Microsoft on Tuesday made its Visual Studio 2008 software development package widely available for purchase — a month ahead of a high-profile event in Los Angeles meant to serve as the product’s official launch.
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Microsoft shipped Language Integrated Query as part of the .NET Framework 3.5 in November. LINQ was originally one of many research projects that the company has under way. LINQ integrates query concepts directly into .NET programming languages using a syntax that is similar to SQL, to simplify the querying of data, objects and XML.
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Bytessence InstallMaker (BIM for short) is a setup file creator for the Windows (R) Platform. It is lightweight, easy to use and yet filled with rich features. You can use it to generate single .exe files that will carry your files in a compressed form and also do various tasks to ensure a perfect installation of your product. It uses the very popular ZIP algorithm due to it’s good compression ratio, compatibility and high speed.

Dave Harms comments on the latest Clarion# language changes, including the removal of automatic instantiation and the switch to zero-based indexes.
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Snow? In Japan? Yes indeed, and not just on top of Mount Fuji. Some parts of northern Japan can receive a surprising amount of snow in wintertime, enough to block roads and isolate people living in mountain villages. Elderly people in particular are at risk in these areas, both from being shut-in and from trying to shovel all the snow. That’s where “Yuki-taro, the friendly snowbot”, comes in!
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Jason Zander, general manager of the Microsoft Visual Studio tool set, spoke at the Lang.NET Symposium Jan. 28, noting that making programming easier is number one among the key trends he sees in the industry, and that Microsoft is working on it.

Zander said he and other speakers at the show would address many of the hot issues developers face today. A key issue is deciding whether to “go for reach or a rich environment,” he said.

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Yes. This is another “final” post.

Despite public confidence that SQL Server 2008 would ship by the end of June, Microsoft today indicated it probably is more likely to arrive toward the end of the year.
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Remember Fog Creek Copilot? The app that our 2005 interns built that lets you remote control someone’s computer over the Internet to help them with technical problems?

Well, recently we figured out that we’re paying for a lot of bandwidth over the weekends that we don’t need, so we decided to make Copilot absolutely free on weekends. Yep, that’s right… free as in zero dollars, free, no cost, no credit card, no email address, nothing.
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AM-DeadLink detects dead links and duplicates in browser bookmarks and text files. If a bookmark has become unavailable you can verify and delete it permanently. Additionally you can download FavIcons for all your Favorites and Bookmarks.

AM-DeadLink is Freeware!

We have found a bug in a template used internally to read TPS tables : when there were some INDEX’s then the file could not be accessed!
This bug is fixed in the SAME 1.1.0.5 version.
So please if you have those sort of TPS tables just do a “force update” from the app only - Help - Update on Internet and click on Yes when asked if you want to force the update again.

Data Management Center
A tool to help you Transfer - Import - Export your data so easily ….

We’ve just released build 12A1.01 the first of four quarterly builds planned for 2008.

Other news:
* 2008 is our 12th year in the Clarion 3rd party tool business! Going stronger than ever.
* In November 2007 we lowered our NEW subscriber price from $499.00 US to $299.00 CAD.

Our objective with that price reduction was to add 100 new members before the end of December 2007.
Didn’t quite make it, but we now are nearing that 100 new member objective.
Don’t pass up this 40% discount opportunity!

The Clarion Handy Tools

We’ve been tweaking the C7 RTL with an eye towards improved visuals. Nothing can be more aggravating than a UI that flickers when some user initiated action, an event, or code causes a repaint. To that end in the next build we’ll be releasing changes in the RTL to optimize the redrawing of controls and suppress background flicker on activating or resizing of a window. This change isn’t like the UI enhancements we previously implemented to theme all controls, or the fancy new Menu styles, this one is about what you don’t see.
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I’m starting a new job in a couple weeks, and so I’m in transition at my current job. Which mostly means I’ve been spending all my time in meetings, debriefing the various people who are taking over the bits and pieces of all the projects I’m working on. Which is when I realized that not everybody says “url” as if it were a person named “Earl”.
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VSO-Inspector is a free add-on to report various information about your hardware configuration. Using this freeware, you can check the listed cd and dvd readers and writers connected to your computer, check the firmware used. The details about the media used and the speed supported by a given writer with this media. Also you can scan a burnt media for read errors and be confident about the readibility of your fresh backup.