The xunRAGE™ Blog

Conquer Online

2012-01-19T23:37:00.000+02:00

I am level 115 again after the first rebirth with my Trojan.

HC-91

2011-12-02T01:04:00.004+02:00

I have remembered about the good old times when I had a home computer in the early 1990. There are a lot of emulators nowadays that can run ZX Spectrum. Below is the Sai Combat game that I have played a lot with one of my friends.

Fairy

2011-09-07T11:44:00.009+03:00

We The Humans – Some perspectives

2011-07-10T23:49:00.015+03:00

Since I was a little kid I had a tendency towards the philosophy. Although, I recently graduated as a M.S. in IT, I always had trouble with exact sciences. But I have a curious nature and from time to time I fuse some ideas.

The key points of the discussion:

In a shrinking population, the solidarity produces collapse.
Businesses should move around the people and not people around the businesses.
Licensing is against us by some of us.

Demography

I think about demography. We already are so many on this Earth. But that is not an accident. Human societies are based on solidarity. Solidarity works if the population stays at the same level or gets larger. In a shrinking population, the solidarity produces collapse. I observe some tendencies towards the disruption of solidarity, but nevertheless, the countries that have a shrinking population struggle with the adverse effects of the solidarity.

Business Models

The more educated people are, the worst is for businesses. You see, a big chunk of all the businesses are based on demand from the uneducated people. An educated human requires higher salary and better products and services. Businesses should move around the people and not people around the businesses. The businesses that do not adapt will and should die. A lot of business holders complain that the society is not providing adequate qualified work force they need in their businesses. People don’t owe them anything, their business model is outdated and their thinking is remnant from times of slavery. They want people to lack education, so they can pay them miserable salaries and have them do miserable jobs. Otherwise, they need to invest in high end technologies to do these tasks and pay a lot more the people who develop and maintain these technologies.

Licensing

Licensing is a restriction in the path of the natural need of sharing we the humans have. Licensing is against us by some of us. It’s a barrier that stifles innovation and tempers our education. The tendency to protect the knowledge exists in our societies since forever because of our selfishness and the feeling of power it provides. Copyright is the worst form of licensing, protecting income of few against the rest of us. Licenses that grant freedom, are there to combat copyright, basically stating that a thing is not to be copyrighted.

Assassination of a High School President

2011-07-03T01:31:00.005+03:00

Image courtesy of The Internet Movie Database

I have just seen the Assassination of a High School President. The film is ok, but what is more interesting is the sound of the movie. I have created a playlist in my grooveshark widget with it: Stellastarr*, Goldfrapp, Band of Horses and many others. It's a world of music out there that is hidden by the media outlets that play over and over again the same crap.

Note: A media outlet is a publication or broadcast program that transmits feature stories and news to the public through various distribution channels.

Tetris

2011-05-22T04:19:00.004+03:00

I have made some small modifications to the Tetris for Windows.
You can download it from BOX or from one of my sites xunrage.uv.ro.

Bizarre You, Bizarre Me (Remastered)

2011-04-21T07:00:00.013+03:00

Bizarre You, Bizarre Me

The luscious silver of your eyes is seen in your sandy iron heart,
And the moist gold of your lips is lost in your mordant blue kiss.
With tears like a burnt ashlar,
I deplete the pale sky of its remorses,
In the footfall of the time who silently passes...
Like a holler, beside the love of velvet that sears.

Problema Chio

2011-04-10T00:51:00.004+03:00

Caută banii în pungă. 325000 de bancnote te aşteaptă. Valoarea totală a premiilor este 600000 RON. Valorile bancnotelor sunt 1, 5, 10, 50 şi 100 RON.

Întrebare: Câte bancnote din fiecare tip sunt?

Răspuns: Există prea multe soluţii pentru a şti câte bancnote din fiecare tip sunt.

Analiza problemei:
Valoarea medie este 1.84615, ceea ce ne indică faptul că foarte probabil sunt foarte multe bancnote de 1 RON. Suma se divide la toate valorile bancnotelor, prin urmare ar putea fi plătită numai cu un singur tip de bancnotă, exceptând bancnota de 1 RON pentru care este nevoie de un număr mai mare de bancnote decât 325000. Acest calcul ne spune cât este numărul maxim de bancnote din fiecare tip: 325000 pentru bancnota de 1 RON, 120000 pentru bancnota de 5 RON, 60000 pentru bancnota de 10 RON, 12000 pentru bancnota de 50 RON şi 6000 pentru bancnota de 100 RON.
Dacă notăm cu e numărul de bancnote de 100 RON, cu d numărul de bancnote de 50 RON, cu c numărul de bancnote de 10 RON, cu b numărul de bancnote de 5 RON şi cu a numărul de bancnote de 1 RON, atunci avem două ecuaţii:
a + 5b + 10c + 50d + 100e = 600000
a + b + c + d + e = 325000
Dacă am dori să plătim suma cu cele mai mici bancnote, atunci avem soluţia: 68750 bancnote de 5 RON şi 256250 bancnote de 1 RON.
Dacă vedem spaţiul numeric în care căutăm ca un contor e-d-c-b-a cu valoarea minimă 0-0-0-0-0 şi valoarea maximă 6000-12000-60000-120000-325000, atunci valoarea 0-0-0-68750-256250 este cea mai mică valoare care este şi soluţie. Cea mai mare valoare care este şi soluţie este 6000-0-0-0-0. Este interesant faptul că nu găsim nici o soluţie între 2777-1-0-7-322216 şi 5999-12000-60000-120000-325000, inclusiv. Acest lucru înseamnă că cea mai mare valoare care foloseşte şi alte bancnote decât cea de 100 de RON este 2777-1-0-7-322215. Cea mai mare valoare care foloseşte toate bancnotele este 2776-3-1-5-322215. Disproporţia între numărul de bancnote de 100 RON şi următoarele 3 ca valoare ne spune că numărul de bancnote de 100 de RON s-a ales probabil pe la jumătatea valorii maxime.
Câteva valori posibile: 1500-1500-2000-8750-311250, 1000-2000-3000-12750-306250 sau 1000-2000-6000-6000-310000.

Jocuri Sociale Online

2011-03-24T04:18:00.003+02:00

Sora mea dorește să realizeze un sondaj online despre jocuri sociale.
Dați clic pe imaginea de mai jos dacă doriți să participați.

Girl in red dress

2011-03-06T19:41:00.018+02:00

It was somewhat more difficult to reconstruct a file protected with DOSWF 4.8.5. The decryption and decompilation were easy, but names in action script and those for sprites were unusable. That required a way to rename everything. The flash source file generated with Sothink SWF Decompiler 6, does not recompile identically with the original file, therefore I have only inserted the recompiled action script segment in the result file along with all the name changes.

Maid fashion

2011-03-06T18:23:00.020+02:00

I have successfully decrypted, decompiled and recompiled a file protected with DOSWF 4.5.3.

Natalie Chandra

2011-02-17T02:06:00.004+02:00

This is a clip from Youtube with Chapter II featuring Natalie Chandra. This is an exotic melody that I have first discovered on GrooveShark.

Stringmare

2011-02-12T01:58:00.011+02:00

In highschool, when I started programming, there was Turbo Pascal 7 from Borland. We were taught about two data types: Char and String. Char had a representation in memory of 1 byte. A string could be seen as a sequence of chars, an array of chars or just a text literal. When it comes to the visual representation of a string, it was simply used the code page 437 also known as DOS-US, where the lower 128 symbols are the ASCII symbols, except for the first 32 symbols that in ASCII are not printable, and the upper 128 symbols are a fancy selection. A string could have only 255 characters at most. To change a code point to a visual reprezentation (1 byte integer value to the corresponding 1 byte character) the built in function CHR was used. To change a visual representation to a code point the built in function ORD was used. The string was indexed starting with 1, the value at index 0 was the size of the string. This was it.

Later this kind of string become a ShortString and String was an alias of an AnsiString. Hopefully the Char remained unchanged, but was called an AnsiChar. The visual representation of the lower 128 symbols is the representation of the ASCII symbols. The visual representation of the upper 128 symbols, however depends of the code page used. In Windows the most popular is Windows-1252 (West European Latin). Other Windows codepages are: Windows-1250(Central and East European Latin), Windows 1251(Cyrillic), Windows-1253(Greek), Windows-1254(Turkish), Windows-1255(Hebrew), Windows-1256(Arabic), Windows-1257(Baltic), Windows-1258(Vietnamese) and Windows-874(Thai). AnsiString brought cool new features: size up to 2GB, reference counting, dynamic memory management, null termination. Because of all these, it was often more convenient to pass strings around than byte arrays.

In the last versions of Delphi, things got ugly. The Char type changed to WideChar, a 2-byte memory representation. The String type become a WideString, a sequence of WideChars. The 2-byte character now permits the represenation of Unicode Basic Multilingual Plane. The thing is that most text files from the harddrive are without a specified encoding or a Byte Order Mark(BOM), and that defaults to Windows-1252 in most cases. Reading such a file and displaying it in an Unicode program it's harder. Even worse is the fact that the CHR function don't work for the AnsiChar anymore, and it's pretty useless for WideChar too (as far as the Delphi help explains it). What saves the day is the typecasting to AnsiChar of an integer value, or typecasting to AnsiChar of a WideChar value with some data loss, or even an implicit typecasting to a WideChar from an AnsiChar. What is strange is that VCL components still use the Font and Code Page properties that were used before Unicode was introduced.

Diacritice

2011-01-19T18:55:00.012+02:00

În Română există 10 diacritice, 5 litere mari şi 5 litere mici.
Iată un tabel cu aceste caractere:

Gliph	Unicode	UTF-8	Denumire
Ă	U+0102	C482	Latin Capital Letter A With Breve
ă	U+0103	C483	Latin Small Letter A With Breve
Â	U+00C2	C382	Latin Capital Letter A With Circumflex
â	U+00E2	C3A2	Latin Small Letter A With Circumflex
Î	U+00CE	C38E	Latin Capital Letter I With Circumflex
î	U+00EE	C3AE	Latin Small Letter I With Circumplex
Ș	U+0218	C898	Latin Capital Letter S With Comma Below
ș	U+0219	C899	Latin Small Letter S With Comma Below
Ț	U+021A	C89A	Latin Capital Letter T With Comma Below
ț	U+021B	C89B	Latin Small Letter T With Comma Below

Caracterele "Ș" şi "Ț" nu au fost disponibile de la început, şi s-au folosit adesea înlocuitorii cu sedilă.

Gliph	Unicode	UTF-8	Denumire
Ş	U+015E	C59E	Latin Capital Letter S With Cedilla
ş	U+015F	C59F	Latin Small Letter S With Cedilla
Ţ	U+0162	C5A2	Latin Capital Letter T With Cedilla
ţ	U+0163	C5A3	Latin Small Letter T With Cedilla

Convert EPS to SVG

2011-01-06T01:21:00.003+02:00

Although I use Inkscape and Scribus and both have the option to import EPS files, they do a lame job: Inkscape converts the EPS to a static image and Scribus converts a very small amount from the original file.

Therefore I found that a detour to PDF helps in achieving better results. The key program here is GhostScript. The command is:

"c:\program files\gs\gs9.00\bin\gswin32c.exe" -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sPAPERSIZE=a3 -o c:\tmp\vector.pdf c:\tmp\vector.eps

Some values for PAPERSIZE argument:
PAPERSIZEX inchesY inchesX cmY cm
a033.055646.777883.9611118.816
a123.388933.055659.407883.9611
a216.527823.388941.980659.4078
a311.694416.527829.703941.9806
a48.2638911.694420.990329.7039
a55.847228.2638914.851920.9903
letter8.51121.5927.94
legal8.51421.5935.56

After the file is in PDF format, Inkscape does a good job importing it. After import I save the result as a plain SVG to edit SVG file with Scribus. The problem that bothers me so far is that after conversion from PDF the shapes lose gradient information.

