Posts by Reverend Jim

A note to everyone on Daniweb who is eligible to vote this November, especially young voters who show up in notoriously low numbers. This is not like making a bad decision, knowing your parents are there to save you. There is no safety net. There is no do-over. If you, the voters, f**k this up, there is nobody to bail you out. And if your country goes down the tubes you'll probably take the rest of down with you.

And too lazy to even ask a question.

A while back I came across an article that mentioned genetic algorithms. For those unfamiliar with the term, simply put, rather than finding a solution to a problem by iterating over all possible cases, a genetic algorithm attempts to find a solution by starting with a guess, then generating a next guess by applying numerous random changes to the current guess and picking the guess that best fits the solution as the next best guess. Rinse and repeat.

Unfortunately, most of the articles and examples I came across involved far too much tech speak and math for a brain long removed from theoretical mathematics. I put it aside for a while until I read a paper by Richard Dawkins. He discussed the "Methinks it is like a weasel" algorithm in such clear terms that I coded it up in vbScript. It is such a simple example of a genetic algorithm that I decided to post it here.

In basic terms we define a target which is the string, "METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL". We generate ten new strings by applying a random mutation to the parent string. A mutation consists of possibly replacing a randomly selected letter with a new randomly generated letter. From the ten children we select the child that is the closest match to the target string. This child becomes the new parent for the next generation. If you run the script you will see how quickly we resolve to the target string.

Prior to running …

Tell her to google "rape and the US military". When you tuen 18 you are an adult but that doesn't automatically make you responsible.

I was looking for an Excle/vb.net code snippet that I posted a long time ago. I went to advanced search and selected Programming and code snippets with the search string Excel. The only hits that I got were member names containing Excel. I replaced Excel with Reverend Jim and got only my profile. It doesn't seem to be searching anything but user names. Going to google and searching reverend jim excel site:daniweb.com gives me the correct result.

Before I enrolled in Computer Science at the University of Manitoba I spent several months in Engineering in Saskatoon. It was a hellish time (my first extended time away from home) in a strange city with no friends. I did make one good friend named Hugh Baker. He was the only bright spot in an otherwise miserable situation. He was a veterinary student, a poet, and a part time drummer with the local symphony, and he had a wit second to none. I lasted from September until mid February before packing it in and returning home. Sadly, we never kept in touch. This was 1972 - years before the internet and email.

In 1981 I decided to take a road trip from Winnipeg to the west coast of Canada. While passing through Saskatoon I made a stop to see if my old friend was still living there. Finding him in the phone book I called him up and, in a thickly disguised voice I said "Hugh Baker?"

He replied, "Yes. Who is this?"

I responded (still disguised), "All in good time, Hugh Baker."

He immediuately said "Jim!"

We got together for several hours and renewed our friendship. Eventually though I had to hit the road and resume my trek west. Upon returning home two weeks later I got engaged and somehow marriage, and then family kept me focused on the home front.

Last week at the cottage for reasons unknown to me my friend came once again to mind. Thinking …

Better than what happened to Rick Santorum (google santorum urban dictionary).

Make a new extension (you can check filext.com to make up one that is probably not in use) then when you double click on it you can tell Windows to use your app to open it.

Except for the scenes with James Sikking.

If the file isn't encrypted (you did not specify) then they have access to the entire contents. I the file is encrypted but the file name is not then perhaps inferences can be made from the file name.

What he said. I've been using it for months to share large files between Winnipeg and Long Island. Data is transferred directly (and encrypted) from peer to peer (never appears on a server in the cloud). Transfers, if interrupted, are resumed automatically.

It also comes in a free version.

Cloris Leachman (The Mary Tyler Moore Show) had her own spin-off series called Phylis. In one episode, her daughter said that she and her boyfriend wanted to get married and when Phylis invites his parents over to meet them, she is shocked to find out that they are both (the term used at that time) midgets.

She goes to work the next day. A co-worker senses that something is bothering her and asks her what. She replies "my daughter wants to marry a boy whose parents are midgets". He replies, "What's her problem? Can't she find one?" Every attempt she makes to explain results in him misinterpreting the answer.

I'm thinking I have a little of that going on here.

I'm apparently having a really hard time getting my point across. It's not that I'm worried that Trump will get elected (well, not that worried). My point (and I do have one) is that there are people who are otherwise "right" thinking who have been so disenfranchised that they'd just as soon see everything burn to the ground then continue with the same old shit but with a new (Democrat) boss. If the system isn't going to work for them then it isn't going to work for anyone.

I had hoped the success of Obamacare might have changed that

The intentions were good but the execution was awful. It won't clean up until they have single payer. For example, some hospitals charge different rates if you pay out of pocket or through Obamacare. One example - $80 for a blood test under Obamacare, $15 if you pay yourself. Wkth deductibles you can end up paying less if you pay yourself.

