Posts by MidiMagic

Because there were no WMDs and no link to Osama Binladen and he knew that

Wrong.

I heard Saddam say he was going to provide financial support to Al-Qaeda on the 60 Minutes interview. As soon as I heard that, I said "We are going to war soon."

And Saddam admitted shortly after he was captured that he had been using a phony story about WMDs to flush out a double agent. He not only flushed out the double agent, but in the process, he also provoked the war.

The thing that really bothers me is that the news media went totally silent about these two events after they were initially reported. This tells me that, rather than reporting the truth, they are out to get Bush.

I agree. The death penalty should be carried out the same year as the conviction.

Now that we have DNA to clear a wrongly accused person in most cases, the probability of a false conviction has gone way down.

Was the policeman not looking at what was beyond the snake, or did the bullet ricochet?

Did you find something to use the ISP info for?

There is a way to put Powerpoint files on a website or in an email. They start Powerpoint when downloaded.

I know you can just attach the PP file in an email, but I am not familiar on how it is done with a web page.

Think about this a bit.

If the server is down, it is not going to return anything, including server monitor code. It's DOWN!

The browser will give a "server not found" or a "server is not responding" error.

I guess if you have another site you can put your monitor code on, you could have a script try to open a dummy page on the server being tested. But the server error will stop the script.

The only thing I can think of which can do this is UNIX shell scripting pinging a server.

Use the font the user wants his browser to display, in the size he has chosen. Remember that some people have chosen large default fonts because they have vision problems.

Don't change the link colors.

Remember that users can block their browsers from allowing font and link changes.

And think that the large font user might wish to scroll your page horizontally, rather than have your lined-up information get separated when the page that doesn't fit falls apart.

Please don't!

It is extremely ANNOYING when stuff happens when I move the mouse without clicking, or stuff happens just to get my attention. It makes me mad enough to hit the Back button and add the site to my list of no-no sites.

If a page has moving content, it had better be doing one of these:
- Demonstrating a concept with a moving illustration.
- Trying to drive users crazy.

People who write the pages think this stuff is "kewl" and that it shows off their abilities. People who read the pages think, "Not another show-off!" BACK!

In my case, the interruption from moving material is so strong that I can't read the text until the page stops moving. The purpose of that interruption is collision avoidance, but it misfires.

I have had no trouble coloring a td. A background should work in any box object.

But it must be a td and not a TD. CSS doesn't know what a TD is.

All relevant tage, styles, ids, classes, and selectors must be in lowercase for CSS to understand them.

Be aware that the cell will NOT expand to show the entire image. It shows only the portion which fits behind the contents.

Is there some reason I always have trouble posting at 4 am?

Do you have the same printer?

Some print drivers ignore such operations.

Are the browsers configured for the same security settings?

Some browsers have settings to deny permission for such operations.

I consider such a style to be a security violation. Those settings on my computer are mine, not the property of some web author.

Why not just put instructions on the page to open the file menu and change the print setting to landscape? It will go away when the browser closes.

He posted it thrice in different forums.

The trouble with commercial debuggers is that they often miss such quirks. They usually use the W3C DOM as the reference, and will miss errors occurring in the IE DOM.

Do you know approximately where your error is occurring?

I can think of some goofy things that cause cryptic errors like this:

- Did you use a variable ot id name which is a reserved word in IE, but not FF or the W3C DOM? It could be the name of one of IE's proprietary extensions (such as "marquee"). This can cause IE to misinterpret a reference to a form object.

- Did you use a variable or function name which duplicates a built-in constant or function in the IE DOM?

- Is a semicolon missing somewhere? IE is much more forgiving of this error than FF is. But occasionally it also misinterprets the code with the semicolon missing.

- Is a quote mismatched somewhere? Like this:

'I went nuts last week hunting an error that turmed out to be a case where you don't notice an apostrophe in a quoted line, just like this one.'

I totally didn't think about the word "don't" having a quote mark in it.

- If you are refering to a mapped portion of an image, is it possible that a rendering difference or a failure to find the image file moved the image or made the mapping impossible?

.

