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windows 3.11 "Add Font" dialog still in Windows Vista

very useful if you know how to apply design patterns.

If we're talking about *Javascript* design patterns -- common useful Javascript idioms -- then I think this is a useful statement. If we're talking about common idioms that have filtered out from C++ and Java known as "design patterns" as applied to languages that don't need to many of them, then I'd say Javascript is pretty useful even if you don't know much about them. Possibly more useful.

http://www.nofluffjuststuff.com/show_session_view.jsp?presentationId=9542&showId=114
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000899.html
http://steve.yegge.googlepages.com/singleton-considered-stupid

I find it funny you emphasized 'really', considering most research shows our brains to be terrible at context switching:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000022.html
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000691.html

Relatedly, there was a good article from Coding Horror yesterday about the proper uses for XML.

Bother, I meant Yahoo's Problems Are Not Your Problems

A good review and counter-argument is available at the "codinghorror" blog where Jeff Atwood points out the codinghorror blogYahoo's Problems Are Not Your Problems

--dave

From a quick googling, SSDs seem to use about 1/4 of the power of HDDs (1 watt compared to about 4 watts), but when you put that alongside the screen (~4 watts), speakers (maybe 20 watts in a laptop? Not that you'd always have them up that loud :P ), wifi (~1 watt idle, up to 4 watts while in use) and such, I'd think that you aren't gaining much. It is a step in the right direction of course..

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000562.html is the link I used for a few of those figures

So it's very hard for you to make any "real" (Bill Gates type) money with GPL compared to lets say a proprietary CAD program that can charge $1000/seat/year.

The next question is whether anybody should be making "Bill Gates type" money.

There are both moral and ethical limits to desire for wealth.

I think a few quotes from one of my favorite articles ever explains this quite nicely:

The lack of open source software billionaires is by design. It's part of
the intent of open source software -- to balance the scales by devaluing
the obscene profit margins that exist in the commercial software
business. Duplicating software is about as close to legally printing
money as a company can get; profit margins regularly exceed 80 percent.
        -- http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000842.html

To ask where the open source billionaires are is to demonstrate a
profound misunderstanding of how open source software works. If you
wanted to become obscenely rich by starting an open source software
company, I'm sorry, but you picked the wrong industry. You'll make a
living, perhaps even a lucrative one. But you won't become Bill Gates
rich, or Paul Allen rich, by siphoning away the exorbitant profit
margins commercial software vendors have enjoyed for so many years.
        -- http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000842.html

So it's very hard for you to make any "real" (Bill Gates type) money with GPL compared to lets say a proprietary CAD program that can charge $1000/seat/year.

The next question is whether anybody should be making "Bill Gates type" money.

There are both moral and ethical limits to desire for wealth.

I think a few quotes from one of my favorite articles ever explains this quite nicely:

The lack of open source software billionaires is by design. It's part of
the intent of open source software -- to balance the scales by devaluing
the obscene profit margins that exist in the commercial software
business. Duplicating software is about as close to legally printing
money as a company can get; profit margins regularly exceed 80 percent.
        -- http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000842.html

To ask where the open source billionaires are is to demonstrate a
profound misunderstanding of how open source software works. If you
wanted to become obscenely rich by starting an open source software
company, I'm sorry, but you picked the wrong industry. You'll make a
living, perhaps even a lucrative one. But you won't become Bill Gates
rich, or Paul Allen rich, by siphoning away the exorbitant profit
margins commercial software vendors have enjoyed for so many years.
        -- http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000842.html

So it's very hard for you to make any "real" (Bill Gates type) money with GPL compared to lets say a proprietary CAD program that can charge $1000/seat/year.

The next question is whether anybody should be making "Bill Gates type" money.

There are both moral and ethical limits to desire for wealth.

I think a few quotes from one of my favorite articles ever explains this quite nicely:

The lack of open source software billionaires is by design. It's part of
the intent of open source software -- to balance the scales by devaluing
the obscene profit margins that exist in the commercial software
business. Duplicating software is about as close to legally printing
money as a company can get; profit margins regularly exceed 80 percent.
        -- http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000842.html

To ask where the open source billionaires are is to demonstrate a
profound misunderstanding of how open source software works. If you
wanted to become obscenely rich by starting an open source software
company, I'm sorry, but you picked the wrong industry. You'll make a
living, perhaps even a lucrative one. But you won't become Bill Gates
rich, or Paul Allen rich, by siphoning away the exorbitant profit
margins commercial software vendors have enjoyed for so many years.
        -- http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000842.html

You are correct in that these features do not appear in any commercial version of OS/2. I did not claim that; only that Windows NT was based on the original OS/2 version 3.0 specification (more on that below!).
Regardless: I may be incorrect, but ... ... IRPS was introduced in NT 3.51 as part of the new device driver model. Windows NT 3.1 (the original Windows NT) did NOT contain that feature). ...

