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Messages - Linkman243

Pages: [1] 2 3
1
Entertainment / Re: Facebook has a new chat feature...interesting
« on: May 19, 2012, 01:18:37 pm »
Did they remove that feature or something?  I haven't once seen it while using Facebook chat myself... and neither has my sister.

2
Entertainment / Re: My Unfunny Self
« on: May 18, 2012, 12:56:05 pm »
I don't like Duchamp... no matter what his reasoning is I don't see writing a few words on a urinal or adding a mustache to Mona Lisa and writing "she has a nice ass" as art.

Anyway... the videos... not funny to me.  They went right over my head.  The paining one I didn't understand at all until you explained it and the candy one I still don't understand.
And what was up with them being the same person?  Was that supposed to represent some sort of psychological conversation between a man and himself?  Either way I just didn't get it.

3
Coding / Re: Solved - Timers in Flash / ActionScript
« on: May 18, 2012, 01:46:45 am »
Yeah, I just used variables (although I didn't even bother calculating out seconds... I just made a counter variable which increased by 1 every frame until I wanted it to stop).

My teacher said that the problem was probably a combination of 2 things:
- Flash not being able to move stuff fast enough / not keeping up with the Timer
- Possibly the Timer was causing it to stop between frames so it was ending up one frame off some of the time

Either way, it doesn't have that problem anymore after I got rid of the Timer and just used a counter variable.

4
Coding / Re: HTML5 problems...
« on: May 17, 2012, 03:41:17 am »
And obvious question - are your browsers up to date? I have problems with HTML5 on Safari at my school.
Safari is not... the newest version of Safari isn't available for Leopard (which I'm using).  I am using the most up-to-date Safari available.
But that doesn't explain why it's not working on Firefox (version 12.0), which as far as I know is the most current version.

Quote
Your first question, it might be the security that Firefox adds to local files. If anything, it might be your config. Type "about:config" as the URL and there's probably a variable you have to change.
That may be it... strange part is that the images partly work.  They are drawn on the canvas.  Basically I have code that upon the image loading, it goes through every pixel on the canvas and alters it according to what's currently there... if the image is already there (which it is, as I can see just by looking at it) then there should be absolutely no reason why the rest of the code wouldn't work, since the image itself isn't even involved from that point on.

Quote
Your third question, it's supposed to be !DOCTYPE, just make sure you got that right.
Code: [Select]
<!DOCTYPE html>
I recommend you use a validater to check your code for errors. I use this one.
Yeah, that's the one I currently have but it's not working.  The styles seem to be messed up... one of the <div>s isn't being aligned properly, another of the <div>s's height has somehow become really small (hiding much of the text and adding a vertical scroll bar), and another <div>'s text spacing properies are being ignored.  But only when using the HTML5 DTD... when I use none at all it works fine.

That validator found no errors so the code itself is perfectly fine.

5
Coding / Re: HTML5 problems...
« on: May 16, 2012, 01:41:25 pm »
Okay, we can ignore the second qurstion.  I haven't figured it out but I've changed the code to make it so that it works regardless of the browser.

Still wondering about the first and third though.

6
Coding / HTML5 problems...
« on: May 16, 2012, 03:58:58 am »
I've written a program that uses the <canvas> to do various things... basically palette swaps (like filter type stuff... grayscale, sepia, inverting the colours, etc.) and also it generates ASCII art.  You choose a picture on your hard drive or on the internet somewhere and can make it do the stuff.

So the first problem I'm having is that for some reason images from the internet don't work on Firefox (at least on my computer).  They appear on the <canvas> but that's it... the functions basically stop working after that.  It's not my code, as it works fine in Safari.  It also works fine for any image from the person's hard drive... even if that person types the file path into the URL box on my page (the box normally used for typing in web addresses... there's a separate file selector thing on there specifically for local files).

Second, this is more of a question on HTML / JavaScript in general, but what's a good / easy way to tell browsers apart?  I need to do so because upon testing my program, I've found that there are some huge differences between Safari and Firefox.  One difference was so great that it caused the program to not even be able to run in Firefox...
So currently I'm using this:
Code: [Select]
if (navigator.userAgent.indexOf("Firefox")!=-1){
    // stuff for Firefox to do
}
else{
    // stuff for other browsers to do
    // (so far I'm only testing it on Firefox and Safari, but I'll
    // add other else if statements later)
}
which seems to be working fine, but I'm wondering if there's anything wrong with that.  Also I don't really understand that code... how do I know what I should change it to for every browser?  Like, would just changing the string "Firefox" to some other browser's name work?

