The Lounge

>> The ideal would be to be pitted against Richard, who is never going to win that final vote. << I believe Kelly has now found the flaw in your logic. (But I'd agree that if she had picked Rich instead of Rudy to be kicked off, Rudy would have won by a larger margin

Quite a few actually. The one comes to mind immediately is codeguru. I've just tried it again and I got '9d0' (hex?) on the top left and other strange hex interspersed on the page. When I refresh the page I get '9a8', so this no. is either random or something IE doesn't understand. The other one is codejock. Interestingly enough, www.microsoft.com is free from this annoying added-in. Anyhow, I still suspect it is my setup problem even though I've tried the rather nice sounding IE's 'repair' action on the installation files. BTW, is it possible to put a 'direction sign' (link) to this lounge on the home page? I love this lounge

My company hired them for some training in COM (Essential COM(+)) . It was a very good course. The instructor was very knowledgeable and he was great for answering most questions we threw at him. The 3 things that really stood out; 1. Their example code and exercises were pretty good but best of all we saw a lot of raw COM code. Not stuff hidden behind MFC or ATL (we did get into ATL nicely but after we understand how horrible it can be write alot of COM code). Next the amount of details presented and the extremely low level knowledge they taught was great. This is not a fluffy course. And the biggest selling point was the way the instructor was able to adapt the course to our level. It turned out the group we had in the course was quite advanced in COM and much of the beginning material was redundant so he hit the most important points and then moved on quickly to the really neat geeky stuff and spent more time on that material. Overall I rate the course very high. I hope this helps. If you want more details then please email me.

G'day Daniel, >> I love your analogy of "cracking a peanut with a sledge hammer" I wish I could take credit for that one, but must confess to hearing it from someone else recently, and rather liking it. The report designer (tentatively called 'Report Studio') is a great example of just how handy web sites like Code Project are. After thinking about writing something like this for a few weeks, I decided to make a start one wet, miserable weekend. I started out downloading copious quantities of code from Code Project and Code Guru. Two hours later I started work on the program. About ten hours later I had the shell of the program running and it could to the basics:- - Draw a blank page on screen, - Zoom/scale/scroll the page, - Nifty ruler bars, - Flip between millimetres and inches on the page/rulers, - Drag-n-drop guide lines from the ruler bars, - Drag/reposition page margins from the ruler bars, - Dockable control bar (like the project window in VC++), - VC++ like push-pin properties box for drawing entities, - Serialization of report layouts via .INI like files (I'll add a binary file format later, but text files are handy for debugging). - Fully customizable tool and control bars, - A bunch of other neat stuff. The biggest job, by far, has been adding all the credits to the About Box! Granted, I wrote some fairly ratty code piecing all these things together, but my 'instant gratification' gene kicked in and I really wanted to see something on screen, yesterday. :-) Still, not bad for a days work. If I get the chance, I might throw a couple of pages of screen shots up on our web site to keep interested parties abreast of progress. Stev

We used StarTeam (by Starbase) at my last job.It not only does version control, but it has a bug tracking system and a message base built into the program. It's also web-enabled. We're using sourcesafe here and it's quite possibly the worst version control package I've ever seen.

As an Isralie I should respond wider, but I will do so in the next couple of hours. I'm still a teen (15) but soon I will be drafted into the army (18) and I must say that the isralie elite military programming units are the best in the world. Only the best of the best is accepted into. (my cousin is in the 2nd best unit and he now works for CA Israel and earns over 26,000 NIS which is around 6,500$) there is a better elite unit called "Talpiot" and this is the one I hope to be accepted into to as under family memeber of mine got accepted into it. It's one of the most secret things in Israel. Those pepole are 100% the smartest ppl on the planet. I'm working very hard to be accepted into there (I'm a young VC++ programmer with knowledge in OO, MFC, API, C, C++, OS Internals etc.) Good to see that such a great magazine put the scope on Israel hi-tech. Asaf

