If this is a problem, you could always use the not keyword instead of ! C++ supports the following less well known keyword eqivalents:

and &&
and_eq &=
bitand &
bitor |
compl ~
not !
or ||
or_eq |=
xor ^
xor_eq ^=
not_eq !=

C# doesn't seem to support these alternatives, which were originally included in C++ to support development when the characters needed for the more usual variants weren't available on the keyboard. Gavin Greig "Haw, you're no deid," girned Charon. "Get aff ma boat or ah'll report ye." Matthew Fitt - The Hoose O Haivers: The Twelve Trauchles O Heracles. -- modified at 5:50 Tuesday 7th February, 2006

The BCS website lists these benefits[^]. It doesn't make a "hard" difference in my company, but it does make a "soft" difference in that my professionalism has been recognised to some extent by an external body, and that impresses non-technical staff. If you're looking for an immediate hard difference, there are software discounts that might exceed the cost of membership. As I'm not a very active member, I'll refer you to Colin's reply for more worthy benefits. Gavin Greig "Haw, you're no deid," girned Charon. "Get aff ma boat or ah'll report ye." Matthew Fitt - The Hoose O Haivers: The Twelve Trauchles O Heracles.

Looks like it beats this long-standing Scottish record[^]. Gavin Greig "Haw, you're no deid," girned Charon. "Get aff ma boat or ah'll report ye." Matthew Fitt - The Hoose O Haivers: The Twelve Trauchles O Heracles.

I've never heard that usage, but just to confuse the issue I can add that in Scots, "doubt" can mean "expect" or "guess". For example: I doubt it'll rain -> I expect it will rain. In "normal" English, it would mean "I don't think it will rain". Gavin Greig "Haw, you're no deid," girned Charon. "Get aff ma boat or ah'll report ye." Matthew Fitt - The Hoose O Haivers: The Twelve Trauchles O Heracles.

My first degree was in Physics and Electronics, followed by an M.Sc. in Computer Science and a Ph.D. Without a degree, you might have to work harder to convince potential employers that you have a good theoretical grounding in the subject and are prepared to learn, and accept that some will reject your application before you get far enough to give them convincing evidence of your abilities. Academic qualifications aren't necessary, but they are desirable. Only you can decide whether they're worth spending a year or two on a low income before working full time. You may be repaid in any or all of earning potential, better knowledge of your subject and in your social life - or you may not. Good luck! Gavin Greig "Haw, you're no deid," girned Charon. "Get aff ma boat or ah'll report ye." Matthew Fitt - The Hoose O Haivers: The Twelve Trauchles O Heracles.

I've never had a problem having my Scottish notes accepted south of the border. Anywhere that does try it just won't get my custom. Gavin Greig "Haw, you're no deid," girned Charon. "Get aff ma boat or ah'll report ye." Matthew Fitt - The Hoose O Haivers: The Twelve Trauchles O Heracles.

Graham Bradshaw wrote: people were living in the Outer Hebrides, (islands at the northern tip of England) Excuse me? The environmental argument you're making is fine, but your political geography is well dodgy. The Outer Hebrides are not "at the northern tip of England". They're to the west of Scotland, and not really very close to the English border. Gavin Greig "Haw, you're no deid," girned Charon. "Get aff ma boat or ah'll report ye." Matthew Fitt - The Hoose O Haivers: The Twelve Trauchles O Heracles.

There's also MAKEMSI[^]. I've never used either it or WiX (the Microsoft open source tool), so I can't make any comparison or recommendation. Gavin Greig "Haw, you're no deid," girned Charon. "Get aff ma boat or ah'll report ye." Matthew Fitt - The Hoose O Haivers: The Twelve Trauchles O Heracles.

It is currently optional, but MS have stated that they intend to make it compulsory. Gavin Greig "Haw, you're no deid," girned Charon. "Get aff ma boat or ah'll report ye." Matthew Fitt - The Hoose O Haivers: The Twelve Trauchles O Heracles.

Seconded Thirded! Gavin Greig "Haw, you're no deid," girned Charon. "Get aff ma boat or ah'll report ye." Matthew Fitt - The Hoose O Haivers: The Twelve Trauchles O Heracles.

