Posts by DavidB

Well I had mine added for 6 months and didn't get one...

Hmmnn... perhaps nobody can get there from here.
Are you able to navigate to your LinkedIn page through your Profile?

I checked out your Profile, and Dani's.
In both cases, I was not able to navigate to the LinkedIn pages.

I am using IE10.
When I hover the mouse over the link, all I see is javascript:void(0);
but I cannot actually get to the LinkedIn page.
And it doesn't matter whether I am logged in or not.

Hello, "wasik".

Welcome to the DaniWeb forums. We are glad you joined us.

These forums are an excellent resource: lots of good information and many knowledgeable members here.

It is a great place for the sharing of ideas. I am sure you will learn a lot here.

See you around the forums.

Okay...

I am going to serve as my own Guinea pig for a little experiment.
I have just edited my Profile to include links to my blog, and my home pages on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google Plus. I will leave these links there for a month and see if I attract a lot of spam (I am taking one for the team!).

I have added a reminder to my Google calendar to remove these URLs in one month.

Then I will post back in this thread and let you all know what kind of responses I got.

What's wrong with the 'Home Page' field . . .

I suppose that is one way to do it; didn't think of that. It just seems more appropriate with the other Social Media information.

Also, the beauty of friend and connection requests is that they can be declined :D

True. I wonder if it is even something to worry about? Does anybody actually ever click on these links? It would be informative to know if any Daniweb member has added these URLs to their Profile and later noticed an increase in the number of connection requests they received.

Hi, Louis.

Years ago, when I first joined Daniweb, I think all discussions for the less-popular languages were thrown into the "Legacy Languages" forum:

"Software Development" -> "Legacy Languages"

That is where you'll find any questions relating to MATLAB, MathCAD, AutoCAD, etc. As far as I know, there simply isn't enough ongoing discussion on these topics to justify creating separate forums for them.

It has been a while since I tweaked my Profile, and I just spent a few minutes reviewing it.

There are fields in our Daniweb Profiles for our Facebook and LinkedIn URLs (among others).
I hesitate to share this information because I'd probably end up with many "friends" from India, which I don't really mind, but it would undermine the credibility of these networks.

However, what I would find more useful is a field in our Profiles for our Blog URL. Comments are turned off, so I don't have to worry about spam comments, and I would appreciate another way in which to make people aware of my blog.

The next time Daniweb admins make changes to the forums, any chance a field could be added to our Profiles for our blog URL?

I write to inquire about the necessity of domain registration. What does it actually provide and is it necessary? Guidance sought

If you want to continue owning your own website then, yes, domain registration and renewal is necessary.

If you don't do it
i) you don't get to own the domain name, say, yoursite.com, so you cannot develop a site on that domain, or,
ii) if you own the domain already, and have built a site there, not renewing your ownership of that domain means somebody else could buy it, erase all the work you've done on your site, and start their own site on that domain.

Usually, I look for movies, rather than TV shows.
The only TV show that I make a point to watch is Star Trek: Voyager.
I need my sci-fi fix, and Voyager is the only one that is on.

Facebook sometimes suggests people with whom I can connect. Some of them are old contacts from high school.

However, the odd time I wonder if I have already sent them a friend request, which they have ignored.

My question:
Is there a way to tell if I have previously sent a person a friend request?
I have gone through several of the options and menus, but I can't find this capability. Am I missing something?

In LinkedIn, I can go to my Connections and see that I have X number of outstanding invitations. (Okay, fine, some of these people were marginal colleagues anyhow.)

However, I do not see the same information provided in Facebook. If I sent somebody a friend request six months ago, which they have ignored, it would be nice to know that, so if I forget, I won't bother them again.

What is telling you not to use short.MaxValue? The compiler?

Perhaps you could use a macro instead. This is what is in <cfloat> itself:

#define DBL_MAX 1.7976931348623158e+308

Include <cfloat> in your program, use DBL_MAX in that line, and see what happens.

I think it is 1.79769e+308.

You can access it via numeric_limits::max

i.e. -

#include <limits>

If you then output a statement for this limit for type double, it should give the number I gave up top.

