I can't give names right now.
I've seen adverts of cookies that specificaly show how well they hold up when dunked in tea.
There is a kind of bread (usualy sold dried - for campers and military guys) that has to be dunked to be eaten.
Also when you go to hotels and you are served with burgette(?) and soup, you eat the bread by dunking it in the soup (this is not tea, true but I'm trying to make a point).

Imagine an Eskimo calling african foods smelly. You will not believe that these guys eat fermented fish as a staple.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermented_fish
An article in "Awake" described the dish as having a smell as pungent as excrement. Compare with this description in wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surstr%C3%B6mming

tpia:

don't dip/dunk your bread in the tea (naija habit )

take a bite of bread, followed by a sip of tea, then repeat.

Keep on repeating till the meal ends.


Pinky up if you care about appearances _j/k

Some kinds of bread and cookies are actualy designed to be dunked it tea or other drinks though.

Two reasons I can easily deduce are:

1). These foriegn companies have probably solved such problems in the past and a client might feel it's pointless commissioning the project to a local developer who while being smart enough to handle the job will probably waste a lot of time reinventing the wheel when the foriegn firms will simple dig into their vast archives and reuse existing codes thus saving time and money.

2). If a local developers program were to crash and your company looses a lot of money in the process could such sums be recovered from them even via a sucessfull law suite? Most of our local firms just don't have the financial muscles to deal with such scenerios thus a client will prefer to outsource big budget projects to firms that will be able to deal with the financial consequencies that may result from failure of their "solutions".

Procedural programming is fine for some small programs but you will quickly beging to appreciate the rationale behind OOP when you are faced with some very complex programs.

As to the issue of returning multiple values from a function I still don't think that is theoreticaly possible because a function terminates when it returns. You could however return an array containing multiple values, or use pointers/references seed vairous variable from within a function. (I'm not even sure procedural programs work with pointer/refrences).

Some things which I doubt you will be able to handle easily using procedural programing (especialy is you hate using libraries) are:
1). Imagine writing a program where several values have to be stored in an array of undefined size. That is the size of the array will be decided at run time such that the array can grow dynamicaly.

2). Consider a gaming program where you have vairous characters all having numerous body parts with vairous xtics and states which continualy vary and react to vairous stimulus as the game progresses. You will quickly run into trouble using procedural programing.

I think anything you can do with a procedural language you can do with an OOP language but the converse is not the case.

Bill Clinton was one of the best prez in the US. But he was dragged to court during his tenure, not for the goods that he did, rather for the infractions he committed.

There should be no sacred cows in the country, especialy among the law givers and enforcers themselve. If Ribadu has (or did) break the law or violated some code of conduct during his tenure, he should be made to face the music on those charges, in as much as he was praised for the loudables things that he did. However any attempt to unjustly witch hunt him or any other Nigerian who stood up for equity and justice must be resisted by one and all.

Hi Adam,
Hope all is well.
First off, it was you who posted that you had a problem. Now you spend so much time literaly glorifying the "problem" and making excuses while putting down people who try to give you advices. They are not the persona of the girl who broke your heart.

You will definitely not agree with all the posts but some are realy right on the mark:

from @Love always:
After the girl broke up with you, you began to dislike yourself. That's why you changed who you are. You went from being a religious respectful guy, to being a jerk.

she is quite right. You ended up thinking there was something wrong with you after that break up that you beging to loath the person you were. The person whose character drove away your love.
The girl of your dreams didn't appreciate who you were and so you changed yourself to become more like her.
That is not good at all.

You need to realise that if someone breaks up with you it doesn't always mean there is a problem with you. The problem could just easily be with the other person.
Be the best you that you can be because for every deviation you make from the original you as a result of the hurt you feel, the more victories your heart-breaker scores over you.

Someone said "The opposite of love is not hate. It is indiference." Your deep hatred for her will just as easily be because you truely long to have her back. To have her acknowledge that she made a mistake in leaving you and that she wants you back. Get over her and erase her from your mind. The longer you pine over her the longer the hurt will take to heal.

Enjoy.