Strange NaN

2010-12-31T03:32:00.005+02:00

Javascript uses NaN in a not so obvious way. Any equality test involving NaN will always return false, even if you compare it to itself.

var k = parseInt("abc");
if(k != k){
   document.write("Strange comparison, k might be NaN");
} 

JavaScript Booklet

2010-11-30T01:44:00.007+02:00

I have compiled a small booklet with the posts on this blog about JavaScript. In the booklet you can see also the code behind the scene that you can usually see only when you look at the source of the page where the post is viewed.

View it on box.net, here, or on scribd.com, here, or on docs.google.com, here.

Just a kid

2010-10-17T14:08:00.062+03:00

Animated Logo

2010-09-18T23:55:00.002+03:00

See my new animated logo on YouTube:

Tricksy

2010-09-08T06:02:00.024+03:00

Question	: What does the following pascal code do?
Answer	: Absolutely nothing.

program test;
begin
{var s='test}end.';
write(s);
}
write('ok');
end.

Why?

The first impression will be that the code will display the text ok because the rest is a pascal comment inside accolades. But the compiler, after an opening accolade, looks for the closing one, and doesn't care where it is. Therefore it doesn't matter that in this case the closing accolade is in the string literal, the comment ends there. The code is then compiled from that point on, the special keyword end is found followed by a dot, and the program ends. The compiler will then warn that there is source code that will never be reached.

The code executed is:

program test;
begin
{var s='test}
end.

Child DIV with JavaScript

2010-07-17T16:04:00.011+03:00

Below is a div with the border dashed and using javascript a new div is added as its child. Internet Explorer is a bit different from Firefox and the others when it comes to this DOM action. I took style information from here.

Some English

2010-07-01T01:52:00.000+03:00

CCD Neamt has a guy on their first page that said something about education. Unfortunately the translation from Romanian to English is excruciating. I'm not an English guru or something, but look here how bad the translation is:

You tell it's tiring to be with children. You are right. And add: because you have to descend to their level, to bend, to incline, to bow, to lessen. Here you are wrong. Not this is what makes you most tired, but that you're bound to get the height of their feelings, to lie, to lengthen, to get up the toes, to not hurt them.

From original Romanian this text should sound something like this:

You say it's exhausting to be near children. You are right. And then you add: Because you have to descend to their level, to bend, to incline, to flex, to lessen yourself. Here you are wrong. This is not what exhaust you the most, but the fact you're bound to get to the height of their feelings, to stretch, to lengthen, to get up your toes, to not hurt them.

I guess the confusion of words comes from the fact that many Romanian to English dictionaries list a whole pile of synonyms for a given word and for someone who is not familiar with the terms it's difficult to choose the right translation. When I've started to learn English this issue was one I got into myself.

Let's enjoy another beautiful translation from the aforementioned site:
Personal and professional development of teachers is the main key to make children love coming to school. It is in our power to make "capital children dance"!

Should be something like:

Personal and professional achievement of teachers is the main key to make children to love coming to school. It is in our power to make "children's potential dance"!

Molehill Empire

2010-06-28T07:18:00.003+03:00

Am găsit un joc pe internet din întâmplare. Se numeşte Molehill Empire şi trebuie să dezvolţi o grădină. Un screenshot este mai jos.

The Ten Sausages

2010-06-09T14:41:00.025+03:00

The wife of a programmer told him: Please go to the market and if you find ten eggs, buy them, otherwise buy some sausage. The programmer returned home with ten sausages.

What went wrong... You never know how a condition sounds in a programmer's head.

For the geek:

Because the quantity of the sausages is not well defined in the request, the following two algorithms solve the problem correctly, although the result is unexpected for the first one.

for i=1 to 10 do
if exist 10 eggs then buy egg
else buy sausage

if exist 10 eggs then
for i=1 to 10 do buy egg
else buy sausage

Exercise

2010-06-07T02:28:00.001+03:00

Write a program that generates a random permutation of the numbers between 1 and n, where n is given by the user.

Netbeans trick

2010-05-22T18:31:00.001+03:00

If you update the JDK version, Netbeans 6.8 start bugging about the fact it doesn't find the JDK where it used to be. Instead of uninstalling just for this minor glitch, go to C:\Program Files\NetBeans 6.8\etc\, open the file netbeans.conf, find the line containing netbeans_jdkhome= and type the correct path to the new JDK (something like netbeans_jdkhome="C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_20"). That's it.

Free photos

2010-05-22T03:20:00.003+03:00

A site with free photos

It is hard to find a site that offers a large collection of high definition photos for free. I have found Stock.XCHNG, a site that requires you to be registered to download the photos, but the registration is free.

Cool sites

2010-05-15T21:18:00.005+03:00

Recently I have found out a bunch of sites that seem cool enough.

First one on this list is Smart.fm a site that try to make you learn something new. I will try some Japanese there.

Second on this short list is Groove Shark, a place where anyone can listen to music, make play lists and even upload their own mp3 files.

Finally is My DataNest a site where you can upload any file and have a hot link to it. To prove this I gone wild and I've added the following Java applet in this post:

You have

Pârjoale moldoveneşti

2010-05-02T22:49:00.002+03:00

Ingrediente: 750g carne macră, 1 ceapă mijlocie, o felie de pâine, 1 morcov, 1 cartof, 1 ou (sau o lingură de făină), sare, piper, verdeaţă tocată, 2 linguri de pesmet, 100g untură.

Mod de preparare: Pârjoalele se pot prepara din carne de vacă, de porc sau de miel (sau amestec). Se toacă carnea şi ceapa şi miezul de la o felie de pâine înmuiată în lapte. În cazul în care carnea nu este grasă, se adaugă 1-2 linguri de jumări date şi ele prin maşină. Ca să fie pârjoalele mai fragede se pot adăuga un morcov şi un cartof crud, care se trec prin maşină odată cu carnea. Se adaugă un ou, sare, un praf de piper, puţin pătrunjel sau mărar tocat fin. Se amestecă cu o lingură de lemn. Separat, pe un tocător avem pregătit pesmetul. Se ia cu lingura din tocătură, se fac perişoare rotunde care se trec prin pesmet şi apoi se turtesc. Se pune untura într-o tigaie la foc şi când este bine încinsă, se prăjesc pârjoalele pe o parte şi pe alta.

Spendings

2010-02-21T14:06:00.006+02:00

Some terminology I like to use:

Flow represents the equivalent value of money.
Income represents a positive flow.
Debt represents a negative flow.
Loan represents a variance in flow.
Loan In represents a positive flow variance.
Loan Out represents a negative flow variance.
Goal represents a boundary used for flow control.
Balance represents a calculus used in flow control.
Spending represents an exchange of flow for an object with the equivalent value.
Saving represents a flow that was not exchanged according to schedule.
Reserve represents a flow retained for a later schedule.

Now, let's show some formulas:

Income Balance = add all corresponding subcategories with positive values

Debt Balance = add all corresponding subcategories with positive values

Loan In Balance = Loan From + Return To, where
Loan From = add all corresponding subcategories with positive values
Return To = add all corresponding subcategories with negative values

Loan Out Balance = Return From + Loan To, where
Return From = add all corresponding subcategories with positive values
Loan To = add all corresponding subcategories with negative values

Spending Balance = add all corresponding subcategories with positive values

Reserve Balance = add all corresponding subcategories with positive values

Available Flow = Income Balance – Debt Balance – Loan In Balance + Loan Out Balance – Spending Balance – Reserve Balance

Normal Goal = (Available Flow + Spending Balance) / Month Days, where
Month Days = the number of days in the corresponding month

Median Goal = Spending Balance / Today, where
Today = the number of days since the beginning of the corresponding month including the present day

Future Goal = Available Flow / (Month Days – Today)

Today Goal = (Available Flow + Spending Balance Today) / (Month Days – Today + 1), where
Spending Balance Today = Spending Balance for the day that has Today value

Available Today = Today Goal – Spending Balance Today

Savings = (Normal Goal – Median Goal) * Today; a negative value is considered overdraft.

Deezer Radio

2010-02-03T17:04:00.006+02:00

Some of the radio available at the Deezer:

Blues
Chanson Francaise
Charts
Classic Rock
Dancefloor
Disco
Electro
Film-Tv
Funk
Hard Rock
Hits
Jazz Vocal
Metal
Nouvelle Scene

Pop
Pop Folk
Pop Inde
Punk
R&B
Rap
Rap Francais
Reggae Ska Dub
Reprises-Covers
Rock
Soul
Trip Hop
Urban Style
Variete Francaise

Birthday

2010-02-01T16:56:00.001+02:00

The birthday card from Alice. Thank you!

Exercise

2010-01-18T15:03:00.006+02:00

I've found the following problem in the laboratory at school:

A vector X with n integer numbers is given. Write a Pascal program that computes and prints the longuest sequence X[i], X[i+1], ..., X[f] such that all the elements are mutually distinct.

An scolar studenti 2009-2010

2010-01-02T15:22:00.002+02:00

Structura anului universitar 2009-2010:

Semestrul I
28 sept 2009 Deschiderea festiva a anului universitar
28 sept 2009 - 20 dec 2009 Activitati didactice 12 saptamâni
21 dec 2009 - 03 ian 2010 Vacanta 2 saptamâni
04 ian 2010 - 17 ian 2010 Activitati didactice 2 saptamâni
18 ian 2010 - 07 feb 2010 Sesiune de examene 3 saptamâni
08 feb 2010 - 14 feb 2010 Vacanta 1 saptamâna
15 feb 2010 - 21 feb 2010 Sesiune de restante 1 saptamâna

Semestrul II
22 feb 2010 - 06 iun 2010 Activitati didactice 14 saptamâni
05-11 apr 2010 Vacanta de Pasti Toate Liniile
07 iun 2010 - 27 iun 2010 Sesiune de examene 3 saptamâni
30 aug 2010 - 05 sep 2010 Sesiune de restante 1 saptamâna

Semestrul II - Anii terminali
23 feb 2009 - 23 mai 2010 Activitati didactice 12 saptamâni
05-11 apr 2010 Vacanta de Pasti Toate Liniile
24 mai 2010 - 06 iun 2010 Sesiune de examene 2 saptamâni
07 iun 2010 - 13 iun 2010 Sesiune de restante 1 saptamâna
14 iun 2010 - 27 iun 2010 Pregatirea examenului de licenta si dizertatie 2 saptamâni
28 iun 2010 - 04 iul 2010 Examenul de licenta si dizertatie 1 saptamâna

Naming conventions

2010-01-01T12:10:00.020+02:00

When someone like me puts a lot of markup and javascript inside posts there is always a risk to create conflicting ids and names. One solution is to create a naming convention. Therefore a good idea will be to create master functions (or classes if you like) that contain all the javascript code, and the markup to be inserted using javascript also. The class function will have a name like xunClass_12345678, the instance of the class the name like xunInstance_12345678, while markup elements something like xun[Markup]_12345678_1234, where 12345678 is a unique alphanumeric id for the class and is identical for the instance and any markup, while for markup the last 1234 is a unique id in that area. See the source code for this post for an example.

