I found initially that I was able to learn quite a bit, and copy examples. However I soon hit a point where some components of the application were only solvable through some cut and paste 'magic code'.
I hear what you are saying but that has totally changed in VB.NET. VB6 and older would often come frustratingly close to doing what I wanted but the final step often needed some wierd 'magic code', usually found with the help of Google's usenet archive.
VB.NET (and C#) is much cleaner. Things like data binding really do work intelligently now and there is very little magic stuff under the covers that you can't get at.
GoDaddy also provide free dns so if your needs are simple then you may as well have everything in one place. I'm not necessarily pushing GoDaddy, plenty of other registrars (eg mydomain.com) provide these extra services too but if someone wants a really simple way to get a lifetime address, I haven't found a simpler or cheaper way.
Or pay $12 a year for pobox.com redirection and spam filtering.
Yes pobox.com is a great service which I used for about five years and still recommend to friends but at the end of the day you're still dependent on them staying in business and not unreasonably raising prices etc
A.com domain registration including free email forwarding is only $7.95 per year now at GoDaddy. That's probably a better deal if you're about to go through the pain of changing addresses and you really want the confidence of being able to keep the address forever. If GoDaddy became a problem then you can always move the domain elsewhere.
They have always done a really good job on developer information (MSDN)
This is very true and one of the main reasons why I'm going with MS at my place of work. I don't know how the Java world compares but if you're a dotNET developer then there is an almost overwhelming amount of good stuff on MSDN. I've been watching some of the archived webinars and many really are useful.
A lot of the newer MSDN topic areas such as 'Patterns and Practices' seem to be a genuine and good effort to lift developer skills and shake off the past where most code was probably in VB button click events.
Re:The only real answer is to reorganize society.
on
Out of Gas
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· Score: 1
Thanks folks. All interesting stuff. We had TV licences (more recently called the 'Public Broadcasting fee', administered by 'NZ on Air') in New Zealand but I think it went to help local media productions regardless of which channel they are on. The two government owned TV channels are commercial with adverts and they pay tax like any other company. The government is simply the one and only shareholder. I think the licence fee has been abolished since I left. There is also 'National Radio' which is a bit like NPR. I'm not sure how that gets paid for now.
I mean all the BBC's services in general. I think I know the answer in assuming that the British people pay for it in tax and TV license fees. That's something I'm grateful for as a New Zealander living in the US. The BBC is a refreshing change to the somewhat mind numbing American news sources.
My real question to Brits here is: How well is this burden accepted by the British people? Are the BBC TV and radio stations in the UK really non-commercial? I know the US government gives money to PBS and NPR but I don't know how it compares (especially per capita) to what the British government must spend on the BBC. It must cost a fortune and they are effectively supplying (IMHO) a good quality product for free to the rest of the world via internet and shortwave. I imagine some of the international motivation of the BBC stems back to the days of the old empire. It almost seems too good to be true.
I assume that NPR and others like it around the world pay to carry the program. Maybe that earns a lot.
This question came up in my mind the other day when the wi-fi radio was mentoned here on/. I definitely want on of those beside my bed when it becomes available. It seems like its the ideal thing for BBC listeners. I wonder if its availbility will significantly increase the load on their servers, all costing real money of course.
I just realised that it is related to the popup blocker. If I allow popups it seems to work. I've also heard some say that it matters of you go to msbnc.com, www.msnbc.com or www.msnbc.msn.com but my results have been inconclusive. You always end up at www.msnbc.msn.com so I guess its quickest if we bookmark that.
Ozzie Osbourne sure seems to say 'beep' a lot when 'The Osbournes' is on in the US. Once when his son Jack held his middle finger up to the camera, it was blurred out to protect sensitive american eyes. A friend in New Zealand tells me that The Osbournes is on broadcast TV there at 10 pm uncensored. New Zealand doesn't seem to have suffered because of it. Nobody much seems to care. My friend remembered the blurred finger. Presumably that was done at the source by the same guy who blurs the car license plates etc.
I remember watching an interview with the late George Harrison on VH1. At some point he said something about the record companies was all bullsh*t. Even that was beeped out.
This is a country that lets people work around with concealed handguns but shudders at the thought of a naughty word. Very strange place.
