Within a year or two? No way to guarantee 30%, but a solid gain is *usually* manageable within the stock market. Of course, the problem with the stock market is that the shorter your timespan, the higher the risk... and it's a function polynomial with respect to 1/x, so it gets worse faster the shorter it gets. There are two principles to the stock market - one for survival, the other for doing well. First - remember that you're taking on risk. Putting money in the market means you're willing to lose some. Don't buy or sell a stock without good reasons. Also, never forget that good reasons can include stability as easily as growth potential. Second - work with what you know. Do you know the technology business (not just technology, but the business side) well? Which segments? Those are where you invest... most of the market (including non-specialized financial managers) does NOT have as much knowledge as you do, IF you know it well. I know I said there wouldn't be a third, but it bears repeating - DO NOT INVEST WHAT YOU ARE NOT WILLING TO LOSE. It seems obvious, but many people forget this. There is no such thing as a guaranteed return, short of savings accounts, and even those aren't perfect (although 99.999% likelihood of return probably isn't that far-off an estimate). Risk and return... if you can find a case where they deviate from linear relationships in the right direction, more power to you, but I'm not sure they exist.

Certainly doesn't seem ideal to me... take a great collection of short stories as inspiration, and it ends up with a plot far closer to The Caves of Steel than anything from I, Robot, and without either Elijah Baley or an equivalent.

Well, I might recommend looking around for a copy of WASTE, since I think it's legal to use... Someone please correct me if I'm wrong. Nullsoft posted it a while back, but AOL pulled it. It's a peer-to-peer for up to 50 people, secure, etc.

One very important thing to point out about your refutation posts... By responding to (and more importantly quoting) only small sections, you often take them out of context, setting up a "straw man" that's easier to attack, as it's often said. I'll assume for the moment that this is unintentional. If so, could you please avoid this for the future? I understand that this is an easier structure for an argument, but it's easier simply because it's impossible to make points with any amount of complexity if your opponent insists on being able to take sections out of any relations they have, regardless of how important those relations are to the point. Also, this tends to make it easier for you to contradict yourself, so changing your style like this would benefit you as well.

Ok... The first point anyone should admit about religion (or any other fundamental debate/issue, come to think of it) is that anything based on faith (meaning anything, since every system of belief or operation has axioms, and even that can't make something complete - see Godel) cannot be decided. Deductive reasoning is essentially just as firmly based on faith in the steps of reasoning as religion is on faith in teachings and faith in general. Even so, I just want to question some points of your argument that have been debated many times before. #1) Much, if not most, of your argument is based on how unlikely any particular event of evolution is, let alone a chain of such events. However, the simplified probability (that allows you to predict expected times) you cite/use is based on the idea that there is only one instance where it may happen, even if the chance is repeated over and over. Remember the size of the universe? How many planetary systems are likely to be present in that big a volume, even given the observed relatively-low density? How many of those would be around the right kind of star? Well, I'm not going to go through every term... but can you tell that we're approaching some sort of Drake equation, here? A term for each probability factor, and another term for the numbers of stars in the universe - which is, by definition, astronomically high. And that pun is fully intended. #2) In your evolutionary section, you assert something that is clearly wrong. Note well: Mutations are not usually harmful! Rather, mutations almost always have no effect. It's a matter of how much of DNA is unused, or to a point, unimportant (it can tolerate some change). Also, again, it's a matter of numbers and scale. The probability of useful mutations occurring in a species is just as dependent on the number of children produced by the population as a whole as it is on the chance of the mutation happening at all. #3) Your evolutionary arguments are almost entirely based on the idea that evolution happens only when necessary to survive in a new environment, or to be more successful in a constant one. If I may be blunt, this is an enormous fallacy. Evolution, by nature, is a process of changes. Think of it as nature's trial and error. Subpoint a) Admittedly, naive trial and error is extremely inefficient. However, educated trial and error is extremely efficient for maximization/minimization problems where one does not know the exact function. Evolution is not naive. Drastic changes, such as introduci

Favorites: Java, C#, Perl (Still learning, but I like it) Hated: Javascript, Visual Basic (original, not .NET) Most hated (And I mean DETESTED): IDL (Interactive Data Language) I had to do programming in this for a summer program last year (the Summer Science Program, if anyone cares), and we all despised it. The only opinion I've heard of it from actual programmers is "the bastard child of C and VB" - worst of both worlds. Matrix operations? Sure, they're there, it's a data-oriented language - but there are inconsistencies in how each operation handles both input and output (in terms of row-by-column or column-by-row)!!!