Democrats and UK Labour implement policies that reduce the rise in inequality.

In the US, the Democrats today are far to the right of what they were decades ago. With Clinton in the pocket of Wall Street I don't see inequality getting any better under her. It's not that better policies would make them unelectable, it's more that those policies would result in a major loss of campaign financing which I suppose ends up meaning the same thing.

is being described as an “ultimatum”

This sounds like a variation of the "some say" strategy. Start a rumour and wait for it to spread then claim "where there's smoke there's fire".

A few years ago, the Canadian government (at that time it was a majority Conservative government under Stephen Harper) proposed legislation which would have weakened the privacy rights of all Canadians. Part of the justification was to allow easier apprehension and prosecution of people trafficking in child pornography. The justice minister, Vic Toews, said that anyone opposing the bill was in favour of child pornography. Of course, this was a ridiculous statement, creating a false dichotomy of "you're either with us or against us".

Similarly, the media seems intent on painting anyone who favoured Great Britain's exit from the European Union as Islamophobic or Xenophobic. Almost certainly this was a factor in the minds of some of the voters. However, it may also be that many of the voters felt that Great Britain had lost control over matters affecting them that are better handled from within Great Britain than from without. I've seen the effect that globalization has had on the economies of both Canada and the United States. The FTA, and its successor, NAFTA, both resulted in the outsourcing of millions of jobs to other countries. When NAFTA was first passed, seminars were routinely held for big business to show how they could save billions by shipping manufacturing jobs to Mexico and other countries. Globalization worked to the benefit of big business and to the detriment of American and Canadian workers. Globalization is not necessarily desirable nor inevitable but it is far easier for those who would profit from …

Once you have done the upgrade to Windows 10 your computer is registered with some sort of digital ID with Microsoft. At that point you can do a clean re-install of Windows 10 and you will be automatically recognized as legitimate.

When I tried to set up a Dazah account with the name "Reverend Jim" and this email address I got "Unique value Required" for the email. Just for the heck of it I tried a password resed on rjdegraff@shaw.ca one more time (last time I got an invalid link emailed to me). This time I got to the password reset page and was able to reset my password. After that I went to Daniweb and when I clicked on Login I got the "Daniweb requests access to DAZAH" page and was given "Continue as Jim". When I got the refresh I saw that I was logged in as Reverend Jim. And I don't see any way to access my DAZAH profile.

Clear as mud.

I ran

bitsadmin /liat /allusers /verbose

and noticed that one of the two jobs (currently disabled) listed was set to download and install DropBox. Anyway, I immediately did

bitsadmin /reset /allusers

Interesting, though. I have never used DropBox and have never even been to their website. I'm assuming it came with the original Dell installation.

Sounds an awful lot like a homework assignment. We don't do homework.

Trump is now ahead of Clinton in the polls. One voter has said he supports Sanders but will vote for Trump if Clinton takes the nomination because "a Clinton presidency would be boring." America is now officially like my alcoholic friend who won't admit he needs help until he hits rock bottom.

And as John Oliver recently pointed out "no one ever won the Nobel Prize for replicating a study". Nobody wants to pay for a study to verify the results. The best we can do, apparently, is something like the Cochrane Organization, formerly known as the Cochrane Collaboration. For an example of the work they do you should read the excellent book, Trick or Treatment? Alternative Medicine on Trial.

What if voters decided intelligence and nuanced thinking were more important qualities in a presidential candidate than with whom they’d most like to have a beer? What if the Uhmerican public decided they wanted decent, affordable health care, and started doing things like reading books and cultivating gardens instead of turning on the TV, gorging on fast food, or going shopping for clothes covered with corporate logos?

Mike Judge (discussing his 2006 movie, Idiocracy)

Unrelated suggestion - in some databases, password is a reserved word. You may want to specify it in the query as [password]. It may work in some databases but if you switch to another database it may throw an error.

I have been using AutoHotKey for quite some time and I have found it to be invaluable for enhancing Windows 7/10 functionality. I thought I'd post a couple of useful scripts here.

Windows 10 has a desktop feature that lets you hide/show your desktop icons. I prefer a clutter-free desktop but I also like to keep shortcuts there. The feature is manually available by either right-clicking on the desktop or by pressing SHIFT+F10 on the desktop, then selecting VIEW followed by SHOW DESKTOP ICONS from the context menu. The following code adds a hotkey (WIN+END) to toggle hide/show.

#END::
    winActivate, ahk_class Progman
    Send, +{f10}
    Send, v
    Send, d
    Return

I like being able to use either the mouse or the touchpad on my laptop but one thing that really annoys me is when, while I am typing, my wrist brushes against the touchpad and my cursor is repositioned somewhere else in the text area. The following AutoHotKey script disables the touchpad for a half second whenever a key is pressed.

