Posts by EnderX

Once, I was honored as a bringer of wisdom, but am now feared as a stealer of strength.

Men shudder at my approach. Yet if they knew that they would never see me, they would cry out in anguish.

I have a foe, against whom I seek to protect mankind. But he is the stronger; I cannot protect all from him, and even those I guard will eventually fall to him.

Who is my foe?
And who am I?

The man said "You will hang me."

No, 'wired' is what happens when you drink too much coffee at ~2:15 AM. (Unless someone can suggest a better beverage with more caffeine in it?)

"What do I have in my pocket?"

Knife!

"What do I have in my pocket?"

Handses!

I thought the 'Wyrd' spelling only referred to 'fate' or 'destiny' or whatever the appropriate analogue would be. The sense of the original usage was 'strange' or 'unusual'.

Except that we're dealing with the English Language here, and it has numerous exceptions to its own rules. Besides, check out dictionary.com if you don't believe me.

I, and everyone I know IRL, pronounces router (the device) as 'r-owt-er'. This includes the staff at the local computer store (note: this is not a chain, these people actually do know what they're doing, so I would presume they know what they're talking about as well). I have, I'll admit, heard route (noun - a course, way, or road for passage or travel) pronounced as 'root', but only rarely, and the verb form, as in 'to shift to another path', I have always heard pronounced as 'rowt'. If I heard someone say 're-r-oo-t', I'd assume they were talking about gardening or something similar.

And root itself can be a verb, meaning alternately to establish deeply, or to tear out. (Note: The second meaning requires an object, the first apparently does not. Check dictionary.com for further evidence.)

How are you defining bugs?

i always get told of for bad spelling and using no caps and using LOL/smilies excessively

And again. It's 'weird', not 'wierd'.

Are views unique? I saw and cast a vote earlier, but I'm also looking at it now, having seen that there were more responses since the first time through. Would that count as one view, or two? (Or three, since I'm unlikely to see any response to this if I don't come back and add another view...)

I've been given a piece of buggy code to attempt reviving. At the moment, every time I run it, I'm getting this error:

Database handle destroyed without explicit disconnect.

A quick google search reveals that this indicates I'm not closing a connection. I had trouble figuring out why I was getting this error until I realized that there appear to be two connections getting opened by the program. The program itself runs a select statement, then inside a loop drawing from that, is supposed to delete the files with the values given by the select.

In addition to throwing the 'disconnect' error, I'm not getting any of my records deleted except for the very first thing it calls. Do I need to explicitly close and reopen the connection after every action it's supposed to take, or are my problems likely to lie elsewhere?

Any advice on this will be greatly appreciated.

21?

Just tried this for myself...got some interesting results back.

Six of the ten items on the first page of results are mine. The top two are references to questions I've asked on Daniweb.

Interestingly enough, only one item (the top one in my results) on the second page was mine.

Am I allowed to average if two or more answers describe me about equally well?

Thanks for the advice. For some reason the css code didn't want to work right (remember how I said there were two lines in the visible borders? Css code only got rid of one) but the ="0" worked like a charm. Everything appears to be working quite nicely now. Again, thanks.

I built a php-driven form that is intended to have its results printed out and shipped to another location. The results are laid out as a set of tables that hold the information in place. I tested the page on a system wher ethe default browser isFirefox, which displayed the tables without any kind of border. However, when I transfered over to the system which will actually be running the form, I discovered that the default browser there is IE, and that in IE, there are some nasty borders and partial borders (some tables only have one line for the top border, but two for the sides and bottoms) visible, and I'm fairly sure those will be printed out as well. What methods are there to eliminate visible borders from a table that's being displayed in IE?

Thank you for your consideration,
EnderX

I am working on a program in Delphi which is intended to call up a php file on a server, with the output of the php file being dependant on the information the user enters into the Delphi form. I have access to multiple servers, and I'd like to know if there's some kind of component for Delphi that would allow the program to ping a server and, based on the response, determine whether to call it or attempt to reach the next server in the list. Does anyone know if this kind of component exists? And if so, would someone please be gracious enough to provide a link to whatever site or sites may hold information about it?

Thank you for your consideration,
EnderX

Please forgive me if this question has a ridiculously obvious answer, I am new to Linux and still have trouble trying to figure things out.

In case it's needed, I'm working with a copy of SuSE 9.3 OS.

Is it possible to send the output of a 'find / -name *** -print' statement to a file somewhere on the system? I'm seeking a specific bit of information, but I don't know the actual name(s) of the necessary file(s) and the onscreen output from a find with the first part of the name followed by a wildcard is long enough that by the time it's finished, about half the results are already beyond scroll range. If I could save my results to a file somewhere, that would at least give me a chance to look over all of them.

Is this possible? And if so, how should I go about doing it?