Try POPFile[^]. It's by far the best solution I've found... Pure Bayesian-statistical POP3 proxy written in Perl, and if you don't use POP3, various solutions exist (including a direct plug-in to Outlook called Outclass that uses POPFile to do the processing).

As a teenager, I think I probably fall into one of the worst-affected age groups for low self-esteem... Two things I do, one short-term (but works really well), and one long-term (much harder than it sounds, but the ultimate solution). Short-term: Find some form of meditation that works for you, and do it. Mine is simple... I find some time, lie down on my bed, close my eyes, and try to just consciously experience all the sensations of the simple situation. The touch of the bed, any sounds, any air currents... There's so much to take in, that you can't take it all in and still think of anything. It really helps to blank your mind sometimes - think of it as a full reboot, or a warm reboot (if you only do it for about half a minute, but it doesn't work until you're more experienced with the technique). If it works, there will be some sort of tell-tale... for me, it's that everything looks sharper and clearer for a little while. After a session of this (whether a minute, 5 minutes, or half an hour), I find that it's much easier to evaluate yourself honestly outside of the normal self-criticizing negative light, and see the positive things about yourself for once. If this specific form of meditation doesn't work for you, see if you can find your own personal form that does work (I recommend the book "The Miracle of Mindfulness" as a source of ideas and possibly overall contentment). Long-term: Well, your long-term solution depends on the source of your lower self-esteem. If you can nail down a cause, then that's a good thing. You know the old joke - Patient: "Doctor, it hurts when I do this! *ouch*..." Doctor: "Don't do that." - Corny, to be sure, but honestly pretty accurate. If you find a clear cause, then you have two main options: learn to accept it and move on (probably one of the most deceptively simple things to do), or avoid it as much as you can. Now, if you can't nail down a chronic cause, truly chronic low self-esteem without any apparent cause is often the main symptom of depression, so in this situation it can never hurt to get yourself evaluated. I know far too many people who've come way too close to permanent damage to themselves (whether physical or emotional) through untreated depression, triggered by whatever cause. The short-term solution really helps, I've found... But all this is just me. Take this as just another set of ideas, and build off any, all, or none of the ideas that have been given to find what works for you. Eric

My own MP3 encoding settings for LAME: --nspsytune --vbr-mtrh -V 0 -k -h -m j -b 32 -B 320 --athtype 3 -Z -X0 I can't tell the difference in any auditory way, shape, or form from the original .WAV file. I don't actually download often, but when I do, I rarely download any MP3's below 320kbps... I download the 320's, then recompress them under my own settings. It keeps any noticeable loss of quality to a minimum, since as far as I can tell, the only audible quality loss is on the original compressor's side (and most decent MP3 encoders handle 320kbps well enough).

:wtf:???

Looking up the Invoke method with Reflection is exactly what I needed... I really appreciate your help.

Does anyone know of a decent UML tool designed to work well with C#/.NET? I've been looking for one for a while, with no real luck.

Alright... What I'm working on involves the dynamic creation of a wrapper class (through use of the Emit namespace) around a provided class that I see only as its Type object representation. As part of building the wrapper class, I need to emit methods for each event of the original class such that each method fits the requirements to be used in the delegate type used for the targeted event. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find any way to pull out anything that I could use to dynamically discover the required method signature for the creation of a method that can be used in the initialization of a provided delegate. The primary thing available to me with respect to the event is the EventInfo object, but the only thing that that exposes as to the event handler required for it is the Type object representing the class that inherits the System.Delegate class. This is a Type object like any other, and I can't find any way to pull the method signature out of it that it wants for its instantiation.

