Posts by quintoncoert

in the command prompt window type the name of the program you want to run and press <Enter> key. You may have to change directories to where the program is located if it is not in the PATH list.

sorry but no that is not what i am looking for. i know that i can do that.

what i am looking for is something else. can i not store the program name along with its path in a macro or sequence or something and then activate it by pressing some buttons on the keyboard?

hi. can someone tell me if there is some way to open or start execution of a program by typing in some sort combination of keys on the keyboard?

For example if I have a program called program.exe and it is stored on the hard-drive is it possible to start the execution of that program by pressing a sequence of keys on the keyboard instead of going onto the hard-drive with windows explorer for instance and double-clicking with the mouse?

What kind of software bugs? Do you mean logic errors?

I am really not asure if that is possible. I mean computer programming is problem solving and in order to solve a problem the computer needs to understand it.

when computers have reached the point where they can understand and participate in an intelligent conversation then I would suggest that all of us programmers start looking for new jobs since then your project would have reached square one.

But that is only my opinion. I rarely lsiten to the opinions of others so I would not tell you to listen to mine.

>Cricket? Is it anything like golf?
no. it is like baseball with key differences

>To my knowledge no one plays cricket here in USA.
No. The closest country to USA which plays it is West India. The world cup was there earlier this year. other countries include australia( world champions ), the entire asian sub continent ( i.e. pakistan, india etc ), england and south africa.

Differences between baseball and cricket:

No three strikes you are out. The bowler( akin to pitcher ) has to hit your wickets when you bat. there are other ways to be out too but that is the equavalent of the three strikes. We call it being bowled clean.

Two batsmen must always be in. when only one batsman is left the team is out.

Ball can be hit in any direction. In fact shots played behind and to the side ( i.e. third man ) are favourites in cricket.

two things.

firstly. there are still two tests left to play.

secondly. i am not that surprised at england's collapses. they have done that before.

@ ancient dragon

i read a similar study several years ago and you are right. both men and women tend to prefer what is normal or average in their societies above exceptional beauty.
end @ ancient dragon

for myself i think i would go for total beauty if i can find it and if she would want me back! but then again the easiest way for a girl to impress me is to beat me in something intellectual! of course narue is the only female who has ever managed to do that although about four or five has matched me in some things and i still am in awe of them. also i am not afraid of a woman more intelligent than me although i admit that it is both a bit disturbing and exceptionally rare. a final note on the beauty thing. the beauty must be what i consider beautiful. even though there are similarities in what humans say are beautiful we all tend to have preferences and i want my preferences before i select it over brains.

@ christina
>If a man doesn't have intelligence, he has nothing. He can't financially provide for me or take me out to nice >restaurants. Unless of course, the attractive guy has money. :P

now this is really interesting. not that i want to act like narue or anything but i did not realise that american women still need men to take care of them? by …

hey are you able to play now?

no. i am at work. i am going to look at time zones and find a way to play when i am of hours.

sure we will.

still waiting for quintoncoert to respond and schedule our match.

sorry. i have been out of town. i dont know when we can play. post a time frame in days. i am afraid that if we dont make it before the weekend then it will have to wait until next week because i am going to be out of town again. ideally i would like to make it friday or thursday or better yet next week.

how about transformers? there is not enough robot on robot fighting action (it sort of leaves you wanting for more) and the robots act as if they dont have basic bodily kinesthetic intelligence(or perhaps the producers dont know about it and therefore ommited it in the robot's behaviour.). but apart from that i would say it is an OK movie. i would most certainly recommend it.

2(disclaimer, one of my firefox ad ons inserts a 2 at the beginning of every post, I cannot change this.)

The only things I like to do that do not involve my computer are: fencing, reading, chess, and solving my rubiks cube. (my calculater, gp2x, and other devices have been counted as "my computer." I just got a hp 50g... its sweet)

fencing? that is cool i think. i like any form of combat training. when i was younger i did karate.

i hope that this does not sound like a silly question but can someone please tell me why we return an integer from the main method in c++?

if program execution starts and ends in main then what is the point? main calls other mothods and receive return types so why does main have to return something itself?

