Are you sure MS haven't gotten a major benefit from writing Windows for Mac Software ?? I had read that approx 2% of MS ' s revenue came from Mac Software Sales, Howevere that 2% revenue was far greater than Apple's Profit made from Mac sales. And that was the main reason why MS had invested in Apple !

My Guess it was for a bunch of reasons rather than just 1 large reason. .... Also 135m$ isn't a large investment or even loss for MS to assimilate. .... It's even possible MS could boost Corel sales substantially, .... The idea of having Net being capable of emulating Linux sound s interesting but I doubt will be of great benefit. .... What'll be interesting is if they keep Corel as one co, or split it up, .... Then again maybe MS is looking for a residence across the borde

I have to agree with you Brandon, But where they are more powerful is you have to watch the darn thing and you can't even flick between channel whilst the Darn ADD is playing. Regardz

Chris I say if you feel worried Do it, Another alternative is SWF. [Unisys and Gif SUK ] This site is visited by various Windows programmers, I doubt you have many Pure Linux Heads visiting. thus I'd guess this sites visitors are 99.999 % 4+ And way over 90% 5+ Browsers Regardz Colin Davies

David, My own views are just as highly biased and ill-informed . :-o And I welcome any form of debate or feedback . As Its a www.Net type Application, I can upgrade the adds as often as I wish, And due to the nature of the software it's "{ Auto-geographically aware }", So I can distinguish between a user in Toronto and a user in Vancouver, etc. If it were not for these factors I wouldn't consider it. Hey and as I ain't based in the USA I don't have nightmares about the DOJ, Like a lot of American developers do. :-) But >>>2. Ask users to register. Get their email addresses and >>>develop some kind of meaningful and valuable newsletter. >>>Email sponsorships are much more valuable than banner >>>ads anyway, and you don't suffer the same problems as >>>you do with "bannerware" You application obviously >>>solves some problem, and you can likely come up with a >>>weekly or monthly newsletter that speaks to that problem. is a darn good Idea, Myabe , if its possible for us to eliminate the Banner Adds for those Users Who have registered for the e-mail news letter. Eg. Select your prefered form of exploitation :-) Regardz Colin

David, Thanx for Replying, Two thoughts that swayed us towards this when we had first planned this, 1. The number of users will greatly increase if the App is free. 2. If we were to get folk using one part of our software, it'll be easier to market another App in the future. In Reply to: >> or the rates are so low you don't make any money at it.>> Either we don't have enough copies of the software in distribution or the App Isn't good enough. but: >>only to find that either people won't advertise,>> That I have no reply for. Thanx Again, Regardz Colin Davies

I'm considering releasing a software package as freeware but with banner type advertising emblazened on the main screen. I expect and hope the software to be a "popular" general windows user www application. Has anyone had any good or bad experiences doing this, Or any advice (non-technical) to offer . Regardz Colin Davie

In general I'd agree with you Stuart, When a company turns into an institution, it appears management are promoted to their level of inability ! Then they try to justify there position of superiority by wasting the real workers time by calling meetings all the time. Regard

Dave there are a variety of ways of doing this, One I can suggest really easy to implement is to host a hidden webbrowser control that posts data to a http: site and the site returns the data via a mini webpage to the users PC: A Hacker/Cracker can bust this in Seconds if they no what to look for, and if the user is operating behind a firewall, they'll have to set up a rule to permit your app doing this. Also have a look at this article and consider increasing the identification to the URLS Name Still a Firewall Rule will probably have to be set up for this to work ;-0 Regardz Colin Davies

Yo Congrats OZ, I also wondered, as to outside of Australasia how many folk the symbolysm of corrugated-Iron / Tin and DreamTime would have been totally lost on. Most of the world audience would have required extensive voice overs to explain what was happening. Also why Cathy Freeman was chosen to light the flame and why the old women did the flame's lap, Is difficult to explain. I praise the directors for keeping to the script / this really kept the performance absolutly original. Regardz Colin PS I have scored tickets to the WL at the convention center next week, Now I still have to arrange transport to Syd,

Gee I thought One of mt Apps would have at least made that list :-( , I have always thought folks enjoy complicated - meaningless GUI's , As when they finally work out what they mean - they have a sense of accomplishment and success, Thus any App, that manages this is a real people motivator ! Regardz Coli

Another Idea, For an Internet Downloaded App Preset an expiry date in your program, Now rebuild your program for the next date day +1 Every day upload a new program for the ftp er, Also if you have an internet type application have it check the time over the net as well as the local time. Be wary of Timezones also screwing up the system. But as Todd say's in another post, Crackers will be able to Crack it, Regardz Colin Davies

Wow This shows the depth of knowledge here in the Lounge ! Thanx again Regardz Coli

