Computer Futures is an IT recruitment company. At least, that's what they claim. In fact, they're nothing more than a call-center disguised as a recruitment center. There is no personal contact, no real assessment and no real matching.

In 2003, I applied for a job through Computer Futures. They have kept that information on file for over 6 years without a follow-up call. Any decent recruitment center would have either stopped using that information or place a follow-up meeting to make sure the data is up-to-date. More on the legality of keeping data that long in the last paragraph.

In the meantime, I keep getting job offers that do not concern me. I got job offers for developing in languages or environments that I never worked with and that certainly weren't ever mentioned in my resume. I got job offers stating that the candidate had to live in close vicinity to the offices - which were halfway across the country for me. I got job offers that didn't even mention a job offer, just a description of the company they were "recruiting" for.

I have asked to be removed from their systems several times over the past year. I have done so by writing to the call-center agents that mailed me, by writing to the e-mail address they mentioned in their e-mails and by writing to info@computerfutures.nl. I kept getting mails.

Today, I called them and the person answering the phone couldn't tell me why I hadn't been removed from the system, even though I had used the mail address mentioned in their mails for about four times. Upon asking to be removed, I was told that "I will make sure that you will no longer receive our e-mails". That's not what I asked. I wanted to have my information removed from the system. The call-center agent replied that "I will block everything that I can block". He could not affirm that my data would be permanently deleted. He also wouldn't confirm that they never had face-to-face interviews or that they screened persons by a real-life interview. When I pushed, he asked me if I wanted to have my e-mail removed or if I wanted a discussion. I told him that the latter would be nice since I had some questions about the way they treated me and my privacy to which I got blown off with a "I don't have time for this". Well, thank you! Just another confirmation that Computer Futures doesn't care about you as a person.

Itmight  also be useful to add that Dutch Law states that data concerning job applications should not be held longer than one year after which they have to be destroyed. It looks like Computer Futures is breaking that law. Not only that law, but they're also breaking the OPTA rules which state that everyone should have the right to know what personal data is being kept by an organisation and should have the right to ask for immediate removal of this data from any databases and archives that this organisation stored his or her data in. So, I'm filing complaints with the appropriate government institutes. It'll take time and effort, but that's how tired I am of Computer Futures.

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This is another typical Microsoft-based development issue. Everyone is writing tutorials and omitting what references need to be set to make the tutorial code work.

Anyway, if you're looking for the MSHTML library, it's a COM reference and it's actually named "Microsoft HTML object library". You need to put using mshtml; in your project to be able to reference it.

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may still be true in 2009. Here's Steve Jobs in 1996, talking about Microsoft who, by that time, just released Windows 95. The sound is completely out of sync, so my apologies for that.

Here's the transcript.

The only problem with Microsoft is they have no taste. They have absolutely no taste and what that means is ... I don't mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way. In a sense that ... they ... they don't think of original ideas and they don't bring much culture into their product. And you say "why is that important?". Well, proportionally spaced fonts come from typesetting in beautiful books, that's where one gets the idea. If it weren't for the Mac, they would never have that in their products. ... Erm ... And ... So I, I guess, I am saddened, not by Microsoft's success. I have no problem with their success. They've earned their success - for the most part. I have a problem with the fact they just make really third-rate products.

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We have the all-new Megcos 1182 at home since we got it from my sister for Christmas. While it may not be the most technologically advanced musical cow, we were able to hack it with a mixture of luck and coincidence.

DISCLAIMER: This hack can potentially harm your Megcos 1182. There is NO known reset procedure should anything go wrong. Hitting the Megcos 1182 HARD is your best bet in case anything goes wrong.

The Megcos 1882 or Musical Cow is able to produce a number of interesting sounds and songs. The nose will generate a "moo" sound and the bell will sound like a cowbell. The A button will sound like a sheep, the B button is reminiscent of a rooster and the C button will sound lilke Zorro's Tornado. The 1 button will make a cellphone-like sound, the 2 button will make you think you're in the London tube (that's the underground for US English afficionados) and the 3 button will make a ticking sound like only a clock can. Each of the A, B, C, 1, 2 and 3 buttons will also play a song. Each of these buttons will alternate between "sound" and "song". The songs themselves will rotate and are the same for all buttons. I can't name all of the songs, but there's 10 of them.

However! There are more possibilities. With a little bit of playing around delving into the User Interface, we were able to extract 12 more sounds! These sounds are the following.

• "A" and "Triangle";
• "B" and "Square";
• "C" and "Circle";
• "1" and "Star";
• "2" and "Heart";
• "3" and "Hexagon".

The way to actually reveal these hidden sounds is to actually slide the "on" button not all the way "on" (or not all the way "off"). Sliding it just far enough will result in the buttons producing the said 12 additional sounds. If you don't slide the button for enough, the normal sounds will continue to sound or you get cut-off versions of the 12 additional sounds.

Also: Hexagon? What 1-year old is going to even reproduce that? HEXAGON! LOLLERSK8Z!

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Today, well technically yesterday, I launched Frozen Whisper. It is a portfolio made for Anne Elst, model and concert photographer. Not satisfied with the implementation and maintainability of existing albums, I decided to write my own. The portfolio is simple and uses PHP to dynamically create photo albums. No database is used, instead, the website crawls itself for pictures. A text file is used to create captions, description of the shoot and more. I also implemented MooTools for the scrolling thumbnails.

Be sure to check it out!

The website was well received with comments such as "very clear", "nice and uncluttered".

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