Security

Security for everyone has been more of an issue and continues to be as we move into the future. One of our wiring closets has been unlocked with the door propped open for years. It was always stated that closing the door made the room heat up to much. Well, I guess the heat problem is now under control and the door is locked. A more secure wiring closet, I can't just walk in and disconnect everything, but any confidential information that needed to be shred was also put in a bin in that closet. Now that the closet is locked a drop chute is going to be put in to get anything that needs to be shred into the bin in the locked room. We lock the door and now we are going to cut a hole in the wall. For some reason it sounds like something you would see in a Dilbert Comic Strip.

MS Security Update CD

Get a Windows Security Update CD shipped to you free of charge. Click here. It has critical updates released through October 2003. These days that doesn't sound all that current does it.

Quick response

Wow, what a quick response. Hmm, is Ed Brill really just a Notes application? An IBM/Lotus gimmick. Electronic Data By Real Intelligent Logical Linguistics.

Just kidding, but it was a quick response. Check out the times. Thanks Ed!

From: bonj blog
Date: 02/26/2004 04:45 PM
To: ed_brill
Subject Re: Post 2/25/04 IM in Notes 6.5.1 - Licensing Questions

This may end up in the FAQs that will be forthcoming, but wanted to follow-up on your post regarding the inclusion of IM. Is the inclusion of IM simply on the client side (Notes 6.5.1) or is it included on the server side (Domino 6.5.1) as well?

I guess my question boils down to, do I need to purchase the server piece to utilize the IM that is now included in the client or is it now included in Domino as well?

Blog on!

Thanks,
Bonj
http://bonj.blogspot.com

----------------------------------------

To: "bonj blog"
Subject: Re: Post 2/25/04 IM in Notes 6.5.1 - Licensing Questions
From: ed_brill
Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2004 16:53:09 -0500

pretty frequently asked question, yes

There is a Sametime server component required, and it runs on Domino 6.5.1. However, no additional license is required for it -- the IM piece is licensed for both the per-user client as well as the server required. You only need to buy something if you want the extranet connector.

--Ed

S/390 to blade servers

We may be moving from the S/390 platform to blade servers. The data center is to setup a meeting to discuss further. I'll post more as the discussions take place.

Note to Ed

Just sent a note to Ed (work/play) regarding his IM/Awareness post. Just wondering if the inclusion is on the server side as well or if one needs to purchase that piece. I will let you know what I find out.

Not 100%

I am not 100 percent, but the triple threat prescribed by the doctor has me on the right track. Definitely much better today.

Probably not wise, but after feeling a bit better from the medicine went on to Volleyball last night. Ended up short as two on our team had the time wrong. Last match for the league. The four of us put in a good effort, loosing by no more than three points in the first two games. One of our players showed up with just a few points left in the second game. As we had five (as it was late enough he called our sixth player and said don't bother coming - they both thought we had the next match), we won the last game 25-22. The team we played was the second place team. After loosing the two to them we ended up 26-4 on the season and they were 24-6. Whew!

I've got two more matches tonight. Hopefully I'll survive.

Dr. visit results

A little Allerx-D, a little Omnicef, and a little Rhinocort Aqua. Hopefully that will do the trick.

Dr. Appt.

Headed to the Doctor in a bit. I have a sinus infection. Yuck!

They're Back

I just checked and it appears that Haloscan is functioning properly again. I expected that they would be.

No Comments

Well, I had comments. It appears that Haloscan is down this morning. Hopefully only temporarily.

Resource

I noticed in a brief tidbit in the February issue of Law Technology News a couple of links that may be of interest to those trying to run a small business in the United States. It is the FirstStep Employment Law Advisor and the Employment Law Guide.

XP

Looking at Chad Dickerson's article "Code Warrior" shows that even when you are on both sides, the customer and the coder, it is hard to get all of the requirements up front. I think one of the pluses to Extreme Programming (XP) methodology is that it is not so rigid. It doesn't say I need to know everything up front then go away and come back with a solution to what was asked for 2 years ago. It accepts change as part of the process.

We are all human. As the abstract theory of what one asks for becomes more tangible, it is only then that one can see more clearly what is possible and have the realization of what could be.

You can find more on the Extreme Programming site, or you might check out an article by Duffbert (Thanks Duffbert for adding my first comment from the real world.) that I mentioned in a previous post.