It works!
Each function calls itself recursively through setInterval.
I used the variable smo to control execution of the long calculation and prevent multiple button presses from interacting.

var smo = 0;
var hnd;

function button1(){ // activated by pushing button number one
  var a, b, c, d, e, l1, l2, maxa, max1, max2;
  getgrid(a, b, c, d, e); // this is the error printing function

  if(smo < 1){
    hnd = setInterval("button1()", 300);
    smo = 1;
  }
  else if(smo < 5){
    clearIngterval(hnd);
    smo = 5;
    for(l1 = 0; l1 < d; l1++){
      for(l2 = 0; l2 < e; l2++){
        calcgrid(a, b, c, l1, l2); // this function takes time
        checkgrid(a, l1, l2, maxa, max1, max2);
      };
    };
    putgrid(maxa, b, c, max1, max2);
    smo = 0;
  };
};

function button2(){      // activated by pushing button number two
  var a, b, c, d, e,, l1 l2, maxa, max1, max2;
  getgrid(a, b, c, d, e);     // this is the error printing function

  if(smo < 1){
    hnd = setInterval("button2()", 300);
    smo = 2;
  }
  else if(smo < 5){
    clearIngterval(hnd)
    smo = 5;
    for(l2 = 0; l2 < e; l2++){
      calcgrid(a, b, c, d, l2);       // this function takes time
      checkgrid(a, d, l2, maxa, max1, max2);
    };
    putgrid(maxa, b, c, max1, max2);
    smo = 0;
  };
};

function button3(){      // activated by pushing button number three
  var a, b, c, d, e, l1, l2, maxa, max1, max2;
  getgrid(a, b, c, d, e);     // this is the error printing function

  if(smo < 1){ …

I tested it with several different names, including gibberish. It did the following:

- Returned a different name when I entered the same name at different times.
- Returned the same name for several different names.
- Returned "Huggy Bear" more often than any other name.
- Returned valid names for gibberish.
- Returned three of the names you posted.

It appears to be a random name selector.

One lights sheds, the other sheds light.

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.)

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

Right on all counts.

The others are still unsolved.

There are several flies in this environmental ointment:

- The computer itself uses very little power, compared to other devices in the house, unless it is actually in use. The disk drives use more power than anything else. The power supply wattage ratings includes a reserve for sudden instantaneous power usage.

- CRT monitors and printers are the big power draws with computers.

- Many employers require employees to leave their computers on at night. They set up software upgrades and virus scans to occur dutring this time, so they don't subtract from employee productivity.

- 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.

Some of the "power saving" advice spewed by the "save the earth" groups is ludicrous:

- They tell you to unplug your TV, VCR, and other electronic appliances when you aren't using thenm, because they draw tiny amounts of power to maintain settings. But they forget that such a device can require 15 minutes to half an hour for you to restore those settings before you can use it. It takes this much time if you have to restore radio or TV station settings. So the device draws more power during that period you plug it …

Several books I have indicate that frames are scheduled for future deprecation.

That's what this place is for!!!

Did you also take into account what would happen if JavaScript is turned off in the browser security section?

Thank you. The book I have is clear as mud on this function.

I just had a marvelous idea on how to kill two birds with one stone here - the delay, and preventing other buttons from working during the calculation - without adding any new functions to my earlier 4-button example!

> setIinterval is like a repeating time bomb, not a pause function.
If you know how to tame it, then yes, its of much use, not a time bomb.

:icon_cheesygrin: :icon_cheesygrin:

I was thinking in terms of somehing you set, and it goes off later, not destructiveness.

But it kept repeating the long calculation, and it got the calculations wrong too.

Before starting the timer or calling the setInterval() function, check if the 'hnd' is defined or not. If 'hnd' is undefined, you already have the timer running so no need to start it again, if not, then start the timer.

if(typeof(hnd) != 'undefined' || hnd)
{
    setInterval("function()", 1000);
}

// [B]OR[/B] clear the timer as soon as you enter the doButton() function

function dobutton1(a,b,c,d,e){
  clearInterval(hnd);
  var l1, l2, maxa, max1, max2;
  for(l1 = 0; l1 < d; l1++){
    for(l2 = 0; l2 < e; l2++){
      calcgrid(a, b, c, l1, l2);       // this function takes time
      checkgrid(a, l1, l2, maxa, max1, max2);
    }
  };
  putgrid(maxa, b, c, max1, max2);
};

Then this works differently than the description I have?