Third question... the DOCTYPE.  For some reason the page does not display properly when I give it the HTML5 DOCTYPE... it doesn't even seem to display correctly with an HTML4 DOCTYPE either... but works fine when I give it no DOCTYPE at all.  I'm using nothing deprecated so I don't know what the problem could be.

7
Coding / Re: Timers in Flash / ActionScript
« on: May 11, 2012, 01:54:11 am »
Now I'm having a problem... not sure if it has anything to do with the Timer or not.
Basically, I have an animation of an object moving across the screen from the left to the right.  But rather than using a tween, I am using ActionScript to changing the x position every 2 frames.  The reason for this is because the animation is supposed to loop, but it is supposed to speed up as time goes on, for about 30 seconds... and that would be very difficult to do on the timeline (if it's even possible).
So then I have a Timer set to a really high number (27900) and when it goes off it's supposed to stop the animation.

The problem is that for some reason, it doesn't always stop in the same position.  It's close, but extremely noticable (like, maybe 20 or so pixels apart each time I run it).
I have no idea what's causing this... there is no random aspect to the code or anything... it adds the exact same amount to the x every time the movie is run.  So I'm thinking either the 27900 milliseconds is not actually exactly 27.9 seconds each time, but is somehow changing by a fraction of a second each time the movie is run (causing the x to have a different amount added to it).

Does that sound reasonable... or could it be something else?  I don't think it's a loading issue because I'm preloading all my symbols / movie clips ahead of time.

If the problem is the Timer and can't be avoided... does anyone know a work-around for this?  Perhaps I could have a variable be incremented every frame and then stop the movie clip when the variable hits a certain number... would that work?
That, or I could try putting everything out on a 1000 or so frame timeline... but that's really a hassle (not to mention I don't really know how I could go about the speeding up thing)

8
Coding / Re: Portable application
« on: May 11, 2012, 01:31:01 am »
What exactly is a "portable application"?  I'm not familiar with the term so I looked it up and it seems to just be a program that you run directly off of a USB drive.

In that case, I don't see why it would ever need to make any temporary files.  Programs don't make files on their own unless you design them that way... if you design it so that it never creates any files or that any files it creates remain in the USB drive then I don't see why that would ever be a problem at all.

Also... isn't it bad to run stuff from such devices (flash drives especially)?  I thought that reading from flash drives was a lot slower than reading from a hard drive... and they are more prone to failure / errors / corruption / being deleted / etc.  What is the point in such an application if you can just move it to the computer, run it directly, and then delete it afterwards?

9
Coding / Solved - Timers in Flash / ActionScript
« on: May 10, 2012, 02:58:44 pm »
Edit: problem solved.

I'm making a Flash movie and it relies heavily on Timers (sometimes setting Timers as high as 30,000 milliseconds).

First off, is this a bad idea?

Second, is one millisecond literally one millisecond?  Or does it depend on the computer calculating stuff and whatnot?
Basically, if the movie looks good (exactly how I want it) on my computer, then will the timing be affected if someone with a faster or slower computer than me tries to play the movie?  Or will it always turn out the way it looks? (note: I'm referring specifically to Timers... I already know that timing can be affected by image loading, etc.)

10
Entertainment / Re: Facebook has a new chat feature...interesting
« on: May 10, 2012, 01:38:41 pm »
Yeah... there's no way that the Seen feature is accurate.  How does it know if you actually viewed the message or simply have Facebook running in the background and the message popped up without you even looking at it?

But a "read receipt" would be nice (although a lot of people hate them, lol)...
for that the Messages and the Chat would need to be separated again.  I never liked it that they merged those 2 features... it really doesn't make sense.

11
Discussion / ---
« on: May 08, 2012, 05:13:30 pm »
-

12
Other Projects / ...
« on: May 03, 2012, 10:24:00 pm »
...

13
Coding / Re: Some questions about HTML
« on: April 26, 2012, 02:57:17 am »
To clarify... I wasn't saying I was going to use frames, what I meant was what would happen if I wrote perfect XHTML (with no frames) but gave it the HTML4.01 Frameset DTD? (which I'm guessing would be the least strict one besides no DTD at all)  Would it display properly, since a perfect XHTML page with no frames fits all the criteria for that DTD... or do the XHTML DTDs do something different?  Do the DTDs make the page function worse as you become less strict (so XHTML Strict would always work properly, whereas HTML4 Frameset might not (assuming that the code follows all the XHTML Strict criteria))?

