Thank you!

Nope, just a quiet little southern California beach community. My father worked for an aerospace company and had a penchant for giving his kids unusual (and really fun!) gifts. He even brought home a bunch of optics one weekend (lenses, beam-splitters, detectors, etc.) and [while mom was gone shopping for the day with grandma and my sisters] we built a sand-table on the dining room table and performed a bunch of laser based "experiments". We had a lot of fun with it but the look on mom's face when she got home and found her dining table turned into a sand-table was absolutely priceless! [we went out to eat dinner that night and the dining room was returned to normal before we went to bed].

It's your statement of "if at all" that gets me up in arms. I'm not talking about small businesses that have limited customer bases, in the case of this rant (and let's face it, it is a rant) I'm talking about Costco. I don't know where you're from, but here in the Pacific Northwest of the USA, Costco is *HUGE*! Even though they are so big and their customer base so diverse, I do understand releasing the iPhone and Android versions as soon as their ready, but why not also say something along the lines of "coming to a Windows Phone soon". Instead, there's simply nothing. I can guarantee you that, at least where I live, if Costco had released only an Android version, the iPhone community would have started an on-line "boycott Costco" campaign and gathered volunteers to clog the Costco HQ phone lines. To me it's really not worth more than a rant on a programmers forum and perhaps a stop at the customer service desk when I go in later this week.

Ha ha ha ha! So true, so true!! I guess I'll just need to keep giving to Hands 4 Others[^]!

Not really a toy, but definitely a "Toy". When I was 12 I had my own Helium-Neon laser (and safety goggles, and a long list from mom & dad of what *not* to do with it).

Yeah, but now it's so fast you don't even have time to fill your coffee cup before the page loads. :)

I'm in agreement with you that it's most likely a matter of detected utilization, but that doesn't make it any less aggravating and most certainly doesn't increase my opinion of the company.

As I said in my closing, rant complete. But you're correct. What about Blackberry? I've never coded for it but I don't believe that it would be any more difficult than the others.

How many times have you seen something that says to "Scan this QR code to download our wonderful new app to your phone" only to find out that they support only the iPhone and Android? I own a Windows Phone 8 (Nokia 920) and I love it. We just received our coupon book from Costco in the mail today, and right on the cover it advertises their "Streamlined Savings No more clipping coupons!" You open it up and they show you two important items:

1. Master Bar Code
2. Scan here to download the Costco app

Now, the Master Bar Code lets the cashier know that you actually received a book so the register may automatically apply any coupons from the book to qualifying items in your purchase. Nifty. no need to isolate the coupon to get the savings. (My local Costco got to pilot the program so we've been doing it for a couple of years, but now it's all official). It's the second item that bothers me. You see, when you scan the code it takes you to a web page that gives you links to the Apple App Store and Google play. That's it. Nothing else. So basically, Costco's opinion is apparently that only owners of iPhones and Androids want to be able to use the code from their phones. Well, OBVIOUSLY us Windows Phone users don't carry around our phones, right? And we *never* use it to, say, purchase things, browse the web, play games, interact with our favorite social network, etc. right? Of course not! We only got the phones because they can run Word, Excel, and OneNote (magnificently!). Personally, I've written apps for all three platforms and none of them is easier or harder than the other, they're just different. So why can't these paid development teams build for Windows Phone? The most likely reason is that the company paying them (I'm picking on Costco in this post but there are literally hundreds of examples out there) doesn't think it's of value. So there we have it. I own a Windows Phone and Costco doesn't believe that I have value. Bigotry against me because of my choice of phone. [steps off soapbox, rant complete]

Gotta love problems like that! I used to work for a company that provides custom mainframe solutions in ADABAS / Natural. One day the company president posed a simple challenge to all of the programmers: Written entirely in Natural, divide a 100 digit number by a 50 digit number. Sounded easy enough, took a little longer than I anticipated (by a couple of hours), but I and one other programmer were able to submit working solutions. Challenges like that definately keep us on our toes!

One of my favorite error messages comes from the mainframe world in the Natural environment from Software AG. Natural makes the attempt to not only tell you what's wrong, but what you may be able to do to fix the problem. I don't remember the exact text of the message but it was something along the lines of "an error has occurred". The memorable part is the suggested fix: "Check program and correct".

