Vasper's Blog

Fooling who?

2011-09-27T17:29:00.000+03:00

Greek Government officials keep saying to the people that the new austerity measures are here to save them, and that they are harsh because they had to tell something to the IMF and where possible will be corrected!!!

Who is fooling who? Those measures are taken to delay bankruptcy and to give time to foreign banks to prepare. Not for Greece's benefit.

What this "socialist" government has done is weaken the private sector to a point where it cannot take the burden of those measures and of course cannot absorb the public sector unemployed.

Cost of the public sector is being reduced, but only after the private sector's production was reduced thus making this not a correction to what was happening until 2009 as the government says, but what it did in the last 2 years. We are back where we started, only now we owe more money (+20%) and have a smaller GNP by 10%.

I am sure that the upcoming haircut of 50% (I estimate within the next 12 months) will be viewed by this government as a success, but if GNP is 20% smaller by then and we still have a deficit how is this better? We will be in the same position within a decade...

PASOK is a military junta

2011-06-28T17:52:00.003+03:00

PASOK is trying to disperse protesters by bringing in their military wing, which are the so called "anarchists". The violence seen on your TVs is provoked and created by the "government".

PASOK is not a legitimate government any more. It has lost the support of the people. There is only one solution: Elections. Or this will end with blood.

Do what we tell you to do...

2011-06-25T17:46:00.000+03:00

The chancellor of Germany, Hitler... sorry, Merkel, told Samaras, leader of the largest Greek opposition party what to do.

Well. There can only be one response to that:

Taxes, taxes and... guess what? Right. Taxes...

2011-06-22T17:15:00.003+03:00

When you overtax, instead of gaining, you loose revenue. What is overtaxing? Well, in the world of finance there is something called the "Laffer Curve". This is a principle that is accepted by almost every analyst:

When you increase taxes, you also increase revenue. However there is a point where revenue seems to slow down and then a point is reached where in fact revenue starts declining.

This point has been reached and exceeded by the Greek "Government" and it shows in the declining revenues. So, what do they do to fix it? They increase taxes some more!!!

Now, my bet is that revenues will continue declining. It is as simple as that.

So, why are they taking theses austerity measures if they are not working? Because their purpose is not to increase revenue, but to make people more susceptible to their will. It is a kind of economic terrorism. And what do they have to gain from it? Well, much. When the economy defaults, and it will with these measures, politicians and hedge fund owners are going to make a lot of money. It is the only logical conclusion I can reach.

PASOK's democracy...

2011-06-21T16:38:00.001+03:00

The ruling party PASOK has ordered it's MPs to vote for the austerity program today.

Goverment spokesman, mr.Mosialos said, word by word: "The mid term austerity program will be voted by all 155 PASOK MPs". He forgot to end his phrase by saying "by order of King Little George, son of Margaret, wife of Greek emperor Andreas Papandreou".

Irresponsible opposition?

2011-06-21T16:24:00.003+03:00

Some German politicians and journalists are calling Samaras, leader of the Greek opposition party New Democracy, irresponsible and egotistical. What is the truth?

The truth is that Samaras will not condone the austerity program designed by the Greek government because he and his party believe it is wrong. It will not better the situation but make it worse. At the same time, the opposition party votes yes on measures it agrees with. Since October of 2009, the new Government has brought 100 bills to be passed in the parliament and of those 49 where voted by the opposition.

Is this the behaviour of an irresponsible politician and party?

On the other hand, when New Democracy was the ruling party, mister Papandreou and PASOK voted for almost NONE. Also Papandreou came to power by lying to the people and doing the opposite things he promised to do before coming to power.

So who is responsible and who is not?

As for those German politicians and journalists, they can go back to the caves they crawled out of. As we say in Greece, "when we had cholesterol you where still eating bananas out of trees".

Refutal

2011-06-20T12:29:00.001+03:00

The new minister of finance said during the Ecofin that the Greek Government and the Greek people support the new austerity program.

I refute it. The Greek people have never agreed to such a program so they are not supporting it. The minister is a liar.

The truth about the situation in Greece.

