Posts by Reverend Jim

By the way - do you see that article at the top of the forum page that says Please Read This Before Posting? It's there for a reason.

You talk to the customer to determine the requirements (specs) then you develop the code. Along the way you might decide to prototype a GUI for the customer to approve.

If you have to go farther back then you start by learning how to program and how to use databases. Books and college are two good choices. Then talk to the customer...

Or if you are asking us to do your homework for you then forget it. However, if you have specific questions then feel free to post them. Please show us that you have put some effort into finding the solution yourself first.

In 2013, millionaires made up more than 50% of the US Congress.

Saw the Hobbit finale. It's what I expected from reading the book - lots of fighting. Rewatched American Graffiti last night. It was while watching the credits that I noticed that Vic Spano was in it (he was a greaser who threatened Toad with a knuckle sandwich). He is currently an occasional guest on NCIS as FBI agent Tobias Fornell. He's really aged. I guess that means I'm getting older, too.

Man is the Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion–several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself, and cuts his throat if his theology isn’t straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother’s path to happiness and heaven. He was at it in the time of the Caesars, he was at it in Mahomet’s time, he was at it in the time of the Inquisition, he was at it in France a couple of centuries, he was at it in England in Mary’s day, he has been at it ever since he first saw the light.

Mark Twain

Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy was worth it.

Except for the third one which was too drawn out. Take another look at the mob fight scene later in the movie. Watch the background fighters and you'll see some of them obviously just going through the motions.

It would also help others if you posted your solution.

Just put a ">" at the start of a line and it will quote the text. You can also select the text and click on the quote tool.

Just saw the movie, Elysium. I'm glad I only paid $1.20 to get it from the library instead of full price in the theatre when it was released. The writers put almost no thought into this movie at all. There were plot holes you could fly a space station throough and the science was essentially non-existent although the commentary throws the term "Stanford taurus" around a lot. My son and I ended up pressing "pause" frequently to cry bullshit. Actually, that kind of got to be fun - more fun than the movie.

For OLEDb the synax would be

Dim da As New OleDbDataAdapter("SELECT * from EncodingComplete where (Date_Bill BETWEEN ? AND ?) AND Client like ? Order by Date_Bill desc" , con)

Please note that the parameter values must be added in the order in which they appear in the query.

Parameterrs in OleDB are specified with ? rather than &parm. See here for a working example.

In the United States you are statistically in less danger of dying from a terrorist attack than from a toddler accidentally shooting you.

In an Explorer window

Organize >- Folder and Search Options

Click on the View tab.

5-6

It's a hidden folder. You have to enable "Show Hidden Folders, Files and Drives" in folder view.

I was trying to think like you...

That's not answering the question. That's avoiding answering the question.

its the people who are using a religion to cover up their wrong doing.

That's kind of my point (again). And the term is "justify", not "cover up".

I was gonna assume that you will say that the aethiest believes in natural selection...

I don't see what that has to do with this topic. Whether or not an atheist believes in natural selection has nothing to do with whether or not religious texts can be used to justify violence.

you were supposed to defend yourself. You have to consider history.

Of course. But the edict, Kill disbelievers wherever you find them. is still being used to justify killing. Unfortunately, defend is open to interpretation. If someone published an offensive cartoon and that is seen as an "attack" on ones beliefs, or if a believer converts to another religion (talk about out of the frying pan) then that can also be interpreted as an "attack" and thus a lethal response can be justified. There are still many places under Sharia law where apostasy is punishable by death. Raif Badawi, a Saudi blogger will receive 1000 lashes - 50 every other week, for the crime of renouncing Islam. This is an official punishment from Islamic officials who believe they are following the tenets of their religion.

We know the Quran orders believers to fight in combat …

The easiest way to do this would be the string.split method.

That would be easier. I assumed because SubString was out that Split would also be disallowed. As for last names with two (or more) words, my last name has two words and I use both first letters in my initials. I can not see any way of determining whether a name like "Mario Van Peebles" consists of two given names plus a surname or one given name and a compound surname.

Well, all i am trying to point out is that we shouldn't be taking things out of context.

Can you please explain what context could be used to explain how Kill disbelievers wherever you find them. 2:191-2 is not actually a call to violence? If the Koran is God's infallible and eternal word then it must mean exactly what it says. It is not a parable or an allegory. It is a simple statement.