I understood from the documentation I have that the called function would stop executing as soon as the timer was cleared. I thought you put the clear at the end to make sure it finished the function.

I want people to keep trying. I would love to be proved wrong here. But so far, I haven't found anything that always works and preserves the formatting I want.

I don't think it's just the browsers. I think we are missing a tag.

The div tag is too general to use for something like rows and columns and have it stay put. It takes a lot of jiggery-pokery with the widths to get divs to stay where they belong, and then resizing the browser window throws the divs around to land wherever they will.

We need something with TWO sets of tags. One tag pair tells the browser what material belongs within a set of columns (like tr). The other pair tells each column which column of the set it is, and where it belongs (like td).

I tried nesting divs with different widths, and that didn't work either.

My thought is that those in charge of W3C are so heavily into book and newspaper publishing that they forget that people have other needs (e.g. tutorials, term papers, and advertising). Right now, we cannot do the following in xhtml code which validates. We used to be able to do all of them:

- Center an image, without a lot of extra code. The only reliable centering I have found uses a div "wrapper" and a lot of styles.

- Quote a portion of a reference work which includes PART of an ordered …

AJAX is not permitted. It's javascript or nothing.

Also, is the user allowed to press multiple buttons or is it assured that only one button at a time would be pressed till the end result and processing finishes?

Pressing other buttons right now causes the process to start again after it finishes. But I just realized that if I put in the delay, it would let a second process start before the first one finishes.

Once the loop starts, do the values of variables 'a', 'b', 'c', 'd' etc. change or remain the same as they were when the control entered the function?
The value a changes each time calcgrid is called. The checkgrid function looks for the largest value of a, and puts it into maxa, puts the value of l1 or d which caused it into max1, and the value of l2 or e which caused it into max2.

But still, considering the checkgrid and the putgrid functions require the values from the computation of calcgrid() function, I don't think delaying the execution of calcgrid() would be of any use...

setIinterval is like a repeating time bomb, not a pause function. I need a pause function.

I had an idea that I thought would work. I moved all of the contents of button1 except getgrid into another function dobutton1, and called it with setInterval from button1. But it kept repeating the long calculation, and it got the calculations wrong too.

var hnd; …

Why not use an input text box instead?

What was it?

I wasn't trying to be rude. I was merely listing facts. You have to watch what you infer from text. I think extremely logically.

You are still changing the rules in the middle of the game.

It does work, but it is still a kludge.

The outside list needs to be a single complete list.

In the actual application, the outside list is a much larger list, and it is now ordered. It can't be broken apart like that, because setting the start point is deprecated.

I said no inside list style position. It still looks stupid in the prototype.

When converted to xhtml, the code won't validate because of a misplaced br tag. When I remove the tag, the format falls apart again.

This code works perfectly if I use table parts instead of divs. Table has an inherent row-ness and column-ness that div doesn't have.

There are several interlocking requirements:

- After the button is pushed, the getgrid function must run and report the errors.

- The error reports must appear before the loops and the long calculations start.

- Each function needs the result of the function before it. In the loop, each function needs the passed variables which the previous functions produced in THAT iteration of the loop.

- There must be nothing which requires the attention of the user except the error messages and the numbers on the screen. No alerts.

ISP service to house: AT&T SBC Global (sbcglobal.net)

Email: Yahoo (yahoo.com)

Web Host (where the files are): Geocities (geocities.com)

Computer: Dell Optiplex

OS: Windows XP Pro

Browser: Firefox 2.0.0.6

The fact that nobody can make this work without using tables shows that table removal is not yet totally feasible.

User goes back and edits all of their posts replacing them all with jibberish

Are we dealing with little children who take away their ball and go home? Or do policies like a half hour edit limit make them mad?

Why not give us a longer period? Or give us a place we can park the post while we go get stuff. Your preview button doesn't start the clock, but trying to refresh the empty edit screen does.