2011-06-16T13:21:00.000+03:00

There are no riots here. The hundred of thousands of protesters (up to 1 million), besides a few thrown eggs on parliament cars, are peaceful. There is however a small army (about two hundred) of "anarchists" controlled by the government that hide inside PASOK (ruling party) controlled trade unionist marches. Those "anarchists" are paid to cause incidents so they can interrupt peaceful protests and blemish them.

So what do protesters want? A new government? Not necessarily. They want a new policy. This one has been proven false and has to change. In response, the Prime-minister has decided he just needs new faces on his cabinet!

If this situation goes on any longer Greece is going to default for sure. The only way to avoid it is to restart the economy, and have our creditors wait a couple of years before we restart loan payments. However, some have to gain more if we default, so they are betting on it, and trying to stop Greece from making a comeback. The Prime-minister is working for them. He is a traitor.

Implosion.

2011-04-14T11:08:00.000+03:00

Greek "entities" are buying off Greece's debt. That means that the banks are going to come off clean, while Greeks are going to loose their pension money, healthcare and education system.

And for all this we have PASOK (Greece's ruling "socialist" party) to thank! I really don't give a dime about those who brought this on themselves (e.g. public employees) but this is also destroying the younger generation that has done nothing wrong.

General Strike

2011-02-23T16:09:00.000+02:00

The Greek "government" tried to empty Syntagma (=Consitution) square by throwing tear-gas.

They are afraid people aren't going to leave the square and demand that the government resign.

Nothing to say... for Libya

2011-02-23T11:45:00.000+02:00

I am sorry to say that our primeminister (little) George Papandreou, has nothing to say for the people of Libya. He and his father are close personal friends of Moamar Kadafi, the butcher of Libya.

He is probably too busy "saving" Greece.

What he is actually doing is preparing Greece to surrender its natural resources. Nothing less than high treason I am afraid.

Beware of the Greek Government...

2011-02-13T17:36:00.000+02:00

The Greek "government" is fooling it's own people.

They have already agreed to an extended program of privatizations, worth over 50 billion euro, hell for all I know they even thought of it themselves, but they present it to the Greek people through the representatives of the I.M.F. and the E.U.

Further more, they act as if they are offended by that presentation in the hopes to gain a political "ethical" advantage, as the government that still has a face to show...

The whole thing is a lot of bullshit. They think the Greek people are a bunch of idiots that will believe anything they throw at them, just because they got them scared. And although that may be true for the majority of any people, the few that remain vigilant will educate the rest.

As a man who believes in a free and open economy, I can detect when a devaluation is going on. And this is it. For almost a year now, the Greek "government" has been de-valuating it's property so it can be bought out cheaply as it was agreed by the corrupt politicians who now rule. It is nothing sort of high treason. At the same time, the Greek people are being turned into a cheap and desperate labour force. It is almost the same as communism taking over, just the party members are exchanged for corporate CEO's.

I.M.F. ordering Greek goverment....

2011-02-12T12:13:00.000+02:00

The IMF came, saw... and ordered Papandreou's government to sell public property in order to reduce its debt further.

Papandreou is supposed to be a Socialist!!! I know conservatives who could't do a better job implementing strict fiscal policy!!!

Netbooks

2009-02-18T14:01:00.006+02:00

I love netbooks. You can carry them everywhere, have your documents with you all the time and go on-line from almost any place. However they should take better advantage of newer technologies, even at a bit of a higher cost.

For example, why not integrate WiMax and 3G in netbooks as standard. WiFi is ok, and usb 3G works fine, but... intergration and portability together with small form factor and low value should be the netbook goals. How much would this cost? An extra 60-70$US? Instead of a 350$US netbook we would have a 420$US netbook. Not much for what you would get. This would also give an added incentive to Communication companies to provide WiMax and 3G connectivity.

Also... no Windows as default in netbooks please!!! Too heavy and too difficult to navigate using a small keyboard, a tiny mousepad and a tiny screen. Perhaps after Windows 7 is out. And even then, I don't know... unless we can have a cheap 100gb SSD just for the bloated Win32 programs.

Vista... the new Windows Millennium.

2009-02-03T13:41:00.002+02:00

Lets face it. Vista was and is a flop. It is a complete and utter failure. It is Windows Millennium once again. Bloated, incoherent and incompatible. Microsoft should just put it in maintenance mode right after SP2 and roll out Windows 7, so older systems can upgrade to a usable OS.

