This year’s Dutch Java Nerd event called J-Fall was held in Nijkerk, in a beautiful location called “Hart van Holland” . With plenty of sessions by speakers from all over the world it promised to be a great day for Java enthusiasts, at a great location for meeting friends and colleagues. I took a day off from work and it was well worth it.
Category: Microsoft
Bill’s Mosquitoes
Bill Gates found a very good way to get the news reporters to pay attention to the malaria problem. In his talk at the TED conference, he released a few mosquitoes, stating that malaria should not be just for poor people to experience. People who did not see the whole performance may react shocked, because when placed out of context it sounds like an outrageous thing to do.
If you think that’s the case, you should maybe have a look at his talk, available (for free, without registering) at TED.com. You’ll see that the audience is actually laughing when he releases the mosquitoes, and at the end of the talk Bill gets a standing ovation.
In addition to the malaria problem, Bill also makes a very good case about how important good teachers are, and what we can do to help teachers become just that.
Remote Desktop Connection updated
“Remote Desktop Connection.app” allows you to see the desktop of a remote Windows machine on your mac. This application will not update itself automatically, unless you have it installed as part of the Microsoft Office for Mac suite. If you’ve downloaded the 1.0.3 version you probably did not notice that “Remote Desktop Connection.app” was updated somewhere last year by microsoft.
You can find the latest version of Remote Desktop Connection on the Microsoft Mactopia site. Version 2 is an improvement over 1.0.3 (which I had). Notable differences are:
- Nicer configuration screens, makes configuring your resolution and shares easier.
- Now a Universal Binary, which should improve performance on Intel Macs. I have not noticed improvement, but that’s probably because the network is the bottleneck.
- Supports the new RDC 6.0 protocol used by Vista.
- Can do authentication of the remote machine (if it’s a Vista machine).
- Your Mac printer can be exposed to the Windows machine so you can print documents on your local printer.
I played with it for a while, and apart form the new looks I can not say it’s very different from the 1.0.x version. It could load my old RDC 1.0.3 configuration files. If you need to connect to a Windows desktop from your Mac, this does the job just fine.
Wiimote Whiteboard
For people wanting to have an interactive whiteboard but don’t have the money, Johnny Chung Lee has found the solution. Using a Wiimote, he can track an infrared lightsource (like an LED) and use that to control the mousecursor. I tried some software on the Mac and the PC, and I actually got both to work without too much trouble.
Censorship: here to stay
For those of you who think that media and information are free and uncontroled, guess again. Lately I have been seeing more and more incidents of large corporations hiding information, and even telling other people to hide it for them. I think this is plain wrong, and the guys involved should have been fired or punished otherwise.
If you have information which is of interest to the public, and somebody is making you sign a paper with which he can force you to shut up, you should think twice (and then not do it). Not because of the money, not because of the information itself, but for the sheer principle. Information should not be controled in that way. By anyone. It is dangerous.
Laptop Stolen? See who did it…
In this strange world, people can’t seem to leave your stuff alone. All the electronic gadgets of today are too attractive to the lowlife of this world. So what do you do if somebody swipes your laptop? You take a few pictures of him, and trace his IP address!
Migrate from Windows to OSX
My wife got tired of her Windows/Compaq laptop. So 2 weeks ago, she decides to go out and buy a 15″ macbook pro (an excelent choice I might add). She was a bit worried about getting used to the new machine, but decided to take the risk. After no more than 3 days, with surprisingly little help, she figured out how to do everything she did on the Windows machine, and even installed her own software.
The last thing to do was to migrate all the stuff from her old Windows machine to her new “lappie” (yes, she actually gave this one a nickname 🙂 ). Although Microsoft tries hard to keep Outlook Express users locked in, I did find a tool that solved the problem completely for me.
Clone Windows HD on Apple OSX machine
Last week, lightning struck at my parents apartment building (literaly). Other damages aside, my dad’s PC also died.
The guy at the PC repair shop warned my dad that “we may need to wipe the HD, do you have a backup”? Ofcourse, all data was backed up daily and “off-site” at my house so all important data was safe. But just in case, we wanted to make an exact disk image of the drive, so that we could easily restore it when the PC returns from the store
Difference between Windows and OSX
Another great example showing the differences between OSX and Windows. Bot applications synchronize your phone over bluetooth. Both applications are simple to use, but one is simpler. And contrary to expectations, this time the Windows version (left) will cost you money, and the OSX version (right) is free.
Although you’d expect the Windows version to do more with all these bells and wistles on the screen, but it’s actually iSync that also synchronizes the calendar to my phone, and back. Automatically. No configuration needed, it does what is considered logical to the sensible mind.
Apple and OSX are just like a Volkswagen New Beetle. Either you like it, or you don’t. But either way, it’s good that it’s here.
For the record: I don’t like the Volkswagen New Beetle, and I do like OSX. My Mac Mini is absolutely by far the best computer I have bought in the past 5 years, maybe even the best computer I’ve bought ever. No kidding.
DOCTYPE is a myth…
… and other wisdom from Joel. Finally, after weeks of slightly boring posts about travel, speeches and FogBugz, Joel has an article on his blog he was so famous for: Martian Headsets.
The article discusses the problems with the HTML spec, and numerous other problems developers are facing these days. That, and the Martians’ strange fascination for all kinds and shades of red.
At times, the article remembered me of some thoughts I have during my dayjob:
- Minimize. (also known as the KISS principle)
- Have a contract early in the process. Make it testable. Find a way to handle problems in the contract.
- Be strict and transparent. Fail early and explain.
- Using a standard and conforming to it are two different things.
- Communicate.
Although all are true to some degree, they aren’t going to solve all problems, because everybody has their own set of thoughts and rules. For every problem there is a nice, clean, simple, cheap, wrong answer.
Now go read the article, it’s much better than my writing…