Stuff that fries your potatoes with olive oil of HAPPY.

[MortifiedocAlot]

He was goofy, probably had an actual chemical addiction. He did it in front of me one time and kept talking about how he wanted to quit and how he didn't want to hang out with this other person, then while with said person he got all mad at me for "having a problem with it" (I never really did, he's just fucking dumb).

[Spectere]

I have a Windows Phone now (in face, I'm posting with it right now). It's insanely nice so far. Unlike my experience with Android, I have more complaints about the handset (an HTC HD7 in my case) than the underlying OS. It has the first onscreen keyboard that I've used that even compares to the one in iOS, and it is better in a couple of ways and worse in others (namely, the autocomplete doesn't do as much handholding, which is both good and bad). The interface itself is very different from any other smartphone I've used, but it doesn't feel different for the sake of being different -- it's actually very functional.

In some ways it takes the best of both worlds. Instead of widgets, ala Android, or traditional icons, it uses Live Tiles, which allow you to start an app and also get at-a-glance information. For instance, a weather app might display the current temperature and conditions on its tile.

It also has very nice integration with Xbox Live, allowing you to chat with friends and even earn achievements by playing mobile Xbox Live games on the phone.

Probably the weakest point that I've seen so far is the web browser, as it's a hybrid of the IE7 and IE8 browser engines. On the plus side, it feels snappy, keeping up well with Safari on my iTouch.

I his platform will get to be very nice as it matures. For a new phone OS, I've been very impressed thus far.

[Kulli]

I was just messing with you.

I can't wait until March.

[Spectere]

I'm now a registered Windows Phone and Xbox 360 indie game developer (I was aiming for the latter, but both things come in one juicy package).  As a result, I wrote a Windows Phone 7 program to read and graphically display the accelerometer values of the device.  Simple stuff, but it's satisfying as hell to see it running on my handset.

[Bobbias]

I'm now a registered Windows Phone and Xbox 360 indie game developer (I was aiming for the latter, but both things come in one juicy package).  As a result, I wrote a Windows Phone 7 program to read and graphically display the accelerometer values of the device.  Simple stuff, but it's satisfying as hell to see it running on my handset.

Oh cool, what kind of hoops did you have to jump through for that?

[Spectere]

Not many.  I actually spent more time getting the little pixel-thin bars to display than it took me to actually read the accelerometer.  The main reason for that being that I'm not used to working with Silverlight and the mobile subset of it doesn't give a lot of friendly ways to directly modify bitmaps, most likely for performance reasons.

Reading the accelerometer was just a matter of handling an event.  That's it.  You couldn't ask for anything easier.

With regards to Silverlight, I'm impressed at how intuitive it is to deal with.  I've always used Windows Forms exclusively, but Silverlight's XAML approach is fairly straight-forward and flexible; it didn't take me a whole lot of time to get the basics down.  Changing the way that the application behaves (i.e. page transitions, etc) is just a matter of defining something once and changing properties.  It gives the feeling of being designed for fixed window sizes and being able to display rich animations and transitions.  The way that it handles resources makes it suitable for single-file deployment.  Given its original design as a web technology, none of that is surprising.  It's basically like a non-shitty version of Flash that focuses more on applications and happens to work well on a mobile device (unlike, y'know, Flash, which is absolute shit on mobile devices and even more reasonably powerful set-top devices [hello, Wii!]).

If Moonlight weren't so damn far behind the curve (Moonlight is about as much of a joke to me as the HURD), Silverlight would probably be a lot more prevalent.

[MortifiedocAlot]

Well, my friends father died, and he and his family have both had a whole lot of support from their community and friends. I saw him tonight and he and his brother seemed to be doing quite well, and he seemed to have a lot of friends helping him through all this bullshit, which I'm really glad for.

[Bobbias]

If Moonlight weren't so damn far behind the curve (Moonlight is about as much of a joke to me as the HURD), Silverlight would probably be a lot more prevalent.

What is moonlight anyway? (I do know of the HURD, lol)

WPF also uses XAML for defining windows, and I actually quite liked using it. It was nice to see a section of code that represented the window without any random bloated stuff around it. Everything was easy to change, and it makes designing things really quick if you know what you need to do with it.

WPF has quite a few nice build in features, actually.

[Spectere]

Well, my friends father died, and he and his family have both had a whole lot of support from their community and friends. I saw him tonight and he and his brother seemed to be doing quite well, and he seemed to have a lot of friends helping him through all this bullshit, which I'm really glad for.

That sucks.   At least he has a lot of support, though.  Losing a family member is never easy.

What is moonlight anyway? (I do know of the HURD, lol)

It's the Mono Project's implementation of Silverlight.

While the rest of Mono is compatible with most of .NET 4.0, Moonlight is only compatible with Silverlight 2.0.  They were scheduled to have had an alpha for Moonlight 4.0 in November of last year, but that never happened.

WPF also uses XAML for defining windows, and I actually quite liked using it. It was nice to see a section of code that represented the window without any random bloated stuff around it. Everything was easy to change, and it makes designing things really quick if you know what you need to do with it.

WPF has quite a few nice build in features, actually.

Not surprisingly, Silverlight is a subset of WPF.  WPF is more intended for rich desktop apps (a competitor to Adobe AIR) while Silverlight is intended for web and now mobile apps.

[Bobbias]

Ahh, that makes sense. I didn't realize that WPF and Silverlight were so closely related.

I was just wondering to myself about whether managed applications will ever be built into windows or not, and why microsoft would chose to keep it separate. You'd think that having things integrated into windows would benefit things quite a bit (aside from the security concerns that would cause, since integrating anything heavily into an OS requires a heavy rethinking of the security)

[Spectere]

.NET has been essentially integrated into Windows since Vista.  I think Vista introduced .NET 3.0 and 7 introduced .NET 3.5, both of which feature WPF.  You can choose to uninstall the .NET Framework, since Windows is pushing toward modularity, but there's not much of a point in doing so.

[MortifiedocAlot]

Speaking of Silverlight, can anyone explain why I can't get GFWL to do anything without crashing? I've tried several times to install Age of Empires 3, but I get nothing but crashes and errors.

That and the Witcher seems crash happy.

[Spectere]

The Witcher has pretty much always been crash-happy.  I don't know about GFWL, but I know that a lot of people haven't had a whole lot of luck with it.

I haven't used GFWL for anything, personally (I already have a love-hate relationship with Steam, no sense jumping to another, less proven service), so I'm probably not the best person to ask.

Does it only do it for AoE3 or does it do it for everything?  If it's an issue that's specific to AoE3, try looking for some sort of repair function.  Steam buggered up a couple of downloads for me (hi, Mass Effect) and that did the trick.  If that fails, try to delete the downloaded file and redownload it.

[MortifiedocAlot]

both AoE3 and Viva Pinata crash while downloading.

[Spectere]

That could be an issue with GFWL itself, then.  I don't know about Viva Pi