Oh, and another question... what exactly is bad about using the <table> tags to do layout?  I keep seeing all these websites / people saying "Never use tables for layout!" but no one ever explains why... the few things that I've heard were:
- It's only done out of laziness (which I don't see why it matters... if the page runs fine I could care less if a web page designer was lazy or not)
- The code is harder to read / write (which I disagree with... and it doesn't need to be easy to read / write anyway.  Saying bold textitalic textunderline text is a lot easier to read and write than <span style="font-weight:bold;">bold text</span><span style="font-style:italic;">italic text</span><span style="text-decoration:underline;">underline text</span>, yet the one with the CSS is the one to use).
- The table has to load in an extra element or something so it loads more slowly (this makes absolutely no sense... a single table isn't going to noticeably slow the page at all...)
- It's bad for accessibility (like if someone has the browser read the page to him... however, this doesn't really matter for the purposes of my page (which isn't meant to have the contents spoken) and additionally I can get the brower's speech option to work fine in a table)
Does anyone have an actual reason other than personal opinion / preference as to why tables should never be used for layout?  Just wondering... my layout actually doesn't use tables but I don't understand why people say to avoid it like it's the plague.

14
Coding / Some questions about HTML
« on: April 25, 2012, 01:12:55 pm »
I'm not sure if this is the correct forum... it involves HTML code, not game-making code.
So anyway, I'm kind of new to HTML... well, not exactly new... I learned HTML back when it was very different... back when all tags were done in caps and closing tags on single-tag elements weren't needed and there was no CSS (example:
I learned:
Code: Text
  1. <CENTER><IMG SRC="http://www.google.com/images/srpr/logo3w.png"></CENTER>
Instead of:
Code: Text
  1. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" src="http://www.google.com/images/srpr/logo3w.png" />
However, I've learned just about all the differences so it doesn't really matter.
I am confused about a few things though...

First, what is the difference between XHTML and well marked-up HTML besides the DOCTYPE and the fact that instead of writing <html> you write <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> and the fact that a few HTML attributes are not included in XHTML?  Are the two compatible... I mean could I literally take my web page and change the DOCTYPE and the <html> tag and have it work as XHTML (as long as I haven't used any attributes that aren't valid in XHTML)?
Also, what really is the point of HTML when XHTML exists?  It sounds as if XHTML is better, so why should I ever use HTML?

Second, I'm confused about DOCTYPEs as they didn't exist when I learned the language.  I see that there's strict, transitional, and frameset... I don't understand the purpose.  If I write code that follows the strict standards and I give it the frameset DOCTYPE then will it still run fine?  If so, what's the point in even using strict if frameset allows for strict along with other stuff?

Third, there's this "validator" program at http://validator.w3.org/ ... I assume that what that does is checks the code for errors.  However it always finds a ton of errors in my code that I know are not errors at all.  In fact, giving it Google as the page to check gives 32 errors and there's no way that there could be that many as it runs fine for everyone who uses it.  It also tends to find tons of errors in my javascript scripts saying that they aren't valid HTML (but of course they aren't valid since they aren't HTML).  Should I ignore those errors... more importantly should I ignore this validator altogether?

Lastly, I'm curious... what would an older browser do when it comes across a tag that didn't exist at the time?  Will it ignore the tag or will it print the tag to the page as if it was text?

15
Debates / Re: Piracy... >>
« on: November 17, 2007, 09:40:06 pm »
That defeats the original meaning of the term "stealing". The WHOLE purpose for that words existence, and the laws thereof, is to deter someone from taking personal property from someone else so that they no longer have that item; making a direct copy of something does not harm the original items integrity at all. Just because some organizations bitched about declining profits doesnt mean that the terms definition should change.

