Codemuffin
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Posts posted by Codemuffin
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Drinking tea in muffinland, orange herbal to be precise. Looking at version control systems, and assorted code bits. Preparing for bed.
Thinkin' about layin' off the coffee until I figure out the source of my headaches. Oh noes, but I love caffeine. :/
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*hides*
For what it's worth, I merely replied because I saw some misinformation being spouted, and it tickled my reply finger all too much! I swear!
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Hello Codemuffin and welcome!
....You're....a ...bunny? Oh YEAH, you will fit right in!
I'm originally from Hinsdale, Madison Street, just off Odgen Ave. I understand our ranch house has been replaced by a half million dollar mansion (!) I miss Chicago....once a city girl, always a city girl.
My son is a folk (Morris) dancer---*cough* download *cough* Salty Dog Rag--is that ever a fun dance. Liz
Heh. I use the term 'advertising bunny' as a euphemism for ' clueless industry girl that is blessed by two wonderful, wise, creative directors'.
Not naming my employer of course, that's my dirty little secret ;P Chicago's gotten pretty crazy these days. Too expensive for my blood. (I'm actually from Aurora, truth be told, but I love going down town for a pizza pocket. grease sensation!)
Texas is so-so, I can't take some the attitudes here, but I'll manage.
Thanks for the welcome.
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How do you plan your sites? Does the idea just strike you, and you go straight to your editor? Or do you break out the notebook paper and begin writing down how things should look, what needs to be done? I tend to plan first on paper, then execute with code. I have several templates - two column, three column, header, footer, etc. I know I'm going to be styling with CSS, so having the underlying HTML the way I want it is important to me.
Any preference of standard, while we're at it? I used to do HTML 4.01 Transitional, but lately I've been in an XHTML 1.0 Strict kind of mood. I read how to make sure to feed the right content type to each browser with PHP, and I can't wait till my next site to implement it.
I'm planning another re-do of my home page (which is woefully blank, since I can't think of what I want to do next), and my blog, which the newest copy of Movable Type ate my pretty stylesheet. Just trying to get some perspective on how other people do things.
Codemuffin
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Going to be updating this thread as I find more information. Google is your friend - turn anger into empowerment.
Conferred with my buddy again (who is a wonderful source of Linux information, I make sure to take notes from him). We confirmed that the Al Green cd is copy-protected by Cactus Data Shield 200.
Another CD protected by CDS-200 So I'm thinking this isn't a mere software issue, it's a hardware one. I don't think my cd drive can truly *read* it. When my sister-in-law returns, I'll ask for the cd again to test this theory *myself* on the other Windows machines, and then this one again, given what I know.
Keep y'all posted - I guess this is one of those 'learning experiences'
Codemuffin
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Well, I have heard of these new ideas to make it so you cannot copy CDs to your computer, and this does sound a lot like it. Although, I'm still confused of what Linux has to do with it.if I make my computers live in a Linux world, how will I know what CDs are safe?
Did I miss something about that?
Matt
I've heard two different veins on the subject. I've heard some of the copy protection schemes allow for a certain number of copies, however, this only works on Windows (I may have to dig through my bookmarks for the link, though). That was the vein I was working off of.
As far as I can tell, it could be a software issue - I can't see the drive, therefore I can't rip cds.
Well - I posted my thoughts to a friend, and he suggested using cdparanoia directly. Once I get ownership of that CD once more, I'll be able to test the cdparanoia theory.
Meh.
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So even if you tried this disc in Windows, it would not have been able to read it?
Matt
According to my brother, he tried putting it into his laptop, and it didn't end well. I don't know what that means. *I'm* not going to worry too much over this individual incident, but it does make me wonder - if I make my computers live in a Linux world, how will I know what CDs are safe?
Though, I took another stack of cds...I *may* be having a CD-DRIVE issue.
Pardon my thread, if so.
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I'm confused.. Are they putting file information that is not readable on Linux, or is this some DRM ploy?
Matt
DRM ploy, I'd think. Not quite sure. I burned a new Usher cd a while back for my sister-in-law, and it worked fine. Bought it from the same store, even. Brand new.
