Perhaps a dialog's returning a custom data class wasn't the best argument. I think I have a better argument for an embedded class, anyway. I'm working on a class that programmatically displays rectangles of specific color samples, and the user is expected to click on the particular rectangle to select a color. OK, nothing special about that. I am displaying the colors in a matrix of rectangles that are programmatically generated panels, given a generic List of colors that I want to present. After I got deep into the coding, I decided I wanted to have a border around every rectangle, where the color of the border signified which palette the color was in. Not that there are expected to be a lot of palettes, maybe 1, 2 or 3. But I ran into a problem: the panel control doesn't have a means to define the color of it's border. I posed that problem to ChatGPT, and it suggested I write a custom Panel class that extends the standard panel class and showed me how I could override paint to put a border of any specified color around the Panels I am creating. I don't plan to use this custom panel class anywhere else, it is short and to the point, and there seems no reason yet for having it in a stand-alone file. Steve

I'll have to look at some of my project code and get back with you, as it half past midnight here, and I am a bit fuzzy on why. I know that the way I write my dialogs aren't quite as trivial as textbook examples, and I have to look and see why. But what I think I was doing was not so much as embedded a class within a class, but simply putting my data class on the end of the dialogbox class, initially, rather than having a separate file for the data class. It may relate to my wanting a dialog box that had an Apply button implemented in addition to the usual OK and Cancel buttons. It may be that my dialog box does something complicated and has to stay open and effect the target form with changes as I make them on the dialog without closing and reopening the dialog repeatedly until I get the combination I want.

I mostly do C# these days. But I find that when I am designing a dialog box for a program, I usually need more than a single primitive value returned. What I seem to end up doing is writing an embedded class to handle all the returning data. I make it an embedded class because I can keep it associated with that dialog box. Using a class gives it an instance that doesn't vanish the moment the dialog closes. There have been a few occasions when I've decided that an embedded class was a good solution as a class to handle multiple issues in a project. When I get to that point, I usually elect to change the class from embedded to a separate file.

The book used when I took my first formal course in C++ at a university was: "Problem Solving With C++" 'the Object of programming' by Walter Savitch ISBN 0-8053-7440-X Along with this, my professor had daily handouts, usually 1-4 pages long, of typed material about the language, and he went over the notes using his overhead-projector, and pointed out a lot of things. The professor retired a couple of years later, and the university's bookstore started self-publishing his classroom notes. The other professors all taught using different materials and texts, and this was just before Java got a foothold.

This is something I wouldn't ever trust to automation. That being said, I'd do this in hardware. I used to be a tape-recorder-nut and did work with tape recorders of various formats, and I would first suggest using a common cassette recorder, except they are no longer 'common'. Likewise, a VCR can be utilized to make audio-only recordings of up to 8 hours long, just use the VCR's line-in jacks and 'ignore' the video. Of course, VCR's are no longer common either. Maybe one of those handheld voice recorders can accept a patchcord? The other thing is to attach a second computer, use the capture audio on the line-in of second computer. Use a free recording program such as Audology.

I don't do this very often, but one tool I have running anyway on multiple desktops is Discord, and I have used it to share items between desktops. Just that there's an annoying bar on the Windows 7 desktops these days urging me to upgrade to Windows 10 or newer. Another tool that works for me is Dropbox. These are really both overkill for just sharing across my LAN, but the only other thing would be to write my own app to do this, then I wouldn't have to worry about content, size, and volume restrictions.

I was hoping for rivers of lava, not blood.

OK, you have lot's of computers and each one has a number of terrabytes. Someplace you should be maintaining 2 backup images for each system, and daily or weekly diff files for each system. That's too much content for the cloud, given today's transfer speeds. You'd spend several days of continuous transfer time making a single backup. I backup all my computers using a pair of NAS-boxes I built (You can buy NAS-boxes, but they usually have huge prioce tags and don't include the drives). Mine run Linux. When I'm not activly pushing/pull from a backup, I keep them powered-down to protect the lifespan of the spinning oxide (harddrives). I have 2 NAS-boxes so that I can keep redundant copies. I don't use a RAID configuration in them. They are built with identical hardware, so if a card quits in one, I can pull a like item from the twin machine.

