You won't be able to add additional storage. In a its cheapest form, it has 16GB of storage. That cannot be expanded. Think how many pictures and music you currently have on your netbook or laptop.

It won't play music on the web. Last.FM, Facebook, YouTube, Hyves, MySpace and a myriad of other websites use Flash to let you listen to music. "The best way to experience the web" is as a deaf person.

You won't be able to connect to network or USB printers. This rules out the iPad as a business tool. Unless you absolutely never have to print anything out.

You won't be able to connect to external storage devices. You won't be able to connect to your Network Storage or other laptops - Windows, Mac or Linux.

It has no camera, so there won't be any videochat. Almost all current netbooks and laptops have a built-in webcam. And you won't be able to add an external webcam because, you guessed it, no USB support. There's also no mention of a microphone so even skyping won't work. Oh, and there's no USB support so no USB microphones either.

It won't play video on the web. Sure, it will have its built-in YouTube app, but since it doesn't have multitasking, that means you will have to stop browsing and watch the movie. When the movie is finished, you'll have to start the browser again. Manually. That's acceptable for a Smartphone, but not for a tablet. And you certainly won't be able to watch MySpace video. Or Vimeo. Or Blip.TV. All of which are very good and valid video sites with extremely good content.

There's no easy way to type text on the tablet. And you can't add a USB keyboard. Because it has no USB. So don't expect to type long mails to your mother - which you could just Skype if you had a webcam. Or even a built-in microphone.

For those of you who think the absence of Flash is good because "you browse with Flash turned off anyway". That is not entirely true for most. Most run with a Flash blocker which allows them to turn Flash ON every once in a while to experience additional content on a website. But you don't even have that choice. There is no Flash. And I highly doubt that it will have HTML5 video support.

So there. No iPad for me. I'll stick to my Acer Netbook for couch surfing.

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It often happens when reading bulk information that dates get treated as text to minimise the amount of conversion errors on the import. I have seen a lot of intricate algorythms to verify the validity of such a string as a date. I have seen people cutting it up by explicitly searching for the separator, storing each part in a different variable, rearranging those variables and then convert the amalgamated strings into a new string which, hopefully, yields a date. I've seen code where the dates get split up, stuck in a table and then rearranged with selects. I believe there is an easier way which simply reads as follows.

 
SET dateformat dmy
 
SELECT 'It''s a date, cap''n!'
FROM tblImport
WHERE ISDATE(someDateField) = 1
 

By using "set dateformat dmy", we tell SQL Server to analyse any possible date by assuming that first part of any date is the day of month, the second is the month and the last part is the year. There are drawbacks, however. You must use either a hyphen or a slash as a separator. You cannot use concatenated date strings or other separators such as periods or blanks.

Still, for us in continental Western-Europe, this solves a lot of problems when reading from bulk imports.

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IF @pCode = 'AA' or @pCode = 'AB' or @pCode = 'BA' or @pCode = 'XY'
	SET @actionType = 'single'
ELSE
	SET @actionType = 'combined'
 

You can recode this to SQL to make it more readable.

The second option will be slower - about four times slower - but on my stone-age development system, it still performed 20000 iterations in under 200ms. That's 100000 comparisons per second.

 
SELECT
	@actionType = 'combined'
 
SELECT
	@actionType = 'single'
WHERE
	@pCode in
		(
			'AA',
			'AB',
			'BA',
			'XY'
		)
 

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It's weird, because nowhere on the uservoice.com website is your mail address actually displayed or linked. So, either someone who participates in the tweetdeck uservoice discussions had a virus, or uservoice.com has had a privacy leak and all the mail addresses in their database are now being spammed. The latter seems likely because of the high amount of spam I'm getting, which could indicate that spammers believe this address to be recent and valid.

I would like to hear from other people who've had their spam count increase dramatically over the past few weeks and if they can determine why.

Edit: At least 1 other person is experiencing this: http://twitter.com/bjq/status/1784497230

---

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.

---

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.

---

Today, I looked further into the issue and finally found the solution.

Step 1.
Open the normal.dotm template. Enter the text as shown in the image below. Do not use the headings at this point. Instead, type it in and format it the way you would like the headings to appear.