Thank you for your consideration,
EnderX

Does anyone know what the names of the library files are likely to be? I'm not sure what to look for, and I'm not sure what path the original PHP4 system was using; it would be nice if I had some way of tracking down the files it wants so I can put their path into the configuration. Any suggestions on some names to look for?

Does anyone know the name of the MySQL library package? I'm working with a server that recently had an upgrade from PHP 4 to PHP 5, and apparently PHP no longer provides built-in library files for MySQL. The system in question should have the libraries from PHP4 on it somewhere, but I don't know the name of the files I need to look for. Would someone please suggest a filename to search for?

Thank you for your consideration,
EnderX

I am currently responsible for a set of server units. Recently, the group of users working with one of these units informed me that they were having problems with a php-based report generating program. I did not write the program; my predecessor did. I did manage to track down the error, though; the program throws the message

[B]Fatal error[/B]: Call to undefined function mysql_connect() in  [B]/srv/www/htdocs/tech_site_lst.php[/B] on line [B]123[/B]

when attempting to access a mysql database.

Another server, running the same code, has no problems, but is running a different version of PHP. (Working program is running 4.3.10, broken version is running 5.2.*, I think the star is a 0 but cannot recall for certain.) Both systems are running on SuSE 9.2 OS's, both systems are running MySQL 4.1.10a.

Does anyone know what the problem might be? Or perhaps know of someplace I can go to find out more about the problem in question?

Thank you for your consideration,
EnderX

Offline? What's that?

Seriously, I'm myself. I'm not always 100% sure what that is, mind you...I have changed somewhat over time. But I really don't see a point to attempting to fool others about your nature; you'll either eventually slip and let something loose, or else you'll begin to go slightly crazed (not crazy) attempting to keep the multiple 'yous' straight.

This doesn't mean I don't mind hiding tracking details. I'm a bit paranoid IRL, and so I tend to do as little as possible to reveal anything about myself online that might come back to haunt me.

Read the commentary on that site. Apparently there was, in fact, a real reason behind it.

And then it promptly got turned into a joke.

Well, her status page does show she's member 1, so that would make her the oldes...

Oh, wait. You meant the other kind of oldest. Sorry.

What ways are there to try aligning the contents of a table cell? I have been requested to align a set of financial data so that the items are even on the screen and printout (that is, the decimals have to be on top of each other), but I cannot get the code to do what I want it to. Although I'm working in PHP, the segment I'm dealing with now is a simple echo of HTML table design code, with the only non-HTML data being the actual returned value.

I know there is an 'ALIGN=' command for use in table cells, but it doesn't seem to be working. I've tried every variation of 'ALIGN=RIGHT' that I can think of, and none of it seems to matter; the t able still left aligns the value anyway.

Can anyone offer any suggestions as to other ways to align the data in the cell?

Edit: Please ignore this message. This idiot (me) just discovered he's been trying to align the table from within the <FONT> tag instead of the <TD>tag. Sorry to waste anyone's time.

Not from an email, but I found this page kind of interesting:
http://www.prosoundweb.com/fun/jokes/joke48.shtml

I know, I know, one of the big advantages of PHP is that the variables in PHP don't take typecasting but instead any variable can hold any data. Thing is, for something I'm trying right now I need the ability to cast. I'm trying to add together financial values drawn from a database, which means they're all floating-point with two significant digits after the decimal. Problem is, actually doing addition on them seems to deal with integer addition; if the values both end in .*0, then any zeroes after the decimal point are eliminated from the value before it gets displayed on the resulting page. Is there any way in PHP to code for a financial numeric typecast, or am I going to have to hack around it with stringlength comparisons and artifical trailing zeroes?

@Junyah: How are you with Broccoflower?

I once got this variant on that one:

"Thee hast been blessed with the Amish Virus. As we do not use computers, thou art on the honor system. Please send this message to everyone in thy address book, then delete all files on thy computer. Bless thee."

Doesn't necessarily matter. It's a detail of whether or not he's been removed from the gene pool, not whether or not he survived. And from what you said, I'd think this one fits the rest of the Darwin rules nicely. At the very least it's good for an honorable mention.

The only actual phobia I have is a sort of modified heights. I've had that one as long as I can remember. I'm fine with tall buildings, so long as I don't make the mistake of looking down out of a window; I have no problems with airplanes, but if I'm on a building and look down toward the ground, I start to freak a bit. Fortunately, I've never managed to work myself into a panic on that. Otherwise, I'd probably have managed to toss myself off somehow.

And I don't like the dark. Never have. It's not exactly a fear, since I'm not really scared of it, but I prefer to have some kind of light source available.

That part I'll buy. I remember reading about a study done on that stuff once where the scientists asked for volunteers to send in their information to receive a horoscope casting. When questioned about it, the vast majority (I want to say ~90%, but I can't remember for certain) claimed it was accurate.