Even at that; regarding the last bit- Thats where laws are set up against DISTRIBUTORS of files/mp3s/etc. If a teacher shows a movie to their class (which according to the MPAA is illegal), who's liable? the students? or the teacher?
I have no idea why the word "stealing" was invented... but it certainly isn't limited to just what you mentioned (at least the current definition isn't).  Dictionary.com says, "steal... 1. to take (the property of another or others) without permission or right, esp. secretly or by force: A pickpocket stole his watch..."  Taking songs (property) without the right to from whoever's selling it (the others) is definitely stealing by that definition.  And even if it isn't "stealing", it would definitely breaks copyright laws (which is a similar issue anyway).  Regardless of whether or not you call it "stealing", it "harms the original item's integrity" because it messes up the whole supply / demand and lowers the value of the item.  This is one of the main reason's that counterfeiting money is illegal.  No one loses the item that they bought, but buying the item was a waste of their money if it suddenly becomes worthless.
And your point about the teacher showing a movie... I wasn't aware that that was illegal.  If it is illegal then the law doesn't make sense... anyone selling a movie will know that people usually watch movies with other people.  There's no agreement that you need to make saying, "I will be the only one to watch this movie and I will not allow anyone else to see it as I watch it."  It's different from if the teacher were to be distributing copies to everyone
This is pretty much the same discussion that happened before lol.  Maybe my point will be more clear if I overly simplify everything.  Let's just say piracy was legal (everything was free), and let's say that companies only profitted from sales (so ignore concerts / donations / ads on websites), and let's say that the only point in selling a song or game or whatever was for the money (so people don't make games / music because they like to or because it would give their companies good reputations or anything).  If everything was free then then there'd be no reason for a company to make a game in the first place.  And this is obviously bad for everyone who plays games / listens to the songs / whatever because there'd no longer be anything

16
Debates / Re: Piracy... >>
« on: November 14, 2007, 02:18:08 pm »
Quote
At least with iTunes the artist is still making some money, but with piracy he isn't.
Piracy > CDs > iTunes in the long term. Piracy will kill of record companies, and removing them is the only way for artists to actually make any money. Pirate your music, then send a check for $20 to the artist. Seriously.
That makes quite a bit of sense.
I think cash would probably be better. Sending your name to someone when you are trying to make up for doing something illegal just seems like a bad idea.
lol, true.  but then you'd risk someone else taking the $20 bill before it even got to the artist.  it's more about making sure the artist gets the money (instead of the record company) than making up for something illegal
and I don't agree with this... you need to look at it from the record company's point of view.  you act as if it's wrong for the record company to profit from the artist's work, but don't you realize that it was the artist who made the deal with them?  it's not like the record company is illegally profitting from someone else's work.  the artist could have chosen to distribute his own music online for free (then no money would go to the record company), but he didn't.  why should you steal from the record company because you don't like the decision the artist made?
and why do you think he didn't choose to do that?  it's because the record company isn't always bad for the artist.  having a deal with the record company usually helps to make the artist more well-known, so he's able to have more concerts and make more money that way.  if he wasn't interested in concerts and just wanted to make money from CDs then he could sell them himself, but in that case he wouldn't be making a deal with any record company so it's irrelevant.
Actually when the music industry was started the record companies were the only option for people who wanted to sell their music so they got away with taking huge cuts of the profit. No, I don't think it is wrong to profit off someone elses work but the record companies do more than profit. They charge way more money than their services are actually worth.
Now the record companies are losing their monopolies because of computers and they are trying to present the facade that they are the best option. As far as publicity goes piracy is a much better advertisement for concerts than record companies because the advertising is more widespread.
That's sort of what I was getting at by, "the artist could have chosen to distribute his own music online for free (then no money would go to the record company)."  He could just decide not to make any deal and distribute it himself over the internet, then people could get it for free, it wouldn't be illegal (in which even more people could download it since there'd be no worrying about being caught), and the record company wouldn't get the money.  Except that probably wouldn't work unless the artist is at least somewhat well-known already or if his music is so good that it will be able to spread quickly enough

o.o can someone please point out the laws behind this? Less than 10 years ago; there were no laws, or anything of that nature for this stuff. It seems to me that its only "guidelines" set by the RIAA and MPAA; and prior to that !@#$%, the fines were for the distributors of said item, not the receivers.
I assume it would be the same laws that they have for any other kind of stealing.  There might be more but it's not really necessary.  If someone broke into a store and stole all the CDs, then gave them to you and you accepted them, knowing that they were stolen, you'd still be breaking some law.  It doesn't make sense for it to be any different just because it's files and not a hard copy
Actually, The difference is that when you copy a CD no one loses the CD. There is no law that says you can't make an exact copy of something strictly for personale use. If there were than you couldn't do much of anything without infringing on some law or another.
Wasn't this already discussed?  It makes no sense to say that it is stealing just because someone loses a CD.  CDs are pretty much worthless... they cost maybe 10 cents to make.  And having the songs on your computer is much more convenient than taking out the CD everytime you want to play it.  For the most part I'd think people would rather not have the CD (unless they want to play it in their car or something).
And piracy isn't exactly "making an exact copy of something strictly for personal use."  Making a copy implies that you actually have a legal copy of it and you are just making a copy for backup purposes or copying the files to your computer so it'd be more convenient than taking the CD out every time you want to listen to it.  Downloading a copy isn't the same as making a copy.  And it isn't "personal use" if someone goes around distributing it to other people

