Tuesday, August 12, 2003

Ben Shneiderman : A More User-Friendly Direction A More User-Friendly Direction Are you waiting for a usable interface? The Renaissance integration of disciplines that Leonardo da Vinci exemplified could be our new guide. Reprinted by permission of MIT Press. Excerpt from Leonardo's Laptop: Human Needs and the New Computing Technologies. Copyright 2002, by Ben Shneiderman; All Rights Reserved. Link from Tomalak's Realm 8:32:46 PM    comment []

Here we go again Charles Cooper: Here we go again. [Scripting News] 8:25:41 PM    comment []

Microsoft Mac Office includes x86 emulator and a copy of Windows XP I guess you have to move your product somehow. This struck me as a bit bizarre. Microsoft expands Mac Office line with x86 emulator. Cuts prices too [The Register] 8:03:05 PM    comment []

Killing the music: who's the real enemy here? Ars Technica posts Killing the music: who's the real enemy here? with a pointer to an equally good BBC article. Bottom line: sharing a party mix with friends, or letting a friend check out a new album is not the same as selling mass-duplicated copies on the street corner. But you already knew that. 7:52:38 PM    comment []

The Ten Habits of Highly Annoying Bloggers Jeremy Zawodny nails it with The 10 Habits of Highly Annoying Bloggers. I am guilty of #2 and #8, but that's because that's how I chose to blog. Mine is an aggregator and ny editorial choices reflect the voice behind them. Most of my audience reads few, if any, other blogs. Link courtesy of Garrett Fitzgerald 7:33:51 PM    comment []

Robert X. Cringely: Body Count: Why Moving to India Won't Really Help IT "There was a story in the news a couple weeks ago about how IBM was planning to move thousands -- perhaps tens of thousands -- of technical positions to India. This isn't just IBM, though. Nearly every big company that is in the IT outsourcing or software development business is doing or getting ready to do the same thing. They call this "offshoring," and its goal is to save a lot of money for the companies involved because India is a very cheap place to do business. And it will accomplish that objective for awhile. In the long run, though, IT is going to have the same problems in India that it has here. The only real result of all this job-shifting will be tens of thousands of older engineers in the U.S. who will find themselves working at Home Depot. You see, "offshoring" is another word for age discrimination. " Read the rest of the column. 7:23:30 PM    comment []

MSBlast Prevention and Cure A new worm exploiting an older Microsoft flaw. Read the story at http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105_2-5062532.html?tag=fdfeed More details here: http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105_2-5062524.html?tag=fdfeed A friend called me yesterday to say the Internet was falling down around him (he also said it was a buffer overflow in an RPC call to DCOM, so maybe he knew what he was talking about). Another complained the user group boards were down and the ISP wasn't too responsive. It will be interesting to see what happens Saturday. With this much warning, can a DDOS be deflected? 9:38:30 AM    comment []

Welcome back, Craig! Five posts in a few days puts Craig Berntsen back in the blogoshere, and on my blogroll at right. Keep 'em coming, Craig! And how 'bout an RSS feed, to complete the circuit? 9:36:57 AM    comment []

Microsoft re-issues security bulletins MS03--024 and -025? In my inbox this morning are two security bulletins originally issued by Microsoft on July 9th. I cannot find anything in the body of the message or the linked bulletins that indicate why these were re-issued, whether the original patch had a flaw that required a patched-patch, or whether Microsoft was sending these out based on reports of ISPs shutting down sites yesterday based on a DDOS attack. No clue. Here are the links, patch if you haven't: http://www.microsoft.com/security/security_bulletins/ms03-025.asp http://www.microsoft.com/security/security_bulletins/ms03-024.asp It's also worthwhile to run Windows Update regularly, and review the basic security precautions Microsoft recommends at http://www.microsoft.com/security. 9:21:30 AM    comment []

Cringely: SCO, IBM, Fox, Ratliff, Long and Ashton the macaw Great column by Robert X. Cringely at his PBS haunts on why SCO is doomed to fail in its persecution of IBM, and what may be really motivating the suit. In addition, a bit on Oracle, Peoplesoft, SAP, J.D. Edwards, IBM and DB2. And if that's not enough for you, a little history of Ashton-Tate, JPL, Wayne Ratliff and Jeb Long. All in 1700 words. Cringely rocks. Link courtesy of Craig Berntsen 9:06:23 AM    comment []