What kind of answer are you looking for? An exact time in milliseconds? I don't think anybody could give that kind of answer. It would depend upon the hardware you use and several other factors.

Are you supposed to write a program execution timer? You'd have to get a hook into the clock cycles of your computer and take the time before and after the code block executes.

Or are you just looking for the order of the algorithm? For example, order 0.618*n, n, n log(n), log(n) log(n), etc.?

">Basically I am trying to set size for each form differently."

I think you would have to create a different style for each of those sizes and preface them with different names. For example,

formsize1, formsize2, formsize3, etc.

Then, in the web page itself, you'd have to style each code block according to what you want using those individual styles you created, or using the dot operator.

That's a pretty nebulous question.

In what language are you planning to code?
Could you give us a better idea what you are trying to do.

Is writing a password manager system your assignment, or do you just happen to need a password manager?

If you just need a Password Manager, there are many already written, and very good. For example, KeePass, 1Password, and my1login.

If you need an encrypted plaintext system, you might want to check out Steganos Locknote, which encrypts files.

And there is SpiderOak, a back-up service that encrypts everything by default.

It looks like you are computing the height of the function by moving over an x-quantity 0.001, computing the area of that small segment, and then adding it to the running total. I think that is the triangle rule; is that the method you are supposed to use?

In any case, where are you having problems? Compiling the program? Running it? Getting incorrect results?

Is Firefox the only browser you use on that computer? If you use Internet Explorer on the same computer, do the pop-ups NOT appear?

What other software are you using on that computer? Any free downloads?

I personally think they should be left alone. . . .

Agreed. The West should get out of the habit of meddling. And the fact is, we simply cannot afford to do it anymore.

We should let somebody else take a turn shouldering the burden of settling conflicts. China sells their goods all over the world and is getting rich doing so. Why can't they pay the cost of policing a region for a change? Or Russia? They have a stake in the region too, but aren't talking about going in there to settle things. Perhaps they believe things will get settled--by themselves--without costing any Russian men or rubles. Either way, people are going to get killed.

And why are we now so concerned that people were killed by gas? Nobody would be as excited if the same number of people were killed by a big explosive device.

I wonder why some nations seem content to let others kill each other, while western nations feel the need to do something about it. Are those nations simply more cold-hearted than we are? Or do they know something we don't?

What are you doing now (i.e. - grade in high school, college, etc)?

If you are sure you want to pursue a career in Computer Science, I suggest you start exploring Linux. It is not exactly Computer Science, but most jobs in the field like to see somebody with some knowledge of Linux. All the programming courses I took (Mac Pascal, FORTRAN, Pascal, C, C++, etc.) always covered the same bases: do loops, for loops, while loops, pointers, arrays, subroutines, etc. The syntax was slightly different, but the logic was similar. I thought most of the courses after the first one were just a waste of time, since they were just repeating what I already learnt in the first course.

If you get a job using existing applications, or purely writing code, consider yourself lucky.

However, in many situations, you will end up working in some industrial application: remote control, telephony, web applications, communications, game development, real-time robotics, etc.-- all of which will require knowledge of Linux or Unix (Windows is not good for real-time applications).

Here's an idea: pretend you are a graduate right now, and you are looking for work. Spend some time in the job boards (monster, careerbuilder, etc.) and see what requirements are listed for job-postings that you like. I think you'll see a lot of them include Linux experience as a requirement or a "nice to have."

And the nice thing about playing with Linux is that you can do it on your own, constantly--even …

So, who is going to school in September?

Not me. I have been out of school many years now.
However, I wish I was going to school; I miss it. It was stimulating and satisfying. It sure beats some of life-sucking work I have been doing since graduating.

I take the occasional night-school course at a local technical school, but that's about it.

Somehow your program has to determine which of the five formulae will be used when it is executed. The program must make this decision based on parameters within the program, or it must be told exactly which formula to use based on user input. For example, the program might prompt the user to enter an integer indicating which calculation is to be made.

In any case, once the decision is made, just call the appropriate function and execute it.

can anyone help me fix my program?

What is wrong with it?
Is it not compiling?
Not executing?
Executing, but outputting unexpected results?
...

What input are you feeding in to the program?