Trollslayer wrote: It's Labelmania ! At least labels are being used then... It could be worse! Gavin Greig "Haw, you're no deid," girned Charon. "Get aff ma boat or ah'll report ye." Matthew Fitt - The Hoose O Haivers: The Twelve Trauchles O Heracles.

Paul Watson wrote: I think he made a subtle, or feable depending on your viewpoint You might be right, but if so, my viewpoint is that it was an utterly lame effort! :-D Michael Howard is often caricatured as a vampire, after he was described some years ago by a fellow Conservative, Anne Widdecombe, as having something of the night about him, so much could have been made of the date. Incidentally, Annne Widdecombe is sometimes referred to as Doris Karloff (revealed in the interests of balance :-D). Gavin Greig "Haw, you're no deid," girned Charon. "Get aff ma boat or ah'll report ye." Matthew Fitt - The Hoose O Haivers: The Twelve Trauchles O Heracles.

He missed the significance of Howard's border patrol date though - I can't believe a humorous article missed the open goal of 6/6/06... Gavin Greig "Haw, you're no deid," girned Charon. "Get aff ma boat or ah'll report ye." Matthew Fitt - The Hoose O Haivers: The Twelve Trauchles O Heracles.

Time to switch over: New Series News[^] Official BBC site[^] Gavin Greig "Haw, you're no deid," girned Charon. "Get aff ma boat or ah'll report ye." Matthew Fitt - The Hoose O Haivers: The Twelve Trauchles O Heracles.

Paul Watson wrote: Back then the health problems were unknown. Not exactly true. James VI and I[^] wrote A Counterblast To Tobacco in 1604 (though he relaxed on it a bit later on when he realised he could tax it). While the amount of knowledge about the problems of smoking can only ever increase, the zero on that graph doesn't lie in our grandfathers' generation. Gavin Greig "Haw, you're no deid," girned Charon. "Get aff ma boat or ah'll report ye." Matthew Fitt - The Hoose O Haivers: The Twelve Trauchles O Heracles.

:laugh: Gavin Greig "Haw, you're no deid," girned Charon. "Get aff ma boat or ah'll report ye." Matthew Fitt - The Hoose O Haivers: The Twelve Trauchles O Heracles.

I've just re-read my other message and it reads like I'm saying FireFox's security's no good. Sorry for expressing it so badly - that's not what I meant, I just meant that it's not yet a big selling point to Joe Punter. Gavin Greig "Haw, you're no deid," girned Charon. "Get aff ma boat or ah'll report ye." Matthew Fitt - The Hoose O Haivers: The Twelve Trauchles O Heracles.

Paul Watson wrote: No other browser have killer features to woo users so why are we picking on FireFox? Because it's topical. I don't have anything against FireFox, and would apply the same arguments to any other browser hoping to make a big splash. I just don't find it especially exciting, interesting or reassuring - and it needs at least one of those, in the average user's mind, to be a big success. It's already a small success, no argument there. It might still make it to big success on the "reassuring" front, for the reasons you give, but my personal opinion is that it needs something more than it's already got in order to do that. Time will tell. Gavin Greig "Haw, you're no deid," girned Charon. "Get aff ma boat or ah'll report ye." Matthew Fitt - The Hoose O Haivers: The Twelve Trauchles O Heracles.

I think the problem is FireFox doesn't have a killer feature which would provoke the majority of real users to switch. Tabbed browsing is the only thing I hear about consistently as a feature a user would recognise, and my response is "meh". I don't care about it, and although I'm happy to accept that other people do, there'll be plenty who agree with me too. The other big FireFox advantage appears to be how well it handles standards, but that's a developer's concern, not a user's. Hoping FireFox will beat IE on those grounds is a bit like all those years I spent as a desktop developer hoping that there would be a popular rush from Win9x to the more expensive WinNT/2k so that it would be easier for me to develop Unicode applications for our international clients. Dream on! Maybe I'm missing something? Gavin Greig "Haw, you're no deid," girned Charon. "Get aff ma boat or ah'll report ye." Matthew Fitt - The Hoose O Haivers: The Twelve Trauchles O Heracles.

I don't know about consultancy specifically, but JobStats[^] may be worth a visit. It isn't the prettiest of sites, but there's a lot of browsable statistics. Gavin Greig "Haw, you're no deid," girned Charon. "Get aff ma boat or ah'll report ye." Matthew Fitt - The Hoose O Haivers: The Twelve Trauchles O Heracles.