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Trojan

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*** WARNING: STUPIDITY IS A BANNABLE OFFENCE ***


HOW TO ASK A QUESTION




Please do a search to see if a similar question has been asked before - e.g. we always get a lot of people asking the same "project ideas" question at the start of the academic year.

Required reading: guide to asking for help online.

In the world of hackers, the kind of answers you get to your technical questions depends as much on the way you ask the questions as on the difficulty of developing the answer. This guide will teach you how to ask questions in a way that is likely to get you a satisfactory answer.

The first thing to understand is that hackers actually like hard problems and good, thought-provoking questions about them. If we didn't, we wouldn't be here. If you give us an interesting question to chew on we'll be grateful to you; good questions are a stimulus and a gift. Good questions help us develop our understanding, and often reveal problems we might not have noticed or thought about otherwise. Among hackers, "Good question!" is a strong and sincere compliment.

Despite this, hackers have a reputation for meeting simple questions with what looks like hostility or arrogance. It sometimes looks like we're reflexively rude to newbies and the ignorant. But this isn't really true.

What we are, unapologetically, is hostile to people who seem to be unwilling to think or to do their own homework before asking questions. People like that are time sinks — they take without giving back, they waste time we could have spent on another question more interesting and another person more worthy of an answer. We call people like this "losers" (and for historical reasons we sometimes spell it "lusers").

Please read the entire page, particularly the section "Write in clear, grammatical, correctly-spelled language".

Posts that are not written in clear, grammatical, correctly-spelled language may be deleted, depending on how much _effort_ the moderators think that you've put into it. If English is not your first language you're not going to be given out to for typos, but please - the Return key is there for a reason - use paragraphs! The same for the Shift key.


LINK: HOW *NOT* TO ASK A QUESTION



FREQUENTLY GIVEN ANSWER

The most frequently given answer on the programming board is "Give us more info". So make sure that when posting a question you give as much detail as possible, including stuff you've tried that failed. If you show that you've made an effort at the problem then people are more likely to help. Asking people to write your homework without making any attempt at it will result in a PFO (Please Try Elsewhere).

KEEP YOUR CODE CLEAN

Keep all your code indented corrected, either tabs or spaces (better). Or use a pretty printer (look it up). There is a real reason for indentation, it makes code 100000% easier to read, comprehend and modify.


REAL-TIME HELP


If you're in need of help quickly you might want to try IRC (Internet Relay Chat) which is a text based real-time communication.

To use IRC get a client like xchat (unix) or mirc (win) and connect to a server.

You'll find a lot of boards readers on Quakenet since boards.ie originated as a quakers message board. Connect to ign.ie.quakenet.org and try the following channels for help: #quake.ie , #unix.ie , #security.ie , #boards.ie .





FAQ RULES

This is sticky thread which will hold pointers to the Programming boards' FAQs.

To have a new FAQ added to this list please execute the following instructions:

1. Create a new thread called "FAQs: Subject" (NB: the 's' is necessary to avoid a right-casing "feature" of vbb)
2. In the first post of the thread include a list of links to external resources (e.g. the Usenet FAQs), etc. Please note that if you don't post this, either your post will be edited to include this information, or deleted without comment.
3. In subsequent posts to that thread, please include the question you are answering in the post subject. A brief keywords section in the post is optional, but would be handy for people searching threads so keep it in mind.

Your thread will be linked to from here by the moderators.

Note: this thread and all FAQ threads will be extremely moderated to ensure high signal to noise. Irrelevant posts will be deleted without comment. Also, please pay some attention to spelling in FAQ posts, the posts will be around a long time.

Talliesin

Here is a new rule effective immediately.

If you post a link which precisely answers a question, and uses good design principals (rather than half-assed kludges) you are then allowed to add something along the lines of:

STFW
J00 R LUSER
Stoopid stoodent

Otherwise you aren't.

Alternatively, you may choose to explain what search you did, and on what basis you judged the quality of the information (there is a hell of a lot of crap programming tutorials out there, which newbies are better of not reading).

There are two types of knowledge. One is knowing a thing. The other is knowing where to find it.
-- Samuel Johnson

Knowing how to STFW well for information in a given field is a skill in itself. Encourage people to develop it rather than flaming them when they don't.

Talliesin

Persistent and/or extensive deletion of posts such as may damage the flow of a thread are harmful to everyone's ability to communicate. As such offenders will be banned.

Capt'n Midnight

http://www.thefreecountry.com/ - free programming resources

Hobbes

XUL FAQ - http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=212605

Please add to the list then delete this post. Thanks.

PoiBoi_Patch

Python FAQ

Q. What is Python?
A. Python is an interpreted, interactive, object-oriented programming language. It incorporates modules, exceptions, dynamic typing, very high level dynamic data types, and classes. Python combines remarkable power with very clear syntax. It has interfaces to many system calls and libraries, as well as to various window systems, and is extensible in C or C++. It is also usable as an extension language for applications that need a programmable interface. Finally, Python is portable: it runs on many Unix variants, on the Mac, and on PCs under MS-DOS, Windows, Windows NT, and OS/2.

Q. What is python good for?
A. ython is a high-level general-purpose programming language that can be applied to many different classes of problems.

The language comes with a large standard library that covers areas such as string processing (regular expressions, Unicode, calculating differences between files), Internet protocols (HTTP, FTP, SMTP, XML-RPC, POP, IMAP, CGI programming), software engineering (unit testing, logging, profiling, parsing Python code), and operating system interfaces (system calls, filesystems, TCP/IP sockets).

Q. How Do i get docs on Python?
A. All documentation is available on-line, starting at http://www.python.org/doc/.

The standard documentation for the current stable version of Python is also available at http://docs.python.org/.

The LaTeX source for the documentation is part of the source distribution. If you don't have LaTeX, the latest Python documentation set is available by anonymous FTP in various formats such as PostScript and HTML. Visit the above URL for links to the current versions.

Q. what is python software foundation?
A. The Python Software Foundation is an independent non-profit organization that holds the copyright on Python versions 2.1 and newer. The PSF's mission is to advance open source technology related to the Python programming language and to publicize the use of Python. The PSF's home page is at http://www.python.org/psf/.

Donations to the PSF are tax-exempt in the US. If you use Python and find it helpful, please contribute via the PSF donation page.

Q. Can Pyhton be compiled
A. yes a program caled py2exe exist and for macintosh's apple we have py2app

Q. does Python have GUI support
A. Yes there are a vast amount of products for python programing with GUI modes for your scripts/apps

Q. Does Python support java
A. Yes, Jpython is a new founded source of python programming with embeded java support.

Baz_

FAQs: Python

ala Hobbes, please add this to list and then delete this, and poiboi's, post

PoiBoi_Patch

thanks baz im not really sure i knew what i was doing lol it was late when i posted and tired sorry for all that crap .... Patch

mar 25

Hi im am wondering could any one tell me how to burn dvd's?
I got a new computer with a dvd burner on it and it wont burn dvd's for me. It's all new to me so i would appreciate it if someone could tell me how to burn. Do i need to download something?