There realy is a degradation in the standard of education across the nation. Many primary school leavers and junior secondary school students these days can't even recite or write poetry. They read little or no literary pieces aside from those that form the school's curriculum. This to a large extent a failing on the part of the teachers and the schools.

I find it a little appaling when I read through dailies and magazines (which should be an ideal source for pupils to hone their reading and writing skills) only to find them fraught with grammatical and spelling errors. Our TV icons and public speakers don't do much better either.

In present day Nigeria there are, it seems, fewer motivations for the average pupil to build up their vocabulary. This should not be the case especialy when one considers the availability of novels and literrary works sold cheaply at most major bus stops, not to mention the availability of litrature on the internet. The reading culture is just not there. Pupils need to read wide to increase their knowledge. Some of these pupils are afterall the teachers of tommorrow.

Many of the present day teachers are people who probably took to the teaching proffesion not out of love for imparting knowledge and guidiance but for want of options. The schools also don't seem to do much to encourage reading on the part of the teachers or student.

In my primary school days our headmaster made it mandatory for all students to buy and read, regularly, literary works like "Adventures of Tom Sawyer", "2000 leagues under sea world", "A tale of two cities"  etc. We had book clubs and debating societies. During our recreational perionds and breaks we had TVs in the recreation rooms and dinning halls showing sesamestreet and other educative programs and documentaries.

Schools will need to do a lot of work to improve on the knowledge base of their student (our future teachers and leader) if there is to be any hope for a better Nigeria tommorrow. Parents should also do alot more to improve their childrens love for literature and historical pieces. My dad use to buy movies of such at least twice a week and made us watch them.
I already watched the movies of most of Shakespears work before I got to primary four.

Closing down the whole computer village is certainly not the way to go. Some Shops definitely pay taxes and lets not forget VAT that consumers pay on their goods.

Computer village is a phenomenon and should be encouraged by the government. They could even start by giving some form of tax incentive or tax hollidays to the traders in the zone (both to encourage more traders to come to the zone and to buy adequate time to work out a sensible taxation system for the zone).
There should be proper registration and monitoring of all shops in the zone (bank statements should be scrutinised) to determine how much they should pay as taxes when the tax holliday is over.
Then the government can zero in on the individual traders and tax them appropriately and penalise any defaulters.

We need the computer village to stay open.

Hi,
in a program I wrote I use the following dsnless connection string to access a dbase on my system

CString m_strConnection = _T("Provider=MSDASQL.1;DRIVER={Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb)};DBQ=C:\\Program Files\\MySoftware\\mydb.mdb;";
this works fine. Now I am trying to access the same dbase over a peer-to-peer network. The IP address of the system where the database resides is 100.0.0.2 so I used the following connection string but it dosen't work:

CString m_strConnection = _T("Provider=MSDASQL.1;DRIVER={Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb)};DBQ=\\100.0.0.2\\Program Files\\MySoftware\\mydb.mdb;";

Does anyone have a good suggestion on how to go about this?

Thanks a lot @quadrillio,
You'd need to break it down for me a little though. Let's use the following practice scenerio:

Lets say I have a file "GoodFile.htm" on a CD ROM now how will I get that file to autorun on Linux?

Hi Linux gurus,
can anyone of you tell me how to create a cd that autoruns a contained program on Linux OS. I can do this in Windows but I'm not quite familiar with Linux.
Thanks a lot.

Hi @Kazofc,
I've been wondering how to create a cd that autoruns on Linux. Do you have any tips on that?

can't u do dat with "webshots"?

Why not get a book on php, asp (or whatever your prefered sever scripting language is).
Most books of such cover the subject very well.

If you have a particular software need in mind why not post a good description of your needs so that programmers on the forum may better assist you.
You may also call 07027705358.

sayhi2ay:

if you are going into programming, are you doing self-study? because that wont work!

I realy disagree. A lot of very good programmers are self taught. it realy boost your ability to think out of the box and your ability to research. You will need a lot of good books too. You have to get into some kind of support group so that when/if you run into difficulties they could guide you to the right path.