#NoEnv
SendMode Input
SetWorkingDir %A_ScriptDir%

#SingleInstance force
#Persistent
OnExit, Unhook

hHookKeybd := SetWindowsHookEx(WH_KEYBOARD_LL   := 13, RegisterCallback("Keyboard", "Fast"))
Return

ReenableTrackpad:
BlockInput, MouseMoveOff
Return

Unhook:
UnhookWindowsHookEx(hHookKeybd)
ExitApp

Keyboard(nCode, wParam, lParam)
{
   Critical
   If !nCode
   {
      BlockInput, MouseMove
      SetTimer, ReenableTrackpad, 500
   }
   Return CallNextHookEx(nCode, wParam, lParam)
}

SetWindowsHookEx(idHook, pfn)
{
   Return DllCall("SetWindowsHookEx", "int", idHook, "Uint", pfn, "Uint", DllCall("GetModuleHandle", "Uint", 0), "Uint", 0)
}

UnhookWindowsHookEx(hHook)
{
   Return DllCall("UnhookWindowsHookEx", "Uint", hHook)
}

CallNextHookEx(nCode, wParam, lParam, hHook = 0)
{
   Return DllCall("CallNextHookEx", "Uint", …

You know, now that we are at the cottage for the summer my dog has taught me that there are better ways to spend my time than obsessing about some orange skinned freak.

I think Obama was a decent politician with convictions but in some ways he was a complete idiot. The GOP said from day one that they were going to ensure that Obama accomplished nothing. And yet he still wasted the first two years (when the Dems controlled the Senate AND Congress) trying to govern with the approval of both parties. Think of what he could have accomplished in those first two years if he didn't have his hear up his a$$. Just look what FDR did in his first 100 days and how much better the country was for it.

I think I finally understand why Trump is doing so well (he recently pulled even with Hillary Clinton). It's only after years of shows like American Idol and America's Got Talent that his rise is possible. These shows got Americans used to the idea that they could vote with no actual consequences. In most cases (with very few exceptions), people with minimal talent are voted on and selected as "the winner", then almost immediately return to obscurity. In some cases (remember Sanjaya Malakar) there was an actual campaign to rig the vote so that a thoroughly undeserving candidate would win.

What else could possibly explain this lunacy?

Use grep.

A much simpler solution would be something like

Dim srcFolder As String = "d:\temp\don"
Dim ConcatFile As String = "d:\temp\don\concat.txt"

For Each file As String In My.Computer.FileSystem.GetFiles(srcFolder, FileIO.SearchOption.SearchTopLevelOnly, "file*.txt")
    Dim text As String = System.IO.File.ReadAllText(file)
    System.IO.File.AppendAllText(ConcatFile, text)
Next

Yes, this causes the output file to be opened and closed multiple times, but the simplicity of the code far outweighs the very minor performance hit. Modify it as appropriate for your directory and file structure. The third parameter in GetFiles is a file pattern to restrict the input to files of a specific naming pattern. Use *.* for all files (but then you'll likely have to put the Concat file in a different folder). Another advantage is that AppendAllText will create the ConcatFile if it doesn't already exist.

If there is only one file then the loop will execute once and append the single file.

Product_Name is defined as an int and you are trying to assign a string to it. My C is a little rusty but it seems to me that you want to declare Product_Name as a char array and use strcpy to copy a string value to it, or declare it as a pointer to a string and use the assignment as stated to assign the address of the literal string.

silly UI bugs?

The only bugs I would classify as "silly" are the ones that the developer should have caught himself before passing the system on to the testers, in other words, the ones that the developer should feel silly for not having spotted early on. What, exactly, do you consider to be a "silly" bug?

See here.

We must face the fact that the United States is neither omnipotent or omniscient—that we are only six percent of the world's population—that we cannot impose our will upon the other 94 percent of mankind—that we cannot right every wrong or reverse each adversity—and that therefore there cannot be an American solution to every world problem.

John F. Kennedy

Typically, Dell supports the hardware of a system and will assume that every problem is a software problem for which they will charge to fix (trust me on this - I spent the last 16 months fighting with Dell). They don't really care what OS is put on the machine or what problems you have because you can't maintain/use it.

Linux is both horrible and awesome. Not all technology is intended for all people. Linux is a powerful system that, like UNIX, allows the user to do anything, even if that "anything" is stupid. You can do great things if you know what you are doing. Similarly, if you don't know what you are doing you can quickly bury yourself. Don't label it "garbage" if you are not capable of using it. I can't fly a helicopter but I still think helicopters are awesome.

