Never mind VS2003 - officially, you can't even install VS97 under Windows 7 64-bit. (Someone posted a workaround, eventually, but it took 12 months or more.) There's a lot of legacy VB6 code out there and you can't just open those projects in VS2008 and recompile, not by a very, very long shot.
That was my first thought too. I've been developing software for Windows since the early 90's, and while I'm a gamer and I enjoy owning a relatively powerful PC I have zero interest in smartphones, tablets and other gadgetry. I won't be developing for any of them, just the desktop.
As for the desktop market disappearing, tell that to small businesses running accounts software, or authors writing novel, or just about anyone else who - when they think about computers - thinks 'keyboard' not 'gestures'.
I avoid looking at the screens in my local department store because, apart from showing the scanned purchases, they also play ads on a loop. Whoever programmed the things need a re-education, because when I, a 44-year-old-male, am buying 4 litres of motor oil and two bags of fertiliser, I really don't need to watch ads for the latest slimming magazine, hair colours and super-multi-vita-shampoo with vitamin X. Okay, maybe the shampoo.
But, to get back to my point... I'm 90% certain the screens show pics of each product as it's scanned. Unfortunately an organic cucumber looks pretty much like a regular one grown in Eau du Periodic Table, so I guess even product photos have their limitations.
Four of my novels were published between 2005 and 2008. I still make a small amount of money off them - enough that my wife and daughters have enough to eat, for example. Yes, I'm writing more novels, and yes I do supplement my income with school visits, contract programming, google adsense, odd jobs, ebook conversions and anything else (legal) I can think of, but those novels were only really published locally (I'm in Australia) and haven't had a chance at finding a big overseas audience yet. If some entity took away my copyright and deigned them free for all time, I'd never have a shot at earning a better income off my years and years of hard work.
Yep, and if anyone tweets me this crap I'll just unfollow them. When enough people do that their scant pennies in commission will dwindle along with their followers.
I'm 44 and have been programming for nigh on 30 years. I've been self-employed for the past 6 or 7 years, working full time from home. Nothing fancy, just enough to pay the bills and enjoy a lot of spare time. Every now and then I enjoy a new challenge - right now, it's developing a PC game. my brain may be creaking with matrices and vertices, but it's still working fine.
I have my first ZX81 still, and I picked up another Spectrum a few years ago out of nostalgia. ZX Printer, microdrives, interface one... a whole list of bits and pieces. I have a ton of nostalgia for my teen years in the 80s', and I can't help but smile when I crack open my copies of Crash magazine.
I have a 'No NDAs' clause on my freelance page. It keeps clueless megalomaniacs out of my inbox, and I still get work from regular guys who just want a bit of programming done.
Plans for this acrobatic plane were published in a 4-volume 1940's British encyclopedia called 'World of the Children'. (I have a copy on my shelf.) The instructions call it a glider, and explain how to gently release it by the tail so it proceeds across the room in a leisurely fashion. At six, I discovered I could hold the thing nose-first with my three middle fingers and whip it high into the sky.
It might not be a world-beater, but it's fun to fly.
Click on the Code tab and it'll give you the subversion command to download the source tree. You can also grab a tarball from this page: http://hjt.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/hjt/
And while I'm commenting... as a VB programmer going way back to QB45, GFA Basic on the Atari, and Sinclair Basic on the Spectrum, it'll be nice to finally be able to download and play with the source for one of these utils.
I saved enough pocket money for a ZX81 in 1983, and then my dad told me I wasn't allowed to buy one. He was worried computers were a bad influence on youth (unlike, say, drugs and alcohol). It took a few weeks but I finally won. Then I used my paper round money to buy a ZX printer. I still have both of them in the cupboard.
Windows XP had a lot of issues with removable drives. I have a couple of dozen of them assigned to specific drive letters, and nine times out of ten when I went to remove them I'd get the 'busy' message and I'd have to restart the PC to get them out safely. (These were critical backups, and the idea of pulling them out without a safe removal wasn't really an option.)
Each time it happened I discovered XP had automagically ticked 'enable system restore' on these removable drives. I'd untick it, again, and back it would come next time. It's bad enough waiting for a backup to complete so I can leave the house, but having to do a complete restart of the system each time was too much.
Would you believe this was the ONLY reason I upgraded to Windows 7?
You just gave me an idea for a new doorbell, which could be a fun project. (The old one sits in a box five times bigger than the RasPi - plenty of room for the board & batteries.)
For Beginners. They don't have to worry about which libraries to include, where to put the semi-colon or how many times to press TAB. They can just enter Print "Hello" and it will. BASIC is a great way to get people into programming. If they want to take it further they can move on to other languages. If they just want to write an app which beeps their phone at 7am every weekday, I'm sure BASIC would do the job.