The horoscope they all received was that of a famous mass murderer.

How are you defining 'Horoscope'? It's always been my understanding that the horoscope is itself the divination or results of the divination, based on reading the stars.

Please note, on a personal note I do not recommend any form of divination. It tends to lead to nasty results for those who allow themselves to deep.

How are these psychologists trying to define their food items? My first pick would have been the brownies, but to my mind the word 'cake' implies light and fluffy, and I prefer brownies tough enough you have to actually chew them. Otherwise, what's the point to eating them?

My second choice, the ice cream, doesn't describe me at all.

Exactly which popular media outlets are you referring to, Sharky? Most of the normal media outlets in the US (as opposed to weblogs or similar online, which don't tend to fall under the same banner) are decidedly liberal in their viewpoint. Any image of the Republican Party they paint will tend to show them in a bad light, above and beyond the actual crimes, problems, and errors which really exist. Historically, Democrats have been just as bad about the 'crime/problem/error' count, but those tend to get ignored by the media until they hit a critical threshold value. With Republicans, the media shows no such restraint, as far as I can tell.

And for the record, you do realize that calling yourself a 'Socialist-at-heart' means you're advocating the general package of Big Government and government constraints on private matters as the Liberals in the US, I hope. Liberalism in the US is quickly going the Socialist Route, same way it did in Europe, and it's just as destined to fail here as it was there. In all of history, as far as I can tell, there has been exactly one community which managed to live up to the ideals supposedly espoused by socialism. And it's not exactly a good example of socialism as it's normally understood.

EnderX

I've been requested to upgrade a postgres system running version 7.4.9 to one running version 8.1.3. There is another system running 8.1.3 with the data that we need to transfer over to the 7.4.9 system. Both systems are running SuSE 9.3 linux.

Is there some command I can use to check on the configuration that was given to the 8.1.3 system, so I can do an exact match when I configure 8.1.3 on the 7.4.9 system?

Thank you for your consideration,
EnderX

Any suggestions? The only thing I've found so far is TinyCobol, which I haven't had a chance to set up yet.

Kind of ironic for me: I have a copy of the MicroFocus Cobol compiler available, designed for Windows 95, but it refuses to let me run it on my XP machine. I don't recall the exact error offhand; I'll have to try running it again.

That's the problem. I'm not sure if what I have is source code or not; that line makes me think it is, but the vast majority of the file weighs in against the sourcecode theory.

What I have is a set of files that have some clear plaintext in them, but also a vast amount of unknown data. Opening it in notepad gives me the little block image of an unprintable character, while opening it in Edit (DOS command line) shows an array of what look like ancient ascii symbols: Club, Diamond, some kind of wierd spikey circle, etc. These symbols apparently bear no relation other than appearance to the unicode symbols of the same type.

The problem is that I don't know how to pluck the plaintext statements from the rest of the file. I'm hoping you're right about it being COBOL; that at least gives me somewhere to look.

Thanks.

I'll check into it, but it's my understanding this program has been in use for at least a decade, which makes me think it unlikely that's what the file is. Still, I appreciate the help.

I'm trying to decipher a set of program files I was given to work with. I don't have the original source (as far as I know) or a copy of the executable, merely a set of files I was requested to deal with.

The files came in two directories, 'data' and 'sys'. Opening one of the files from 'sys' in the OpenOffice word processor, I stumbled upon a line which read, in part, 'Pic([[Z*][#*]*])'. {Note: Exact code witheld; it's not mine to disseminate. That's the general pattern the code took, though.} This looks a bit like COBOL to me, although I'm not completely certain about that.

Here are my questions:
1. Am I correct in assuming that command to be COBOL?
2. If I am incorrect, then what other languages use the 'PIC' command? I'll need to look at those to determine what I'm dealing with.

Thank you for your consideration,
-EnderX

If this is in the wrong place, I apologize. I simply couldn't think of anywhere else to put it.

I've recently been attempting to decipher a set of files with the extension .wbo. The files themselves appear to have been part of a database setup, but I don't know what db format (if any) it was in; the files are simply seperate files, not table-format or anything similar...at least, not as far as I can tell. Opening the file(s) with notepad reveals some normal english phrases, some of which seem to be field names, but that's about it; most of the contents are either unreadable characters or what I'm told is compressed data.

Does anyone know of a program or db setup that uses the .wbo extension? The only thing I could find about it online is that it's an 'Unknown or unassigned file extension'. Any advice you can offer on this would be most appreciated.

Thank you for your consideration,
-EnderX

Is there a relatively simple procedure for reading .ini files in Visual Basic? I'm more used to dealing with Delphi, and I have a couple of quick functions (written by another) that deal with .ini handling there, but I've been requested to use VB if at all possible for this particular task. I haven't worked with VB in something like six years, and that was a college 'intro to vb' type course.

