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General Software Discussion / Microsoft to open source the VB6 Language (NOT Visual Studio)

« Last post by Josh on May 19, 2011, 08:22 PM »

At Tech-Ed this week, Microsoft told its Most Valued Professionals that the company is open sourcing the code to Visual Basic 6.0 on its CodePlex community development site before the end of June.

Roy Osherove, an early member of ALT.NET community, and TDD specialist, broke the news on Twitter: " Microsoft announces to mvps at #msteched that VB6 will be released as open source on codeplex end of june! w00t."

An MVP in attendance at the Tech-Ed meeting confirmed the announcement. He said Microsoft is planning to release only the VB6 language on CodePlex – not Visual Studio or related tooling.

Osherove followed up with another tweet: "Damn. VB6 going open source may be the one interesting thing I've heard come out of #msteched so far."

Osherove is not alone. "Visual Basic 6 being released as an open source project on CodePlex is a very interesting prospect," said Joe Kunk, a Microsoft MVP for Visual Basic and the On VB columnist for Visual Studio Magazine. "There's still a very significant presence of VB6 applications in companies today. Having VB6 continue to live, even as open source, will give those companies some piece of mind until the VB6 applications can be rewritten in .NET."

Derived from the BASIC programming language, Visual Basic was introduced for Windows development in 1991 and MS-DOS the following year. Visual Basic was replaced with a .NET version in 2002 when the managed framework was released. The final release, Visual Basic 6.0 appeared in 1998. Microsoft support, outside of the runtimes, ended in March 2008.

Source

727

DC Gamer Club / Re: Portal 2 - Team Portalday Night Live

« Last post by Josh on May 19, 2011, 08:05 PM »

Hey, the "it's cold" excuse doesn't work for men, why should it you? ;-)

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DC Gamer Club / Re: Portal 2 - Team Portalday Night Live

« Last post by Josh on May 19, 2011, 07:26 PM »

But hey, shorties need love too!

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DC Gamer Club / Re: Portal 2 - Team Portalday Night Live

« Last post by Josh on May 19, 2011, 07:26 PM »

I am the tall, linky one. She is the short chubby one ;-)

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DC Gamer Club / Re: Portal 2 - Team Portalday Night Live

« Last post by Josh on May 19, 2011, 07:20 PM »

Be warned...these photos are NSFM (Not safe for mouser)

<SPOILER ALERT>

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DC Gamer Club / Re: Portal 2 - Team Portalday Night Live

« Last post by Josh on May 19, 2011, 06:41 AM »

Thats rated....NSFW....sorry

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DC Gamer Club / Re: Portal 2 - Team Portalday Night Live

« Last post by Josh on May 18, 2011, 08:34 PM »

Nope, we played together....Now I need a cigarette...

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DC Gamer Club / Portal 2 - Team Portalday Night Live

« Last post by Josh on May 18, 2011, 07:51 PM »

Yes,

Let it be known that carol haynes and myself have just conquered portal 2 in co-op mode. Now....WHERE IS MY CAKE!!!!

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Living Room / Re: Sony Playstation Network hacked - All your infos are belong to hackers.

« Last post by Josh on May 18, 2011, 04:41 PM »

How are they incompetent with this issue now? Almost all companies use the same email address verification, or a very similar method, for login information....

735

Living Room / Re: Worlds leading experts...How is this status given?

« Last post by Josh on May 18, 2011, 10:10 AM »

My latest example comes from betanews where one of their new authors is listed as a "one of the world's leading experts on Microsoft licensing policies"

It seems, at least in the IT industry, this term, and those similar to it, are self-derived.

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Living Room / Worlds leading experts...How is this status given?

« Last post by Josh on May 18, 2011, 09:37 AM »

I cannot tell you how many times I have read an article, gotten to the bottom and found a description of the author which claims them to be "A world leading expert on XYZ." My question is this, where is this title given or is it just a buzz word that is self-given to make yourself appear credible? At what point do you consider yourself a "World leading expert"? At what level of experience is this title bestowed? Is there an official ceremony?