I already understand this much of Reflection, but that doesn't help me... I need to dynamically create a method without ever actually seeing any method, only an EventInfo object or something that it publicly exposes a reference to.

I'm working on the basis for a CodeProject article, but stuck on a couple of issues. The current problem is as follows: I have to dynamically create a method that can be used as an event handler for a particular event, given only the EventInfo object that represents the event. This includes a reference to the type (subclassed from Delegate and accessed through the EventInfo.EventHandlerType property) that is created to represent the method in delegate form. However, there doesn't seem to be an obvious way to read out the desired method form (parameters & parameters' types, return type, etc.). Does anyone know how to get this method semi-signature out of the EventInfo, the event handler Type, or anything else that's dynamically accessible through the framework (almost certainly through Reflection)? Thanks! Eric Astor

I was browsing a few sites that I frequent, and ran into a link over to a screenshot article on the newest leaked Longhorn beta. Just glancing through, and I struck one screenshot that made me very interested: http://www.flexbeta.net/images/longhorn_4015/12.gif[^]. For those who don't need to see the image, here's the full text of an error box shown in the screenshot: <Error Message> Explorer.EXE - Common Language Runtime Debugging Services Application has generated an exception that could not be handled. Process ID=0xcbc (3260), Thread ID=0xcc8 (3272). Click OK to terminate the application. Click Cancel to debug the application. </Error Message> Admittedly, this doesn't say much for the beta's stability, but if you reread the title of the error message, you might notice something interesting. Explorer.exe seems to have thrown a .NET exception. Is the new Windows version Longhorn at least partially written in .NET? Does anyone know?

True, compilation appears to work out-of-process... Except that once compilation is done, the CompilerResults object returned contains an Assembly object. The instant that the Assembly object is loaded into the process's memory (which can happen indirectly by loading the CompilerResults return value), the assembly (with all accompanying code and metainformation) is apparently irrevocably loaded into the process's AppDomain. This consumes memory. If I'm mistaken, please let me know.

Thank you for your points... I hadn't even thought of my runtime compilation component as a part of a logic-testing environment, and the features of a testing environment that you point out make the problem of memory leakage mostly irrelevant. Unfortunately, the points that you've made may not hold for my situation. The process (although not the thread) that requires code compilation in my solution should be rather long-lived, as it is a server in a centralized client-server architecture. However, thanks to your arguments, I've realized that an effective way to solve my problem is just to precompile each piece of code at startup of the server, then to access the compiled types. Although this may be expensive in terms of memory, it's much more efficient in terms of programming time required. I intend to polish my design of my existing Runtime Compiler interfaces slightly, then I'll use that. Once the entire server is finished, I'll probably write a CodeProject article on it... As this will be my first significant networking effort, aside from basic tests, the lessons that I learn may be useful to others working on other networking projects. Thank you for your points, Eric Astor

I appreciate your answers to my questions. I had actually conceived of this library as a tool for self-modifying code or code read in from a database and then executed, as opposed to a testing tool (which would seem redundant, as access to this library merely gives access to the .NET compilers, already present when the .NET framework is installed). In such an environment, I believe that memory leakage would be likely to become an issue. I would appreciate if you would possibly re-answer the third question as below, taking this into account. 3) I'm building a .NET library (in C#) which gives full, optionally automated, simple, on-the-fly access to the compiler. The actual compiler access is done... However, building the complicated Remoting/AppDomain infrastructure is taking a while. Without this, there is no way to unload a runtime-compiled assembly before the main application ends. Is this final feature desirable and/or necessary for a good runtime compilation library? Thanks, Eric Astor

Not as good as programming, but a nice touch in life, and something to make you believe there is an element of magic in life after all... Xyzzy X  Y   Z  Z   Y 24 25 26 26 25 = 126% :laugh: