Latest postings for The Lounge

Boom baby!

thrakazog — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:55:00 GMT

Take that productivity!

Demolition game.[^]

Happy Birthday Bob!

Muammar© — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:49:00 GMT

And we need to update our dull page on wikipedia!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codeproject[^]

We will either find a way, or make one!
(\ /)
(- .-)
C(''')(''')

Stupid scammers

Dan Neely — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:27:00 GMT

The FCC is going after people who've been scamming a service they offer that allow deaf people to use a normal phone system by using a sign language interpreter with a video conference link to translate between sign language and speech. A noble service to offer; but the FCC was paying $390/hour to operators. Even if the translators were making $80/hour ($160k/year) that would leave room for a 400% overhead rate to cover time between calls and administrative expenses. IF they were being paid something more akin to the average white collar job it would allow for an overhead rate of closer to 1000%. It seems to me that the participating companies should've been able to make money hand over fist even without billing for fake calls.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/11/arrests-made-in-massive-390hour-video-relay-service-scam.ars[^]

3x12=36
2x12=24
1x12=12
0x12=18

PowerPoint conditionals

0x3c0 — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:48:00 GMT

I'm working on a piece of ICT coursework and could do with a little help. I'll spare you the details of the circumstances, but I've failed a unit because my e-learning product wasn't written in PowerPoint. I've been told to recreate it over the weekend.

I can get the content and videos migrated over easily enough - some parts actually look better in PP. But a major part of my original project was the concept of checkpoints, where a chapter on the main menu would not be viewable until the previous chapters and introduction were viewed. This was easy in C# - a quick if-clause and I'd be done. But in PP, I'm stumped. I've done some research and apparently I need to use alternative views for every possible combination, but this just feels wrong. Is this the cleanest way to do it, or is there a better way to do it?

OSDev

Just in case you don't know what to tell your Mom you want for christmas...

stephen.hazel — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:48:00 GMT

You want http://www.xgamestation.com/view_product.php?id=51[^]

two, count em, two MCUs you can write code for in c.
or the (not very developed but still fun) basic interpretter.

Does video out of the box and has a MANUAL like in the olden days.

My Mom's gettin' me it for Christmas.
I verified that

Just when I thought windows 7 was ok

Richard Jones — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:43:00 GMT

I wanted to try XP Mode, so I downloaded and installed it.

I already had Virtual PC 2007 installed, so naturally nothing works anymore.

Can't uninstall KB95899, can't install it again, and VPC (after working fine for 3 days) is "incompatible" and won't run.

Oh and after all that, I discover I would have needed more RAM anyway. I only have 2GB and it needs that for XP Mode alone.

Now I'm faced with reinstalling 7 so I can use VPC again.

"The activity of 'debugging', or removing bugs from a program, ends when people get tired of doing it, not when the bugs are removed." - "Datamation", January 15, 1984

Murder, he wrote

Ravi Bhavnani — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:28:00 GMT

The local sheriff was looking for a deputy, so Gomer, who was not exactly the sharpest nail in the bucket, went in to try out for the job.

"Okay," the sheriff drawled, "Gomer, what is 1 and 1?"

"11" he replied.

The sheriff thought to himself, "That's not what I meant, but he's right. What two days of the week start with the letter 'T'?"

"Today and tomorrow."

The sheriff was again surprised that Gomer supplied a correct answer that he had never thought of himself.

"Now Gomer, listen carefully: Who killed Abraham Lincoln?"

Gomer looked a little surprised himself, then thought really hard for a minute and finally admitted, "I don't know."

"Well, why don't you go home and work on that one for a while?"

So, Gomer wandered over to the barbershop where his pals were waiting to hear the results of the interview. Gomer was exultant. "It went great! First day on the job and I'm already working on a murder case!"

/ravi

My new year resolution: 2048 x 1536
Home | Articles | My .NET bits | Freeware
ravib(at)ravib(dot)com

Office 2010 Beta

Nemanja Trifunovic — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:22:00 GMT

It's been out for a couple of days now[^]. Anybody tried it? Impressions?

utf8-cpp

Replacing a heater matrix

senorbadger — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:44:00 GMT

Hi guys,

Just wondering if anyones ever replaced a heater matrix on a car, got my mate coming up on Sunday and we're gonna tackle mine. He's done a couple before but was just thinking is there anything to look out for?

Worried about the air bag, seems to be the worst bit! Its a Peugeot 106 we're working on.

Got the week off work incase we screw it up

Since DD is not here...

ragnaroknrol — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:20:00 GMT

A motel with a desk but no drinks or biscuits, within which carnal happenings are incredible. (13)

Should be easy for you guys.

Sorry guys I forgot a line, that fixed it.

SP3 vs SP2

Jim Crafton — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:33:00 GMT

Has anyone had un-managed apps work fine in Windows XP SP2, but then crash inexplicably in XP SP3? Is there anything special about SP3? I've got a case like this but we don't use SP3 in our office, and the only difference appears to be that the person running into the problem has SP3.

¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire!
SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0
0 rows returned
Save an Orange - Use the VCF!
Personal 3D projects
Just Say No to Web 2 Point Blow

IE9, a free upgrade for the web

Norm .net — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:21:00 GMT

IE9 article[^]

Interesting, looking forward to try it out.

Software Kinetics (requires SL3 beta) - Moving software

Damn rain!

Brady Kelly — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:55:00 GMT

It has hardly stopped raining wherever I have been for the last three weeks, and this week's home drenching is the last straw - my ADSL is down to 64kbps, and I suspect my ISP is also having line quality problems. CP loads relatively quickly, while many local sites don't load at all. Hey, they rain is OK if you don't need to work from home on a VPN, or walk or ride a motorbike anywhere, but enough is enough.

