[Smalltalk]

UserFriendly on Google Talk

UserFriendly the Comic Strip makes fun of Google Talk. Hilarious.

Open Source Time Tracking Tools

Matt Raible is looking for an open-source time tracking tool. Me too. I would prefer something PHP-based. Any suggestions?

Dell Dimension 5100 Audio Driver

Yesterday I got a new Dell Dimension 5100 desktop for my company. After installing a plain vanilla English XP SP2 instead of the pre-installed Dell-flavored German XP (I really hate that stuff), I noticed that Dell does not provide an audio driver for download. Upon further investigation, I found out that the 5100 uses a Sigmatel STAC 92XX chip for audio. No luck on the Sigmatel Web site though. They don't provide drivers for end users. Some more investigations and I found out that Dell once offered a driver for the Dimension 9100, which seems to use the same audio chip. Fortunately, the driver can still be found on Dell's FTP site: ftp://ftp.dell.com/audio/R97752_OLD.EXE

I don't know the reason why Dell removed it from their downloads page, but I installed the driver and it seems to work.

Google's Master Plan

Apparently someone broke into Googleplex and stole their top-secret master plan. Scaaary stuff. Things like orbital mind control, Skynet and cattle mutilations. Someone gotta stop them or we're all doomed...

Useless Dell Order Status Page

I recently ordered a PC plus two flat-panel displays from Dell. The order was submitted on July 27. A few days later I received the written order confirmation from Dell, citing the fourth of August as the planned shipping date. Of course, in the meantime I had checked the online order status page, and it already showed a planned shipping date of August 9. By the way, the German version of the order status page is titled "Statut Des Commandes" - so much for their QA. Well, as August 9 came nearer, the planned shipping date kept slipping backwards. First to August 12, then to August 19, then (yesterday) to August 22. During the whole time, the order status was frozen at production preparation. Dooh. Today I checked the order status again, an, out of the blue, it has changed to shipped, as of August 15, 18:20. So much for the usefulness of Dell's order status page.

Industrial-Strength Chefs

Google is looking for industrial-strength chefs. Bon appétit.

(Photo by Wikipedia)

419 Scammers go Snail Mail

Today Maria found a surprise in our mailbox: a personally addressed (to me), printed 419 Scam letter from a sucker named Dr. Mike Malangu of the Reserve Bank of South Africa. The bank, needless to say, does not exist (but there is a South African Reserve Bank, which is the central bank of South Africa). The letter has the typical 419 scam content and is written in poor German, full of typos and grammatical errors. The letter was mailed in Amsterdam and contains phone and fax numbers, but no addresses (of course).
Since I don't have the time for scambaiting at the moment, I decided to send the letter to the local authorities. Maybe it helps in getting these a$$h0135 behind jail bars.
Anyway, for your enjoyment, here is the letter. Click for a larger version.

C++ Portable Components 0.93.1

The latest and greatest release of the C++ Portable Components is available for download. This release brings major enchancements to all libraries. Highlights are the LocalDateTime class, the ServerApplication class with support for Windows services and Unix daemons, improvements to the FileChannel class, bugfixes and numerous other enchancements.

The changes in detail:
- bugfix: UUIDGenerator throws an exception if no connected ethernet adapter can
be found (and thus no MAC address can be obtained)
- added UUIDGenerator::createOne() method
- added error handling to UUID sample application
- added relational (==, !=, <, <=, >, >=) and arithmetic operators (+, -, +=, -=) to DateTime
- added LocalDateTime class
- added support for LocalDateTime to DateTimeParser and DateTimeFormatter
- added enqueueUrgentNotification() to NotificationQueue
- added support for timezone specifiers (%z, %Z) to PatternFormatter
- added [] operator and count() to StringTokenizer
- added elapsed() and isElapsed() to Timestamp
- added tzd() to Timezone
- added WinRegistryKey and WinService classes (Windows only)
- added index operator and count() to StringTokenizer
- added day/time-based log rotation (thanks to Alex Fabijanic), minor improvements to DateTimeParser
- support for Mac OS X 10.4/gcc 4.0.0
- added NamedMutex and NamedEvent
- added Process::kill()
- added NoPermissionException
- added Task and TaskManager classes
- added ServerApplication class
- bugfix: EventLogChannel - _logFile was not properly initialized in one constructor
- bugfix: File::createDirectories did not work for hierarchies deeper than three
- added Util::FilesystemConfiguration
- documented logging policy: log() must open channel if it hasn't been opened yet
- FileChannel::log() opens channel if necessary
- the application reference passed to initialize() and reinitialize() is no longer const
- improved application logging initialization
- fixed a problem with configuration view and property placeholders
- fixed Util build configuration for Visual Studio
- improved application samples
- fixed documentation for Semaphore class