There's never a downside to knowing Latin. How would you translate "Do No Evil"? Not "non nocere", certainly, which is a bit weaker.

The one before the one before is called the antepenultimate, actually. My brother had it as a daily double question when he appeared on Jeopardy!, oddly enough.

Flaming brandy is always nice, thrown over some sort of dessert. I knew a fellow at a bar in Prague who used to experiment with flaming drinks. He started with a bunch of different liqueurs. Each would have to be deposited carefully with a spoon, so that, based on density and (I guess) surface tension, each would sit easily in the glass on top of the next liquor down. The top level would be either a liqueur that flamed nicely, or even better, vodka, which burns really well (you've heard of the molotov cocktail of course - VODKA!). Mixing cocktails is an art, however. I would start off making something simple like a dry Martini (years to perfect) or an Orange Blossom, or a Gin Gimlet. The quality of the liquor makes a big difference to the overall quality of the drink. For instance, Grey Goose is a great vodka, but for a Martini you might want to go with Ketel One or (my favorite) Three Olives instead, since they have a stronger flavor. Temperature is also important, and learning how to crack the ice in a shaker is also essential. After that, you might want to move on to drinks involving egg whites, which were very popular during the flapper era. Only approach flaming drinks after mastering all these others, else you might do permanent injury to yourself. Good luck with your new vice, my friend. People who start down this path ultimately either find themselves waking up one day in an alley with no money and no friends, or else they end up in the White House.

Marc, This is just a guess, but I think your 1.1 apps will work fine. The incompatibility issues, as I understand it, have to do with the IDE. You may need to install VS 2005 with the special Vista service pack in order to further develop your 1.1 apps. VS 2003 will likely have problems (though I havn't tried it). As for the experience, I've enjoyed developing in the Vista/VS 2005 combo. I'm using a dual boot with XP, though, so I can go back and forth. In XP, I have VS 2003 and VS 2005 running side by side.

Glad to hear it. Good luck with your project.

Matt, I think it's starting to make sense. You want to have more control over the Speech API, so you can customize which phrases map to which private methods of your email application. Is that it? Or is the mapping a problem you've already solved, and you are now trying to iron out the speech UI?

Sri, As I understand it, only Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Basic 6 are supported on Vista. Everything else will have issues. See here: http://blogs.msdn.com/somasegar/archive/2006/09/26/772250.aspx[^]

Matt, It definitely seems do-able. You can use some kind of command class that you queue (you were talking about queues, right?) up and then execute whenever the last process has finished. I've never tried speech with email so I don't know the specific issues there. Is it that multiple docs try to get read at the same time or something? Also, are your problems specifically with the speech API (I might be able to help out, there) or more with the code around it that is specific to your application? James -- modified at 14:28 Monday 26th February, 2007

Matt, Can you say more about what issues you are having. I've been playing around with the Speech API in Vista (it's pretty sweet) and I might be able to help out. Not everything works in XP, though. James

Anton, The .Net 3.0 assemblies can be found on your harddrive at C:\\Program Files\\Reference Assemblies\\Microsoft\\Framework\\v3.0. I started this article (http://www.codeproject.com/useritems/Vista_Speech_Recognition.asp[^]) with an explanation of the steps (just a few) you need to follow to start developing with Visual Studio 2005 on Vista. So far, I havn't run into any problems developing on Vista. It's actually very nice, and I'm enjoying the new OS. James

Sorry man. I was trying to go to the next page and accidentally gave you a 2 rating (not really sure how I managed to do that). Didn't mean for that to happen, though. My bad.

Noor, Strangely enough, I just wrote an article using an MDI application to show off Vista's speech recognition features. I think it will show you how to do what you need (though I don't fully understand your third question). http://www.codeproject.com/useritems/Vista_Speech_Recognition.asp[^] There are two C# projects in the downloadable source. The first, Textpad, will run fine in Windows XP. Speechpad, the second project included, only compiles in Vista. However, everything you need should be in the first project. Just read through the first half of the tutorial (which I was worried wouldn't be useful to anybody, by the way -- thanks for proving me wrong!) and you should be in good shape. James