The edit window clearing happens on only this site, and one other one which seems to use the same kind of BBS software. I have been trying to track it down, but without luck. Some theories:

- I just realized that it is not the browser losing focus, but the page losing focus. I have to use the browser to get the info from my server.

- The ads my ISP foists on me, combined with your ads, might use up so much cache that the text box info is lost.

- Your ads may be forcing the page to reload. I do see the blue progress bar at the bottom when I return.

- The help person on the other system I have this trouble on says I violated "security" by leaving the site bounds.

eBay also makes this claim, but it makes me log in again if I leave the site bounds. I can leave your site for over a day after forgetting …

I don't see how editing a post can get you in a difficult position.

I seem to recall that it was some kind of posting game that caused this unreasonable limit. Was it overloading the server or something?

Often I don't realize that I need another piece of code until the edit limit is too close. By then it is way too late to make the notepad file.

I have to log into the server to get the files. That takes time.

So I really have just 15 minutes.

And if I get a phone call, the time is taken away.

If you can reverse the change you made which clears the edit window when the browser loses focus, this wouldn't be a problem. I could put all of the files in the initial edit. I believe this change happened when you added those awful bumbling windows.

This is no project for a beginner, and you aren't going to achieve it with off-the shelf software. It sounds like a heavy programming job.

The first thing you may have to deal with is copyright. Are the data you are trying to use copyrighted? If so, you can't do it at all without permission of the owner (which may be the reason it has not been done).

Second, there are security issues. Automatic operations such as this are often prohibited. You might have to own the server to have permission to do this.

Once you have the data, SQL queries can find the information from the tables you create. But I can't find any chart generation function in any of my books on SQL or PHP.

Actually, graphics generated in the server may be a security issue, because viruses often hide in graphics files. You may have to upload the graphics from your desktop.

You aren't going to get this with HTML alone. Some other software is going to have to be continually updating your files (or you are going to have to do it manually - security may proihibit this).

1. Have a set of charts stored on your server as image files, and pick the correct one according to what link the user (or PHP and MySQL) chooses.

The hard part is the source of the charts. I can't find any scripting languages that can create graphics.

Maybe you can find a general purpose programming language your ISP host lets you use that makes charts. Or you can make them with Excel and upload them.

Either way, you aren't going to get this with programs bought off the shelf. It's going to take some programming.

I am totally sick of that editing time limit.

When I am trying to copy pieces of code from several files on my ISP, the 30 minute editing time limit keeps me from assembling the code together in the code tags in the post:

- When I go to get each piece of code from a file on my ISP server, when I return to this page, the editing window is erased. So I have to save the post before I go get a piece of code.

- The clipboard can hold only one piece of code at a time.

- When I paste the next piece of code, I have to edit the previous piece to get the formatting lined up again. There is something that removes spaces or puts extra spaces into some of the lines. It messes up the code one way if it is already in code tags, and another way if it is not.

- Because of these delays, the 30 minute limit keeps me from adding more than two pieces of code in a post.

- To top it off, one of the ads just made my mouse-drag selection disappear and moved the mouse cursor into the ad.

There should be no edit time limit.

See the entry before yours. Our posts crossed in time.

It didn't do what I wanted. It delayed the execution of EACH repetition of the loop, extending 8 seconds of execution to over a minute.

One thing is that there is no "single function" for the long calculation. It depends on which button is pushed on the form.

It looks like this (note that the JS is an external file, not embedded):

function button1(){      // activated by pushing button number one
  var a, b, c, d, e, l1, l2, maxa, max1, max2;
  getgrid(a, b, c, d, e);     // this is the error printing function

  for(l1 = 0; l1 < d; l1++){
    for(l2 = 0; l2 < e; l2++){
      calcgrid(a, b, c, l1, l2);       // this function takes time
      checkgrid(a, l1, l2, maxa, max1, max2);
    }
  };
  putgrid(maxa, b, c, max1, max2);
};

function button2(){      // activated by pushing button number two
  var a, b, c, d, e,, l1 l2, maxa, max1, max2;
  getgrid(a, b, c, d, e);     // this is the error printing function

  for(l2 = 0; l2 < e; l2++){
    calcgrid(a, b, c, d, l2);       // this function takes time
    checkgrid(a, d, l2, maxa, max1, max2);
  };
  putgrid(maxa, b, c, max1, max2);
};

function button3(){      // activated by pushing button number three
  var a, b, c, d, e, l1, l2, maxa, max1, max2;
  getgrid(a, b, c, d, e);     // this is the error printing function

  for(l1 = 0; l1 < d; l1++){
    calcgrid(a, b, c, l1, e);       // this function takes time
    checkgrid(a, l1, e, maxa, …

I just thought of something stupid.

