26 Oct, 2010, Bobo the bee wrote in the 21st comment:
Votes: 0
Kline said:
Rudha said:
However, you're only using the bank to store positive amounts of gold, you should be okay doing that.


So I would be unable to withdraw all funds from my account? There is now a minimum balance?


Or if you withdraw your money, the bank no longer assumes you have an account with them.
26 Oct, 2010, Runter wrote in the 22nd comment:
Votes: 0
Lawl. Since we're talking about shoehorning here just use an 8 byte integer and only use the first 4 bytes for the value and the last 4 for the account flag. Okay, on second thought just use two variables. ;)
26 Oct, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 23rd comment:
Votes: 0
Runter said:
Okay, on second thought just use two variables. ;)

Your eminently common-sensical approach is utterly unacceptable here.

Personally I favor the reimplementation of Python in C.
26 Oct, 2010, jurdendurden wrote in the 24th comment:
Votes: 0
Well if you want to get fancy with it Ssol you could have the account close due to inactivity or to negative funds. Could just run a check through update_handler once a day to see which accounts are negative or inactive and wipe them if over 30 days/under -200 gold (credits) or something. And you spoke of doing banking anywhere… you could make an item_type called "ATM", and set these up on every corner or wherever you want them, and allow them to work with a specialized card that each person carries. If you lose your card you're screwed :P Or could just be an implanted chip in their arm, however sci-fi you want to get with it.
26 Oct, 2010, Ssolvarain wrote in the 25th comment:
Votes: 0
jurdendurden said:
Or could just be an implanted chip in their arm, however sci-fi you want to get with it.


I was thinking it would be one of the standard benefits of being a citizen of the Midgaard. My basis is that if we can do mobile banking from a cell phone, why wouldn't I be able to include as one of the perks of cyberware? No interest, fees or the like. Just a bank to hold and transfer money. If I could get fancy, though, I'd use this "online" account to hold all balances and draw funds from there for all purchases. Awakening (based on Shadowrun) had these cool credsticks to hold electronic currency that could be secured/cracked, in addition to a hard currency. I like the idea of these credsticks, but I think the use would be limited unless I made them mandatory… which is kind of something I want to avoid.
26 Oct, 2010, Kline wrote in the 26th comment:
Votes: 0
If you plan to have a system accessible from anywhere on the premise of mobile cellular banking, why not just rename the existing display fields to "bank"? It sounds like the "bank" system you have envisioned is a renamed method of "cash on hand". So unless you add some kind of item/cost for "worldwide access" outside of a fixed bank facility or cash dispensing location, you may as well just rename things and save a lot of hassle :D.
27 Oct, 2010, quixadhal wrote in the 27th comment:
Votes: 0
No, not python. Implement perl.

Perl provides you with both "undef" for declaring something to be not-defined and not-zero (but still false), and "0e0", for a numerically zero value that is also true.

Neither of which is trivial to have in C.
27 Oct, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 28th comment:
Votes: 0
Python has the same concept with None vs. False vs. zero.

The easiest equivalent in C would be to have a pointer, such that if it's NULL the value is missing, and if it points to something, that thing is the value. It just means you have to manage more memory, and be careful in your variable accesses.
27 Oct, 2010, Rudha wrote in the 29th comment:
Votes: 0
Yes we all know by now that the preferred method of argumentation here is to erect radiculous strawmen and then mock their ludricrous nature, but back here in the real world are people who have been dealing with Cs eccentricities for a decade. Provided you're using pointers sanely and not leaking memory its pretty easy to test for the existance of a variable. Ill post an example when I get home if people havent reduced this thread to another useless bit of argumentum ad absurdum drivel by then.

Maya/Rudha
27 Oct, 2010, Ssolvarain wrote in the 30th comment:
Votes: 0
Rudha said:
reduced this thread to another useless bit of argumentum ad absurdum


This thread can only contain as much absurdum as the OP. Which… means there's still a lot of room left for absurdums.
27 Oct, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 31st comment:
Votes: 0
Rudha said:
Yes we all know by now that the preferred method of argumentation here is to erect radiculous strawmen and then mock their ludricrous nature, but back here in the real world are people who have been dealing with Cs eccentricities for a decade.

You made statements that were misleading at best and simply false at worst. You made confusing statements about __if_exists being used to do something that is simply inappropriate here. You talked about Python being written in C as if that were relevant to solving Ssol's problem. You kept saying that this or that were "trivial" but never said how one might actually do it (other than with incorrect statements like __if_exists).