Quick Tips

2009-12-24T01:40:00.006+02:00

When using Vidalia 0.1.15, Tor 0.2.1.19 and Privoxy 3.0.6, use the proxy 127.0.0.1:8118. The port 8118 is the default in Privoxy.

In VirtualBox to access the shared folders:
net use x: \\vboxsvr\shared /persistent:yes
To remove such a shared folder:
net use x: /delete

Philosophy through IT

2009-12-16T07:05:00.007+02:00

I like to make my own philosophy. Because I am a programmer, I inevitable use terms from that area to describe some ideas or concepts. I want to put some of them here, more as an example and maybe later as a guideline in writing a book.

A context is an existential environment with a set of binding rules.
An environment is a space that may contain objects.
An existential environment is an environment that has a conglomerate of factors that supports existence.
Existence is a sequence of events in a time line, a space and abiding by a set of binding rules, thus existence is a sequence of events in a time line and a context.
An object is a conglomerate of elements that exist in a context and are tied together by a set of binding rules.
A persistence is an existence without a time frame.
A time frame is a well defined portion in a time line.
An event is a manifestation in a time line.
A coincidence is an alignment of several events without a programmatic schedule.

Lets define the context eliminating the keywords:

A context is a space that may contain one or more conglomerates of elements presented within, tied together by a set o binding rules, that participate in a sequence of manifestations in a time line, a space and abiding by a set of binding rules, that has a conglomerate of factors that supports itself.

As you can see here, we have learned that the binding rules keep everything (elements, factors) together. Moreover existence and context are dependent one on another; existence without a context is just a time line (or time); context without existence is just a space. Thus we have learned what time and space are.

Now lets use these basic concepts to create some new ideas and explore if they are correct:

Life is a coincidence, while the universe is not.

Exploring the idea:

Life was possible because a sum of events aligned to make it happen. Because life manifests in a time line and an environment, if we assume the lack of a scheduling force, it is a coincidence. Arguably, but without any strong evidence, some assume the presence of a scheduling force (that is a deity) and thus the life is created by the force and not by random events that aligned successfully, resulting that the life is not a coincidence.

Universe is not a coincidence because it started simultaneously with the time line, therefore no events have been aligned for its inception. Arguably, if the time line existed before the universe, then the universe may be a coincidence.

If life is not a coincidence, then it's safe to assume that the scheduling force may interfere at any time in the sequence of events that forms it. But if we assume that this scheduling force exists, then we may safely guess that it appeared as a factor in the universe. This makes the scheduling force a persistent object.

Usually the scheduling force (deity) is thought to exist outside of space and the time line. This assumption breaks the definition of the existence and is impossible to demonstrate. Moreover, this assumption makes the scheduling force abstract (undefined).

It's therefore a matter of faith how people consider life and universe relative to coincidence.

Script Integration Test

2009-11-25T16:58:00.042+02:00

The main problem when writing a javascript inside a blogger post is that the editor interprets < and > as portions of html tags, even if they are inside the <script> tag. The solution presented as an example here is to create two string variables called lt and gt and use them instead. On the other hand, to write the code only once, it is put inside a string variable and then evaluated. To display it properly the two conflicting characters should be transformed again using a function that replaces their occurrences. You may also be aware that the code should be on a single line, because a new line creates html markup inside the script.

MinGW Developer Studio 2.05 cu MinGW 5.1.6

2009-11-21T01:55:00.014+02:00

MinGW Developer Studio 2.05 de la Parinya Software are inclus o versiune de MinGW mai veche (posibil incepand cu 3.1.0-1 si mai mica decat 3.4.5, pentru ca __MINGW32_VERSION este 3.7, iar __W32API_VERSION este 3.2). In MinGW 5.1.6 __MINGW32_VERSION este 3.15.2, iar __W32API_VERSION este 3.13. Cele doua valori se gasesc in fisierele _mingw.h si w32api.h din directorul include. De fapt suita este interesata de prezenta fisierelor g++.exe, gcc.exe si gdb.exe in directorul bin din cadrul directorului MinGW. GCC este o colectie de compilatoare, iar G++ este compilatorul pentru C++ din cadrul acestei colectii. In versiunea de MinGW care vine impreuna cu suita, compilatorul are versiunea 3.4.2, iar in MinGW 5.1.6 are versiunea 3.4.5. Pentru a afla versiunea se foloseste comanda:

gcc -dumpversion

Daca se doreste instalarea noii versiuni se descarca de pe situl http://www.mingw.org/ fisierul MinGW-5.1.6.exe. In momentul rularii, acest fisier va descarca pachetele necesare instalarii:

mingwrt-3.15.2-mingw32-dev.tar.gz,
mingwrt-3.15.2-mingw32-dll.tar.gz,
w32api-3.13-mingw32-dev.tar.gz,
binutils-2.20-1-mingw32-bin.tar.gz,
gcc-core-3.4.5-20060117-3.tar.gz,
gcc-g++-3.4.5-20060117-3.tar.gz,
gcc-g77-3.4.5-20060117-3.tar.gz,
gcc-ada-3.4.5-20060117-3.tar.gz,
gcc-java-3.4.5-20060117-3.tar.gz,
gcc-objc-3.4.5-20060117-3.tar.gz,
make-3.81-20090914-mingw32-bin.tar.gz.

Ne intereseaza numai G++ din cadrul GCC, prin urmare daca nu vom selecta si alte compilatoare atunci pachetele respective nu vor mai fi descarcate (G77, Ada, Java, Object C). Dupa instalare vom descarca gdb-5.2.1-1.exe din ramura GNU Source-Level Debugger, subramura Current Release_ gdb-5.2.1. Vom instala acest pachet in acelasi director unde am instalat si MinGW. Pentru MinGW Developer Studio nu este necesar sa fie instalat si pachetul care contine executabilul make.exe, asa cum este necesar pentru NetBeans. In general nu se recomanda amestecarea pachetelor MSYS cu cele MinGW. Daca este necesar executabilul make.exe, o solutie ar fi redenumirea fisierului mingw32-make.exe in make.exe, desi Netbeans nu a functionat fara executabilul din pachetul MSYS.

Pentru a seta MinGW Developer Studio sa foloseasca noua versiune a compilatorului se va merge in meniu la Edit -> Options..., se alege tabul Compiler si apoi se introduce calea catre MinGW.

Daca programelul de mai jos se compileaza si se construieste fara probleme, atunci instalarea a avut succes. Este necesara o linie libera la urma pentru a nu avea o avertizare.

#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

int main(){
cout << "Hello world!"; }

Kaze no Gekido

2009-11-03T01:35:00.004+02:00

Wind's Fury, the translation of xunrage is written as "Kaze no Gekido" in Japanese.

Hello world!

2009-10-19T22:56:00.009+03:00

Blogger supports scripted forms:

Javascript object functions runs on creation

2009-10-11T14:17:00.006+03:00

Consider the code bellow:

function myfunction(){
document.write("I was executed.");
}
var f = new myfunction();

The function myfunction is used as a class for the object f, and is also executed at creation time.

The code produces this result:

Static variable in a Javascript object function

2009-10-11T02:36:00.035+03:00

Consider the code bellow:

Because the function myfunction is used as a class for the object f, the local variable myvariable is considered private and it can be accessed only by member functions like mymethod and increase. Therefore this code produces something like this:

Test Java Presence

2009-10-10T23:39:00.004+03:00

To detect if Java is enabled on your computer use the following code:
if(navigator.javaEnabled()){ ... }

Therefore you on your computer.

Detecting Internet Explorer version with Javascript

2009-09-22T19:46:00.050+03:00

This post contains JavaScript.
I have found on the Internet the following function for detecting Internet Explorer version:

function vIE(){return (navigator.appName=='Microsoft Internet Explorer')?parseFloat((new RegExp("MSIE ([0-9]{1,}[\.0-9]{0,})")).exec(navigator.userAgent)[1]):-1;}

The property navigator.appName returns something like:
The property navigator.userAgent returns something like:
The function returns the conditional result of the expression <logical> ? <value_for_true> : <value_for_false>
Constructor RegExp creates a new object and defines a regular expression as: [0-9] defines a character set formed by any character in the range 0-9; {x,} defines the minimum x number of occurrences used in the match; () creates a subexpression.
RegExp.exec(string) returns an array of the matches of the regular expression in the given string or null if no match is found. The returned array contains both matches for the regular expression as well as for present subexpressions. For this reason, the second element in the array is parsed to a float value and returned by the function.

Therefore your Internet Explorer version is:

Note: You may get a wrong version for Internet Explorer 8 if you use Compatibility View, as at the time of this writing Blogspot domain is in the Compatibility View List (more information at this page). Check the list by typing in the Internet Explorer 8 address bar: .

DKU-5 Driver

2009-09-02T01:12:00.012+03:00

Although the Nokia DKU-5 cable is rather old, there is not a fair practice to not support it on Vista. After a few searches on the web, I have found a third party driver for this cable that works with Windows Vista SP2. I put it on MediaFire.

If you have a Nokia 3100 phone like I have, it's recommended to use Nokia PC Suite 6.84 with it because the latest version crashes when I try to install java applications.

This phone supports only MIDP-1.0 and CLDC-1.0 for java applications, 128x128 color display with 4096 colors and MIDI poliphonic sounds.

Registry value types

2009-08-25T20:46:00.004+03:00

Name	Type	Data
(Default) BigEndian Value Binary Value DWORD Value Expandable String Value LittleEndian Value Multi-String Value None Value String Value	REG_SZ REG_DWORD_BIG_ENDIAN REG_BINARY REG_DWORD REG_EXPAND_SZ REG_DWORD REG_MULTI_SZ REG_NONE REG_SZ	xunrage 0xff000000 32 0x00000020 A text here 0x00000100 "Line One" "Line Two" 10 00 00 A text here

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\xunrage]
@="xunrage"
"BigEndian Value"=hex(5):ff,00,00,00
"Binary Value"=hex:32
"DWORD Value"=dword:00000020
"Expandable String Value"=hex(2):41,00,20,00,74,00,65,00,78,00,74,00,20,00,68,\
00,65,00,72,00,65,00,00,00
"LittleEndian Value"=dword:00000100
"Multi-String Value"=hex(7):4c,00,69,00,6e,00,65,00,20,00,4f,00,6e,00,65,00,00,\
00,4c,00,69,00,6e,00,65,00,20,00,54,00,77,00,6f,00,00,00,00,00
"None Value"=hex(0):10,00,00
"String Value"="A text here"

Automatic logon script for Windows XP

2009-08-25T20:28:00.007+03:00

I have created a command line script for setting the windows registry values to logon automatically in Windows XP. To set these values manually go to a previous post here.

@echo off
echo Automatic Logon in Windows XP

if exist "%SystemRoot%\system32\reg.exe" (
echo REG.EXE was found...
goto :runscript
)
goto :exitfail

:runscript
if /i "%1" equ "set" (goto :activelogon) else (if /i "%1" equ "unset" (goto :unactivelogon) else (goto :exitfail))

:activelogon
set /p theuser="Default User Name:"
set /p thepassword="Default User Password:"
echo Running REG.EXE to set the required values...
echo.
echo Setting DefaultUserName...
"%SystemRoot%\system32\reg.exe" add "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon" /v "DefaultUserName" /t REG_SZ /d "%theuser%" /f
echo.
echo Setting AutoAdminLogon...
"%SystemRoot%\system32\reg.exe" add "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon" /v "AutoAdminLogon" /t REG_SZ /d "1" /f
echo.
echo Setting DefaultPassword...
"%SystemRoot%\system32\reg.exe" add "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon" /v "DefaultPassword" /t REG_SZ /d "%thepassword%" /f
set theuser=
set thepassword=
goto :exitnormal

:unactivelogon
echo Running REG.EXE to delete the required values...
echo.
echo Deleting AutoAdminLogon...
"%SystemRoot%\system32\reg.exe" delete "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon" /v "AutoAdminLogon" /f
echo.
echo Deleting DefaultPassword...
"%SystemRoot%\system32\reg.exe" delete "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon" /v "DefaultPassword" /f
goto :exitnormal

:exitfail
echo.
echo Failed.
goto :eof
:exitnormal
echo.
echo All operations completed successfully.

