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Yes that stereotype will probably never go away. But every now and then I see something advertised with an "AOL Keyword" that I would like to know more about...

Maybe now I'll be able to check out some of that stuff without having to be a member.

Of course I have to wonder how bright some of these companies really are, restricting their advertising to the limited userbase of AOL, instead of just putting it up on a website.

Maybe AOL is offering free bandwidth in exchange for exclusivity...

New web comic: Jendini.com , home of Zillion Zombies Zone!

Funny and NOT trying to be userfriendly:

Jendini.com

I wish more cartoonists would do "realistic" storylines without the sci-fi/fantasy copout of not being required to make any sense. I also like that the animals don't talk. :-)

Disclaimer the author is a friend, and I am actively attempting to spread the word about this new comic

People who produce large numbers of CUSTOM CDs will love this. Right now the cheapest way to automate the production of such CDs and print the identifying information on them is to use a robotic contraption with 2 CDs and an expensive disk printer. Such a device costs $2500, minimum (excluding mickey-mouse versions that don't work well).

And at that price range, the ink is water-soluble and will smear if it gets wet.

I imagine that they will partner with a burning software company to make printing the labels easy. My handwriting is so bad that I would gladly pay a bit extra to be able to type in my CD labels without having to go to any extra effort.

And then there are people who do backups on CD, who constantly run the risk of mislabeling CDs as they come out of the burner.

IMHO, very few people care about pretty color graphics - they just want legible, permanent printing at the lowest possible cost

New Web Cartoon: Jendini.com

It's always nice to have worked on things that people have not only heard of, but that actually makes their lives easier.

Do you know why the machines won't let you insure your package? It seems like they can handle every other service the PO offers.

That's the only thing keeping me from using them on a regular basis.

New Web Cartoon: Jendini.com

Actually I've had CISCO support reps in the Phillipines stay on the phone with me ALL NIGHT fixing our firewall problems. And these guys REALLY knew what they were doing.

And the commercial support that I've gotten from DELL was great when it came to advice, and staying on the phone until my RAID was back in one piece, even though I was using an unsupported OS (FreeBSD).

new web cartoon, now featuring Bitey, the pound cat: Jendini.com

A bigger problem is the lack of tax-sheltered savings for small companies. You cannot "save-up" money very efficiently, because at the end the year the tax man takes so much of your savings.

So you are forced to go begging for any capital you might need to expand. And small companies are forced to try to spend all profits by the end of the year to avoid taxation.

What we really need is something like an IRA for small companies, to save money tax-deferred, until there is a big enough pile to make the investments required to grow to the next level.

New Web Cartoon: Jendini.com

I don't know (or care) about .NET, but if you are writng a windows program Delphi is staggeringly more efficient to develop in than C++. You can also use it to do Windows API stuff efficiently, meaning you can write most of your custom controls in delphi itself without have to resort to C++.

I just wish they could get their act together and make better documentation.

I actually used C++ for many years before finding out about Delphi, but now that I've switched there is no way I would ever go back.

Of course, more efficient development is not in the best interests of most programmers, because they are motivated to drag out projects as long as possible for job security reasons. But when you are doing fixed-bid contracts, or even if you just care about your reputation, Delphi is the way to go.

New web cartoon: Jendini.com

IMHO, MySQL is much cleaner and easier to deal with than Postgres, but only if you aren't using transactions and stick to the MyISAM tables.

Personally I still use it to run a large complex site with thousands of users and it performs flawlessly, and quickly, day in and day out. Last time I checked, my most difficult queries still ran faster than on Postgress, so why would I change?

New Web Cartoon: Jendini.com

Servlets are Java programs that handle specific events (such as requests to a URL) and Tomcat is an apache plugin that lets you run servlets from apache.

New web cartoon: Jendini.com