Yes it did. And so did VMS.

http://windowsitpro.com/Windows/Articles/ArticleID/4494/pg/2/2.html

One of Microsoft's goals from the start I think was to get a 32 bit version of the 16 bit Windows API running on a 32 bit kernel with a VMS like IO system tweaked a bit to be SMP friendly and processor independent. Dos took over from CPM when the market moved from the Z80 to the x86 and CPM-86 was late and bad. I think Bill Gates was paranoid that Microsoft would be destroyed by a analagous move to Risc SMP.

The original main architecture was the i860 ( codenamed N Ten ). Apparently the internal codename was Windows NT.

Later the main architecture was x86 with secondary support for a bunch of Risc architectures. One of them, Alpha was kept alive internally to allow them to port to 64 bit.

Deferred Procedure Calls (DPCs) is part if Windows Driver Model (WDM) which was fully implemented only in Windows 2000 (see http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc264476.aspx).

No DPCs are another VMSism. They are a way to avoid spending too much time at a raised IRQL (another VMSism that is implemented in Vax hardware and emulated on x86 until the APIC supported it natively)

However, these are tiny details of the bigger picture. The main feature set: Threads, pre-emptive multitasking, priority-based scheduling, support for SMP, layered architecture, pluggable file systems, application level insulation (i.e. one application can't take everything down), paged memory management (page swapping instead of segment swapping) all originate from the original OS/2 v3.0 specification*).

Yeah, and that was based on the NT kernel. The difference was that the main userland API would use 32 bit version of OS/2 APIs to please IBM rather than Windows ones. If you read Showstopper by G Pascal Zachary there's a funny account of a meeting where an obnoxious Microsoft employee presented the new 32 bit main API for "OS/2 3.0" to IBM. To IBM's horror every single function was almost identical to Win16 with all the pointers extended to 32 bits, and totally different to OS/2. None of OS/2's function had equivalents. At that point the OS was still called OS/2 3.0. Somewhat latter it was renamed Windows NT, the same as the internal Microsoft codename. All of which is funny, it reminds me of a bad sci fi series where a shadowy bad guy turns out to be the main bad guy (who you thought was dead) in disguise.

NB! This is different from the actual commercial product "OS/2 version 3.0" , which is derived from the OS/2 2.x code base! Confusing, I know!
The history behind this is as follows: IBM and Microsoft co-developed OS/2 1.x [16-bit operating system]. When it became time to migrate to 32-bit Microsoft claimed that it was difficult for them to travel between Seattle and Bocca Raton, Florida, where IBM labs resided. They convinced IBM to take upon themselves the implementation of the first, Intel-only, 32-bit version [which became OS/2 2.0 and base for later versions of OS/2], and to leave Microsoft to work on the next-gen portable OS/2 [which was to be some future 3.x version of OS/2]. However, Microsoft soon abandoned OS/2 and used the know-how and specifications for developing Windows NT.

You may be too young to remember, and possibly mis-informed. (The winne

You can't.

Not even Linux boxes are safe from hacking.

An anti-virus scan is totally worthless. In fact, most systems slow your machine down so badly that they're worse than useless. Norton slows your machine down by thousands of percent!

Let's be honest here. In my lifetime, I've spent less than $100 (one hundred dollars) on my security systems. That gives me a D-Link firewall, Avast!, and Spybot. The hackers have access to the same materials. If they want to write a program that gets around my meager defences, then they can. I live only by my obscurity, enhanced by my slight tweaks to my firewall. (Dropping pings, blocking port 113, etc.) As far as a passive scan goes, I don't exist. I simply wouldn't survive a concentrated attack.

That's probably okay, though - it's like when I lock up my bike. I have a kryptonite U-lock that I put through both wheels and the frame. I also take the seat with me and remove all the shiny bits. (It also has a VHF transmitter, but that's another story.) It would take someone with a plasma torch two or three seconds to cut the bike rack and put my bike into a truck. However, that's not worth your average meth-headed bike thief's time. It's easier for him to take another bike that's not as secure. If a dedicated professional wants my bike, then he's going to get it.

