someone in the same boat as me :laugh: after college i went to work at a big services company thinking about the various fields i would get to shift to within the company if i don't like a particular field. i did get offers a small product development companies but i turned them down because i thought they were small. now i am repenting my decision.:sigh: tell you what prst123, in my opinion its down to just 1 thing, are you tech savy and want to code/design for as long as you wish to?? if yes, go for product. If you prefer travelling for on-site work,flying around,seeing the world and making money, and climbing up the management asap go for a services company. work at a services company would be very boring for someone who prefers to code. they ask you to learn boring middleware, kick you around depending on the market demands, at times whatever you learnt in a month or two for a project would never ever be put to use by you after that project... and if you survive they will make you a project manager. the only challenge at a services company once you have settled in is completing a project for a client in an incredibly short period of time. i can't tell you anything about product development because i never gotta go there yet. But i am trying my best to get out of services and go back home to coding ;) btw about the pay at product companies, maybe it seems less at the beginning, but if you can prove yourself to be a really good developer you would get a really good salary and all the fame and recognition you can ask for. And if you decide to start your own company years down the lane and come up with a kickass product, you would be rolling in cash or rolling in fame on the internet or maybe both.:-D

does anybody know how to convert from "CString" to "LPCWSTR" ? i am using BITS in my program and the "IBackgroundCopyJob::AddFile" function takes input only as HRESULT AddFile(LPCWSTR pRemoteName,LPCWSTR pLocalName); i wish to pass CString taken from the user interface to the BITS function.:) didn't get much help from MSDN :((

sure mr. ramanan sivan...."most" wasn't the correct term to use considering the very low computer:person ratio that we have in india....i bet more that 50% of our population never got a chance to use a computer ever in their lifetime.....:laugh: and i wonder if you haven't noticed the facts fact#1 that most of the thousands of cafes that have come up during the last few years use and sell pirated softwares. those who do use real stuff , stick to win98 or win2000. fact#2 most of the pcs sold in india are assembled ones...i wonder how many people who buy assembled pcs buy genuine software :) ....they are buying assembled pcs to cut down costs.... fact#3 i noticed some microsoft ads recently .... they are now selling windows on assembled pcs through something called "microsoft partners" .... ( can't tell you where and when i saw those ads, will have to dig through the old newspapers !!) .... this is proof enough that MS knows that piracy is wide-spread and is trying to get some share of the assembled pc market ! wonder if you have been residing in india lately :doh: anyway nice to see somebody stand up for my country:);)

Can there be a free version of Windows ? why not?? i read the article "Piracy and Unconvential Wisdom" by Chad Z. Hower aka Kudzu today... well here in india where i live we can get pirated copies of any software and games both new and old at rock-bottom prices...some just for less than $2/cd .... here in india most of us don't feel guilty about buying pirated software because the cost of owning software is terribly high compared to the cost of hardware! you can get an assembled pc for about Rs 15000 ( $ 333.333 when you take $ 1=Rs 45)..... so for most of us espically those from the student community it hardly makes any economic sense to legally buy software. linux does seem like a good alternative, but for most users its not easy to use it. they prefer to use windows. lets think about what a free version of windows can do------- 1. it can be provided as a stripped down basic version, most users don't even know about the existance of things like "Disk Defragmenter" for one..... what most users want is browsing, media players, basic document editors.... and windows already provides IE and MediaPlayer for free!!!! 2. it need not be a supported product...that way microsoft still retains most of its current customer base! 3. the public (especially student community, software engineers) can be invited to find bugs in programs, make suggestions, make inovative products. Microsoft can use the money they spend in fighting piracy to reward these efforts and use the suggestion,inprovements,products thus generated in their mainstream products. 4. the free os can be a testing ground for new products... 5. as young users will use this free version, the probablity that they will turn to linux is greatly reduced.... MicroSoft will thus be generating a wider customer base for the future!!! 6. by providing web services and selling programs as per user requirement(....if a user wants "Disk Defragmenter"...sell it to him as a standalone) even this free versions will generate revenue for Mr. Bill. 7. the free version can be supported by donations... those who use it will certainly like to donate some money however small the amount, for keeping this great offer alive. the money so obtained should not go into the bank acount of Mr Bill Gates :) but put into the development of this free os. MicroSoft can bring about a linux like revolution ( without the open source condition!!!) if they think about the suggestions i have mentioned above ! I prefer to use Windows over linux .... but

does anybody have any code that helps in sound recording from microphone without using directshow/directsound and all those complex things? also not write to a file but to keep the recorded sound data in memory.