A friend sent me this story And I was wondering if anyone could veriry its truth. The following concerns a question in a physics degree exam at the University of Copenhagen: "Describe how to determine the height of a skyscraper with a barometer." One student replied: "You tie a long piece of string to the neck of the barometer,then lower the barometer from the roof of the skyscraper to the ground. The length of the string plus the length of the barometer will equal the height of the building." This highly original answer so incensed the examiner that the student was failed immediately. The student appealed on the grounds that his answer was indisputably correct, and the university appointed an independent arbiter to decide the case. The arbiter judged that the answer was indeed correct, but did not display any noticeable knowledge of physics. To resolve the problem it was decided to call the student in and allow him six minutes in which to provide a verbal answer which showed at least a minimal familiarity with the basic principles of physics. For five minutes the student sat in silence, forehead creased in thought. The arbiter reminded him that time was running out, to which the student replied that he had several extremely relevant answers, but couldn't make up his mind which to use. On being advised to hurry up the student replied as follows: "Firstly, you could take the barometer up to the roof of the skyscraper, drop it over the edge, and measure the time it takes to reach the ground. The height of the building can then be worked out from the formula H = 0.5g x t squared. But bad luck on the barometer." "Or if the sun is shining you could measure the height of the barometer, then set it on end and measure the length of its shadow. Then you measure the length of the skyscraper's shadow, and thereafter it is a simple matter of proportional arithmetic to work out the height of the skyscraper." "But if you wanted to be highly scientific about it, you could tie a short piece of string to the barometer and swing it like a pendulum, first at ground level and then on the roof of the skyscraper. The height is worked out by the difference in the gravitational restoring force T = 2 pi sqrroot (l / g)." "Or if the skyscraper has an outside emergency staircase, it would be easier to walk up it and mark off the height of the skyscraper in barometer lengths, then add them up." "If you merely wanted to be boring and orthodox about it, of course, you could use the barometer to

HR, yep all deals are based in US dollars. that works out fine as I only seem to work for US companies, I'm actually in New Zealand which has a lower currency rate than Australia. I enjoy getting paid in US $ but I think programmers salaries are relative. As it is getting easier to work across the net , employers have to compete with US salary levels. But there are big taxation advantages for me working in US earned currency as well. No I don't get bombarded from programmers from India looking for work, I actually have a problem with east europeans looking for Artistic Contracts.(Long Story) Most of my contacts were made when CodeGuru had there own Jobs message - board. >>>> How do the people in China and Thailand work regarding $$$$. They are very ecomomical and reliable. I generally ask for a quote and they give me a good price always. It's always difficult with R&D to work out what is "fair". And generally Price isn't the only factor when arranging work as quality and time also equally important. HR, I also suggest if you are contracting piece work out, To consider breaking the work into smaller pieces. Good luck,

Weird, But in my other post where I mentioned Culture, I was in particular thinking of India, and for the particular reason you mentioned . "Don't take it personally. Its just business." I don't contract work out to India anymore. Actually HR I never wished to name India as I thought it was only Myself that continually had bad experiences there. Good countries to deal with I've found are Thailand and China. China in particular seems to be strting more cooperative type programmers groups. I like this as I believe the programmers will recieve a better share of the returns than in a sweatshop type environment

Lori, I have worked for the last two years as what you might be calling an "offshore developer", plus I have recontracted out work to others are "offshore". So possibly I have seen both sides of the problems. Whoever you deal with you must have an appreciation of there culture. And also human language differences and misinterpratation are a major problem. Also timezones are a problem when requiring direct contact. And you must modify your accounting system for payments, or the developers will quickly loose interest. I realise thes don't sound like programming/systems problems but human problems, However all the real problems are human. Solutions. 1. Learn a little about the people and culture you are working with. 2. Have a person in your team work as an English to English translator/interprator, (What is slightly ambiguous in English for a native English speaker can be have a total different meaning to a non USA English speaker. 3. Learn the Timezone differences, and setup a mutually acceptable daily contact time. 4. Get your accounting department to set up a "swift" payment system. (sending a surface-mail US cheque may take up to 3 months to be cleared, and the developers have to eat also). Tools, Sorry, I only work with finished classes,dll's,ocx's, and libs' thus I have never required any. It also saves on hassles. Regardz Colin Davies

Yes , something is needed, ( Actually I need it for my current project ). I have been looking at doing something similar based on A explorer BHO. Eg when your user operates IE the dll does the verification and everything else for you :- for your 3rd party app. Kaizen I realise this sounds like a complicated method, but it solves step 4 easily. The advantages of this is the app will be updated even when it hasn't been used for a while. The disadvantage's are it's another dll to register etc, and a bit more memory usage. And it won't work to well for some netscape wombles. Regardz Colin Davies , P.S. unfortunatly I'm not a Guru

TM, (my rant for the day). One big problem you might be having is trying to understand everything at once ! And possibly would be better breaking it up into small pieces. Look TM, I have been working on my current project for 3 months, but last week in 4 days I rewrote the whole project from scratch ! So what happend in the other 12 weeks ? No, I didn't waste my time, I was learning ! Possibly TM, what you require is a small project to work on, Rather than concentrating on learning. Also try to purely get the project/application to work, rather than trying to make the program an example of excellent coding practice. The thing I enjoy about programming most is that I am always learning something new. Also what is good about OO programing, is you don't have to create great classes to have a top application. You can use/alter someone elses free class or tools ! After altering some elses class several times, You'll find you'll be able to rewrite it for your own usage ! So get a small project to work on , Even if it isn't useful. Also try to discover the time of day that your brain functions best. Most males brins seem to work better in the morning, when they are more receptive to new ideas, (I saw that info on a documentary so I've adopted an approach of studying in the mornings, and working afternoons or evenings) Regardz Colin.

TM as we are in the " Lounge " I'll hapily digress , I also had problems learning human languages from books and teachers at school. But after having travelled at lived in other cultures, I found, that I could quickly pick up a language if I lived with and in it TM. Interstingly I believe one of the main advantages of learning other languages was the ability to understand English better. Also I think I learn languages very analytically. As I also am a Math type person. Math also can be called a language ! But in daily life it has minimum communication ability. If you take your average Swiss citizen who is fluent in at least two languages, He/She seems to be able to learn another language very quickly. The same with us programmers, Joe who is fluent in Cobol,Pascal and VB can learn VC++ quickly. There is one field of linguistic thinking that the language that you principally use allows, you to think in a certain manner. eg I have heard Hungarian's are great at Math as there language is meant to be math structure like. Anyhow TM stick with it, hope you manage to break down your barrier