martin_hughes wrote:

... and then somebody tells you tables are bad for layout so you endeavour to use CSS..

The impact of this statement is easily lost in the cross-eyed simplicity of it. "Tables are bad for layout". The simple 2D grid, the absolute lynchpin of 2D design, was so badly handled (and this was persisted in a large enough way) that we can't use it. That probably infuriates more people daily than Chris Eubank ever managed to irk in his whole life so far. But here's my current "favourite" programming turd : In Java, when you substring() or otherwise index a range, you pass 2 integer args. The first is a zero-based index, the second isn't. Nor is it the length of the range you want, no, it's a 1-based index. Once again, the true impact of this is hard to convey without actually punching anyone. Can we extend this kind of mentality to other professions, please? Let's have farmers ploughing fields with chopsticks made from frozen urine, for example.

I'm peculiar to myself, therefore I am.

Willies and ploppy-poos./ and tigers. yeh.

I'm peculiar to myself, therefore I am.

BOT : I'd quite like to read an impartial precee of what Chrome is about, pls anyone got a good link?

I'm peculiar to myself, therefore I am.

I vaguely remember reading something about the human senses compared to other mammals, in terms of genetic expression. Apparently we are losing our sense of smell in recent evolution, judging by the amount of unchecked mutation in our olfactory genes and their controller regions that we still share with, say, dogs, from a common ancestor. But smells are important, though. I heard the military had developed a crowd-dispersal stink weapon, carefully chosen for its ability to cause instinctive retreat and unease, without actually poisoning anyone. Somehow I think I can live the rest of my life without knowing what that smells like. I'm imagining it's like snakes, rotting marrowbone and Terry Wogan all in one sickening flyblown bundle.

I'm peculiar to myself, therefore I am.

[quote]It just makes sense to enable Java on Windows[/quote] Don't get me wrong - I know that Java is hamstrung by having to support badly designed, old libraries, and there are many Java programmers with bad habits, so a lot of Java apps end up flawed beyond our reasonable repair efforts. But Java is evolving toward C# and remains a source of useful innovation. Truth be known, the .NET platform borrows a lot of wisdom from the Java sphere, and more recently the two languages have begun to converge. Letting Java die is a lengthy process.....

I'm peculiar to myself, therefore I am.

I reckon the CO2 clouds are the aliens, and very intelligent ones. OK maybe not. But it's about as likely as discovering a humanoid being wandering about on the surface of Mars BEFORE finding convincing evidence of lower, smaller life forms, isn't it?

I'm peculiar to myself, therefore I am.

Nice to about unexpected success. Caused an interesting thread, too. Most of the time I hear about unexpected failures (bugs). This is like a juicy raisin in the muesli - a surprisingly rare sweet moment of positivity that doesn't turn out to be artificial on closer inspection. I once built a simple website using VS2005 and was pleasantly surprised at how well it worked with the major browsers on my friends' PC's. In fact I could hardly believe it. I cling to stuff like that at times of deep MSdespair.

I'm peculiar to myself, therefore I am.

I use Sony Cybershot ...currently a 7.2 Mpixel model. I know it's trendy to hate big corporate companies but I like these cameras and the results I get with them. There may be others with better image processing software - I don't care about that because free stuff like Irfanview does it all anyway.

I'm peculiar to myself, therefore I am.

Absolutely true. Time is a convenient dogma, not a truth. It flies when you're having fun & it crawls when you're in mortal danger. Perhaps our dying moment lasts forever -- and THAT determines heaven or hell - your mood in that moment. You might notice that time flexes in direct correlation with your own perceptive flux if you take certain hallucinogens. But what use is there for such a line of inquiry? There's a great deal of sense in the convenient linear axis model, in terms of getting things done and being happy in life. If you're brave enough to re-write your own perceptual set from the foundations upwards, you might not be able to return to 'normal', and your family will probably miss you when you're in the clinic. Pearl Jam had a lyric about the downside of cold, hard truth: (a child) traded magic for fact - NO TRADEBACK. (I'm open , No Code)

'All there really is, is: virute and vice' ...Black Crowes

Plasma is stupidly hot. It's a stupid waste of energy to watch a moving image with such heat as a by-product. And don't get me started on unnecessarily large screens..... Suffice to say that : If you buy a 150" screen for your home, you need psychological treatment, a less powerful car, a less powerful PC, and possibly penis enlargement. 'Should I be the one to say that you don't need it? Style guide never would profane that you don't need it.'

