That's weird, since the preview release runs on my crappy old celeron 300 w/ 128Mb without any problems whatsoever. cheers, Chris Maunde

Hey Avizern, As an Australian currently in SF I feel a little torn as to what I should be doing - work hard all weekend or be true to my homeland and grab some beer, a comfy chair and watch some violent sport. In the end I did the best of both - took off friday afternoon (sorry to those who have articles that need posting!) but am now making up for it by working this weekend. I'm in Toronto sunday night (their thanksgiving) so will pay penance by working on their public holiday. Public holidays are are actually really difficult if you travel. Do you take your homelands holidays? Your host country's holidays? Both? None? Another weird thing is the thought of working in a job where all you can do is think about the upcoming weekend is so depressing, and I hope I never have to be in such a job. I was talking to someone about this very thing last night and we were waxing lyrical about how nice it is to be in an industry where you don't mind working on weekends, and equally have no problems taking a day or half-day off in the middle of the week. It's strange how the work ethic has changed. We may turn up late for work, or play hookey and take a day off, but at the end of each seven days you still find that you've done 60-70hr

That is hilarious

Nick Hodapp just pointed me to this interesting page and it got me a little steamed up: "[In] 1999 [Unisys] stated that its policy is to require a $5000 fee from websites that carry GIF images made by unlicensed software -- even nonprofit websites created and displayed with free software." So who is using a pre-version 4 browser that is unable to upgrade to a newer browser that supports PNG? PNG is superior to GIF, and it would be cool to start hosting PNG images - but I don't want to leave anyone stranded.

...and never being away from work, and finding it all too easy to spend "just 5 more minutes" and suddenly it's midnight again, and not social life..

Sydney is OK - but I guess I'm biased and would have to say Melbourne is nicer. Better restaurants/cafes, less stressed. Of my friends who work in Sydney and Melbourne, the ones in Melbourne are definitely enjoying it more. Then again, anywhere in Oz is kinda nice :

David Cunningham of Dundas Software and his wife Julie yesterday had a new baby boy - Cooper Grant Cunningham, weighing in at 7 lbs 11 ounces. Congratulations guys

There is a decomnpiler in the SDK. :

I totally agree about the web development stuff. I still like to consider myself a C++ guy but the advances with ASP+ and .NET leave me feeling like a kid with a new toy. Debugging that actually works, ASP pages using C++ or C#, scheduled server restarts, Session information integrity retained even after reboots, proactive component destruction/recreation,...<Homer Simpson drool...

In .NET your applications are compiled to Intermediate Language (IL) which is then JIT compiled to native language at runtime. Everything runs using the common language runtime which includes support for things like garbage collection and security. I'm surprised your VB app was so slow - I've written exactly the same application you described using C# and there was no noticeable speed difference to native code (celeron 300, 128Mb) One point is that when you initially load your first .NET appplication it will have to load the .NET framework into memory, and then load your program. Once the .NET framework is in memory all subsequent runs should be quick.

Paul, just because one person has a different experience to you does not mean he is lying. I've been using W2K on my laptop and desktop, both with dual boot win98SE (and the desktop with .NET boot as well) and they are rock solid. I have experienced a few problems when program install scripts decide to replace W2K files with older versions :mad:, but other than that it's been sweet - and this is on a small 450MHz laptop, and a 300MHz celeron desktop (both with 128Mb). Boot up is reasonably quick (compared to 98 :)), and the system responds quite nicely - esp after a nice disk defrag. I've not once had a problem installing peripherals like scanners, mice, monitors, extra drives etc etc etc. People are always going to experience different things with different OS's, and as long as people use the OS that is best suited to them there should be no problems

This is bizarre... http://www.itolympics.org/ cheers, Chris Maunde

I've just posted a list of the emoticons (something I've been meaning to do for months). Check 'em out here. cheers, Chris Maunde

In Oz, "root" is, er, what two consenting adults do when they love each other very much :-O (how's that for a delicate explanation) cheers, Chris Maunde

Just read this interesting piece at Wired. Evidently there was a poll on the Best Operating System in which Windows NT/2000 won by a healthy margin. Problem was, Linux was leading until the last moment when there was a sudden surge in votes, leaving Linux with only 4% of votes. Linux users say Microsoft was stuffing the ballot box and that the poll was rigged. This produced a colorful response from the poll organisers who claimed that it was the Linux users who were actually stuffing the poll. It's been a while since I've seen some healthy Linux vs Windows heat so it amused me :) cheers, Chris Maunde

I've talked to Ann Jesse of CUJ - she is onto it and assures me it will be taken care of post haste. cheers, Chris Maunde

Christian, I'll talk to Ann Jesse at CUJ about your subscription. Hopefully she can get this worked out. cheers, Chris Maunde

Daniel Kopitchinski, the winner of our tutorial drive, was just wondering which magazines to grab as his prize. I was thinking of mags like Dr Dobbs or C++ Users Journal, but I figured it was easier just to ask you guys what your favourite magazines are. cheers, Chris Maunde

Just wondering how many people have downloaded the .NET SDK and how stable they have found it.

Thanks mate! Was nothing really - just something we knocked up in someone's back shed one afternoon... :) I just wonder how many understood the outdoor loo, the cardboard box sheep or the lawnmowers. We were falling off our chairs in hysterics but were a little worried it wouldn't make any sense to anyone but us. Oh - and if you thought the pause before the flame road up the tracks to the top of the stadium was a little long you were right. Oops :D cheers, Chris Maunde