Linux Examined... yeah right!!!

2008-07-10T15:19:00.003+03:00

I was reading an article today on the Australian PC World magazine site and came on a phrase that made me wonder how people write articles. This is the phrase: "Given that Red Hat bases its Fedora distribution on OpenSUSE, and that Fedora and OpenSUSE are both distributions with advanced features intended for power users, why would you pick one over the other?"

Ok... I mean, he could have said anything else and get away with it. But... GIVEN? Who told him that?

Anyways. In his comment on ComputerWorld regarding the same article the writer says it was "a misfact introduced during the editing process". My take on this is that people who write on influantial online media should be carefull about getting their facts straight first.

OpenSUSE: Simply the best.

2008-05-19T12:17:00.002+03:00

I have been using Linux for my home desktop exclusively now for 2 years. I have always had a version of Linux on my system since the days of 0.92 kernel (remember Slackware in the red multi-cd box?) , but I always felt it was not mature enough until 2 years ago.

My distribution of choice has always been Suse. I have tried several others but as I have discovered they all have minor problems that were show stoppers.

Last week I went out and bought a top of the line PC, my first "high-end" ever. I always stayed a generation or two back, to be on the safe side. This time however I wanted something big, fast and with lots of goodies. So I bought an Intel Core Duo 2 at 45nm running at 3.16Ghz, the fastest CPU by Intel bellow their Extreme series,a fairly good ASUS motherboard with 4gb of Ram (2x2gb) and an NVidia GeForce 8800GT video card.

I had also decided to try a different distribution and see if there has been much improvement, and since the day I bought the new PC, Fedora 9 came out, I downloaded it and tested it.

It booted in the installer, checked the media, I chose a volume setup I liked and I told it to install everything. 20 minutes into the installation it failed and all I could do was stop the installation or report a bug and stop the installation!

Ok... Second try.

This time install only the basic system. Install finished in under 10 minutes and I rebooted. Entered a root password and created a user account and then I got to a black screen and the system stopped responding!

I tried several BIOS settings, since it seemed to be a hardware problem, some twicking of the xorg.conf file to use a failsafe video mode (using the cd to boot to repair mode) but to no avail. It didn't work.

Ok... I remembered I had an Ubuntu 8.04 live CD somewhere. Found it and booted. It worked fine. The installer worked and everything seemed fine.

So it was time to install the NVidia drivers. It seems though that the hardware configuration was too much for Ubuntu. Although the driver installed fine, XServer refused to use it and always used the open source non-accelerated driver. Twicking the gdm didn't work. Also I discovered that some standard runlevel commands like init don't work in Ubuntu.

Finally I decided to use OpenSUSE, which has worked great in the past for me on all my systems. OpenSUSE 10.3 is the latest stable version and it is older than both Ubuntu 8.04 and Fedora 9 so I had little hope it would work. However it worked great. Installed without a hitch. Updated with no problems, recognized all my hardware and finally the NVidia driver installed correctly and 3d acceleration was tested with Quake Wars Enemy Territory .

Don't get me wrong. I have seen Fedora 9 work great, I just have never been able to install it on any of my systems that usually have weird or exotic hardware. Ubuntu? I use it on my media pc, a pc made from a barebone system, that sits under my 32" Samsung TV. However it seems non of the are good enough for my new system.

No I am sure I can make them both work fine with a lot more twicking, but lets be honest. If we want linux on the Desktop, twicking should be about getting more out of the system, not getting it to work!

So... OpenSUSE? Simply the best.

Insulting the ambassador of FYROM

2008-04-15T13:07:00.002+03:00

FYROM
FYROM
FYROM
FYROM
FYROM
FYROM
Pseudomacedonia...

If he wants more he knows where to find me...

The US tries to rewrite history.

2008-04-08T13:07:00.002+03:00

Dianel Fried, the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs made a statement, that there is a Macedonian people and a Macedonian language, however it doesn't have to do with the ancient Macedonians!!!

That is absurd. If it has to do with the modern era, then how can a country occupying 10% of the geographical area of Macedonia and only 30% of that country being on that 10% have claim to the Macedonian name and language? Because they and their patrons say so?

