Messages

1

General chat / Re: Who loves Blitz3D?

« on: March 23, 2011 »

puki, those screenshots look like some serious work has gone into that and I'm curious - percentage wise, how far would you say you are through this project and how long have you been working on it?

2

General chat / Re: Firefox 4.0

« on: March 22, 2011 »

No status bar?

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

3

General chat / Re: Facebook

« on: March 20, 2011 »

If anyone tags me in a photo I get untagged. Friends are told anyway NEVER to tag me in photos.

I've only ever received one photo tag to date so far and that was someone I'd known from school and didn't know not to add me.

Moroboshisan, it was their poorly (or so obviously) worded TOU that made me register with completely fake details.

If my fiance didn't have some paranoia about needing to get hold me me wherever I was I'd scrap my mobile phone as well. I have no real need for it and I actually hate the bloody intrusive thing.

4

General chat / Re: Facebook

« on: March 20, 2011 »

Thanks to va!n for those links, this bit caught my eye:

So what’s next? Is this the next step towards banking through Facebook? Will we get personal with Facebook and let it be the carrier of our personal information? We might.

Erm... I remember when your pay packet from a job was paid in cash. Little brown envelopes with your names on it with your money inside it - sealed.

With the arrival of the banks and their "technologies" many decided to switch to paying direct from the company to their accounts because it was more convenient.

This bit I can't stress enough: what was a convenience [banks] has now become a necessity as companies now refuse to pay you without a banka ccount.

I've not had a bank account for about 7 years and I have no need for one - I still get my wages, just alternative arrangements have been made.

While I'm on my mini rant - stop using those automated checkouts at supermarkets. I would rather queue for 10 minutes than to walk throuigh and help the companies remove what little precious human contact we've got left. These electronic tills ARE removing jobs from people regardless of what the companies say. They might not be sacking people now but they're not recruiting anywhere near as many people as they used to. Fact.

EDIT: I just remembered - I have several friends on Facebook who in real life call themselves private people. One is very shy and keeps herself to herself. Fairly young (early 20s) and very attractive. She's registered her "mobile device" with Facebook and she regularly posts all her info. She actually lives over an hours drive away on the other side of the county and yet I know where she's going for holiday, how she's managed to find E-cup bras for her petite frame after certain (named) shops refused to stock them and more. All because she posts everything on Facebook.

Another friend is again over an hour driving away on the other side of the county, a divorcee with 2 grown up kids. Hates even the neighbours knowing what she's doing yet she posts regular updates on Facebook even down to what she's eaten for breakfast (I kid you not!)

Scary world, isn't it?

5

General chat / Re: Facebook

« on: March 20, 2011 »

When I tell people my Facebook account is registered under a false name, has no photos of me and contains complete bullshit I get strange looks. Even when I tell them I value my privacy and I don't like the way Facebook (and other social networking sites) asks for so much private information, something that so many are only too eager to fill in and make public without thinking what they're doing.

Identity theft is one possible reason.

Over here in the UK paper shredders are very popular because people throw out so much private stuff in the trash like bank statements yet they tell the whole world all their private info online.

Stalking is another reason.

I had an email from a friend asking me to do a little h4kk!ng to find two addresses of two people who had ripped her off on eBay. I didn't have to do much than look them up on eBay then go to Facebook. I handed over so much info to my friend including the mobile phone number of one of their employers, full postal address of their work place and much more. Once you find one individual you can see who all their friends are and get extra info from them should whoever you're tracking down make their account private.

I don't like the way the default settings for Facebook are tell everyone everything. Unless you *think* about your own privacy you have to go in and make everything private.

Any data uploaded to Facebook stays with Facebook. Permanently.

The only reason I set up a Facebook account years ago was to help my fiance with her farm on Farmville as she needed more neighbours and wasn't into letting complete strangers into her friends list. So, having several websites I set up several dummy accounts, loaded them with junk and they were used to great effect. In no time she was ruling the place. I have to admit I got into Farmville myself and after we got bored - I tracked down the "delete account" link (which is hidden from view) and I had to go through quite a process to delete these accounts. Couple YEARS later we've got into CityVille - I went to re-register these accounts and guess what - they're all still very much there with all the content on them still present.

