k_nitin_r

@The SimpletonHi!Most of the Adobe tools target the Mac too. Ask a Mac designer who will tell you how much he/she is in love with Adobe Photoshop and its performance on the Mac. Windows is pretty stable now, but way back in the late 90s, if you had to do some serious graphics editing, you had to get a Mac - editing high resolution images on Windows would simply cause Photoshop to crash. The Mac, however, would appear to hang but only because it was really performing the processing that you've requested.Windows has evolved since then and a lot of web designers now use PCs running Windows to do their web design and graphics editing. However, the Mac continues to attract graphics and web designers.With the issues currently surrounding Windows Vista and Windows 7, you're better off getting a MacBook instead of a PC running Windows.

@SkyHi!I think what you are experiencing is a privileges issue. I'm guessing that your web hosting provider does not permit you to run CREATE DATABASE statements from within the interface that you are using. They provide a separate web utility for creating databases and you can then use the utility you are currently working with for executing ad hoc queries.If you are still unable to resolve the issue, PM me and I'll see if I can help.

@The SimpletonHi!Some Windows Registry tools do more than just clean up entries. They also make and restore backups or diagnose problems with the registry. However, the original problem seems to mention about files that were deleted in the Program Files directory rather than something missing in the Windows Registry. I could be wrong, however your suggestion of using registry cleaners is not all that bad - some of them do have diagnostic capabilities too.

Hi!I really love the C programming language because of its simplicity. There are very few language concepts to be learned and you can build anything from extremely complex applications to very simple applications. Depending on your experience with the language, you can also build very efficient software because you have a control over memory allocations through your source code.As a first-taught language, I believe BASIC does a pretty good job there. If you can't see anything visually execute on the screen, how can you be motivated to learn to write more code?

Hi! Pretty much all of the libraries I can think of are either C libraries or C++ wrappers over C libraries. Even the Microsoft Win32 API consists of C functions. I believe in some cases they won't work with C++ class methods (it's been a long time, but I specifically remember that there was a problem when I tried to pass a pointer to a C++ member function and an error was returned). I'm not sure of why you're avoiding C-based libraries and would like to know why you prefer to use a C++ library instead. You might want to take a look at the ATL library, which is quite popular among C++ developers on the Microsoft Windows platform. From a quick Google search, I've found a tutorial on the Microsoft website at: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/599w5e7x(VS.80).aspx If you're open to the idea of using C libraries, you ought to try SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer). It's available on both Windows and Linux - I've done all of my development on Linux so I can't tell you much about working with SDL on Windows. I'm sure it's almost the same on both platforms, except for the initial step of setting up the libraries and setting up the path for the compiler. If you think you would like to extend into 3D graphics, you should take a look at the OpenGL library, which is available on a multitude of devices from smart phones to computers.

Hi!A few years ago, I watched "GoogleWhack Adventure" by David Gorman and I found it to be quite amusing. It's a standup comedy.Among all the present-day standup comedians, I think Raymond Albert Romano is the most popular... or at least I can't think of any other name when I think about standup comedy. Raymond Romano is known for playing the lead role in the series Everybody Loves Raymond. I'm sure you've heard of it. It doesn't really make you laugh the way you would if you watched Rowan Atkinson but the parts where Raymond talks about everyday occurrences from a different perspective at the start and end of each episode does seem quite interesting.Does anybody have any suggestions among lesser-known comedians to watch? I'm sure there are more good comedians out there who aren't popular yet but are quite entertaining.

@bluedragonHi!I actually think Ubuntu 9.10 does a better job of power management than Ubuntu 9.04. With Ubuntu 9.04, my old Pentium-4 laptop had its fan running at full throttle even when idling. Ubuntu 9.10, however, only runs the fan when needed and although it does take slightly longer than Ubuntu 9.04 to start up, I'd think they just added features in the new version that will make up for the slightly increased boot up time. In either case, I never have to boot up the system as I keep it running all day long, so the day I do have to reboot the system, I probably wouldn't mind if it took a few seconds longer.

