Nerseus

Be careful about the size of the body (if you use it), as it seems to cause errors if the text is too large (or possibly contains too many CRLF characters - I can't remember). -Ner

To answer Bucky, I'd like to see "highly motivated" whenever I see any kind of deficiency, and everyone's deficient (I know of only ONE renaissance man in development - a pure genius) :) And everyone says "I can learn everything, I'm very motivated, I'll learn anything you want." To be "highly motivated", you have to really convince me. Tell me examples of things you do (read magazines, books, try out technology on your own, etc.), what you like, etc. Aside from motivation, I'd rather see a lot of knowledge in a few areas than general knowledge in a broad range. This is biased (as is almost everything), but in the past, the people I've interviewed that had the broad vs. deep knowledge seemed to have jumped around a lot. They tended to not learn the "right" way to do things because they knew only one or two ways to solve a problem. It's hard to explain, but it's just my experience. -Ner

Other than the Collection class, I can't think of any 1-based objects in .NET. -Ner

Exactly - the GC only runs as needed. That works great most of the time, unless the object holds onto resources. Even .NET managed objects hold resources, such as the Graphics object (part of GDI+). It also wants an explicit call to Dispose when through with it (not in a Paint Event handler, where the .NET framework does the creating/releasing). It's hard to know when you NEED to call Dispose vs. just want to. You can always call Dispose if you're in doubt, but it's so sloppy (sorta). Usually the docs will let you know when you *must* call it. Glad you got it working, by the way :) -Ner

Have you run a SQL trace to see how/if the user is connecting? Is the connection string using the user's credentials? If so, make sure that user has access to the DB AND has the EXEC rights. -Nerseus

What are you comparing the values to? Are you saying that each individual check needs only occur if both values are non-null? Would you want to stop comparison if any one of the comparisons failed? -Ner

If you have no experience, then a degree might help get you in as a junior developer somewhere. With even 1 year or more of experience (real world, not just lab assistant type) the degree isn't important at all (at my company). It doesn't look bad, but it's much better to see 1 or 2 years of VB.NET, C#, Database, or something else "useful". There are SO many factors into hiring someone though, it's hard to pin one area down as more important than another. Personality is a key (must get along with others) for instance, though many companies won't mention it because it's too taboo (it could potentially be used to weed people out by race, sex, or whatever else people might not want). But if you're expected to work as a team, you must get along well with everyone in it. -Ner

I've used a Sony Trinitron 21" flat screen for years. I recently upgraded to an 18" LCD and then a 20" LCD (had to give the 18" away). I've gotta say I still like the Sony the best. Wyrd pointed out the problem with games - the LCD is fixed-pixel and the dark areas aren't quite as good. Also, it's locked at a slower refresh rate which took some getting used to. I will say that Text on the LCD seems a lot sharper, which helps with coding. But that flicker (which isn't really a flicker, but seems that way - hard to describe) can be a downside as well. As it is, the 18" LCD from Dell was about $100 cheaper than the 21" flat Sony (which is an AWESOME monitor). The 20" was about $450-$500 more but you actually get more viewable space (but just a bit). A friend of mine is trying to get two 18" LCDs (he's got an 18" LCD and old 15" rounded monitor for now) - I'm crossing my fingers that he won't get them, I'd be too jealous :) Of course, there's also desk space to consider. That LCD is VERY nice for leaving some extra room in front, if you don't have/like keyboard trays. I like being able to move the keyboard forward and have enough room to eat... I mean put a notebook for writing down important work "stuff". :) -ner PS Because an LCD is pixel-locked, make sure you like the resolution it should be running at. The 15" is 1024x768 (I think), 18" is 1280x1024, and the 20" is 1600x1280 (I think). You can't go ANY higher, but you can go lower, As mentioned, going lower will cause the monitor to do some doubling of some pixels, enough to make certain things just a tad bit "off", usually fonts or other things that have straight lines.