>There is nothing to say though that greenhouse gases and such are the cause of global warming.

that is true. all we have is a sudden acceleration in the rate at which earth's temperatures are rising. at best it co-relates with the rising levels of carbon di-oxide.

in fact i shall go you one better and say that earth's temperatures seems to fluctuate over periods of time and that it has probably been higher in the past.

but the keywords here are acceleration and co-relation. while earth's temperatures have been rising for a very long time it has never rose at the rate at which it rises now. and it also happens at the same time that we have released huge amounts of green house gasses into the atmosphere.

lets take a look at the term green house and green house gass.

by day the earth receives heat energy from the sun. and at night that energy is lost back into space. this maintains earth's temperature at a roughly stable level over large geological time periods. however ask anyone who knows either farming or geology and he will tell you that your coldest nights are the nights without cloud cover because the clouds will prevent the loss of heat to the cold and dark regions of space. that is a natural green house. in my country which is warmer than both USA and Europe one can clearly see the difference between a cloudless and cloudy …

@ lasher511

o come on. protecting the planet is important. if it goes we humans would have nowhere else to go.

and what is up with calling him a liar? have you seen no reports on ice on polar regions and himilayas melting? when are you going to believe him when we have succeeded in changing earth into a second venus?

i understand the american attitude towards the kyoto protocol. it will only shift production to third world countries with green house gasses not being reduced by much. but even that only stresses the point that we are killing our planet. whether we are killing it from china, brasil or africa on the one hand or from europe or america on the other hand makes no difference. we have to reduce green house gasses period.

@ enderx & midimagic

i think i need to get hold of some info regarding the wtc. original construction etc. midimagic makes a good point as to why the building collapsed.

@ lasher511

you are right about seeing other points. i too sometimes argue against what i believe. but i do it just for fun.

>Yes Russia gave up but that was because they believed it.

one can probably not prove that the moon landings were not faked. i must admit that part of the reason that i believe that the moon landings were real is because i like to believe that it is an achievement for humans as a species. so perhaps i am looking through coloured glasses.

however. until someone actually prove that they were in actual fact faked i think i shall continue to believe tat they were real. remember that there also is no proof of the landings being faked either.

i read some crab about lighting not being right but i did not buy it. and also a friend of mine has this really nice thing about aliens already being on the moon and sending the humans back so that even though it is within human ability the aliens were or are already there. so they returned to earth and shoot the whole thing in some studio in order not to alarm the humans on earth. as proof he said that there was a considerable delay between the guys arriving up there and the actual broadcast they did back to earth. that delay was because they were returning to earth.

i dont know how long a trip back from the moon takes but unless the delay was a couple of days it is of course all BS.

@ narue

Hi. i would really like to play you again in a friendly game. you know i just realised that the last time we played we were both a bit stupid. It would have been much better if you played in the morning and me in the evening. that is if you do not mind getting up one hour early. else i can always try and get you on a weekend. so can we play again some time?

there is something that i would like to ask you. you seems to know the sicilian since you can play against it as well. if someone plays the sicilian najdorf variation against you how do you prevent him from capturing the e4 pawn by chasing the c3 knight. the only way seems to be an early f3. even if you dont move the bishop to c4 black still has a chance to hit the knight. and moving that bishop seems to be the best move.

hi. can anyone tell me if there is any build-in functions which converts hexadecimal to decimal and decimal to hexadecimal in C#?

@ darrenw89

really good. i once worked at a company where, i swear, the IT people had a very similar attitude. And i was answering the phone at help desk so imagin the heat i got from end users calling.

@ nichito.

dont let narue hear you make bill gates jokes. she is a fan. the joke is pretty true though.

i am not sure if i am one. but nevertheless.

i dont really spend any time in front of the computer away from work. even in tertiary education while my friends was surfing the internet i would be somewhere else.

in my free time i read, play chess, run or watch sports. i also like hiking but i havent done that in a long time.

nowadays i do spend some extra time at the computer but that is only after i have read narue's list of what excellent game programmers can do.