COMMENTS

I had figured Blogger would add comments at some point in time, but that hasn't happened yet, so I figured out (a little slow I guess) that there are free comment sites out there. No real big reason, but after looking at a few, I decided I would try Haloscan. We'll see how it goes. Feel free to add a Comment or try out the Trackback.

Spyware

Spyware, just about as bad as viruses! Check out PC Magazine's article on spyware removal software, "Spy Stoppers".

Phone

Seems like there are new ones about everyday.
Here is another take on the phone keyboard. Click on the phone to read a review.

Studio E

Looks like a Honda model to battle the Scion Xa an Xb. My kids would probably like it.

Studio E

Xa

Xb

Bloglines down, thus Blogroll down

As my blogroll is based off of items I have on Bloglines and Bloglines is down for maintenance, no Blogroll.

Here is what the site says:

Dear Bloglines Users,
The Bloglines service is undergoing a fixer-upper. We hope to be back at 11am Pacific Time.

Don't worry, everything will be better when I'm done with it.

The Bloglines Plumber

Falling Servers?

I didn't know they were falling, but thought I would pass on a link to an article on Software Development Times, "As Domino Servers Fall, Trilog Takes Notes".

Excerpt:

As far as Lotus Notes is concerned, it would seem that the bloom is off the rose. And although IBM Corp. continues to advance the Notes/Domino platform, with an update as recently as September 2003, the company’s long-term strategy appears to be to migrate users to J2EE and DB2.

Vacation Home - Casa Sirena

Hmm, might not be a bad vacation home. Guess I better start saving. Okay, I am up to 1 cent now. I guess this might take a while.

Viruses

They make the news a lot and keep getting worse and worse. You see new stories about them almost daily. When will it stop? More people are practicing safe computing, but it makes you wonder when the really big one is going to hit. The one that wipes your machine at home and work, the servers at work, the network, and the Internet. What would we do without it all.

If such a scenario happened would you know how to contact all of the people you currently communicate with? Do you have the information somewhere else outside your computer? Do you even know the full name of everyone you communicate with or are some simply an e-mail address that doesn't tie to their personal identity in any other way? Would the kids give a blank stare when you said to get the phone book or to call information?

Just as in real life the viruses can take some of the fun out of it.

Let's just hope the brilliant minds combating the viruses are better than those creating them.

Sandbox

Although in the real world there may be some things that you don't want to pick up from the sandbox, there may be a few things you want to consider picking up from the Lotus Sandbox. It seems that I tend to go a few months after looking in it to look again, so the date view works well, but this may just be the reminder that you needed to go take a look.

Is it love? : Part 2

I think the answer to the Honda question would be, "Yes, it is love!", if they would give me a Honda SUT. I could probably live with a Japanese Truck. Kind of a cross between a Chevy Avalanche and a Dodge Ram Pickup.

2-25-05 Image link updated. We now know it is called the RidgeLine.

Is it love?

2-25-05 Link to images removed as they are no longer on the Honda site.
Honda has kind of a funny little campaign. You take a picture of yourself that best represents one of the cars they have listed. I saw the photo of the Honda Insight from the side and with it's rear wheel skirts thought of an old farm hat with the ear flaps. You can't alter the photos. A black hat and a better looking dude under the hat would be better, but oh well. You can rate your favorites for all of the different Honda photos here.

Search Engines

From my post on 10/17/2002, I would say I fall into the average mentioned in the article "Search wars are about to get personal".

On average, people use two different search engines a month, according to new data from market researcher ComScore Media Metrix. And while Google commands the most loyalty from searchers, even those people find the need to cheat sometimes.

As mentioned I use Google and Altavista most often, in that order. Come up with an equal or better search engine that is one syllable and can be quickly typed and I think you would have a chance at a winner. You may have to promote. Maybe try the orkut approach, you can't use the search engine unless you get an invitation.