I've been wondering... how do WordPress, Joomla, Drupal etc. schedule their jobs when on a Microsoft Windows environment, where we don't have cron? I haven't seen then create any tasks in the Windows task scheduler. Do the tasks even run at all?BTW, as we're discussing a PHP-based application here, there's something I've been wanting to ask about PHP. I've been developing on PHP for a while and one of the things I dislike about it is that PHP doesn't have a global storage area that I can use. Sure, I can store to the database or to a file or to any other location, but that's extra work - it would be nice if the kind developers could write a session-like collection for storing data common to all users. ASP.NET has it, and so does JSP - they even have many developers using it so it must mean that it's a useful feature, isn't it? I use it to store a couple of variables that I read at startup in an ASP.NET application instead of having to query the database each time. I know somebody is going to mention about databases having really good caches and their ability to store the table data in memory, but think about parsing a SELECT query each and every time a user request went to the server. The database server may have to calculate the execution plan once but it still have to compare the strings and ensure that it's the same as the statement for which it has a cached execution plan.I'd also like to mention that ASP.NET has a scheduler-like functionality which is actually a workaround. By placing an object into the ASP.NET cache with a specified time interval and a callback function, the cache is cleared sometime after the time interval (I know it might take longer but it does at some point in time) and then the callback function is invoked. This callback function can contain code for scheduled activities instead of creating a cron job or a scheduled task.

Hi! Although Zend, Xampp, and Wampp consist of the same packages (they bundle the software, add an installer, and give it a name!), I'm guessing that Zend may have made modifications to the source code of the open-source packages. That's actually the beauty of open-source - you can take the source code, modify it to build something better and release it as a different flavor of the product - that's how Linux ended up getting so many different names! In addition, as the previous poster has mentioned, Xampp and Zend are available on platforms other than Windows too, while Wamp is limited only to Windows. In fact, Xampp targets Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and Solaris. I can't tell you much about Zend but I'm pretty sure that they have a Windows version and a Linux version, at the least.

Hi!The "loving it" sounds like the words of McDonald's in India. Their slogan is "I'm loving it", though I think their marketing strategy is really poor, that's a discussion for a different thread.I've been using Linux since '99 but I think it's only after 2006 that they really became the operating system of choice for end-user PCs. Till them, they had limited hardware support but as the community grew larger, they managed to get more volunteers and a greater buy-in from hardware manufacturers to provide the information required to create driver software for their products. It still hasn't got to a point where manufacturers will themselves provide software drivers for the hardware that they manufacture, but it'll take a larger market share for Linux to earn that support. We aren't getting to that point anytime soon though because people who use Windows stick to Windows. Other people who previous ran Linux and couldn't get popular software to run on their systems switched to Mac OS (while also buying Mac hardware).I share your thoughts about the stability provided by Linux and the lack of software support. In the end, it all boils down to one thing - money. If software manufacturers spent a certain amount building Windows software, they'll get their money's worth through sales. However, Linux is a niche market so unless they find a really compelling reason, they're going to stick to building Windows software. Wine is a community-built product so although they might have the quality in place, it will struggle with trying to keep up with the new API that Windows keeps introducing with every version. The Mono project is trying to keep up with the Microsoft .NET framework development, but although they're close, we aren't at a stage where you can take a .NET application as-is and expect it to run on the Mono framework. Also, the runtime of Microsoft .NET and Mono don't have binary compatible serialization methods. It's actually ironic since Microsoft promotes the .NET framework as a platform independent framework. While it doesn't depend on the hardware platform (it runs anywhere Windows does - on both 32-bit and 64-bit hardware), it does depend on the availability of a version of Windows that supports the .NET version that you are targeting. In either case, we still have a lot of Linux software that runs on the Mono platform.

Hi!You could perhaps use a Spanish name. That'll make it sound more exotic. The name should depend on the kind of food that you are serving. If it's going to be Indian cuisine, you ought to pick an Indian name so it gives a feel of what people would expect when they hire your catering firm. You could also name the business after a city if you're trying to bring the experiences of a different location to your clientelle. I'd suggest avoiding names that people already associate with something else. For example, the name "Annapurna" suggested above is commonly associated with salt by most people - remember "Annapurna namak"? Some restaurants are named after their specialties - I'm thinking about Chutneys, which has a presence both in India and in other parts of the world.

