Latest postings for The Lounge

OpenVMS fans: wanna trade?

goodideadave — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 06:15:00 GMT

I am moving in a few weeks, and came across this beauty.[^] Never been used! I'm sorry I didn't find it before Christmas, it would make the perfect gift for a devotee of OpenVMS. What do you have to trade for it? I will ship anywhere in the world from Northern California.

Someone's gotta be the last to know, but why is it always me?

Hassle free Linux distro

evilnoodle — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 06:07:00 GMT

I have VERY limited Linux experience but want to load a distro on one of our unused PC's. Irrespective of size, what is the best, stable, most-hassle-free distro you would recommend?

Doggy treat[^]

New Apple innovation

Kent Sharkey — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 05:19:00 GMT

Seeing as how we seem to be on a mini-Apple streak, how about their new laptop without a keyboard[^]?

-------------- TTFN - Kent

A letter from Steve Jobs

ne0h — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 05:03:00 GMT

Here[^] and he's not well.

"hi, I am explorer.exe. sometimes when you are doing anything at all, I will just freeze for ten minutes. All of my brother and sister windows will also freeze, because they are sad for me. Maybe we will come back, maybe not, it will be a surprise!"

Why lie about Santa Claus?

Phil Martin... — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 04:56:00 GMT

(This is my feeble attempt at helping out John and his desire for a flurry of posts) Why do so many people devote so much time in to propogating the lie of Santa Claus? Each year even the TV weather reporters talk about the weather in terms of how it will effect Santas planned flight path. Imagine if all that energy was put towards something true and useful, like actually helping people, or writing cool software, or knitting. Heck even volunteering as a part time head basher for brick wall testing would be better. Bah humbug.

Why does my dog like to roll in Alpaca poo?

TheArtistFormallyKnownAsMaxxx — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 04:17:00 GMT

Simple question - he keeps on doing it - jumps in the dam (that's like pond to you non-aussies) climbs out, shakes himself, then finds the pile of Alpaca poo and rubs himself in it - NOT PLEASANT. Question is, what's in it for him? He hates being washed, and surely if it stinks to me, it must be REALLY stinky for him.

If I knew then what I know today, then I'd know the same now as I did then - then what would be the point? .\\axxx (That's an 'M')

VM forum?

Hans Dietrich — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 03:26:00 GMT

There seem to be more questions posted about using VM software for development tasks. I was just wondering if it would be useful to have a separate VM forum?

Best wishes, Hans

[CodeProject Forum Guidelines] [How To Ask A Question] [My Articles]

iTunes, apple store and podcasts

Chris Maunder — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 02:20:00 GMT

Why oh why are Apple devices so intuitive, but iTunes and the iTunes store so mind shatteringly stupid and painful. My head. It hurts.

cheers, Chris Maunder

CodeProject.com : C++ MVP

I hate review sites that....

Mycroft Holmes — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 00:55:00 GMT

[Rant] Don't allow user feedback, I recently got a new machine and being dissalusioned by McAfee to the point where I am willing to change I used positive review[^] this site and followed their recommendation and got BitDefender 2009. Stupidly I bought it instead of using the trial version. After 2 weeks of hassles I am at the point of trying to get a refund (seems unlikely as they have not aknowledged any emails or forum posts) and thought I would comment on the very strong recommendation from this site - nothing, nada, zip, absolutely no way to contact them through their site or to comment on their crappy review. I found AVG to be too processor intensive on the old XP machine so I thought I'd go to a paid tool thinking it would be better supported, nope BitDefender installs ok but comes up with a critical error every reboot and now I can't even uninstall it. [/Rant] I know this is SB material but John is terminally bored so....

Never underestimate the power of human stupidity RAH

First ever phishing email posing as my own actual bank

John C — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 00:19:00 GMT

Here in Canada we get hundreds of phishing spams all the time for American banks which makes it's pretty easy to spot that they're fake , but today we must have passed some kind of milestone because I actually got a phishing attempt for my own bank here in Canada.

"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it." -Sam Levenson

This site is Awsome

Colin Angus Mackay — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 00:17:00 GMT

Code Project is awsome. I don't usually ask questions on the forums often, I'm usually the one answering questions, but today I was stumped by something and I posted a question, I got a good reply in about 15 minutes that solved my problem (which ended up being because I missed something out but I just didn't see it at the time) So a big thank you to all the helpful people out there who make Code Project the greatest developer site on the internet.

* Developer Day Scotland 2 - Free community conference * The Blog of Colin Angus Mackay

Vogon Building and Loan advise that your planet is at risk if you do not keep up repayments on any mortgage secured upon it. Please remember that the force of gravity can go up as well as down.