Seems a bit odd to upgrade you with just one test. The old "new" track (VB5 to VB6) required 3 new exams, including that 3 hour (5 hour beta) Solutions test! But I haven't perused the site in awhile. I'm halfway to the new "new" MCSD, though work keeps getting in the way :) -Ner

Have you checked the size of the texture after you load it? I've never seen TextureLoad.FromFile load a non-power-of-2 texture properly. Meaning, if I load a 60x29 bitmap, it'll scale it to 128x32 or something similar. You can get the surface description after you load the bitmap to see the size to make sure it's what you passed to FromFile(). Also, I know that all vertices must be offset by 0.5 pixels when drawing. It took me the longest time to find it in the docs because *most* of the 2D sprites would draw fine, but some would be scaled off by 1 pixel. -Ner

What does dbmon report as the error? I used to see other errors when resetting a device, usually my not releasing certain resources like I should. I haven't done much with the render state blocks, but I wonder if you have to call Dispose when you're done with them? Is this managed C++ DX9 by the way? -Ner

To combine existing attributes into one... I don't think you can. Or if you can, it's probably not worth the effort. I'm guessing you're looking for a simple way to cut and paste attributes of classes/members? If not, let us know how else you're using them and maybe we can help. -Ner

I'm not quite sure what you're trying to do with the ldb.txt file? Why would you assume it's in the same path as the JPG they selected? Could you give some more info? -Ner

Well I didn't look at it in detail, but I don't see where you'd need a window handle anywhere? it appears to intercept at the EXE level (?) somehow. You have to replace your d3d9.dll with the one in the package though... Are you trying to implement code in your app to use D3DSpy? I saw two short samples but neither of them needed a window handle either, that I could see. -Ner

According to the docs, DXSpy only supports DX7 and DX8. I haven't tried it, but it sounds like it won't work with DX9. Since the doc was very vague about what it does, it's hard to say how it's intercepting calls. How does it say you "attach" it to a window? Does it intercept ALL calls to all windows using DirectX, or are you supposed to point it at a window like with the normal Spy tool? -Ner

I would normally agree, but Crystal has a very active knowledge base of issues plus its own set of forums. If you bought a copy of Crystal (I don't think the free version with VS counts), you can use Answers by email as well. -Ner

It sounds like you may just want to secure the website, if you have access. I hear that you want to charge people a fee to view your manual but you don't want them to distribute it. Providing it as a free website means anyone could copy the pages, link directly to it, etc. I'm not sure how you'd even keep Google from crawling the site :) Another option might be to zip up the contents or use a protected PDF with a password. Those paying the fee could be emailed the password. That won't prevent people from copy the manual WITH the password, but it doesn't sound like you want a real robust solution - just something to deter the casual copier. -Ner

What kinds of programmers do you currently have? Do most of them already know Director? If so, I wouldn't suggest switching unless there's a good reason to. You mention distribution. Is that the main issue, or are there other factors? -Ner

For step 1 and 2, you can also use the GetLevelDescription method to return a SurfaceDescription structure full of detailed info about the bitmap you loaded. Keep in mind that the built in texture loading methods will stretch your bitmap to meet the power of 2 requirements. Meaning, if you have a 120x96 texture, you might end up with a 128x128 or 256x256 bitmap with all of your original bitmap data stretched out. At least, that's what I've seen (and read that that's pretty much how it works). To read the pixel data, I use LockRectangle, a method of the Surface object. You can get a surface from a texture using the Texture's GetSurfaceLevel method. LockRectangle is its own little beast. See if you can find some help on Google. If not, I can dig up some old code that uses it :) -Ner

Can you show us the error? Not the VS error but the one reported through the dbmon utility? If you don't know what it is, check out this thread. -Ner

apanjocko, this thread is REALLY old. But yes, if you have DX SDK installed with the Debug runtime, you can turn on the UnManaged Debugging to see a TON of info (not just on DX, but from all the System DLLs as well). -Ner

Capturing on another process's handle? I don't think so, but I don't know that much about it. Why in the world would you want to create your own window through the API? If you need to capture windows messages or whatnot, you could always override the WndProc in your form. -Nerseus

If you're using binding, you'll have to implement the Format and Parse events. The Format will have to convert the System.DBNull.Value to an empty string (or whatever the DateTime picker wants for a blank value). The Parse will have to convert the empty string to System.DBNull.Value. -Ner

Not that I know of. Why would you want to use a handle? The only reason I can think of to NOT use a window handle is because you're trying to use another process's window handle? -Ner

You can trap window events to handle keystrokes, including stopping Ctrl-C from copying. You'd also have to disable the right-click or they could copy text that way, too. But (big one)! A user can still click File->Save As and then view the source code that way and you can't prevent that. Not to mention if the user can see it, they could type it in exactly the same way themself (though tedious, it would work). I've seen a few websites that now render text as an image - it looks to be happening on the fly, too. That prevents cutting and pasting since there's no text to copy. But it's much slower and would be a lot of network traffic for the image (compared to text). And the user could still type in what they see manually. If you still want some javascript, let me know. -Ner