A couple aspects of your program caught my eye:
1) Line 15 is a standalone for loop. Is this loop supposed to have a body? Effectively, all it does is set x to 0. But since x = 0, when the program reaches the switch blocks nothing happens.
2) Switch statements usually include a default statement on the last line. Your program might not need it, but I think it is good to be thorough.

SAP customizes their solutions per customer and site; all the features and capabilities you might request for an off-line version would be available in the cloud-based version. Assuming you have a rock-solid, high-speed, Internet connection, the cloud-based version would be less-expensive. You would not have to worry about the admin side of the product, installing software, upgrading, etc.

There is a comparison page posted here:
https://www54.sap.com/solution/sme/software/erp/compare.html

For more specific questions, I recommend you start a chat session with SAP directly; I am no expert by any stretch of the imagination.

Hello, Kevin.

Welcome to the DaniWeb forums. We are glad you joined us.

These forums are an excellent resource: lots of good information and many knowledgeable members here.

It is a great place for the sharing of ideas. I am sure you will learn a lot here.

I have used SAP by Design before, a cloud-based version of SAP, but that was some time ago. And it is quite different than the offline version.

See you around the forums.

Your title is a bit misleading; submitting a site to Yahoo! is unrelated to on-page optimization. On-page optimization is about factors on the page that make the page search engine friendly.

Getting links to a page, submitting to directories, social bookmarking, etc. is part of the field of off-page optimization.

In any case, I believe the Yahoo! search has been combined with the Bing search engine, so you would actually be submitting through Bing's Webmaster Tools page:

Bing Webmaster Tools
http://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster

Hope this helps.

I do not know if there is a hard and fast rule about when to break JavaScript code blocks into separate files.

If you are doing this work for an employer, they may have policies regarding when and how to break code up into individual files.

Myself, I often break code up by common sub-routines. For example, I have separate files for routines that (i) input data for a square matrix, (ii) output a square matrix, (iii) input a vector, (iv) output a vector, etc. That way, when I write a new page that may need these tasks done, I don't have to include the whole routine in each new program. I just reference the external .js file. Makes the file size of each page smaller, and saves space on the server.

Plus, using external files make re-loading the pages faster. The .js files are kept in the browser cache and don't have to be re-loaded each time.

"Patriotism isn't the same as nationalism. The former is a healthy love and respect for your country, but the latter is blind, total, and unrestricted support for any and all legislation, policies, or activities of a nation. Nationalism is the extreme, whereas patriotism is the goal, because good patriots know when to challenge their political leaders, laws, and policies when they become unjust or immoral."

Rev. John Triglio Jr. and Rev. Kenneth Brighenti
"Catholicism for Dummies"
2003

They are both used to access members of a structure.

The dot operator is used to access members of that structure when the structure is in the code block by value. For example, say you define the following structure in the main program:

struct {int a;
int b;
int c;
int d;
} DummyVariable;

You could access any of the members of DummyVariables by using the dot operator. For example,

DummyVariable.a = 5;

You could also pass the entire structure into a function. For example,

function(struct variablename);

HOWEVER, changes you make to members of the struct within the function won't apply outside that function. If you want changes to a struct to be applicable outside the function, you have to pass that struct into the function by reference. So the function would have to be re-defined to accept a pointer (*p), and in the main program the address would be passed in (e.g. - &struct).

Then, in the function, you would access members of the struct by using the -> notation, and any changes made to the struct within the function would take affect outside the function also.

Thanks for the advice.
I just came back from a walk through a local store and was looking at USBs. Some of them come with drag-and-drop encryption built-in.
That got me wondering: would a USB with this built-in encryption interfere with running Linux from it?
Is it best to purchase a USB without the encryption in the first place?

I would like to use Linux at home but do not want it to mess up anything on my home PC (Windows 7).

Ideally, I would like to run it from a USB drive, as independent from the PC as possible.

This is totally new territory for me, so I have several questions.
First, is this possible?
If so, what distro of Linux is recommended?
How do you tell the computer to boot from the USB when starting up?

I don't expect to run many applications.
Mostly a word processor (e.g. - Libre Office), a web browser, FTP client for updating my websites, plain text editor, and perhaps a C++ compiler/IDE.
Could these Linux applications also be run from the USB drive?