And you said that islam is violent, so i pointed out examples from the bible.

So you are saying that because the bible is violent it proves that the Koran is not? If, on the other hand, you are saying the bible is as violent as the Koran, then we agree.

Just because talks about violence, it doesn't mean the people are to be violent.

It doesn't mean that the people will be violent. That wasn't my point. My point is that it is used to justify violence. A true believer can claim "see, my holy book says that this is what I am supposed to do".

So, i am guessing that makes me and over a billion other muslims official assassins.

Potentially, yes. If the Pope publicly and officially called for the assassination of all cartoonists who published works offensive to Catholics, what do you suppose would be the reaction? Would this be met with widespread condemnation or would it be considered reasonable? We are all of …

Nope.

no religion promotes violence (at least the religions I know of).

And yet in your second paragraph you cite many examples of violence in both the old and new testaments, so your first statement is false.

We can't be quick and shoot at any religion and say they promote violence. People take the words out of context.

Please peruse the link I provided in my previous post. I'm not going to go to the trouble of detailing everything here again. There are numerous examples of the Koran inciting violence in that thread.

People take the words out of context.

Yeah. That's an often heard excuse. Passages such as

Kill disbelievers wherever you find them. 2:191-2

Are not open to misinterpretation or context. They are pretty straightforward.

don't let a minority group influence your perception of a group as a whole

I never said that all Muslims are evil. I believe that the vast majority of Muslims are peaceful people. What I said was that the Koran at its core promotes violence. I also said that the Koran is not alone in doing this.

Back then, times were different, conquest was used to form those who would not ever be worshippers/those who are invaders to convert.

The problem is that because religious texts are considered to be infallible and eternal there will always be a group of believers who will use the texts to justify whatever evil acts they …

Is the show good? I may consider watching it.

Absolutely hilarious.

Start by taking the string from the textbox and adding a blank at the front. Then scan through the entire string and check each character. If a character is non-blank and is preceded by a blank then add that character (upper case) to your output string. Once you have finished the loop your output string will be the initials

Yay. The new season of Archer has started.

I suspect that you posted that just to poke a stick in the hornet's nest. Hoowever, because I have a few minutes to spare...

The rash of horrific attacks in the name of Islam is spurring an anguished debate among Muslims here in the heart of the Islamic world about why their religion appears cited so often as a cause for violence and bloodshed.

It's because Islam is, at it's core, a religion that promotes violence and intolerance. Note that the debate concerns appearances rather than realities.

The majority of scholars and the faithful say Islam is no more inherently violent than other religions. But some Muslims — most notably the president of Egypt — argue that the contemporary understanding of their religion is infected with justifications for violence, requiring the government and its official clerics to correct the teaching of Islam.

While the old testament is a book, likewise filled with intolerance and violence, Christianity, for the most part, has abandoned most of the calls for death to transgressors. I say, "mostly", because there are still some nut-jobs out there who use the old (and new) testaments to justify discrimination and intolerance (see many US stories for examples of this), and even violence (bombing of abortion clinics, assassination of abortion doctors and calls for the execution of gays - yes - in America). If you examine the record you'll see very few examples of Jewish, Buddhist or Christian suicide bombers.

The above claim implies that …

Save the date and time when the app was first run, then just pop up a nag and exit if it is mote than one year old. The first-run date could be saved in a Settings variable or the registry (possibly encrypted to prevent abuse).

For future reference, unless the text file is exceedingly large I find it much easier to read the entire file in at once as

Dim lines() As String =  System.IO.File.ReadAllLines(filename)

That way you know up front how many lines you are working with. You don't have to test for end of file. You can process the lines in any order you want and you can use Filter to extract specific lines.

Why do so many people expect to be rewarded...

I don't know about other places, but here in Winnipeg there was talk a few years ago about something which I believe is at the root of the problem. Some teachers felt that it was proper to give either a lower grade, or even no grade, for assignments which were not handed in on time. This is a position with which I strongly agree. In the real world you don't credit for work that you don't do. I seem to recall that the teachers were told that they were to allow work to be handed in late with no penalty. Furthermore, it is now almost unheard of for a child to repeat a grade. Everyone gets moved through the system regardless of proven ability or proficiency.

