Charles Nadeau: Technology

VHS to DV

Wed, 07 May 2003 01:00:16 GMT

Posted a comment on Slashdot regarding converting VHS tapes to DV tapes

M$ Blog

Sat, 26 Apr 2003 02:16:08 GMT

Check out all the Microsoft weblogs. [Scripting News]

Interesting to read.

BA to retire Concorde

Thu, 10 Apr 2003 05:06:53 GMT

Concorde to retire by end 2003. BA is to confirm on Thursday that it is grounding its supersonic Concorde service for good, the BBC learns. [BBC News | Front Page | UK Edition]

Too bad, such a graceful plane...

Cisco's feed

Thu, 03 Apr 2003 01:00:21 GMT

Cisco Systems has 12 new RSS feeds. Latest News Releases, Content Networking, Partner, Routing, Security, Software, Standards, Storage Networking, Switching, Voice, Wireless, Features. [Scripting News]

Excellent!

Opening of the new Bic Camera in Tenjin

Sun, 30 Mar 2003 01:23:04 GMT

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...

Wrox is going down...

Tue, 18 Mar 2003 00:22:28 GMT

Wrox books goes under....

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.

Here are some links that tell the story.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/29790.html

http://www.hotfootmail.com/hotfeet/

Sigh...They were fairly nice people, and I was happy to have my tiny face on two.

[Scott Hanselman's Weblog]

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...

I.T. Shopping in Taipei (2)

Mon, 24 Feb 2003 01:30:26 GMT

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.

Jon Udell's archive

Sun, 23 Feb 2003 11:02:35 GMT

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.T. Shopping in Taipei (1)

Wed, 19 Feb 2003 04:47:00 GMT

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.

Which OS are you?

Sun, 09 Feb 2003 23:32:58 GMT

Which OS Are You?.

Which OS are You?

Clued in by David "Palm OS" Watson. [The .NET Guy]

COOL! I'm ahead of my time-)

Which OS are You? [Sam Gentile's Blog]

Well, I took the test and I am:

Which OS are You?

PCMag RSS feeds

Wed, 08 Jan 2003 01:33:45 GMT

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]

Note to self: To keep.

More than bisexual scripting languages

Thu, 19 Dec 2002 01:49:26 GMT

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...

[Lambda the Ultimate]

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...

Very useful Web Service

Sun, 15 Dec 2002 10:35:23 GMT

http://www.tinyurl.com - a simple (even REST-ful) solution to a big problem. It's helped me many times. Check it out. [Scott Hanselman's Weblog]

Great example of an useful Web Service. I'll add it to the sidebar of my blog!

Accessing my e-mail everywhere

Tue, 12 Nov 2002 01:09:07 GMT

Sony Ericsson Makes a tri-band GPRS modem. prostoalex writes "Sony Ericsson announced their new PCMCIA GPRS wireless modem, capable of delivering 57.6 Kbps. It is tri-band and works in 900/1800/1900 MHz ... [Slashdot]

This is just what I need, when I roam in Asia, to stay connected to my office. The only thing that I would then need is a contract with an ISP with access point in all the countries I serve (37 offices in 7 time zones).

Signal Booster

Sun, 10 Nov 2002 09:59:35 GMT

I just saw this: a signal booster for the Linksys WAP11. It is not available yet though. It is a good idea but they should have made the WAP11 better right from the start. Probably another way to milk their customers. Oh well...
For those with a hacker spirit, here is the "undocumented" way to do it.

Another sickening patent case

Thu, 24 Oct 2002 02:17:58 GMT

San Diego Company Owns E-Commerce. Kernel Panic writes "Looks like you can now be sued for using graphical and ... [Slashdot]
This one is also sickening: An american company managed to patent e-commerce. Can you believe it? The patent office granted them a patent! This system of granting patent for anything to everyone and their dog is wrong.
Patents should be peer-reviewed before being granted. They should also be subjected to a period of public scrutiny during which the public and specialists in the field could point out prior art and/or notify the authority of the consequences on the intellectual common of granting this patent.

Big Brother is British

Wed, 23 Oct 2002 01:50:29 GMT

UK ISPs Refuse to Monitor Users. An anonymous reader writes "The internet industry has refused to sign up to ... [Slashdot]
I can only be sympathetic to the ISPs. September 11th shouldn't be a reason for any government to spy on its citizens. That whole affair stink and is disgusting. Maybe the RIAA is behind, who knows?

Mitch's brand new PIM project.

