-wide coordinated surprise attack by the NVA and VC on more than 100 towns and cities, including 36 provincial capitals and Saigon. The attack, at the time, was the largest battle of the war. The Viet Cong (VC) and North Vietnamese Army (NVA) struck nearly simultaneously, during the most sacred Vietnamese holiday while many Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) troops were on leave. Initially the attacks took the South Vietnamese and Americans by surprise, but they were beaten back by the ARVN and the Americans, inflicting massive casualties on the Viet Cong. The offensive included attacks on the city of Hue, where intense fighting lasted a month, at the U.S. base at Khe Sanh, where fighting continued for 2 months, and the raid on the U.S Embassy in Saigon, which was repulsed within a few hours. It is widely seen as a turning point in the war, but although it was a military defeat for the Communists, media reports were misleading in America, where televised war footage showed the Americans retreating through the grounds of the US embassy in Saigon making for a profound psychological impact on the US public.

Bolded for emphasis.

Does his behaviour change according to the weather outside?

What do you get if you cross a raspberry pie with a policeman?

What do you get if you cross a banana cream pie with a policeman?

Arrested for bribing an officer of the law.

How much water is in a bottle which has a cork in it?

Depends. Was the bottle corked before or after the water was poured in?

How long is a piece of string?

Depends. Are you referring to a piece of (yarn/rope/cord/thread), in which case the answer can only be determined by measuring the length with a marked straightedge (aka ruler), or are you referring to a collected array of individual computational characters? If that's the case, it will be either length n or length n+1, as it will have n characters and a terminating null that may or may not be counted.

Does anyone know of a good site or doc that describes the ways to use a TStringGrid? I'm trying to figure out how to right-justify some of the items that are going to be placed into a TStringGrid, and none of the docs I've found so far seem to have anything on how to do that.

I've been working with a css file to produce a few bits of needful output formatting for some php-built reports that are designed to be printed from the web. Recently, though, on one of our systems, I had an incident where it looked as though part of the css was either not processing, or was getting mislaid on the way.

The statement in question is

@page

{
    size landscape;
}

, a CSS2 instruction that is supposed to format the page in landscape orientation for printing purposes. The nature of my reports (rather wide layout) means that I need to be able to print them landscape if possible. This instruction isn't supported by every browser (notably, IE doesn't seem to support it), but the Firefox browsers we use inhouse do seem to do so.

Recently, though, I had to transfer one of my report-generating programs to another box in order to show the boss what I've got done so far. Both this system and my dev box are running Windows XP. Both of them have Firefox on them, version 1.5.0.12.

On my dev box, the CSS2 instruction works; printing the web report automatically prints it in landscape version. On the other box, when the report opened in Firefox, printing it caused it to come out in portrait orientation until my boss manually swapped the layout.

I don't know anything about why this might have happened. Would someone mind please giving me some kind of pointers …

We might also end up going back to arc lamps lining outdoor roadways. Although those wouldn't last too long; I'm sure they'd produce enough ozone that someone from one of those groups would get them banned too..

I'm not sure I actually have a 'favorite' type of animal. Current pet listing is as follows:

Living:
Dogs - Annie (miniature poodle, black fur where not going gray. Has cataracts, is apparently going deaf if not already there, and limps slightly. Also has a slipping problem on our hardwood floors.), Cooper (collie hybrid; humane society find. We have no idea what the other part is, as he looks like a pure collie except his ears droop a bit. Male, white with brown patches.), Cassie (purebred collie, female, mostly black with white underbelly and white/brown 'socks'.), CJ (humane society find, genuine mutt as far as we can tell. Female, brown fur.)
Cats: Gracie (humane society find, striped fur.), Amy (street rescue, pure black fur.)
Other: Jack (Box turtle, ~ 12 years old, most of which was spent in our care.), Al (Plecostomus, name is short for 'algae eater'), two unnamed fish that share the tank with Al (breed unknown; they belong to my sister), a small outdoor ornamental pool filled with goldfish, and Henry (White peacock.)

Dead:
Joshua (White peacock).

Missing, presumed dead:
Pogo (Black poodle, on the boundary between miniature and toy. Disappeared October 2006.), Barret (White peacock. Disappeared late summer 2001.), Lady Sarah (White peahen. Disappeared early summer 2001.)

Non-pet:
A small number of Black King snakes that have been released near a storage building in the back yard to solve the mouse problem.

- The biggest environmental problem caused by computers is the solid waste caused by the joint efforts of Microsoft and Intel to make computers "bigger and better" by requiring hardware and software upgrades every three years. If we could have a requirement that operating systems must never change, this problem would go away.

Or, find alternate solutions. I agree I'd rather not have to worry about an OS going near-obsolete within a short time of my purchasing it, but I've heard elsewhere that it's the hardware that determines the software; as hardware gets better, software will either have to take advantage of the newer improvements, or else become ineffecient. I'm not sure how accurate this is, but as I said, I have heard it before.

