Slashdot Mirror

They wrote a Windows wrapper around cross platform libraries.

No, you've inverted it, they wrote a "cross platform layer" that currently only has a Windows libraries based implementation:

Chrome uses abstraction libraries to draw the GUI on other non-Windows platforms, but for now, what sits underneath part of ChromeViews is good ol' WTL.

(from Scott Hanselman's analysis of the Chrome code)

This indicates that Google did have multiplatform support in mind from the beginning. If they hadn't used native Windows libs for the GUI, I'm pretty certain we'd be hearing just as much bitching about how cross platform libs never perform as solidly as native ones.

Then they had the nerve to deny it, even when anybody who looked at the source code immediately after initial release could see the truth of the matter.

Citation, please.

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/HowToEasilyDisableReplyToAllAndForwardInOutlook.aspx

2 simple lines that you can include in your Outlook client to prevent this action internally on your exchange server.

Note this does not include any macros in the email.

Actually, it's 2.0 SP2 now - you forgot about 3.5 SP1, which included that...

And yes, there are differences in the runtime, though vast majority of .NET applications didn't see them. There weren't many in 2.0 -> 2.0 SP1 update, but there were several breaking ones in 2.0 SP2.

Even so, those are all corner cases. The compatibility is not perfect, but it's close enough.

Meh. .NET can be as large or small depending on if you need backcompat. If you just want a minimal install, check this out.

I know it's not a PC but a Mac Mini had held up to my daughter's use. She's had it since she was 4 (now 8). First program I got was Baby Smash, when she was still in the sit on lap and mess with my computer stage.

Just upgraded her to a G5 tower as she needs a real video card for the games she wants to play.

There's well-known .netter out there called Scott Hansleman, he's written a freeware program called Baby Smash for windows, which might be a better option. http://www.hanselman.com/babysmash/ Baby Smash locks down the keyboard and responds to "keystrokes" (ie baby-smashes) with coloured shapes / letters and numbers. Letting junior learn that input gets a response on a computer. Except after BSOD :-) .ALT-F4 exits the application and Shift-Ctrl-Alt-O opens the options. Scott has a link to "Alpha Baby" if you prefer to use a Mac (in fact he says himself Baby Smash is a "homage" to Alpha Baby). This doesn't solve the problem of keyboards and salivia not mixing terribly well however....

WPF runs on XP, and it will run on OSs after vista.

As for the number of WPF apps, it's definitely got some traction

You forgot "3.5 SP1", which was another major version - it included a major 2.0 VM/runtime update which, among other things, broke existing code. And of course introduction of some new major stuff such as ADO.NET Entity Framework and ASP.NET Dynamic Data, plus a plethora of updates across the existing libs (WPF, ASP.NET etc).

By the way, 3.5 pre-SP1 also updated the 2.0 runtime and libs (to "2.0 SP1" - 3.5 SP1 updates them to "2.0 SP2"), so it also had some minor irks - but much fewer than 3.5 SP1, because of the magnitude of changes in the VM. It did add a few new types to the base libraries, too (such as INotifyPropertyChanging), so if you develop on a machine with 3.5 installed, but want your code to run on plain 2.0, do watch out!

By the way, 4.0 will be a major version for sure (it has been said many times on the blogs and Connect), so it's going to be side-by-side, no doubt about that now.

MIT license is not a source-required license. Companies may sell, close it up, whatever they wish so long as they continue to give credit to the original product.

And is that relevant? This issue has been addressed:

Scott Guthrie says:
"We will distribute the jQuery JavaScript library as-is, and will not be forking or changing the source from the main jQuery branch."

The Scott Hanselman says:
"It's Open Source, and we'll use it and ship it via its MIT license, unchanged. If there's changes we want, we'll submit a patch just like anyone else."

You would think IMAP would be the obvius answer, and the website I mentioned has step-by-step instructions on how to do that with Thunderbird, but Outlook's IMAP support evidently sucks.

From this website: "There's lots of hacky ways that huge amounts of email can be moved from Outlook to Gmail for Apps. Believe me, Google knows this is a problem and I'm 99% sure they are working on it. Until then, you can do the IMAP trick above, or use a tool. Time is money, so I used gMOVE from LimitNone."

What I find odd about this statement is that he had to rerun gMove 7 times at what looks like 30minutes each run because it only supports 5000 messages at a time. 35000 messages doesn't seem like that much email...(maybe I've been using gMail too long). How awful is Outlook's IMAP support???

There isn't much "look and feel" to an email importer. Check out the interface at this website. Evidently all this tool does is enable a POP server in Outlook via OLE and sucks the mail into gMail. gMove can only import 5,000 messages at a time, so you will have to run it several times to import all your mail.

This looks like a pretty mediocre product with no "look and feel" to speak of.

"Any machine you like" may yield a much hotter, higher power draw device than buying a WHS box off the shelf. http://www.hanselman.com/blog/PowerConsumptionOfTheHPMediaSmartHPHomeServer.aspx

Here's a blog that talks about Pacman in Excel. And here's the link to the original Japanese page.

Would some study results from a research company help persuade your bosses?

Microsoft researchers haven't perfected the genie, but they've found a tool that can increase your productivity by 9 to 50 percent and make your work day easier. And you can begin using it right away. The researchers conducted user studies that proved the effectiveness of adding a second or even third monitor to your workstation, creating a wide-screen effect. In addition, they found out how the operating system needs to change to accommodate a larger screen area.
http://research.microsoft.com/displayarticle.aspx? id=433

Or how about this one?

A systematic study conducted by NEC-MitsubishiOpen link in new window, ATI TechnologiesOpen link in new window and the University of UtahOpen link in new window has concluded that the use of multiple monitors in the workplace increases productivity.

Granted, you have to take the results of research with a grain of salt when the team is headed by a company that makes monitors, but still...

And if they're the kind of folks that like anecdotal evidence, just send them here and here.

here's the blog in question.
Apparantly, it didn't delete all of temporary internet files.

is here: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ANewPrivateBrowserIM eanBrowzarDoesNotWorkAsAdvertised.aspx

Not that I would care much for some "enhanced" IE shell, but it makes sense for there to be such a market, of course. How do you know who to trust if you're not a geek reading tech news every day? Maybe google should have some kind of techmeme-ish related links to every site in a result.

Lots of people have insisted that their favorite email readers can do this. As far as I can tell, they didn't RTFA.

All email clients (yes, even Outlook) can do threading. This is NOT about threading.

The article is about HOW A SELECTED THREAD IS DISPLAYED.

If you're so busy that you can't take 2 minutes of time to RTFA, at least look at the screenshot.

OK, now that you've done that, what existing email client, if any, can show a selected thread in a nested, forum-like view similar to that shown in the article?

Lots of people have insisted that their favorite email readers can do this. As far as I can tell, they didn't RTFA.

All email clients (yes, even Outlook) can do threading. This is NOT about threading.

The article is about HOW A SELECTED THREAD IS DISPLAYED.

If you're so busy that you can't take 2 minutes of time to RTFA, at least look at the screenshot.

OK, now that you've done that, what existing email client, if any, can show a selected thread in a nested, forum-like view similar to that shown in the article?

It doesn't stop here. Venolia has also designed the user interface to give you some metrics about your conversations - you can find out at-a-glance just who you communicate with the most, and whether you are the originator, recipient or a participant. You can also see a complete list of the attachments, URLS, and images that are found in all your messages, in case you don't want to hunt through past e-mails to find that one document or Web site reference that you want.