I couldn't activate all of them as they've introduced code to detect possible "account abuse" and after activating five of them the sixth they want my mobile number to verify the account belongs to a real human being. As I travel a bit repairing computers across the county there's nothing stopping me registering several new accounts across the county and using them at home.

Several times I've been told that the security on my account is not strong enough and that it's recommended I give them my mobile number to help verify myself should anything happen. Not likely as my password is VERY secure.

Facebook=pure evil.

6

C / C++ /C# / Re: Which version of C?

« on: February 23, 2011 »

Intellisense - I forgot how handy that is!

Jim - it's the Java similarities that's making me not want to do C# as it doesn't feel like C++ and it's the "I'm learning C" thing I like the sound of.

7

C / C++ /C# / Re: Which version of C?

« on: February 23, 2011 »

LittleWhite, is that just C# or is the MSDN compatible with C++ as well?

8

C / C++ /C# / Re: Which version of C?

« on: February 23, 2011 »

Just an update.

I was thinking of learning C++ and I'm now thinking of heading right to C# instead.

Quick question: say I do head to C++ instead of C# and I want to learn how to do something - let's say for the sake of this example I want to get the list of files & folders in a specific folder - how would I look up on how to do this? It must be possible so my guess is it's just a case of tracking down which includes I need and figuring out how to use them but how would I go about this?

9

C / C++ /C# / Re: Which version of C?

« on: February 22, 2011 »

Thanks for the replies.

I know what you mean with the searching for code bit as I spent ages when I tried learnign C++ last time. I could not for the life of me find a routine anywhere that would get the contents of a specific folder.

I'm not into demo coding (maybe MUCH later down the line) but for now I'm more interested in coding utilities. Not amazingly super wonderful utils but just for the sake of learning it. As I mentioned elsewhere in another post - my [serious] coding days are pretty much over and I'm more wanting to learn C because I never did plus I'm still weighing up whether I want to learn Blitz Basic and be adventurous with maths functions or learn C and go semi serious with the coding.

A lot of basics for C are not new to me. I've been using PHP for quite a few years and I've noticed several similarities. I've also been usign C style formatting strings with assembler on the Amiga when using come library functions so programming is definitely not new to me.

10

C / C++ /C# / Which version of C?

« on: February 22, 2011 »

I've had my BlitzBASIC topic now for one on C.

What are the differences between C, C#, C++ (and the others) and which is best to learn. I've been given a legal and full copy of VisualStudio 2008 but from my past experience trying to learn C things weren't that easy and certainly didn't seem that welcoming.

I had a bash at learning C++ and no matter how hard I tried I couldn't find many code snippets and when I did none of them would compile and the error messages meant nothing to me.

I think my main problem is going to have to accept that I'm going to have to break away from an IDE environment and maybe use Notepad++ with some non-GUI compiler. On the Amiga DevPac had a very nice IDE, AmigaBASIC had an IDE, HiSoft BASIC had an IDE yet I did manage very well with E which had no IDE and I used CygnusEd.

How are things structured with C on Windows? I mean, the Amiga had all those nice libraries, devices and handlers that could be opened and (ab)used. From what I've seen of DirectX code examples it seems to run very much like a library call system - am I right?

EDIT:

Just been reading other topics from the last page backwards and found codeman's topic which I've been reading and found VERY interesting.

So there's devcpp and the free MS Visual Studio C compiler. Which one to use? I remember I installed the free MS compiler last time and ended up abandoning it because I couldn't find much code that would work and I don't want to go back to the start again.

Just trying to weigh up and decide which road to go down - Blitz or C - and I can't make up my mind.

EDIT 2:

Just been reading some more and it looks like I'm heading more towards C++ than C#. Only thing is, I've read a lot of people saying C# is a clever re-work of Java giving some VERY good and true-sounding evidence to back this up just as I've read a lot of people giving good sounding evidence that C# is nothing to do with Java.

I guess at the end of the day I'm wanting to code apps. I remember I got put off C++ the first time because I couldn't do a simple task like get the list of files on the hard drive and couldn't find any source to do so.

The whole "cout" thing I find very confusing, I'm more used to printf. That cout thing looks messy.