Could be an OS issue, but I seriously doubt it. Also, do they even make the copy protection work in other platforms other than Mac/Win? I'm not certain either way, but I *am* very upset that something that I paid *good* money for won't work properly.
Back to buying things online, it seems.
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Me, Me, Me...
- 25
- Open Source software advocate (*cough* junkie)
- advertising bunny by day-job
- freelance writer when I feel like it
- freelance computer work when I can get it
- encryption junkie
- super-volunteer (somewhere around 250 hours a month)
- student (headed to Angelo State U in the fall, CS major)
- activist, education reform and equal rights
- likes country, soul, oldies, rock, jazz, blues, lounge
- into jazz dance and ballet
- speaks German as a second language
- date-curious, not looking to get hitched anytime soon
- takes care of her mother
- lives on a military base (Fort Hood, TX)
- originally from Chicago, IL
That's enough me
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I went to the store to buy a CD for my brother. He's a total Al Green fanatic, and so when I brought him the CD, he was overjoyed. He wanted a copy for his car, so I said it could be done. After all, I had Grip, right?
Oops. I put the CD into the drive, and it screamed 'Unable to Read Disc'. Not cool. I thought something was wrong with my cd-rom drive! No, it was the CD. I tested other original cds, and found them working - my Diana Krall CD played quite well.
I know the Powers that Be wish to control the rampant piracy on the net, but let's not forget that not everyone runs Windows or the Mac, k?
Not that I'm bitter.
Codemuffin
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Most people don't know how to maintain a car. They have a (very) small library of scripted responses to certain events; when those scripts fail they turn immediately to experts. The same is probably true of pools.
Indeed, and even then, there's car owners that complain when the mechanic has something to fix. "It's so expensive." A lot of car ownership also has to do with reading the lovely owner's manual and noting events. I do see your point - we have a capped limit of what can be handled by the owner, and what must be handled by an expert. Thank you, jcl.
Trying to reply to everything at once.
I agree with the idea that Linux is about making mistakes and learning from them. I also agree with the idea that computer users shouldn't have to deal with the spyware and viruses and what have you, but the cold reality is that they must, and this is no time for lack of information.
Believe me, I know it. I've lost my entire hard drive to cluelessness. I was on dialup, and I figured that 'it would never happen to me'. So I didn't bother with a virus scanner. And well, the ones I saw were too large to download (no patience for KJ). So I didn't bother. Well, I got hit. My system was so corrupted beyond belief, and I had no clue what to fix. I ended up paying an exorbitant amount of money for Windows 95 (which was the only OS this poor box could handle - and this was before my Linux days), which fixed the problem - 'cept I lost all my stuff because, well, on 512MB hard drives, I didn't really have any place to put anything. I couldn't burn it, no burner. And you tell me how many floppies that would have taken.
Looking back, I am glad I did make the mistake, all said and done - it keeps me on edge, and makes me realize there's risks, and there's rewards to all this computer activity. Should there be risks? 'Course not. We'd all like to have a lovely Internet and all that, but I don't see that coming anything soon.
Back to our little 'hijack', eh? I do think, as time progresses and HCL's become more refined (though that's far out of my range of interest, as my hardware works fine, but I can see why HCLs are necessary), I think we'll see less and less hardware conflicts. I sure hope so. The hardware is really what shuts a lot of would-be Linux users out.
and hitest, I just deleted my windows partition yesterday. I'm still excited.
I just don't have any reason to boot into Windows anymore, so I figured it was just taking up space. I use the partition to store some more personal files. I'm always trying to figure out the big questions when 'converting' people over to these parts:
1) What's stopping you from taking on Linux?
2) How can we (royal we, or community we) help?
3) What direction do we need to take in order to get more people into the community, and keep them there (it's one thing to install Linux for a day, get frustrated, and reinstall Windows, and it's another to keep it for "good", whatever that means.