If there is a Macedonian people, those are the Greeks living in northern Greece. And they are Greeks as much as Alexander the Great was Greek, as much as Pericles and Socrates were Greeks
and as much as Cretans were and are Greeks.

There is NO Macedonian language, because their idiom is 99% similar to Bulgarian and because in ancient Macedonia, everybody spoke the Macedonian Greek dialect.

Kiro Gligorof, the former Prime minister of FYROM had stated that they are Slav Macedonians that came to the area of Macedonia a thousand years after the death of Alexander the Great. Fine... put an ethnic or a geographical term in front of the name Macedonia and use it to name that country. However the language is NOT and will never be Macedonian.

Pseudomacedonia, game over

2008-04-01T17:39:00.002+03:00

This is my response to the New York Times article about FYROM:

GO STUFF IT. (I am not a native English speaker, so I don't know if this is comparable to f*ck u, but it will do).

We Greeks don't claim anything. History is written and cannot be unwritten. We do not claim that Macedonia is Greek. Macedonia is Greece and that is IT. If the FYROMians want to use the geographical term in their name, that is fine by us. BUT a geographical term must be clear. The name Macedonia is a claim to history and national identity. They have no right to it. Their ancestors came to the area during the 7nth and 8th century A.D. How can they claim any Macedonian ancestors and most of all Alexander the Great!!!

Do Greeks claim that they are descendants of Alexander the Great? Well, not really. We are not all descendants of Alexander the Great as we are not all descendants of my grandfather!!! But there sure is a family tree connection and it is a real one and not a make belief like the one the FYROMians claim.

Time to switch?

2008-04-01T17:09:00.002+03:00

What better time to switch to Linux than now that Vista is out and XP should be phased out according to Microsoft.

Think about it. Never again will you have to put up with the monopoly giant and its tricks to keep you in its clutches.

Time for you to be free. Just install any Linux distribution (if you are a newbie use Ubuntu, Fedora or my personal favorite OpenSUSE) or ask your local computer dealer to offer Linux preinstalled machines. No fuss with activation, and for sometime ahead you won't have to worry about viruses, since there are only a few capable of infecting a Linux system and most of them aren't around...

Pseudomacedonia

2008-02-24T12:16:00.004+02:00

Skopjie should bring us one... just one piece of marble, or one piece of clay with a few words (or letters) on it with this so called "Macedonian" language from the time of Alexander the Great or before and we will give them the name. I dare them.... Can they? Of course not!!! Because such a thing doesn't exist.

People... there is no such nation as Macedonia. And I am not saying this because Macedonia is Greek. I am saying it because Macedonia IS GREECE. Plain and simple. It is not debatable. It is a FACT.

The sooner Skopjie realizes that the sooner we can all get on with our lives.

If they are so keen on having a name that contains the word Macedonia, I can suggest "PseudoMacedonia". It describes them perfectly.

Also I would like to inform the world that those people are teaching their children at school to hate Greeks.... because we "rob them of their ethnic identity". I feel pity for them.

People Ready

2008-01-28T17:55:00.001+02:00

This is the motto of the future for Microsoft.

I just came from Bill Gates speech. It was funny mostly... I was sitting about 4 meters from him and I was not impressed by the richest man in the world. But... what he did during the last 20 years is impressive.
.

Bill Gates

2008-01-24T15:00:00.000+02:00

Bill Gates is coming to Greece and I have an invitation to his speech.

Thinking of asking him witch is his favorite Linux Distribution!!!

2008 Predictions

2008-01-02T11:18:00.001+02:00

Happy new year...

Here are my predictions for the year 2008. (MMIIX) (11111011000) (7D8)

1. Linux will get 20% of the Desktop market reaching critical mass. At least 3 more companies will roll out PCs and Laptops with preinstalled Linux distributions.

2. Vista SP1 will cause more problems than solve.

3. iPhone 3G will sell twice as much as the original model.

4. High Definition format war will end. Winner is as of yet unknown. My bet is on HD-DVD although I personally prefer Blueray.