Re:Apache 2.x MPM is safe with PHP 4.3.x
on
PHP 5 RC 1 released
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· Score: 2, Informative
OT question: Why not dual flush toilets in USA?
on
The Power of Sewage
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· Score: 4, Informative
In my former part of the world, nearly all toilets in homes are dual flush to save water. They have two buttons, one gives a half flush, the other a full flush. Its not rocket science to figure out when you need which. An american visitor had not seen this before.
Now that I live in the US, I wonder why such technology doesn't exist here. It seems like a much better way to save water than the problematic 'low flush' toilets common the US.
Junk mail in your house mailbox seems like an american thing. In New Zealand, you can put a 'No Junk Mail' sign on your mailbox and its generally respected. The big difference there is that New Zealand Post doesn't have a legal monopoly on mailboxes like the US Postal Service has. Most junk mailers deliver the stuff directly and they know that ignoring the sign is a waste of resources and a sure way to irritate any potential customer.
I'm not sure about other countries. When I first moved to the US and had no knowledge of these matters, a friend was arranging to drop something off at my place and I said "leave it in the mailbox if I'm not home". The look on her face was as if I had asked her to commit a serious crime.
Also, I'm about twice as productive using PHP/perl then I am on C# and ASP.NET. Things that are trival in the former are sometimes much more difficult in the latter.
You remind me of the old joke where a chainsaw salesman visits a woodsman chopping down a tree with an axe. The woodsman is suspicious about the salesman's claims but he agrees to try the chainsaw for a while. A few weeks later the salesman returns to find the woodsman taking a break in his hut. "This thing is useless", the woodsman exclaims. "I can cut down a tree much faster with the axe". "I'll show you" says the salesman who leaves the woodsman sipping his tea and takes the chainsaw outside. A few minutes later he returns. "There! That tree is down". "Wow!, that was quick, but what was that loud noise?".
VS.NET, C#, SQL Server, ASP.NET, ADO.NET and, just released, Reporting Services make an awesome combination. BTW, I happily continue to use PHP / LAMP for several relatively simple, non-profit projects but in my daytime corporate job.NET is looking pretty good.
commonwealth countries like australia can have knighted people.
I wonder if that applies to countries who are members of the commonwealth but don't have the Queen as their head of state. Many commonwealth countries are like that these days.
If you can call it a computer, my first was a kitset using an RCA CDP 1802 processor. It was a pc board with the processor, a static ram chip (256 bytes I think) and some I/O logic. I/O was 2 seven segment led digits, a few single leds and a hex keypad. The keypad was an optional extra luxury because it also had toggle switches. It either came with a speaker or I hooked one up to an I/O line. I spent many hours writing hex machine code to play simple games, flash lights etc. Eventually I turned it into a fusible link prom programmer.
A quick search on Google shows that it was suspiciously similar to the COSMAC ELF which was featured in Popular Electronics and others have mentioned here. I bet it was the same circuit. It came from a company called Kit Parts Ltd in New Zealand.
Looking back, learning machine code and knowing about hardware gave me a great start in programing with an understanding that I wouldn't have if I started with a high level language.
An interesting thing I've found is that some people see 50 or 60 Hz flicker quite easily and some don't. If I move my head or eyes quickly, an AC powered led easily becomes a dashed line, especially in the dark. In wierd moments I've tried to explain this to a few people and most have no clue what I'm talking about. I also have the ability to spin my eyes quickly which creates dashed circles 8-).
Its similar with vertical refresh rates on CRT screens. I often see people using screens with dreadful flicker and ask them how they can work with it and most don't know what I'm talking about. Its usually a quick setting to increase the rate.
Slashdot Mirror
I found initially that I was able to learn quite a bit, and copy examples. However I soon hit a point where some components of the application were only solvable through some cut and paste 'magic code'.
.NET Business Objects by Rockford Lhotka. Very good real world stuff for building multi-tier enterprise apps. C# version coming any day now.
I hear what you are saying but that has totally changed in VB.NET. VB6 and older would often come frustratingly close to doing what I wanted but the final step often needed some wierd 'magic code', usually found with the help of Google's usenet archive.
VB.NET (and C#) is much cleaner. Things like data binding really do work intelligently now and there is very little magic stuff under the covers that you can't get at.
Book recommendation: Expert One-on-One Visual Basic
Not to denegrate Goldstine's contributions, they were important but he was really more of a project manager .....
