Oh, shit, git![^]

Does anyone know what happened top Mabry Software? They used to write and sell some really nice controls for .NET. I used their FTP .NET component at a previous company and noticed that the company I work for today still uses an older version. I suppose the company simply went under but I wonder what happened to all the old source code. It would be a shame if it's simply gone forever. It always seemed very well written to me. You got most of the source code with the components, EXCEPT for one or two key components at the very bottom of the stack that were proprietary.

The eclipse really looks awesome.

Personally, for me it kept failing to install after several reboots... would just keep rolling back. I took it as an opportunity to do a clean install, something I've been wanting to do for some time now anyway. Post clean-install, update to SP1 everything is humming along great, including my games, VS.NET 2008, all my hardware, etc.

Don't sweat it. 90% of the US works on President's Day.

Sweet. Thanks!

Over the holiday I installed Visual Studio.NET 2008 Professional from MSDN Subscriber Downloads to my personal machine running Windows Vista Ultimate... mostly because I'm interested in some of the functionality LINQ brings to the table and thought it would be neat to try and build some samples and play with them on various databases. Anyway, post installation everything seemed ok and I did a final reboot before heading to bed. The next morning I logged in, or tried to, but was greeted with a message from Vista telling me, essentially, that I was locked out. It gave me an option to either close the dialog (which kicks me out of the OS back to the login window - same for all logins) or to open IE and go to Microsoft's "Genuine" checker page, which I was failing all of a sudden. Now, all the software on my PC is 100% purchased and legal, including the OS and had been running Vista perfectly (well... it's Vista... so as perfectly as it's able) for months. The IE page only managed to tell me that my copy of Office was "genuine" but my OS kept failing and there was no real help for me except to submit a ticket. There wasn't even a phone number to call or anything. Ultimately I dug around around found Microsoft support and after an hour and a half of being forwarded 13 TIMES to different departments, they still couldn't help me. I finally gave up, went into Safe Mode and did a System Restore to about a week back and now my machine seems happy again. I manually deleted Visual Studio 2008 since a restoration "restores" OS files and the registry back to a previous date but otherwise leaves files alone. I don't think I'll try to install it again until I do a full system re-install but this really freaked me out. Microsoft put enough thought into Vista to lock me out entirely but then had no mechanism in place to help me when it got screwed up! Support was a nightmare and so upsetting I could barely even stay civil on the phone by the end. No one knew anything or would take any responsibility, instead only trying to find any reason possible to kick me over to the next support number and even the transfers failed far more often than they succeeded with me constantly having to write down and dial yet another 800 number. I realize that Microsoft is not the only company out there that has completely lost sight of customer support... but, wow, this was my worst experience so far with any company.

A year or so ago there was a website that would let you type in your name and would show every physical street address it had listed for you going back as much as 10 years. It was free to use.... I don't suppose anyone knows what I'm talking about. Google is failing me a the moment, probably because it's putting all the paid sites at the top of the search results. I'm not much of a records keeper so looking at old bills won't be very helpful. Thanks in advance. Matt

Let's say I have a ... let's call her DU (Dumb User). Now, if DU was just your average person you have to support from time to time you'd tell the person to learn the tools and leave you alone (maybe you'd do it nicer than that) but this DU is a high ranking manager. DU does things a certain way. She's older and not very tech savy but isn't going to spend time learning how to do things properly and to suggest she do so... is a bad idea. Now, DU has a document she's been working on for a long time. This document is 28 pages long, using Microsoft Word 2003. It's also almost 26MB in size. DU does not understand the concept behind different image formats, how Word embeds and scales these images, etc. DU wants an image, drag/drop, copy/paste, or insert image... if she wants a snippet from a Microsoft Excel sheet, she just copies all the cells right into the document. DU doesn't actually NEED the cells in her document, just the data, but DU doesn't understand the difference. So... we now have a massive, mission critical document, that every time she wants to email this document (which is often) is a 25MB attachment, because DU doesn't understand compression, and truthfully, the person on the receiving end of this document... we'll call him DU2 is also blissfully unaware of most things computer related, including what a zip file is. Does anyone know of some tools that might be available to automatically scan a Word document and ... convert the embedded pieces into manageable sizes to "trim" the document for them? That way I could just "fix" it without spending the next few hours manually correcting every image or insert in that.