Hi!Back in the age of command-line DOS, xcopy was a really useful utility. Some developers used it as an installer through a batch file though they had to include the xcopy executable as some systems didn't have the utility.Judging by the working path that you've provided, I'd say that the you have the networkfileshare directory in your current path. Unless filename.xml is in your current path, you cannot use ".\filename.xml" to refer to the file. You can, however, refer to the file with a ".\networkfileshare\folder\filename.xml". Alternatively, before issuing the xcopy command, you can type "cd networkfileshare\folder" and then type the xcopy command with the ".\filename.xml".Additionally, I would like to suggest avoiding the ".\" because those are two extra characters and omitting them doesn't really make a difference. Besides, when you double-click a batch file in Windows or run the batch file by CD-ing to the directory and then typing the batch file name, you are executing the batch file within the context of the directory in which it is located. If somebody were in a different directory and were running your batch file by specifying the absolute path, I'd be surprised - it's possibly, but I can't think of why anybody would intentionally do such a thing. I understand you are trying to cover all of your bases and make your batch file execution 'fool-proof', but it's a very improbable occurrence. You are actually typing two additional characters to clarify that the file you are referring to is in the current directory but because you are passing a filename and not executing a program (which could be located elsewhere, depending on the path variable), it is implicitly understood that the file is located in the current directory.

Hi Fermin! The negative balance probably comes from the time that you got the myCENTs for the post that you made but when the moderator put it in quotes, you lost the myCENTs that you earned from the previously non-quoted text (just a reversal of the error). The warning status is just an added onus to discourage others from copy-pasting content and to serve as a reminder that one should pay particular attention to quoting copy-pasted content. By the way, what's the site you're trying to launch? Perhaps you can do some of the groundwork by designing the site and creating the content for it till you reach the level of myCENTs required to order a hosting package and a domain.

Hi!If you do not want to use HTML to build your website, you can use Adobe Flash instead. The only HTML involved is in pointing the web browser to the Flash media file, but that is generated by Adobe Flash when you use the publish option. If you do want to have a conventional website but do not want to get your hands covered in the HTML mess of obfuscated structures (something that occurs frequently when you have multiple developers working on the user interface and you end up with HTML markup that nobody really knows till they decide to sit down and trace the output line-by-line) you can use a template and then edit it with Adobe DreamWeaver, Microsoft Frontpage, or some other HTML editing software. If you've found a good WYSIWYG editor, do post back to the forum to let us all know. Microsoft Publisher was also popular way back in the day for designing simple websites. You can find a lot of templates out there to get you started so you only have to place your content onto the templates and upload them up to your web hosting server.BTW, you can also use Microsoft Word (yes, that's MS Word from the Microsoft Office suite of software) to generate web pages though they tend to end up as bulky HTML documents.If you would like to get started with some HTML, do feel free to post any questions that you may have to the Xisto forums and you'll have the community of web designers and developers here helping you out every step of the way to building your own web site, completely in HTML!

@rayzoredgeHi!I think one of the Cons you should list about Karmic Koala (Ubuntu 9.10) is that it is still in Beta and will be releasing next week. Perhaps you should've had a comparison with Ubuntu 9.04 instead?I wouldn't really want to have a dual or triple boot but would prefer to have a system running a particular operating system that I can access remotely. I've got an old HPQ (with a Pentium 4 processor... it's from the pre-Intel-Core era) which runs Ubuntu 9.04 full-time while my IBM Thinkpad which is my primary machine at home runs Windows XP. My work notebook, however, has a dual boot with both Windows XP and Fedora Linux. The reason for the dual boot is that the virtualization servers at work did not initally have support for running Linux so I had to either connect back home, which was reasonable for doing some command-line stuff but became painfully slow when I had to do anything graphical, and because the office later got their proxy/firewall to block direct traffic so I can only connect via a remote desktop to a server located in a different office. The dual boot gives me access to a Linux environment when I'm trying to do something like a grep on a log file or something similar.The reason why I avoid having a dual boot is the time it takes to switch between the two (, three, or even multiple) operating systems. If I were to accidentally select Windows instead of Fedora or Ubuntu on the boot loader menu, I'd have to wait for Windows to start up, then wait for it to load background services before it can start responding and I can reach for the Start menu to shut it down and get back to the boot loader to select the other operating system. Also, the browser cache from one operating system isn't shared with that on another operating system so if I were accessing a website that I visited previously, my web browser would do a full download of all of the content. Yes, we do have a proxy server at the office, but it doesn't seem to cache anything - it simply blocks access to large files, websites such as Facebook, and IM clients such as MSN Messenger. At home, I don't run a proxy server but would've loved it if my ADSL router could do some caching. Remember the LinkSys routers that ran Linux and could be used for downloading torrents onto USB disks back in the day? LinkSys discontinued the unit, but I guess it could have been used to run a proxy too. I wonder if Tomato running on a LinkSys router provides similar capabilities. When the next generation of ARM-based netbooks are out there, I might consider getting them to deal with the issue of caching, but there's more - the recent documents list, the email clients, and other personalization settings aren't shared between the operating systems and that simply results in repetitive work.I also need to keep a copy of CounterStrike on my work laptop as we occasionally stop for a game. Or perhaps even Transport Tycoon Deluxe (the open-source variant, which is often referred to as OpenTTD) which I have a round of when I'm bored.Between virtualization and dual-booting, I would choose dual-booting but I would rather not dual-boot if I had things my way.