I think part of the problem for Yahoo and MSN in trying to wrestle the crown away from Google is that the only thing people really correlate with Google and Altavista is "Search Engine". That is not the case with Yahoo and MSN. They are trying to be more, e-mail, content, search, etc.., which I think takes them out of the thinking for first on the list of searching, unless you utilize those sites heavily for other things and the convenience works for you. If they can truly give better search results then they might be able to sway traffic. Yes, Google has other things going on, Blogger, orkut, etc.., but go to Google and you know what you are there for. If MSN and Yahoo brand their search with a short quick name and then utilize it on the parent site I think they would have better luck. As I said, something quick and simple, like fast (FASTNET, a Internet Access Provider, already has that domain registered, but something like that). Something you can type quickly with one hand.

Only time will tell who the next winner will be.

Some other search engines not mentioned above (some are more or less duplicates on the back end and/or have the same parent company, some utilize one of more of the other to give results, but I have listed several here anyway):

All The Web
AOL
Ask Jeeves You can get to this via a single syllable, but needs to be a better engine and then promote the "ask" domain over "ask jeeves" and it might have a chance.
Direct Hit
Dogpile
Excite
Fast Search
Findspot
Go
Hotbot
Infospace
Inktomi
Kanoodle
LookSmart
Lycos
Netscape
Open Directory Project
Overture
Search.com (previously savvysearch)
Teoma
Vivisimo
WebCrawler
WiseNut

Tuesday?

It may be Tuesday, but the way things are going it sure seems like a Monday. Of course, the problems that one experiences the first day back after a weekend seem to be there no matter what day you start the work week on (we were off from work yesterday) and it always seems that four day work weeks simply mean that you now have five days of work to get done in four.

Maybe don't watch it

As I have tried MobiTV several times throughout the day it looks as though the app may be a bit early compared to the capacity of the network, etc.. Cool idea, but speeds up the battery usage and it does break up a fair amount. Off hours and plugged in would be the best recommendation, but during those times it is probably likely that you will have easy access to a regular tv, so why bother. Worth trying for the novelty, but I don't see myself keeping the subscription ($9.99/mo).

1,000 hits.

I can't remember when I actually added the counter, but it has been some time now. I have actually passed the 1,000 hit mark (non-unique). Nothing compared to many out there, but evidently there are a few that have stumbled across the site.

TV on the phone

Okay, I am trying the mobitv (around 6am). It is pretty cool. Decent video all things considered (still somewhat of a slideshow like RealOne and 1KTV) and pretty good audio too. Since trying the audio during a busier time of day (9am) there do seem to be more breaks in the audio. It appears that it is not skipping the audio, but taking a bit longer to get it with more skips in the video.

It has an annoying feature though! About every 5 minutes it ask you to press a button to keep playing. I understand not wanting to waste any bandwidth that is not being used, but this is totally annoying. I had it going and turned on the TV, switched through a couple of the channels simultaneously on the phone and the tv. Same content coming across, although the phone feed is roughly 30 seconds behind that on the tv.

Watch It!

This may be somewhat trivial, but it is an interesting application and if you are on the road a lot it might be nice for passing the time if your phone has enough battery life. What am I ranting about? It is mobitv. It is available from SprintPCS on some of the phones they offer.

See a demo here.

I have a Sanyo 8100. I have done the whole picture thing. You can see many of them here on Textamerica's site.

I have also tried the 1KTV and RealOne thing. They are pretty cool, but they are more like slide shows and the content isn't always as up to date as one would like. This may end up being the next phone app I try. The phone applications from Sprint have a monthly subscription cost, which if subscribing to several apps can run up quickly. I think they try to make it a bit more difficult for you to remove them as you can easily purchase them via the phone or web, but can only unsubscribe via the web.

The following is just a gripe session, so you may want to simply skip it.

Just one more way Sprint tries to nickel and dime you to death. Great phone, great service (at least it has been for me for the most part - I know some would disagree), but the customer service always leaves something to be desired. One of their latest ways of trying to get money out of you is by adding Sprint PCS Voice Command to your account every time you call. They will say they will add three free months of Voice Command to your account to compensate for the hassle of calling in, etc... It doesn't matter that I say no every time. I have still had it show up on my account more than once. Sure the first three months are free, but they expect you to forget about it and then they will start getting another five bucks a month. They did it to me again recently. I called back in and told them to take it off. That didn't happen, but at least it is finally to the point that I can remove it via the web. If you can do it via the web that is my suggestion as it usually works best and you don't have to talk to a clueless rep. The way the sell (rent) games/ringers/screensavers is a rip off too. Another gripe I have is that anytime you would have something changed on your account (adding a service, etc...) via a phone representative you cannot access your online billing, minutes, etc.. until the next billing cycle. Many times if you do the same thing via the web you do not loose the ability to get to your information. Okay, that is enough for now. It is a love - hate relationship as if you couldn't tell.