I'd set-up a test station (another computer), with the same OS and programs installed, and then enable that update and see what it actually does. Just becuase Microsoft says it is going to do X doesn't mean that it isn't going to do Y also or instead. I've skipped Windows 10 for the most part, and I have built a Windows 11 system for select newer apps that have internal blocks that keep them from running on Windows 7. However, I've found that Windows 11 is a slow painful environment to use, and frequently needs several hours of warm-up time before I can use it when it's first booted. With that in mind, I haven't moved all the projects I'm involved in over to the Windows 11 system. I can't take a chance on it not working at a critical momwent.

Here's a radical idea: somebody thought it would be a good idea to monetize it. Someone won't like me to say this, but in my opinion, it's a scam, and the whole certificate structure is just so-much nonsense that has zero-utility as it essentially does nothing except to add a placebo effect of software safety.

I use Liberation Sans 9-point Bold as the default in a form. There's also a Mono version for code. Being visually-handicapped these days, I need BOLD for everything, and simply making the font a larger size just doesn't cut-it for me. I need the thicker strokes of Bold to distinguish text from the background.

Your not going to like my answer. But it is Eudora 7.1.0.9, with the update from the Hermes group who recently produced a way to put in TLS1.2 compliance, and proper handling of certificates. There are many possible candidates for a replacement email client, but I haven't found one yet that I'm willing to try, and I have 20 years worth of email in over 400 email folders within Eudora that I preserve. The junk and spam I delete, but I have my own reasons for saving things that way. The Hermes Group was established to take on the job of updating Eudora with the Computer History Museum's release of the Eudora source code to the public. Right away a difficulty arose in that the source required some 3rd party libraries that are neither free, nor open source, and not particularly available any longer. That seems to have caused a huge slowdown in the project of producing a new replacement. I've read that they have a version that compiles, but is unstable. Before they got started on actual work, I was one person they contacted to work on the new project. I declined as I had just started a new, large project and didn't consider myself 'available'. I still have a time constraint, and am not yet available. And my work flow at present time is not very efficient. Please forgive the boldface, but it is easier on my eyes. Regards, Steve Tabler

Interesting. Oh well. Since the email address used is a gmail address, I was able to log into the gmail account from a browser, and the trash folder had the specific Daily News in it, and it was readable. I put it in a folder there marked 'archive'. Then I forwarded a copy of it to my outlook.com email address. I was able to look at it at outlook.com via browser, so that was a good sign. I then switched to my pop3 client and I was able to download and view the forwarded Daily News message. It had not occurred to me to search the trashcan on gmail in this manner, but now that it's happened once with success, I'll keep this in my strategies. Thank you for your assistance in this matter.

I look forward to Daily News when I get up in the morning and go through my inbox. Today, when I clicked on the entry to read "Daily News - The state of WebAssembly ­ 2022 and 2023", my email reader presented me with a blank white page. My next option when a reading problem like this comes up is to use a button in my email reader to send the entire message to my browser. I did that, and I saw another blank white page. My next option is to view the pages source using the browser. From that, I can see that there is considerable source, so you haven't sent me a blank page. I guess that's something. I have yet to analyze the page, and I'd rather not do it. But I think you should know that something broke since yesterday (Jan 30, 2023), and I'd appreciate it if you could fix it and re-sent today's Daily News. Thank you.

The box that is running ClamWin is an HP Compaq 6005 SFF. I've been on Frontier and feel your pain. The only thing more painful is Comcast. I don't trust 'security' products made by Microsoft. I went with ClamWin when I spun up this particular Win7 box because the then-current Avast-free refused to install on it for some undetermined reason. So it was either ClamWin or nothing. That particular box isn't doing anything critical: it is simply my caller-ID display and logger for the call logs I've been collecting for the past 15-20 years when I had to start screen robocalls and other spam calls. I'm open to ideas about an anti-virus solution myself. Many products have soured me to the point I no longer consider them.