I think that there is a strong sense of entitlement being fostered in our children and I think that this hurts them in the long run.

Turn on any newscast and you see CEOs of the same companies that caused the financial crash being rewarded instead of punished. You see people with no discernible talent, people who contribute nothing to society other than providing fodder for tabloids (think Kim Kardashian, Paris Hilton and any Real Housewives or Jersey Shore cast member) raking in millions.

And you ask why people expect to be rewarded for doing nothing?

Nearly 50% of the US population now receives government handouts in one form or another.

If there was an online storage option that would store my files encrypted (including file names) where the encryption key was stored only on my computer then I would likely use it. I realize that I can use truecrypt to create a container which I could then use on DropBox, but that requires re-uploading an entire container for even minor changes. A while back I looked at SpiiderOak which was promising just that in the near future. Perhaps it's time for another look.

Still getting duplicates of everything.

"Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech food. Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its safety is the FDA's job."

• Phil Angell, Monsanto's director of corporate communications. New York Times, Oct. 25, 1998

I've noticed that a lot of your recent questions could be answered by even a cursory reading of just about any intro to vb.net programming book or one of the many similar (free) tutorial web sites. Might I suggest you get one and read it?

I don't see a question and you didn't bother to say what you want your code to do, but once I corrected your formatting (please use the Code tool to post code) it was obvious that you were missing an End If. You also do not do anything with the returned value.

I only noticed it for the first time yesterday. And, by the way, Joyeux Noel to all in the great land of Quebec.

Ads might seems annoying but on the positive aspect. It is one way to gain profit in business industry.

I agree that some ads are necessary and even a good thing. Having said that, would you like people continuously knocking on your door and phoning you to sell you something? Even with the "do not call" laws in place we still get phone calls pestering us with "this is your last call (bullshit) to take advantage of our credit card debt consolidation service". When I get these calls (automated) I press "0" to speak to an agent then give them a blast from a whistle. I realize that some of these people only take the jobs because it's all that is available, but I have no sympathy for anyone whose job is basically making annoying spam phone calls.

Chicago is heading for a high of -18 Celsius!

Luxury! We'e been having windchills of -40C. We've got the snow but we can't go skiiing.

I used to do quite a lot of work in vbScript (great for admin stuff and even a lot of unattended applications) so let me know if you need anything.

I had to read this for a book report, I felt miserable reading it.

That's how I felt when I read it in high school. I read it again about six years later and had a totally different opinion. I always wondered why, in high school, they couldn't have included something like Childhood's End (Arthur C Clarke) or Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury) and skipped Of Human Bondage or Wuthering Heights. Fortunately they got us to read Huckleberry Finn (which I have also read a couple of times since).

I'm getting unusual behaviour in the edit window. As I type, the edit window automatically grows, however, when it grows large enough for a scroll bar to appear, the control does not auto-scroll to keep what I am typing visible. I have to keep manually scrolling to keep the new text on-screen.

If you want to do the same without using AutoIt you can still do it with vbScript by

do

    titles = GetTitles()
    if Contains(titles,"TextPad") Then
        wscript.Echo now, "TextPad is active"
    end if

    wscript.Sleep 1000

loop

Function GetTitles ()

    Dim cmd:  cmd = "tasklist /v /fi ""WINDOWTITLE ne N/A"" /fo list"
    Dim tasks: tasks  = Split(CreateObject("WScript.Shell").Exec(cmd).StdOut.ReadAll(), vbCrLf)

    GetTitles = Filter(tasks, "Window Title:")

End Function

Function Contains (titles, string)

    Dim title

    Contains = False

    for each title in titles
        title = Trim(Split(title, ":")(1))
        if instr(title, string) > 0 Then
            Contains = True
            Exit Function
        end if
    next

End Function

although executing TASKLIST is much less efficient than using AutoIt and it involves a lot more coding.