5. Blogs will influence international and domestic policy in Europe and the US.

6. NVidia will opensource its Video driver for Linux.

7. Olympiakos will not win the Champions League. (like that is difficult to predict)

(more to come)

Update: It seems I was right about the HD format war, although it looks like Blueray is going to win and not HD-DVD as I thought.

Update 2: Seems I was right about Vista SP1 too. Reports are coming that a lot of third party applications stop working after SP1 is installed!!!

HTC TyTN II

2007-12-11T15:00:00.000+02:00

I bought myself an early Christmas present. The HTC TyTN II. First impression? It is excellent.

Hardware:
The included GPS works quite well.
The processor is fast and responsive.
Phone operation works great and the sound is clear. Far better than the QTEK 9100 I had before.
Memory is plenty and after installing my navigator program I had another 90mb free.
The Camera is all you can expect from a mobile phone. It is also quite an improvement from previous HTC models.

Software:
This time HTC has also taken care of details in software that pissed me off on previous PDAs. It has a switcher app and you can select what the X button does. On Windows CE, the X button minimizes the Application, but now you can choose also to close it.
The Task screen is customizable as always, and HTC has put an excellent plug-in on it that provides a huge digital clock (good idea) and a tabbed interface to usual functions. Only the weather tab is a little strange, since it needs a live Internet connection to update, and when moving you can see the weather so... what's up with that?

Other:
Size is good, it is slimmer than the QTEK 9100 and it is good looking.

Cons:
Only problem is the screen protector that when installed creates small bubbles of air, but it is not a real problem since you can not really see them if it is turned on.
Some people might also consider a con the lack of an FM Radio that other smart mobiles have, but since I rarely listen to music I don't miss it.

Overall:
If you can spare 670 Euro, and you like pda phones with everything on them... this is the phone for you.

Linux on the Desktop

2007-12-08T18:25:00.000+02:00

We need Linux on the desktop to have these (across all major desktop aligned distributions):
1 Easy setup
2 Easy update
3 GUI consistency
4 A good help system for basic functions
5 Easy administration
6 Easy Software Installation

and

7 Games.

Now most of the first 6 things are there, a little more effort should be put in GUI consistency and the Help system and Installation needs some intuitive GUI that covers even the .gz distribution of programs.

As for the seventh... I am impressed with this: ENEMY TERRITORY : QUAKE WARS
More of these and we are set to beat Windows to the ground.

Feature leaving Vista

2007-12-05T15:11:00.000+02:00

A month and a half ago I wrote about the number one missing feature from Linux, the.... Reduced functionality mode. Well... it seems that Microsoft has come to its senses. Not because they would like people not to be bothered by this... feature any more, but because they couldn't make it work!!!

Microsoft to modify Windows Genuine Advantage anti-piracy scheme

Software the Impossible.

2007-11-28T15:27:00.000+02:00

It is almost impossible to create good, solid software for Windows today without putting a few hundred extra hours of work.

Mostly because there are no guidelines, API's or documentation that are 100% complete. There is always something left out. And you can bet that it will be what will create that deadly exception and cause data loss...

Just another day at the office...

Number 1 missing feature from Linux

2007-10-23T23:12:00.000+03:00

Vista's Reduced Functionality Mode is a feature that is missing from Linux.

I am so angry at Linus Torvalds and/or Novell (I use OpenSuse). Why didn't they see this coming? I need this feature NOW on my Linux system. I mean, what could be cooler than having to activate by phone or the Internet, or be kicked out of your system in 1 hour tops.

Computing, 10 years from now: Vasper's number 1 prediction.

2007-07-04T21:44:00.000+03:00

A little bit about my background:
I don't consider myself a technology specialist, but I am a computer geek. Have been since the days of 8bit computing. I am a software engineer, specializing on Windows software (hey.. I have to make a living don't I?) but I have also worked on a variety of other OS, including but not limited to Linux based OSes.

So, this is what I predict the future of computing will be:

The year is 2017. Microsoft is rolling out it's first fully Holographic interface based on high precision, low intensity lasers. It is an idea already used in a smaller scale on its latest game machine, known as the Cubicle.

