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C# is identical to the new version of Visual Basic. MS added a bunch of very cool features to VB that is backward compatable with VB 6.0 and almost identical to C#

VB.NET == C#

C# = VB.NET

The choice between using VB and C# is more a matter of taste than a serious technology choice. The manuals for each language are almost identical and they give you the VB and C# syntax for every class libarary method. The reason C# will destroy Java is that C# can be compiled down to binary, Java is terrible for writing User Interface programs, Java is slow and usually runs on a buggy Virtual machine, and Java is not portable, while with C# the issue is who cares about portability.

C++ is still not totally obsolete and will remain a core langage for doing high performance graphics until MS gives me a replacement for COleControl in C#

I am working on a project in C# to view DNA Sequences and I hope to have it available on the net in a couple of weeks. I took a look at Human Chromosome 5 in my viewer this week and I am trying to make a generic DNA viewer for examining Sequences and performing Protein, cross linking, Coiling, and search operations. There is an entire new field of Bio-Informatics that is going to change the future even more than the invention of the Semiconductor chip changed the present. I hope to have something to show by next week. The real trick in computer programming is Installation, because any idiot can write good software with the tools available these days.

It is not an established fact that any new C# code is going to be running on my customers computers.

Software is easy, installation is hard.

If you are buying Database software for running a large business or government operation you have three real choices.

1. Oracle

2. Microsoft SQL-Server

3. IBM-UDB

As generic SQL servers all of these products are nearly identical to each other in function and performance. I can tell you that as a programmer with more than 20 years experience that Oracle and Microsoft SQL-Server are almost identical to each other at the server application level. I work with both Oracle and MS-SQL almost every day.

I don't know exactly what California is getting from Oracle. An interesting question is: how many runtime licenses, how much assistance in application development, and what other software came with the deal? I can tell you that California DMV is a mess and the same is probably true for most other State Services in California that require good follow up like Parole, Courts, Welfare, and the like.

Oracle is a California based company and if Oracle can run the all computer operations across the State for $95M then as a California taxpayer, citizen, home owner, and patriot I would believe that we got a good deal for our money.

Gray Davis and the Democrats are at their worst when they try to use the legislative process to subvert the immutable laws of physics. As a Californian I would like to try giving Oracle a chance at providing a solution.

The Energy crisis in California is not over and if Simon and the Republicans want to get my vote they should be talking about how we are going to keep electricity flowing into those nice computers because all the software in the world will do nothing useful without electricity.

"Chomsky is, in fact, the imam of this religious worldview on today’s college campuses." I don't know about that. It seems to me that most college kids are more interested in mind altering drugs, pizza, and really bad music much more than the cannons of deranged septuganarian intellecuals from the time of Abraham Lincoln or Teddy Roosevelt. Chomsky did have some interesting ideas about how human language evolved and why humans make and use all those funny grunting sounds all the time. The fact that Chomsky uses language to abuse politics should not take away from these two facts. 1. Some of his ideas in the science of Linguistics may be valid. 2. His lectures are better than most in the MIT humanities (Joke Joke Joke) departments. There are lots and lots of bigger fools in this world than Chomsky, but Chomsky is an interesting fool.

Herman Gomez is off his medication for a few days.

This is the kind of thing that keeps me voting Libertarian year after year since 1990. The authorities in Indiana had were within their powers to enforce the law and shut down the Rainbow farm, but the reason you pay undercover cops all this money is because you want them to use their brains and prevent things like this from happening. If an Indiana State police officer had been the trigger puller on this dreadful and unlawful execution then as a California Pot smoker I would have said "Shame on you Indiana", and probably voted Republican in the next election. The trigger puller for this atrocity was a federal agent. This displeases me very much. The federal agents report directly to George Bush, and the only way I can register my disapproval of this outrage is to walk into the voting booth next election and punch all those libertarian holes across the ballot.