But I don't own a single .NET book, other than the original O'Reilly C# In a Nutshell reference for the language, which I got as a gift way back in the day. And I really didn't use it that much. I've really never been big on computer books. The only one I ever *really* got some mileage out of was the original Jet Database reference published by MS Press, but that's because there was no real internet to speak of back then :)

That said, anything written by Sells, Brown or Petzold should be pretty good.

I haven't done a lot of WinForms, but it's really not that much of a paradigm shift if you're familiar with MFC or even VB6. The "mapping" is pretty straightforward, especially all the control plumbing and the graphics stuff (pens, brushes, HDCs, etc). Some stuff is trippy, like the idea that every item in a listbox can be an object that just needs to override ToString() for example, but you get used to that quickly enough.

So what you're saying is that I should have paid for XPSP3. Yet I don't remember having done so.

Seriously. I'm not one to loudly advocate using Linux on the desktop, but if it's a choice between jail and Linux... choose Linux. Use WINE if there's something you can't do without.

(I was going to make a Soviet Russia/Communist China joke here but I decided not to)

Right, I suppose "shuns experts" was a bit vague. Let me clarify. Wikipedia is the place where an expert's credentials and experience are no match for an unknown conspiracy theorist who has decided an article must include certain content _he_ believes is perfectly valid and useful to mankind.

That joke about the astrophysicist having to contend with the kid from Kansas who owns a book that talks about the laser-wielding sharks at the center of the galaxy, while humorous, has a well-documented basis in reality.

So no, I suppose Wikipedia doesn't shun experts. It just insults their intelligence. Or it makes them go through a number of exciting and mind-numbing procedures that only the regulars know how to emerge victorious from.

Authoritative-sounding proclamations from people like you about what Wikipedia is supposed to be are very different from what it actually is, and you all know that quite well.

The last time I edited a Wikipedia article in 2006 my changes were reverted by one of those zealous article owners (which I'm told by people like you are not supposed to exist), and I was later banned from editing for three days by one of his administrator buddies. Not by him you understand, by his buddy. I was given the choice to "file a content dispute" or something like that. All over a paragraph added to the article about an 80s rock band from Argentina. With a perfectly acceptable backing source, by the way.

Do you think actual experts on important topics would go through that kind of bullshit? They don't. Because not only do you have to be an expert on your field to successfully contribute to Wikipedia. You have to be an expert on Wikibullshit as well. And most people don't have time for that kind of thing. So very few articles ever actually benefit from any sort of real expertise.

But THE POINT is: if your encyclopedia is NOT a "reliable source"; then WTF is wrong with your encyclopedia?

Wikipedia is the largest organized compendium of popular culture in the history of the human race. It has some encyclopedic content, and happens to be massively cross-referenced, so some people call it an "encyclopedia".

I like Wikipedia. I read it sometimes when I'm bored. It is undoubtedly valuable in many ways. But it's not an encyclopedia by any stretch of the imagination. A culture that shuns subject matter experts and at the same time pretends to inform me about said subjects may be entertaining, but never trustworthy.

Patent lawsuits are filed in the Texas Eastern District because it's patent troll-friendly. It's an honest to god racket that's even credited with fueling the district seat's economic boom.

It's been a while since I actually cried and choked while laughing. Thanks for this, it made my day.

Damn, I'm sorry to hear that. I hope you have something lined up.

Did you get axed as part of that?

Weird. Maybe it's just old habits not wanting to die. Many "power users" are also extremely resistant to change, and they might be just dumb enough to give up functionality to stay in their safety zones.

You mean the *style* of the start menu of the functionality? I like the XP start menu, but I use the 'classic' theme so it looks more like Windows 2000. This is really a personal preference as I don't really like the XP themes. But the functionality is there, including the "pin list", which is the really valuable thing.

The Vista start menu is far better though. I see KDE4 copied it almost verbatim, except that it took me five minutes to figure out how to run a damn program :)

Innovation and all that.

Yes they are, and Microsoft has known this for a long time.

That's one of the differences between MS software and open source, for example. Microsofts's success lies on carefully picking defaults that cater to the majority of its users. Mostly that has worked for them through the years. Open source applications on the other hand suffer from a sort of tinker syndrome, with millions of possible choices. Of course for the kind of people that use things like KDE (yes I'm looking at you KDE), that's a big plus. Not so for the kind of people who use Office, for example. They just want the damn thing to work out of the box. They see their computers as appliances and the software in them as tools. We see them as cool devices that we spend time tinkering with. It's a cultural thing that FOSS largely does not understand yet.

twitter? Is that you? :)

In my very humble opinion, and as an additional (possibly worthless) data point, people that dislike the ribbon interface are more likely to be "power users" that tinker and customize everything (like me).

The rest of the demographic that tends to use Office software - you know, the millions of corporate users that still have the default background, theme, sounds and everything else that originally came with their laptop or desktop - the ribbon tends to be a little baffling at first and eventually extremely useful to them, because it mirrors the way they work. That's the reason it was designed and why it was introduced with 2007.

Microsoft places much more importance on the latter group and tends to make design decisions based on their working habits and patterns. If you are part of the first group, it's best to get used to that fact.

And of course, there are millions of people still using Office 2003 and even 2000.

Yeah. Way to innovate there, Redmon. Congratulations on entering the 1990s!

Outlook has supported threaded discussion views for email and post folders since the 2000 version. Here's a walk through for 2003. First hit on Google searching for 'outlook threaded view'

While threaded mode is useful for some things, there are other nice ways to visualize your stuff on Outlook that I like.

View -> Arrange By -> Conversation on OLK2003 is essentially the same as GMail mode, for example.

A quick switch to Message Timeline view is also extremely useful in those situations where someone says "it's an email from 03/12/70" or something like that and you want to look quickly at the entire sequence sorted by message rather than simply by date.

The "Show in groups" thing is priceless as a visual aide to stuff that's happened in the last few weeks.

I think Outlook is an example of Microsoft's better software efforts. It has its quirks and limitations of course, but overall it's far better than most other mail clients I've used in the past 15 years. And I'm not even considering Exchange integration here.

Congratulations on getting modded up though. My theory that mod points are being increasingly farmed out to rhesus monkeys and squirrels on steroids continues to pan out.