Someone defined tragedy (for a programmer) as: When you run into serious difficulties with your code only to realise that you are the local programming guru.

You need a lot of education to succeed as a programmer but you do not need a degree of any kind to succeed. There are a number of note worthy people who succeeded in programming with out any degree or certification. But on the flip side: there is a reason why they made the news:- There are far more successful programmers with certification and degrees than there are successful dropouts.

Don't drop out of school except if you are persuaded with all of your heart that getting a degree stands in the way of your progress.

kanirip:

The replies in the post have been quite funny!

Do you think every Drill Engineer working on the Bonga Fields enjloys pushing drills all day long? Do you think all the people doing Network Support for Chevron enjoy getting told to defragment hard drives and clean up the internals of the machine?

I doubt it.

But here we are telling this fellow that he should only become a programmer 'if he enjoys programming'( Whatever that means I don't know) in order to avoid the posters original question.

Na wa!

And to the poster, I think what the above were trying to say was, that for the most part, A programmer/Database Administrator gets paid about the same rate as a beggar in VGC which is around 40K a month.

I hope that answers your question.

Unlike menial and routine tasks you just mentioned above, programming, just like art, takes a lot of creativity, and if your heart is not in it then you would not get far.

I've travelled quite a bit around Nigeria and some of my favourite snacks from different states/ regions include
Dodo Ikire => Osun State
Fura de Nunu = > Norhtern States
Okpa = > Benue/Anambra States
Ukwa and Palm kernel => Imo State
Suya and Masa => Northern states
Roasted yams and Fish => Rivers State

please list yours.

My concern is not just about speed but coverage as well. It makes little sense for me to shell out good money to get a connection which works like magic when I test run it in VI only to get Home to Egbeda and find that it has no coverage.

Can someone please give us a list of the vairious networks, their speed, and where we can expect to get good coverage using them?
My Glo 3G USB modem is not giving me any joy at home in Egbeda so I am back on my lowly Multi-Links (at least it works).

None of the good service providers will gives total coverage as yet. I recently shelled out 45K to get the Glo USB 3G connetion only to find out I can't use it in my area of Lagos state. What will work for those in VI and Lekki might not have any coverage in Egbeda, Alagbado, LASU/Ojo, Agege etc.

If you are able to find a good provider that will give you over 1.5mbps then go for it. For those in Ikeja, VI, Lekki and such environs, Starcoms Evdo and Glo 3G USB modem is recomended.

There are also 3rd Party providers Like Cobra (not too secured, I tap into it occasionaly in VI but the speed is like 11mbps), Python, etc. These operator give a very decent service but there coverage is not ussualy wide. You have to find one in your area.

If you want cheap dail-up then I'd still say Multi-Links (The service was a total write off last couple of months but it's back now . . .  I hope). It gives you coverage in most area of Lagos and it's the fastest among the non-broadband CDMA providers. But you will have to take it as you see it.

If you are familiar with object oriented programing then you could simply create one (lets call it) "product" object. That object has all the required methods built into it. Now lets say some of the parameters you need to work with are: Purchase price, Resell Price, Purchase Date, Ressel Date, Expiry Date, Product Name, Shelf Life, etc
you will also need to compute some things like the shelf life, Profit on Item, . . . etc

Create the product class using your prefered language

(this is just a mock-up code . . . to demostrate the concept)

Class Product()
{
variable PurchasePrice;
variable ResellPrice;
variable ProfitOn Item;
variable Shelf life;
Variable ExpiryDate;
Variable PurchaseDate;
.
.
.
Function getProfitOnItem(){return(ResselPrice - PurchasePrice)}
Function getShelfLife(){return(ExpiryDate - PurchaseDate)}
Function setProfitOnItem(){ProfitOnItem = ResselPrice - PurchasePrice}
.
.
.
}//End Class

You can then simply create an object of this class for any new product and pass in the appropriate parameters and the methods in the class will take care of all nescessary assignment. Since your programe is probably running on a database, your objects will probably be populated from the database and will also send the nescessary input back to the database (assuming you are not working directly with variant types - that will be a lot more tedious for a large program).

