Archive for September, 2007

Seen on Insignificant Thoughts.

I love OpenOffice. I have been using it instead of Microsoft Office for over a year now, and I must say I am very happy with it.

Enterprise software for free? Apparently so. IBM has just releated a new enterprise-grade suite of office productivity applications, called Lotus Symphony. The free software that comprises Lotus Symphony includes a word processor, spreadsheet program, and business presentation applications that are clearly targeted at the capabilities of the popular Microsoft Office suite.

Symphony builds upon IBM’s recent decision to contribute software code to the OpenOffice.org community, while promoting the Open Document Format (ODF). Since Symphony is based on ODF, organizations can rest assured that they will be able to use and modify all of their documents for the long-term, according to Steve Mills, the senior VP of IBM’s Software Group. “With the Open Document Format, businesses will be able to unlock their information, making it universally accessible on any platform and on the Web in highly flexible ways,” Mills said.

I’m not sure I would try Lotus Symphony, as the whole “Lotus” name still gives me the heeby-jeebies. Maybe it doesn’t have that effect on you, so feel free to try it.

If this happened to me, I would think that someone had a hidden camera somewhere waiting for my reaction.

A batch of laptops pre-installed with Windows Vista Home Premium was found to have been infected with a 13-year-old boot sector virus.

Those of you with a long memory will vividly recall the year 1994: Nirvana’s lead singer Kurt Cobain died, South Africa held its first multi-racial elections, and Tony Blair became leader of the Labour party. Oh, and Microsoft’s operating system was the quaint, pre-NT Windows for Workgroups.

But it was a year that also saw the arrival of a boot sector computer virus known as Stoned.Angelina which moved the original master boot record to cylinder 0, head 0, sector 9.

Talk about a crapshoot. I think we’d have better luck finding designer knockoffs at some wholesale clothing store than we would avoiding some of the viruses out there.

[Source: The Register via Dvorak]

Looking for a total managed integrated web solution? At the day job, we are looking for just the right intranet software, and we discovered Epazz.

One of the problems we have is connectivity from some of our jobsites, and Epazz offers a free 30 day trial, which will allow us to test it under our specific set of conditions.

Epazz offers total managed hosted solutions, website content management, group scheduling, and a whole lot more. Who knows. Epazz may be just the solution we are looking for.

Do we really need another social networking site?

What the hell? Sure, there’s money in social networking, but just how social can people be online? Think about it. If people are spending their day sending Facebook updates, posting on MySpace, checking their Orkut contacts, Twittering their fingers off, Powncing on their friends, sitting at Bebo, or Mashing things up, when will they have time for face to face communication with people?

Heck, I love social networking and all the technology that goes along with it, but aren’t we losing touch with one of the very things that makes us what we are?

When was the last time you chatted with the clerk at the corner store? Have you ever had a conversation with the guy at the dry cleaners? Didn’t your mom warn you about talking to strangers?

How long has it been since you talked with your next door neighbor? Do you even know your neighbor’s name? Do you even want to know his name? If not, why are you inviting 4,000 people to follow you on Twitter? He may be one of those 4,000 people you know.

Social networking online is not a bad thing as long you balance it with social networking with people face to face sometime.

Yahoo Inc. is testing an experimental social network service called Mash that makes it easy for Yahoo users to share tidbits of their lives with friends and family online, the company said on Sunday.

Mash, to which a limited number of public users began being invited as testers on Friday, was described by a spokeswoman as a new, next-generation service that is independent from the company’s 2- year-old Yahoo 360 degree profile service.

…

Mash amounts to a new stab at competing with the likes of News Corp’s MySpace, Facebook, Bebo or Google’s Orkut, which have attracted tens of millions of users worldwide.

Sorry Yahoo, I just don’t have time for yet another social networking site. Good luck though.

First they force us to use an operating system vulnerable to this kind of thing in the first place, then they force feed the fix to all of their users.

Microsoft Corp. is forcing Windows Live and MSN Messenger users to upgrade to the newest version due to a security update included in that release, according to a posting on a Microsoft blog.

Anyone using 6.2, 7.0 and 7.5 versions of MSN Messenger or Windows Live Messenger 8.0 will be guided through the upgrade process to Windows Live Messenger 8.1 when they try to log in to their chat client, according to a blog posting by a security product manager at Microsoft calling himself “Anand.” This will replace the option upgrade notice that users have been given when using those versions of the product since January, he wrote.

Imagine if Microsoft was your parent, and you didn’t want to eat your peas. Thank goodness they aren’t in charge of medical supplies either. How pleasant.

In the 20 years I have been programming, I have never learned to play golf. Many of the people I work with have offered to take me out for a round, but since I don’t even know what the heck I would be doing, I figured it wasn’t a very good idea.

As soon as I get caught up on a few projects I should have some extra money to play with, and I have been thinking of getting some golf clubs so I can at least start learning. I know one thing for sure, it would be nice to get away from the computer once in a while and smack the heck out of stuff while I am doing it.

There is something kind of funny about this story.

A Republican Party Web site has been hacked, and for some time it has been spreading a variation of the long-running Storm Trojan horse to vulnerable visitors, a security researcher said Friday.

This is the first time that Storm has taken to the Web for its victims, said Dan Hubbard, head of research at San Diego-based Websense Inc. “The big news is that Storm has added infecting sites to its arsenal,” said Hubbard.

Storm debuted in January but only cracked the top malware lists early this summer, and has become infamous for its ability to adapt its infection strategies.

I know there’s a joke there somewhere, I just haven’t found it yet. If it’s not a joke, then I need to undergo some drug rehabilitation right quick.

Today was a good day. I finally upgraded from an old 17” CRT monitor to a new 22” LCD monitor. Life is good.

Oh yeah… This made my day. It sure beats the day I had yesterday.

I was sitting here, minding my own business, when a guy calls and asks me for me by name. When I assure him that he is speaking with me, he starts rambling about a Dodge Charger accessory that he needs, and he won’t take no for an answer. I finally convinced him that someone had their wires crossed and I was not the person he was looking for. I hope he found the part he needed though, cuz his car sounds ultra cool.

is this really a good idea? I know it sounds like a good idea, but the types of interaction between two people on eBay is completely different than that between two people on some random dating site.

Buy and sell enough goods on eBay and you’ll accumulate a score based on feedback left by other users. Visit another site, however, and you must rebuild your reputation from scratch.

A Boston-based startup is trying to change that with a reputation system that travels with you, whether you’re seeking roommates at a classifieds site like Craigslist or love at a dating site.

“We believe reputation is something that needs to be horizontal,” said Shawn Broderick, chief executive of TrustPlus Inc. “If I’m a good buyer on eBay, that should be reflected when I’m on Craigslist.”

People who’ve had dealings with you can rate you using your e-mail address, eBay Inc. username, telephone number or another identifier.

My reputation with former friends and girlfriends will be far different than my reputation with business associates and people who have sold me schtuff. Should the rating given by a jilted lover have any real impact on whether or not you want to buy a used DVD from me on eBay?

Of course it shouldn’t, unless of course that DVD contains explicit material from said jilted lover anyway.