Well I may be a retard, but it seems to me that the problems raised in this topic should have been dealt with in the first day of learning C++ (or first month, depending how lazy you are). I'm not trying to say that I'm better than anyone else, because I myself am a rather novice programmer (it's amazing how much time I can waste looking at a screen).
You need to start from the start, basically. It appears that you're jumping in without reading through the basics.. you usually need to read to understand concepts. This isn't always the case, but it appears to be in this/these circumstance/s. Use help from others as a last resort, and you'll end up learning a lot more than with just asking people questions straight off the bat.
End of story: I'm an idiot.