The Ranting Room

I'll freely admit I am not the world greatest programmer - if I was I would be a games programmer or some other high-flying software mechanic and not a lowly engineer... however, I have been programming since the late 70s in a variety of languages, from raw machine code (if the processor is simple enough) to rather misguided attempts at graphics based 4GLs... Languages such as FORTRAN, COBOL, coral, pascal, basic, Modula-2, HTML, css, java, asp.net, c, c++ and a variety of machine specific propriety languages hold no mystery to me. But here I am at 3:30 am on a Sunday morning after 12 solid hours of staring at a p*xy PC screen trying to figure out why the fk I cannot perform a simple task of using vb.net to suck an XML "database" into Excel and plot a few (well 167) crappy graphs. I mean - XML is supposed to make life simple, but for the love of all things precious, why the fk did the mrns at W3C invent such a ridiculously verbose syntax and then give it to fking muppets  (who haven't quite grasped the concept of object oriented languages yet) at MicrSft to code! For example: objAdapter.SelectCommand = New System.Data.OleDb.OleDbCommand(strSQL, objConn) ... clear as sodding mud... at night... wearing a blindfold... in a coal-celler... while still under the affects of those drops the optician gives you that dilate the pupils so people afterwards think you're pissed or stoned or just plain mad.

mystic fred wrote:   bring back MS-DOS

Dean wrote: whenever I drop into the MS command line now I keep typing "ls" instead of "dir" - what Windoze needs is a nice UNIX shell.

http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/

Can't live without this. 

You mean computers aren't magic?

computer are as magic as women - take a look here 

Dean wrote: I'll freely admit I am not the world greatest programmer - if I was I would be a games programmer or some other high-flying software mechanic and not a lowly engineer... however, I have been programming since the late 70s in a variety of languages, from raw machine code (if the processor is simple enough) to rather misguided attempts at graphics based 4GLs... Languages such as FORTRAN, COBOL, coral, pascal, basic, Modula-2, HTML, css, java, asp.net, c, c++ and a variety of machine specific propriety languages hold no mystery to me. But here I am at 3:30 am on a Sunday morning after 12 solid hours of staring at a p*xy PC screen trying to figure out why the fk I cannot perform a simple task of using vb.net to suck an XML "database" into Excel and plot a few (well 167) crappy graphs. I mean - XML is supposed to make life simple, but for the love of all things precious, why the fk did the mrns at W3C invent such a ridiculously verbose syntax and then give it to fking muppets  (who haven't quite grasped the concept of object oriented languages yet) at MicrSft to code! For example: objAdapter.SelectCommand = New System.Data.OleDb.OleDbCommand(strSQL, objConn) ... clear as sodding mud... at night... wearing a blindfold... in a coal-celler... while still under the affects of those drops the optician gives you that dilate the pupils so people afterwards think you're pissed or stoned or just plain mad.   I think to would have been quicker for me to print these 180MB XML files out on paper and use scissors and glue to organise them into a life-size papier-mâché model of an elephant on roller-skates juggling three hippopotomi.   At least I'd have something to show my boss and his customer on Monday.   Oh well, back to it... now where did I put that bottle of PVA glue?...

Kind of interesting, my VB.Net teacher uses the phrase clear as mud all the time in class. I have her for a programming logic class as well, I don't think she says it nearly as much in that class.

I do hate my programming logic class more though, I get to use a language called JustBasic, which feels like it takes the limitations of TI-Basic. I have only used Python to see what it feels like, but it seems like a nicer language.

floydispink wrote: I'm  mad!  I bought a new CD-player which is of great quality, but somehow in between the songs there's a one minute break. I've called the support service and they said it was because of the quality of the sound that the thing needed to read every song for a second. It wasn't mentioned anywhere when I bought the thing.  enjoy listening to Dark SIde Of The Moon this way.

Dean wrote: floydispink wrote: I'm  mad!  I bought a new CD-player which is of great quality, but somehow in between the songs there's a one minute break. I've called the support service and they said it was because of the quality of the sound that the thing needed to read every song for a second. It wasn't mentioned anywhere when I bought the thing.  enjoy listening to Dark SIde Of The Moon this way.  I think you've been fobbed-off with a bs answer - even if that was a truthful answer (which I very much doubt - the gap in a track on a CD is silent, but not empty of data - the player is reading the disc constantly from the moment you start playing and even if it does pre-read 1 second of data, it will do it over the silent bit too). Take it back and ask for a refund as being not fit for purpose.

Edited by floydispink - November 27 2009 at 13:45

floydispink wrote: Dean wrote: floydispink wrote: I'm  mad!  I bought a new CD-player which is of great quality, but somehow in between the songs there's a one minute break. I've called the support service and they said it was because of the quality of the sound that the thing needed to read every song for a second. It wasn't mentioned anywhere when I bought the thing.  enjoy listening to Dark SIde Of The Moon this way.  I think you've been fobbed-off with a bs answer - even if that was a truthful answer (which I very much doubt - the gap in a track on a CD is silent, but not empty of data - the player is reading the disc constantly from the moment you start playing and even if it does pre-read 1 second of data, it will do it over the silent bit too). Take it back and ask for a refund as being not fit for purpose. Yeah, I'm going to ask for refund tomorrow, as the company's service is closed now. They told me the problem might be helped when I updated the CD-player by putting some USB stick with files in it. I did that, but nothing has solved. The sound is very good though, but I get extremely frustrated every time the gap comes in.

I'm having trouble understanding how one CD player could sound better than another, unless you are referring to the quality of the speakers. Personally, I would rather spend $350 on headphones instead of speakers if I was going to spend such a large amount of money on equipment.