I love cool software.  It helps out with my job and it's great to keep ahead of the game.  But I'm fed up with the cost of it.

Things I'd love to own is a copy of Adobe Creative Suite 4 (Web Premium) £1,315.00 one off and Microsoft Expression Professional Subscription ~£500 a year.

Oh this would be great I could carry around this cool software and do development for anyone without worry about licences.

Now subscriptions I can cope with so Microsoft seems attractive but Adobe don't offer subscriptions.  Then again Adobe seem to release a new version every couple of years so maybe it's not that bad.  I defiantly can't afford both though.

By the way don't forget that a msdn subscription is strictly for development only.

So why is software so expensive?

Well people steal software which means there is a huge hole of cash to fill.  I know one guy who told me that Microsoft are not bothered about individuals using illegal software as they like to focus more on companies where the big bucks are.  I'm getting the feeling that the large software corporations expect individuals to steal and use software.  Something which I'm totally against.

So I think the prices on software from these companies are for those people who've got the cash and companies.  They probably feel that the normal individual will probably steal it anyway and we should forget about the honest ones anyway as they're a rare bread.

I don't know what the solution is but again the honest are persecuted.  Not that it bothers me :D

Here's the screen saver I made up from my last post which is supplied to you as freeware.

The screen saver provides some animation, commands of Jesus (New one each day (Community has same one each day)), images (rotated every two minutes and you can change them via the screen saver settings).

It also works on duel screen monitors.

I've tried it on the wife's rubbish XP machine and the performance is ok.

• Text: Rev. Bill McGinnis
• Programmer: Andy Wyatt
• Images: stock.exhng
• Code template: Code Project
  

Download -> CommandsOfJesus_x86.msi (3.36 MB)

If you need support, suggestions or have questions please email me


Some may need to download something called the Microsoft .Net Framework 3.5 SP1.  The screensaver should help you to do this.

Asp.Net and possibly winform controls don't like bound properties that navigate through nested object properties.  For example:-

txtTutorName.DataSource = student;
txtTutorName.DataField = "Tutor.Name";

This code should go through the Tutor property of the student and then go and get that Tutor's name.

Now some may be thinking well why don't you just make the DataSource student.Tutor and then make the DataField "Name", which works fine.  The point here though is that if we're using a data grid and need to navigate without flattening the data (involving another class or linq pokery) it becomes a bit messy just because .Net can't navigate down.  It should do it really as with Silverlight.

Please vote here to get it fixed (which also has a neat but painful workaround)

Update 1
To be honest I don't think it's too much of a problem when using Framework 3.5 because you could set the data source like this on a data grid
dgGrid.DataSource = from student in lstStudents select new { TutorName = student.Tutor.Name, StudentName = student.Name }
etc.

I suppose it's not that bad now but still needs fixing I think because many can't get their hands on Linq.

Why do so called ‘do gooders’ sometimes try to regulate the way we should act and think with regards to our own religion?

Why are people sometimes so insensitive to Christian beliefs and expect us to not get upset about it? It’s in God’s plan I'm sure but things are happening so fast that we’re becoming a Godless nation.

From a Christian looking at our country we are as a nation always breaking the commandments and I believe most if not all break, ‘You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour.’ Which is in the form of lying / fibbing, which in turn is the sign of a lack of love for our neighbour with or without considering God.

T-Mobile the other day called me up saying one of their staff said I was interested in buying a phone. To which I replied, ‘I think it’s more likely that they just lied.’ To my astonishment he didn’t go on about company policy, morals, etc but thanked me saying, ‘I’ll mark it on our systems as they have lied and we’ll keep an eye on him. So are you interested in broadband?’ *sigh*

We’ve lost so much as a nation through annexing God so successfully. I’m constantly reminded by people of how our kids are out of control, the media is corrupt as are politicians and no solution is likely to come around. Whilst I agree with them I think articles like the above are just snippets of the removal of good moral practices that can be found from Christianity that lead to such issues as these.

It's also a perfect example of how companies have black and white polices that offer no flexibility even when common sense contradicts it. I’m always amused when people find my Christian view ‘It’s written that’s why’ funny when they themselves live under stringent and inflexible polices such as these. Funny how we accept a black and white policy from Health & Safety but some can’t accept one of the laws from the 10 commandments.

Bad news for me? Not really, after all I’m sure of my destiny.

Bad news for us? We could spend a life debating that question.