For that sort of stuff I use AutoIt. It's free and very scriptable. For example

set aut = CreateObject("AutoItX3.Control")

aut.AutoItSetOption "WinTitleMatchMode",2

while True

    if aut.WinExists("TextPad") Then
    wscript.echo "textpad is open"
    end if

    wscript.Sleep 1000

wend

After you install AutoIt, copy the above and save it into WatchTextPad.vbs. The do the following, once from the command line

cscript //h:cscript //nologo //s

That makes cscript.exe the default engine. That way, writes (wscript.echo) go to the console window. Otherwise, vbs scripts get run by wscript.exe and writes get sent to a messagebox popup.

aut.AutoItSetOption "WinTitleMatchMode",2

says that when you are checking window titles, check for the given string anywhere in the title (there is a very good help file detailing all this). The rest of the script should be obvious.

What are the command line arguments for running it? Also, it seems like an awful lot of code just to monitor a process.

the fact that only 1 of the 2 images is updated is the design flaw.

It's not a bug. It's a feature designed to prevent a catastrophic corruption of the active registry from propogating to disk.

I want to try running this locally but I am getting

Type 'FreeMemory' us not defined
Type 'EncryptDecrypt' is not defined
Type 'BuildString' is not defined

What version of vb.net are you using?

For starters, the program won't compile because of

If p.Id = CDbl(cid) Then

The variable cid is not defined.

I believe it is the exact opposite. It isn't until you shut sown that registry changes are committed to disk. That is why if you get a BSOD or just power off without shutting down some changes go away.

I've always felt that new posters should, for the first few posts, be presented with a pop-up such as

As a new poster we would like to remind you that it benefits everyone if you are familiar with the DaniWeb rules. After your third post you will no longer see this reminder.

We can't force anyone to read the rules or the stickies but at least that way there would be no legitimate way for a poster to claim ignorance of them.

My older son was always an avid reader. With him it was mostly books on science. He is now doing a post-doc in bio-physics. When my younger son was in early school he liked to read the Goosebumps books by R L Stein. His teacher at that time discouraged him. We, on the other hand, felt that the books were harmless fun and encouraged him to continue. Today he has a college degree in Computer Science and still reads. He also writes as a hobby.

While I enjoy TV and movies, I find that books exercise my imagination more. When you watch a movie you experience the sounds and images of someone else's imagination. When you read a book you experience the author's imagination via the words but your imagination provides the sights, sounds and smells. It is a collaborative effort. When I read, I can take in the book at my own speed. I can stop and savour a particularly interesting passage and I never miss a plot point because a character was mumbling or the musical score was obnoxiously loud.

The last few books I read were

A David Baldacci mystery
John Cleese's autobiography
The Naked Lady Who Stood on Her Head (a collection of psychiatric case histories)
The Born Again Skeptic's Guide to the Bible
A Tale of Two Cities (for the third time)
Analyzing Criminal Minds

My vote goes to Heath Ledger. Jack Nicholson is limited by the fact the every character he portrays is basically just a slight variation of himself. Nicholson's Joker was more like circus clown. Ledger's Joker was more like Tim Curry's Pennywise. It's like comparing Mark Hammil's version of the Joker from the animated TV series with John DiMaggio's Joker from Batman: Under the Red Hood. Hammil's was more fun but DiMaggio's was scarier and more disturbing.

Actually, I don't find DaniWeb intrusive at all. We have the option of blocking ads, and there are numerous methods (plugins) for blocking thse annoying popups on other sites. As for ads that are mixed with content, as long as they aren't distracting (autoplay videos, flashing colours, etc.) they are easilyy ignored. Any website that I find too obnoxious doesn't get a repeat visit. There are a lot more websites than there are basic cable channels.

I can't imagine why you would even consider using the term "bombarded" for anything DaniWeb related. The "related articles" information is no more obtrusive than a footnote in a book. It's there if you want it but it isn't jumping up and down screaming READ ME READ ME!!!

Regarding attention span - I don't know if it's because of the increase in ADD (which I suspect is widely over-diagnosed, if it is even a real condition) but it seems like camera shots are much shorter than they used to be. Also, on news shows there is a lot of eye candy. You don't just have a talking head giving the news. You also have infographics (which do add information) with scrolling colour borders (which do not). And while you listen to one news story there is a constant scrolling banner with completely unrelated news. This relates back to ads where the pop-ups constantly take your attention away from the show. If this happened in any other medium (movies, live theatre, music) this would (squirrel) not be tolerated.