crazyfray

Yeah, Python is on my to-do-list :)Partially because I want to move to using OpenOffice rather than MS Office at some point, and they use Python to provide users back-end access (like VBA for MS Office). Also, I used to use SPSS (a statistical package) and you can interact with that using Python.It's a language that's gaining market share and traction (if I recall correctly, Computing Weekly (Monthly?) have a yearly survey of skills in demand in the UK IT sector, and Python keeps moving up the rankings), and is supposed to be fairly easy to learn once you've got a couple of other languages under your belt.

anwiii, if it's a new business, bear in mind that most businesses have a 3 year business plan of loss first year, break even second year and only gain profit in the third. Even tech companies struggle to earn profit without a market share!

Useful resources, thanks for those links karlos.I've been working on my own excel+VBA project manager (task driven, with GANNT chart as output), but stopped partway through when I realised how good the freeware project managing programs are.

I assume you mean the OP, but if you mean me, I've not used any forum software yet. I'd be looking for a system that is easy to set up, with the option of using a true programming language to extend (rather than a proprietary one). Not sure that that's even an issue with forums, since I don't know much about the implementation of them at all.

They look classy and professional - some real attention to detail there, even though there's not much content. The Flash site is swish, though the loader would drive people away (no-one likes to be told something is done, only that you have to wait a bit longer!).Nice photo loader, though couldn't see any photos. Also, I like Vegemite, though less a fan of the pony

The biggest and easiest (for non-SEOers) thing to do is make sure your content is logical and of good quality. Have a look at http://www.webconfs.com/15-minute-seo.php , and look how many of these are just good web coding practice. BTW, whoever originally gave me that link (I think it was someone here), you are a wonder among giants

What the OP is describing is really vertical search (supposedly the next big thing among all the next big things of that next big thing, web 2.0) https://www.searchenginejournal.com/vertical-vs-horizontal-search-engines/4274/ I'm a little sceptical, but it makes sense to be a natural progression from traditional search. Time will tell, I guess.

I wouldn't think that smoking pot is a particularly good remedy for sleep...no sirree. Nor would I go down the tablet route. Just bear in mind that reducing your sleep can greatly reduce your physical development. Yup, that kind of physical development. Yup, that kind of physical development too Some non-jokey recommendations (since I suffered from insomnia for a couple of months about a year ago): 1 - Set a time 1hr before going to bed for getting ready for bed. Sounds stupid, but it takes me forever to do all those little things you've got to do before tomorrow. 2 - Eat some cereal before getting into bed. Your body uses energy 3 - Read for 1 hr in bed. In particular, read any revision materials you have for exams or that you want to know, but can't be bothered to. Computing texts are ideal for this. A fringe benefit of this is that you can actually gain a lot of knowledge out of this relaxing time (I've revised for all my CIW exams this way - the key is starting well ahead of time!)...though don't pick anything that is too interesting, or urgent...both of these will keep you up out of interest or worry. 4 - On days where you feel you're too tired, drink water instead of tea and coffee. You may feel more tired in the short run, as your body has become dependent on caffeine, but you will feel better in the long run. If you must drink coffee, don't drink it on your non-work days!

It's getting out of hand, you say? But I don't have any hands after my industrial accident. BLASPHEMY! Yes, it can do, but the biggest problem with political correctness is that it distracts from the very real fact that discrimination is alive and well in our society. It's like any kind of social movement - whenever there is a need for social change (such as in the heavily discriminatory employment sector of the UK in the early half of this century), societies always act in a very visible and explosive manner, sometimes overreacting. At the same time, however, we still have people in wheelchairs (thinking of my previous employer) being denied job interviews because 'they won't be able to get into the building' - despite the fact that this person was more qualified and capable than both of us interviewing... Though it probably didn't help that she was a woman. A woman! In a wheelchair? Employers can barely manage one, never mind both. It is also easy to overlook the fact that language can and does hurt feelings (despite the fact that we're on a forum... ), and when we talk about someone 'being a dwarf' [not quoting smithy500] we often don't realise that we are defining that person by their appearance (saying that someone is a dwarf is very different from describing them as short). We've become so accustomed to this in many areas ('she's a hotty'), it's easy to just accept this as being normal (whatever the heck that is). Still, I can't help comparing this to elderly relatives saying that 'they get on fine with darkies'. In case anyone is wondering, I am not disabled in any way. And yes, my background is in linguistics, to my eternal shame.

This is my take on things too...don't be a hater! It's pretty good here in the UK since it got banned in public places (something agreed with by many of my smoking friends...who wouldn't dream of smoking in a non-smokers house, which is my pet peeve). There's no real need, in my opinion, to the ban the thing completely. After all, it's their funereal (sorry to be so flippant about it, but black humour often works best ). I don't like peas either, but I don't start kneecapping all you crazy pea-eaters. And don't think I wasn't tempted to, either.

Maybe it comes from second-hand smoke sellers dumping their product when it doesn't shift?Still, if you want to get rid of smoking, just keep going the way things are...it's considered to be far less cool than it was in my generation (26ish for reference), and by banning things outright you make them much sexier.

I dunno. Tesco has some good quality stuff (it's like any supermarket - sometimes is good, sometimes is bad...the key is not to get suckered into buying everything there for convenience in my mind).Software? I think any proficient internet user that already uses freeware (not strictly the same thing as open source, though it happens to correlate) won't bother, but we're not the target market. Tesco have a decent reputation for listening to feedback, which is needed for software to really take off, so who knows?Still, I think it'll be as much of a flop as straight-to-budget games are.

