Political forum discussion and planning

[Telarus]

I did some research on this, it seems like a recent problem with SMF (the posts about it are fairly recent).

Here are the references I've found. If I find a solution I'll post a link.

http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?P=f78b9b128bdb809601e5491344154706&topic=470035.msg3302295#msg3302295

http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=472921.0

[Salty]

I wonder if it has something to do with using their installation program as opposed to doing it manually. I will do it manually this time.

[Salty]

Ho! HO HO!

So, during the manual installation, which took some fair amount of extra time because of one (1) limp brained FUCKNECK on tech support, uh oh yeah, there was an unchecked box for UTF-8 which I clicked the everloving fuck out of. Then i posted a word doc with a bunch of freaky formatting and such. And it FUCKING WORKED MOO HOO HAHA!

So yeah, I'm pretty sure it was the quickuploader since I never had the option for UTF8 with that thing. So I guess this was my fault for taking a shortcut, then again who could've guessed?

Let me know if there are any issues. I would got a second chance to not fail a class and I need to get busy.

Oh I can actually access it from my PC now as well.

[Salty]

Also, thanks for your help, guys. I really appreciate it.

[Cain]

Fcuk yeah, we're back in business.

Thanks Alty!

[hirley0]

LAMAT smf [|/] tbc from 5.43M6268to ? Scripting
FOLLOWING:  a clue in the book i did go to http://www.symantec.con
to look4 Nortons GHOST | IT WAS:  just A 4 trip whiTch i try to avoid
searching webcrawler ?/? i found a site that had tested / had links 2
some FREE gHOSTs | most were none OP but i found 1to download
_ HAVE not tried it out yet BUT AS SEAMS to be suggested HERE
thing are working there & my guess is while its working | Making a
COLON makes sense to me | maybe on a Jump | anyway good luvk
Fan of SMF if U must know  | once a user of php | that was years ago

[Salty]

Fcuk yeah, we're back in business.

Thanks Alty!

You're welcome! I just hope it all works and stays working.

[Triple Zero]

So this part works as it should now and I don't need to try and reproduce/fix the problem? Well done!

And in case anyone is wondering what UTF-8 and all that mysterious "encoding" talk is really about, what it actually means except for "well all I know is if you get it wrong, you either get ????? or you get these square shapes, sometimes with numbers in em, or a quote turns into two accented characters, and apparently it can even cut off your text".

This article is a very readable and excellent introduction on the subject:

The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Absolutely, Positively Must Know About Unicode and Character Sets (No Excuses!) by Joel Spolsky

Actually, it's hardly an introduction, while it's "the absolute minimum for every programmer", it's also pretty much all you need to know about it whether you're programming or not. It's the basics, and it will transform "encoding" from "that mysterious thing that makes text funky sometimes" into an actual understanding of what's going on.

Yes its intended audience are programmers, but I just (re-)skimmed the text and it doesn't get too technical as far as I can tell.

(It helps if you know a tiny bit about how to count in binary: There's 8 bits in one byte. That's a sequence of eight ones and/or zeroes, and therefore you can make 2⁸=256 different combinations of eight bits. So instead of writing down the ones and zeroes we numbered them starting with the number zero which is 0000 0000. The next one is 0000 0001, and then 0000 0010 (number two), and 0000 0011 (number three), and so on. It's important to realize that the bits on the right change first, and that the first half (0-127) of them all have the leftmost bit at zero, and the second half (128-255) is in exactly the same order as the first except it has the leftmost bit set to one).

(Oh and I see he also mentions hexadecimal numbers. That's if you have 16 digits instead of 10 (decimal) or 2 (binary). You use the regular numbers 0-9 but then instead of 10 you get A, B, C, D, E and F. The hexadecimal number "F" equals 15 decimal. Add one more and you get 16 decimal which looks like "10" in hex. Often they write hex numbers with "0x" in front of them to signify they're hex, so 0x10 = 16. The nice thing (for programmers) about hex is that the numbers 0 .. 255 (decimal) are exactly 2 hex-digits: 0x00 to 0xFF. Try this out: Start up your Windows Calculator, and select View>Scientific Mode (or in Win7 it's called "Programmer"). Now type in the number 3735928559 and hit the "Hex" button. OMG!)

Whatever, even if the hex thing flies over your head (or the binary thing for that matter), the article is still really well-written and IF you're curious, it'll explain you the fuck out of encoding and wtf is up with that and how as usual history screwed us in the ass because everybody started doing whatever without any foresight.

Fortunately most people seem to agree that UTF-8 is pretty cool and works really well (especially if you write English) and so these problems aren't nearly as bad as the shit we had to endure with HTML during the Browser Wars.


This has been a TripZip service announcement. Also, if you're NOT curious, that's completely fine

[Cain]

http://dirtypoliticsforum.com/index.php is about as ready for launch as it will ever be.

I suggest a week or two of putting up top quality content, then passing on the link to the Capitol Grilling lot, Nigel's friends etc

[Prince Glittersnatch III]

Reged as Cyborg Glenn Beck.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Registered as Kitty Parson!

[The Johnny]

Joh.Nyxian

[The Johnny]

BTW, single aposthropes " ' " are not accepted as valid characters in registring a user name (doesnt really affect me, just saying)

[Cain]

I think that's a general SMF thing.  You can probably put them in a username, so long as your login name doesn't have them (Ie; change it in Account Settings)

[Lenin McCarthy]

Registered as Marcus Aurawlsius (edit: Changed nick to Barefoot Imelda Marcos). At some point I will invite a few of my less partisan politically interested friends.