Yes you can create an array of textboxes.Look at the code below.

public partial class Form1 : Form
    {
        TextBox[] txt = new TextBox[3]; //Creating an array of textbox //references NOT an array of textboxes.
        
        public Form1()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
        }

        private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            

            for(int i = 0; i < txt.Length; i++)
            {
                txt[i] = new TextBox(); //Each textbox reference must show a //textbox...
                
                this.Controls.Add(txt[i]); //Add the current textbox to the //form.
                
            }

            
        }

Now why we wrote txt = new TextBox(); ???
Because when you initialize the array of textbox references , each reference shows "null".So when you write txt.Text = "something" without write txt = new TextBox(); it will cause an error(Null reference exception).

public partial class Form1 : Form
    {
        TextBox[] txt = new TextBox[3];
        
        public Form1()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
        }

        private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            txt[0].Text = "something"; //These assignments will cause Null //Reference Exception because each of reference shows "null";
            txt[1].Text = "something else";
            .......
        }
    }

Note that all of the textboxes have the same location on the form when they were added to the form.You must change their location with the code below :

txt[0].Location = new Point(45,89);
txt[1].Location = new Point(34,88);
......

But this will cause a little mess for 30 textboxes...:P
If the textbox positions are proportional you may solve this by using a loop...

thank you. it was most helpfull. there still is some issues but they involve logic and i shal be able to deal with …

@ lasher511

you are only proving my point that rusia gave up the space race when they lost it. I mean. if the moon landings were faked rusia would have continued.

you are right in that i have not heard about building seven. but the point is that the U.S. government gained nothing by such a conspiracy. Consider motive. Before I trip my best friend i am going to make danm sure that I gain a ship load of gold for him going down. Or at the least there must be a king cheeta chasing us both which of course is a motive by itself.

@ Aia

Sorry for only responding now. You probably thought that I have forgotten all about you but actually, for reasons which shall soon be clear, I was away on Venus for the past few days and as you no doubt know the solar winds can make inter-planetary communication a nightmare at best. Especially during this time of the year.

>I apologize. When I wrote the Rusty story, I was mad at Al Gore and his environmental >acolytes.

Don’t worry about it. We are only human all of us.

>Truth to be told. I was bitter, because a spokesman for Al Gore sent me a “cease and desist” e-mail, against my >business.

I sympathize. The same thing happened to me when I tried to bring the benefits of modern economics to the native inhabitants of Alaska and North-west Canada by selling them solidly frozen water. My friend went through the same thing when he tried to sell salted water to the dolphins. In fact so enraged were we at the gross violation of anti-thrust legislation that we took the liberty of taking a trip to Venus and seeing Mr. Gore. He was there conducting a study on excessively carbonated oxygen.

>a concept that they solely, hold all legal rights to.

He immediately set the record straight. They were not trying to establish a monopoly, but were merely trying to protect the consumer. In fact they are planning to ban …

@ dave
i certainly hope the the moon landings were not faked. at least i am sure that they are not. if they were faked why did rusia gave up the space race or did the american government fake the space race too.

It makes no sense for a government to do that kind of damage for some reason. the best motive for 9/11 conspiracy theory involves oil theft. take a good look at the economics of oil( i.e. producers, suppliers, consumers etc ) and you will see that the U.S. did not gain that much by such a conspiracy. In fact unless the U.S. is carting of ship loads of oil I dont see the gain of the war.

@ jwentig

if God really made the earth 6000 years ago but put in fake dino bones and stuff why was he so against us gaining knowledge etc? what would be the point? for example man was kicked out of the garden partly as punishment but mostly because he had knowledge making him half God-like and if he were to become immortal too... just read genesis properly. and at babilon too.