As an example of an alternate solution, I heard about an event in my area recently. The event went by the name of 'Ecycling day' if I recall correctly, and the whole point was to take the no-longer-wanted hardware people have cluttering their houses and try to get some use out of it. From what I understand, working systems were to be set aside for donation to local schools, possible salvagable parts reclaimed, etc. I'm not sure how well they actually did with this, as I understand the ecycling team was overwhelmed with people coming in and underwhelmed with volunteers, but it's a start.

- They tell you to turn fluorescent lamps off when you nleave the room. This will save a small …

My condolences.

@Serunson: The answer is not Photons.

@Everyone else: Serunson is still closest.

I'm working on a php-built report that's supposed to be printed out. It may be used on IE, it may be used on Firefox, I'm not sure which and have no control over the issue. Differences in the output formatting of the two browsers mean I have to be able to trim the report at different places in order to keep everything looking neat. (Firefox should print landscape with 8 records per page, IE portrait with 10.)

I've found out about the HTTP_USER_AGENT variable. But, with both the strstr command and the stristr command, I can't seem to extract 'Firefox' from the Firefox user agent string, which shows up on echo as "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.12) Gecko/20070508 Firefox/1.5.0.12".

The word Firefox is in there; I can see it. So why can my comparisons not seem to find it? And if the strstr and stristr functions don't see it, are there other php functions that might?

He claims that his single murder was because he was a hotheaded teenager, but the Death Penalty in the 'States is usually reserved for only premeditated murders. Premeditation isn't an action simply explained away by being hot headed. The courts obviously saw that between the way he killed the woman and his actions afterwards, he deserved death even after his retrial.

Remember, the person making the claims wasn't the actual criminal. If I read the article correctly, the criminal himself has been executed already.

Nobody else has anything they want to add to this discussion?

Ah! You're of the 'Bush is a front man/scapegoat' conspiricy persuasion, then?

Yes that is correct. Its illegal (or against USA prior doctrins) for USA to invade any nation as first strike. Iraq did nothing to us, they were not the cause of 9/11 or Pearl Harbor either.

Regarding bolded section: Please provide proof (reference of actual law or statute) regarding true illegality. And please explain why 'prior doctrine' is being held up as equal to law:

doc·trine (dŏk'trĭn) Pronunciation Key
n.

1. A principle or body of principles presented for acceptance or belief, as by a religious, political, scientific, or philosophic group; dogma.
2. A rule or principle of law, especially when established by precedent.
3. A statement of official government policy, especially in foreign affairs and military strategy.
4. Archaic Something taught; a teaching.

You seem to be applying definition two here, but definition three would seem to make the most sense of the context you're using the word in. And in such a case, it's a matter of policy, not of law. Last I checked, policies can, and often do, shift.

I noted a small item in the editorial column of a paper a short while back that kind of caught my interest. It sparked a couple of thoughts off in me, and I'd kind of like to know what others think about the topics it raised.

The item in question was a letter, referencing the execution of a man who had been on Death Row for nearly three decades. The writer of the letter stated that he felt himself, along with every other citizen of the state, was guilty of murder in the death of this convicted criminal. (The man was convicted of killing a young woman, as I recall.) The letter writer's argument was that the man put to death wasn't the same man as the killer. Not that the two were different people, but that 'that man was a 19 year old hothead, while this man is a 46 year old who's spent the last 27 years of his life looking death in the face' or something to that effect. (Not an exact quote; I'm paraphrasing it as best I can recall.) The letter writer also brought up the ancient bit of 'well-known knowledge' about how over time, every cell of the body gets replaced, so this also means that the man who was executed wasn't really the killer.

The whole point of the letter was about how the executed criminal should have been offered mercy by the state, rather than being executed.

The whole …

Exactly what grounds are you using to declare it an illegal invasion? Please cite relevant laws.

I think mostly the real charges are "He's a bad, bad, ba-ad man' and 'BUSH BAD! BUSH BAD!', although I could be mistaken.

For the word ba-ad, pronounce as though bleating like a sheep.

What's the difference between a kerosene lantern and a detective?

One lights sheds, the other sheds light.

If dirt weighs 25 pounds per cubic foot, how many pounds of dirt are in a hole 10 feet long, 5 feet wide, and 2 feet deep?

At 100 Cubic Feet, 25 lbs per, 2500 lbs, or 1.25 tons, of material has been removed from the hole...of course, being a hole, it has no dirt actually in it. (Value of material removed based on assumption that each foot of measurement is in fact squared off at the edge.)

How far can you walk onto a bridge?

As with any other 'how far onto/into' riddle, the answer is ($Object.length * 0.5), aka 'halfway'.

Quick hint: So far, Serunson's been closest.

No, I mean your answer was off...as in off course.