17
Debates / Re: Piracy... >>
« on: November 12, 2007, 01:31:30 pm »
o.o can someone please point out the laws behind this? Less than 10 years ago; there were no laws, or anything of that nature for this stuff. It seems to me that its only "guidelines" set by the RIAA and MPAA; and prior to that !@#$%, the fines were for the distributors of said item, not the receivers.
I assume it would be the same laws that they have for any other kind of stealing.  There might be more but it's not really necessary.  If someone broke into a store and stole all the CDs, then gave them to you and you accepted them, knowing that they were stollen, you'd still be breaking some law.  It doesn't make sense for it to be any different just because it's files and not a hard copy

Quote
At least with iTunes the artist is still making some money, but with piracy he isn't.
Piracy > CDs > iTunes in the long term. Piracy will kill of record companies, and removing them is the only way for artists to actually make any money. Pirate your music, then send a check for $20 to the artist. Seriously.
That makes quite a bit of sense.
I think cash would probably be better. Sending your name to someone when you are trying to make up for doing something illegal just seems like a bad idea.
lol, true.  but then you'd risk someone else taking the $20 bill before it even got to the artist.  it's more about making sure the artist gets the money (instead of the record company) than making up for something illegal
and I don't agree with this... you need to look at it from the record company's point of view.  you act as if it's wrong for the record company to profit from the artist's work, but don't you realize that it was the artist who made the deal with them?  it's not like the record company is illegally profitting from someone else's work.  the artist could have chosen to distribute his own music online for free (then no money would go to the record company), but he didn't.  why should you steal from the record company because you don't like the decision the artist made?
and why do you think he didn't choose to do that?  it's because the record company isn't always bad for the artist.  having a deal with the record company usually helps to make the artist more well-known, so he's able to have more concerts and make more money that way.  if he wasn't interested in concerts and just wanted to make money from CDs then he could sell them himself, but in that case he wouldn't be making a deal with any record company so it's irrelevant.

18
Debates / Re: Piracy... >>
« on: November 11, 2007, 04:08:30 pm »
Are you sure that more money goes to the record companies if you buy the song from iTunes?  Everything's cheaper, so if you're right then it's a higher percentage going to the record companies aswell.  But what's your  point?  If you're just trying to say CDs are better then you're probably right.  But if you're trying to say that piracy is better then the argument makes no sense.  At least with iTunes the artist is still making some money, but with piracy he isn't.

19
Debates / Re: Piracy... >>
« on: November 11, 2007, 01:27:21 pm »
There are many good songs out there on albums that are filled with garbage. I just can't justify buying an entire album just to get one song. If the album is mostly good songs however I will then go out and buy it, quite satisfied that I am getting my moneys worth.
That's why you should use the iTunes store / any other online store that lets you buy just one song.  Unless the song is album-only or not available on there then there's no reason that you'd need to buy the entire CD.  And if you want the whole CD then it's usually cheaper to buy over iTunes anyway.
The only problem is that I've heard that the quality is worse than CDs.  I've never noticed though... maybe because mostly everything I get is from iTunes

20
Debates / Re: Piracy... >>
« on: November 11, 2007, 03:42:34 am »
Because nobody buys them, so nobody makes a profit. It's redundant for companies to try to sue over something that is, in all respects, dead weight.
That's not exactly true (well, with Nintendo anyway)... alot of old games have been re-released for GBA and other systems.  And you can also download old games with the Wii.  So Nintendo still profits from them.  If there's a game that isn't going to be re-released then I don't really see anything wrong with pirating it (in terms of Nintendo's profit, it's really not much different than buying a used game), but I still think it should be up to the company to decide to distribute it for free or not.  Problem is, game companies like Nintendo never choose to distribute their old games for free :(

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