Can someone please tell me what is wrong with the following code or if it is even legal? I am trying to access the text in a multitude of textboxes without having to go to each textbox manually. so i named them all similar enough. their names are all variations of
txtSG1D1
with only the numbers varying. the problem here is that s2 cannot be equal to the text of curText. I get an error message that seems to imply that curText is not a real object. I must create an instance by using keyword new.

Or is there some other way of creating an array of controls. I really do not want to resign myself to the fate of having to code 30 textboxes by hand.

Thanks.

TextBox curText = newTextBox();
curText = (TextBox) this.Controls["txtSG" + x.ToString() + "D" + y.ToString()];
 
s2 = curText.Text;

@ Aia

I am not entirely surewhat you are trying to say. So before i make a fool of myself let me ask you if you are saying what i think you are trying to say.

are you saying that the earth warming up is some natural process and that we humans are in fact grossly mistaken to believe that we can somehow raise the temperature of the planet? because that is what the moral of your story seems to suggest. especially since you went and back it up by saying that we cannot reverse the flow of the mississipi back upstream.

if that is what you are saying then i have to say. perhaps you are right in that we cannot reverse the flow of a river. but we can in fact do many things with a river. we can change its path( not drastically i admit) we can reduce its flow and water level. we can polute it. the list goes on.

and to get back to the story of rusty. the sun did not need rusty to rise. that is true. in fact the crowing of the cock was a result of sunrise. i.e. he started to crow in response to slow sunrise and ended up believing that the sun rise in response to his voice.

if you want to compare it to human greenhouse gasses and global warming you are in fact saying that we are emitting greenhouse gasses in response …

ha... you should take a look to ours... all of them are corrupted, and several crimes are repeated towards them... and they're there just to pick big fat checks, worth enough to pay for the lifetime education of one single kid...

i dont think the american politicians are worse than mine either.

mine can be divided into two groups.

group one is utterly incompetent and we have problems ranging from undrinkable tab water all the way up to the rampant rape and murder of small children.

the second group are intelligent enough to steel in either legally or illegally. with legal theft i mean writting yourself a paycheck of many thousands or millions of Rands as a performance bonus while your organization is in fact making a loss.

thanks. it works. i do not know why i did not think of that myself. probably tunnel vision!

is it possible to have global level methods in c#? I have several forms and they are going to use roughly similar logic. i can design methods which can work with them all depending on what parameters are passed to them but how do i make these methods global so that all the forms can access them?

for example. one method retrieve data from a database one field and record at a time. two forms need to use it. but i only know how to create methods that can be accessed by one form. this i do by placing the method within the class curly brackets of the form. but how do i make such a method accessible to both forms?

>I was actually thinking that we could all pitch in and help program a ladder system ourselves

i am more than willing to help out. if someone can act as system analyst or software engineer and tell what he wants programmed i am willing to do my part. just as long as it is not too big since i am a novice programmer.

@jocamps.

i see that you are here. my boss is in the office but i can try to sneak in a game. but if i suddenly quit or something then you know why.

sorry. no need to answer. i figured it out.

System.Convert.tostring( integer );

i guess i shall place it here in case someone else ever wants to know.

Can someone tell me how to convert variables from one type to another in c#?

Specifically i need to display an integer in a textbox. the textbox does not want to display it since the textbox has text and the integer is an int.

i am very new to c# and dont understand all of array passing to methods. chief reason for these misunderstandings is the keyword param.

param can only be used in a method header once and is always passed by value. also it works on a number of individually declared variables which is then passed as an array.

But what then of a real variable array? the type declared by for example .... int[] a = new int[ 10 ];.....? Can one pass a real array to a method without the use of the keyword param? and is such an array passed by value or by reference. if the programmer can specify which one then how does he specify it? by typing in the keyword ref in front of the array? also can one pass more than one array. for example can one pass an integer array as well as a string array to a method? and lastly can one use the keyword out with an array.

sorry if these sound like silly questions. i was on a few websites but they did not answer the questions i just asked.