This time however, the interface is fully interactive and in combination with the 55 inch background paper screen, the virtual multi core CGPU and the surround sound projectors, it is expected to create an amazing sensation. I cannot believe they placed all that on a 10x10x20 centimeter box weighing only 1200 grams.

The only restrictions of the interface is the protected cubicle it creates using low energy magnetic fields to keep the atmosphere of the holographic projection area clean and under specific pressure. Not quite ready for the outdoors though. The tingling sensation you might feel when first using this interface goes away after a few seconds.

How much does this cost? Well, remember nine years ago when you bought your first Surface? It did cost some extra dollars (4000$US if I recall correctly), but it was worth it. Believe me, this is worth the 3500$US it costs. Rumors say that Microsoft is loosing 600$US on every sale, but technology advances will bring down the cost of the unit by at least 2000$US by the end of the next year.

Microsoft just proved it is still ahead in the game. It doesn't have 45% of the worlds market on Computing systems (remember when we used to call them Desktop PCs?) for no reason.

Plan B of Microsoft.

2007-07-03T20:12:00.001+03:00

I read an interesting article on Microsoft today:
Does Microsoft have nowhere to run?
And although I have repeatedly in the past said I am all for open source and I really dislike the way Microsoft is holding on to its monopoly I must disagree with this article. Why? Well the future of computing is not in the Operating system, but in the usability. People are just tired of extensions like the mouse to use their computer.

So to answer the last question about plan B, I present plan B, C, D and E together:
Microsoft Surface

Can't wait to get my hands on one of those... literally.

View the future of media

2007-06-21T22:50:00.001+03:00

I especially liked the part about Google buying Microsoft.

Kubuntu on a media pc.

2007-05-08T17:18:00.000+03:00

I recently put together a new system. It is a Shuttle XPC with an AMD 4600+ X2 AM2 processor, 1GB of Ram, 160GB HD(cannibalized from an older PC), an ATI X550 Video Adapter and a Dual Layer DVD RW. It's primary function will be to serve as a media PC connected with my 32" LCD TV.

I am planning a few updates to it, as I am adding 1 more gibabyte of memory, a 500GB SATA II Hard disk and a better Video Adapter (probably a GeForce 7900).

After playing a little with various configurations, I ended up with Kubuntu 7.04 as the OS to drive this machine. Why Kubuntu? Well I love KDE and hate Gnome, but that is only a personal preference. Ubuntu is simple enough for the desktop and has lots of available applications.

All that remains to be done now, is to setup a remote control with lirc which unfortunately has proved to be difficult.

So, why not use Windows XP Media Edition? Well, first of all, it is not free. Secondly I believe OpenSource is better for this kind of endeavors.

Home users Linux, Business users Vista

2007-04-08T13:33:00.000+03:00

Microsoft's latest operating system, Vista, is the best reason why a home user should switch to a Linux distribution. It is bloated, unsafe (for how safe it was hyped to be) and slow. For home usage Linux is as good as Windows is today. You need to write a DVD or a CD? It's there. You need to watch a movie or create one? It's there. Need to preview photos or edit them? It's there. Need to write a document or prepare a presentation and perhaps a small spreadsheet? It's there. Chat? Browse? All there. Only if you are a hardcore gamer at home Linux is not yet for you.

As for businesses, the amount of applications available for them on Windows, probably makes it a bad idea to move to Linux just yet... We will see...

Worst way to use Web Services found

2007-03-31T15:05:00.000+03:00

Recently the company I work for landed a big customer. We are now developing a custom software solution for them, based on our commercial legal ERP app.

We were very excited to learn that their infrastructure included such conveniences as Web Services to exchange information between applications. That was until we got their WSDL and together some sample xmls. It seems their Web Services serve not structured data, but plain simple xml without even a schema! That is the worst way I have seen Web Services being used.

For those who work with Web Services this should be a funny joke, but for us it is a nightmare.

Smoking, a real problem.

2007-02-19T16:53:00.000+02:00

Don't know what the status of smokers is in your country, but in mine, smokers are considered cool. I have never smoked in my life, and never will and I think that this attitude on smoking is really backwards.

Why am I writing this? Well, yesterday I went to see a film at the movies and before it started there were three advertisements of cigarette brands. Now, in Greece, advertising of cigarettes on Radio or TV is forbidden by law, but they can advertise on billboards and in magazines. They can also apparently advertise in movie theaters.

