Why didnt you respond when Chris posted his intentions in the lounge? .S.Rod. wrote: The only reason for it was to stop people from web ripping, thus sucking the bandwidth. According to me, it's an incredibly bad reason to force users to log on. Yeah. Not a good reason at all. After all why should the people who bother to sign up and contribute to the site get a nice responsive experience when browsing their favorite website? All that bandwidth should be reserved for the web-rippers... shouldn't it? BTW. Since you're complaining about the solution that was implemented, do you have an alternative solution to prevent web-rippers sucking bandwidth? Cheers

A previous post referred to Saddam unleashing his WMDs including gas. Phew! Maybe it's best to wait for a while before the US invades Iraq. At least until the CIA tells us that he's not eating those hot breakfasts. You know the ones. Baked beans on eggs on cheese on toast. I wonder if he lights his farts. Maybe he did, and the US surveillance satelites picked it up as a nuclear test! Now if we can just get The Shrub onto a high fibre diet, this war can be fought on equal terms!

You can feed a Gremlin any time. It's a Mogwai you can't feed after midnight! ;P

Oh yeah. I know that. My fathers cousin died there.

Stan Shannon wrote: Worse things could happen. I doubt it, considering last time you guys had a squabble with NK, China was backing it up. China *is* a nuclear power.

Hopefully they'll have got the guy by the time I get there (5 months). Matt Newman wrote: or more specifically cover your head or chest areas. What about the groin!?!? ;P

Stuart van Weele wrote: Both Cable TV and broadband about $20 to $50 a month depending on what you get. Figure about $200 a month for food if you mostly eat at home. A lease on a car will cost about $300 - $400 a month with $2000, $3000 due at signing. You could also plan on getting a used car for about $3000 - $4000 and sell it when you go back. Car insurance should run about $750 a year. Make sure your employer pays for the medical insurance, its quite high in the US. I should have said that the company will lease a car for me, and pay for medical insurance. Even if they dont pay for petrol, it's quite a lot cheaper in the US. Stuart van Weele wrote: Oh my, yes. You will be within easy driving distance of Washington DC and Philadelphia, both which have a great night life. A further out there is New York, Boston, and Atlanta. There is also good fishing, and sailing along most of the atlantic. Excellent.

Hi all, It's looking very likely that my company will be sending me to the good ol US of A in about five months to work with a customer located close to Baltimore. The duration of my stay will likely be at least 18 months. Now, I won't be staying in Baltimore. Some other guys from work are already there, and they live out from it a ways. Now I've got a couple of questions. 1) Seeing as work is paying for accomodation I dont have to worry about that, but I am interested in what the costs of living are like there. Specifically, how much is Cable TV and broadband internet? ;P 2) Is there much to see and do in that region of the US? I've been to Washington and N.Y. on holidays before, so I'm sure I'll head to DC and check out (more) of the Smithsonian and other things like that; is there much more? 3) Any CPians live in that area?

What a classic. I read this on the Despair website, but I didn't realise that they had done it. Wouldn't hold up in court though.

Ahh. An opportunity to learn! ;)

Paul Riley wrote: You could get shot in here for saying things like this. ;P Paul Riley wrote: Java, InstallScript and C have many similarities; C++ is a derivative of C; C# is a derivative of C++ and VB. I think that's about as far as the relationships go. Don't know about InstallScript, but aside from VB they all have a fairly similar syntax. There are large differences sure C++ is OO, C isn't. C# is 'simpler' than C++. But they are all designed to make the transition from one to the other as easy as possible. Paul Riley wrote: Don't know quite what you mean by functional, but doesn't COBOL fall in there? COBOL, C++, Pascal, (if I've got my terminology right) are procedural languages. The execute procedures. A functional language evaluates expressions rather than executing commands. There's a FAQ at http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~gmh//faq.html[^]

Nick Parker wrote: Ah, maybe this would be a good article idea Sounds good. Nick Parker wrote: with a simple Access database as the backbone Nah... too much. Use an XML document. :)

Paul Riley wrote: Funnily enough, I'm trying to limit how many new languages I learn thanks to .NET. I've already had jobs in COBOL, VB(+Script), Java(+Script), InstallScript, C, C++ and now I'm doing a job in C#, not to mention other stuff I learned before I ever got a job or in my spare time since I started. Cool. One thing though. They are all very similar. Try something very different. Perhaps a pure OO language like Smalltalk, or a functional language like Haskell. Each would bring something new to your programming experience. I do agree with you though. You do need to build up your skills in one language, do that in your job, and spend your 'spare' time learning something different.

Michael Dunn wrote: Since she has no coding knowledge at all, stay away from C++. This is true. Michael Dunn wrote: Same reasoning for avoiding C#. I don't really agree there. Java is being used as a teaching language at some universities. C# is similar so it may not be a bad choice. Michael Dunn wrote: I'd say start with BASIC. Eeewww! BASIC is a poor choice to teach someone to program in. There is a lot in it that can breed really bad habits. In fact it's hard to write good wholesome code in it. I think a better choice than BASIC, if you want a good structured non-OO language is Pascal. It was designed specifically as a teaching language. I still wouldn't write off C# or Java though. Why not learn OO from the start?

Jonny Newman wrote: does anyone use windows in hollywood? I read somewhere where it was noticed that Windows was primarily used by the bad guys in a TV show or movie, and the good guys used a Mac. Unfortunately I dont remember where I saw this, but the author went to lengths to research his theory. Apparently there was a TV show where the good guys all used a Mac, except one. The author of this article thought this seemed suspicous, and sure enough, a few weeks later the Windows user turned out to be a bad guy. I wonder if script writers all use Macs?

The lesson of 3DFX is that they told the customer what they wanted. nVidia listened to what the customer wanted.

Mark Conger wrote: However, if you like to play graphic intensive games (which basically is any game currently on the market these days) then an MX series will be slow, laggy and you'll have to cut detail and options to the minimum. Not true. I have been running both Warcraft 3 and NeverWinter Nights at a higher than standard resolution. They are both pretty new games. I suspect I'll have to upgrade for DNF, and I will have to upgrade for Doom3. No other games have required it. I'm running a 1.2GHz AMD with 512MB DDR RAM and (now) a 60GB 7200RPM drive for your reference.

Very true. I tend to play RTS games more than FPS. However Deus Ex played magnificently, and AvP2 also played well. The current games I have been playing are Warcraft3 and NeverWinter Nights. Both play really well. I suspect I'll have to upgrade for Doom 3, and Duke Nukem Forever after it stops taking forever to make (it's been five or six years now.) I'll cross that bridge... There has been some talk that computer graphics will start to be limited by the speed of the CPU sometime soon. The theory is that the graphics cards are getting so fast that they are outrunning the CPU and are being bottlenecked by it. When that happens we'll need to buy all the latest hardware to play Doom 6.

Certainly the GF4 Ti4200 is a great piece of hardware. Joao Vaz wrote: Don't buy it . MX is synonym of piece of crap. Buy a Geforce 4 Ti 4200. I've heard this before and I don't really understand it. I have a GF2 MX. I have no problems with it, and it runs everything that I have, at the resolutions that I am happy with. If you are on a budget, it's not a bad alternative. If you want to run Doom 3 though... well then I believe you are going to need a GF3 or better. To get the most out of the game you'll need a Ti4200 or better.

Nah! Not from here mate!