>@quintocoert
>thanks for the compliment. you still owe me a match though. lol. i'll PM you when im not busy and able to play (in the >right conditions. lol) really was challenge to play with you.

i can play you any weekday from 4:00 GMT to 5:00 GMT. But say when you want to play. I normally start work 6:00 GMT.

However we shall probably meet in this tournament soon again. I fully expect you to win all of your games (sorry to the rest of the guys. i dont mean to insult you or anything) and since I lost to narue you will finally face me in the final game of the loser bracket. The winner gets to face her.

And practice. I was not exaggerating when I portrayed how good she is. I am not sure but i think that australia is at least thirteen hours behind her time. if that is so then 18:00 her time is 7:00 yours. i would suggest you ask her for a game if you lose to me again and dont get to play her yourself. (narue i hope you dont think that this is too presumptuous of me.)

@ thegathering or narue or anyone else who knows.

i have gone on the internet and have seen that C is used primarily for system programing since it can access hardware addresses directly. i am a bit confused between what it can do and what c++ can do with memory addresses.

i know that a pointer in C++ can alter the value of a variable and how it does this. i assume that c also has that ability. but what i dont know is if C++ can directly access a memory location if that memory location is not assigned to a variable. i suppose that C can. in the light of that am i correct to assume that C can do things such as send a group of bites to lets say a printer port or a graphics card but that C++ cannot do that directly? (i.e. the only way c++ can do that is via a library written in C)

i originally thought that C was an outdated language and that C++ can do everything that it can do plus it can do object oriented as well. i just thought that learning C would be a waste of time since C++ includes C functionality as well. but that still does not explain why she would not hire someone who dont know C?

>If I were to make a career out of computer programming,
>which would be better to learn, Java or C/C++?
If you don't know C, I wouldn't hire you. Period. If you don't know Java or C++, whether I would hire you or not depends on the job. However, I would recommend learning all three, starting with C, then moving to C++, and finally Java.

@ narue unless of course someone else knows exactly what she means.

Why? i know java and am learning c# and c++. but what is the point of C? what is so special about it that someone cant just learn c++ and use it for situations that also calls for C? are there really some programs that is best written in C? i have always been under the impression that games are the most difficult thing for a human to write as well as the most demanding thing for a computer to execute. so if games are written in C++ then what is the point of learning C?

your program requirement has a lot of holes so i shall have to make some assumptions. i have to say that if my boss gives me this scanty info i go back to him and ask him to be more thorough.

i have to asume that you are not interested in printing the number of cans for each scout or the number of bonus point of each scout and therefore i also assume that you are only entering a total for a scout once.

also i am only going to give you the logic with which to flesh out the skeleton program i already gave you; a little heat might teach you not to leave your projects till the last moment again.
i am going to give you two sets of steps to get your averages and highest and after that your just need to output them using cout.

steps to get averages
1. create the following integers before the start of the the loop:
totalCans, totalBonusPoints, totalReaders.
by the way. what is a reader? is it a scout's reading? So that you have one reader for each scout? and also you do of course realise that when i say loop i mean the sentinel controlled while which checks for end.

2. inside the loop, just after receiving the number of cans, do the following:
2.1 add the cans just entered to the totalCans integer.
2.2 use either a switch …

here is a skeleton program which aught to get you started. i suggested something similar to another student asking for help. it is called a sentinel controlled loop. it continuously asks for scout name as well as the number of cans for that scout and will continue to ask until you type "end" where they ask for name. note how the loop says ....while ( scout != "end" )

this code was compiled on Bloodshed's Dev-C++ 4.9.9.2 IDE which uses the ming32 compiler but i say this only if it gives problems on VC++. others better at c++ than myself would then be able to help you. but narue told me that the world has moved on to compilers which works with the standard language so you should have little trouble adapting it to visual c++. I compiled it and it ran. like i said it should get you started.

