I took it this way: Senior management asked the PHB to create a centre of excellence for the company. For an example of what they had in mind see this article to about the Audi centre of excellence in Glasgow[^]. The PHB didn't know what a centre of excellence was so asked Wally. Wally amused himself by telling the PHB that it equated to a Presedential library[^], a rather narcissitic practice popular stateside.

These people seem very cheap[^] with a $6.99 starter package, but again its Linux. I don't see anyone much cheaper than Pipex for Windows hosting and I've been very happy with Pipex's shared hosting. I just see this as a cheap way of hosting multiple sites without the overhead of a dedicated server.

ihoecken wrote:

Seems to be very expensive. I just looked up some providers and found offers for 20 or 25 Euros. You should just google a little bit and find a better offer.

Price isn't the only consideration, but thanks for the tip.

Virtual Private Servers. Just been taking a look at this http://www.webfusion.co.uk/vps/windows.php[^] Looks quite a good compromise between shared hosting and actually running a server, if you want to run multiple sites. Just wondered if anyone has tried, and what downsides there might be.

The man deserves a medal! :-D If it really works he'll be worth more than Billy G.

Have you got the VPC additions installed?

Having just been made redundant (along with 90% of my company), I'd like to brush up on my qualifications. Since MS are about to restructure their certification I thought project management methodolgy might be a better bet. Any suggestions on Prince2 resources or books?

Cool thanks :-D I'll take a look.

I'm looking for a very simple asp.net/MSSQL based timesheet system which allows users to log in and record hours spent. All I need is tasks down the side and days across the top. Obviously pretty easy to write but trying to avoid re-inventing the wheel (and save some time). :) It must be free, run on IIS, use MSSQL (or Access at a push) and come with source (for tweaking if necessary). Cheers, Richard

Everything I say is a lie. ;-)

I had an r/c plane. I last saw it as a dot in the sky, about a thousand feet up heading in the same direction as the wind! It really is harder than it looks. Those guys make it look so easy. I loved the bit where they went vertical and started spinning. Very cool. I wonder how many they've smashed to bits before they perfected that move!

You forgot storge (family love) :-D

Raid 5 requires at least 3 disks otherwise go for Raid 1 (mirroring).

Daniel Turini wrote: what's the point of having a feature that can only be used in sloppy coding? It WILL be abused. Backwards compatability?

PIN number. Always annoys me. :-D

I tried this and got the same result, but I've noticed a few more "funnies" since which also seem to suggest MS testing may have been less than comprehensive. A child window in SQL query analyser that was open during the change acquired a blue border. And I opened a fresh copy of calc and the menu items have a lighter coloured block around them. Strange but true.

Does nobody else see the irony of C# programmers mocking others for not being 'real' programmers? "So what you're telling me is that the latest and greatest thing in 2005 will be _yet another_ programming language that compiles into pcode and runs on an o/s written by those clowns at Microsoft?" "Well, umm its not really pcode, and Microsoft have come on a bit...sort of.... A real programmer used to program in machine code and think anyone else was a Nancy. In this day and age programming is a state of mind not knowledge of a language. You can still write poor code in C#. Why do people feel the need to bash VB6? I always think those that raise themselves by downing others must be insecure. C# can speak for itself, its a beautiful language. I've seen some awesome apps written in VB6...honestly! I've also seen some terrible ones, including everything I've ever tried to write in VB6, but I always put that down to my failings. I've had to program in far worse languages the VB6 and I think I'm a better person for it.

Does anyone use VB.NET standard rather than Visuual Studio .NET? Is there a downside if you only want to write apps in VB.NET?

Yeah, I've already had my nose rubbed in the dirt, but the point you make is interesting. It strikes me, these sites (from my quick glance at them) are very commercialised and little more than meatmarkets. I was thinking of more of a community spirit like CP. A bit like open source you get paid for. Still, where money is involved community spirit never lasts long. :doh:

I also love the speed with which other CPians flock to mock those that post random thought patterns, instead of doing a little research! Thanks for the reality check!