15 more minutes

Last friday, I was at the dentist. My appointment was at 12:00, so I was there at 11:50. After 5 minutes, the dentist came into the waiting room and said: “I’m sorry, I’m running a little behind, I have a delay of about 15 to 20 minutes.” At 12:20, the dentist was ready to see me.

Now, many may say that it’s aggravating that dokters and alike are always late, but I see this as a positive example of how it should be.
The dentist miscalculated the time he needed for previous patients (it happens), he excused himself, but more importantly, he notified me so I had an idea of how much longer it will take. Sometimes you just sit there, waiting for half an hour without knowing anything. So kudos to the dentist.

Some new things for Windows 7 RC

Looks like Microsoft is listening to their users. They posted some things that will be changed in the RC version of Windows 7 on their development blog.

Bye bye Lycos

As a tribute to probably one of the oldest internet portals. Lycos closed down on 15 February, 2009.

No more analog TV for US

A great article at devhardware.com entitled: The Digital Transition, explains what will happen when the US changes from analog TV to digital TV. The date was February 17 2009, but Obama changed it to June 12.
I’m curious when this will occur in Belgium.

Windows 7, again with the versions

Just as with Windows Vista, the new Windows 7, that should be released by the end of 2009, will come in 6 versions.

  1. Starter
  2. Home Basic
  3. Home Premium
  4. Professional
  5. Ultimate
  6. Enterprise

There are some differences now. Each “higher” (read: more pricey) version will contain all of the features that the lower versions have.
You will also have an easier option to upgrade. The installation will install everything and depending on the license key different options will be “activated”. (Can anyone see the piracy problem with this).

I’ve been running the beta version of Windows 7 lately and I must say, it’s an improvement over Vista, but it still crashes sometimes.

Windows 7′s new taskbar not copied from Mac OS X

This article: Paradigms lost: The Windows 7 Taskbar versus the OS X Dock on ars technica is probably one of the best written and researched articles I’ve ever seen on the Windows taskbar.
It explains why the taskbar in Windows 7 looks as it does and why it’s not a copy from Mac OS X, as many try to let us believe.

Best Web Browser at the moment

These 2 articles about the Image rendering and Text rendering in current browsers give a very strange result. Internet Explorer is the best web browser at the moment (when looking at rendering)

What to expect in the next 5 years.

Since years, BT has done some nice technology predictions.
Here is what we can expect in the next 5 years (note some items have links pointing to the actual product existing):
Read the rest of "What to expect in the next 5 years." »

Google Chrome

Google Chrome, Yet another browser?

Reflection GetValue of bool? is bool

After several hours looking for a bug, I finally found it.

This is the code that housed the “bug”.

PropertyInfo info = obj.GetType().GetProperty("SomeProperty");
object value = info.GetValue(obj, null);
if (value.GetType() == typeof(bool?))
{
//Some code
}
else if (value.GetType() == typeof(int?))
{
//Some other code
}

The property “SomeProperty” is a nullable type (either string, int? or bool?).
The weird thing is that it works for int? but it doesn’t for bool?

For some reason when the nullable bool contains a value (so it’s not null), the type of the value object is no longer bool? but a plain bool.
It’s easily fixed:

...
if (value.GetType() == typeof(bool?) || value.GetType() == typeof(bool))
{
//Some code
}
...