also i as well as the others said. you are a bit unclear. for example are the scout name and can total to be stored in an array? then declare the array before the loop and add the total to the specific scout's location in the array.
or is it stored in a file( sorry.there i cant help you! i dont know how to open files in c++) then the process is similar but instead of adding to an array you write it to disk. also does a scout brings all his cans at one …

being a java and VB programmer i am not very good in c++ itself but i am reasonably good in program design and pseudocode.

if you are interested explain more specifically what your program must do and i might be able to give you some idea on how to write the logic for the program. :-).

narue had just beaten me. i actually had a chance before i went and make a stupid mistake.

btw. i did not watch jocamps and nichito play but if jocamps explains a defensive position like that i would believe him. despite losing to narue i am a reasonably good player and jocamps foiled my best attacks for many moves and always threatened with a deadly counter( one was a checkmate attack).

i am trying to connect to an MS Access database but i am new to C#. I have looked at, amongst others, Paladin's response to dark omen about connecting to a database and since i have connected to a database before in Visual Basic most of it makes sense to me.

However i do not understand the argument list for the connection string of the SqlConnection object's SqlConnection constructor. On various info sources the arg list for the constructor seems to differ slightly so i assume that some arguments are optional. can someone please tell me what the bare minimum of arguments are for connecting to an MS Access database on a local pc and what each argument means?

@ josch

>The tournament is just for fun

sorry. i did not realise. but since losing is never fun i usually try to win. i have lost against many people in my life but never to any one for very long. when someone beat me i look at why i lost and then practice so that next time i am a better match. like i said losing all the time is not fun.

>and psyching everyone else out.

i am not entirely sure what psycing out means. if it means scaring then i apologise. since words by themselves never scare me i tend to forget that others go into tremors of fear and raptures of panic at the mere mention of a name.

@ narue.

sorry for sending you a pm. i thought they were send to your email directly. it is just that i need to know today and i did not know if you would check daniweb before i leave for home at 14:00 GMT.

also if josch is right and we irritate you by saying how good you are then i apologise. you are the very best i ever played and you must forgive me for being impressed by you. many have beaten me in both chess and draughts but i have always known that beating them back is only a matter of training and time. i am not 100% sure that the same applies to you.

Okay.. anyway.. I hope I get another chance with Narue so I can kick her ASS! :)

only in your dreams but even that could be dangerous. someone told me that muhamad ali, the boxer, once said that if you dream about beating him you better wake up and apologise.

You can go to the "Chess Bracket" thread in the Geek's Lounge and see how everyone is doing. It looks like Narue is winning to me, but there are still other players that have a good chance.

narue is definitely winning. i had a few practice games against her yesterday and she made me look like a beginner.

good luck to anyone who are counting on luck to beat her. you are going to need an army of leprechauns and an airforce of four leave clovers to ever see yellow again.

josh said she is a beast. he is so wrong. she is a monster.

there is a subtle difference between a monster and a beast which the average person often often miss. you see a beast kills for food. a monster kills the beast for fun. in fact a monster rarely kills for food since it prefers to feel a prey struggle when being swallowed.

i once saw a monster reducing a beast to begging for mercy but since mercy is not in the vocabulary of a monster it did not understand what the beast was babbling about.

>I think that's called hypermodernism right?

that is right. i am not good at hyper modern play though so narue should probably elaborate or rectify if i am wrong or something.

one method of the hyper modern school is to give the centre to you. and when you occupy it with the queen and king (sometimes queen bishop as well) 's pawns they hit you with their own bishops' pawns. now their own king and queen pawns are free to take the center which is the ideal of the modern school.

other strategies involves controlling the centre from a distance using pieces (nimzo indian defence and queen's indian defence) as well as blocking the centre and then attack around it( king's indian defence).

a word of advice though. hyper modern play extends modern strategies so learn modern play first. modern play is that which was started by wilhelm steinitz.

