I completely agree with this statement here. About a month ago, my company had challenged this very idea. We used an inhouse utility application developed in Visual Studio 2005 (C#). We tried obfuscating it 3 different times with different tools to see which was best. My boss had used the obfuscaters and gave me the binaries. On each attempt, I used "Reflector" to perform the disassembly. Each time, the disassembled code was nearly perfect. Even most of the indentation and spacing was right. The biggest differences I saw is that they primarily renamed all the variables to more obscure names by using just letters and numbers. All the logic was clear which helped to decipher what each variable was used for. If you have never heard of or even used Reflector, I strongly suggest you check it out. Try it on your .NET binaries that have been obfuscated. Here is a link to the site: http://www.aisto.com/roeder/dotnet/[^]

Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, burger in one hand, drink in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WOO HOO......What a ride!"

As I said, I only recently heard about but what I've heard have been good things. I haven't used it or any other online backup service. If you do choose to try it, please share your experience over the boards. I need to start backing up my stuff soon as well, but have yet to decide which approach to take. Currently, I use a batch file that runs twice a day copying to an external hard drive. While this works great, it won't survive fire or theft. Offsite storage is really the only way to protect against a data disaster. Thanks, Mike

Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, burger in one hand, drink in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WOO HOO......What a ride!"

It may not be free, but I've recently heard a few good things about Carbonite for online data storage. $50/year seems to be a decent price too since it provides the off-site storage automatically. I'm neww to the backup arena, so I'm not really sure what else is out there, but it may be worth a look... http://www.carbonite.com

Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, burger in one hand, drink in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WOO HOO......What a ride!"

I've already purchased, received, and installed my copy of Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition....

Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, burger in one hand, drink in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WOO HOO......What a ride!"

I can't imagine why they would want to consider dropping PS2 compatibility. If anything, I'd consider that as one of the primary reasons to go with a PS3 over other consoles. The gaming catalog for PS3 (through PS1 & PS2 compatibility) far exceeds any of the other consoles. I'd really be interested in reading the article you noted if still know where you found it. Thanks!

Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, burger in one hand, drink in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WOO HOO......What a ride!"

I'd say 1. Generally speaking, I'd adhere to that logic. Also, I believe that it is common in copy methods to organize parameters as (source, destination).

Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, burger in one hand, drink in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WOO HOO......What a ride!"

If you choose to test performance using this type of metric, use the System.Diagnostics.StopWatch rather than the timer. It is more accurate for such purposes...you can measure all the down to clock ticks.

Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, burger in one hand, drink in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WOO HOO......What a ride!"

19" monitor in 1280x1024. Similar setup as yourself...in visual studio all day, monitor about an arm's length away. I use 10pt Courier font. Works great for me...though a wide screen would be nice for some of the testing I do.

Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, burger in one hand, drink in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WOO HOO......What a ride!"

I'm currently working on an iTunes maintenance application for tasks such as this. I still don't have my dupe finder functionality working 100%, however, using the iTunes SDK you can do quite a bit. If you are interested, I can send you some sample implementations which could help get started (all in C# of course).

Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, burger in one hand, drink in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WOO HOO......What a ride!"

I began my career with a small company. I then moved on and got a job with a big company for a significantly more amount of money. I stayed there for 1 year and opted to take a 15k paycut to go back to a small company. The paycut left me making more than when I left the first small company, but it goes to show that money isn't always everything. In my opinion, the small company valued quality, hard work and dedication. Everybody is highly visible. When one person does well, the team does well. If one person falters, the team falters. In the small company, I find high pressure, high demands, but all with great satisfaction and pride in my work. In the large company, in my experience at least, there was little value placed on total quality. Also, the politics and the ass-kissing involved was simply not worth it to me. I feel that one's work, not how well they can suck up to their boss, should speak for the value of the individual.

Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, burger in one hand, drink in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WOO HOO......What a ride!"

Just to put in my 2 cents...I graduated college with a degree in Management but did take a few programming courses. My first job out of college was an entry level programmer for a small company. Best move I ever made. I stayed there for 3 years and moved onto a much bigger company for much more money and an entirely different type of experience. After working for my second company, I was offered a position from my first employer as a lead developer for slightly less pay but with the opportunity to work from home. I took the job and the experience I have had, and now am pursuing my masters in software engineering (may as well have some official degree related to computers). I've been working from home for a year now and doing better than some who have been with their companies for over 10 years. Even after 5 years, I still consider myself to be a bit of newbie; not because of lack of experience, only because of what there is out to still learn. Go whereever can offer you the best experience and opportunity to learn....then move on to your dream job!

Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, burger in one hand, drink in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WOO HOO......What a ride!"

I also work from home and can't imagine it any other way as a programmer. I have been working from home for almost a year now and love every minute of it, I am more productive, tend to work more hours without consuming much more of my day (commuting time spend working and typically shorter or no lunches), and have the ability to go back to a problem piece of code with new ideas at any time (huge convenience)! As for being alone, I think alot of that depends on what motivates you. Personally, I work for a small company with only myself and the owner as developers. We work closely together via phone and remote access software. I find it actually works out better than having somebody sitting at your desk with you if you are doing a code review or demo. Because we are so small though, it is very clear to the rest of the staff if I am not meeting and/or exceeding all expectations of me. I set my own expectations even higher as I strive for the impossible perfection. You can get a little cabin-fever sometimes, but a walk at lunch or running errands are great remedies. Good Luck!