My favourite message (that wasn't an error) came from a Microsoft Game: MTM (Monster Truck Madness). When I was updating the game via my dial-up connection, 10 or so years ago, it was keeping track of the update in a fashion like: "Downloading update... 14378 KB of 400 KB completed." Oh, Microsoft, how wonderful 'tis to see thy glorious programming talent!

"Silently laughing at silly people is much more satisfying in the long run than rolling around with them in a dusty street, trying to knock out all their teeth. If nothing else, it's better on the clothes." - Belgarath (David Eddings)

Steve Naidamast wrote:

You go to the diagnostics button and it basically tells you to contact your system administrator...

It gets even more fun when you are your own system admin :P

"Silently laughing at silly people is much more satisfying in the long run than rolling around with them in a dusty street, trying to knock out all their teeth. If nothing else, it's better on the clothes." - Belgarath (David Eddings)

Brady Kelly wrote:

A hint, perhaps, as to where my 2010 fortune lies?

I was thinking the same thing! :P

"Silently laughing at silly people is much more satisfying in the long run than rolling around with them in a dusty street, trying to knock out all their teeth. If nothing else, it's better on the clothes." - Belgarath (David Eddings)

Don't forget that people are stupid :P I deal with stupid people every day, as a help desk staff member at my local College...

"Silently laughing at silly people is much more satisfying in the long run than rolling around with them in a dusty street, trying to knock out all their teeth. If nothing else, it's better on the clothes." - Belgarath (David Eddings)

It's possible that it may be simply that they want to check your handwriting for legibility. I mean, if you're gonna be working in South Africa, Language barriers will be present (since many other employees will not be native English-speakers). Perhaps they're just looking to reduce Lexicographical barriers as well :P

"Silently laughing at silly people is much more satisfying in the long run than rolling around with them in a dusty street, trying to knock out all their teeth. If nothing else, it's better on the clothes." - Belgarath (David Eddings)

Ian Shlasko wrote:

The NEXT version would be Wine!

BAHAHAHAHAH! I like it! Too bad Windows doesn't take more out of the Linux book, tho... Man, I hate Windows, but Linux still has not yet matured enough to suit all of my needs (gaming, etc) :( But I still love the OS... much more powerful and greater potential than Windows, IMO... And don't even get me started on Exchange :mad:

"Silently laughing at silly people is much more satisfying in the long run than rolling around with them in a dusty street, trying to knock out all their teeth. If nothing else, it's better on the clothes." - Belgarath (David Eddings)

I did that for a few weeks after I transferred out of the CIT program at my local college into the Business program... It was starting to get annoying (but no less amusing) :D

"Silently laughing at silly people is much more satisfying in the long run than rolling around with them in a dusty street, trying to knock out all their teeth. If nothing else, it's better on the clothes." - Belgarath (David Eddings)

Now can we return to the task at hand?!

"Silently laughing at silly people is much more satisfying in the long run than rolling around with them in a dusty street, trying to knock out all their teeth. If nothing else, it's better on the clothes." - Belgarath (David Eddings)

(Read: Mark McCutcheon - The Final Theory)

"Silently laughing at silly people is much more satisfying in the long run than rolling around with them in a dusty street, trying to knock out all their teeth. If nothing else, it's better on the clothes." - Belgarath (David Eddings)

Some background: I have taken a few measures to prevent SQL injection on my PHP/MySQL setup (currently WAMP for development, but will be LAMP for production server): - In my users table, I have entered a "bad" user, with all the fields equal to 0.     - this is the first user in the table     - if a hacker tries to enter ' or ''=' in the uname field:         - (theoretically,) "bad" user will be first result, and         - (theoretically,) # of results will also be greater than 1 (more than 1 user)     - (theoretically,) the following code will prevent said hacker from gaining unauthorized access - mysql_real_escape_string() function will be used to escape input when site is launched, but right now it is not in use to allow testing of common SQL injection methods.     - I have read that mysql_real_escape_string() has some vulnerabilities.     - I know mysql_real_escape_string() is more secure than addslashes().