Is it possible that the browser is somehow seeing text it already interpreted (such as stuff cached) and is interpreting it again?

The marquee tag does not work on any browser except Internet Explorer. It's one of Microsift's nonstandard features.

It is not part of any W3C doctype. Your page will not validate if you use it.

Do not use it.

Yes, for all that I loathe Bush and what this administration has done, I am not aware of any law which he has broken - except those of trust, responsibility, and decency.

That depends on point of view:

Only those who believe the news media theory of why we are in Iraq see a breach of trust. But Saddam did admit that he was using a false story of WMDs from Africa to smoke out a double agent. He found out who the agent was, and also found himself in a war.

Only those who believe that we can just get up and walk away from a war with no consequences see no responsibility.

And it's amazing how many who think Bush is somehow not decent also think that Clinton was one of the best presidents.

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

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?

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?

How far can you walk onto a bridge?

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

How long is a piece of string?

Right on all counts.

Ohio.

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.

Actually I think XIX is nineteen in roman numerals and take out the one in the middle to get twenty (XX).

There are two grooves on a record.

You have it. One on each side.

I thought I typed XIX. By the time I noticed the I was misplaced, I was locked out of edit.

Er.. riddle?

Was that a recursive riddle?

So why did I see the html code I put in a code block fully rendered in the edit window when I clicked the back button after posting that code?

"Once you open this can of worms, it takes a bigger can to recan them."

Browsers like to do this. They calculate how things fit based on columns and rows. And they do it whether you hard code your html or use pagebuilding software.

So you change the size of A. This makes more room for B, so it resizes. But now C, below it resizes too, changing the size of D. Cascade!

On top of that, Firefox and Internet Exploder have different rules on how they render margins, borders, and padding, which the pagebuilding software can't easily allow for.

This is one reason I don't like pagebuilding software. It's much easier to get stuff to locate right if you do it yourself with style sheets.

If I need iron control, I use the width style, as a percentage of the page or container width.

And I still find myself checking different browsers to see if my design falls apart whenever I change something. IE is the browser with the antsy-est behavior.

Yes.

You can't do that. You changed the contents of the lists of items so it works. But if I fix it for the original display I want, it falls apart again.

In the example, ALL of the text I put in must be displayed in the correct place, not just the numbers one through eleven.

The first group of columns is inisde a list. The second group is NOT in the external list. You put both inside lists.

You conveniently removed the parts which display in the wrong place. That's cheating.
They are:

* Here's the end of the list

Here is the next line

And down here, it works.

You remind me of the college student who passed a test by changing the questions on an online test, or the use of lime to "remove" PCBs from soil (it poisoned the test for PCB).

I have a really good reason for wanting it displayed correctly in its original form. It should look something like this (except for column widths, and the asterix replacing the bullets):

* Here is the list
      1. one        1. four       1. eight
      2. two        2. five       2. nine
      3. three      3. six        3. ten
                    4. seven      4. eleven
  * Here's the end of the list

Here is the next line

And down here, it works.

  1. one        1. four       1. eight
  2. two        2. five       2. nine
  3. three      3. six        3. ten
                4. seven      4. eleven

Here is the next line

This could be a Windows or a server setting.

There is something that doesn't work here:

The lengthy processing function requires values to be passed to it from the error display process. It does nothing to the values displayed, but it does need them to know what to calculate default values for.

I can't pass the values to the processing function if they haven't been set yet.

Also, site policy says I should not modify the html code with scripts. I need to set styles and values instead.

Also, you put in an alert. That alone will cause the display to complete. But I don't want to distract the user from what he is doing with an alert.