It is rather poor form to turn around and say that this is all everybody else's fault, when it started because you said things that were simply wrong but you wouldn't let go, and you drove it to the absurdity of reimplementing Python.

If you have examples of things people said that were straw man arguments, or why the things you said were not in fact wrong, you should just say so and provide us all with that information, rather than insult people with empty hand-waving assaulting their characters.

Rudha said:
Provided you're using pointers sanely and not leaking memory its pretty easy to test for the existance of a variable.

I think you mean what I said in post #28. I think it was said before that as well. If you meant something else, then yes, please do provide an example because it will most likely be helpful to this thread.
27 Oct, 2010, Rudha wrote in the 32nd comment:
Votes: 0
Generally when people say something that can be taken in a normal, sane context, and in anorher completetely ludricous and irrelevant context, they mean the former, but by all means, do continue to believe what you choose to; just dont be surprised when we end up having two entirely different conversations.

Maya/Rudha
27 Oct, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 33rd comment:
Votes: 0
Look, we actually have a technical conversation to have here. Why can't you just participate in the technical conversation? :sad: Why can't you just say why it is that you were right? If you were wrong, let's just move on already for crying out loud. If you were right, then help people learn something useful about these technical issues. These insults are pointless and wastes of time. Maybe we are indeed interested in entirely different conversations. :sad:
27 Oct, 2010, Rudha wrote in the 34th comment:
Votes: 0
It is exceedingly difficult for me to maintain a relevant and intelligent technical conversation when people are not participating in good faith. Ad homininen and ad absurdum arguments are not participating in hood faith. If ypu want me to stop calling people on it, stop doing it.

Maya/Rudha
27 Oct, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 35th comment:
Votes: 0
If correcting your false statements about programming is "participating in bad faith", then I am guilty as charged. I don't mind if you call people on something, as long as you are actually willing, and able, to back up your accusations. In the meantime, I'm not sure what your goal is here. It certainly does not seem to be talking about the issue at hand. I will do my part to return to that issue henceforth, and try my best to ignore any further unsubstantiated insults that serve only to distract the thread from an interesting technical conversation.
27 Oct, 2010, Runter wrote in the 36th comment:
Votes: 0
The "some people in this thread have been using C for a decade line" was funny. It reminded me of the "maybe I should repeat myself in one of my many spoken languages" lines last week. Someone must have utterly no respect for the other people who frequent these forums. Its especially cute because nobody ever points out that most of the people have more than a decade of fluency with C here (and other languages) and most of us can speak more than one spoke language. So really, do only those of us who have been using C for more than a decade get to speak? Or should those words have exemption from scrutiny?
28 Oct, 2010, quixadhal wrote in the 37th comment:
Votes: 0
Do I get to use bold, if I programmed in C on the Commodore 64? Or am I stuck with just italics?
28 Oct, 2010, Runter wrote in the 38th comment:
Votes: 0
You must use strike through under those unfortunate circumstances.
28 Oct, 2010, bbailey wrote in the 39th comment:
Votes: 0
David Haley said:
If you have examples of things people said that were straw man arguments, or why the things you said were not in fact wrong, you should just say so and provide us all with that information, rather than insult people with empty hand-waving assaulting their characters.

Rudha said:
Provided you're using pointers sanely and not leaking memory its pretty easy to test for the existance of a variable.

I think you mean what I said in post #28. I think it was said before that as well. If you meant something else, then yes, please do provide an example because it will most likely be helpful to this thread.


^This. Emphasis mine.

In my limited (albeit chronologically lenghty), self-taught knowledge of C, what's being said here is that you can use a pointer, combined with the runtime allocation and deallocation of a variable on the heap, to simply test for the existence of a variable.

Like this.

Is my understanding correct?

Rudha: If the above is correct, but you are referring to some other method, can you share it with us?

P.S. Yes, I know the mudbytes pastebin is horrible. Yes I know my line widths are horrible. ;)
28 Oct, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 40th comment:
Votes: 0
Yes, that us entirely possible and correct - it's what I suggested in post #28 (check the chronological order of those citations). I would ask though that people not speak of the "existence" of variables. That means something different, not whether or not they have a non-zero value. A pointer exists when it is declared, not when it is given a value. This is important when you consider that a suggestion was given to use __if_exists which does test for true existence (but only at compile-time).

Basically C doesn't have the same dynamic notion of existence that languages like Python do. It can be implemented of course as something else, but then you're testing for something other than the presence of variable.
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