Hi!I haven't used SpeechMike but I'm assuming it is a standard USB microphone to capture audio. When I first read your post, I found it confusing when you mentioned "The speechmike seems to work when it is unplugged from the laptop" :-P That's analogous to saying that the light bulb was still glowing when you've unscrewed it from the lamp :-DAnyway, I think the problem you might be experiencing could be related to the driver you are using. Try looking for a newer version of the driver, perform a Windows Update, and see if either of the two solves your problem. The power saving feature is probably unrelated because the microphones do not work on re-booting and not while coming out of standby or hibernation.I often have a problem with my key board and mouse (trackpad on the laptop palmrest) responding when it comes out of standby. I've got an HP Compaq 6710b laptop running Windows XP. I had the same problem with Windows 7. To deal with the problem, I simply hit the little switch that turns off the monitor when the lid is closed and after pushing it once or twice, the key board and mouse start responding again. I'm not sure if your problem is similar, but you could try disabling standby and hibernation on the laptops and ensure that a full shutdown occurs when the users try to shut down their computers. On a normal startup, the SpeechMike microphones should work normally.

@mahesh2k Hi! I know what you mean about people using Turbo C++ for learning C or C++. It has more to do with being able to find faculty to teach C and C++. Besides, with educators focusing more on the language itself than on the development environment, they don't really have specific guidelines about using Visual C++, Borland C++, GNU GCC/Cygwin, or some other software. I think educators ought to demonstrate different software and enable the students to choose what they find the best. In a classroom of learners, there's quite a bit of exchange that gets learners sharing ideas and thoughts about the tools that they use for development. I remember a Java class I taught which had a mix of NetBeans, Eclipse, Borland JDeveloper, and others who used a text editor with a compiler. Programming puzzles seem more appealing because they are short and give an idea of the different forms of C and C++ programs, some of which can be very cryptic. (Remember the obfuscated C code challenge?). Pointers are not really hard to understand if you can put them in context. Distinguishing between arrays and pointers, rather than simply demonstrating an example that replaces arrays with pointers, is needed as a part of a chapter on pointers. Here are some of the articles that I could find online about pointers: GBDirect C Book: http://global.gbdirect.co.uk/http_error/404.html Taranet Pointers: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ DuraMecho "Why C Has Pointers": http://duramecho.com/ComputerInformation/WhyCPointers.html

Hi KarlosSantana!If you want to build something that saves electricity, the first thing I would say is that you should stay away from 32-bit x86 processors and 64-bit x86-64 (IA64) processors. Those things are neither built for efficiency nor are they built for heavy number crunching but they are mass produced and so are quite cheap, especially if you are willing to settle for an Intel Celeron or an Intel Atom or even their AMD equivalents. If you pick an ARM processor, although it runs on a different set of processor instructions, you can get a Linux distribution to run on it and it can give you higher levels of efficiency. I can't wait for them to make netbooks with dual-core ARM processors because they seem to last almost forever. You can't, however, run Windows 7, Windows Vista, or Windows XP on ARM processors as Microsoft just hasn't seen the value at targeting a small group of users. You might be able to get Windows Mobile or Windows CE to run on it though.If you are pretty adamant about using a 32-bit x86 processors and 64-bit x86-64 (IA64) processors, you would want to take a look at AMD's Geode processor and compare that against Intel's Atom processor. Both try to give you the highest level of efficiency that you wouldn't find in mainstream processors.Via also has a couple of processors in its line-up that you could use. A couple of years ago, Transmeta did come up with some innovative power saving technologies but it was gobbled up by Novafora, which itself went down under.