The major problem with Windows is that when you take your machine home and plug it in, it can be easily compromised. The same is true with a lot of commercial-grade routers with firewalls. The default settings leave a lot to be desired. Your firewall still sort of works, but you're not getting the same level of protection that you'd get by changing some settings. Just two days ago, we had an article about the 2-wire security holes, showing that a large percentage of IDSN home users in North America are wholly unprotected against external attacks.

So why do we have what we have? It's simple. We have a lot of programs written by people who simply do not understand security issues. Windows, for example, is perfectly stable until you start to put 3rd-party software on it. Then it starts to crash because the memory is being used in two or more different ways. Take a look at some of the snippets on thedailywtf to see what sort of quality work you end up with when you have people who "can program" and can't understand basic math (if you work unpaid overtime, that's you.) writing important code for important systems.

What's required to fix it is a wholesale change in CPU architecture along with mandatory licencing and regulation for anyone who wants to program anything in any language and sell it. (If you put up a dividing wall in your house, you can get the supplies at Home Depot and DIY. If you want to sell a wall-building service to the public, you have to be licenced.)

Only once we take programming as seriously as we take bridge construction and land surveying will we start to see safer computing.

The Coding Horror post you link to on the "dancing bunnies problem" actually mentions that Unix-style privilege elevation is the best known solution to it:

Here's hoping Longhorn (aka Windows Vista) is the first Microsoft OS to default users to non-administrator accounts. Because users can't help themselves-- they just have to poke the bunny.

You're not right. There's nothing preventing any user from setting up executables directly in his home directory; hell, back in my shell account days, I must have had the equivalent of a pretty good-sized unix system in ~/bin, ~/usr and ~/var.

Your solution simply does not address the dancing bunnies problem.

No it's not. It's actually making better use of your RAM.

In my opinion, Vista is only for sophisticated users. Sophisticated users (developers, for example) tend to already go for high end systems, and are willing (and able) to learn new stuff. Ordinary users are resistant to change. They don't want to learn a new way of doing things, and switching to Vista would force them to do that (as would switching to Linux or OSX). There are generally (though not always) pretty good reasons for Vista changing the way these things are done (ie. additional functionality), but those who refuse to learn something new should just stick with what they know.

I'm inclined to agree. If you're happy with XP, stick with it. But if you're out looking for a new computer, unlike most Slashdotters (who have likely never even tried Vista), I'd happily recommend getting one with Vista -- as long as the person I'm recommending it to is willing to put in the effort to learn something new.

Looks kind og like Sierra's ImageNation network

Jeff Atwood wrote a post about this yesterday. Apparently, Mytopia is a lot like Sierra's ImagiNation Network from the late 80s/early 90s.

This (visually) looks amazingly similar to the Imagination Network

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001081.html has a screenshot comparison I saw earlier this morning.

You seem to be in good company. I haven't stopped using it, but I have switched from one bloated AV package to a supposedly-less-bloated one, to a free one that the chart on that first link seems to say is one of the less egregious ones in relation to slowdown.

Still not confident enough to go commando like you, though.

To hell with benchmarks -- "seem" is what matters.

Apparently, it's not actually slower, but it appears slower due to the UI changes. The algorithm is apparently more efficient.

Coding Horror entry on Vista copying speeds.

Not that I care. I run Win2000 at home because Ubuntu doesn't run properly on my machine.

And I'd much prefer if the OS could refrain from nagging every 15 minutes about that....

XP does let you get under the hood a little bit -- you may find #2 here alleviates your nagging issue: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000294.html

Coding Horror has an article (http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001072.html) regarding the hack. Included in the comments are some people who used Reflector to check what the source says. It looked to me like someone didn't know how to send emails to himself. But it could be some debugging code...

Maybe G-Archiver sent a message every time it was launched or something.

So there are probably far fewer than 1700 accounts affected.

Also, if I were the guy who found this, I would have changed the password, then emailed everyone from the account to let them know what had happened. I suppose google could restore the messages so THEY can inform the owners.

Actually, I think Big Trucks might outspeed the series of tubes:

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000783.html

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001058.html

While it goes into details about a lot of other stuff, there's the explanation of Vista's (apparent) slow disk performance.

