Jeremy points to a Bruce Perens article which more or less accuses Microsoft of being the puppetmaster behind the whole SCO-Linux mess. Josh Allen has a great rebuttal that correctly points out that a conspiracy in this case is, ahem, unlikely. That’s all I have to say about that.
Well, OK, not really. I have to admit that I got a kick out of Eric Raymond’s contention (see page 2 of the story) that the Linux gang is the “principal source of innovation in software”. They’re busy ripping off copying reinventing every feature they can grab from vendors as diverse as MS, Apple, and Opera (not to mention Sun and Palm). I have yet to see anything as innovative from Linux as any of the following: auto-discovery of WiFi networks (Win XP), Quartz compositing (Mac OS X), browser-based S/MIME email (Exchange 2003), complete support for FireWire 800 (Apple), support for IP over FireWire (Apple, Microsoft, and some other third-party ISVs)… I could probably think of some others, but I have real work to do.
FUD and Linux
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Filed under Smackdown!
The perfect day?
So, here’s a breakdown of yesterday:
| Activity | Score |
| Yardwork | +5 | Just because I wanted to | +25 | Trip to Lowe’s | +10 | And buying something | +20 | It was lumber | +50 | More yardwork | +0 | Using concrete | +25 | And a saw | +100 |
| Hanging out with Tim | +50 |
| While using power tools | +125 |
| Dinner | +10 |
| It was gumbo | +25 |
| For the 2nd night in a row | +50 |
In the morning, Thomas and I dug up a bunch of, well, crap from the front beds. I then dug up a couple of dead bushes in the back yard, then watched Thomas cut down a tree that had grown into the fence. We went to Lowe’s to buy lumber, concrete, swingset parts, and other essentials; when we came home, I took down about 20 feet of old side-yard fencing, with lots of help from Tim. Tim and I reset two fenceposts and fixed a sagging section of fence, then I dug up some more crap while Tim made a custom fencepost to replace one that had rotted. We reset that too (so much for the rest of the concrete), then made a huge run to the dump. Then gumo, after which came the Great TV Adventure, about which more later.
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Filed under Friends & Family
If you need me, I’ll be on the sofa watching TV
Next Tuesday, the installoid is coming to put in my HDTV box. The local provider has HBO, Showtime, Discovery HD, and the local CBS affiliate. This is kind of disappointing; I don’t watch anything on CBS, so I’d much rather have ABC and Fox. Supposedly, they’re coming soon, along with ESPN-HD. (However, ESPN is broadcasting in 720p, and I am too cheap to buy a 720p TV at this stage of HD’s maturity, so when I do get it it’ll be upconverted to 1080i).
Because this is just a test, it’s too early to tell how much Buckeye will charge, what other channels they add, and so on. I figure that if I really like the HD content, I’ll be better able to stomach buying an over-the-air tuner for local channels and an HD-capable satellite receiver. Then again, maybe not. I also have to budget for a progressive-scan DVD player; my three-year-old Zenith 2550 has component out, but no p-scan. I need to find someone with a p-scan player and a conventional TV and horse trade with them, probably.
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Filed under Uncategorized
Build your own safety sign
This has many cool applications. I don’t know what they are, though.
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Filed under General Tech Stuff
If the shoe fits…
My old tennis shoes have been getting a bit ratty, so I thought I’d pop over to Amazon and order some new ones. This has two benefits: I get a small kickback, and I avoid having to go out and waste time actually looking for shoes. However, there’s a slight problem: they don’t actually have any shoes in my size. I could understand if they only had ugly shoes in size 13, but c’mon… even the fugly ones top out at size 11 or so. I guess I should be happy that their real-time database integration shows exactly which sizes they have in stock, but it’s still disappointing that I am now condemned to visit Shoe Carnival or the equivalent.
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Filed under Musings
Photos: a mixed blessing
I downloaded a nifty little package called ChangeDesktop that does pretty much what its name implies. Every hour, it changes the background of my two desktop monitors by randomly choosing an image for each monitor from the 1900+ photos I have filed away. Not coincidentally, most of these photos are of family members. It’s wonderful to see the progression of our sons over the years, but at the same time it’s bittersweet to see (e.g.) a photo of David at age three: I can clearly see how that little proto-David had the seeds of the David I see now, and it’s hard to be reminded of how fast they’re growing and how little real time we have with them. Excuse me while I go snivel for a bit.
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Filed under Friends & Family
The Ali G translator
me is glad dat there’s a way to turn ordinary text into da wicked way dat ali natters. now i too can be wicked, just dig im. (courtesy of the Ali G translator) Betty and Julie, please use your new powers responsibly.
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Filed under Friends & Family
Think you’re tough?
No matter how tough you think you are, I bet you’re a puff compared to this guy.
Update: It’s worse than I thought; turns out the guy took three days to complete his amputation. Wow.
