Month: October 2005

Well, maybe not. But this article by Charles Petzold is a clearly-articulated discussion of some of the dangerous trends that most programmers aren’t even cognizant of. His discussion is centered around Microsoft, Visual Studio, and dotNET, being that that is his area of expertise. And while there are certain similar problems that also affect other environments, I think that because of Microsoft’s goals and the goals of their tools, I think that much of this discussion is truly mostly-relevant to those deeply entrenched in Microsoft’s OS and tool stack. So I don’t think IntelliSense is helping us become better programmers. The real objective is for us to become faster programmers, which also means that it’s cheapening our labor. I agree. Read more…

As I was going through the junk around our home, getting ready for the big move, I found some REALLY old 3.5″ floppy disks from 1996 and 1997. See, kids, back in the not-so-good old days, we elderly people used to take “pictures” with 35-millimeter cameras which had “film” in them. Then, we’d take that “film” out very carefully and take it to get “developed.” Optionally, in the year 1996, we used to be able to pay some extra amount of money and have a “floppy disk” returned with the “developed” pictures with a slide-show of these pictures. I should have taken a picture of the disk itself. It was made to run in Windows 3.1, and was done by Read more…

It’s funny, but I completely missed this when watching the movie, Elektra before. My good friend Mike pointed it out to me and I had to comment on it. Apparently, Rite Aid managed to get some subliminal advertising into the Elektra movie! Hey, cool!! =:) (psst! elektra-riteaid-1 was uploadd by: vanRijn).

Who needs to spend $20 to replace one’s messed-up cd/mp3-player -> tape adapter! Why, for just $3.99, you can get a new jack end in either solderless or solder varieties. Simple math tells you $3.99 is better than $20, now, doesn’t it? BUT, what they don’t tell you is that you will spend 2 hours every other month, at least, re-soldering the wee beastie whenever your children decide that you don’t have enough to do in your life and manage to make it unfunctional. But this time, I’ve outsmarted them!! Muahahahah. Oh yes, I have. This time, I’ve taken the wee beastie apart, re-soldered it (again), and now I’ve used some of my flourescent zip-ties to reinforce the cord to Read more…

I know, it’s old news, but this eWeek article was a refreshing read that I ran across today. And let say it one more time: OpenDocument is an “open” format. Anyone, including Microsoft, can write to it. Of course, Microsoft doesn’t want to. The Redmond, Wash., giant makes its billions from locking users into its way of doing things. OpenDocument frees users. If everyone started using OpenOffice for their office documents they could decide, for instance, that StarOffice 8 for, say, $50 is a better deal than Microsoft Office at $500. I know, I know–it all sounds heretical and conspiracy-theory-ist to suggest that Microsoft might not be the best thing in the world, but come on and smell the 21st Read more…