Installing Antivirus on infected system

CincDev — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 23:02:00 GMT

Well, I got ambushed into a support issue for my cousin, don't you hate those? Apparently she has a virus on her PC and I was curious if there was a way to clean it before installing Symantec antivirus, which is what she is buying. I think Symantec recommends having a virus free system before installing, which seems like the only way that would ever happen is a clean install of the OS. I tried getting my cousin to run one of the online virus checkers, but apparently she is having tons of popups and slow inet when she tries to use the web. She tried to talk to the people at Geek Squad, but they want almost $200.00 to clean her system, which I think is a little steep, but I really don't want to deal with this issue over long distance. Any thoughts on a good bootable cd virus scanner that can be created from a clean pc and run on hers? Thanks, CT

I Wish...

John Simmons / outlaw programmer — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 22:22:00 GMT

...someone would do something that causes a flurry of posts in here. It's dead, dead, dead in the Lounge. Anybody got a programming question they'd like to ask? Does anyone want to lament their most recent romantic failing? Where is he who shall not be named when you need him?

"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
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"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001

Vacationing as a couple

Jim Crafton — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 20:46:00 GMT

http://indiefilmla.com/blur069_lordandlady.jpg[^] All too familiar.

¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! VCF Blog

VS2008 what's happening internally in a debug build that's different than a release build?

John C — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 20:39:00 GMT

I'm having an issue with VMWare workstation, I'm developing a c# winform app inside a virtual machine with VS2008. I've tried the vmware forums but the mention of a specific app vs2008 scares away any replies and it's definitely an issue with vs2008. Periodically and for no apparent reason about 1 *debug* build in 3 causes the whole virtual machine to temporarily freeze for 10 to 15 seconds. By freeze I mean it becomes entirely unresponsive, if I have task manager running and performance monitor it freezes, everything freezes. It happens just as it logs in the output a call to csc.exe or sometimes sgen.exe or sometimes compiling the license files lic...something. Usually it's in csc.exe. After 10 to 15 seconds it suddenly springs into life again as if nothing happened. What's odd is it *never* happens in a release build. Now what's even odder is I vaguely recall having this same problem a while back when I was not in a virtual machine, during debug and run I would periodically see nothing happening, my app wouldn't launch and though it seems like voodoo if I moved the mouse around a bit it would suddenly launch the app in debug mode. Like it was stuck or something, though in that case the whole machine was never locked up, just vs itself. If I turn on the debugging log for the vmware workstation I get a whole bunch of identical error entries that cover the period it froze for exactly. Entries like this: Jan 02 13:23:14.203: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c Jan 02 13:23:14.203: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c Jan 02 13:23:14.203: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c Jan 02 13:23:14.203: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c Which is unfortunately not documented anywhere. There are no other problems at all with the virtual machine, I can put any kind of load on it, performance is excellent it's only that exact moment when doing a debug build in vs2008. I use the machine heavily for all manner of things there's no doubt it's down to vs2008 itself. Which leads me to believe something unusual is happening during the debug build but I can't pin down what exactly might be going on at that moment that is different than a release build. Anyone have any ideas?

"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it." -Sam Levenson

Congrats to all the Model View Presenters

leppie — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 18:15:00 GMT

My GF just asked my what it means, but I was not sure about the P (in the context of CP). Is that for professional, or participant or player?

xacc.ide - now with TabsToSpaces support
IronScheme - 1.0 beta 1 - out now!
((lambda (x) `((lambda (x) ,x) ',x)) '`((lambda (x) ,x) ',x))

Vista no more...

Ray Cassick — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 16:44:00 GMT

Good bye Vista! For the full reason see here[^] but now that it is gone I have noticed something. Windows XP is far more relaxing to work with. Vista, with all of it's fluff and flash, made me feel jittery as I worked. I never really noticed it until I spent last night working on my fresh install of XP on the same machine I had been using Vista on, but it's true. Vista used to make me feel like I was always running around while XP lets me relax when I work. It's odd how much the look and feel of an OS can impact you like that. Anyone else ever notice it?

FFRF[^]
My LinkedIn profile[^]
My Programmers Blog[^]

MVP surprise

Giorgi Dalakishvili — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 16:39:00 GMT

It looks like Chris wants to see who notices that he/she has become an MVP. Icon Changed to MVP Icon[^]

Giorgi Dalakishvili #region signature My Articles Asynchronous Registry Notification Using Strongly-typed WMI Classes in .NET [^] My blog #endregion

First article this year

sk8er_boy287 — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 14:03:00 GMT

Still waiting. Make it a good one!

Flagging......

Baconbutty — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 10:44:00 GMT

First day back after nearly 2 weeks of lying in on a morning. Is the day over yet? I'm flagging now even after a Toffee Crisp pick me up.

My new favourite phrase - "misdirected leisure activity"