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Filed under Musings
On the road with cached mode
So, this is my first real opportunity to test Outlook 2003’s cached mode on a real road trip; I’m in Seattle for an Exchange 2003 airlift. I use Outlook 2003 for three accounts: my home account, my work account, and my Microsoft account. The first two are homed on the same server (for the time being), fronted by ISA Server so I can access them without a VPN. The third requires me to VPN in to Microsoft; at least, it did before I enabled RPC over HTTP yesterday.
I made sure to let Outlook catch up my MS mailbox before I left, with the happy result that I could plow through the 2500+ unread messages in it while flying to Seattle, but I ignored the other two to give cached mode a fair trial. When I arrived at the hotel, I plugged in my laptop, signed on to the in-room broadband connection ,and ttweaked my HOSTS file to point to the external IP of the mail server. While unpacking, I let my personal account sync; while brushing my teeth and sleeping, I let the work account catch up. When I awoke, I had a full inbox, which for me is the equivalent of having the morning paper waiting on the front step when I get up. I was able to blitz through the accumulated mail and get right to work. I left the hotel and went over to the convention center for breakfast and registration. After registering, I was able to plug in to a network drop, quickly pick up new mail in all three accounts, and enter the keynote session. Throughout the day, I could pop in and out to send queued replies and pick up new messages with a minimum of disruption. If only synchronizing offline files worked as well as this does! Big kudos to the Outlook team for building something that “just works”.
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Filed under General Tech Stuff
Public display of affection
So, this morning I was thinking about my sister. She and I are about as different as two people in the same family can be. She is socially and politically liberal, and I’m not. I am religious, and she’s not. I tend to be more technical, and she’s twice the people person I’ll ever be, not to mention that she unfairly got all the artistic and creative talent. (OTOH Tim and I can use power tools, so I suppose it evens out.) Despite our differences, and despite the fact that I unmercifully teased and persecuted her when we were younger, I love her, and I just wanted to make that fact widely known among the seven or eight people who read this blog. So, props to you, younger sister.
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Filed under Friends & Family
Free client-side anti-spam plugin
Steve Bass sent out an email alerting me to the fact that Amazon is giving away an anti-spam plugin for Outlook. I haven’t used it myself, but Steve’s endorsement is good enough for me to recommend it, especially since the $19.99 product carries a $20 mail-in rebate. Check it out and let me know what you think.
Update: Sunbelt was described as a spammer by John Levine, among others; it looks like the world-famous rhyolist spam list contains several entries related to Sunbelt or Stu Sjouwerman, the owner. Stu is also a Scientologist.
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Filed under General Stuff
Apple’s new music store
This is really cool: a useful, well-implemented, legal, reasonably priced way to buy and download music. It supports mobile devices, CD burning, and lots of other stuff. At $0.99/song or $9.99/album, I’m planning on fleshing out my collection. bbum has some good technical details on how the system works. Windows users, eat your heart out. Wait… I’m a Windows user too. Curses! Cognitive dissonance!
Update: Actually, this might turn out to be a problem. I normally listen to my music in three ways: on my desktop Mac, on my Windows XP laptop, or in the car. The Mac and car are no problem, but music from the Apple Store is encoded with AAC, not MPEG-3. There’s no AAC codec for Windows, and apparently burning AAC to CD and re-ripping to MP3 produces crappy quality. This might be a problem, at least until Apple ships an AAC codec for Windows.
Update again: I’ve bought a half-dozen or so tracks from the store. The experience has been flawless so far, and it’s nice to be able to fill in some of the holes in my collection.
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Filed under General Tech Stuff
TechEd’s just around the corner…
TechEd is just around the corner, and I’ve been invited to give a security session.
SEC306 Secure Messaging and Communications with Exchange Server
This session delivers the critical information that Exchange administrators, security architects, and messaging designers need to understand to protect their Exchange systems. Protecting your organization from malicious content, and misuse of messaging communications is becoming ever more critical as we depend on our messaging systems to provide anytime, anywhere access from a wide variety of devices. If you are serious about secure messaging and communications, you must attend this session. This session will focus on security updates in Exchange 2003 including relay restrictions, OWA security improvements, authenticated and restricted DLs, improved AV & Anti-spam features, and RPC-over-HTTP. Key security concepts for Exchange 2000 and Exchange 5.5 will also be summarized. Come in, sit down, and hold on tight for this fast-paced and demo-packed presentation.
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Filed under General Stuff, Musings
Need a movie?
Ever had one of those times when Blockbuster or Netflix just don’t have anything you want to watch? Now there’s a solution. I may have to rent “Fundamentals of Machine Lathe Operations”; I hear it’s boffo.
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Filed under General Tech Stuff
Habitat
I spent the morning helping to build a house for the local Habitat for Humanity chapter. I had a blast! By the time I left, the outside walls were up (save for one) and most of the inside walls were in place, except for a few that hadn’t been delivered yet. We had quite a crew: two or three Pakistani and Indian guys, a nice Jewish lady (and her dad, visiting from England), and a bunch of white male retirees of various degrees of grumpiness. Everyone worked together well, though, and it was really humbling to realize what this house means to the family that will be living in it. I’m looking forward to my next work shift.
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Filed under Spiritual Nourishment
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