What I've found over the years is that "normal" developers don't need to know how the computer performs math operations. Their development software simply does the magic. Here's where the caveat comes in: "Normal" developers = Business Application Developers Over my career I've primarily done business application development. In the few cases where I was doing scientific development, all the math rules changed. In the scientific arena, you need to understand what's really going on so that you can: 1. Optimize operations 2. Guarantee accuracy to xx digits Sounds simple, but it's not. If you really think it's simple just take a look at some of the "Big Number" math software from places like MIT. You'll see that how the number is constructed and managed becomes very important. Here's an exercise to try: Write a program that will divide a 100-digit number by a 50-digit number. At a company that I used to work for (back around 1989) this was exactly the challenge made to all programmers in the company by the company President. The hook? We developed in Natural on the IBM mainframe. For those who don't know, Natural is a 4GL created to run primarily against an ADABAS DBMS. Both ADABAS and Natural are the IP of Software AG. Within the company only two programmers, myself and one other, came up with solutions to this problem. His was pretty quick but had a couple of numeric domain issues, mine was slower but I neglected to check for a zero divisor. Both of us were awarded a (rather nice) bottle of champagne for our effort (the company President really just wanted to know that he had people who would actually take up the challenge. As it turns out, more than half of the employees started, but only two of us came up with practical implementations that didn't attempt to "extend" the language or environment).

Another alternative that I didn't see mentioned in the replies. Was this code hand written or produced by a generator? I've been playing with the CodeDOM and there are some structures that you can define that would likely generate exactly that code.

If I understand your question correctly, then you first need to determine the lowest common denominator of the forms (font, color, default buttons that are on all forms, etc). Create a regular windows form. Set the properties the way that you want them, save, then close the designer. Add a new Windows Form to the project, but select the "Inherited Form" object instead of the "Windows Form" object. The wizard will ask you which form you want to base the new form on, so select the base that you previously created. When the designed opens up, you will see all of the things that you had set it the original form (and you will not be able to change them), and your new form is ready for adding controls.

You can pick up the location of many different "special" folders. This will get you the Program Files folder:

string strProgFilesDir = Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.ProgramFiles);

If, however, you really meant that you wanted the name of the directory where the assembly was located, then you should use:

using System.IO;

.
.
.

string strMyHomeDir = Path.GetDirectoryName(System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location);

As an aside, rather than adding a program to the Windows folder, you should create a folder elsewhere (I have one called Tools) and add that folder to your environment Path. Perhaps it's just me but I don't like cluttering up system file locations.

I think that your analogy to integrated circuits is completely off track. Until we know, we can't assume storage type, processing type, or retrieval type. Consider this, to remember something best you must experience it with all five senses (sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell). This would indicate that there are at least five processing centers and that they can store information in some type of "overlayed" manner. For example, let's say your brain contains three images of things that you saw that have some similarities. A possible storage mechanism could store the images as a mixed overlay where the similarities intersect (hence most peoples inability at a photographic memory). Now you look at something else and it gets stored, but your brain has already made a correlation to the other three images based not on what you saw, but on what you smelled at the time, overlaying the new image on the other three in the same manner. This type of storage would be far more efficient than a direct storage of memories, and would require a completely different type of retrieval mechanism. However, that retrieval mechanism would be able to correlate memories that defy obvious logic. Just food for thought.

It's been done, and in c# no less. Check out the PhysicsIllustrator application (designed for Tablet PCs) from Microsoft http://www.microsoft.com/indonesia/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/tabletpc.aspx[^]. The source code is available from Microsoft Research http://research.microsoft.com/research/downloads/Browse.aspx?categoryID=0&sortCriteria=shortName&sortOrder=ascending[^]. Granted, PhysicsIllustrator is not a "game" per-se, but it's a heck of a lot of fun. The trick to running it on a non-Tablet PC is: 1) run it from the source code or 2) unpack the msi installer with the command line switch /a, then copy the application to where you want it and run it from there. Works like a champ. :)

If you're interested in delving into the Expert Systems arena (an AI close cousin), try http://www.ghg.net/clips/CLIPS.html Kinda cool.