One of the advertisements showed the well known Malboro Man, somewhere in the United States, probably in Arizona, ridding along a pack of wild horses. Beautiful country, cool looking men and of course a cigarette to keep them company. And of course half the truth. Because Malboro Man died of lung cancer, so it should have also shown his grave at the end!!!

Smoking is a habit that makes the smoker addicted to nicotine, a mind altering drug. It should be banned like all narcotics, but the tabaco industry is too powerful.

So what can we do to stop them?
If you smoke, stop smoking. That should do the trick. And don't give me excuses that you can't or don't want to. It is the addiction talking.
If you don't smoke, never start it and tell everyone who does to stop smoking.

Vista prediction

2007-02-10T21:47:00.000+02:00

I foresee Microsoft allowing at least one version of Vista, probably Home Premium, being cracked and no patch offered by Microsoft for at least 1 year.

Remember that you first read it here.

Finally, scientists with guts.

2007-02-02T18:14:00.000+02:00

A the report shows, we, Human kind, are causing the planet to overheat. Politicians should read and act. That means ALL of you. Yes... that includes you US politicians as well. Lobbying won't save the planet for your children.

Price of Vista (take II)

2007-01-30T10:56:00.000+02:00

Today Vista is available in Europe, at a price of 549,00 € !!! Compared to the 399,95 $ it is almost a 70% higher price.

This is ridiculous. I don't know if it is because of taxes, or because Microsoft wants to get back at the EU for the fines it has to pay, but it is unacceptable. They, at Microsoft, better be prepared for a rise in piracy if they are lucky, or a rise of Linux if not...

Word stuck... Openoffice writer to the rescue!

2007-01-29T19:46:00.000+02:00

Microsoft did it again. A strange issue that cannot be repaired. We created a document using Word, about 6 megabytes in size, with lots of text and images inside. Then we tried to save it as RTF. No luck.... about 500megabytes later word gave up.

Ok, I said... it is just Office XP. Lets try with the Office 2003 I have on the other computer. It should be better right? WRONG. Did it again. Had to stop the process to get back to the system.

So I said, this is a known issue that they probably didn't have time to fix during those two releases, but since then 3 years have gone by... so 2007 should work better. Ok... lets try it on our newest system....

To make a long story short, after trying for about half an hour to save the file as RTF, doing everything I could think of (copying, pasting, splitting, repairing, converting to docx and back to word 97 format.... nothing worked.... So finally I tried with OpenOffice 2.02 Writer... Guess what. It took 30 seconds to open the file, and 5 seconds to save it to an RTF. Word now loads that RTF, but it cannot save it....

Thank god, I have Linux at home...

Price of Vista

2007-01-20T21:21:00.000+02:00

After reading the announcement about the price of the different versions of Windows Vista, I only have one comment:

They must be kidding.

I mean 320 Euros for Home Basic (the basically crippled edition) and 630 Euros for the Vista Ultimate edition? Why? Because it took them 5 years to develop it? Why should we users pay for their delay and high costs of a product that is missing half the features we were promised?

Thanks Microsoft for reminding me why I chose to use Linux at home.

Virtualization not 'mature' for consumers says Microsoft

2006-11-24T15:41:00.000+02:00

Although I am a software engineer working on Windows Applications, at home I use Linux as my main Desktop OS. There is another OS installed on the machine, but it is not Microsoft's Windows.

However, to be able to work at home too, I have installed my bought and payed for copy of Microsoft's Windows XP inside a VMWare Server 1.0 virtual machine. The last few days I was thinking about buying a Home Basic version of Vista, since I won't use Avalon inside the virtual machine, and I am not going to install Vista as my main OS... but Microsoft says NO NO...

Why? If I pay for it what do you care if I use it in a Virtual Machine or on an Amstrad CPC 6128 if I can make it run there....!!! I bought the right to use it, so I am using it.

I don't know if their move is legal, but it surely is illogical. Seems those two things don't have to go side by side where the monopolistic giant is concerned.

