La Tortue Cynique / The Cynical Turtle

YAdNNA: FeedExpress

Yet Another dotNet News Aggregator : FeedExpress... not cross-platform, and closed source for the moment. Does anyone knows if there is already a good CLI => C# decompiler ?(Cyberpunk, 2003/01/24 13:40) lien permanent

Found on slashdot...

By smilingirl:

Lord of the Desktops
Recently one of my friends, a computer wizard, paid me a visit. As we were talking I mentioned that I had recently installed Windows XP on my PC. I told him how happy I was with this operating system and showed him the Windows XP CD.
To my surprise he threw it into my microwave oven and turned it on. Instantly I got very upset, because the CD had become precious to me, but he said, "Do not worry, it is unharmed."

After a few minutes he took the CD out, gave it to me and said, "Take a close look at it."

To my surprise the CD was quite cold to hold and it seemed to be heavier than before. At first I could not see anything, but on the inner edge of the central hole I saw an inscription, an inscription finer than anything I had ever seen before. The inscription shone piercingly bright, and yet remote, as if out of a great depth:

12413AEB2ED4FA5E6F7D78E78BEDE8209450920F923A40EEl0E5F0CC98D444AA08E324

"I cannot understand the fiery letters," I said in a timid voice.

"No, but I can," he said. "The letters are Hex, of an ancient mode, but the language is that of Microsoft, which I shall not utter here. But in common English, this is what it says:

"One OS to rule them all, One OS to find them,
One OS to bring them all and in the darkness bind them."
It is only two lines from a verse long known in System lore:
"Three OS's from corporate kings in their towers of glass,
Seven from valley lords where orchards used to grow,
Nine from dotcoms doomed to die,
One from the Dark Lord Gates on his dark throne
In the Land of Redmond where the Shadows lie.
One OS to rule them all,
One OS to find them,
One OS to bring them all
And in the darkness bind them,
In the Land of Redmond where the Shadows lie."

(Cyberpunk, 2003/01/19 05:32) lien permanent

Two good news aggregator with .Net ...

... and I don't know any good one in Java. I should read less and start to do something with my free time. For the record:

• Syndirella by Dmitry Jemerov. Not cross-platform.
• Aggie by Joe Gregorio. Not cross-platform.

(Cyberpunk, 2003/01/17 20:28) lien permanent

A "look and feel" is not a replacement for a native UI

In Netbeans does SWT!, Danno Ferrin says:

Ray mentioned that he didn't like the "swingy" look of NetBeans, and this does a good job of getting rid of it.

Please, look two seconds the screenshot... look the screenshot on that page. It's striking yes. JGoodies tried to mimic SWT in its Fakeclipse. Sadly, the fake interface is slower on resizing than Eclipse with a project loaded. Comparing with Eclipse, what makes Fakeclipse strange (Standard UI)?

• Scrollbars colors are different
• Popup menus are not exactly at the same location
• The movable toolbar is weird
• Disabled menu items are incorrectly rendered

Those four things make the application feel very different. The Elegant UI helps a lot with the scrollbars and the popup menu placement, but it loses the correct border when a menu item is pushed.

You will obviously notice something, and you'll know it's not the native look and feel. Same for Mozilla, same for Swing, whatever the plaf you plug into it.(Cyberpunk, 2003/01/16 19:45) lien permanent

GBA reborn...

Just a quick note, my girlfriend gratefully took the soldering iron and installed an Afterburner in my GBA. Now I'm less reluctant to play with it again (Cyberpunk, 2003/01/16 17:22) lien permanent

Nintendo has betrayed us

©nintendo

They've announced the released of a new GBA with light. What can we do, us first purchasers? Either go AfterBurner'ing, or buy the new unit, with a completely new design, just in order to show us that we've bet on the wrong horse?

Poor nintendo.(Cyberpunk, 2003/01/07 19:54) lien permanent

Poor Vivendi Universal... we can live without them

One thing fun... today I tried to find some information on a CD published by one of the hundreds labels of Universal Music. I thought at first that it would be easy, since the vision of JM Messier is "convergence of media", their sites must be top-notch. So let's try: since I'm looking for a French CD, http://www.universal.fr, oups, nobody in the box. Second attempt, http://www.universal.com, a bit better, but no AS/400 for me right now, thanks. So http://www.vivendi-universal.com? No luck, dumb server.

Enough blind attempts, Google gives me http://www.vivendiuniversal.com: well done! And in French! I quickly track the moving Universal Music logo in the banner and select it... hmm... back to English... select global... a new window is opened with no title, still English? This stupid site doesn't see my browser preferred language? Well, click on the French flag... voilà! Then the labels list... no luck, the label I search is not present. By artist? No, I'm looking for a soundtrack, and the artist is not Universalized yet. So, I click on "Consultez le plus grand catalogue du monde" ("Browse the richest catalogue in the world"), a new page and... nothing. This simple welcome page is loaded with JavaScript and fails miserably with Mozilla.

I'm forced to dig the Start Menu to find a shortcut to MS Internet Explorer, the catalog now works... and gives no result. A tiny link advises me to contact my Local Universal office... ok ok ok, I follow, another new window, and... no French Local Universal Office? Time out.

What should I conclude? I've mismatched Messier's "convergence of media" with the "convergence of cash flow". After that, don't count your chickens before they are hatched, and finally, it's always the baker's children who have no bread.(Cyberpunk, 2003/01/07 19:41) lien permanent

Chora, a CVS viewer

Found today that PEAR used Chora, an Horde project. I might try this one one day, and see if it usable with TortoiseCVS. Those projects on Horde are impressive...(Cyberpunk, 2003/01/06 19:40) lien permanent

Six is mad

Check nanoweb, an HTTP server written in PHP. Check also sites using the t0x-engine, so bad the source code has not been released.(Cyberpunk, 2003/01/06 19:36) lien permanent

Big Blue or the the big unavailability

I've finally found why Bouygues Telecom online services are so often unavailable. They were made by IBM! The same that have a temporary unavailability with their HelpCenter server for at least two months...(Cyberpunk, 2003/01/05 11:41) lien permanent

Sans titre

I should post somewhere one of this day my customised version for i18n of the GPLed template engine XTemplate... and write the documentation... and do some benchmarks...(Cyberpunk, 2003/01/04 20:50) lien permanent

Waiting eagerly for 1.4.1_02, mantis

The correction of the infamous computer freezing is announced for 1.4.1_02. I can't believe the fix has not yet been released, considering that the bug report is 6 months old. And those guys want the JRE to be bundled with Windows? No way, it's my 4th reboot today, I don't want this pain to be endured by all the Aunt Clara on the Earth just because they don't care about the users.(Cyberpunk, 2003/01/04 15:59) lien permanent