Discussions

Yep, if you live outside North-America, you have a hard time at it, no denying that. This month I'm up for a new phone and I really want a Phone 7. The Dutch telco's, however, wait for the localization, which may come in April. I want the English interface but I still have to wait. While that isn't entirely Microsoft's decision, I can see how providers wait until the local interface is available too. Also, Microsoft shoves localized versions of Zune etcetera even further away. It's very hard for me to justify to wait that long. As a result I've bought a low-end basic phone and as the end date of my contract gets closer, Android, Nokia and even Badu start looking attractive (not iPhone: I am the de facto tech supporter of one and after a year I can only say 'ewww!'). As Eric S. makes sure that he says something to piss intelligent human beings off, Google's Anrdoid, despite that I think Google makes some top notch products in the internet, I can't bear to look at anything Google without despising myself (seriously, I have a wide tolerance margin for corporate evil, but that Eric guy: no-go).

So, Microsoft, I'm a fan but sometimes, just sometimes, it's like rooting for the Dolphins (which, as it happens, I do).

Evok said:

I can see why they'd be mad about this. It seems like this fool is trying to make the iphone out to be something really complicated and hard  to use, thus tarnishing the usability image for no reason other than trying to make a joke out of nothing.

Really? If it's that easy to kill iPhone sales, maybe it isn't that good after all.

Apple's real problem is that they have been able to portray themselves as the nice-and-friendly company, out there fighting the good fight for Joe Average. As they have actually got into the Joe Average market, they find that it's hard to keep up the shiny image. But, a few years ago, the stop-or-we-will-sue your-* letter by their lawyers to the girl that thought it was awesome to send them a design for an iPod cover (or something to that effect) was the first sign they found you cannot be the customer's friend and control everything that's going on outside your company.

In the early 2000's, I was turned off by Microsoft. After that, Apple's shenanigans was one of the bigger factors that made me re-examine and find that Microsoft is actually a decent company that knows how to navigate between the close and open side. Not perfectly but good enough.

To think I was this close to buying an Apple last november.....

Philip Glass - Einstein On The Beach. The logical structure of it helps me think. Especially Knee 1. Excerpt from the lyrics:

1 2 3 4

2 3 4 5 6

2 3 4 5 6 7 8

It's not all counting off course

Sven Groot said:

In ASP.NET you could indeed use master pages for this. If you're using plain HTML you would have to repeat the common HTML on each page, or use frames (which is somewhat frowned upon these days, but can still be a valid approach in some circumstances).

I really want to try and use ASP.NET for it. The simplicity of it makes HTML or frames just as good an option (seeing my meager skill level about 100 times to finish as fast too) but I see this as a kind of Hello World project. Also, in time, I want to take it a bit further and I think that using plain HTML from the get-go will eventually bite me in the ar... behind.

So, masterpage it is

Maybe I'm completely wrong but are masterpages or nested pages what I'm looking for?

I'm a systemadministrator forever trying to break into at least a beginners' level of programming and sometimes run into the simplest of problems (i.e. I think they are simple and that I just can't find the solution).

Working on a very simple website, I'm trying to figure out how to place a page within a page. On the side I have links to different html pages (photo albums). The idea is that that album appears in the middle of the page, comparable to, say, webmail, where the foldernames are to the left of the page and the folder clicked on appears to the left of that.

My biggest problem is that I can't search for a how-to because I don't know how you would call it (yes, it is that bad). Can anyone help me out, so I can take it from there?

What doesn't come across in the ad is that Apple has a big gap between how friendly they portray to be and how cease-and-desist they are. I once was thinking 'iPod' and got a letter to stop thinking the word without written permission.

To a certain degree I understand the mechanics. A company, in my opinion, can be a protective as they want to be. If they get too protective, I won't buy their stuff, which is, in turn, my right. Also, there is a difference between how they are and how they portray themselves, I understand that as well, it's marketing, I'm ok with it. To a point, that is. Apple takes it too far.

CreamFilling512 said:

Maddus Mattus said:

*snip*

Can't have too much action, man.  If you want a story go read a book.

As I said, I'll be doing both. But because the f-ers at Pocket Books decided the North American customers go first, delaying the delivery in Europe by 3 weeks, after initially saying it would be available May 8th (btw they waited until May 12th to say so), I decided to go see the movie first anyway. Of course, Paramount owns Pocket Books. Sigh. Books are my crack and my dealer is most evil.

So it goes.

rhm said:

figuerres said:

*snip*

I think we should save the 8 bit stories for our therapists or something

I bought my first PC in 1990 and soon after bought Borland Turbo C++ v1 - although I only used it as a C compiler.  It was a revelation - a nice multi-file text editor with a built in source debugger. It was a great place to learn your first C because the API surface wasn't much bigger than the classic libC - I feel sorry for anyone learning to program for the first time in a modern environment.

Borland started to lose out with their C/C++ products pretty early on in the Windows growth cycle. The last version I bought was Borland C++ v4 in about 1994. I wrote a few programs for Windows 3.1 using Borland's OWL (object-windows library), which was easier to get to grips with than MFC and more object oriented, but a bit bloaty on the memory front. Microsoft started licencing MFC to other compiler vendors which marginalised OWL. Then ofc they came out with Visual Studio and that's what got most programmers using Microsoft compilers instead of Borland or Watcom.

I'm waiting for the book. Amazon UK said it would be availble May 8th but US, Germany and France say May 12th. UK now says out of stock. I've ordered it, of course.

Good or not, the success of the movie will probably move the direction of on-screen Star Trek to the early years, which is great because they will leave post-TNG/DS9/Voyager to the books. And, IMvHO, the very best of Star Trek is to be found in the books (although there is some mediocre to to-be-left-alone stuff in there as well), especially where it is free from the bounds of screen Trek.
[so please, TV and movie producers, leave the 25th century to the books]

Eventually I will go and see it, probably on DVD. I'm just hoping the movie will be as good as the book