BTW, 64db attenuation on my modem looks rather high. Is it?

Vampires not good role models for Catholics, declares Vatican

molesworth — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:25:00 GMT

A classic headline I think

The Vatican has come out against vampirical toothy teen book'n'movie series Twilight, dismissing the epic girl loves vampire, girl loses vampire, girl becomes vampire cycle as a "deviant moral vacuum".

The Holy See's attempt to drive a stake through the heart of the burgeoning film franchise came as it took £1.8m on its opening day in Italy.

It was down to Vatican in-house mag Osservatore Romano to deliver the verdict on the movie.

According to the Daily Mail Monsignor Franco Perazzolo, of the Pontifical Council of Culture, said: "Men and women are transformed with horrible masks and it is once again that age-old trick or ideal formula of using extremes to make an impact at the box office.

"This film is nothing more than a moral vacuum with a deviant message and as such should be of concern."

There are three kinds of people in the world - those who can count and those who can't...

Silverlight 4 beta is out!

Rocky Moore — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:11:00 GMT

http://silverlight.net/getstarted/silverlight-4-beta/[^]

No go-live, but I would imagine that will be sometime soon after the first of the year.

Rocky <><
Recent Blog Post: Win2008 Server without FrontPage Extensions, really?

Unit Testing Questions

John Simmons / outlaw programmer — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:28:00 GMT

Since CP doesn't yet have a "Unit Testing" forum, I'm asking these questions here. Please don't waste your time (or mine) claiming these are programming questions, because they simply aren't.

I've worked for two companies writing .Net code, and neither of them used unit testing of any description (although one of them wanted to start, but failed to launch on that particular paradigm). Lack of familiarity (and actual implementation) of unit testing is actually hurting my chances of getting a new job. I see no tangible difference between writing test code and writing functional code, and view it to be akin to learning any new framework (like the hell that *is* WPF). I've spent the last couple of days browsing the web, and reading a bunch of test-related articles and such, and I have some questions.

0) I've noticed that a lot of people try to establish a direct/hard link between Extreme Programming and unit testing. I don't understand this because I always thought that XP involved two programmers sitting at the same workstation arguing with each other over how something should be implemented, lack/copiousness of comments, and differing coding styles. Our own Marc Clifton is one of these people (granted, the articles he wrote here are dated 2003, so I don't know if he still subscribes to this belief). Why is this the case?

1) I don't understand why tests are supposed to be written before the actual code being tested. Can someone give tangible (versus theoretical) reasons for this? It appears to me that a different programmer should be writing the tests to guarantee that the tests will written without knowledge of the inner workings of the code being tested, thus avoid "assumptions".

2) Why did Microsoft include its own unit testing functionality in Visual Studio, only to limit it to the "professional" versions? If they want to promote unit testing, they should also put it into the Express and Standard editions to allow people to become familiar/trained up with it BEFORE they enter the job market.

3) Can anyone suggest a list of the best (cheap/free) tools associated with unit testing? So far, I've GOTTEN the following:

- nUnit 2.5.whatever-the-latest-version-is
- Rhino Mocks 3.4 (although I understand that nUnit includes mocking functionality?)
- TestDriven.Net 2.24

4) I played with the Microsoft Testing stuff, and thought the IDE integration was quite handy, but from a usage point of view, it doesn't make sense to use the MS stuff because:

- They don't update their tools AT ALL without charging you for it
- The tools tend to lack really useful features that external tools have
- They don't appear to have any mocking functionality.
- The testing framework isn't available in ALL editions of a given version Visual Studio

Are these observations too far off?

.45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly
-----
"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
-----
"The staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - J. Jystad, 2001

Smooth flash cs4

Mekong River — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:52:00 GMT

Hi, finish reading a book flash cs4 visually[^]. I can do a basic animation but seem not the professional flash animation that is animate smoothly.

Does anyone know or recommend which book that I should read next in order to create a smooth animation in flash cs4?

Thank in advance!!!

The Bad Code Offset

Gary Wheeler — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:33:00 GMT

Did you see The Alliance for Code Excellence[^] post in the Insider?

Someone please tell me that this is some lame PDC joke. I'm feeling particularly gullible this morning...

Software Zen: delete this;

modified on Friday, November 20, 2009 6:39 AM

Craigslist responses

phannon86 — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:47:00 GMT

To fund my next rig (and because I have no practical use for it anymore, I'd rather have a desktop) I've stuck my MacBook Pro on Craigslist. Where I live doesn't have a specific section, but London is near enough so up it went, this is my first time using Craigslist, and had heard it wasn't a bad place to sell stuff for pickup.

I wasn't interested in shipping it or taking e-payments of any kind, and left a strict and clear notice at the top and bottom stating pickup only. So far, I've had 3 responses, all (apparently) from the US, asking in very broken English what the final price is (also stated in the advert), and instantly provide a full name and address for me to ship it to!

I send back a polite no and ignore them from then on. I wonder, are they scams or stupidity?

He who makes a beast out of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.

Let Me Bing That For You

aspdotnetdev — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:47:00 GMT

We have a new option to torment the lazy newbies.

Looks like they have a bit of a usability issue though. The URL they give you isn't encoded properly (spaces are not replaced with "%20" or "+"). Means, for example, that CodeProject didn't recognize it as a URL when I pasted it (I had to modify it myself). Incidentally, lmgtfy does do that properly.

Visual Studio is an excellent GUIIDE.