Explain to me, in a logically consistent manner, how this quote actually applies to choice in selecting tools to accomplish a task? There is no 'war' going on here. Nobody is dying because they chose one technology over another. People aren't being born into lives of servitude based on this. This is as ridiculous as believing you're changing the world for the better because you bought a Ford instead of a Toyota.

Jeff Atwood called it platform douchebaggery, and I mostly agree. So much useless conjecture on 'good' vs. 'bad' technologies, and yet, the most vocal people never produce anything substantially kickass. Go figure.

First rule of programming: Don't listen to your users.

(or just glance below):

1. Firefox 3 Nightly (PGO Optimized): 7263.8ms
2. Firefox 3 Nightly (02/25/2008 build): 8219.4ms
3. Opera 9.5.9807 Beta: 10824.0ms
4. Firefox 3 Beta 3: 16080.6ms
5. Safari 3.0.4 Beta: 18012.6ms
6. Firefox 2.0.0.12: 29376.4ms
7. Internet Explorer 7: 72375.0ms
The results are generated by using the Sunspider JS benchmark suite.


This looks great, but everyone should notice a couple of things that may not be obvious.

1) Sunspider JS benchmark is designed by Apple developers and they use it to show the world how much faster Safari is, however Opera seems to outpace the Safari developers even with their own tests. However, yes some of the benchmarks used are 'picked' to favor Safari, and some are 'extended' to hurt IE.

2) Sunspider over does the tests of the Append String performance problem to make IE look worse than it really is. IE's JScript is coded as JScript was designed, and because of this, it doesn't optimize string append operations by using newer code. So by using this text extra, it artificially make IE look horribly slow. IE8 and possible additional IE7 releases are spending time optimizing the base JSCript code from the original implementations/specifications.

http://blogs.msdn.com/jscript/archive/2007/10/17/performance-issues-with-string-concatenation-in-jscript.aspx

3) If you remove the 'string' routine from the test, IE7, consistently outperforms Firefox 2.0, and is very close to even Safari for with the results were cherry picked.

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001023.html

4) Some of the numbers are quite questionable as to the validity. For example IE7 is given 72375 in this article, and yet the slowest machine our tech lab has ever benchmarked is 2x the speed, and this is on a very old AMD 1ghz machine that barely runs Vista in which the test yeilded the horrible results. So where did they get the 72375 number from? A Pentium 200?

Again reference this link so see that even this person's results are no where near the 75K ms time reported for IE.

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001023.html

So it is quite questionable and inaccurate to try to portray IE7 as 10x slower, when without the 'emphasized' string append slowdown in IE7, it is faster than FireFox 2.0 and within a few 'ms' of even Safari and the new FireFox 3.0 results.

Good job to the FireFox team, btw.. Also does anyone have benchmarks of the new FireFox using a non-Apple test suite?

(or just glance below):

1. Firefox 3 Nightly (PGO Optimized): 7263.8ms
2. Firefox 3 Nightly (02/25/2008 build): 8219.4ms
3. Opera 9.5.9807 Beta: 10824.0ms
4. Firefox 3 Beta 3: 16080.6ms
5. Safari 3.0.4 Beta: 18012.6ms
6. Firefox 2.0.0.12: 29376.4ms
7. Internet Explorer 7: 72375.0ms
The results are generated by using the Sunspider JS benchmark suite.


This looks great, but everyone should notice a couple of things that may not be obvious.

1) Sunspider JS benchmark is designed by Apple developers and they use it to show the world how much faster Safari is, however Opera seems to outpace the Safari developers even with their own tests. However, yes some of the benchmarks used are 'picked' to favor Safari, and some are 'extended' to hurt IE.

2) Sunspider over does the tests of the Append String performance problem to make IE look worse than it really is. IE's JScript is coded as JScript was designed, and because of this, it doesn't optimize string append operations by using newer code. So by using this text extra, it artificially make IE look horribly slow. IE8 and possible additional IE7 releases are spending time optimizing the base JSCript code from the original implementations/specifications.

http://blogs.msdn.com/jscript/archive/2007/10/17/performance-issues-with-string-concatenation-in-jscript.aspx

3) If you remove the 'string' routine from the test, IE7, consistently outperforms Firefox 2.0, and is very close to even Safari for with the results were cherry picked.