/* // This block will be uncommented after development
$u = mysql_real_escape_string($_POST[uname]);
$p = mysql_real_escape_string($_POST[pass]); */

// These lines will be replaced by commented block above after development
$u = $_POST[uname];
$p = $_POST[pass];

// I could add " order by uid asc" to the following query, to ensure 'bad' user listed first if SQL injection occurs, and to prevent hacker from using order by
$query = "select uid,uname,fname,lname,email,phone,other,pass from ads.users where uname = '$u'";
$result = mysql_query($query);
$rows = mysql_num_rows($result);

// if more than 1 row, SQL injection attempted (uname has 'unique' flag in database, so only safe to return 1 row)
if ($rows > 1) {
/* <<Do Stuff - Security Measures (ban IP, etc)>> */
die ("Error[20]: You have entered potentially harmful input. Security measures have

They're based in Australia, which means it'd fall under international IP laws if they're fining companies in other countries. Now, I know very little (in fact, almost nothing) about international IP laws, but I would suppose that it is possible that "equal protection under the law" may not apply. *shrug* who knows... IP Trolls ought to be banned from ever touching electronic devices of any kind. Let them live a miserable, isolated, useless life. Who knows, that kind of lifestyle may actually even add value to the lives they have currently! "Silently laughing at silly people is much more satisfying in the long run than rolling around with them in a dusty street, trying to knock out all their teeth. If nothing else, it's better on the clothes." - Belgarath (David Eddings)

the good "artist" can make good things with small code.

Heh. I suppose that's one way to look at it... I tend to look at the art part of coding as producing the most efficient code possible while maintaining robustness (but that's not to say that I'm really good at said production :P)

"Silently laughing at silly people is much more satisfying in the long run than rolling around with them in a dusty street, trying to knock out all their teeth. If nothing else, it's better on the clothes." - Belgarath (David Eddings)

Somebody has WAY too much time on their hands... I don't understand why people make applets/applications like that? Can anyone understand it?:confused:

"Silently laughing at silly people is much more satisfying in the long run than rolling around with them in a dusty street, trying to knock out all their teeth. If nothing else, it's better on the clothes." - Belgarath (David Eddings)

you may be the 1st person I've heard of who actually uses MS integrated ZIP "tools"

LOLZ. I occasionally use it (only when I'm too lazy to open WinRAR). But one thing I've noticed about it is that it takes like 10x longer to unzip things... especially when there's a lot of small files. For example: If you have 1000 files in a 5 meg zip, and use MSZIP, it will probably say "3 minutes remaining," compared to WinRar, which would have it done in about 10 seconds!

"Silently laughing at silly people is much more satisfying in the long run than rolling around with them in a dusty street, trying to knock out all their teeth. If nothing else, it's better on the clothes." - Belgarath (David Eddings)

a few fuzzy directives

Isn't that why we have fuzzy logic systems? :P

"Silently laughing at silly people is much more satisfying in the long run than rolling around with them in a dusty street, trying to knock out all their teeth. If nothing else, it's better on the clothes." - Belgarath (David Eddings)

Never watched it with her as host. Bob Sagat was my fav' :D

"Silently laughing at silly people is much more satisfying in the long run than rolling around with them in a dusty street, trying to knock out all their teeth. If nothing else, it's better on the clothes." - Belgarath (David Eddings)

who doesn't want to be silver on code project.

*raises hand* Me! Too many M$ junkies, and not enough Linux fans around. :sigh: (j/k - I'm not the kind that cares about post counts, let alone board ratings)

"Silently laughing at silly people is much more satisfying in the long run than rolling around with them in a dusty street, trying to knock out all their teeth. If nothing else, it's better on the clothes." - Belgarath (David Eddings)

I actually saw a news story at least 8 years ago of a girl that had to have half of her brain removed, because of a rare disease. She survived the surgery, and the other half of her brain had to take over control of the rest of her body. They said she was expected to eventually regain all motor functions, but the link below reveals otherwise. Her brain did take over a fair amount of the other side of the body's functions, though. It was really a quite interesting story. Here's an update from 2005 on that story[^].

"Silently laughing at silly people is much more satisfying in the long run than rolling around with them in a dusty street, trying to knock out all their teeth. If nothing else, it's better on the clothes." - Belgarath (David Eddings)

I think we should try direct to the brain reprogramming with VB.

Yeah... that's just what we need... Microsoft to not just own half our lives, but actually our entire minds as well! I think I'd trust the Linux community on that one just a wee bit more :P

"Silently laughing at silly people is much more satisfying in the long run than rolling around with them in a dusty street, trying to knock out all their teeth. If nothing else, it's better on the clothes." - Belgarath (David Eddings)

Plus, unless the computer MUST be on 24/7, there is no point in wasting electricity 16 hours a day while you're asleep or at work.

I must agree. Why waste precious electricity if the box is not a server, or at least doing something useful, like protein folding, or SETI units, or, or, or.... you get the picture. Consider this: the amount of electricity your computer uses could be used to power 4 or more 60-watt incandescent bulbs, or approximately 20 or more flourescent bulbs. In the latter case, that could be enough to light one or two houses!

"Silently laughing at silly people is much more satisfying in the long run than rolling around with them in a dusty street, trying to knock out all their teeth. If nothing else, it's better on the clothes." - Belgarath (David Eddings)