'All there really is, is: virtue and vice' ...Black Crowes

Haha ! How about a compromise like : PLUG N PLAY AROUND FOR HOURS TO GET IT WORKING ...? This isn't my idea -- I heard it before somewhere. To be honest, I've been very successful with all my devices and drivers for several years, since I got a mobo with integrated stuff, and XP. Ironic that I've never needed System Restore since moving from Win98 when I desperately needed it. The only bluescreen I get these days is when I eject a CD using the hardware's button itself rather than selecting File/Eject from iTunes. smug smug smuggity smug-smug

Beef chimney. (You heard it here first.)

I recommend "Return to Castle Wolfenstein" It's great fun. It does get rather fantastical on the later levels but it's truly superb anyway. The same goes for Half-life, though this is more disturbing in my opinion. If you think you're up to it, you might also want to puzzle out why the Mesa scientists "have to wear these ridiculous ties". Class.

'Drop the boy, drop the boy, *ROOERG* ....

I'm in a small team of 4 programmers, working with a project of about 2500 Java classes, enjoying life. I think we've got it about right - 2 junior devs, 1 senior dev, and the team leader... ...who's a very strong personality, and he stops crap from other departments getting us stressed with absurd deadlines or red-tape. What I really like is that all four of us can communicate clearly. The bigger a team gets, the more chance of getting a tosser who causes bad feeling by avoiding certain tasks or lying..... I reckon it's hard to pick 7 people at random without getting a tosser. So keep the team small, and avoid religion in the office.

'All there really is, is: virtue and vice' ...Black Crowes

The cheapest way to do this from India.... ....on a small, personal scale ....is stay there & buy imported Yankee stuff ....like MS, McD's and, um, weapons. (naff drumcrash signalling bad joke) (I dont mean any offence by this I just dislike globalisation)

Exclusivity is desirable & inclusiveness is undemocratic.

I loved that.... superb. I imagine someone calling themselves 'bitchchecker' is probably a primitive, knuckle-dragging, hip-hop-puppet-clown who thinks it's cool to be angry, and smoke weed until IQ < 10... etc. I'd like to take this further; sell handguns which fire backwards at the person firing them. And sell them to people like this 'bitchchecker'. Perhaps a few fake diamonds and gold trim on a converted 'gangsta glock' would be just the thing.

'All there really is, is: virtue and vice' ...Black Crowes

it doesn't really matter UNLESS you're nesting loops like a madman. My first script (almost 900 lines) had about 16 nested loops (ie. 16 deep !) and it obviously hurt like hell trying to debug it. I just wrote it without any planning or consideration for separating tasks into modules or even routines. Looking back, I am amazed I wasn't quietly assassinated by the programmer who had to check it over when I began running it at work, on the live system. Anyway, I converted to the latter style (braces on new lines) because it gave me that little bit of help seeing the blocks/scopes. modern IDE's have a beautify option so it doesn't matter anymore. Wish I'd known that back then. I'm considering starting a thread about 'my first script..was shocking' because it does get funnier the more I think about it.....but I can't find the option to 'start a new thread'. Do I just 'reply' but change the subject field?

'All there really is, is: virtue and vice' ...Black Crowes

I've been living under a large rock (of Java) for a few years. However I read this thread (and the article referenced) and grasped some key concepts of security on Vista without pain. Glad I did, cheers. It would be sane to also lower the default access privileges in our real-world society - I can't believe most people are allowed to drive. Seriously, there's a big proportion who can't cope with roundabouts. Giving Joe Public an admin account is like arming kids with real weapons for a game of 'reality paintball Quake 2007'. In my mind, anyway. :-)

'All there really is, is: virute and vice' ...Black Crowes

...boolean is too restrictive for this task. Return a string (ideally from an enum). Then you can describe most of the likely exceptions / outcomes exactly as you wish. If you insist on being ultra efficient, using bits or bools wherever possible, it's your choice. But these days we've all got so much RAM...

'Make the 'puter work harder so you don't have to.'

".....writing a shell script in Linux that would issue a Google query and then 'grep' inside the first 10 results and step to the next 10 if you didn't find any hits." I thought "clever" and then I wondered how Google actually works. And then I realised that, if someone tells me, I might have to die in the process of finding out.

'All there really is, is: virute and vice' ...Black Crowes

...so Vista requires : 1) a muscular PC 2) some online foraging for drivers / workarounds .....and it's still likely to be slower than XP and have niggly issues. ...not surprising is it? Come on, XP was seen as resource-heavy once. Here's my prediction of the bloody obvious : Vista will come into its own in about 12 months when developers/software/tasks/manufacturers get accustomed to it, and exploit its strengths, etc. The pattern is the same for all new tech. Get over it. Or live in the past like me. I ran Mame on Win98 on my 2.1Ghz machine and turned throttling off. Bloody hell, my machine's fast. True happiness.

'no no, no no no no, no no no no, no no there's no lyrics, no no.....etc'