I have nineteen titles on amazon: four novels in my science fiction comedy series, one novel in a junior science fiction series, and a bunch of short stories and collections. They're all on Kindle/Smashwords/Apple/etc except the junior SF novel, which is Kindle only. So, I just switched that one over to Amazon Kindle Select just to see what happens.
It's still available in print, and the only reason the junior novel didn't make it to Smashwords is because they insist on DOC files.
I have Firefox set up to purge all cookies on exit, except for a long list of whitelisted sites. I'd like Firefox stop trashing my permissions.sqlite file from time to time, deleting all these settings. (Seemed to happen on the 6 -> 7 upgrade, and again on 7 -> 8.)
Just wanted to add: I only use the bounce (which is a manual process) in two scenarios. The first is when someone starts sending me funny pic o' the week or forwarding 10-year-old hoaxes, in which case I bounce a message, wait for them to email me, then inform them my email client often refuses such messages and it's best not to send them. (The alternative is to email and ask, but sometimes they get sniffy about this. It's better to blame my computer and/or software.)
The second scenario is when big companies somehow add me to a marketing list, and their unsubscribe link doesn't work or is missing altogether. If the message is addressed to me directly (not BCCd), I'll forge a bounce. This often works to remove me from their list of victims... er, valued marketing partners.
I have a road bike, a flat bar and a hybrid. The hybrid is the most comfortable for long distances, but I added a pair of tri-bars which allows me to lean forward and put the weight on my elbows. I'm used to spending hours in that position, which is probably why it's the most comfortable way to ride.
All my freeware apps include translations sent to me by users of the software, and I've been doing this since 2000. I just included a template people could modify, and a header asking them to send me a copy of the file. As someone else suggested, people like to translate software for friends and family who don't speak English (or any of the other existing languages.)
What they should do is apply a 1c tax on every trade placed with every major share market. Collect the lot, split it up and wire the funds to a basket of deserving charities. Even better if they could do it without an admin overhead - set the splits once a year and use automated transfers.
Maybe I'm too old to be a gamer, but I've always chosen to do the good things instead of the bad. On the other hand, my kids would always sacrifice followers in Black and White to gain mana.
Slashdot Mirror
Never mind VS2003 - officially, you can't even install VS97 under Windows 7 64-bit. (Someone posted a workaround, eventually, but it took 12 months or more.) There's a lot of legacy VB6 code out there and you can't just open those projects in VS2008 and recompile, not by a very, very long shot.
That was my first thought too. I've been developing software for Windows since the early 90's, and while I'm a gamer and I enjoy owning a relatively powerful PC I have zero interest in smartphones, tablets and other gadgetry. I won't be developing for any of them, just the desktop.
As for the desktop market disappearing, tell that to small businesses running accounts software, or authors writing novel, or just about anyone else who - when they think about computers - thinks 'keyboard' not 'gestures'.
I avoid looking at the screens in my local department store because, apart from showing the scanned purchases, they also play ads on a loop. Whoever programmed the things need a re-education, because when I, a 44-year-old-male, am buying 4 litres of motor oil and two bags of fertiliser, I really don't need to watch ads for the latest slimming magazine, hair colours and super-multi-vita-shampoo with vitamin X. Okay, maybe the shampoo.
... I'm 90% certain the screens show pics of each product as it's scanned. Unfortunately an organic cucumber looks pretty much like a regular one grown in Eau du Periodic Table, so I guess even product photos have their limitations.
But, to get back to my point
I'd mod the OP up but I don't want to waste 1.25 mod points ...
Four of my novels were published between 2005 and 2008. I still make a small amount of money off them - enough that my wife and daughters have enough to eat, for example. Yes, I'm writing more novels, and yes I do supplement my income with school visits, contract programming, google adsense, odd jobs, ebook conversions and anything else (legal) I can think of, but those novels were only really published locally (I'm in Australia) and haven't had a chance at finding a big overseas audience yet. If some entity took away my copyright and deigned them free for all time, I'd never have a shot at earning a better income off my years and years of hard work.
Yep, and if anyone tweets me this crap I'll just unfollow them. When enough people do that their scant pennies in commission will dwindle along with their followers.
I'm 44 and have been programming for nigh on 30 years. I've been self-employed for the past 6 or 7 years, working full time from home. Nothing fancy, just enough to pay the bills and enjoy a lot of spare time. Every now and then I enjoy a new challenge - right now, it's developing a PC game. my brain may be creaking with matrices and vertices, but it's still working fine.
I have my first ZX81 still, and I picked up another Spectrum a few years ago out of nostalgia. ZX Printer, microdrives, interface one ... a whole list of bits and pieces. I have a ton of nostalgia for my teen years in the 80s', and I can't help but smile when I crack open my copies of Crash magazine.