Yes, that's true. I enjoyed listening to an audio version of ENIAC: The Triumphs and Tragedies of the World's First Computer Fasinating stuff. I seem to remember that there were a lot of personality clashes.
Australia follows English spelling (metre, colour, centre, etc) except for some strange reason the news media uses US spelling.
Not generally true but as a New Zealander, visiting Australia for the first time in the early 1980's, I remember two obvious american spellings.
"Australian Labor Party". Someone told me it was spelt like that to distinguish it from the British Labour party. Sounds plausible.
I don't think its been used for years now but Channel 9 TV's logo included the words "Living Color".
Probably unfair but I have heard Kiwi's call Australia 'America for beginners'.
GoDaddy also provide free dns so if your needs are simple then you may as well have everything in one place. I'm not necessarily pushing GoDaddy, plenty of other registrars (eg mydomain.com) provide these extra services too but if someone wants a really simple way to get a lifetime address, I haven't found a simpler or cheaper way.
Or pay $12 a year for pobox.com redirection and spam filtering.
.com domain registration including free email forwarding is only $7.95 per year now at GoDaddy. That's probably a better deal if you're about to go through the pain of changing addresses and you really want the confidence of being able to keep the address forever. If GoDaddy became a problem then you can always move the domain elsewhere.
Yes pobox.com is a great service which I used for about five years and still recommend to friends but at the end of the day you're still dependent on them staying in business and not unreasonably raising prices etc
A
I wish them well but FWIW, it got a skeptical response on this popular ham site qrz.com
They have always done a really good job on developer information (MSDN)
This is very true and one of the main reasons why I'm going with MS at my place of work. I don't know how the Java world compares but if you're a dotNET developer then there is an almost overwhelming amount of good stuff on MSDN. I've been watching some of the archived webinars and many really are useful. A lot of the newer MSDN topic areas such as 'Patterns and Practices' seem to be a genuine and good effort to lift developer skills and shake off the past where most code was probably in VB button click events.
We need to build cities like Bucky Fuller's Community Dwelling Machine
Thanks folks. All interesting stuff. We had TV licences (more recently called the 'Public Broadcasting fee', administered by 'NZ on Air') in New Zealand but I think it went to help local media productions regardless of which channel they are on. The two government owned TV channels are commercial with adverts and they pay tax like any other company. The government is simply the one and only shareholder. I think the licence fee has been abolished since I left. There is also 'National Radio' which is a bit like NPR. I'm not sure how that gets paid for now.
I mean all the BBC's services in general. I think I know the answer in assuming that the British people pay for it in tax and TV license fees. That's something I'm grateful for as a New Zealander living in the US. The BBC is a refreshing change to the somewhat mind numbing American news sources.
/. I definitely want on of those beside my bed when it becomes available. It seems like its the ideal thing for BBC listeners. I wonder if its availbility will significantly increase the load on their servers, all costing real money of course.
My real question to Brits here is: How well is this burden accepted by the British people? Are the BBC TV and radio stations in the UK really non-commercial? I know the US government gives money to PBS and NPR but I don't know how it compares (especially per capita) to what the British government must spend on the BBC. It must cost a fortune and they are effectively supplying (IMHO) a good quality product for free to the rest of the world via internet and shortwave. I imagine some of the international motivation of the BBC stems back to the days of the old empire. It almost seems too good to be true.
I assume that NPR and others like it around the world pay to carry the program. Maybe that earns a lot.
This question came up in my mind the other day when the wi-fi radio was mentoned here on
Escape and enclose in quotes.
"delete from table where id = '" . mysql_escape_string($var) . "'"
I think that's safe.
I just realised that it is related to the popup blocker. If I allow popups it seems to work. I've also heard some say that it matters of you go to msbnc.com, www.msnbc.com or www.msnbc.msn.com but my results have been inconclusive. You always end up at www.msnbc.msn.com so I guess its quickest if we bookmark that.
The only problem I have with Firefox 0.8 is that more often than not, it will not display msnbc.com. I usually just get a blank screen.
I don't know but if I had to guess I suspect the problem is non-standard html at msnbc.com. I have to wonder how much of that is accidental.
I've heard of some companies having these misguided policies. I guess .NET would have an advantage there.