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001023.html

4) Some of the numbers are quite questionable as to the validity. For example IE7 is given 72375 in this article, and yet the slowest machine our tech lab has ever benchmarked is 2x the speed, and this is on a very old AMD 1ghz machine that barely runs Vista in which the test yeilded the horrible results. So where did they get the 72375 number from? A Pentium 200?

Again reference this link so see that even this person's results are no where near the 75K ms time reported for IE.

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001023.html

So it is quite questionable and inaccurate to try to portray IE7 as 10x slower, when without the 'emphasized' string append slowdown in IE7, it is faster than FireFox 2.0 and within a few 'ms' of even Safari and the new FireFox 3.0 results.

Good job to the FireFox team, btw.. Also does anyone have benchmarks of the new FireFox using a non-Apple test suite?

Jeff Atwood had an interesting article on the subject a couple weeks ago. It generated a metric buttload of comments, so you might consider mining for ideas there.

You're unknowingly referring to "two factor" authentication. See: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000785.html

Basically, and I can't find a reference for this right now, in the US, the laws got buggered, and "two factor" became "two password", where the second password is entered with a virtual keyboard on screen, rather than the real one. This is a farce, but is so much cheaper to implement, that wala, that's all we've got.

Oh good. Then please tell me how you did it. Every Mac Pro, MacBook Pro and iMac I have installed with Leopard (5+ so far) has had crappy font display. With sub-pixel hinting enabled it's always horribly blurry, on any monitor.

And it's apparently not just Ou and me who have noticed.

Sorry, but language still makes a difference.

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000838.html

C++ Compiled 1:1
Visual Basic Compiled 1:1
C# Compiled 1:1
Java Byte code 1.5:1
PHP Interpreted > 100:1
Python Interpreted > 100:1

Well, if what you're saying is true, it runs contrary to what I've read in the past, and every bit of info that I just found via a quick Google search on the matter. Also, you'll find that many high end LCDs for graphics work are S-IPS, or some variant there of, such as the LaCie 319.

Do you have any sources to back up your claims? If not, I'm afraid I'll have to stick with my original statement.

Are they going to do anything about Javascript performance?

am sorry if I am a chemical engineer and not a EE or CS major. But if what you said is true, then the RAM usage on a perfectly new computer with Vista shouldn't used up around 500mb of RAM either, but they are. Also, if it already cache the information, then how come every time I open Firefox or Winamp, I see a clear jump in my RAM memory? What I mean is...why is it that Vista sit at idle at around ~500mb, and the moment I open firefox (which I have been using on a daily basis for months), it jump to around 650-700mb? If it is already cached, shouldn't it stay relatively constant?

I don't know about your specific system configuration, but if you're interested in learning more about how Vista uses RAM, you may be interested in http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000688.html. They write:

In previous versions of Windows, system responsiveness could be uneven. You may have experienced sluggish behavior after booting your machine, after performing a fast user switch, or even after lunch. Although too many carbohydrates might slow you down after lunch, your computer slows down for different reasons. When you're not actively using your computer, background tasks-- including automatic backup and antivirus software scans-- take this opportunity to run when they will least disturb you. These background tasks can take space in system memory that your applications were using. After you start to use your PC again, it can take some time to reload your data into memory, slowing down performance.

SuperFetch understands which applications you use most, and preloads these applications into memory, so your system is more responsive. SuperFetch uses an intelligent prioritization scheme that understands which applications you use most often, and can even differentiate which applications you are likely to use at different times (for example, on the weekend versus during the week), so that your computer is ready to do what you want it to do. Windows Vista can also prioritize your applications over background tasks, so that when you return to your machine after leaving it idle, it's still responsive.

They'd be no secret about what I'd be doing if I was running the Internet Explorer 8 team. Here's a few things I'd do:

1. Turn everything on this page that is red to green for the Trident engine.
2. Fix everything on this page.
3. Correctly support the mime-type for XHTML and display an error if *anything* on that page is incorrectly formed. The last part of this sentence is absolutely crucial. We need to start breaking pages that are not correct, XHTML is a good chance to push this.
4. Get rid of the Trusted Site, Internet, Untrusted security model and just have Untrusted.
5. Get rid of ActiveX. Support Internet Explorer 6 for ActiveX for another five years to allow people to transition to other platforms.

For bonus points, do all this faster and with less memory than Internet Explorer 7 takes.