Finaly, everyone seem to have gone to bed. I am the last poster. I won!!!!!!!!!!!

All things considered, you and I should go well together
Check out my profile for a detailed resume.

What exactly are we supposed to touch? And where do you have in mind for us to go to?

Hmmmm . . . @lysaa, have you been sleep walking again? Here is your solution. Put some sleeping pills on your bedside table, get an electronic engineer to rig a presure allarm to your bed, when you get up and try to sleep walk, the alarm should trigger and wake you up. promptly lie down and take some sleeping pills so you can fall asleep. Repeat as often as needed.

Guys, when ever I go to sleep, I always wake up in Nigeria. Can anyone tell me how to get this background to automaticaly change to that of Sydney? While you are at it help me do the same for my screen saver so that after my siesta I'll wake up in Newyork.

Just like Maleeq said, Office 2007 is backward compatible with lower versions of office so you do not need any special plugin or patch or configuration etc to make it work. If you are experiencing a problem in opening files from lower versions of Office in Office 2007, then your files are either curropted or your Office 2007 is not properly installed. You may try working alog these routes to find your solution:
Resave your files properly in Office 2003 (if possible do it on another system in case your office 2003 has a bug). Then try opening them, as ussual, in Office 2007. If problem presist (A)bort, (P)onder, (R)einstall your office 2007 (using a more authentic version).
You can also try visiting Microsoft's Help online (be carefull if your OS and other products are pirated - those guys could do nasty things to you).

mambenanje:

. . . . Actually this is my point of view "Firefox pushed the tabbed browsing system in to Africa and now most african scammers are using tabbed browsing to send mails faster, and it hurts me because they also disturb bandwith by eating up all the bandwidth with many tabs", so if I write about what I observe, how come you guys tell me the observation is dumb. . . .

Actualy tabbed browsing is supposed to help conserve sytem resources since one open browser with five tabs will use less resources and overheads than five open browsers. On the server end however, if the amount of bytes being downloaded by the five tabs is equal to the amount of bytes being downloaded by the five browser window then its all thesame as "Fifty Naira & Wazo".

Well Java is great. I am in favour of C++ however.
Java users point out the strenght in Java and the weaknesses in C++ but Java has its Achiles heels too. I'll point out some of the weaknesses of java i.e. areas where C++ is known to out perform Java:

1. Speed - Because java is an "Interpreted code" it requires Java Virtual machine to interprete the programmes compilled byte code. This makes Java slower than equivalent native code produced by an optimised C++ compiler.

2. Poor low level access - Java has no pointers (while this is touted as one of it's strenght since it makes it simpler and easier to use) it is virtualy incapable of accessing a computer system on low level. This makes Java unsuitable for system software that perform such operations as calling BIOS and DOS subroutines and responding to interrupts. Java is not a good choice for writing operating systems, device drivers, and other low level code.

3. No Multiple inheritance - Java classes supports only single inheritance. In C++ a class may be derived from several base classes, while in Java a class may only be derived from one superclass. [a[b] limited [/b] form of multiple inheritance is possible using Java interface clases but it does not compare to the more sophisticated form of multiple in C++]

4. No bBackward compability with C - Any legacy code written in C will have to be totally re-written if it's desired in Java. C++ compilers are however able to tranlate C.

5. No support for in-line functions - Java does not support in-line function but C++ does. The use of inline functions provide programmers with optimisation techniques which have a great impact on program runtime speed. Java does not support source-level optimisations, and the code optimisations supported by Java compilers are not language specific.

This are just a few I picked out of a Book by one of my favourite Java Authors. (Tom Swan).
There are many advantage/ disadvantages to both languages and there are many shared points too. it wouldn't hurt to learn both languages. I've learned close to 8 programming languages (not counting scripting languages) but my favourite is C++. Learn as much as you can. Both languages are great.

javarules:

. . . "any dummy can use M$", I am so sorry and I repeat so sorry if that hurts, but its d truth.

Thank you for comming to terms with a basic marketing fact. It is not a supprise then that MS Windows and Office rules. Wake up and smell the Java coffee.