The White House has released the 2010 Economic Report of the President as an eBook -- available for Kindle, Nook and ePub (for Sony readers, iPhones, and so on) This is the first time that this report has released in eBook format.
Engadget quips:
Will this be the final step that truly pushes e-books into the mainstream? Probably not. But if this rapid adoption of technology by the White House is any indication, we could well see weekly Presidential addresses in 3D next year.
I'm wondering why the Kindle version costs 99 cents while the Nook and ePub versions are free. Didn't my tax dollars already go for creating this bit of fiction?
Technorati Tags: Economic Report of the President, Lies the Government Tells, Barack Hussein Obama the Dangerous Choice
First stop: Twitter.In spite of the conclusion in final paragraph above, the fact that so many Congressmen have seized on modern communication channels is surprising. More surprising is the Republican's lead, given Obama's rather effective use of these channels during his campaign.
Earlier this month, Mark Senak, senior vice president and partner at Fleishman-Hillard, a public relations firm in Washington, D.C., issued a report titled "Twongress: The Power of Twitter in Congress" in which he analyzed the Twitter use of all members of Congress. The findings surprised him.
In Congress, he found, there are 132 members using Twitter actively: 89 Republicans and 43 Democrats. It breaks down like this: In the Senate, there are 14 Republicans using Twitter compared to 11 Democrats; and in the House, there are 75 Republicans using Twitter (42.13 percent of the Republican Caucus) and 32 Democrats (12.45 percent of the Democratic Caucus). . . .
What about YouTube?
On Jan. 21, 2010, YouTube's CitizenTube posted a year-end wrap-up that showed 89 percent of Republicans and 74 percent of Democrats in Congress have started YouTube channels to engage their constituents. More importantly, people are watching the Republican channels much more often. According to the report, eight of the top 10 most-viewed and most-subscribed YouTube channels in Congress are from the GOP, though Democrats took two of the top three spots. The top 4, in order, are Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Ca., and Boehner.
A tracking of YouTube views by industry analyst TubeMogul shows that with few exceptions, Republican videos consistently drew more clicks than those from Democrats. . . .
And lastly, Facebook, the favorite of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. Palin's Facebook page has more than 1.2 million fans.
No one in the House has that kind of reach. And we couldn't find any comprehensive analysis of engagement on FaceBook by members of Congress. But as of Jan. 22, 2010, Boehner had 31,757 fans of his page, compared to 8,745 for Pelosi. . . .
But while House Republicans may rightly crow about deeper engagement in social media than their Democratic counterparts, Senak. the author of the study, says neither side is doing particularly well compared to other large institutions. Both parties have a minority of members engaged in Twitter. And neither side has fully embraced the give-and-take of Twitter. Most members have elected to follow very few other people and rarely "re-tweet." In other words, he said, they are mostly using Twitter as a soapbox.
Baseline Magazine analyzed the last three months of IT job postings from job supersite Dice.com, and the findings are grim:
| Job Area | Jobs | % Change from 3 Months ago |
| Available Tech Jobs | 49,016 | -14.5% |
| Full Time Jobs | 30,039 | -21.8% |
| Part Time Jobs | 1,040 | -10.1% |
| Contract Jobs | 21,742 | - 9.2% |
Worse yet, last year contract jobs made up of 40% of the IT available tech jobs, but they now account for 44% of the jobs. So companies are not only not hiring as many people as they use to, they are hiring even fewer permanent employees. Tech employers are not making a long term investment in human capital, which is a sign that tech companies do not see things improving.
But for the geeks looking for work, what areas are best?
| Job Area | Jobs | % Change from 3 Months ago |
| Windows OS | 8,445 | 13.7% |
| Unix OS | 6,997 | 12.8% |
| Oracle DB | 9,119 | 18.0% |
| SQL DB | 7,389 | 11.6% |
| C / C++ / C# | 9,354 | 10.6% |
| J2EE / Java | 8,676 | 12.7% |
I was without work for 7 months 2 weeks and 3 days in a job market that was shedding jobs faster than you can pull fur off a mangy hamster by petting it with a steel brush. 7½ months without work was a long, long time, but the shrinking job market made it seem like an eternity.
So I have a lot of empathy for the growing numbers of my colleagues that suddenly find themselves out of a job. I can tell you to approach looking for work as a full time job for which you must develop new skills. I was actively looking for gainful employment about 10 hours a day, seven days a week, for 7½ months.
But now I have a fantastic position doing interesting work for an organization that does a great deal of good in the world. Being one of those growing numbers of contractors, I don’t know how long this position will last, but take it from me — there is work out there if you are willing to make the connections and do the work of finding it.
Good luck, my friends, as we wait for “Change”.
A rather long post on The BEA / Oracle Saga over on my neglected IT blog for anyone who might possibly be interested.
Plumtree was a small company that had a complex portal product (albeit in the best-of-breed class) and minimal support. Trying to do a global implementation of Portal, Collaboration, Content Server, Studio Server and PT Tracker with a technical staff of two people and a tech writer was difficult (to put it mildly).