Step 2.
This is actually the part that I overlooked first.

Select all your text. Click the multiple-level list button and choose the list that has heading in it. In the picture below, it's the option that is enlarged. It says kop because I'm using the Dutch version of Word 2007.

Now, you need to tell Word that you want multiple levels - not just 1 level.

Click the multiple-level list button. There's an option that lets you change the level of the list item. For each heading you want to create, change the level.

Step 3.

The last step. Select each heading and then right-click the corresponding style button in the ribbon and select "update style to selection". That may not be the exact wording (again, I'm on a Dutch copy of Word) but it should be the first item in your list. Check the image for further help.

Do this for all your headings. Save the template and press ctrl-n to start a new document. Your headings will be autonumbered.

---

There is still a large number of webdesigners and webdevelopers that use tables over divs and CSS to design their website. This article is meant as a "getting started" tutorial to help you move from tables to divs.

This is in no way a complete guide to CSS-centered design, and it certainly doesn't explain about all the niceties of CSS-centered design. It's meant to help people move away from tables and start appreciating CSS-centered design.

Using a doctype

The first thing you want is a doctype. More specifically, you'll want a STRICT doctype. Most of the problems people encounter at first when using divs instead of tables arise from using transitional doctypes. Strict doctypes will make sure that all browsers look upon your CSS in more or less the same way - you eliminate a lot of the margin/padding/alignment problems by using STRICT doctypes. Use the following at the very top of your documents.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">

Yes, you can use 1.1 if you prefer. It's even better, since there is no confusion between strict, transitional or framesets in this XHTML standard.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">

Designing for Divs

Being a good webdesigner doesn't just mean coming up with fancy graphics. Being a good webdesigner also means knowing the limitations of (X)HTML, CSS and keeping those in mind when designing. To make your life easier, here are a few rules of thumb.

• Separate the header from the content from the navigation from the footer from the disclaimer from the sidebar. That doesn't mean your layout has to be columnar or in blocks - it just means that you should see the HTML while designing the page. Know where the different sections of your website will be and layout accordingly;
• Use elaborate CSS where possible to substitute for images;
• Use background images where possible to substitute for elaborate and complex HTML;

Centering your web layout

Instead of using a master table and setting the width to 100% and then fitting the actual table with your design, you can use the following the autocenter your web layout.

Consider the following HTML content.

<body>
<div id="wrapper">This div will be perfectly centered.</div>
</body>

Pair the HTML content with the CSS below.

body, html
{
     margin: auto;
}

#wrapper
{
     margin: auto;
}

Setting the margin to "auto" will make sure your browsers autocenters the layout by calculating the left and right margins necessary to center the layout.

The Wrapper

The wrapper div is a container that you set to the width you want your website to have. It's the box that you'll be working in. You can omit this if you want your website to be "fullscreen".

Creating columnar layout

Creating columnar layout is simple. Use float to make certain DIVs align left or right, automatically. Give them a width to work with and you're set. Use clear to clear to reset the alignment.

Consider the following HTML content.

<body>
     <div id="wrapper">
          <div id="columnleft">This is the left column</div>
          <div id="columnright">This is the right column</div>
     </div>
</body>

There are several ways to make the left column align left and the right column align right. The method you choose is based on what column you want to have priority. The column you want to have priority should be declared first. The float property you need is the result of this decision. If you want the RIGHT column to have priority, then you first declare the RIGHT column and then set the float property to RIGHT.

<body>
     <div id="wrapper">
          <div id="columnright" style="float: right;">This is the right column</div>
          <div id="columnleft"This is the left column</div>
     </div>
</body>

<body>
     <div id="wrapper">
          <div id="columnleft" style="float: left;">This is the left column</div>
          <div id="columnright">This is the right column</div>
     </div>
</body>

<body>
     <div id="wrapper">
          <div id="columnleft" style="float: left;">This is the left column</div>
          <div id="columnright">This is the right column</div>
     </div>
     <div style="clear:both">This will reset to the full width of your wrapper. Ideal for a footer, for example.</div>
</body>

Questions?

Questions? Post them in the comments and I'll answer them. Most of them. At least the ones pertaining to CSS and/or this article.

---

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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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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