Any suggestions for what size USB is required for doing all this?

I need a step-by-step "Installing and Running Linux for Dummies" tutorial. Any suggestions?

Hello, Henry.

Welcome to the DaniWeb forums. We are glad you joined us.

These forums are an excellent resource: lots of good information and many knowledgeable members here.

It is a great place for the sharing of ideas. I am sure you will learn a lot here.

See you around the forums.

Any time I have included an alert in a Javascript program, I have simply called it as "alert", for example,

alert("The value of the variable is presently " + varValue + ".");

However, I also see code that calls it as window.alert. For example,

window.alert("The value of the variable is presently " + varValue + ".");

Is there any difference between calling it one way or the other?
Is one considered better style than the other?

Does calling it by window.alert avoid some overhead (i.e. - save the program the problem of resolving where the alert comes from), thereby making the program execute more quickly?

Any other feedback?

In particular, I am curious to know if there is a better way to keep the console open. Presently, I keep the console open by waiting for input of a character (lines 192 and 193). "rflag" is already declared, so it is not like I am creating a brand-new variable solely for this purpose.

I tried replacing lines 192 and 193 by the following two lines:

cout << "\nPress Enter to continue. \n";
cin.ignore(numeric_limits<streamsize>::max(), '\n');

Had expected to avoid accepting a character. Doesn't cin.ignore just wait for the "Enter" key? The program no longer waits for a character input; in fact, it doesn't wait at all. The console closes so fast I can't see what error messages or comments may have been output.

I had to add TWO lines of cin.ignore:

cout << "\nPress Enter to continue. \n";
cin.ignore(numeric_limits<streamsize>::max(), '\n');
cin.ignore(numeric_limits<streamsize>::max(), '\n');

Now the console stays open until the "Enter" key is pressed, and whether or not gibberish is typed in beforehand. Does this mean there were two newline characters in the buffer waiting to be cleared out?

In any case, I am not sure if doing it this way makes the program better.

Any thoughts? Is the original program fine, or should I edit it to use cin.ignore?

A couple other ideas come to mind.

Daniweb still seems to be Firefox unfriendly. Could that be an issue?

Has Daniweb been mentioned in all the social media outlets? When I check Google Analytics, several Data Hub Partners are listed (17) in their Social Media section. Is Daniweb listed/mentioned in all these partner sites? (I have no idea if Google gives these sites more influence than others, but it can't hurt to cover all the bases.)

More Tutorials. When I search for answers to programming questions, very often the top results are tutorial pages on codeguru or similar sites. These tutorials are very useful, the information they provide is not time-sensitive, and they don't get buried deep in the forums as time goes by.

I am sure all the prestigious universities are comparably excellent (Oxford, Cambridge, etc.).
Do you have a particular preference for where you want to go within the field of Computer Science (CS)?
For example, Loughborough is pretty well-known for aerospace, so a CS degree there might be designed more for engineering applications.

Perhaps ask your question in a forum specifically for university students. The Student Room (thestudentroom.co.uk) is the biggest student forum I know of, and it happens to be based in the UK. Somebody there probably has personal experience with UK universities and can offer better information.

. . . I think there is a hesitation to post on social media because you wouldn't want your social network to see you in the need of asking for help. I know it sounds silly. Posting on a forum keeps a person more anonymous.

True. And many of my contacts on social media are co-workers and former co-workers. I wouldn't want them knowing everything I do as I do it.

On the other side of that equation, I'd prefer not to have my contacts' activities fed into my social networks. One of my Connections on LinkedIn (not a member of Daniweb) must be doing something like this. For a long time he was quiet. Now he is writing/posting articles/opinions/etc. several times a day and my LinkedIn daily updates are filled with his postings. I'd like to keep him as a Connection, but I'd rather not have my LinkedIn updates filled with all his postings, and every other random musing that might come to his mind. It is getting really annoying.

I have worked on a few blogs for several years and have treated them as a creative outlet. Haven't been concerned about getting followers or traffic.