Please sue me mr Ballmer

2006-11-17T19:56:00.000+02:00

Steve Ballmer, has said that all Linux Users, except those using SUSE are liable to be sued by Microsoft for infriging on her IP.

So this is an open note to mr Ballmer,

I currently use Suse Linux on my desktop, but please tell me what version of Linux might I install so Microsoft can sue me for infriging on her IP. Otherwise, please, shut the hell up...

Thank you,
Yours, Vassilis Perantzakis
Software Engineer.

Back from Barcelona

2006-11-13T11:01:00.000+02:00

Microsoft TechEd Developers 2007 was a good event. I wasn't impressed, but then again, Microsoft is notorious for too much hype while delivering little. However, it was a learning experience, and it is too bad I couldn't follow more sessions.

The sessions I followed had to do mostly with SQL Server 2005, Office 2007 Tools and the new OpenXML format. I learned a few tricks about indexes (and finally I had the chance to prove to a coworker, that using GUIDs as primary keys is bad), I saw the new capabilities of the Office tools and learned a lot about the OpenXML format, although a 4000 page manual read (!!!) is needed to learn all of that.

The last day, I followed a session on SQL notification services, and I must say I was disappointed by the way Microsoft has crippled the best feature to be put in SQL Server since SPs. I was also amazed that the Microsoft expert could not understand why that same feature in Oracle had a different approach.

This is the difference in a nutshell: Oracle notifies of the change in a table followed by the query and returns the key of the line changed, regardless if the line is included in the results, while MSSQL returns only that something has changed in your result set. Now, it is fine when you want to invalidate a whole result set, but if you have a result with 100000 lines and only want the changed ones... Oracles way is far far better. After all, if the line changed is not in your result set... you can find it out with just a quick locate.

Microsoft Tech?Ed: Developers

2006-09-29T10:30:00.000+03:00

I am now registered for the Novemember Tech Ed in Barcelona.
I will be there from the 6th to 10nth, during the Pre-Conference and Main events. It is quite an oportunity to see the latest developments from Microsoft and speak 1 to 1 with some of the IT industry's leading people.

As for what I am doing now... Well, I have restarted work on a Zeta/BeOS/Haiku language called yab (Yet Another Basic) and the creation of a Visual design tool for it. It is quite interesting...

ICANN chokes off .xxx porn registry

2006-05-12T14:35:00.000+03:00

ICANN's board of directors has killed the .xxx registry in a 9-5 decision due to political pressure. The pressure came mostly from the US right-wing Christians.

My take on it? Are the right-wing Christians in the US working for porn? I don't get it. If there was an .xxx top level domain, then parental control would be a simple thing of banning entry to .xxx. With the dispersal of porn sites, how can they do that now?

ASP.net 2.0

2006-05-02T16:19:00.000+03:00

Today, I am going to start going through a book about ASP.Net 2.0.

There have been many changes since 1.0 and I am curious about the improvements in speed and ease of development. Although I am managing 2 projects on ASP.Net, I don't have much hands on experience and this should be interesting, so I will keep this blog updated on my progress as much as I can.

Delphi tribute

2006-04-29T01:24:00.000+03:00

My one true love, besides my girlfriend (yes I have one of those) is Delphi. Not the ancient site, but the development environment.

You are going to see me blogging about it a lot.

Borland, the company that created this great tool for developers like me is now selling the IDE product line. When I first heard about it I thought "this is the end". But later, when I read David I's (Borland's Developer Relations guy) letter to the community about the issue, I realised this could be a good think.

Although Delphi is an excellent development tool, from version 2005 it became a slow copy of Visual Studio .Net. It seems Borland has lost interest in innovation. So if somebody else can focus on that, it would bring back the greatness in Delphi.

It remains to be seen.

Blog coming to life

2006-04-29T01:23:00.000+03:00

I created this blog and then forgot about it, but now it is coming to life.

So, what have I been doing?

I have been working on the BeOSMax site, updating its content. BeOSMax is a site that helps users of BeOS, Haiku and Zeta OS get the max out of their system.

At work, I have balancing a few projects in Delphi, C++, ASP.Net, C# and PHP (!!!).

Just donated $100 to the Haiku Network bounty. If you wish to help go to Haiku Bounty and donate what you can.

Stay tuned for more updates.