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I really like using Thunderbird. My only nitpick is that I can't select a certain piece of text in a message, and reply only to that. It's a slightly pain, but the overall excellence of Thunderbird totally outweighs this very minor nitpick.
All in all, I'm really happy. I even get to feed my Usenet addiction and check my mail at the same time. Excellent.
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Plastic. Paper bags aren't easy for me to carry, and break on me.
Politically affiliated, or couldn't care less?
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or the time it takes to find drivers for linux hardware on dialup
linux is for the rich.
and tech minded.
not ordinary not so techminded people.
i know ive been there
marty
I didn't originally wish to chime in on this post, as my biases come out too quickly. But, the more I think about it, a community can't agree all the time, so here I go, making more posts.
"Linux is for the rich"
How is Linux for the rich, when most of the support (in my experience, that is) can be found online for free? The distributions can be downloaded. There are also a lot of Linux User Groups all over the United States at least (I'm American, and I apologize for not recognizing some of LUGs in other countries), where I'm sure someone could easily give you a copy of the distribution (if you had a slow connection or something). I do not mean to make this sound accusatory, I just wish to know the basis of your statement.
"Linux is for the tech minded."
With extremely user-friendly distributions such as Fedora Core, Mandrake, Xandros, Lindows, and the wickedly-popular Ubuntu, I don't think this statement holds up anymore. With any operating system, there will always be 'bugs' , things that don't work quite the way the user expected, which means there will always be a need for support. After all, people tell me Windows is very user-friendly, yet there are support communities out there to fill in the gaps when problems arise, yes?
I suppose it's a difference in perspective. When I first started learning things about computers on my own, I noticed people around me looked at a computer, and expected it to *just work*. They expected nothing to happen to the machine, so they did not bother to check up on it, perform basic maintenance. Yet these same people would not dare do the same thing to a car, or a swimming pool (both above and in-ground types DO take maintenance, yanno), or anything else valuable. Why to a computer?
Flash-forward to 2005, and I still see this ugly pattern. Fortunately, it isn't as prevalent, but there still is this expectation that the tech minded are to take over everything, explain everything, and fix anything that breaks. As a "tech minded person", I have no problem with fixing things -- to an extent, so long as the user also understands they have certain expectations on them as well (scanning, not opening attachments, using a firewall, etc.)
Just my two cents, convert to the currency of your choice.
Codemuffin
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Adding to the pot:
Designing a CSS Template, Part 1
Why did I post all these URLs? Because while it's nice to find beginner tutorials, there's other factors at work here (standards, design as a whole, etc etc). In order to get the best design, it's often necessary (and recommended!) to surf around at other sites, even if they introduce concepts that are a bit more 'involved' than the basics. I have other URLs, and if this topic is that interesting, I'll be happy to look through my bookmarks (my bookmarks file is around a meg, and I bookmark mostly things related to web development / technology in general) and post some more.
Codemuffin
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Hey there.
The first part of the function says it deals with the variable square(double doubleVar). Yet, the second part deals with the variable dValue . These are different variabes, but refering to the same function. Why does it work ( as in calculate the square) even though the variables are different? Can different variables be used for the same action? Should dValue be doubleVar? Am I just missing something?It works because you are passing dValue 's information to square(), which will perform the necessary calculation. Different variables can be used for the same action because when you define a function, you can use anything between those parentheses.
For example:
double cube(double someNumber)
{
return someNumber * someNumber * someNumber;
}
// main block
int main
{
double someNumValue = 5.0;
cout << "The cube of " << someNumValue << " is " << cube(someNumValue) << endl;
return 0;
}
It should print out to the screen: The cube of 5 is 125. Of course, we could always move away from hard-coding the number in (note that in an application, we always need to make sure the user can enter their own numbers).
The point is: all you're doing with these functions is passing in a value. We can use anything to define the function's parameters, so long as the variables we pass to the function match the specifications (in both examples, the variable needs to be a double) .
Hope that helps,
Codemuffin
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I'm at home in C++, teaching myself PHP and mySQL, I dance the wave fantastic with XHTML and CSS, and I'm cordial with Java, but that's another war for another day.
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