Would someone mind filling me in on what's happening with Rep points?

My last item of rep (rep added to me) was on July 13th.

About two weeks ago, I had 332 rep points according to my Control Panel.

Yesterday, I looked at an older post, and saw that I was listed as having 15 points. Okay, I just presumed that the rep from Geek's Lounge and Posting Games had been filtered.

Today, I hit 10 points, again with no change in the list of rep items.

What's happening with the reputation values? I don't care about the numeric value, I'm just curious about why it's suddenly fluctuating without any sign of additional rep items (positive or negative) being added to my account.

Off

Closing in.

Are either of you two gentlemen familiar with the name Zeno of Elea?

Nope.

Nope, although you're on the beginnings of the right path.

Still almost a year's head start.
Jbennet, I dub thee 'Tortoise'.
Serunson, I dub thee 'Achilles'.

Im winning though hehehe ;)

Is it really 'winning' when you've got such a head start going for you?

Shall we try another semi-tough riddle?

I bear light without sight.

The swift-stinging hunter of the
desert sands echoes my fire.

Ancient stones may reflect my glory,
though the crimson gem will steal
from mine to breed its own.

I exist in myriad places, yet
my true dwelling place lies
beyoned the purpled horizons.

To humankind, my touch is as a
double-edged sword, bringing
forth both a form of beauty,
and great devastation.

What am I?

The style of a proper riddle. Something that's obvious once someone else gets it right...

Congratulations to Scudzilla.

What is the bus driver's name?

This one works much better when spoken than when written. In written format, it's possible to go back and look at the phrasing again.

And, technically, the answer is environmental variable $YOU, as it will differ for each viewer. In my case, $YOU = 'EnderX'.

Nope again.

Yesterday, I was attempting to reload a remote copy of a postgresql database that had been corrupted. Creating the new db went well, as did reloading the data schema, but somewhere during the reload of the data itself, I lost the remote connection. After killing the now-unworking putty connection and opening a new one, I discovered that neither the postgresql system, nor the postmaster it uses, were running. And when I try to restart the postmaster, I get the following page of errors:

LOG: database system was interrupted while in recovery at 2007-07-31 08:54:40 CDT
HINT: This probably means that some data is corrupted and you will have to use the last backup for recovery.
WARNING: autovacuum not started because of misconfiguration
HINT: Enable options "stats_start_collector" and "stats_row_level".
LOG: checkpoint record is at 3C/D7008078
LOG: redo record is at 3C/D7008078; undo record is at 0/0; shutdown FALSE
LOG: next transaction ID: 59170527; next OID: 532878
LOG: next MultiXactId: 1; next MultiXactOffset: 0
LOG: database system was not properly shut down; automatic recovery in progress
LOG: redo starts at 3C/D70080BC
PANIC: block 39 unfound
LOG: startup process (PID 6852) was terminated by signal 6
LOG: aborting startup due to startup process failure

I googled for the panic message and found a small thread on the postgresql hacker's mailing list detailing a similar event, but the thread gave no clues as to how to resolve the issue. Can …

Nope.

We've been running through the more well-known type, let's try a slightly harder riddle. This one went unanswered in the original riddle game thread...happy solving.

I bear meaning within meaning within meaning.

Some use me for amusement. For others, to
learn more of me may be the difference
between life and death.

I am ancient, and yet often newly-born.

My secrets may be revealed not to the
strong, or the swift, or to the brave,
but to those who posses wisdom or
cunning will I make myself known.

And I dwell close to you, much closer
than you would think.

What am I?

What's round on both ends and high in the middle.

Ohio.

How many grooves are on the average phonograph record?

Assuming a normal two-sided record, then I'm going with Sk8 on this one. Each side would have a single massive spiraled groove running from the rim to the inner edge.

And on the Anagram:

Eleven plus two: 3 e's, 2 l's, 1 v, 1 n, 1 p, 1 u, 1 s, 1 t, 1 w, and 1 o.

Shuffle these around, and you end up with the following: (Note: Plus doesn't need to be shuffled)
______ plus ___
__e__e plus __e
__el_e plus __e
__elve plus __e
__elve plus _ne
T_elve plus _ne
Twelve plus _ne
Twelve plus one.

Not if he's going for the old joke. "How do you get down off an elephant?" "You don't. You get down off a duck."

The asbestos scare hadn't materialized yet when the WTC was built. The asbestos fell off because the binder was faulty.

According to the source I quoted, the first ~35 floors (I think) were built with Asbestos on them...as evidence, it pointed out a fire in the WTC in 1975 that the building survived. However, this source also claimed that most of this was removed later due to the huge asbetos suit claims and health scares.

1. What part of a car travels farther than any other part?

The keys, as you'll take them with you upon leaving the car.

2. How do you get down off an elephant?

For the last time, Midi, you don't get down off of elephants. Elephants don't have feathers, down, pinion, or otherwise.