I would say it depends on the type of game. If you're only moving layers of images (like with old-school, top-down turn-based RPGs) with few effects, best to choose the one you know best rather than have a panic over what you're choosing.Also, Lua is used for interacting with the WoW interface, if you're interested.I'm tempted to make a quick game in VB just to poke at Tetraca, but he's right, so I won't Much as I'm a big fan of VBA and VB, they aren't particularly efficient languages - since they aren't targeted at that market. They're just easy programming languages.

Lol...you confused me greatly there. I thought you meant in programming terms, since ! is used to mean not...so while x=x (x is equal to itself), x!=y (x is not equal to y). Which is why I thought 'what an idiot, asking why 0 isn't equal to 1'. More fool me! if post-title.content.firstglance != obvious-to-stupid-crazyfray then irrelevant-pseudocode.add end if

Hehe. I know who Gordo is, but I'm a brit, so it'd be a poor show if I didn't. Wish he was still locked up doing economics though.Always annoys me that it's the person who makes the mistake that is fired, or the person in charge who steps down (as is the case, IIRC), and never the direct line manager of the person who made the mistake for not training them properly or implementing proper data security procedures.Middle management: we convey the blame both ways. It's either the fault of your slovenly underlings, or the wicked whims of the boss that's to blame.

Simultaneous release with the PC version? :)Yeah, I know. Not gonna happen. I guess we should be happy we got number 2 at all...

He's mad. You should be happy, because it seems pretty clear you don't want him as a friend, and better to find out like this than if he tried something else to 'inspire' you.Maybe it was just a prank, but I wouldn't like someone with such a lack of empathy as a friend.GL either way.

I think he's referring to how typing something 20 times tends to make you remember it, whereas autocompleting editors (such as the code editor in Dreamweaver (off topic, but people know what I mean then)) mean you can become a little lazy. Plus, when you spend 15 minutes trying to find why your XHTML page doesn't validate when it's just an unclosed tag (due to the size of your page), you become a bit more careful about closing them at the point of entry.Still, I prefer my editors

Yup, w3schools is good. I also quite like http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

First off, Amezis is right in everything he says (not that he needs me to say that!). Yup, though it is targeted differently from a database. To my mind, XML is better for handling string data, since it has no inherent way of calculating which means that that data would have to be handled by the parsing program - whereas you might as well do it all in one go in a DBMS (database management system). That's one of the reasons XML ties in so nicely with web development workflows and dynamic page content. I would add that in most cases I've encountered, when someone asks whether they should be using a database (and I'm making a distinction between a database that you would parse using SQL or a similar sorting/filtering language/mechanism, since technically any repository of data is (at some level) a database, given that it implies relations and structure within the datasets), they shouldn't touch one with a bargepole. Sounds like a crass generalisation, but it seems to have worked for me - they either want to use a database because someone said they should. or because they think that lots of data = need a database, and in both cases don't realise that databases tend to take a great deal more planning too, since mistakes will and do come back to haunt you (whereas XML is fairly forgiving, though it you add attributes and elements later your previous data will have blank value). Not saying that's the case here, mind - but in my experience, people who really need a database don't realise it because they're already struggling to see the wood for the trees that have been processed into piles and piles of paper... In this case, I think that you would not get any real benefit out of a database, since you are dealing with mainly string data that requires no additional calculations (intensive or otherwise), and are unlikely to hit the massive amounts of data where the optimised nature of a database would need to kick in. Nor does it sound like you will deal with (and you can represent many-many parent-child relationships, such as files with categories, where files can fit in more than one category, quite well in XML anyway) complex relationships where the relationships affect how you will parse the data. Basically, all you need to do with a simple index is sort and add. For the situation as you describe (an indexing system), XML is perfect. Heck, a spreadsheet is fine - nothing wrong with using Excel if there's not a better solution to the problem! Also, apologies for the broken language of this post..too many long, unnecessary meetings today!

If you want your kids' teachers to love you forever, try after their GCSEs . Any kid'll tell you how disrupting the darn things are in the classroom. I agree with Renaissance on maturity though. I use mine all the time, and it would be harder to organise things without it (both work and social). I'm not tied to it, but it is a useful tool. So from that angle, there's nothing about the phones in themselves that stops them being useful for kids of any ages - it's how they are used (and marketed, TBH) that makes them a nuisance.

I got my PDA so that I could work when on the train if I get good app ideas (using Office mobile)...but any kind of proper IDE would be good, so that I could do real work, instead of notes that I then use when I get in. I got conned a bit with Windows Mobile, thinking it had a lot more to it than it does.But now we're heading into mobile computing, rather than phoneland...not too far off, but still off

Nokia is pretty good company for their ergonomics (though my most recent one is a HTC tytn (brick) phone).

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that the OP was trying to work out how to set this kind of system up for his own forum, rather than work out how this one works. I may have missed something in the FAQ, but I don't think that that link answers his question. Not that I can help, since I have never set up a forum. I'd be interested in the answer though. EDIT: I was going to suggest looking at the page source, but it's a hodgepodge of a lot of stuff. They even used inline CSS to make it extra long

I'd second w3schools - it is an excellent resource, and you can be confident you're learning good habits. Also, just building sites seems to help a lot!Pick one aspect of your site per week (such as typography, layout, use of images etc.) and just look at other sites in relation to that. There's too much to take in when you try to look at everything...plus that way, you start to develop your own preferences and style.