I mostly still run Windows 7 here. I just retired a Windows 2000 machine and shifted it over to a new dedicated Windows 7 machine. Up until recently, I HAD been running Avast as my antivurus on all machines. But Avast didn't want to install on that latest Windows 7 machine, so I switched to the antivirus I was using on the Windows 2000 machine: an open source antivirus called 'ClamWin'. Some web content absolutely can't be accessed with Firefox, i.e. many videos. The only success I've had is with Chrome, which I hate. I just watched my Firefox update itself to version 108.0.2, which was a surprise as everytime I open it, there's been a banner that says I will need at least Windows 10 for future updates, so updates could halt at any time. Best advice: many forks of Firefox have also announced an end of support for Windows 7, so be prepared to clone the repository and compile it yourself, taking out the trap that prevents the compilation from running on a Windows 7 box. Probably have to keep cloning with every change. Watching web videos is frequently important for me as I access video tutorials that I haven't found an equivalent textual answer. And sometimes I have to sort through multiple videos for the same issue because I can't understand the narrator due to the thick accent. As for WannaCry protection: disable SMB level 1 access. Also a good idea to disable remote desktop access on all systems. This caused me a headache a few years ago when I spun-up some Linux boxes to use as my NAS, and I had to get them all on the same level to talk with each other. Your router should keep out most traffic hammerinag at your location, though port forwarding to any box (computer) can be an issue. I don't use 'Virtual Machines'. Except on the odd occasion I need to run something in the virtual XP environment that Windows 7 let's me have. And I have a lone Windows 11 tower I put together for primarily for some programs that absolutely would not run on Windows 7 or 8 (I don't have an 8-machine) or Linux. But it has been a tough project to get it stable. It was a couple of months to figure out why the nvidia gpu driver was being disabled at every system-start, resulting in only one monitor working. That was solved by simply changing which Ryzen chip I was using. Go figure. Good luck. I feel your pain.

Interesting. But my incident was pre-2006, and I didn't have a SmartMeter there at that time. I had not actively shopped for gas stoves up until then, and instead always accepted what came with the house. And at that time it wasn't possible to purchase a gas range that didn't have the sealed-burner design. I understand about cats and children....never the issue for me, though. My previous home was a house built in 1925, and the gas stove that came with it was probably of similar vintage, with standing-pilots on the burners that didn't want to say lit, and an oven that didn't have a pilot. I generally had to use matches to light a burner or the oven with every usage. But I never endured a lengthy power outage there.

At one house I had, with it's shiny new appliances, I looked into getting a gas range instead of the white electric glass top that came with the house and promptly turned brown. I was told that in case of electric power loss, I would need to have the gas stove plugged into a UPS in order to light it, and that matches wouldn't work becuase of the 'patented sealed-burner design' that has finally made gas stoves 'safe'. I kept the electric glass-top. I did have a prolonged power-outage (7-days) in the middle of a snowstorm. An underground transformer blew, and I ate out a lot, did some homework by candle and PDA (I was working on my Master's), got extensions on some assignments, and a letter in the mail from the electric company espousing their efficiency to get everyone's power back on in 2 days. Standing their without power reading how they had the power back on really was ... irritating, and I sent them a letter in response to their nonsense, and another letter to the regulating agency. The electric company sent me a greenbar printout to 'prove' they had everyone's power back on in only 2 days, and chastised me for contacting the regulating agency.

I wouldn't think that a 'missed appointment' would be the same thing as a 'cancelled appointment'. A 'cancelled appointment' shouldn't incur a 'missed appointment fee'. As someone who loves to code, and loves to read, and has had to cut-back on reading becuase it seems I am outliving my eyesight, I don't accept responsibility for signing my name on anything i can't read. That means for me to be able to read it, make the font Liberation Sans, everything boldface, and everything 14 point size. Otherwise, it is all just a huge white blur. So legal agreements that have lot's of fine print I don't even TRY to read. Sorry to say this, but software licenses have also gotten way out of hand and impossible to decode. If I'd wanted to read, write, and decode legalese, I would have wasted my time in law school instead of computer science school.

I'm regularly asked by other coders to fix code or tweak code that is formattwed like this, or worse. U like my indents to be a consistant 1/4 inch so the long lines of code don't wrap because they have several levels of indent in them. Just give me Allsup (ANSI) format.