We have this code. Currently this is small (110k) dll. This dll can download and update files from internet. Update information stored on server in XML format. Currently this dll have interface only for C++. Now we don't distribute or support this dll. But if you want you can test this technology. WinMp3Locator (www.winmp3locator.com) already use this tehnology. Sprry for my bad english. Vladimir Romanov (vromanov@reget.com) =======================update.h===================== #pragma once #ifndef NO_UPDATE_LOG #include "RgLog.h" #endif static const UINT wm_UpdatePresent=RegisterWindowMessage("AutoUpdatePresent"); static const UINT wm_UpdateFinished=RegisterWindowMessage("AutoUpdateFinished"); static const UINT wm_UnlockFile=RegisterWindowMessage("AutoUpdateUnlockFile"); // lParam - it is the handle for further passing to GetMessageInfo BOOL InitUpdateSystem ( LPCSTR szUpdateID, LPCSTR szUpdateURL, LPCSTR szRegKey = NULL); // szUpdateID -Id of update // szUpdateURL - URL of update // szRegKey - main registry key // it should be subkey of HKCU // by default using Software\\ReGet Software\\AutoUpdate // return FALSE if case of error void SetCookie(LPCSTR szCookie = NULL); // szCookie - it would be sent as referer BOOL UpdateFromFile ( LPCSTR szFileName ); // szFileName - File with information about update // return FALSE if case of error BOOL IsAnyUpdateAvailable ( BOOL bForce = TRUE ); // bForce - FALSE check only new update // TRUE check all updates BOOL DownloadUpdate(BOOL bCheckUpdate, BOOL bAskForPackages, HWND hWnd); // downloads update in separate process // if CheckUpdate is TRUE new information will be retreived from server // if AskForPackages is TRUE the message about packages would be shown BOOL GetMessageInfo(LPARAM lParam, LPSTR szBuffer, int nBufferLength); // it is used for getting information about UnlockFile Message void RunAfterExit(LPCSTR szName); // it is uset for post an application to queue for further run (after update) void SetupUpdateSystem(); // it cleans the registry only #ifndef NO_UPDATE_LOG extern CRgLog g_UpdateLog; #endif #ifndef AUTOUPDATE_EXPORTS # ifdef _DEBUG # pragma comment(lib,"T:\\AutoUpdate\\debug\\Update.lib") # else # pragma comment(lib,"T:\\AutoUpdate\\Release\\Update.lib") # endif #endif //AUTOUPDATE_EXPORTS ============ Update.xml file sample ===============

TM, (my rant for the day). One big problem you might be having is trying to understand everything at once ! And possibly would be better breaking it up into small pieces. Look TM, I have been working on my current project for 3 months, but last week in 4 days I rewrote the whole project from scratch ! So what happend in the other 12 weeks ? No, I didn't waste my time, I was learning ! Possibly TM, what you require is a small project to work on, Rather than concentrating on learning. Also try to purely get the project/application to work, rather than trying to make the program an example of excellent coding practice. The thing I enjoy about programming most is that I am always learning something new. Also what is good about OO programing, is you don't have to create great classes to have a top application. You can use/alter someone elses free class or tools ! After altering some elses class several times, You'll find you'll be able to rewrite it for your own usage ! So get a small project to work on , Even if it isn't useful. Also try to discover the time of day that your brain functions best. Most males brins seem to work better in the morning, when they are more receptive to new ideas, (I saw that info on a documentary so I've adopted an approach of studying in the mornings, and working afternoons or evenings) Regardz Colin.

Might I also humbly suggest that you have a look at ED for Windows. ED4W is a full featured programmers editor which is popular with developers doing cross development. A major new release, Version 4, which is near completion extends its language sensitive editing capabilties via. Style Sheets and Language Flavours. These are important additions for folks doing cross development. Full compiler support with error tracking is built in. You can download a free trial of the current 3.80 release from www.getsoft.com and see details of V4 on the Future Plans page on our site. Neville Franks, Author of ED for Window

<Streep>A dingo took my baby!</Streep> The prosecution rests... :-)

Terry Microsoft IS a big fat-cat public company, so why shouldn't the CEO reflect that? No one is going to dominate the Internet the way that MSFT dominated the desk top, so no matter how well they do, it will look they are going down hill. Gord

Thanks for the tip. I've just tried it, and it's infinitely easier than InstallShield. I finished setting up the installallation in 10 minutes and no help info required. It's a beauty!

Paul, EWBX (earthweb) is more or less a job site if you look where their revenue is coming from. I'm not too bullish on them. I kind of like RWAV (Roguewave). Their new CEO seems to know what he is doing. Their stock price is way down. And I have a feeling that their next quarter will be half decent. At $6... there doesn't seem like there is a whole lot of downside. I also like NMGC which is selling for less than the cash they have in the bank.

While it's not so much a shrinkwrap tool, it's every bit as useful, I recommend getting John Robbins' book "Debugging Applications" It's largely a collection of his excellent Bugslayer MSJ articles, but it's handy to have all in one place. Rebasing your dll's, and using the provided code, you can make your field debugging tasks a *lot* easier.

That's one of the bugs I mentioned ;) [Forum Guidelines]