We went to the opening sale of the new Bic Camera in Tenjin yesterday. I am not very impressed: Yes they have much more stuff than the "old" branch but nothing very interesting to a real geek. Most of the items related to IT are still at the old Bic. This new branch of Bic Camera is definitely targetted at the the general public.
The store was very noisy, a lot of sale clerks were screaming "deals" through megaphone. Not good. It was also very crowded, like if the whole city went there to take a look. I hate crowded stores where you can't move at the speed you want and go where you want wothout having to fend off the crowd...
However we found a good deal on a Konica camera. At less than 9,000 yens we couldn't skip on this one.
This morning we went again to get an heavily discounted camera (19,980 yens), but when we arrived we saw a line up stretching for 2 blocks... We quickly went back home quite disappointed...
10:23:04 AM comment [] - See Also: JapanMultimedia
It appears that the parent company of Wrox books has gone under, taking Wrox with it. The part that really bites is that all authors who are due royalties on existing book sales are out of luck.
Sad indeed. They were making good books but the quality slipped a bit in the last year. Did it kill them? It would be nice if O'Reilly could buy their catalog... just dreaming...
Friday night I went for my second shopping trip in Taipei. I went to a district located right next to the Taipei national university of Science and Technology, a bit north of the Chunghsiao Hsinsheng station. It is full of small boutique but nothing really stands out there. Most of the boutiques sell the same gear, the same standard stuff. I bought nothing. The only shop with something noticeable was a shop where they had Xeon for sale. They seem to be the only one in this neighborhood.
10:30:26 AM comment [] - See Also: SciencePersonal
Jon Udell's Archive.
Jon Udell sent an email late Monday night indicating that he has archived columns that were previously lost when Byte.com started charging fees for post-1998 content. Thanks Jon! Some of those past columns have been a big help to me. [On The Mark]
This is a priceless list of articles. Brilliant! Way to go Jon. Food for thought for everybody.
I went to the NOVA computers shopping mall (http://www.nova.com.tw/)
yesterday night. It is located right next of the Taipei main station.
I was a bit disappointed when I arrived there as it is not as big as some
colleagues told me (I guess they never been to Akihabara...). They mostly
have laptops and mobile phones-related stuff there.
One thing that impressed me there is they almost have no CRT monitors left
for sale there, only LCD.
Tomorrow night I'll go to another one, I hope it will be bigger and have
more choice of spare parts.
1:47:00 PM comment [] - See Also: Personal
Ziff-Davis has two more RSS 2.0 feeds. One for PC Mag reviews, and the other for tech news from eWeek. Hey it looks like someone got the religion. Excellent stuff. [Scripting News]
Developing Reliable Software with Scripting Languages. In conclusion, as Tom DeMarco pointed out in his book PeopleWare, it is not technology that prevents software success, but people. So higher level tools that aid people in their work are to be encouraged. Looking down at scripting languages because it lacks this or that is short sighted because it is the now and the future of computing.
This essay really needs debunking, and who is more suited for this task than LtU readers?
It's not that I have anything against scripting languages, indeed I think they have their uses. But, to pick one example from this essay, I think that weak-typing and polymorphic typing do not mean the same thing...
I especially like the title of the point 2 of the first answer: "Scripting languages have more options than bisexuals because they have polymorphic types". Pretty graphic description. Oh well...