Hi EuroBeat,There are different kinds of mobile devices with varying capabilities. If you're used the Safari web browser on Apple's iPhone, you would be able to view almost any website that works on a standard web browser running on Windows, Linux, or Mac OS X. (One can't point at any one browser and say it's a "standard web browser" because the standard is quite loose and there are different interpretations of it).On the other hand, if you've got an old Windows Mobile phone, it probably runs Windows Mobile 5 with Internet Explorer 5.5 which makes developing a website that can work with the device much harder because you'd have more quirky layout rendering by the web browser, probably would have problems with Javascript functionality, and is less restrictive therefore leading to security issues.The approach that Microsoft's ASP.NET uses is by identifying the device from the web browser's request and sending back content in a form that is suitable for the device. It involves development with standard controls provided by ASP.NET and setting their properties to get them to changes values or modify appearance and functionality. Java's equivalent is the Java Server Faces, though I haven't had any experience with it to be able to tell you how Java's implementation works.

Hi! I often post technical stuff on my blog at http://www.nitinkatkam.com/ . I've got some more on my older blogs at http://picometric.blogspot.de/ and http://knitinr.blogspot.de/ . If you are trying to get started with Win32 development in Visual C++ or Borland C++, you can look at a couple of examples (without much explanation - it's only the source code) at http://win32-api.blogspot.de/ . Before I got started with WordPress, I was a pretty big fan of Blogger (also known as Blogspot). I wonder why Blogger decided to have the Blogger domain name for blog owners and the Blogspot domain name for visitors. It was quite confusing for me at first as the Blogger folks don't mention anything about it on the website.

Hi iGuest,Are you referring to the Phoenix USB card reader? That can only read to and write from MMC cards, SD cards, XD cards, memory sticks and their variants.BTW, where's the original post located?

Hi!When you've got free software and commercial software, the general idea is that commercial software is better in most cases. However, when you see widely used free software, you would prefer it over a commercial alternative.I agree with RpgSearcher's point about OpenOffice and Microsoft Office there but that's more of a standard issue. Microsoft Office can open documents created in its own format and can correctly display it. However, OpenOffice can open Microsoft Office documents, but that doesn't mean that it is very good at displaying them. Sometimes, the fonts and colors of the document are off from the original. At other times, we have items positioned incorrectly. In either case, when something does not work out of the box, you would switch over to an alternative product, be it commercial or free.

Hi!Nameless : I think the reason why it becomes harder to earn myCENTs instead of easier is that if you were to get started on Xisto, you would want to get a website over the next 2 weeks because if you didn't, you may not stay on Xisto for very long. On the other hand, if you kept posting and it was easier to earn myCENTs, you would accumulate so many myCENTs that you wouldn't have the motivation to keep posting any more.A flat reward system that didn't get easier or harder would be nice too - it maintains a sense of fairness that you get rewarded for your posts, no matter whether you are a newbie or a pro. It also comes across as a no discrimination policy.Each of the three approaches has it's own advantages and disadvantages. The folks at Xisto probably have been doing some number crunching in their ateliers to analyze which approach works best and decided to pick this over other approaches.Anyway, now that the myCENTs credit system is back online, happy forum posting!

Hi Rob86!Thank you for sharing your views about the programming tutorials and lessons that you've come across.When I come across lessons or tutorials and they are simple to understand, it doesn't usually matter for me whether there are colors, videos, or examples. The colors, videos, and examples are in good lessons and tutorials, but just the presence of them doesn't really mean that the lesson or tutorial is good. Microsoft makes several training videos but some of them are just way too basic and although they do involve examples, they aren't interesting because they explain so much more than what they really need to cover.I guess what is considered a good lesson or tutorial is subjective - some people find some tutorials easier while others find the same tutorials difficult to understand.Anyway, I guess you could post a couple of links that you came across for C++ GUI development. I worked on creating tutorials for GUI development in C++ a long long time ago, but that was just for the Windows platform and it wasn't very detailed.More from me later.

Hi!Happy Belated Birthday, Saint Michael. Sorry for not staying updated but I've been busy catching flights and checking in and out of hotels.I really like the cards everybody has posted further up in this thread. There's the cake built entirely using open-source technology (?) (was it Gimp running on a Windows box or Gimp running on a Linux box?). Then, there's the beer with candles in it. I wonder if anyone's tried putting candles on a glass of beer... it would be hard to put up the candles without accidentally getting the wax into the beer. Perhaps we can have something float on the surface of the beer to hold the candles.Anyway, more from me later. Take care, fare well, and may the force be with all of you folks.