Social Networking - Online Communities

Interesting to see how many people are posting about orkut and how much of a buzz it has going. Capturing the curiosity of people can bring about a frenzy. It will be interesting to see if people feel the same way about orkut once they get in. One article stated that a person paid $11 online to get an invitation. Funny.

I have not delved into the online community scene much, so I don't have much to compare it to, but it appears the biggest use is searching for a date. As it is in it's infancy, it could be that the community, knowledge sharing, etc.. will grow as it does.

Will it survive and is it worth it. Time will tell.

Is being in such a gated community any different or any better than sharing ideas and info via the blogging community for all to see? I guess the thought is that bad apples won't get it. Well when someone wants to make a buck and will sell an invite on e-bay then it sounds like the bad apple is already in and openly inviting more.

If you want to find out more you can simply search on "orkut". Hmm, where would one search for info on something that is affiliated with Google. If you want to see info in the news, then try the News (Beta) search on Google.

You can also follow these links for more thoughts:

Anti-Mega - orkut
Anti-Mega - The fatal flaw of formalized social networking.

arve bersvendsen - Why you should read Terms of Services and Privacy Policies

An MIT Enterprise Technology Review - I want to be your friend!

news.com - Google's Orkut gets back online

Online Business Networking - "OK, I’m in!"—Orkut’s exclusive launch triggers small world effect in real-time

Newsday.com - Google Breaks Ice With Orkut Latest to launch social network

Thanks for the invite Sarah.

Editor

As I have mentioned before I am not a programmer, just something that doesn't click with my brain. Anyway someone mentioned this editor (Crimson Editor) to me and I thought I would pass it on. Not sure how good it is, but hopefully it is worth the price (free).

Excerpt from site:

Crimson Editor is a professional source editor for Windows.

This program is not only fast in loading time, but also small in size (so small that it can be copied in one floppy disk).

While it can serve as a good replacement for Notepad, it also offers many powerful features for programming languages such as HTML, C/C++, Perl and Java.

It also states that it can be extended for other programming languages by setting up custom syntax files.

Exploited

I occasionally check to see where I am falling on the search engines, not that anyone is really searching for me. As I update somewhat regularly searching on "Bonj" does often show my blog near the top. In looking recently I found that I did not show near the top and found that my blog had completely vanished from the list. I got to thinking about it a bit and I am guessing I know why. I had a post clearly pointing out that it was an example of the IE exploit. As I posted later McAfee added detection of the exploit and goes a bit crazy when it finds it listing it as a Trojan. I imagine the fact that it somewhat appeared that the page held a virus that it was removed from the search engine results. Have since removed the post referring to the exploit. Only time will tell if is creeps back into the search results.

Cyberalert System

See the article on NEWS.COM or simply go to the site to sign up for alerts.

Phone Scoop

Here is a site that may be of interest for those always looking at new cell phones.

Domino 6.5 Editor's Choice Winner

Check out the "E-mail Servers" article in the February 17, 2004 issue of PC Magazine.

Excerpt:

For small and midsize companies looking both for basic e-mail and for group calendaring, the choice comes down to Domino or Exchange. In Domino's favor: better multiplatform support, easier setup, and more features (such as instant messaging) included in the base product. Notes also offers unmatched customizability, with a programming language and interface design tool that lets you build collaborative tools, workflows, and databases tailored exactly to your company's needs. The downside: A less-familiar client interface. Despite this one drawback, Domino gets our Editors' Choice as the best overall groupware server.

Site registrations/profiles, etc..

It has been happening for some time, but the endless profiles, userids, passwords, etc.. are tiring. As posted a while back, my e-mail address changed at work. It will work for another year, but as it is on my mind since the change, whenever I visit different sites that have my e-mail address in the profile I have been updating the accounts. It seems that each time one does this there is an additional required item, or question to answer, or you find out about a new requirement on password length, etc.. Ugh!!!!! Frustrating. Stop the madness. Please!