Friday, March 14, 2003

More than a pretty face

Gotta really hand it to Steven: his paper on Cocoon and Forrest is a really great piece of work. Waw - I guess I'll have to admit that he is more than a pretty face ...
Posted on Friday, March 14, 2003, , Permalink #

Thursday, March 13, 2003

Antwerp Blues

Well, what can I say. My city government resigned today, for a reason that I don't understand. What happens to politics, when politics are not allowed to function in a reasonable way anymore. What happens when a demo-cracy (I happen to know some ancient Greek etymology: it stands for the people that governs) turns into a demo-crazy. A crazy, misinformed and sensationalist set of MEDIA (not the people, but the MEDIA!!!) turn away a city government without taking the time to think twice about what they are doing right or wrong. Admitted: Antwerp hasn't had the best of city governments and officials in the last couple of decades, but I just can't see why this particular government needs to resign now. And I CERTAINLY don't see why the MEDIA are so influencial on all this: we, the people, really haven't had the chance to react. The MEDIA assume that they know what we are thinking - but I can't remember them making a well-argumented case for us. It is astonishing. Makes you wonder what democracy is really about these days. Makes you never to want to read a newspaper, watch a television program or listen to a radio program again. And don't even get me started on their role in the war on Saddam. Yuck.
Posted on Thursday, March 13, 2003, , Permalink #

Wednesday, March 12, 2003

Take a chance

Interesting, funny, or symbol of bad taste? You can place bets on major political events like the War in Iraq at one of the major online betting sites. What *IS* interesting is that you can track the value of a bet, and thus visualise the probability of it on this page. Does this mean that chances for peace are still ok?
Posted on Wednesday, March 12, 2003, , Permalink #

Freedom Fries

TomK pointed me to this bold new measure. If it weren't for the picture, I probably wouldn't believe it ...
Posted on Wednesday, March 12, 2003, , Permalink #

BEA's bet

Interesting interview with Alfred Chuang from BEA. Although I'm sure that this is a company that actually produces great software (at a price), I was very intrigued by the following excerpt at the end of the interview

What's your long-term vision for the company?
For the next two or three years, our focus will be very much on making continuous enhancements and filling out the stack that we have.

And longer term?
Longer term (we will be) helping people build horizontal building blocks for applications and assisting in dramatically accelerating hardware performances for software, resiliency and auditing capability. It's a continuous enhancement to a point where an end user can compose applications on the fly. That's ultimately where enterprise applications are going.

Monday, March 10, 2003

HELLO WORLD

Today, I realised once again that not every single person on this planet has woken up to the wonderful world of Blogging. One of my very best friends, a decade into his university education, had never heard of the phenomenon, and REALLY made me realise that there is more than just one reality - once again. I'm comfortably living mine, but so many others are (un?)comfortably facing theirs. Here's to you all - Cheers!
Posted on Monday, March 10, 2003, , Permalink #