You can also download it from the box.

Some tweaks for Windows XP

2009-08-24T11:33:00.011+03:00

To disable the sending of unique player ID for Windows Media Player modify or create the following value:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\MediaPlayer\Preferences]
"SendUserGUID"=hex:00

You can use the reg command for this as follows:

reg add "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\MediaPlayer\Preferences" /v "SendUserGUID" /t REG_BINARY /d "00" /f

Set the value back to 01 to send the ID again.

To protect against SYN attacks: From this documentation results that the minimum settings required is as follows:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters]
"SynAttackProtect"=dword:00000002
"TcpMaxPortsExhausted"=dword:00000005
"TcpMaxHalfOpen"=dword:000001f4
"TcpMaxHalfOpenRetried"=dword:00000190

These values are not present on a fresh installed system.

Disable Remote Registry service using the sc command (also discussed here):

sc stop RemoteRegistry
sc config RemoteRegistry start= disabled

Set the default back with:

sc config RemoteRegistry start= auto
sc start RemoteRegistry

Search Engines in Opera

2009-08-08T16:41:00.011+03:00

To set search engines in Opera 9.24 go in Tools -> Preferences... and then choose the Search tab. Now you can click the Add... button to add a new entry or use the Edit... button to edit an existing entry. Of course to delete an entry you have the Delete button. Let's assume you want to add the new search engine from Microsoft, Bing. You put Bing in the Name field, choose an unused letter like b in the Keyword field, and finally the important part, put http://www.bing.com/search?q=%s in the Address field. The %s is replaced with the string you type in the search box. You can also write something like b search_text in the address bar of the browser to invoke a search for search_text on Bing.

Search engines list:

Name	Keyword	Address
Bing	b	http://www.bing.com/search?q=%s
UTrace	u	http://en.utrace.de/?query=%s
Hallo	d	http://hallo.ro/search.do?d=en&l=ro&type=both&query=%s
Merriam-Webster	m	http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/%s
WebDEX	x	http://www.webdex.ro/online/dictionar/%s

Romanian Special Symbols

2009-07-27T18:11:00.012+03:00

Ă
Â
Î
Ş
Ţ

ă
â
î
ş
ţ

House MD

2009-07-27T17:37:00.008+03:00

După ce am văzut House MD, sezonul 1, am rămas în cap cu câteva cuvinte noi :

seizure = a sudden attack (as of disease) ; especially : the physical manifestations (as convulsions, sensory disturbances, or loss of consciousness) resulting from abnormal electrical discharges in the brain (as in epilepsy)
nausea = a stomach distress with distaste for food and an urge to vomit
spirochete = any of an order (Spirochaetales) of slender spirally undulating bacteria including those causing syphilis and Lyme disease.

What is better?

2009-07-06T16:31:00.002+03:00

What is better between an antivirus that removes files wrongly classified as suspicious or the lack of the antivirus at all?

The antivirus from Comodo Internet Security 3.10.102194.530 is seeing Heur and unclassified mallware everywhere, even when heuristic scanning level is at the lowest. When the incidence of false alarms is so high, the user may be at a real risk of running a virus on his/her computer. At this point turning off the heuristics is the only solution for this suite. I hope they will fix this major flaw, or I will be forced to switch to other products.

Some new words

2009-07-01T18:17:00.006+03:00

Today I've learned new words:

endeavor = strădanie, forţare, efort
sophomore = student in anul doi [univ.]
allegation = afirmaţie (nedovedită), declaraţie
racking = de specula, sfâşietor
foreclosure = prescriere (a unei ipoteci) [jur.]

Translation provided with the help of www.hallo.ro.

Remove Windows Messenger

2009-06-23T11:17:00.003+03:00

To remove Windows Messenger from Windows XP SP2 use the following command at the command prompt:
rundll32 advpack.dll,LaunchINFSection %windir%\INF\msmsgs.inf,BLC.Remove

CAD-KAS Dividers and Ruler 1.0

2009-06-13T23:25:00.007+03:00

Zirkel und Lineal, the name its developer gave it, was given away June 13, 2009 on www.giveawayoftheday.com.

It is somewhat portable I think, because it could be used without being installed. Indeed it is a very basic application. One thing about it bothers me: it doesn’t support antialiasing when exporting to bitmap. According to developer's site, the company has a lot of experience in printing software and when I was printing to PDF file using PrimoPDF (free printer software available at www.primopdf.com), the resulting pdf was antialiased. Then you can import the pdf in Inkscape (available for free at www.inkscape.org) and save the picture as SVG. At that point you have a vector format for your drawing.

But further testing of today's offering helped me discover some major issues a software costing $79 should not have:

The dimension of the ruler, protractor and dividers can't be modified (i.e. the ruler always have 570 mm);
The ruler, protractor and dividers don't repaint when the rubber is used;
The background of the drawing area is always white;
Curves are not considered objects (can't be moved and modified), only lines and rubber;
Rubber instead of deleting existing objects adds a lot of white cicles in front of the existing lines and curves, but under the text;
Text is always in front in the object order, but doesn't repaint either when the rubber is used;
Text clipping for italic fonts is smaller than needed;
Lines objects can't be edited;
Using pencil creates a very large amount of lines;
There is no UNDONE for operations;
Total lack of features like object grouping, ordering and snapping; lack of antialiasing and exporting to more raster (only bitmap is supported) and vector formats; lack of the precision in many operations; lack of layers;

I have to give it a thumb down.

Remove a service from Windows Registry

2009-05-26T02:42:00.003+03:00

To remove a service from Windows registry use the following command at a cmd console (in Windows Vista run the console as Administrator):

sc delete <service_name>

Some more JavaScript

2009-05-21T20:36:00.005+03:00

Some quick tips:

To continue a string on the next line in JavaScript, use the \ operator like this:
var s = "A long text \
that continues on the next line";
Create on the fly functions like this:
function functionAssembler(operatorSign){
return new Function("a","b","return a" + operatorSign + "b;");
}
Use it to create functions:
var add = functionAssembler("+");
var substract = functionAssembler("-");
var multiply = functionAssembler("*");
var divide = functionAssembler("/");
Use the function as always:
document.write(add(10,5));
document.write(substract(12,6));
document.write(multiply(5,3));
document.write(divide(125,5));

Functions in JavaScript

2009-05-21T18:05:00.013+03:00

A Delphi programmer like me, accustomed with strongly typed programming, with clear function block limitation and with classic object oriented style, finds JavaScript overwhelmingly weird. In JavaScript a variable type is interpreted and can happily jump from one type to another, object oriented is based on prototyping starting from the Object primitive type and functions are objects derived from Object.

The Object type has two properties (constructor, prototype) and six methods (eval, toSource, toString, unwatch, valueOf, watch) (see here).

Function is a type descended from Object and has six more properties (arguments, arguments.callee, arguments.caller, arguments.length, arity, length) and two methods (apply, call) (see here).

Below are some code snippets:

Creating an object is as follows:

var myObject = new Object();

var myObject = { }

In the second notation, the members of the object are expressed like name:value pairs as:

var myObject = { aname : 15, bname: "test" }

Such a member can be a function like:

var myObject = { myfunc: function(msg){ return msg+msg; } }

A function can be created also as follows:

var f = new Function("a","b","return a+b;");

To create a simple object is used the special keyword this:

function myType(a,b,c){

this.a=a;

this.b=b;

this.c=c;

}

Then you can use this object like:

var f = new myType(10," and ",20);

document.write(f.a + f.b + f.c); // The result is 10 and 20

Create an object with a method:

function myType(a,b){

this.a=a;

this.b=b;

this.add = function(){ with(this) return a+b; }

}

Now use the object:

f = new myType(5,6);
document.write(f.add()); // The result is 11

Note that the add method is present in any object created and if there are 1000 instances of myType, there are also 1000 instances of the function add. To avoid this, use the prototype keyword like this:

function myType(a,b){

this.a=a;

this.b=b;

}

myType.prototype.add = function(){ return this.a + this.b; }

Use it like previously explained:

f = new myType(19,11);
document.write(f.add()); // The result is 30

There can be created a helper function like:

Function.prototype.method = function (name, func) {
this.prototype[name] = func;
return this;
};

The simple object:

function myType(a,b){

this.a=a;

this.b=b;

}

Add a new method like this:

myType.method("add", function(){ return this.a+this.b; });

Then use it as usual:

f = new myType(125,80);
document.write(f.add()); // The result is 205

This is enough to get started with objects for now.

Problema cu monedele

2009-05-08T16:28:00.009+03:00

Într-o urnă se află 4 tipuri de monede, cea mai mare având valoarea de 1£. Ştiind că fiecare monedă există de acelaşi număr de ori şi că suma existentă în urnă este de 14.13£, găsiţi câte monede sunt de fiecare tip şi care este valoarea lor.

Notă: În UK monedele au valorile: 0.01£, 0.02£, 0.05£, 0.10£, 0.20£, 0.25£, 0.50£, 1.00£.

Genul acesta de problemă presupune de fapt rezolvarea unei ecuaţii cu mai mulţi parametri întregi. Ecuaţia problemei este s=n*(a+b+c+d), unde s=14.13 şi d=1. Deci n*a+n*b+n*c+n=14.13 şi trebuie să se afle n,a,b şi c. O astfel de ecuaţie se poate rezolva prin forţă brută, însă ideea de rezolvare este mult mai frumoasă atunci când se studiază posibilele valori ale parametrilor astfel încât să se găsească mult mai repede soluţia. Pentru că a+b+c+1>=1 avem faptul că 0<n<15. Dacă folosim pentru a, b şi c valoarea cea mai mică (a=b=c=0.01) atunci n=14.13/1.03=13.72, deci n<14. Dacă folosim pentru a, b şi c valoarea cea mai mare (a=b=c=1) atunci n=14.13/4=3.5325, deci n>3. Având un interval pentru n şi ştiind că n este număr întreg nu ne rămâne decât să calculam prin forţă brută posibilele valori pentru n.

n=4, atunci 14.13/4=3.5325, valoare imposibilă pentru că rezultatul trebuie să aibă maxim 2 zecimale;

n=5, atunci 14.13/5=2.826, valoare imposibilă;

n=6, atunci 14.13/6=2.355, valoare imposibilă;

n=7, atunci 14.13/7=2.01(857142), valoare imposibilă;

n=8, atunci 14.13/8=1.76625, valoare imposibilă;

n=9, atunci 14.13/9=1.57, valoare posibilă;

n=10, atunci 14.13/10=1.413, valoare imposibilă;

n=11, atunci 14.13/11=1.28(45), valoare imposibilă;

n=12, atunci 14.13/12=1.1775, valoare imposibilă;

n=13, atunci 14.13/13=1.08(692307), valoare imposibilă;

Prin urmare am avut noroc şi am găsit doar o singură valoare posibilă pentru n şi anume n=9. Deci fiecare monedă se găseşte de exact 9 ori. Trebuie să aflăm acum valorile monedelor, conform ecuaţiei a+b+c+1=1.57, deci a+b+c=0.57. Ştim că a≠b≠c şi observăm rapid soluţia a=0.5, b=0.05 şi c=0.02.

