Stuff

Visug Geek Dinner

Peter Himschoot — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 03:26:00 GMT

Christmas is in the air :) and so it's time again to have a nice dinner with people who you can be geeky with.

So join us for a geek dinner in Antwerp. Of course you don't need to be a geek to join us.

For more info see http://www.visug.be/Home/tabid/36/Default.aspx

Hope to see you there!

Dear Apple, dear Microsoft

Peter Himschoot — Sun, 03 Dec 2006 21:00:00 GMT

Dear Big non-EU Company,

Just so you would know, Belgium is a country where people speak three (YES THREE) different languages, Dutch, French and German. Most of us even speak two of these fluently, and a lot of us understand English to some degree.

Is it so hard for you to learn that, if you present a legal form, you should present it not only in French, but also in Dutch and German. I am sick of registering to find only one language present. I'm not capable of understanding the legal language used in these 'terms' in my motherlanguage, so surely not in any other language. Or sending mailings only in French, not Dutch nor German. I really don't understand this consistent option of taking French, because the majority in Belgium speaks Dutch. Skype is really good at this, if you visit their home page www.skype.be, you get automatically redirected to their french page. Luckily in this case you can change afterward, but ask first, then redirect! Don't get me wrong, I respect all languages and cultures.

I think this is a lack of respect for your customers, and I think you should consider looking into this matter.

Respectfully,

Peter Himschoot

This post is being triggered by yet another "international" company that believes everyone in Belgium speaks French, and I know this company has representatives in Belgium, so they CAN and SHOULD know.

P.S.: This post is my personal opinion, and should in no way be seen as representing the company I work for. This means you should not refer to this post saying U2U anywhere, use my name...

Unconventional Wisdom

Peter Himschoot — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 00:20:00 GMT

This is a must read !

"As software developers, piracy is something that affects us all. If you are a software developer who works for a big company, you likely do not see it directly. But you still have an interest in who is using your company's software. If you are in a small company or are a developer who sells software, piracy hits a lot closer to home.

However, the conventional wisdom, which often equates to the "knee jerk" reaction, is not the proper one."

http://www.codeproject.com/gen/design/UnconventialWisdom.asp

Thinking about the future: google and Microsoft go green

Peter Himschoot — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 02:18:00 GMT

While google is planning on building huge solar panels for powering their servers, Microsoft is (already) doing the same.

One can only congratulate both (ok, if these solar panels were created using an environment friendly way)...

Asus dreams up modular PC of the future

Peter Himschoot — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 04:44:00 GMT

"Asus has shelved plans to develop the PC of the future - literally. The Taiwanese vendor's Green PC concept computer, shown to Reg Hardware this week, is just that: a shelf. And some clever wireless connectivity and non-contact inductive power source"

Link (Fixed the link, sorry about this :))

OMG: Google Code Search

Peter Himschoot — Sat, 07 Oct 2006 01:22:00 GMT

Developers, look no further, don't type in any code any more, simple use google codesearch!

... blood freezing in my veins ...

Belgian MSDN site redesigned

Peter Himschoot — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 21:06:00 GMT

The belgian MSDN site has been redesigned. Whoa! Looks great.

Keep up the good work, Tom and Wim (and anyone else involved)!

Rules for Successfull projects

Peter Himschoot — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 16:29:00 GMT

This gem has been around for a while, but I thought let's post it for those who don't know this:

http://www.ssw.com.au/ssw/Standards/Rules/RulestoSuccessfulProjects.aspx

Go FORTH!!!

Peter Himschoot — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 04:42:00 GMT

When I started programming in the eighties, you could choose between BASIC, Assembler or FORTH.

Forth is a stack based (like postscript), nifty little language with inner beauty. Forth is still being used (I believe) but for example was used quite a lot to program the movement of camera's for SF-movies. I fill in love with this language when the personal computer I had had only 16Kb (YES, KILO BYTE) and the other choice was some crappy BASIC dialect (or Z80 assembly which I also loved!). I'm talking about the ZX-81 computer here.

Now Valer Bocan, from Romania, wrote his own .NET version of FORTH. Man man man. Will I need some time to play with this! I discovered this through Channel 9. BTW.: this guy looks a lot (well, a little) like a good friend, MVP and ex-collegue of mine. Guess who.

BTW.: as one of my university projects I also built for FORTH runtime (FORTH is normally interpreted) on an IBM PC using Turbo Pascal :) This of course adds to the love for this project!

New Microsoft DOT COM site

Peter Himschoot — Sun, 06 Aug 2006 00:22:00 GMT

Microsoft has a new site up and running looking like Vista.

Link.