I upgraded my almost brand new Dell (new at Christmas) last night from XP to Vista. I ignored practically every piece of common sense and lessons learned over the years and pretty much plowed straight ahead... well, ok, I didn't ignore EVERYTHING. I did backup my files and I have all of my Dell installation CD's. That's more than most people probably. I even went ahead and removed a few applications ahead of time that weren't critical so I wouldn't have to bother with that during the upgrade. What I didn't do was really prepare myself outside of the Dell Upgrade Assistance DVD and the Vista pre-check. I also let it do an upgrade without really understanding fully what I was getting and losing in the process. Long story short, I went from Media Center Edition XP SP2 cashing in my Free Dell upgrade to apparently Vista Home Premium. Oops - now I can't Remote Desktop into my PC. Well, that's practically at the top of my list of requirements. I can't believe my upgrade LOST me functionality but... I guess it shows that you should read the fine print always. Other than that: I had Tivo Desktop 2.4 Preview installed. It doesn't work under Vista and wasn't flagged as problemtatic by Dell or the Vista Upgrade. Here's the kicker: it's installer specifically requires XP SP2, any flavor. So when I try to UNINSTALL it, it pops up and tells me it requires XP SP2 to install (of course installer/uninstaller - same thing). So, other than manually hacking it out, there's no way to remove it. The same thing occurs with several other installations, including the Microsoft Zune Theme (from Microsoft itself). This machine is a Core 2 Duo, Intel viiv and IT won't upgrade either, because it can't remove the old version. After all this, I'm just going to tag out. Dell Support had no idea how to fix it. I have a backup so hopefully wiping the hard drive and starting over will go ok, though I'm of an equal mind to actually hold off until I can afford to upgrade to a version with Remote Desktop support OR I may attempt to dual boot XP and Vista so I don't loose things I need that don't work yet with Vista. Man, I shoulda known better. :sigh:

I'm sorry. :laugh:

Of course with Firefox you could easily unclose any tabs you had open complete with history. ;)

Our graphic designers are getting new PC's and I'm (.NET developer primarily) getting lumped in (finally). These machines will all be Dell PC's. A couple questions for those that know and are willing to spare a moment: 1) If I go with about a 2.66 Ghz processor in either case, which machine is better for our needs (Core 2 Duo vs. Dual Core Xeon)? Keeping my development out of the picture for a moment, our developers have to do a great deal of rendering. They use Photoshop of course, but also Adobe Flash, After Effects, DreamWeaver, and various other tools. They are usually rendering MPG2 but till be moving mostly to High Def... at this point I'm assuming MPG4. Is there an appreciable difference? The Core 2 Duo is quite a bit cheaper. 2) Among those tools listed, I've heard some stories of problems with Vista. Vista is new, of course, and I'd generally want to hold off but should I? The PC's generally ship with Vista though some of the ones can be shipped with either Vista or XP. I'd kind of like to have Vista but I've heard of there being some DRM issues that "might" cause problems for our Creative Designers? Thanks all, Matt Philmon

I can only imagine it's something like this though I can certainly not vouch for the link: http://www.kopykat.com/exe/talkany.zip[^] I don't think Microsoft distributes this anymore though I found plenty of references to it on google.

The Microsoft IE bloggers put up something a bit curious on their page: IE Blog[^] Check out the side image: VanishingPointGame[^] If you head over to the site referenced from the image you get a rather interesting little count down page (gotta love viral marketing I suppose): http://www.vanishingpointgame.com/[^] Neowin members are spending some time trying to figure it out. Here's the forum link: http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=523893[^]

Yeah, I ultimately did in C++. I wrote a wrapper in ATL COM so I could easily use it in a C# project I was working on at the time. Unfortunately the hard drive it existed on was lost when the project was shelved a couple years back. I MAY have a backup still on another drive at the office. I can dig that up for you if you really need it, but it will need to wait until Monday. If you can't, then look into examining the PEB (process environment block). I think it had something to do with NtQueryInformationProcess but I'm not sure. You can get the processID of the process you want to query with the .NET classes, then jump into the lower level API calls to get the rest. Hmmm, maybe there's an actual article in there for CP. I hadn't thought about that before.

Some people know how to make anyone smile anytime. My dad sounds kinda like yours in a way... Mt grandpa died about 15 years ago (my dad's dad). After the funeral, the immediate family was sitting on the back porch of my grandma's house... mostly comforting each other. The subject of funeral costs came up and my aunt said that the vet had just sent in a check. My dad didn't miss a beat before saying, "Oh crap, did we send him to the wrong place?!?" Everyone, including grandma, burst into laughter. Sometimes, laughter is the best medicine. For those not familiar with the slang, grandpa fought in World War II and is thus a "vet" or "Veteran". American Veterans get money towards burial/funeral services. "vet" is also slang for veterinarian (where you take your pets when they are sick).

Very nicely put. I prepare for the worst, but try to expect the best and I always leave the option of support "after the fact" if the relationship is good. I don't tend to jump around as much as most programmers in the US ... and probably everywhere ... because I tend to stick with smaller groups (30 people in the company is about the most) so I've now worked at 1 company for 5 years and another for 6 with random odd jobs on the side. The company I used to work left a very bad taste in my mouth, however, the PEOPLE I worked with were/are absolutely TOP NOTCH and some of the best programmers I've encountered anywhere. So, I left the open option for contact which was taken several times, and I didn't accept any payment for it either.

Never, ever burn bridges, no matter how bad the situation. You never know... Give them a real, working, 2 week notice. They may not even want you to work it.

Lack of motivation can come from several couple places: 1) Burn-out: You need a vacation or a change of scenery. 2) Laziness: Uh... if someone figures this one out let me know. 3) New Career: This one might be me unfortunately. After 10 years of employment I've come to the startling realization that while I still love problem solving, I don't get any enjoyment from programming any more. I used to care not just about getting it done, but getting it done cleanly, clearly, and efficiently. Now it's just getting it done. For me, I think it's time to go back to school... some form of engineering maybe. Hopefully starting over isn't something you'll be faced with.