Răspuns: Monedele au valorile 0.02£, 0.05£, 0.5£ şi 1£, fiecare monedă fiind de exact 9 ori.

Observaţie: Dacă nu am fi ştiut că valoarea unei monede este de 1£, atunci am fi fost nevoiţi să căutăm n în intervalul [4,78] (14.13/0.18=78.5, 0.18 fiind suma minimă a 4 monede diferite). Găsirea unei soluţii nu implică faptul că soluţia este unică.

Valori versus Drogati

2009-05-05T01:36:00.003+03:00

Originally posted on Aedoh forum (fragments):

Sunt de acord ca nu acordam atentia cuvenita oamenilor importanti care au trait in Romania, insa propria decadenta ne impiedica sa recunoastem valorile. In schimb sa afirmi ca in ziua de azi persoanele valoroase sunt pe cale de disparitie este foarte hazardat. Massmedia e prea preocupata cu isterizarea populatiei ca sa se mai preocupe de lucrurile cu adevarat importante. Este imprumutat modelul de stiri american, in care o stire despre ceva pozitiv nu este stire ci doar ceva negativ reprezinta o stire. Parerea mea e sa ne dea voie si cu arme ca sa putem sa ne impuscam de spaima (i.e. in USA anual 10K oameni mor prin impuscare). In aceste conditii ce se percepe de la televizor e o Romanie negativa. Prin urmare trebuie sa fii concentrat ca Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche (http://www.tibetantreasures.com/tthtml/ctr.htm) ca sa prinzi vagile stiri pozitive. Atunci afli ca avem valori in box, judo, inventii, chiar si retail. O alta solutie este sa mergi sa vezi lucrurile pe viu. De exemplu dupa cate stiri negative auzi despre Bucuresti ai crede ca sunt cam 2 infractori pe metrul patrat si in realitate cobori din tren in Gara de Nord si lucrurile sunt ok, nu te ataca nimeni in secuda numarul doi (de fapt multimea asta de stiri nasoale despre capitala mi se pare o palida incercare de a mai tempera migratia).

Sa polemizez impotriva tehnologiei din cauza unor ciumpalaci care nu o folosesc corespunzator sau isi fac rau folosind-o, nu o s-o fac niciodata. Ma doare in cot de oamenii care se distrug singuri. Daca ar fi dupa mine as lasa lumea sa se drogheze si sa moara. Tratarea drogatilor pe banii oamenilor platitori de taxe e ca naiba. As vrea o lume in care sa pot sa aleg daca sunt solidar sau nu. Eu nu as fi, iar celelalte specii existente pe planeta nu sunt nici ele solidare. Deja incit la violenta ca Mircea Badea si conform noii legi a lui peste fac inchisoare ca indemn la jihad, desi asa mujahid cum sunt nu am nimic cu nimeni.

Ce au cu calculatorul?

2009-05-02T02:08:00.005+03:00

Originally posted on Aedoh forum:

M-am saturat sa aud oamenii ca au ceva impotriva "calculatorului". Nu tehnologia este "evil", ci oamenii o folosesc adesea fara discernamant. Din punctul meu de vedere romanii habar nu au de tehnologie. Priveste pe situl http://www.ted.com/ si convinge-te.
Tinerii din ziua de azi sunt "a new breed", oameni fundamental globalizati si democratici. Internetul a ajutat la stergerea partiala a granitelor, cunoasterea este disponibila in cantitati uriase... Realizezi destul de repede ca nu poti sti si nu poti citi nici macar o zecime din cat exista (i.e. poti petrece cativa ani citind doar situl http://www.howstuffworks.com/). De aceea oamenii de maine se bazeaza pe infrastructura informatica, pe baze de date create automat de motoare de indexare, pe accesul oricand si oriunde la retea. Din toata masa aceasta de informatie trebuie sa alegi ce este relevant pentru tine... Invatamantul clasic, evident, nu face fata nevoii de "customization" a informatiei pentru fiecare individ.
"And there is real Romania", romanii (in proportie mai mare cei tineri) sunt foarte ancorati in Internet pentru ca: massmedia traditionala esueaza dramatic in a furniza continut pentru ei, cu exceptia catorva posturi de muzica si cateva emisiuni cu intindere numarata in secunde, lipsa banilor nu permite vizitarea pe viu a unui loc sau obiectiv, si altele mult mai subtile si complexe. Internetul devine astfel o fereastra spre lume, creaza viata paralela in care inegalitatile par sa fie nivelate. Migrarea asta bineinteles ca enerveaza pentru ca regulile sunt schimbate brusc; multi tineri lipsesc din viata reala, s-au virtualizat; astfel nu mai poti sa ajungi la ei cu produsele tale atat fizice, cat si intelectuale; nu mai participa haotic la munca pe viata pentru un camion de caramizi (i.e. o casa) sau o tona de tabla (i.e. o masina), tot ce au nevoie e apa, paine si bandwidth.

Nu pot sa fiu mai in dezacord de atat cu mentalitatea de genul: Toti copii sunt interesati de droguri si alte tampenii in loc sa se preocupe de ce e specific varstei.
In primul rand este mult prea generalizat toti copiii... Cam cat inseamna acest toti? Lipsa de incredere in tineri nu ajuta la nimic, insa adanceste si mai mult "gap"-ul dintre generatii. Drogurile sunt o problema, dar nu este extinsa la toata generatia, iar in ce priveste tampeniile, cel putin maturii au demostrat ce le-a putut capul in tara asta (i.e. razboaie, comunism, rasism, furt). Apoi este evident ca ce era specific varstei acum 20, 100, 1000 de ani nu mai este specific unei anumite varste acum.

Time has changed, therefore it's time for youth to claim equlity in rights.

Endnote: Cei care vor zice ca am scris intr-o limba neromana, sa considere faptul ca limba romana este o mixtura de toate limbile peste cele cateva sute de cuvinte dacice, asa ca tundeti iarba in alta parte.

Security tips Windows XP

2009-04-14T04:25:00.010+03:00

Two security tips for Windows XP:

1. Disable administrative shares:

Modify the key

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\lanmanserver\parameters]

by adding or modifying the value:

"AutoShareWks"=dword:00000000 .

2. Disable remote registry access:

Method 1: Go to Start->Run and type services.msc and then find Remote Registry service, right click it and choose Properties, then change under Startup type the value to Disabled. You can also stop the service right away.

Method 2: Disable Remote Registry service using the sc command:

sc stop RemoteRegistry
sc config RemoteRegistry start= disabled

Set the default back with:

sc config RemoteRegistry start= auto
sc start RemoteRegistry

String pad function in JavaScript

2009-04-11T02:17:00.009+03:00

I've found this mind blowing function for padding a string in JavaScript:

String.prototype.pad = function(l, s, t){
return s || (s = " "), (l -= this.length) > 0 ? (s = new Array(Math.ceil(l / s.length)+ 1).join(s)).substr(0, t = !t ? l : t == 1 ? 0 : Math.ceil(l / 2))+ this + s.substr(0, l - t) : this;
};

Let's break it in pieces :

The construction String.prototype.pad = function(l, s, t) extends the functionality of the String object adding a new method called pad, which is a function that has three parameters.
Parameters of the function stand for: l=maximal length of the string, s=padding string and t=type of padding (0=left, 1=right and 2=center).
An expression which contains an enumeration is evaluated to the last member of the enumeration, therefore the second expression in the return clause will be the result of the function.
A logical OR expression is evaluated until a member is true, therefore the expression s || (s=" ") actually means: if s contains something then it is true and left alone, otherwise s will contain exactly one space.
Expression (l-=this.length) makes l contain the number of needed characters for the string to have the required length (if the length of the string is 7 and we want it padded to 20 characters, now the l is 13).
Is well known the expression like <logical> ? <value_for_true> : <value_for_false>.
If new l is greater than 0, then computations are required, otherwise the string (referenced using this) is returned as it is.
Math.ceil(<value>) gives the closest upper integer value of the given value.
join(<separator>) creates a single string value from the array it is applied to using the given separator string.
The expression s=new Array(Math.ceil(l/s.length)+1).join(s) creates a new array with a number of elements equal to the number of times s is required to repeat for the string to be padded, plus one (because there are -1 separators involved in such a join), then the empty values are joined using s as a separator. The new value is now assigned to s. For example, if we want the string "xunrage" padded with s="{}" to the left (t=0) for a total length of l=20, first l became 13, and now l/s.length=13/2=6.5, therefore Math.ceil(l/s.length)=7, following that a new array with 8 elements will be created. When joined, only 7 separators forms the result, therefore s="{}{}{}{}{}{}{}".
substr(<start>,<length>) returns a portion of a string that the function is applied to starting at the given position and having the given length.
Expression substr(0, t=!t ? l : t == 1 ? 0 : Math.ceil(l/2)) contains two ?: expressions and an assignment in the second parameter of the substr function. The first expression is !t ? l : <the_rest> and the second expression is t==1 ? 0 : Math.ceil(l/2). The value of the entire expression at the end is assigned to t. In our example t=0, therefore !t is true and t=l=13, resulting a string like "{}{}{}{}{}{}{" that will be added to the result.
Finally, if something left to be added is added at the end, using substr again. For left padding (t=0) there is nothing left to be added because t=l=13 and l-t=0, resulting in "{}{}{}{}{}{}{xunrage". For right padding t=1, we have t=0 initially (t==1 ? 0 : ...) and l-t=13 at the end, resulting in "xunrage{}{}{}{}{}{}{". For center padding t=2 and we have t=Math.ceil(l/2) which is t=Math.ceil(13/2)=Math.ceil(6.5)=7, finally l-t=13-7=6, resulting in "{}{}{}{xunrage{}{}{}".

Now you can see how amazing this one line of code is.

Stop autorun.inf from running in Windows

2009-04-10T03:12:00.005+03:00

Put the following into the registry:

REGEDIT4
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\IniFileMapping\Autorun.inf]
@="@SYS:DoesNotExist"

Note: @ stands for (Default) value.

Fox Pro - Cateva comenzi

2009-03-29T16:54:00.005+03:00

O comanda FoxPro utila este aceea care permite filtrarea inregistrarilor dintr-o tabela:

SET FILTER TO [lExpression] [IN nWorkArea | cTableAlias]

de exemplu SET FILTER TO info=123 face accesibile numai inregistrarile pentru care info este egal cu 123. Pentru a elimina un filtru se foloseste comanda fara expresia lExpression.

O alta comanda interesanta este aceea care permite gasirea primei inregistrari pentru care criteriul de cautare este indeplinit:

LOCATE [FOR lExpression1] [Scope] [WHILE lExpression2] [NOOPTIMIZE]

Pentru Scope se poate folosi: ALL, NEXT nRecords, RECORD nRecordNumber si REST.

Pentru a gasi si celelalte inregistrari se foloseste constructia:

DO WHILE FOUND()

CONTINUE

ENDDO

Functia FOUND([nWorkArea | cTableAlias]) determina daca cea mai recenta comanda CONTINUE, FIND, LOCATE sau SEEK a avut succes.

Comanda CONTINUE este folosita dupa comanda LOCATE pentru a gasi urmatoarea inregistrare care indeplineste criteriul de cautare definit de catre LOCATE.

