Tom,

>>I was inspired by Spiro Agnew.. Nattering Nabobs of Negativism... <g>
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>Doug;
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>For those not familiar with the details, Spiro Agnew was at one time governor of the state of Maryland, and later served as Vice President of the United States, under Richard Nixon.
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>Mr. Agnew while governor had admittedly taken a $50,000 bribe from contractors who were doing work for the state of Maryland.

Yep.. He was a crook.

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>At 5 AM one morning my clock radio came on radio station KSFO in San Francisco with the voice of Spiro Agnew, announcing his resignation as Vice President of the United States. Then Mr. Agnew stated: “I am innocent of any wrong doing”! At that statement I laughed so hard I fell out of bed onto the floor!

Right. As hard as you laughed when Mr. Clinton said, "I never had sex with that woman. Miss Lewinski."?

<g>


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>My friends and I took his statement to mean that governors of Maryland were accustomed to taking bribes and this was not considered an illegal activity. Ah – to be a public servant! Perhaps because I was in engineering college I found this episode to be amusing. That is common with college aged students. Then again, I still find this to be just as amusing today as when it first occurred!
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>Getting older does not mean you have to change your principles. Either you have principles or you do not. Some people have principles different than others, while some are said to have “no principles”.

Righto. That seems to me to be a big part of this discussion. The way I see things is that we, as developers, are all a hugely talented bunch. Everyone of us IMO. That talent or ability is earned by a lot of hard work and effort. I have no doubt that those with whom I have occassionaly crossed swords with are hugely talented and good at what they do. None whatsoever. More than likely much more talented than I am.

However, as I've mentioned before, I am strongly of the opinion that this talent 'trumps' circumstances and this is what I think gets often overlooked. Jim Nelson, Mike Asherman, me, you, John Ryan, everyone here carries within themselves the ability to respond to these circumstances! That's why I am so positive. I'm not always happy about the way that Microsoft treats it's ugly stepchild Visual FoxPro. But, I try very hard not to forget that the ability to develop is not contained within Visual FoxPro - it's contrined in me. And you, and eveyone else here.

We are all good enough to move on to something else if need be and the one absolute here IMO is that the need for desktop data solutions will never ever go away. Ever. Never. As such I am of the opinion that worrying about whether or not there will be a development platform to meet that need is also a huge waste of time and energy. Delphi & Interbase comes to mind. Delphi & SQL as well. I could go on for hours here there are really so many choices. There is no lack.

Besides, VFP is no doubt good for at least 5 more years in its current release at v6. I mean, give me a break with all the hand wringing...

I get frustrated because I think that people are selling themselves short and blaming Microsoft for it.

If you don't have to courage to learn something new and your success is dependent on someone else you will forever be the victim; frustrated and mad at the world. Get a grip is my response. Grow up already... <g>