Guys, What is the general observation? In spite of the severe limitations that Silverlight has (compared to WPF), Silverlight seems to be gaining more ground in the market (in terms of employment opportunities, roles being made available, projects being started, etc. ) than compared to WPF. Is this correct or may be i am just trying to gauge it using just one or two factors - i.e. employment market / new projects, and hence get this feel? I even heard one employment agency guy say that his client is moving from legacy WPF ;) code to Silverlight. WPF - is already a legacy system :) ???? Goodness. Is MS investing (or going to continue to invest) in WPF more, or is their direction is on to Silverlight now? Do we have any pointers, guesses or opinions on this?

Thanks Anna, fastspring does look interesting, and i did apply for an account straight-away, but i have not received any account email or greeting email etc. as yet, apart from the standard machine generated one ;) that says they have received my application from the web. Maybe i will have to wait for a week or so before i they will write to me. Thanks for the pointer though. Help appreciated.

Thanks Chris. I will evaluate that option, but how do they handle VAT? Do they collect VAT and remit to the respective governments or do they remit the VAT to you and you do the remittance to various governments and account (more paper work here!)

Hi, I have been using Regnow.com as my e-commerce payment collector agent (online sales). Their recent reporting system software upgrade has caused chaos on everything - including payments being late, wire transfers messed up, bad / invalid reporting of information in control panel etc, and they don't seem to be fixing it in spite of requesting for fixes. I am thinking of moving away from using regnow.com or any "digital river" company for that matter, and i was looking for any good suggestions. If any of you have used any e-commerce company, please recommend if they have been good. US based ones preferred, since they take the responsibility to collect and remit VAT, so i don't have to. (I am UK based software company). Thanks.

So what is the popular choice - IPad2 or Xoom? I am digging into both the websites, and finding compelling features both sides :) I love to see more screen space in Xoom (10+ inches) as compared to IPad2. I am planning to buy one of these, and was thinking which way to go? My main applications would be: books reading (e-books - techy books as well), watching videos, email + internet stuff, and if possible running some business apps like spreadsheets, word processor, Presentation, etc. What has been your choice, if you have bought one of these toys.

Cool, yes, thanks for that link. I read his post just now :) Awesome achievement! Congrats Roger! Wow, what a day! I am getting lots of inspirations for diving into the "dream of mine" sport/art. Yay!! I am going for it!!!!!! :)

Really appreciate it, Johnny. That was a very inspiring reply - especially from someone who is a already a martial artist. Thanks. Good to know, its not too late for my age. Certainly by no means i am dreaming to be a jackie chan ;), but will want to train well, and earn a Black belt! I am thinking of going private classes, since the master said i could speed up on the grades quickly by working out and trainning a lot more than general classes, and attend competitions for earning the belts faster. What are you thoughts on the private classes? Thanks.

Guys - i am about to introduce my daughter (5 years old) to Martial arts - Teakwundo, jiu-jitsu, etc. I am crazy about learning it for myself, but never got into it so far. I am running 39 years of age. The master i spoke to (for my daughter) says i can take the classes, since i am keeping well for my age in terms of body fitness - he thinks. I personally have got a lot of will for this, and solid drive to do it. So just wanted to check with you all on this - especially any one who is starting on this at my kind of age - i.e. 39+. What are your thoughts? Is it doable, or would it become a joke at the school? :) Obviously i am not planning to be a professional figther or go into professional tournaments, but definitely want to learn it until i reach a black belt. Has anybody started to learn martial arts at this age? Was it doable. Any pains, lessons learnt etc. for me? :) Thanks.

Purely from a point of view of heavy UI based WPF, Silverlight development, which one of these processors should one go for? i7 970 (3.2 GHz) or the new Sandy bridge / 2600 series The 2600 series has only 4 core maximum, so maybe i7 970 series (which has 6 cores)?... given i will be playing around heavily with tools such as TPL/PLINQ, etc. Opinions please. I am buying a new PC soon....

Cool. Thanks :)

Nice answer, Thanks :) I was only concerned around the technicality of developing these apps in 64-bit, and any grey area of potential issues in being able to deploying the same and they work just fine in 32-bit OS as well that my customers may have. that is all. From your experience, it seems clear that there is no issues developing in 64 bit and these running fine in 32bits. Thanks.

In fact they said they can do "nothing" as well for the same price ;) Ha!

I am currently buying a new desktop and was in dilemma as to whether to get 32 or 64 bit OS, since the vendor offers both at he same price. Given my main day-to-day requirement is to develop for WPF, Silverlight and WinForms (occasionally) + COM-interop, no core C++ development though, what do you all recommend? Should i get 64bit pre-installed or get 32 bit OS installed. I take it i can safey deveop WPF, Silverlight and WinForms apps in 64-bit and deploy to 32-bit - since the JIT compiler takes care of the bit-specifics at jit compile time? I have this dilemma since i am buying a i7 980X with 6 cores there, and 16 GB RAM, and i don't want to be wasting all this resource with 32 bit OS which can access only 3 GB at any time.

Apologies for my spell and grammar mistakes in my post.

It was a breaking news for me, and from teh answers from some here, i can see it was a breaking news for many here. Now, it is a shameful matter for us British, irrespective of whether it is breaking news or not!

I don't think it was the police that helped your situation there, it might have been the "some muscle-bound friends" that did the trick to sort out things there :)

Hmmm in that case you might want to use proper words too - "didn't" is no proper English word. We can go on and on about this. Forget it!

No problem Mate, i understand what you say about me :) but i do get really annoyed when I see bizarre things happening that should not happen at all.

" however there is also no law forbidding a homeowner to re-enter the property and remove them." LBC asked this to a policeman (I think) there, and he confirmed that if the squatters won;t allow the owners into the house, if the owners try to enter teh house - then that will be illegal, and squatters can call police and get the owner arrested for infringing the squatters rights. I am sure you won;t accept it, but you and i are not police, and that guy knows his job. "Just bring a locksmith, and once in, change the locks," Nope that cannot be done. If you enter the house to do this, you can be arrested - see my above answer as to what that policeman said to David. The policeman and the lawyer confirmed that this is day-in and day-out thing that is happening, and all owners go through court spending 1000s of pounds.

I did not believe all this when the show was going, and me a British did not know until today that this stinking law exists in my country. Shame!! Only when sevveral lawyers and squatters themselves came into the show and confirmed to the LBC, i could digest it! Now i can see from where this concept of benefits, free lunch scrounging ideas of British came from. This must have been there for centuries here.