@ narue.

i do not know if you are going to be online today but i am going to be here for long time. if i am missing between 10:30 and 11:30 GMT then it would be because i went get something to eat and would be back shortly. i would really like to play you. not the real game but for fun and training.

after having read your elaboration of my reply to josch's question i am sure that you are a better player than me but it will not be as easy as you think.

now for time. 6pm to 10pm for you is 1 am to 5 am for me. i am afraid that we shall have to make some compromises. i asume that you have internet access where you stay. cant you be online from 10 to 12 pm? then i am online from 5 am to 7 am my own time.

and o yes i did not mean to question your times. it is just that i have seen you online at 3 pm my time which is around 9 or 10 am your time a couple of times so i was curious. it is said that curiosity kills the cat but with nine lifes he can probably afford it!

i say that a good beating brings good results and a halfhearted beating results in mediocre achievements. :-(. My father used to beat me and look at what i've become. I became a king!

Sorry. just kidding. i heard that that on children's program once.

seriously though. some parrents beat children with the sole aim of breaking those children's will. such parrents should be hanged. i think that they are a disgrace to the human race.

in general though i think that corporal punishment as a last resort should give better results than no corporal punishment at all.

but having said that. if I should someday have children i don't know if i would have the heart to do that. i am a tad soft.

also like jbennet i had a couple of smacks as well as hidings from a father I love and i turned out fine. now my younger brother whom did not have much or even any at all has a real self-discipline and respect for other people issue.

>He used an invisibility cloak?

Ha! funny. seriously though. they were not invented yet during the time of canon balls! He used math.

visualize a three dimensional piramid.

squared base.
the top layer is one ball. the second layer is four balls since this the only way that the top ball can fit on top of the second layer. third layer is nine balls and so on and so on. try it with marbles. do the same for a piramid with a triangular base. if you add the balls together for both piramids( i.e. 1 + 4 + 9 etc ) for every layer your get a series for both piramids.
square based ( 1, 5, 14, etc)
triangular based ( 1, 4, 10 etc ).

eventually you reachd the point where the triangular based piramid has one ball more. that number is 56. that one more is the extra ball the soldier carried.

actually propper math creates two quadratic equations which cuts each other at two places and the number of balls could have been either of these two numbers. 56 is the lower of the two numbers.

i hope the math was not too irritating but this is geek's lounge yes?

Hope Aia didn't bet against me, cause she would've lost lots of money...

i beat sk8... (sorry dude) and now looking forward to play jocamps...

whenever you're ready partner...

i am sorry nichito but i know facts. i've played both off you and i shall eat a hat without any tomato sauce if he loses. he really is very good. i have been the best player in my home town for years. i have provincial( similar to a US county ) colours too. And yet i believe he should have beaten me.

>also... i don't care losing a piece or two if i have something planned to do... they're sacrifices that must be done to achieve victory...

i am going to say that those kind of sacrifices are going to end in defeat. sacrifice only if you see a clear path to victory and the sacrifice is the only way to achieve it.

>my favorite plays are those where you put your opponent in a situation in which he must pick what piece >he prefers to lose...
>or doing the same with a check... they're so nice... lol

that is one standard use of the queen. but it requires that enemy pieces are loose or unprotected. The queen is lot like cavalry in eighteen century warfare. once infantry had been broken cavalry are the chain saw killers. but against infantry or musketeers in good order and formation they are only going to break themselves against their sustained fire. same with the queen. once the enemy is of balance she is a murderess. but she will find it very difficult to get all his pieces of balance herself. especially if she wants to do it on her own.

>As white, e4. As black it depends on white's opening, but since it's usually e4, I'll defend with a Sicilian variation.

sicilian is an opening reserved only for the pros. you see josch i was right to be afraid of her. i myself am only learning the sicilian now. against jocamps i played e5 and would have gone Nc6 had he gone Nf3 but instead he went Bc4.

>Pins are the result of good positioning, so technically they are essential.

true. tactics is only the result of an accident in the case of beginners only. pros win the strategic battle first. Then their better placed pieces has the better tactical chances. tactics then is almost like applying paint to a well build house.