Tue, 22 Oct 2002 02:58:24 GMT

You're Making a What?. The product, which is central to the whole undertaking, is a new take on the Personal Information Manager. It will... [Mitch Kapor's Weblog]
Here is my wish list: ;-)

Outstanding spam protection
RSS support. I have a cool idea with this:
Imagine I am subscribing to a mailing list that also interest my colleagues. I could set a rule that would move all the e-mails from the mailing list to a given folder and then let my colleagues subscribe to the content of this folder. It could reduce the amount of bandwidth involved in subscribing to mailing list with heavy traffic (like the Linux kernel list)
It would be nice to have folders subscribing to RSS feed
A rich scripting language: I want to be able to trigger actions when event happen. And not only with e-mail:
- When a task is completed, an e-mail may be sent and the task moved to an archive folder.
- When I put my "Out of Office" message on, subscription to my mailing list could be suspended.
I want support for regular expression. It goes with the rich scripting language.
I want a section where I can jot down notes while on the phone. I want to be able to attach to these notes a date/time, contact name, keywords. And I want them to be fully indexed and searchable.
I want to be able to subscribe/post to Usenet newsgroup. The scripting language should be able to deal with this.
I want to interact with a "map server": If I have an appointment, i want the appointment item to include a map showing me how to go there if I don't know already.
Finer grain archiving. In Outlook, you can only set your criteria based on time: Archive items older than 3 weeks.
I want to be able to say: Archive items older than 3 weeks and those bigger than 200K except those from my boss with an attachment or those from Joe and Bob including the word "Urgent" in the subject line.
I want to be able to assign metadata to any entries/items.
Of course everything will be stored in XML.

Microsoft programmers watch TV on the job...

Thu, 10 Oct 2002 09:31:49 GMT

This is a funny quote from the Windows XP Media Center team:

A great example of this capability—while our development team was creating Media Center Edition, the World Cup and British Open events happened on the other side of the world. Tons of people on our team set their PCs to record these TV broadcasts overnight, so that they could arrive at Microsoft and watch them on their PC in a window while doing their daily work. It was a terrific enhancement to our productivity!

[John Robb's Radio Weblog]

That's why their softwares are so buggy: They watch TV and code at the same time... ;-)

Jim Seymour died yesterday

Thu, 10 Oct 2002 03:04:55 GMT

Jim Seymour, a long-time contributor to PC Magazine, died yesterday. Best wishes to his family and colleagues. [Scripting News]

Sad news indeed. I always found his columns entertaining: Nifty sense of humour.

Dave has adventures with the SX6000 too

Wed, 09 Oct 2002 12:55:17 GMT

New comment on post 70. New comments on post 70 (1 comments, previously 0) found [Comments for usernum 0111823 on server http://radiocomments.userland.com/comments]
In this comment Dave wrote:

"I have been reading your Promise SX6000 saga and would like to comment that I have been having a lot of problems too. I did a google search (looking for sx6000, problem, promise) and came across your site. My system specs are an Asus motherboard, Celeron 1000, 256MB, 5 WD200. Standard stuff. I have been fighting to get the system working for a couple weeks, on and off, and now I think I will have to go back to a SCSI solution. I was advised to replace the motherboard, etc. Tech support is really bad there."

I think I can state some rules to work with the SX6000, based on my own experience:

Never use the SX6000 with an Phoenix BIOS.
It works perfectly with an Elite Group K7SEM: it has an Award Bios. In my disk box, it is the only PCI card: no chance of conflict.
If your chipset is the AMD-760, don't use a GeForce4 or a ATI Radeon video card: Their ROM is too big. A Matrox G550 is a good choice.
If you motherboard is a Tyan S2466N-4M, make sure you use at least the version 4.03 of their BIOS. But it won't be that stable anyway. I haven't tested version 4.03d yet.
If you must use a SCSI card with the SX6000, the Adaptec 3210S works (but it is a RAID one). I never manage to make the Adaptec 29160 works.
If you want to use an Iwill MPX2 motherboard, look here.
If you use Western Digital drives, don't put any jumper on them.

And regarding Promise's customer service, I must say it was a bit slow but knowledgeable. Their RMA department in Taiwan was top notch. They processed my return promptly and they followed up on the questions I sent with the card I returned.

Zoe to google your e-mail

Wed, 09 Oct 2002 03:34:58 GMT

Googling your email. ... [Jon's Radio]
Absolutely brilliant!!! I'll install it tonight, if I have time.

Physics Nobel Prize 2002

Wed, 09 Oct 2002 00:53:28 GMT

I was watching the japanese news yesterday night and I learned that a japanese professor of Tokyo university had won this year's Nobel prize in Physics.
I was absolutely disgusted by his attitude. Quote like "I am glad they finally give it to me", "I knew someday I'll get it", "I've been waiting for it for 50 years" are not typically japanese and show a very un-japanese lack of humility. Moreover, the news anchor never mentionned that he was sharing it with two other physicists. Shame on japanese TV!

Jon Udel InfoWorld's contribution in one place with RSS feed!

Tue, 08 Oct 2002 05:26:40 GMT

Jon's InfoWorld feed. I'm sometimes asked for pointers to my InfoWorld articles. To make them easier to find, I've added a new category, InfoWorld, to this weblog. It will be a chronology of the articles I write for the magazine. I've seeded it with most of the stuff I've written since joining InfoWorld. Conveniently, it has its own RSS feed. ... [Jon's Radio]

This is good! My favorite guru centralize his articles for InfoWorld and it has an RSS feed! Wow! Thanks Jon!

Object orientation in Fortran 2000

Sat, 05 Oct 2002 02:40:14 GMT

Fortran 2000 Committee Draft. Richard Maine writes "John Reid, convenor of the ISO Fortran standards ... [Slashdot]

Object-orientation in Fortran? Hello! I don't want that in Fortran. Let's keep Fortran for its first purpose: mathematical calculation. Remember that Fortran means: Formula Translation.