HELP! lol

11

General coding questions / Re: Blitz - which version?

« on: February 21, 2011 »

Thanks - I'm used to the OOP after playing with PHP for a few years. Coding assembler for several years has given me some invaluable knowledge with loads of stuff. If you'd have told me years ago I'd go back to BASIC I'd probably have laughed

I did try learning C (either C# or C++) but was unable to find anything remotely useful. Source code didn't compile and nothing worked so I packed that lot in.

12

General coding questions / Re: Blitz - which version?

« on: February 21, 2011 »

OK so if production has stopped are they worth learning or is there something else in the pipeline?

Not sure I want to spend ages learning something that's already expired.

13

General coding questions / Blitz - which version?

« on: February 21, 2011 »

Going by the name of it I thought BlitzMax was the best to go for now I'm not sure.

I'm not into writing flashy ground breaking demos. I'd like to play with maths routines to help get my head around maths a bit more. Maybe write some utilities so if any of them can make GUI apps for Windows that'd be good.

Just what are the main differences with 3D and Max?

14

General chat / Re: A controversial topic.

« on: February 21, 2011 »

Drupal and Joomla are both CMS - Content Management System.

Either way you'd still need to add a forum and some CMS apps have their own forums built in. In this case it's either put up with whatever forumsoftware they've adapted (phpNuke uses phpBB) or add some other forum and modify the code so logins work across both.

15

General chat / Re: A controversial topic.

« on: February 19, 2011 »

I do like phpBB but I know it's not one of the best security wise.

Not really thought of forum software like that. Didn't realise phpfreaks was SMF - that's a surprise - must be a mix of the theme and custom mods.

16

General chat / Re: A controversial topic.

« on: February 18, 2011 »

What software do I prefer, you mean what programming language?

On the Amiga it was assembler and E but those were very much machine specific and I don't like the idea of running them on an emulator.

For the PC I'd love to learn BlitzMax. Overall it would have been C++ but I don't have the time to learn that what with dyspraxia. I've had a play with BlitzMax and I like what I see. Quick and easy coding.

With the Amiga I was very much into coding utilities and although I'd like to do the same on the PC it's not essential. I'd love to cover some maths stuff.

I noticed the more complex the machine the less detailed the manuals get. Now we've got todays PCs and the manuals seem non-existant.

17

General chat / Re: I am here but not sure how long for

« on: February 18, 2011 »

Hi Graham!

I've stopped learning C++ and I've stopped coding assembler.

I'd love to get my head around BlitzMax but I won't be taking it too seriously like I did with assembler, I've got a lot of responsibilities that I never had before and I don't have anywhere near as much spare time.

18

General chat / Re: I am here but not sure how long for

« on: February 14, 2011 »

I'm not sure - there was talk of it being held elsewhere, a bit more northern.

It could mean the end of it for me if it is if my fianances aren't that great. I'll miss helping out with it, it was great fun and every time something happened to my car. I think the last one was the one time my car didn't die at the end.

19

General chat / Re: 3D Computational Fluids

« on: February 13, 2011 »

That was incredible to watch and also quite scary. Out of everything on this planet over all time computers & associated technologies have evolved faster than anything else. I'm not sure I want to know what it'll all be like in 50 years.

20

General chat / Re: A controversial topic.

« on: February 13, 2011 »

I'm not a fan of SMF - interface seems quite "cludgy" compared to others. One I really like is the forums at phpfreaks.com although they have heavily modified that.

I'm got Blitz Max installed on my machine. Not used it much except to play around with maths functions for calculating stuff. I'm almost 40 and I know I'm not going to produce some amazing new demo with slick effects as my codingdays are pretty much over. The Amiga was where it happened for me and those days are gone. I've tried DevPac in WinUAE and it isn't quite the same.

What would I like to see? BlitzMax tutorials teaching the reallt basic stuff.

I've got more of a life now than I did when I was sat in my bedroom coding as a kid then as a teen and I don't have the time to be sat researching stuff plus I have Dyspraxia which makes some learning definitely anything but enjoyable.

I'd like to learn BlitzMax better than I do now and some tutorials on how to do stuff would be awesome. I've not yet tried looking for any books in PDF format yet but will tomorrow.