Wow, what a great day: First, IronPython 1.0 is released and now comes word that Turbo Delphi, C#, and C++ are free for download.

Alright! Jim Hugunin et al. have shipped IronPython 1.0. You can get it at CodePlex.

Apparently, there's a "known problem" with Vista installing into VMWare Workstation. Kind of reminds me of the days when DOS didn't ship 'til 1-2-3 broke. Grrr....

Apparently you can use VMWare Server to instal Vista and then move the VM to Workstation.

The new version of Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools is winging its way toward me, along with Test Drive Unlimited, a racing game set on the island of Oahu. I wonder which one will have a worse effect on me.

Perhaps you've noticed the "Universal Service Fee" on your telephone bill. This is a government-mandated subsidy to support phone access in rural areas. Fair enough, perhaps. Here in Hawaii, SandwichIsles Communications Company receives more than \$16M dollar per year to service... are you ready? ... 1,238 customers. That's \$13,345 …

In a forthcoming column in SD Times, I predicted that one of the first things written using XNA GSE would be a Bittorrent client for the XBox360. Wrong. The current version of XNA does not allow network access.

Hmm...

Holy smoke, the new version was supposed to have hit the storeshelves 2 days ago. Man, I bet they regret not having had the opportunity to put "the lowest-swinging signifier of programming studliness" on the cover.

Joel Spolsky, one of the ablest commentors on the industry, recently made the mistake of combining advice and self-promotion without realizing that what he was writing combined "do what I say, not what I do," with a flame-baiting slap at non-mainstream languages. He's been hammered in the blogosphere, but the …

Ah. Although you cannot develop with XNA GSE inside a VM (either VMWare or Virtual PC), you can install Visual C# Express side-by-side with Visual Studio 2005. There's a slight weirdness in that VC# Express can only install to \$PROGRAM FILES, while I normally keep my dev tools on a …

Oh, bummer! Given that XNA GSE is a beta and given that it requires C# Express, not Visual Studio, I installed it in a VMWare OS, but when I went to run the sample SpaceWar game, I received a "No suitable graphics" message. I think that leaves me out of …