They can be udeful when working from the command line. con is the console device. cat lists the contents of a file to the console. If you cat and redirect input from the console then cat will display everything you type. Not a useful example but still an example.

D:\>cat < con
abc
abc
def
def

nul is the null device and is useful for suppressing output. This can be useful in cmd files where you want to minimize output.

D:\>echo "hello"
"hello"

D:\>echo "hello" > nul

D:\>

Dell came today to replace the motherboard. The Bluetooth still does not work. The tech took out the old motherboard, removed the fan, then applied conducting paste before connecting the fan to the new motherboard. He tried for several seconds to put the board back into the laptop when pointed out that the fan is more effective if it is pointing out. He flipped the board over and put it in the correct way.

Once we got the system booted I started checking things out. The Bluetooth was first (failed) followed by the USB ports (all passed). Because I would have to call Dell again on Monday I didn't bother checking the HDMI or network ports. It wasn't until a few hours later that I noticed that my keyboard backlighting was no longer working.

Oh yes, that policy of replacing the laptop with three hardware replacements in 30 days? Turns out they want to renege on that. Too bad for them that I was recording that previous convrsation.

Don't buy Dell.

No one here is going to give you code. You won't learn anything unless you do the work yourself. Show us what you have so far and we cn offer suggestions.

I have repeated problems with Dell Hardware Support in trying to convince them that a problem is hardware (warranty) rather than software (not covered). I have found that the easies way is to boot into Linux and demonstrate that the problem still exists. Download a Linux (I find kubuntu the friendliest) LiveCD and burn a DVD. Bott into the DVD (select try instead of install) and see if you have the same problem. If you do then you know the problem is with the keyboard.

I'd rather play a nice game of chess.

@CimmerianX - try creating a simple exe that does nothing but exit. Then rename it gwx.exe and use it to replace the real gwx.exe. Then open a command shell as admin and cacls the stub to remove all access rights for everyone except our admin account. That might protect it from being overwritten. So far with running GWXControlPanel in monitor mode (and judicious screening and hiding of bad updates) I have mostly avoided Microsoft's latest virus. The one recent time that it got through I immediately restored an old disk image and upped my protection.

When the 2002 Euro banknotes were designed they created fictitious bridges to not favour any one country. Then a Dutch designer went ahead and built the bridges for real.

Source

The only thing I've ever used dism for is to reduce the space used by my current Windows OS and the command and options I use aren't displayed when you type dism /?. The command I use is

DISM /online /Cleanup-Image /SpSuperseded

This is what you would run after installing a service pack. It deletes all of the Windows uninstall files associated with the service pack.

To save you from the "gotcha" (thoughtfully provided by Microsoft), the Next method of the random number class can be called with parameters MinValue and MaxValue as in

rnd.Next(0,20)

The gotcha is that that some brain dead programmer at Microsoft decided that the MinValue is inclusive and MaxValue is exclusive so MaxValue is actually one greater than then largest value you want returned - rnd.Next(0,20) will return a random number from 0 to 19.

Thanks Microsoft.

You could try a Finally clause which is executed whether or not an error occurs.

Try
    con.Open
    .
    .
    'don't do the con.Close here
Catch ex As Exception
    MsgBox(ex.Message)
    'don't do the con.Close here either
Finally
    If con.State = ConnectionState.Open Then
        con.Close()
    End If
End Try

I thought it was a great place to exchange ideas. Programming forums are one thing. With a few exceptions, people didn't respond to questions unless they had an informed opinion/suggestion/solution. In the geeks lounge one feels less of an obligation to be an "expert". Of course, sometimes it just got silly - and that was ok too from time to time. I think the geeks lounge made Daniweb more of community than just a place to get help.

I also miss the dust-ups that I'd get into occasionally in the geeks lounge. Now that the geeks lounge has disappeared there is no place for general discussion.

A few years ago the ratio of A:B where

A = "Here's my homework. Do it for me." or "I'm too lazy/stupid to Google this myself".
B = "I'm stuck after putting in all this work. Can you please help?"

was much lower than it is these days. Perhaps that's part of the reason.

Even though I have GWX Control Panel installed and actively blocking, and even though I have Windows Updates set to "check for updates but let me decide whether to download and install", and even though I have hidden the offending KB updates, Microsoft has, once again, installed the "Get Windows 10 Update" app on my system. I was able to uninstall it, yet again, with

wusa /uninstall /kb:3035583 /norestart /quiet

but, really, should I have to keep doing this? It may be that the only way to prevent this Microsoft bullshit is to uninstall my legally purchased (OEM) Windows 7 OS and replace it with a pirated version that does not qualify for update.

I don't use data tables but I think it should be ds.Tables not ds.Table. Also you have a typo in da.Fill(ds, "EmMasater").