Jeroen is my hero

Jeroen Frijters wrote a C# program that displays an artificial horizon on his new Thinkpad T41p by reverse-engineering the [IOCTL]{.caps} that corresponds to the data provided by the built-in accelerometer in his T41p.  via [iunknown.com]

I think he should "take it to the next level" and write a …

more ...

InfoPath And XAML The Scales Fell Off My Eyes This Morning When I Was Answering An Email To My Recent SD Times Articl

InfoPath and XAML

The scales fell off my eyes this morning when I was answering an email to my recent SD Times article discussing InfoPath. I wrote that column before the PDC and hadn't really thought about it since (it's mostly a criticism of InfoPath's licensing model). But now I …

more ...

Why does Mr. Tetris work for MS?

[W]hat does the inventor of Tetris do for MS?

I don't want to make any stupid assumptions, but my guess is that he designs the cubicle layouts while listening to catchy music... via [Neopoleon.com]

\<

p xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> Rory's witty.

more ...

Python on .NET can go fast

::: {dir="ltr" style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"} Jim Hugunin, of AspectJ and JPython/Jython, has made a preliminary version of Python that runs quickly on .NET. This is a very big deal big in that to date the only third-party dynamic languages for .NET have been conspicuously low-performance. At the "Alternate Languages …

more ...

Strong AI, and back to the moon...

Rory wrote a post about strong AI and whether we should spend money there rather than going back to the moon to which Eric replied "...the best goal to push for is solar power satellites...."

I think that solar power satellites is a world-transforming goal that requires government funding, while …

more ...

Discover of useful APIs

In a post that's mostly about resource management, Eric Gunnerson mentions an API that I didn't know existed:

desktopWindow.Image = Win32Window.DesktopAsBitmap;

This is quite apropos the discussion of novice versus expert users. Here I've been a user of the .NET BCL for more than 2 years and when I …

more ...

The average user is like a blue-square skier

Like skiers, the average user is a permanent intermediate, neither beginner nor expert. It is a mistake for UI designers to heed debates such as going on in Scoble's comments on UI requests for Longhorn. Even more dangerously, intermediate skills are easy to overlook in usability labs: sit a person …

more ...

Intel Research Has Released An Open Source Machine Learning Toolkit Base

Intel Research has released an Open Source Machine Learning toolkit based on Bayesian learning. (Hmmm... at the moment, they don't seem to have deployed any... oh, what is the word? ... files.)

more ...

I Promised Myself Id Let My Cold Burn Itself Out By Taking A Day Off And Making A 2003 Highlights Home Video For The Family

I promised myself I'd let my cold burn itself out by taking a day off and making a "2003 highlights" home video for the family. Instead, I ended up writing an application that allows you to create Premiere batch capture lists on your Tablet PC. I can't believe there's another …

more ...

Keith Pleas Has Wondered About What Language Features C

Keith Pleas has wondered about what language features could be put in Visual Basic .NET that would differentiate it from C# (as opposed to tool features such as Edit-and-Continue). My suggestion would be rules. If C# can become Scheme, why can't VB.NET become Prolog?

more ...