Casualty In The Fight Against Boredom: August 2005

Beating a Dead Horse

Recently there was a post made on slashdot titled King Kong vs. the Pirates of the Multiplex.

Haven't we already been down this road a million times before?

Piracy is bad and the movie industry is hurting because of it. No. The movie isn't hurting because of people cheating the system, it's because the movie industry hasn't given the people anything decent to watch! Check out this list and tell me that at least half of these movies have been worth shelling out $10 a pop for.

I'm a firm believer in patrionage. If I want to see a movie, I'll shell out the cash for it. If want to own a copy of it, I'll buy it. But to expect that everyone else is going to drop good money for a product that is not worth it is foolish. If the movie industry got off their ass and produced something of quality, something that everyone would actually want to own or see the people will drop the coin for it.

(check out that list, movies that were actually well made earned a fair bit of cash)

Recursion();

This weekend I did a little bit of coding. My roommate was asked to help out some guy write a program to calculate what the average damage would be if you were to roll X N sided dice and there was a damage reduction of Z on the roll.

Since it used recursion and was kinda tricky to figure out I figure it would make for a good example:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/*
* This code is distributed through the GNU Public Licence. http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt

* Author: Paul Greber
* Date: August 29, 2005

This program calculates the average result of several multi-sided dice being thrown. It is a display of recursion.

*/

#include
#include
using namespace std;

int calc(int,int,int,int);

int main()
{
int sides,dice,reduction;

printf("Please Enter...");
printf("Number of Dice: ");
scanf(dice);
printf("Sides on the dice: ");
scanf(sides);
printf("Damage reduction: ");
scanf(reduction);

int sum=calc(dice,sides,reduction,0);
double combos=pow(double(sides),double(dice));
double awns=sum/combos;
printf("sum: ");printf(sum);
printf("# of combos: ");printf(combos);
printf("The average damage is: ");printf(awns);
return 0;
}

int calc(int d,int s, int r,int x)
{
int sum=0; // keeps the running sum of the results

for(int i=1;i<=s;i++)
{
if(d-1>0) // if this is not last dice
// take the value of the dice
// and the previous values
// and pass them on to checking out
// the next dice
sum+=calc(d-1,s,r,i+x);
else
{
if(i+x-r>0) // if this is the last dice
sum+=i+x-r;
} // sum up the value of that
// dice and all previous
// dice.

/* The recursion will sum up all the values of the
last dice with all the previous dice values.
Then once those sums have been made, the value
on the previous dice will increase and go back into
recursion of the next dice and so forth.
*/
}

return sum;
}
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Rants From the SoapBox

Ok so here is the skinny.
I have to give a persuasive speech tomorrow and if I type it out it will help me organise my thoughts. Note: This is only going to be part of it since I'm way too tired to finish it up right now.
....

People do stupid things for two simple reasons; ignorance or apathy.
If you are using Internet Explorer to surf the web you are doing it because of ignorance or apathy.

Good afternoon, my name is Paul and today I am going to inform as to why you should stop using Internet Explorer and motivate you into switching to a different browser.

There are three reasons why you should stop using Internet Explorer; Security, Standards and accessibility.

Security is the main reason why everyone should stop using Internet Explorer. People do a lot of private things with their computer on the net and Internet Explorer leaves them open to spyware, adware and viruses which invade their privacy, spam them with pop-up ads and bogs down computer performance.

Why does Internet Explorer make you so susceptible to these things? It is because of how it is designed. Internet Explorer is directly intergrated into the Windows operating system allowing IE to download and install certain files without the user even being aware.

Some people like to think that the reason why IE is so prone to viruses is because those that write them want to cause the most damage and because IE is the most popular. While this argument makes sense it isn't the real reason why. Let's take a look at servers. There are basically two types of servers; Windows and Linux. Unlike with web browsers Microsoft does don't have the majority. Linux is the most popular type of server but it doesn't get broken into, it's the Windows servers that do. The reason is because the Windows servers are designed poorly and that is why people target IE, because it's easier to write malicious code for.

IE users think they are safe with Microsoft's Security updates, Norton anti-virus and an army of spyware and adware removal programs. To say that you are safe is like saying that you are going to keep intruders out of your house by putting up a fence and leaving the door wide open. It is in the basic design of Internet Explorer that prevents it from being an acceptable way to keep your computer safe.

Little Bit About Me

I figure I should start this with the basics...

I'm a 20 year old dude who is presently taking Computer Engineering.
I spend most of my time at the computer listening to music, reading web comics/news, posting in forums and other excellent forms of wasting my time.

I don't play nearly as many video games as I should, it's a downside to using linux as much as I do. I've gotten pretty into the whole Open Source idea and spend most of my produtive time trying to tweak/fix my system.

My aim with this blog is to display general items of interest and to keep personal shit to a minimum. I don't have the dark rimmed glasses or web cam to make this an emo blog. If I had those I would so be all over it!