Those are not your icons Chris. They belong to Microsoft...didn't you read the license. Considering the number of tools available to undo this (I have one on my machine) it obviously happens to a great number of users.

This sounds like the beginnings of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010\_Austin\_suicide\_attack get help fast

Why do you think they limit themselves to the public tough? That has gotten WAYYY to risky (see cash in the congressman's freezer debacle) The private military-industrial complex have a lot deeper pockets and have little, if any, oversight.

Asynchronous programming is not needed if you have an advanced OS that can extract the parallelism from your executable and distribute that processing across all of its cores. Otherwise, you need to learn how to do it. It will probably serve you better than trying to learn the newest sexy programming language that hides the multitasking with a "trust us, we know what you want to do". It's really cool too.

You're right. Most developers I know are 'makers'..those that love to build something. My latest is a 500 sq ft garage apartment that is ultra efficient. It's really nice to go out after a day at the office and pound some nails.

It's really "Say goodbye to the Windows Desktop" While the data consumers will be happy, the data generators will have to return to the days of SUN or Silicon Graphics workstations. There will always be workstations of one sort or another because the data generators will demand it. Microsoft made the audacious move to make workstations commodities. They seem to be back-tracking on that decision. I expect Linux to come to the fore to run workstations of the future, much like the various flavors of UNIX ran them in the past. What goes around, comes around.

SCRUM works, and works well, as long as you accept it. That's what my pastor told me about religion. Religion works, and works well, as long as you accept it. Interesting....

In '65 I was in a scout explorer group in East Texas. The guys at GE allowed us to use their time share terminal in the evenings. We could each do a short (3 - lines) program and feed the teletype by punch tape. It was so much more fun then fixing TVs that it became my new hobby. Twenty years later it was my career.

Prescription computer glasses are the answer. Reading glasses are designed for 18-24" where you hold a book. Computer glasses are customized to your monitor distance (mine is 32"). Luckily there are several optometrists around Austin that know the difference (some don't ...I learned the hard way). I use 80%. Productivity is directly proportional to the number of windows viewable at one time. stevev

Yeah, that's true, but they are trying to monetize this by selling to enterprises. I just wanted people to know going in that their IP could be at risk. It is my belief that if you discussed a patent using that technology, it immediately becomes public domain.

Just a note on the zoom.us video conference company. Be sure you read the terms-of-service. Here is a portion that says if you share your desktop with the meeting, that content automatically becomes theirs and they are allowed to sell it at will. Pretty gutsy. You understand and agree that by displaying, exchanging or uploading Content to a Zoom website transmitting Content using the Products or otherwise providing Content to Zoom, You automatically grant (and warrant and represent You have a right to grant) to Zoom a world-wide, royalty-free, sublicensable (so Zoom affiliates, contractors, resellers and partners can deliver the Products) perpetual, irrevocable license to use, modify, publicly perform, publicly display, reproduce and distribute the Content in the course of offering the Products.

Boy, does that bring back memories.... I was just a youngster and someone hired me to generate a plug-in cartridge that would make the C-64 excercise a speech synthesizer that only plugged into the Apple II backplane. I tried to talk them into a) moving to the IBM PC where everything was cheaper, and then b) move the C-64 software to the Apple II. They would have none of it. I completed the project and got it to work. It just was so cost prohibitive it wasn't funny. Forty years later, I'm still a consultant/contractor. I learned a great lesson very early: The customer is always right... up until he's wrong.

Well, I'm no MS fanboy but this isn't bashing.(I gave that job to Apple) So, what you are saying is that the developers bit on the tools and overlooked the infrastructure. That, at least, makes some sense. Thanks. stevev

Yeah, but why did the developer community bite so hard on this? It looks like they go wherever Bill tells them to.

No. My market stays way off the bleeding edge.

First, let me say that I understand that Microsoft has to keep the market stirred up. It is very difficult to sell stuff into the status quo. I also understand that Microsoft needed a language it could control to base its wpf etc products on and bought into C#. That’s all well and good, but can somebody tell me why the developer community grabbed onto the .NET and its intermediate language which, to me, looks exactly the like the p-code from back in the day when Pascal was the new sexiest language. It just looks like a rehash of an old idea (albeit better executed).

There are a few other things to think about here: 1) us dinosaurs lived through the debacle of P-Code. .NET is just another attempt at that solution. It is more successful because they have quad-core, multi-giga hertz processors to over-power their ineptitude. Because we lived through it, we find it difficult to embrace it again./ Maybe in a few years... 2) us dinosaurs lived through the first garbage collectors too. The ones that would lock-up your display for 30-60 seconds at a (random) time. We find it difficult to go back to those bad old days just because of more powerful processors make the lock up less than a second. 3) Redmond had to have C pound. They had a horrible time trying to be compliant with the C++ international standard language and library. And it only changed every ten years. You can't sell compilers when it only changes every ten years. You gotta get your own language, pile your employees on the standardization board and "make it your own". Those bi-yearly changes will be well worth it. 4) remember, dinosaurs that have programmed professionally for 30 years didn't do that by not paying attention. They got burned early with new sexy languages and techniques and are a bit skeptical of 'the latest thing'. We experimented with C++ using C-Front because it offered real advantages. But it didn't get used in production for another five years. OOP & OOD were watched carefully and embraced as they matured. .NET may make it but it ain't there yet.

I too, am glad I'm not to see the final agony.

Maybe. The app will be downloaded, used and then killed. The data will be cached locally,uploaded and then killed. The app will probably run in some sort of p-code that would be supported on any platform, It would not be a PC app. ...sound familiar?

Yes. If it is up to microsoft, we will all be cloud computing by windows 10. If you notice windows 7 is rapidly moving the user to the cloud. They removed windows explorer so you have limited tools to maintain your local drives. They enhanced their web browser so you can barely tell if you are on your machine or in the cloud. They have nearly stopped development on C and C++ tools for the PC. Since they still own the PC space, they are moving users off the PC as quickly as they can. There will always be a place for the PC, just like there is still a place for mainframes. It just won't be where the masses are dumping their money. I don't own microsoft stock. I do own google and amazon stock. stevev