Problema din Biletul 11

2009-03-17T04:28:00.002+02:00

În acest post am menţionat despre o problemă în FoxPro. La punctul e) a fost găsită şi o altă soluţie care a fost reîmpachetată în arhiva foxpro_11b.zip.

Language issue

2009-03-10T23:28:00.003+02:00

Before Unicode there were code pages and fonts like Arial or Times New Roman reflected this like scripts as Arabic, Baltic, Central European, Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew, Turkish, Vietnamese or Western. I usually have to switch to Central European script in video players in order to see the subtitle in my native language, Romanian. I have recently found out that BSPlayer and JetAudio are unable to make that switch and the subtitle looks awful in Western script. In fact the diacritics are shown wrong, the rest of text is ok. I have found two solutions to this: To use a font that has only one script (the Central European) or to make some changes in Windows settings to sort this thing out.

First solution for me is to use a font called JetRomanian (see it in the BOX).

Second solution is to follow these steps in Windows XP:

Click Start, then go to Control Panel.
From there choose Regional and Language Options.
Then go to the Advanced tab and choose Romanian under the long label "Select a language to match the language version of the non-Unicode programs you want to use:"

That's it. Now I can watch the subtitle as they should be displayed.

Porturile folosite de Yahoo Messenger 9.0.0.2136

2009-02-27T03:59:00.001+02:00

Pentru a afla porturile folosite de către o aplicaţie în Windows XP, se introduce de la consolă comanda:

netstat -aon

Comanda afişează PID-ul (Process Identifier) aplicaţiei. Pentru a afişa toate aplicaţiile care rulează împreună cu PID-ul lor se introduce comanda:

tasklist /svc

Astfel se descoperă că Yahoo Messenger foloseşte porturile:

5101, 3467, 3468, 3473, 5050, 3479, 443, 3470.

Septica

2009-02-23T23:18:00.004+02:00

Jocul are urmatoarele reguli:

- sunt 32 de carti (opt figuri): 7, 8, 9, 10, J, Q, K si A, fiecare figura avand 4 carti;
- fiecare jucator primeste initial patru carti, alese la intamplare;
- jucatorii pun jos cate o carte, alternativ;
- implicit, cartile de jos sunt luate de primul jucator;
- daca al doilea jucator pune un 7, sau o carte cu aceeasi figura ca si cea initiala, atunci el va lua cartile;
- primul jucator poate obiecta in cazul de mai sus, dar doar daca pune de asemenea un 7 sau o carte cu aceeasi figura ca si cea initiala;
- daca primul jucator nu obiecteaza se ridica cartile;
- dupa ridicarea cartilor, se primesc noi carti pentru ca fiecare jucator sa aiba 4 carti in mana;
- 10 si A se considera puncte (in total sunt 8 puncte);
- castigator este cel care a acumulat cele mai multe puncte la sfarsitul jocului.

Automatic logon in Windows XP

2009-02-23T03:05:00.004+02:00

In this article is explained how to turn on automatic logon in Windows XP. Basically it means the modifications of the following keys:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon]
"DefaultUserName"="<user>"
"AutoAdminLogon"="1"
"DefaultPassword"="<password>"

where <user> is the desired user to logon and <password> is the password for that user.

Problema in FoxPro

2009-02-19T05:32:00.017+02:00

Mi-am testat puţin abilităţile de programare în FoxPro 9. Vezi în Box fişierul foxpro_11.zip.

Prietenul Octavian va fi probabil interesat.

Pentru schimbarea caracterelor

2009-01-09T17:03:00.004+02:00

Pentru a schimba caracterele in majuscule in VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) se poate folosi functia UCase(String).

Pentru a schimba caracterele in minuscule se poate folosi functia LCase(String). Vezi un exemplu in fisierul schimba.doc din BOX.

Belief

2008-12-29T15:29:00.003+02:00

I am a ronin. My mind is my nihonto and my life is my yama. Like wind my soul is passing through sakura and I unleash my rage against the enemies. I will never surrender my mountain.

Amilo Li2735

2008-12-15T18:00:00.003+02:00

Astazi am achizitionat un notebook Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Li2735, la pretul de 1900 de lei. Este dotat cu un procesor Intel Core 2 Duo T5750 la 2GHz, realizat in tehnologia de 65nm. Pe langa aceasta caracteristica definitorie, notebookul are un display de 15,4 inches, 2GB memorie RAM si un harddisk de 160 GB. Grafica este integrata Intel Graphic Media Accelerator X3100 (333MHz display cores, 500MHz render cores, suporta DirectX 10.0, Shader Model 4.0 si OpenGL 2.0, altfel zis merge blana la joculetele mele stupide).

Box Specifications:

AMILO Li 2735

Display: 15.4" WXGA BrilliantView (1280 x 800)

Processor: Intel^® Pentium^® Core^™ 2 Duo T5750

Memory: 2 x 1GB RAM DDR2/667

Hard disk: 1 x 160GB SATA/5400rpm

ODD: SuperMulti-format DVD burner DL

WLAN: 802.11 b/g

Graphics: Intel^® Graphics Media Accelerator X3100, shared memory depending on RAM

Communication: LAN 10/100

Interfaces: 1 x VGA, 4 x USB 2.0

Interfaces: S-Video out

Interfaces: Mic/Line in, Headphone/Line out

Audio: 2 speakers

Numbers:

Asset Number: 930000525620

Product Number: CCE:SEE-110142-001

SAP Number: 10600976948

PO Number: 3500037790

Serial Number: DWQC001374

Made by: Fujitsu Siemens Computers GmbH, Mies-van-der-Rohe-Strasse 8, D-80807 München

Trapped Inside

2008-12-06T00:06:00.001+02:00

Here. Now. Alone. Full of obsessions. Full of fears. Trapped behind a fence inside the mind where the perceptual point of view offers no hope, no purpose, no sense of time. When eyes become too wide open, it starts to hurt. Then expectations die and life fades to black. A dark existence, where world becomes a lie, where you and me are just mistakes in universe, against the logics of the peace, of eternity.

Thinking... too much, too often. Searching the truth by making unbiased links between ideas. A chain is formed that locks the path to the reality of love and happiness. I stay at the border of this land awaiting for someone to rescue me from the truth that brings the madness...

Correct phrase

2008-11-13T04:34:00.001+02:00

I suppose you know that lovely person very well because you succeeded to light up a sensitive zone from her life. I think you are a writer, a remarkable one. Congratulations!

Ikariam

2008-11-09T22:30:00.011+02:00

De câteva luni joc Ikariam şi de curând am început să folosesc Google Docs pentru a utiliza un spreadsheet. Pentru că am dorit să automatizez cât mai mult calculele am căutat să aflu formulele jocului. Câteva dintre ele sunt oarecum greu de ghicit dintr-o privire, iar rotunjirile pe care le face Ikariam produc şi mai multă confuzie.

Locuitorii unui oraş se împart în 4 categorii: cercetători, muncitori la moara de lemne, muncitori la mina de resurse şi locuitori care nu sunt destinaţi celorlalte activităţi. Putem scrie aceasta ca :

Locuitori = Cercetători + MuncitoriLemn + MuncitoriResursă + Cetăţeni

Cetăţenii produc 4 aur pe oră, cercetătorii consumă 8 aur pe oră, iar muncitorii nici nu produc nici nu consumă aur. Prin urmare aurul brut se calculează astfel:

AurBrut = Cetăţeni * 4 - Cercetători * 8

Dacă este cercetat Tobogan de scrisori din ramura Ştiinţa, atunci cercetătorii vor avea nevoie numai de 7 aur pe oră.

Când vrei să scrii formule blogger este ca o împuşcătură în picior. Din acest motiv pentru mai multe detalii citiţi acest document în format PDF.

Quick tip

2008-11-08T20:06:00.002+02:00

To run Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool, click Start then Run... and type: mrt.

Vundo.Gen

2008-10-25T16:35:00.004+03:00

I got Vundo.Gen from the Internet and my Avast Home Edition 4.8 found something a little suspicious, but it failed to actually handle the infection. Using TuneUp I found out a link to a strange named DLL in the Windows\System32 that started with Windows. The file handle was locked by three processes, one of witch was Windows Explorer. I had to use Unlocker to be able to delete the file. Later I use VundoFix to rescan for Vundo and I deleted 6 more files that were not the trojan (therefore this tool sucks).

When a file is suspicious, a cool way to found out if it is clean is to use VirusTotal service where you upload the file and it is checked with 36 antivirus engines.

Register a DLL or an OCX

2008-10-09T23:12:00.003+03:00

To manually register a DLL or an OCX file in Windows use the following command:

regsvr32 [/u] [/s] <path_to_file>

where /u stands for unregister and /s for silent.

Example:

regsvr32 %systemroot%/system32/comdlg32.ocx

Timidity

2008-09-25T13:39:00.002+03:00

Timidity is a fear to not bother others with something you do, to not be in the center of attention to others. Paradoxically, timidity is opposite to natural human behavior. This makes me think that the origin of timidity is in the early childhood. Little children instinctually want to be in the center of attention and they will pretty much use all the necessary resources to obtain that. At this point it’s critical how harsh is the punishment from the grownups. Excessive punishment (even if it’s only verbose) may create the fear that powers up timidity. Timidity is also fueled up by a factor of isolation. In a way parents are the oppression and your friends the resistance. In other words people of the same age are more likely to accept your stupidities than older ones.

Resuming, timidity consists of:

Fear not to bother
Fear not to be in the center of attention
Isolation factor

It’s important to mention that usually timidity installs itself at the instinctual level and is only eliminated by abruptly eliminating the generators.

The opposites of shy persons are the overconfident ones. In this world, the shy persons are the prey and the overconfident persons are the predators. When you form yourself as a person, there are several layers of behavior that interact and depend one on another. Because timidity is on a lower layer it is very difficult to extract and it requires multiple changes in almost all the layers. I guess that the key to success of timidity banishment is the isolation factor: forcing of being with other people will finally reduce the fears and most probably terminate them. But the shy person have to fight himself and push the relational interaction further even if he thinks he does ridiculous things. Unfortunately shy persons will not become very sociable easily, and in most cases is a matter of context.

The Zero Effect

2008-09-25T02:45:00.005+03:00

In 2001, when I made my first webpage, I was very excited about all this opportunity, because Internet offers a place where you can publish your ideas and a lot of other things, and all these are available to a broader audience. But there is a problem: nobody knows about your site. You, very soon, realize that you need to promote it. This can be done in two ways: to annoy people by telling them about your site, or to spam them. Either way, finally, a couple of people will visit your site. The problem now is that they compare it to sites belonging to corporations or companies where a team of professionals maintain the content and your site doesn't stand the chance: at its best is considered cute and easily forgotten. While the time passes, there will be zero visitors, zero comments, zero downloads, zero feedback. One day you will embrace that zero and you'll start to put things out just for your own purposes. Sad that day is. Web is no longer different than a notebook, with the exception of the times when you write stupidities and they will hunt you down for that.

What xunrage means

2008-09-05T00:09:00.010+03:00

Back in 2001 I wished I have a unique nickname. The main idea was to stick together two words from two completely different languages, and then search in Google how original that composition was. Finally I came across xunrage, which is formed from the word xun from Chinese and the word rage from English. Xun is one of the eight trigrams of Xiantian Bagua and its meaning is wind. Therefore xunrage translates as the fury of the wind. Considering the fact that in Bagua wind is a mild and gentle element, its association with rage is my personal belief that peaceful things can change in unsuspected ways. Later I’ve created the X logo with those sharp edges, where the blue represents the xun and the pink represents the rage.