All I really need is the ability to read from a .ini file; I'm only going to need a single line to work with, but that line has to be editable by the end user, and the program is supposed to run on startup; this means I can't store it in the executable or require the value to be entered in a data field.

I have looked on the web, but most of what I found seems overly complex, especially relative to the Delphi code variants I'm using now.

Can anyone suggest somewhere else I can look to find what I need?

Thank you for your consideration,
-EnderX

Before Darwin, evolution as a hypothesis (Note: Hypothesis, not theory. Scientifically, something's not allowed to reach the theory stage until it has been tested and at least semi-proven) allowed for the existence of God as the designer and planner of evolutionary pathways. (Think dog-breeding for a possibly more-understandable example.) Darwinian evolution, which is what most people think of today when they hear the term, rejects that option, insisting that everything happened completely randomly, without any form of outside interaction.

And the Cambrian Explosion does fly in the face of Darwinian evolution. If Darwin was correct, and everything does happen in moderate micro-steps, there simply wasn't enough time for what happened during the Cambrian Explosion to occur...yet the fossil record shows that it did.

And @ 'Stein: I apologize about getting you confused with someone else. I'll do my best not to do that again.

I don't have to prove anything, 'Stein. You're the one with the new theory; the burden of proof rests on your shoulders. All I have to do is verify whether or not what you come up with matches against the historical and technical data.

Darwinian evolution is evolution, but the term has become so PC-laden these days that it can be used to mean almost anything to almost anyone. Darwinism is the foundation; therefore, it is what needs to be proven. A solid foundation can bear having a shakey structure built on it; a broken foundation can support nothing.

And finally, a bone...although you'll claim it can be proven by evolution, even though it flies in the face of the basic theory: Go look up data on the Cambrian Explosion.

'Stein, where is your proof? Show me some real proof of evolution, not theory, not 'it might have happened this way,' but real proof. Show me something that only evolution, in the original Darwinian sense, could explain, and you'll have a case. I've researched the topic some...admittedly, I'm not an expert...and I have yet to see anything that fits that description. All I've seen is stuff validating the concept of 'change over time', which isn't evolution.

On what grounds?

The only reason evolution is considered more likely than special creation is because of a blind spot in science: Science is, by its very nature, limited to the material world. As a result, it cannot understand or make clear anything not purely rooted in the material. Evolution could, theoretically, be purely material, if it were real. Special creation, by definition, cannot be purely material. That is the only reason that evolution is considered to be more valid than special creation. On any of the rest of the evidence, evolution breaks.

yes theres bound to be if the universe is so big and we managed to evolve so i tiink other planets should be able to support life

Only if you accept evolutionary theory. Frankly, given the odds on that one, and the misscience that's gone into backing it, I seriously doubt it's even close to being a reasonable option. (Note: This has little to do with the 'other viable planets' option; I'm of the opinion it's possible, but that they're too far away to do us any good.)

I am attempting to write a program that expects the value of a specific field to be a five-digit zip code. Logically, this should be a completely numeric value, but as I'm using a text field, it is possible for the end user to put anything in there. I'm trying to figure out how to stop this.

Is there any built-in command in Delphi that can be used to check whether or not the contents of a string are completely numeric, without throwing a major exception? Or do I need to start breaking out the try/except blocks to cover against this possibility?

I've checked the Delphi help file included in my installation, but there doesn't seem to be anything that can do what I'm after...or if there is, I have no clue what to look under.

Can anyone (and would someone) please tell me either a command that can do what I'm trying to do, or someplace else to try looking for such a command? Or, failing that, please let me know it is impossible without throwing try/except blocks around?

Thank you for your consideration,
-EnderX

I am currently in charge of a running installation of the Slony replication procedure for Postgresql databases. I inherited this installation from my predecessor; I have no clue how slony works. I am in need of some kind of beginner's guide, if anyone knows where such a thing might be found.

I have checked the documentation which came with the slony installation currently running, but it's far enough over my head I can barely understand what they author is referring to, let alone what I need to do to learn it.

Searches on the web have revealed little. A general google search for Slony and Slonik (the commandset for slony, apparently...it was referenced in the installation docs) revealed nothing more useful than a list of the commands, with almost no instruction on how they were to be used. The instruction that was present apparently is geared towards someone who already knows a fair amount about Slony replication. Again, I do not qualify for that.

Searches for "Slony Beginner's Guide" and similar terms revealed a single site, which mentioned the term in reference to another site that seems to be mostly an FAQ. I'm still looking through that site, but I don't know if the contents will help me any. Other than the FAQ layout, it seems to be pretty similar to what I've already discovered, which, as I said, is currently over my head.

Again, does anyone know of a beginner's guide to Slony, or anything …