So if a writer types 'How does someone publish there book?', Microsoft will send them to a spelling and grammar site instead of HarperCollins?
I have a 'No NDAs' clause on my freelance page. It keeps clueless megalomaniacs out of my inbox, and I still get work from regular guys who just want a bit of programming done.
Plans for this acrobatic plane were published in a 4-volume 1940's British encyclopedia called 'World of the Children'. (I have a copy on my shelf.) The instructions call it a glider, and explain how to gently release it by the tail so it proceeds across the room in a leisurely fashion. At six, I discovered I could hold the thing nose-first with my three middle fingers and whip it high into the sky.
It might not be a world-beater, but it's fun to fly.
Click on the Code tab and it'll give you the subversion command to download the source tree. You can also grab a tarball from this page: http://hjt.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/hjt/
... as a VB programmer going way back to QB45, GFA Basic on the Atari, and Sinclair Basic on the Spectrum, it'll be nice to finally be able to download and play with the source for one of these utils.
And while I'm commenting
I saved enough pocket money for a ZX81 in 1983, and then my dad told me I wasn't allowed to buy one. He was worried computers were a bad influence on youth (unlike, say, drugs and alcohol). It took a few weeks but I finally won. Then I used my paper round money to buy a ZX printer. I still have both of them in the cupboard.
Windows XP had a lot of issues with removable drives. I have a couple of dozen of them assigned to specific drive letters, and nine times out of ten when I went to remove them I'd get the 'busy' message and I'd have to restart the PC to get them out safely. (These were critical backups, and the idea of pulling them out without a safe removal wasn't really an option.)
Each time it happened I discovered XP had automagically ticked 'enable system restore' on these removable drives. I'd untick it, again, and back it would come next time. It's bad enough waiting for a backup to complete so I can leave the house, but having to do a complete restart of the system each time was too much.
Would you believe this was the ONLY reason I upgraded to Windows 7?
You just gave me an idea for a new doorbell, which could be a fun project. (The old one sits in a box five times bigger than the RasPi - plenty of room for the board & batteries.)
For Beginners. They don't have to worry about which libraries to include, where to put the semi-colon or how many times to press TAB. They can just enter Print "Hello" and it will. BASIC is a great way to get people into programming. If they want to take it further they can move on to other languages. If they just want to write an app which beeps their phone at 7am every weekday, I'm sure BASIC would do the job.
I have nineteen titles on amazon: four novels in my science fiction comedy series, one novel in a junior science fiction series, and a bunch of short stories and collections. They're all on Kindle/Smashwords/Apple/etc except the junior SF novel, which is Kindle only. So, I just switched that one over to Amazon Kindle Select just to see what happens.
It's still available in print, and the only reason the junior novel didn't make it to Smashwords is because they insist on DOC files.
I have Firefox set up to purge all cookies on exit, except for a long list of whitelisted sites. I'd like Firefox stop trashing my permissions.sqlite file from time to time, deleting all these settings. (Seemed to happen on the 6 -> 7 upgrade, and again on 7 -> 8.)
Just wanted to add: I only use the bounce (which is a manual process) in two scenarios. The first is when someone starts sending me funny pic o' the week or forwarding 10-year-old hoaxes, in which case I bounce a message, wait for them to email me, then inform them my email client often refuses such messages and it's best not to send them. (The alternative is to email and ask, but sometimes they get sniffy about this. It's better to blame my computer and/or software.)
... er, valued marketing partners.
The second scenario is when big companies somehow add me to a marketing list, and their unsubscribe link doesn't work or is missing altogether. If the message is addressed to me directly (not BCCd), I'll forge a bounce. This often works to remove me from their list of victims
yMail2 (Windows, free to download & use) offers a bounce facility, and the entire program is written in Visual Basic 2008.
I have a road bike, a flat bar and a hybrid. The hybrid is the most comfortable for long distances, but I added a pair of tri-bars which allows me to lean forward and put the weight on my elbows. I'm used to spending hours in that position, which is probably why it's the most comfortable way to ride.
I still play dungeon master regularly using an ST emulator. The spell creation is great, as is using portcullis doors to pound monsters into the dust.
All my freeware apps include translations sent to me by users of the software, and I've been doing this since 2000. I just included a template people could modify, and a header asking them to send me a copy of the file. As someone else suggested, people like to translate software for friends and family who don't speak English (or any of the other existing languages.)
What they should do is apply a 1c tax on every trade placed with every major share market. Collect the lot, split it up and wire the funds to a basket of deserving charities. Even better if they could do it without an admin overhead - set the splits once a year and use automated transfers.
Maybe I'm too old to be a gamer, but I've always chosen to do the good things instead of the bad. On the other hand, my kids would always sacrifice followers in Black and White to gain mana.