Subtitrari

2008-08-10T01:21:00.004+03:00

Softpedia are o sectiune de subtitrari, insa am incercat sa pun si eu o subtitrare la ei pe site si n-am reusit. Le-am trimis-o pe mail si am observat ca m-au ignorat total: nu numai ca nu au pus subtitrarea pe site, dar au eliminat si un comentariu lasat la filmul respectiv in care spuneam ca n-am reusit sa urc subtitrarea. In loc sa rescrie codul defect al sitului lor infect, au ales calea ascunderii adevarului. La urma urmei, nu ma afecteaza pe mine atitudinea lor.

xunRAGE Art

2008-08-09T06:23:00.006+03:00

I've uploaded some of the pictures I've created using different programs to Picasa.

Best Webhost

2008-08-08T03:29:00.003+03:00

For me a best webhost is that host that offers for free as much services as it can and it stand the test of time. A best webhost never cares if I use their services and how, as long I'm not reported doing something wrong. A best webhost is just hosting me, no string attached. For the moment I'm looking for such a place to put my homepage there, because my last choice, to my dismay, vanished.

Licenta

2008-07-10T20:00:00.001+03:00

Am sustinut examenul de licenta si totul a fost ok. Vezi notele aici.

MinGW Developer Studio 2.05 cu MinGW 5.1.4

2008-07-03T13:56:00.002+03:00

MinGW Developer Studio 2.05 de la Parinya Software are inclus o versiune de MinGW mai veche şi se poate folosi din primul moment. Însă dacă se doreşte utilizarea sa cu ultima versiune de MinGW, atunci după ce a fost instalat aşa cum am discutat în acest post, se merge în Edit->Options..., tabul Compiler şi se alege în căsuţa corespunzătoare etichetei MinGW path calea C:\MinGW\.

Bad Icon for IE7

2008-07-02T15:57:00.009+03:00

I have chosen to use Internet Explorer 7 as my default browser in Windows XP SP3. For some reason the Start menu icon for the browser didn't show fine. After a bit of research, i found that it simply has set up a bad icon index to -7. I turn it to 0 and everything went fine. The registry key that I have modified follows:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Clients\StartMenuInternet\IEXPLORE.EXE\DefaultIcon]

I modified the default string value to:

C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe,0

By the way, the 57th (0x39) byte in a LNK file shows the icon index used.

Code::Blocks 8.02 cu Borland C++ Compiler 5.5

2008-06-22T03:27:00.005+03:00

Când am început eu să învăţ programare în liceu se foloseau exclusiv produsele Borland, adică Turbo Pascal 7 şi Borland C++ 2.6. Unii mai folosesc şi astăzi aceste unelte antice. Pentru cei care sunt fani Borland se poate realiza următoarea combinaţie gratuită: Code::Blocks IDE şi Borland C++ Compiler 5.5. Pentru a descărca compilatorul este necesar să fie creat un cont CDN, însă acest lucru nu este un impediment. În final se obţine fişierul freecommandLinetools.exe pentru instalarea compilatorului şi fişierul de instalare pentru Code::Blocks (eu am ales versiunea cu MinGW inclusă, codeblocks-8.02mingw-setup.exe).

Mai întâi am instalat Code::Blocks şi apoi compilatorul. Pentru instalarea compilatorului am ales calea de instalare în interiorul directorului lui Code::Blocks (C:\Program Files\CodeBlocks\Bcc55). Apoi se crează în subdirectorul bin cele două fişiere, bcc32.cfg şi ilink32.cfg aşa cum este explicat în fişierul readme.txt. Se deschide Code::Blocks şi se merge în meniul Settings->Compiler and debugger..., apoi se alege din drop-down box-ul Selected compiler, Borland C++ Compiler (5.5, 5.82). În tabul Search directories şi subtabul Compiler se adaugă calea C:\Program Files\CodeBlocks\Bcc55\Include. În subtabul Linker se adaugă două locaţii: C:\Program Files\CodeBlocks\Bcc55\Lib şi C:\Program Files\CodeBlocks\Bcc55\Lib\PSDK. În tabul Toolchain executables se alege în căsuţa corespunzătoare Compiler's installation directory, C:\Program Files\CodeBlocks\Bcc55. Automat în subtabul Program Files sunt alese fişierele corecte. În final se poate opta pentru folosirea ca default a compilatorului de la Borland, acţionând cu un click pe butonul Set as default.

Poţi testa faptul că Code::Blocks a folosit compilatorul de la Borland dacă în executabil găseşti şirul de caractere Borland C++ - Copyright 1999 Inprise Corporation. Recent divizia CodeGear de la Borland Software Corporation a fost vândută firmei Embarcadero Technologies, Inc., ceea ce înseamnă că toate uneltele de programare au acum un nou stăpân.

Netbeans 6.1 cu MinGW 5.1.4

2008-06-22T01:48:00.007+03:00

A curs apa de pe mine până am reuşit să fac să meargă NetBeans împreună cu MinGW.

Primul pas a constat în download-ul lui NetBeans 6.1 care conţine toate componentele (versiunea de 219 MB) de aici. Anterior instalasem JDK 6 Update 6 şi aveam downloadată şi documentaţia de aici. La instalare am renunţat să instalez serverele, GlassFish V2 UR2, respectiv Apache Tomcat 6.0.16. Datorită acestui fapt nu am instalat nici SOA. Am pornit NetBeans şi am setat locaţia pentru documentaţie din meniul Tools->Java Platforms, tabul Javadoc, apoi Tools->NetBeans Platforms, tabul Javadoc. Este interesant faptul că NetBeans crează indexii pentru help abia după deschiderea unui proiect java, astfel că Help->Javadoc Index Search va funcţiona numai după aceea.

Am crezut că suportul pentru C++ este complet, însă am constatat că NetBeans oferă numai suport pentru editare (este doar un IDE), nu şi pentru compilare sau crearea executabilului.

Printre compilatoarele agreate este şi MinGW şi am decis să-l instalez pe acesta. Problema e că pe SourceForge sunt o mulţime de pachete pentru MinGW şi nu ştiam ce să instalez (vezi aici). Primul lucru pe care l-am instalat a fost Automated MinGW Installer (MinGW-5.1.4.exe). Am ales să instalez toate componentele mai puţin Ada Compiler, Java Compiler şi Objective C Compiler. Automated MinGW Installer a descărcat următoarele fişiere: binutils-2.17.50-20060824-1.tar, gcc-core-3.4.5-20060117-3.tar, gcc-g++-3.4.5-20060117-3.tar, gcc-g77-3.4.5-20060117-3.tar, mingw32-make-3.81-20080326-2.tar, mingw-runtime-3.14.tar, w32api-3.11.tar şi mingw.ini. Locaţia de instalare am lăsat-o C:\MinGW pentru că am observat că dacă conţine un spaţiu în denumirea căii, NetBeans nu se descurcă prea bine. Am observat că mai trebuie şi utilitarul make şi debuggerul. Pentru debugger am mers pe ramura GNU Source-Level Debugger şi apoi am downloadat din Current Release, fişierul gdb-5.2.1-1.exe. La instalare am ales să se instaleze tot în C:\MinGW. După mai multe încercări eşuate am găsit că pentru make trebuie descărcat pachetul msysCORE-1.0.11-2007.01.19-1.tar.bz2 de pe ramura MSYS Base System. Am făcut rost de un arhivator care ştie să despacheteze arhivele bz2 cum ar fi 7-Zip. După despachetare am copiat conţinutul arhivei msysCORE-1.0.11-2007.01.19-1.tar în directorul C:\MinGW. În final am setat NetBeans să folosească MinGW: am mers în meniul Tools->Options, apoi am ales pictograma C/C++ şi sub panoul Tool Collection and dat click pe butonul Add..., am ales ca Base Directory C:\MinGW\bin şi automat NetBeans a detectat că e vorba de MinGW.

Licenta

2008-06-19T23:54:00.004+03:00

Astazi, in sfarsit am terminat lucrarea de licenta de redactat, de printat si de legat. Urmeaza o perioada in care va trebui sa fac o prezentare a ei, si sa studiez ceva programare. Din punctul meu de vedere partea cea mai obositoare a trecut.

Freelance

2008-06-02T13:54:00.001+03:00

Starting with 1st of June 2008, I'm a freelance again. In other words I'm working for myself from now on.

Reflections

2008-05-22T11:16:00.019+03:00

Being you and believing in your existence
It's a big difference between being you and believing in your existence. The main difference is that being you it is like you as a mind and you as a body are a whole, something integrated, something unique, that act and think in the same way. But when you think that you exist, you create a difference between your body and your mind. Then you start to view the life from different angles, from angles that sometimes leave your body. You can go as far as differentiating between your body and your mind or simply you can go farther and create a virtual wall between your internal world and external world. When you believe that you are not a whole structure it’s easy to imagine that your body can hold multiple dimensional selves and soon you will loose yourself.

Goddess
My perception of a girl is like the girl is some sort of goddess. Because you do not have to trouble gods with your thoughts, with your feelings, gods are only there to venerate and to sacrifice your feelings for them, I usually do nothing. But this is an artificial love, an artistic love, because there are not deep roots in this love.

Open to love
To meet love you have to be opened to love. That means that you strongly have to believe that someone can love you, you strongly have to believe that you cannot live without someone. These assumptions are stupid but they are beautiful in their way. And this stupid, yet beautiful thing is love.

Obsession
I know only a way to love: it’s the way of being attracted to someone and transforming the attraction into an obsession. I don't get rid of my obsessions easily. She was a brunette, she was beautiful in a kind of way and nothing was too special about her. That emphasize my beliefs that you're attracted to women that are most closely to your genetic branch. Therefore I believe that my DNA dictates me that brunettes are best fit for the sexual purpose and for the racial continuance of my species.

Changes
I swore to myself or promised as you like to say it, I’d change the way I am. I was catastrophic! People don't change and if they change it takes a life to do it.

Desynchronized
When your world crashes into pieces and you're not upset about it then you don't really exist, you're a fabulous thing from tales. Remaining with nothing creates a very multidimensional sorrow, multidimensional pity, and multidimensional negativism. Then, the existence has nothing to offer. It was not a surprise I desynchronized from school. When world means nothing, school means even less.

Raport Candidati si Note

2008-05-13T16:08:00.001+03:00

Comanda sql pentru crearea unui raport cu notele si probele candidatilor:

select nume+' '+initiala_tatalui+' '+prenume NUME_COMPLET,cnp, profiluri.nume_profil, filiere.nume_filiera, specializari.nume_specializare, forma_invatamant,rom_oral, rom_scris,(select nume_tip_subiect from tipuri_subiecte where tipuri_subiecte.id_tip_subiect=candidat.id_limba_moderna) PROBA_B, nota_limba_moderna,(select nume_tip_subiect from tipuri_subiecte where tipuri_subiecte.id_tip_subiect=candidat.id_proba_d) PROBA_D, nota_proba_d,(select nume_tip_subiect from tipuri_subiecte where tipuri_subiecte.id_tip_subiect=candidat.id_proba_e) PROBA_E, nota_proba_e,(select nume_tip_subiect from tipuri_subiecte where tipuri_subiecte.id_tip_subiect=candidat.id_proba_f) PROBA_F, nota_proba_f,(select nume_tip_subiect from tipuri_subiecte where tipuri_subiecte.id_tip_subiect=candidat.id_proba_f_bis) PROBA_REZERVAfrom candidat, specializari, profiluri, filierewhere nume_clasa='XIII' AND tip_clasa='' AND candidat.id_specializare = specializari.id_specializare AND specializari.id_profil=profiluri.id_profilAND profiluri.id_filiera=filiere.id_filieraorder by nume, prenume;

Atentie la Backup!

