The Wannabe Java Rockstar

What were they thinking?

Last week I had the joy of setting up email using Exim on a new Debian box. Why on Earth can't they do it as everybody does? More

DOCX vs. DOC or: Proprietary XML Formats vs. Proprietary Binary Formats

In the comments to my last post, Charles asked why a proprietary XML format was better than a proprietary binary format. Well, my point wasn't that it is. But: I believe, the XML based Office 12 formats are better than the old DOC/XLS/PPT formats. Even if they are still proprietary. Here is why.

 

More

About the Uselessness of OpenDocument

OpenDocument is a waste of time and money. At least if you believe Dave Winer. Unfortunately, Dave got the facts wrong. More

What's up with hard drives these days?

A little bit more than a year ago, my hard drive died. It was a rather unpleasant affair, I lost a lot of important data. I bought a new drive, set up the computer again, and went on with life. Five days ago, this drive died as well. More

Open Source At Adobe.com

Today, Adobe unveiled two open source libraries for handling complex GUI issues. This is great news. But I still hate them for AdobeReader. More

Don't Buy A Creative Zen Touch MP3 Player ...

... or any other big MP3 player for that matter. It keeps you from doing anything useful. For two weeks I've been spending my spare time ripping CDs. I didn't read news, didn't watch TV, didn't blog. I didn't ego surf or checked referers. It's that bad.

All joking aside, the Creative Zen Touch is a great unit. More

The ONElist File -- The Story Of Yahoo Groups

Mark Fletcher of Bloglines fame also was the founder of ONElist. The ONElist file chronicles the story of ONElist from inception to the point where Yahoo bought them. It makes for an interesting read, even if it's still work in progress. More

The French Cafe Technique -- Or How Samba Was Written

Via a post on Groklaw, I found an fascinating article about how Samba was written. The Samba guys don't call it reverse engineering. They like to compare it to a French Cafe. More

Fighting Referer Spam

I found a nice resource about how to fight referer spam using a .htaccess file. More

Politics-Oriented Software Development

On Kuro5hin: A brief guide to software development in the real world: How to cover your ass in a sleazy office environment. More

Dealing With Information Overload In Emails

Dion asks for better handling of duplicate emails. I sympathize with him. But from a UI standpoint I have to object. More

Gmail Invites

I have a couple of Gmail invites. Email me if you want one. More

Free Throwaway Email Addresses

Do you need a couple of email addresses to throw away? More

Review: 3rd Party Spell Checkers for Windows Applications

I had the need for a third-party spell checker that works with every Windows application. After a bit of research, I found a couple of products. Two of them, Spell Check Anywhere and Spell Catcher Plus, I put to test. More

No, Not Again

A while ago, I posted a hate blog about Adobe Reader 6. Today -- I suspect in order to snafu my Christmas holiday -- Adobe released Adobe Reader 7. More

Rockstars vs. Unit Tests

In the Joel on Software forum, there has been a huge discussion going on about unit tests and Rockstars. As The Wannabe Java Rockstar, I have my opinions, too. More

Fartleking?

Fartleking anyone? More

Firefox Newspaper Ad Runs in Germany

To me, it was money well spent: Yesterday, an advertisement for Mozilla Firefox ran in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ). Inspired by the effort to purchase an Firefox advertisement in the New York Times, 2403 German Firefox fans donated the money. More

Next Meme: Obscure Yet Indispensible Windows Applications

This deserves to become a meme: Cedric posted a list of obscure but useful Windows applications. Here's a collection of lesser known applications that I depend on. More

And You thought You Worked Hard - Continued

New stuff about working conditions at Electronic Arts. More

And You thought You Worked Hard

Slashdot carries a story about somebody working for Electronic Arts, the game studio. Working in crunch mode is the norm. More

AOL Kills Winamp

There are rumors that AOL killed Nullsoft, the software company that produces Winamp. More

What Makes Link Blogs So Successful

Do you wonder why link blogs, such as Erik's or Scott's, are so successful? Conventional wisdom says, you'll get readers if you have good content. Scoble has a different theory: link blogs are successful because they want people to go somewhere else. More

Filehand -- An Alternative to Google Desktop Search?

Considering the ballyhoo following Google's release of it's desktop search, I'd like to point to an alternative: Filehand. The new version 2.0 is free for non-commercial use. More

Would You Do It?

Weiqi raises an funny question: Would you Google yourself in front of others? More

WTF: Burleson Consulting Dress Code

This is fucking hilarious: Burleson Consulting Dress Code. More

Bad UI design kills

Via Joel's forum: Apparently, a company did not label the entry fields in it's drug pump product resulting in death's and injuries. More

Desktop-based Bug Tracking Software

If you need a simple bug database check out Pacsoftware's Bug Tracker. More

Ping Weblogs.com and Co with Python

I hacked a small Python scripted that pings Weblogs.com and Co. More

Links

A couple of interesting links. More

Das ist nicht die c't, die ich kenne

Im Editor hilft eine aus Textverarbeitungen bekannte Rechtschreib- und Grammatikprüfung, syntaktisch und semantisch einwandfreien Code zu produzieren - noch bevor es ans Debuggen geht. Was ist nur mit der c't los? More

Howto Deploy Firewall Settings in Windows XP SP2

Windows XP Service Pack 2 will include a new firewall. SP2 provides several interesting methods for configuring it. More