Ozzie Osbourne sure seems to say 'beep' a lot when 'The Osbournes' is on in the US. Once when his son Jack held his middle finger up to the camera, it was blurred out to protect sensitive american eyes. A friend in New Zealand tells me that The Osbournes is on broadcast TV there at 10 pm uncensored. New Zealand doesn't seem to have suffered because of it. Nobody much seems to care. My friend remembered the blurred finger. Presumably that was done at the source by the same guy who blurs the car license plates etc.
I remember watching an interview with the late George Harrison on VH1. At some point he said something about the record companies was all bullsh*t. Even that was beeped out.
This is a country that lets people work around with concealed handguns but shudders at the thought of a naughty word. Very strange place.
Message from Rasmus about this issue.
In my former part of the world, nearly all toilets in homes are dual flush to save water. They have two buttons, one gives a half flush, the other a full flush. Its not rocket science to figure out when you need which. An american visitor had not seen this before.
Now that I live in the US, I wonder why such technology doesn't exist here. It seems like a much better way to save water than the problematic 'low flush' toilets common the US.
Its always inches or pounds.
I've never received anything promising to add centimeters or lose kilograms.
Junk mail in your house mailbox seems like an american thing. In New Zealand, you can put a 'No Junk Mail' sign on your mailbox and its generally respected. The big difference there is that New Zealand Post doesn't have a legal monopoly on mailboxes like the US Postal Service has. Most junk mailers deliver the stuff directly and they know that ignoring the sign is a waste of resources and a sure way to irritate any potential customer.
I'm not sure about other countries. When I first moved to the US and had no knowledge of these matters, a friend was arranging to drop something off at my place and I said "leave it in the mailbox if I'm not home". The look on her face was as if I had asked her to commit a serious crime.
Also, I'm about twice as productive using PHP/perl then I am on C# and ASP.NET. Things that are trival in the former are sometimes much more difficult in the latter.
.NET is looking pretty good.
You remind me of the old joke where a chainsaw salesman visits a woodsman chopping down a tree with an axe. The woodsman is suspicious about the salesman's claims but he agrees to try the chainsaw for a while. A few weeks later the salesman returns to find the woodsman taking a break in his hut. "This thing is useless", the woodsman exclaims. "I can cut down a tree much faster with the axe". "I'll show you" says the salesman who leaves the woodsman sipping his tea and takes the chainsaw outside. A few minutes later he returns. "There! That tree is down". "Wow!, that was quick, but what was that loud noise?". VS.NET, C#, SQL Server, ASP.NET, ADO.NET and, just released, Reporting Services make an awesome combination. BTW, I happily continue to use PHP / LAMP for several relatively simple, non-profit projects but in my daytime corporate job
and having no health insurance
It depends where you live. Many countries provide public healthcare for their citizens.
commonwealth countries like australia can have knighted people.
I wonder if that applies to countries who are members of the commonwealth but don't have the Queen as their head of state. Many commonwealth countries are like that these days.
Hopefully this means that Japan will put more force onto the US government to switch
Yeah, like when one or two countries changed to the metric system. The US shows no fear of being left in the dark ages.
If you can call it a computer, my first was a kitset using an RCA CDP 1802 processor. It was a pc board with the processor, a static ram chip (256 bytes I think) and some I/O logic. I/O was 2 seven segment led digits, a few single leds and a hex keypad. The keypad was an optional extra luxury because it also had toggle switches. It either came with a speaker or I hooked one up to an I/O line. I spent many hours writing hex machine code to play simple games, flash lights etc. Eventually I turned it into a fusible link prom programmer.
A quick search on Google shows that it was suspiciously similar to the COSMAC ELF which was featured in Popular Electronics and others have mentioned here. I bet it was the same circuit. It came from a company called Kit Parts Ltd in New Zealand.
Looking back, learning machine code and knowing about hardware gave me a great start in programing with an understanding that I wouldn't have if I started with a high level language.
Cheers
Ross
An interesting thing I've found is that some people see 50 or 60 Hz flicker quite easily and some don't. If I move my head or eyes quickly, an AC powered led easily becomes a dashed line, especially in the dark. In wierd moments I've tried to explain this to a few people and most have no clue what I'm talking about. I also have the ability to spin my eyes quickly which creates dashed circles 8-).
Its similar with vertical refresh rates on CRT screens. I often see people using screens with dreadful flicker and ask them how they can work with it and most don't know what I'm talking about. Its usually a quick setting to increase the rate.