2008-05-13T13:25:00.004+03:00

Recent aplicatia CL a suferit un patch si acum a devenit versiunea 5.1. Diferenta consta in faptul ca s-a modificat baza de date si a aparut un checkbox plasat in graba unde s-a gasit loc (checkboxul cu eticheta "Sustine subiecte 2007").
Prin urmare operatiunea de backup atat din CL 5.0 cat si din CL 5.1 a ramas aceeasi. Se alege din meniul Fisier, optiunea Copie de siguranta. Apoi se alege directorul unde se va crea backupul, conform titlului ferestrei de dialog "Selecteaza directorul unde va fi salvata copia de siguranta". Partea de jos a dialogului trebuie ignorata pentru ca trecut in casuta corespunzatoare "Numele fisierului:" este de fapt calea de directoare in care se salveaza backup-ul, iar casuta corespunzatoare etichetei "Tipul fisierelor:" este complet inutila. Incercarea de a da un nume exportului va rezulta intr-un esec, pentru ca numele este creat automat sub forma:

"backupDatabase_"[zi]"_"[luna]"_"[an]"_"[ora]"_ "[minut]"_"[secunda]"_v5_"[01].exp.

Pana aici probabil ca se gaseste in manual, insa voi merge ceva mai departe cu detaliile.
Primul lucru de stiut este faptul ca fisierul exportat este o arhiva ZIP, prin urmare schimband extensia EXP in ZIP se poate despacheta informatia continuta. In interior sunt 4 fisiere: bacalaureat.data, bacalaureat.log, bacalaureat.properties, bacalaureat.script. Aceste fisiere formeaza de fapt o baza de date HSQL cu numele bacalaureat. Fisierul bacalaureat.data, contrar numelui contine 1MB de carcatere NULL adica 1048576. El este cel mai mare insa e inutil. Fisierul bacalaureat.properties arata ca programul lucreaza cu HSQL versiunea 1.7.x. Datele introduse in sesiunea curenta (in perioada de timp de la deschiderea programului pana la crearea backup-ului) sunt salvate in fisierul bacalaureat.log. Programul realizeaza COMMIT, doar la pornire. Celelalte date se regasesc in bacalaureat.script.

Un backup rapid manual se poate face dupa ce s-a inchis programul, prin copierea fisierelor bacalaureat.properties si bacalaureat.script din directorul data al caii de instalare a programului CL.

Desi versiunea 1.8.x este versiunea curenta de HSQL si este downward compatible, ea va schimba fisierele bacalaureat.properties si bacalaureat.script, iar programul va afisa urmatorul mesaj "Aplicatia mai este pornita o data sau nu aveti drepturi de acces pe directorul data". Schimbarile sunt efectuate in sectiunea de creare a tabelelor in fisierul bacalaureat.script, sau spus altfel in sectiunea de antet pana incep comenzile INSERT. Atentie! Lipsa fisierului bacalaureat.properties duce la aparitia unei ferestre de eroare cu mesajul "Eroare baza de date" si un buton "Inchide". In aplicatie baza de date apare ca fiind goala, insa fisierul bacalaureat.script este intact, insa dupa inchiderea programului fisierul bacalaureat.script este modificat si se pierd toate datele. Dupa ce s-a folosit versiunea 1.8.x se foloseste fisierul bacalaureat.properties pentru versiunea 1.7.x, si se inlocuieste partea de antet din fisierul bacalaureat.script cu cel specific versiunii 1.7.x. Acest lucru este bineinteles necesar daca s-au modificat datele prezente in baza de date, insa nu si structura tabelelor.

Problema cu CL 5.0

2008-05-05T15:44:00.007+03:00

In acest post aratam faptul ca clientul de bacalaureat foloseste JRE 6u5 ca sa se planga ca nu poate rula, ceea ce era mai mult decat straniu. Iata cum face el verificarea versiunii de java in functia main:

public static void main(String args[]){
Properties properties = System.getProperties();
if(properties.getProperty("java.vm.version").startsWith("1.6") properties.getProperty("java.vm.version").startsWith("1.5") properties.getProperty("java.vm.version").startsWith("1.4.2"))
{
//something
} else
{
Show.error("Versiunea minim\u0103 de JRE este 1.4.2.");
System.exit(0);
}
}

Problema e ca in JRE 6u5, atributul care este cautat este java.vm.version=10.0-b19, si prin urmare nu incepe nici cu "1.6", nici cu "1.5" si nici cu "1.4.2". Mai mult, ar trebui sa se aloce memorie astfel:
Properties properties = new Properties(System.getProperties());
Cel mai bine ar fi fost sa se foloseasca atributul java.version=1.6.0_05.
See a test here.

Excel & HSQL

2008-05-05T14:35:00.004+03:00

Mai jos sunt cateva comenzi utile:
In Excel:

UPPER(A1&B1) - concateneaza continutul din A1 si B1 si apoi converteste toate literele mici in litere capitale.
MATCH(B1,altafoaie!$A$1:$A$100,0) - indica randul din altafoaie in rangeul A1:A100 care contine exact informatia din B1.
INDIRECT("altafoaie!"&ADDRESS(A1,3)) - intoarce valoarea din altafoaie de pe randul specificat de A1 si coloana C.

Urmatoarele comenzi sunt specifice bazei de date HSQL folosite de aplicatia CL 5.0 pentru bacalaureat:

select * from candidat where nume_clasa='XII' AND tip_clasa='A' order by nume,prenume;
Afiseaza toti candidatii in ordine alfabetica din clasa XII A.
select id_tip_subiect, nume_tip_subiect, id_disciplina,
(select nume_disciplina from discipline where discipline.id_disciplina=tipuri_subiecte.id_disciplina) NUME_DISCIPLINA,
id_proba,
(select cod_proba from probe where probe.id_proba=tipuri_subiecte.id_proba) COD_PROBA,
(select tip_proba from probe where probe.id_proba=tipuri_subiecte.id_proba) TIP_PROBA
from tipuri_subiecte where id_tip_subiect=197;
Afiseaza detalii complete despre tipul de subiect care are id-ul 197 (Engleza). Modificand acest cod se poate afla informatii despre oricare alt tip de subiect. Daca se elimina clauza WHERE atunci vor fi afisate toate tipurile de subiecte existente.
update candidat set id_limba_moderna=197 where nume_clasa='XII' AND tip_clasa='A';
Schimba id-ul probei la limba moderna cu 197 (Engleza) pentru toti candidatii din clasa XII A. Daca se foloseste de exemplu id_proba_d=10 (Matematica) atunci se va alege proba d pentru toti elevii din clasa XII A.
select * from alocare_tipuri_subiecte where ( id_filiera is null or id_filiera=1 or id_filiera=2)
and (id_profil is null or id_profil=3 or id_profil=5)
and (id_specializare is null or id_specializare=8 or id_specializare=74 or id_specializare=77 or id_specializare=39)
order by id_specializare asc, valabil desc;
Se filtreaza tipurile de subiecte posibile pentru filiera tehnologica sau teoretica, profilul real sau tehnic, specializarea matematica-informatica, tehnician mecatronist, tehnician transporturi sau tehnician electrotehnist.
select count (*) from candidat where id_limba_moderna<>0 and id_proba_d<>0 and id_proba_e<>0
and ((id_proba_f<>0 and id_proba_f<>192) or (id_proba_f=192 and id_proba_f_bis<>0));
Se returneaza numarul candidatilor care au optiuni complete, ceea ce inseamna ca au id-ul la proba respectiva diferit de 0, iar pentru Educatie Fizica (192) exista completata si proba de rezerva.
select nume +' '+ initiala_tatalui +' '+ prenume Nume_Complet, cnp, nume_clasa+' '+tip_clasa Clasa,
(select tipuri_subiecte.nume_tip_subiect from tipuri_subiecte where tipuri_subiecte.id_tip_subiect = candidat.id_limba_moderna) Proba_C,
(select tipuri_subiecte.nume_tip_subiect from tipuri_subiecte where tipuri_subiecte.id_tip_subiect = candidat.id_proba_d) Proba_D,
(select tipuri_subiecte.nume_tip_subiect from tipuri_subiecte where tipuri_subiecte.id_tip_subiect = candidat.id_proba_e) Proba_E,
(select tipuri_subiecte.nume_tip_subiect from tipuri_subiecte where tipuri_subiecte.id_tip_subiect = candidat. id_proba_f) Proba_F,
(select tipuri_subiecte.nume_tip_subiect from tipuri_subiecte where tipuri_subiecte.id_tip_subiect = candidat. id_proba_f_bis) Proba_F_Rezerva
from candidat order by nume_clasa, tip_clasa, nume, prenume;
Se afiseaza o lista care contine optiunile candidatilor numai cu numele optiunilor.
select nume +' '+ initiala_tatalui +' '+ prenume Nume_Complet, cnp, nume_clasa+' '+tip_clasa Clasa,
id_limba_moderna,
(select tipuri_subiecte.nume_tip_subiect from tipuri_subiecte where tipuri_subiecte.id_tip_subiect = candidat.id_limba_moderna) Proba_C,
id_proba_d,
(select tipuri_subiecte.nume_tip_subiect from tipuri_subiecte where tipuri_subiecte.id_tip_subiect = candidat.id_proba_d) Proba_D,
id_proba_e,
(select tipuri_subiecte.nume_tip_subiect from tipuri_subiecte where tipuri_subiecte.id_tip_subiect = candidat.id_proba_e) Proba_E,
id_proba_f,
(select tipuri_subiecte.nume_tip_subiect from tipuri_subiecte where tipuri_subiecte.id_tip_subiect = candidat. id_proba_f) Proba_F,
id_proba_f_bis,
(select tipuri_subiecte.nume_tip_subiect from tipuri_subiecte where tipuri_subiecte.id_tip_subiect = candidat.id_proba_f_bis) Proba_F_Rezerva
from candidat
order by nume_clasa, tip_clasa, nume, prenume;
Se afiseaza o lista cu optiunile candidatilor care contine atat numele optiunilor cat si ID-ul acestora.

About Adelina

2008-05-05T02:18:00.007+03:00

The following text was initially intended for The xunRAGE Magazine, but it was never published until now:

When someone becomes famous everybody is eager to say that they know her. Well to be completely fair with you, being classmates for a year it's far from knowing somebody. Yes, I met her and all I can say it's that she was a very good person. Nothing outstands except the beauty. But in the 9th grade, we're just a bunch of kids scared by Biology, Math and sometimes IT. Now she presents sport news at Antena 3 and meets famous people. I like to think that there is a world beyond our world for all these people. She had everything necessary to cross beyond. When you watch TV, those people seem flat, and what you know about them makes them flat, but they are real, and sometimes we need to take some time to realize that they have needs like everybody else. I am the witness that those people exist.

Note: She recently leaved from Antena 3, but at the time of the writing of this article she was still working there.

PAPERSIZE	X inches	Y inches	X cm	Y cm
a0	33.0556	46.7778	83.9611	118.816
a1	23.3889	33.0556	59.4078	83.9611
a2	16.5278	23.3889	41.9806	59.4078
a3	11.6944	16.5278	29.7039	41.9806
a4	8.26389	11.6944	20.9903	29.7039
a5	5.84722	8.26389	14.8519	20.9903
letter	8.5	11	21.59	27.94
legal	8.5	14	21.59	35.56