Presently, the "Blogroll" section of my blog is empty. However, I am now considering adding several URLs to this section. I don't plan to follow these other blogs everyday; I want to treat this section of my blog as a convenient online bookmarking service for myself (instead of saving a collection of links in, say, a text file).

I am now wondering, by linking to another person's blog, do they automatically receive notification that somebody has linked to them? Or does that only happen if I subscribe to their RSS feed?

I don't expect the other bloggers to link to me, but it would be a nice bonus. And I don't plan to initiate contact with the other bloggers to make a link-back request.

So ... my question is: does having a Blogroll result in any benefits to a blogger, other than creating a convenient collection of links, so that everything is one click away?

Another question just came to mind. Could that drop in posts, or attempted posts, be accounted for by automated spambots that search for vBulletin sites? Perhaps the change in platform removed Daniweb as a target for scripts seeking vBulletin sites--in which case, that is a good thing.

I am curious: did the URL of these forums change too (when the platform change occurred)? I forgot what it was before, if it was different.

Almost all vBulletin or IPB forums I visit include the term "forum" in the URL. Whenever I search for a forum on a particular topic, it has become almost second nature for me to do a Google search specifically for forums. For example, if I want to find a forum whose theme is mathematics, I would do a Google search like the following:

mathematics inurl:forum

I don't like to spend a lot of time searching through non-relevant results, so like to make each search as specific as possible. I might also use the intitle tag, or some of the other advanced search operators too--anything to make results as applicable as possible.

Daniweb does not have the term "forum" in its URL, or title. If a new programmer goes on the Internet and searches for "programming forums", and perhaps uses the advanced search operator, I don't think Daniweb would come up.

Perhaps that is just me. But I thought I would throw that out there.

Okay. I just re-posted the code snippet. Hope this works.

 void Poly2Solver(double a, double b1, double c, double* sr, double* si, double* lr, double* li) {
 // Calculates the zeros of the quadratic a*x^2 + b1*x + c
 // This solver computes both real only AND complex roots (if applicable).
 // The components of the two roots are lr and li (the real and imaginary components, respectively, of one root), and
 // sr and si (the real and imaginary components, respectively,  of the other root).

 char rflag;
 double b, d, e;

 *sr = *lr = *si = *li = std::numeric_limits<double>::quiet_NaN();
 if (a == 0) {
     cout << "\n a = 0. NOT A QUADRATIC EQUATION! TWO ROOTS WILL NOT BE FOUND. \n";
     cout << "\nEnter any key to continue. \n";
     cin >> rflag;
     if (b1 != 0) {
         *sr = -(c/b1);
         *si = 0.0;
     }
 }

 else {
    *sr = *si = *li = 0.0;
    if (c == 0){
         *lr = -(b1/a);
    }
    else {
         b = b1/2.0;
         if (fabs(b) < fabs(c)){
            e = ((c >= 0) ? a : -a);
            e = -e + b*(b/fabs(c));
            d = sqrt(fabs(e))*sqrt(fabs(c));
         } // End if (fabs(b) < fabs(c))
         else { // Else (fabs(b) >= fabs(c))
            e = -((a/b)*(c/b)) + 1.0;
            d = sqrt(fabs(e))*(fabs(b));
         } // End else (fabs(b) >= fabs(c))

         if (e >= 0) { // Real zeros
           d = ((b >= 0) ? -d : d);
           *lr = (-b + d)/a;
           *sr = ((*lr != 0) ? (c/(*lr))/a : *sr);
         } // End if (e >= 0)
         else { …

What are the options for fixing it?
Should I re-post the original code in another post, same thread?
Could we delete the entire thread and I will create a brand-new one?
Do Mods have the capability to edit the code? Perhaps I could be made a Mod for one hour and then I could correct the code myself; it shouldn't take long.

. . . There is one more possiblity which I missed the first time: the OP might have actually posted the HTML escaped code snippet. I have posted a comment on that snippet thread; let's see what he has to say.

Hi, "~s.o.s~".

I replied to you in that thread. And added another comment.

