I thought I had a more useless lookup table, but I was wrong

private static Dictionary alphabet = new Dictionary();
static AlphabetPositionMap()
{
alphabet['A'] = 'A';
alphabet['B'] = 'B';
// you get the idea
}

I am wrong because it is only a small step from this code to creating an Enigma machine in software, which I believe had some amount of use a few years back. Failed at being useless :sigh:

I haven't seen Interstellar but have read some articles about the science. The depiction of the black hole was quite interesting. The accretion disk is actually fairly flat. In the movie it looks like a sphere because of the bending of light around the black hole. As I understand it, the light from the far side of the accretion disk that you would expect to go over the top of the black hole and not enter your eye is bent by the warping of space around the hole. The light from the far side enters your eye but appears to be coming from above the black hole and so it looks like there is accretion disk above. -- A little like a normal mirage where light from the sky is bent and appears to be on the road ahead. -- Apparently, they had to write their own rendering software because all existing software assumes light travels in straight lines, which is vastly not true near a black hole. The story goes that they set their new software an overnight rendering job to see what the accretion disk would look like. There was surprise at first when they saw the result but worked out why they got the result when they thought carefully about how light would be bent near the hole. (Found a link http://www.wired.com/2014/10/astrophysics-interstellar-black-hole/[^])

When you pay too much tax to the taxman who then gives you back your money with no interest why do most people think that is good? I aim to pay less tax during the year so that the taxman has basically been giving me an interest free loan which I repay at the end of the year. It has always puzzled me that people think getting a tax refund is a good thing.

How does 'just' relate to 'ctrl+shift+alt+windows+1+F'? :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ab8GtuPdrUQ[^]

What's the problem? That lists all the primes less than 26. It also lists some other numbers as well, no extra charge.

I just tried to register for a 'free' report at an accountant's web site. Entered First, Last, Email, Pass and captcha. Then clicked on 'Register' to get this

INSERT INTO `dbbizval`.`tblauth` (`fldCustomerID`, `fldCustomerUserName`, `fldCustomerPassword`, `fldCustomerEmail`, `fldCustomerDate`, `fldCustomerFirstName`, `fldCustomerLastName`, `fldCustomerAddress1`, `fldCustomerCity`, `fldCustomerStateID`, `fldCustomerCountryID`, `fldCustomerPostCode`, `fldCustomerPhone`, `fldActive`, `fldLoginAttempts`, `fldDisabledTime`, `fldRandomKey`, `fldHowHeard`) VALUES (NULL, "My Email address", "MyPassword", "MyEmail", CURRENT_TIMESTAMP, "Paul", "Linton", NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, "1", NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL);Could not connect: Access denied for user 'dbbizval'@'27.50.90.137' (using password: YES)

(My email and password were both displayed in plain text) Nice of them to give me their username and password as well as telling me my own.

I don't know VB and was just wondering ... if

Return OrderNumber = 0

does a comparison and returns the result then how would you set the value of OrderNumber to 0 and then return OrderNumber? In C#, the first is

return OrderNumber == 0;

and the second is

return OrderNumber = 0;

If ! is hard to read then make it more obvious

private bool CaseWeCareAbout(string input)
{
return !!!!!!!!!!!input.StartsWith("Case we don't care about");
}

Double-click does not detach the tab for me. Dragging a tab does. Maybe you just need to change the drag sensitivity? http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2009/04/10/9541813.aspx[^]

1976 (or there abouts) I soldered up a veroboard mounted National Semiconductor SC/MP (scamp). 256 bytes of memory in two chips. Front panel had 8 leds, 8 switches for address and 8 switches for data. A push button for deposit and another for run. There was a single bit of output which I connected to an earpiece and it could play very simple, very short pieces of 'music', mainly stuff from my 'Learn to play the Recorder' workbook. The 'case' was made of chipboard with holes drilled in the top to allow ventilation. Front panel was a lovely piece of brushed aluminium. Consumed months of my pocket money and worth every cent. The design came from Electronics Australia and they had produced a pcb but I couldn't afford to buy it. Did anyone else make one of these?

Are you aware of this article A Calculation Engine for .NET[^]

Whenever you change isTesting you will need to call

RunCommand.OnCanExecuteChanged()

(If it isn't, you might want to make isTesting a property and call OnExecuteChanged from the Setter)

Just saw this posted on another forum

List _chars = new List();

for (int i = 0; i < 2000; i++)
{
if ((i >= 48 && i <= 57) || (i >= 97 && i <= 122))
{
_chars.Add((char)i);
}
}

The author claimed that the code "work efficiently". I wonder how the upper limit of 2000 was determined? Why not int.MaxValue? Then you could maximise the inefficiency. Of course, you could do better with a long, or a lower bound of int.MinValue but that's getting silly. The way _chars was used later all that was required was

string _chars = "0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ";

Yes, it is bad but understandable. The equivalent of that code works just fine in Excel, for example. Try "=Date(2011,Month(Today())+1,1)" and you get 1/1/2012 which seems sensible to me. It's a coding style I have used for years. No excuses, I'm just saying.

I hope this code didn't get in to production :laugh: because it doesn't work. Try

TruthChecker(false, 1)

I think this will return true :(

In c# I prefer

// to be sure, to be sure, to be sure
if (((boolVar == true) == true) == true) {

I find that three levels is optimum

It was interesting, to me at least, that in every month of 2001 more people were killed in road deaths in the US than died in the terrorist attacks of September that year. Is that too high? Imagine a 9/11 occurring every month. Month in - month out. That's the level of road deaths. I reckon its too high.

You are always going to store 24.25 in a floating point number exactly. 24.25 is a power of two. You should never see any of the results you listed (except 24.25) no matter what print formatting is specified.

I can create a method on any class called GetEnumerator(), it doesn't have to have anything to do with IEnumerable. Eg public class DumbClass { public string GetEnumerator() { return "Good morning";} } Not very useful but now I can say DumbClass x = new DumbClass(); Console.WriteLine(x.GetEnumerator()); ForEach needs an implementation of IEnumerable.

If the logic is difficult for the author to understand, have pity on anyone else who will read the code. How about if (!ignoreExisting) throw; if (sx.Number != 2714) throw; Personally, I find double negatives put my head in a spin, so I would go for if (obeyExisting) throw; for the first test.