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Living Room / Sony details welcome back package for PSN users

« Last post by Josh on May 18, 2011, 09:18 AM »

Sony has revealed which games it will give away in its “Welcome Back” package as compensation for the last four weeks of PlayStation Network downtime.

Some elements of the service, including streaming media and online gameplay, were restored this weekend, while the PlayStation Store is due to open once again for business toward the end of May. When those digital doors reopen, gamers on PlayStation 3 and PSP will get to pick a handful of titles to download and keep.

On PS3, there’s patchwork creation station LittleBigPlanet, open-world superhero game inFamous, futuristic antigravity racer Wipeout HD and its Fury expansion pack, mini-adventure Ratchet and Clank: Quest for Booty and zombie blaster Dead Nation.

You’ll get to download two of these for free from the PlayStation Store, unless you’re in Germany, where inFamous and Dead Nation are replaced with Super Stardust HD and Hustle Kings.

For handheld console PSP, your selection is a little more limited. The four-game selection offers LittleBigPlanet, racetrack-builder ModNation Racers, cops-and-robbers sim Pursuit Force and top-down shooter Killzone Liberation.

Source

Personally, I think this combined with the free year of credit monitoring is a very decent welcome back/apology from Sony. I see all of these users complaining who also claim to never use their PS3 anyways, and have to laugh. The only ones who have a right to complain are those who pay for an online service that utilizes PSN, PSN+ users, or some other online service which incurs a monthly fee.

I thank Sony for this. It is a great gesture on their part.

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Living Room / Re: The end of the line for cursive writing

« Last post by Josh on May 15, 2011, 08:57 PM »

Kamel, you are not alone. I completely agree. As I said on facebook, I have not used cursive writing, minus a signature, since I left high school.

Even in my military class, where we are forced to hand write memorandums, we had to use print and only signed our names. Outside of literary writings (poetry, etc), I see little use for cursive.

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Living Room / The end of the line for cursive writing

« Last post by Josh on May 15, 2011, 01:17 PM »

The handwriting may be on the wall for cursive.

At least that's what some people fear as schools across the country continue to drop cursive handwriting from their curricula.

Forty-one states have so far adopted the new Common Core State Standards for English, which does not require cursive. Set by the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and the National Governors Association (NGA), the standards provide a general framework for what students are expected to learn before college.

States are allowed the option of re-including cursive if they so choose, which is what Massachusetts and California have done.

But the latest to contemplate abandoning the script is Georgia, where teachers and administrators will meet in March to discuss erasing the longhand style from its lesson plans, says Georgia Department of Education spokesman Matt Cardoza.

The argument is that cursive is time-consuming and not as useful as the keyboard skills students will need as they move on to junior high and high school, he says.

As it happens, cursive is also not on the tests that rate schools under the No Child Left Behind law, and increasingly schools gear their curricula to excel at those tests, says Kathleen Wright, a national project manager for Zaner-Bloser, a publisher of education writing materials.

"It's just not being assessed. That's the biggie," she says. "If it's not assessed, it tends to fall by a little because people are teaching to the test."

Source

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Living Room / Re: PORTAL 2 AVAILABLE NOW FOR PRE-ORDER

« Last post by Josh on May 15, 2011, 09:33 AM »

Not to sidetrack this thread, but why has OpenGL never really seen wide adoption? I remember seeing OpenGL as a driver option when playing duke nukem 3d back in the early 90s. It is available for Windows, you can use it. Is this a case of the open product not offering what the proprietary systems can?

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Living Room / Re: PORTAL 2 AVAILABLE NOW FOR PRE-ORDER

« Last post by Josh on May 15, 2011, 08:52 AM »

(from what I understand, this happens because the windows version uses direct3d whereas the OSX version uses openGL).
-jgpaiva (May 15, 2011, 08:23 AM)

But wait, some people on various forums, including this one, tell me that open standards like "OpenGL" are much better for everyone? Are you saying that DirectX is actually faster than an open competitor?

Sorry, couldn't resist.