Also, yes, I did copy and paste from another app. I did a copy and paste from the Visual Studio 2012 IDE to a plaintext document (TextPad) to strip out all formatting. Then I did a copy and paste from TextPad to the Code Snippet window. But I don't think that is the issue. I follow this routine for almost all my writing--copying from a plaintext editor to ensure no weird behaviour--and it has worked out fine so far. And my other code snippet, for the Matrix Multiplication Program, appears just fine.

I guess we'll have to wait for some feedback from Dani, to know what may have happened.

David, it seems that your < and > have been turned into &lt; and &gt; respectively. Did you post it that way? If not, I'll have to ask Dani to look into it.

Oops, I just noticed a few more errors:

Quotation marks (") in the cout statement have been replaced by &quot;
and the newline character (\n) has been replaced by an 'n' only--the backslash in front of it has been deleted.

Hmmnn ... I wonder why that happened? I thought anything wrapped in code tags would be posted as-is (i.e. - nothing converted to HTML, formatted, etc.).

David, it seems that your < and > have been turned into &lt; and &gt; respectively. Did you post it that way? If not, I'll have to ask Dani to look into it.

No, I did not post it that way. If you hadn't pointed it out, I wouldn't have even noticed it. Thanks for catching it.

Yes, if an admin could edit the code to put the braces back in there, that would be good.

I don't think it is just Daniweb. I spend time in several forums and they all seem to be getting quieter. Like Daniweb, they have a mix of discussion on the topics of programming, Web development, Traffic generation, and general talk. It seems like the traffic just disappeared. I don't know where it went; DevShed, Codeguru, GIDForums, GameDev, etc.--they are all pretty quiet too.

Unfortunately, I haven't done much to liven them up. Most of the questions of interest have already been asked already. For example, I am guilty of usually ignoring "Internet Marketing" forums. They all seem to be filled with noobs or spammers; the threads are (i) several years old and resurrected by spammers, but there is no point replying to them because I am sure the OP is long gone; (ii) made by noobs who are too lazy to search for the answer that might only be one page down in the thread; or (iii) made by spammers who ask a generic question loaded with keywords who only want to draw traffic to their post and, from there, to their site. Either way, I rarely go into the "Internet Marketing" section of most forums. Even when I visit SP, DP, V7N or some of the others, I rarely see posts in the whole forums that attract me to them.

Anyhow, that is my two cents. But I don't have a solution.

You are doing this in high school?! It must be a pretty advanced high school. I don't recall doing anything like this before first year university.

In any case, normally, to solve N Equations in N Unknowns, [A](x) = (b), the easiest way is to make the [A] matrix triangular, and then use back-substitution. However, I doubt you want anything that complicated.

Are you only going to be working with systems of size 3? Are you supposed to solve the system using determinants? It looks like you are off to a good start: computing the determinant by the standard formula.

Are you unclear about the algorithm? Or the coding?

If you are planning to submit your own code snippet, you are welcome to do so.
But I would suggest you create your own thread for it, within the "Code Snippet" section.

Here is a small--complete--program that includes a sub-routine that inputs two matrices and then multiplies them.

Notes:

• 1) I happen to like taking input from a text file. It eliminates the need to type input from the console, especially when debugging, it prevents the possibility of making typos.

• 2) The sub-routine includes several checks to make sure the array sizes are correct. These checks are not necessary for this particular program, but the checks were added in case the sub-routine is ever copied and used somewhere other than this program.

• 3) To make the code more concise, I have used typedef to re-name vector<vector<double> > as "C2DArray".

• 4) This program also shows an example of two more aspects of C++ programming: (i) dynamic arrays using <vector>, and (ii) inputting data from a text file and putting it into arrays

===========================

I don't use any online storage but I would imagine SpiderOak is preferable to DropBox. SpiderOak uses on-the-fly encryption . . .

Nice. I will have to check that out; I hadn't heard of SpiderOak before.
I presently use Google Drive, ADrive, Box, and My Shoebox (shoeboxapp.com) for photos, but it is always good to know about more options.

Regarding privacy, I don't worry too much about it. I don't save documents with deep dark secrets anyhow. I mainly just treat it as a back-up in addition to a USB, in case my computer crashes or my home burns down.

Anything more personal or private I would encrypt anyhow (addresses, phone numbers, business contacts, website log-ins, etc).