This is a fairly modest list but if they fixed all of that, Internet Explorer would be a joy to develop against. Hell, I might even consider replacing Firefox as my default browser on Windows. However, as much as we can collectively dream, you know they'll rejig the interface slightly, crank up the version number by one and call it a day.

Microsoft is a text-book example of a market failure. Nearly every other browser has Internet Explorer boxed off in terms of functionality, security and speed. The only reason it is the world's number one browser is because it comes pre-installed with WIndows.

As a program Internet Explorer is simply trash. I simply hate it. Actually I fucking despise it. It is a big ball of shit. It's the ugly building in the middle of a city that everyone wants torn down but it just sits there damaging the community's spirit.

I once joked with a colleague that Internet Explorer has probably wiped billions off pounds off the world economy. I laughed, paused for a moment, and realised it's probably completely true. What could the world have done with all those countless hours hacking their CSS to support the trash that is Internet Explorer?

Doesn't it make you depressed?

Simon

You forgot Dell: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000927.html

Vista 32-bit isn't going to support more than 3.5Gig either (just as WinXP and Win2k). So, unless you're running Vista 64 bit, this is no different. (It's a hardware limitation, Linux 32-bit can't use more than 3.5Gig either) Yes, there is stuff like PAE, but that really is just a hack. Essentially it's segmenting for 32-bit machines. Both WinXP and Win2k support up to 4Gig RAM, but most hardware simply don't. I have a AMD Athlon MP system that has 4Gig RAM. Only 3.5Gig is visible to WinXP, but the same is true for Linux and FreeBSD. For me there is no way out, because it is a 32-bit system.

The RAM usage at startup for a newly-installed system is simply absurd. 600-700MB is not an exaggeration. The graphics card needs for the new environment (without which it's mostly XP right? It's not like there's a new object-oriented file system in there right?) are quite hgh for most business needs.

I've recently discovered Consolas as well (via Coding Horror).

I love it for coding - especially with comments set to italic. Looks really nice.

Jeff Atwood, giant ad whore that he is, has a nice article on programming fonts:

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000969.html

with screenshots showing the differentiation that you are talking about(as rendered on Vista, with Cleartype enabled).

Let me put this into perspective:

Woz designed the Apple ][ from scratch, invented the A][ hard drive controller, wrote the system monitor in machine code (without the aid of an assember, mind you!) as well as the Integer Basic interpreter and did this at least twice (he lost the source code) and it was several bytes smaller the second time, etc. etc. etc.

Gates, Davidoff and Allen as a team gave us a hacked version of someone else's basic interpreter. Gates gave us donkey.bas

I rest my case.

From my experiences, only games from about HL2 on support dual-core, quad-core being utilized either badly or not at all. When you talk about Photoshop, CAD, encoding video and so forth, the situation improves.

> He should have just concentrated on useful new features like the ability to get a commmand window at any folder.

Agreed.

In the meantime, snag 4NT.

Command Prompt -> Explorer
alias x=start explorer /e,"%_CWD"

Explorer -> Command Prompt
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/files/OpenCommandWindowHere.zip

You mean like this

http://www.petefreitag.com/item/533.cfm

or http://pgl.yoyo.org/lqr/

or http://www.croftsoft.com/library/tutorials/opensource/

or http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000833.html

All found with a very cursory Search on Google. If these are not enough you could always open a little program called OpenOffice and create one. Given how many of the above are crosslinked, You could find any number of people to host it.

I think though the proper place for your chart is probably at OSI itself

What bothers me most is that, in this day and age, these things still come in male and female connectors. This leads to a plethora of different cables, extensions, and connectors, and also a huge headache (made even bigger by your observation). What ever happened to hermaphroditic connectors?

Totally 100% agree... I must have interviewed 30 people before I filled my last programmer position for my team. I hired a guy in who had never actually worked with the language we use (C#).

Seriously... the other 29 canidates that I brought in couldn't write a 3 case "if" statement in the right order.

I made up a test (Well copied it actually: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000781.html/) and I thought to myself, "There is no way this will help me filter people out, this is WAY too easy." But I decided to go ahead and try the simple test just to see how people would approach it. To my shock.. every single person failed it except for the guy I hired.

I suddenly realized my own place in this job market was MUCH better then I had thought before. (Being totally self taught and working by myself or with small teams, I used to wonder how well I stacked up to what was out there) If you are GOOD at programming there is PLENTY of oppertunity in the US for programmers. You hear me smart kids? We can certainly use many many more good programmers.