So when BEA Systems purchased Plumtree, I was quite excited. As long as BEA didn't try to integrate Plumtree (a platform-independent portal framework) with Weblogic (a Java-based transaction portal), then everything would be fine. And they didn't — all they did was rename Plumtree Portal to "Aqua Logic User Interaction", or ALUI for short. (And to think, some marketing major probably got paid a ton of money for that awful idea!)
But things didn't improve. Here, in a nutshell, is why I would never recommend buying BEA ALUI:
Intermittent Errors - Profile Center & Service Request PortletsWhat makes this so bad is that this announcement has been up over a month (close to two, I think). In other words, a company that sells a portal product is having extended problems with their portal and can't get it fixed!
IMPORTANT: Due to problems with our back end servers you may experience poor response or time out errors in the Profile Center and in the Service Request portlets. We apologize for the inconvenience and assure you that we are working on a resolution as soon as possible. Thank you.
The worst of it all is that BEA stock, currently selling at $14 a share, is way overpriced. This means that a potential buyout by IBM, HP or Oracle (all of whom are rumored to be eyeing BEA) is improbable at best. But a purchase is the only thing that could possibly save this company. Oracle or IBM either one would whip the company into shape, coordinate product lines and provide world-class support.
Yo Larry, buy this company! Are you listening?
The big shocker at the Worldwide Developers Conference was Apple's CEO Steve Jobs announcement that Safari (the browser used by Mac users for years) is being released for Windows. For you daring types, the beta is available for download now.
First impressions from a Windows user's perspective:
Still, it's a pretty solid start. I've had more trouble with some "production" software, so you have to give Apple kudos for that.
What I don't understand is Job's reference to gaining "market share" in the browser market. Is there "market share" for something that's free? Wouldn't gaining "user base" be more accurate?
Update: Errate Security found 6 bugs (4 DoS and 2 remote code execution) in the first afternoon of fiddling with Safari, and was able to weaponize one of them. Click over to see links to others that have found bugs as well, including a different weaponized security hole. [HT to Slashdot]
The tech blogs are buzzing with the announcement of Microsoft's Surface computer.
The coffee-table shaped device is exactly that -- a table on which you can place objects (cell phones, wireless cameras, PDAs) which the device recognizes and connects with, as well as a 30-inch touch screen that accepts input from multiple points at once.
Six years in the making, it will be priced between $5K and $10K. So you'll be initially seeing this at hotels, casinos and retail outlets (you'll be able to use it to help pick out a phone at T-Mobile stores). But as with all technology, prices will drop soon making this the next cool toy for all the guys.
Watch this video from Popular Mechanics to see just how cool (click on the link for a larger version):
This is not only a radical new technology (new to the consumer world, anyway), it is a new approach to product development and marketing by Microsoft.
Microsoft Watch declares that Surface signals a sea change in how Microsoft does business:
Surface, which was developed in part by Microsoft Research, is coming to market from the Entertainment and Devices division—the same folks responsible for the Xbox and Zune. At least in the early years, Microsoft will provide the basic end-to-end hardware and software. There will be plenty of third-party software developer opportunities, as with Xbox and Xbox Live, but much less for hardware. Microsoft has no immediate plans to license Surface to other manufacturers.
In a separate article, Joe Wilcox applauds Microsoft's marketing of the product:
The blog and broader news media reaction to this announcement will be interesting. If Jobs had made the announcement, it would have been heralded as another breathtaking Apple innovation—that "one more thing"—that sets the company apart from others. Will Microsoft get as much fanfare or credit? Probably not. Should Microsoft deserve big buzz as innovator. Probably yes.
One parting thought: "Home 2.0" — you heard it here first, folks.
From the Chicago Tribune, via ThreadWatch, via Digg:
1. password
2. 123456
3. qwerty
4. abc123
5. letmein
6. monkey
7. myspace1
8. password1
9. blink182
10. (your first name)
If you use any of these, shame on you. And don't be surprised when your online bank account is suddenly emptied.
While using Google Reader to peruse some RSS feeds, I clicked on "Home" and got this:
Yeah, thanks. Not even a suggestion to reboot?
Anyone notice that trying to go to the CIA World Factbook with IE7 results in a security certificate error? It may just be me, but I find that rather humorous.
The Ultimate List of Free Windows Software from Microsoft, compliments of the Road to Know Where.
There's some pretty cool software here, like an Alt-Tab replacement that actually displays a preview of the app instead of just the icon (handy for multiple Explorer windows). It's not as slick as the built-in functionality in Vista, but it's pretty slick.
There's also a couple of upgraded calculators, some great media tools and utilities like Fiddler (". . . an HTTP Debugging Proxy which logs all HTTP traffic between your computer and the Internet. Fiddler allows you to inspect all HTTP Traffic, set breakpoints, and "fiddle" with incoming or outgoing data.).
Ah, the things you have to research for work when you're in charge of the portal initiative. For instance, who are the biggest players in internet search traffic? According to a website called Search Engine Watch:
According to ClickZ, the majority of Internet searchers use multiple search engines. (I'm one of those.)
And in the stupidest search engine factoid ever generated, 7% of doctors recommend Google, 4% recommend Yahoo! I don't trust my doctor to get my diagnosis right. Why would anyone take their recommendation for something so far outside their field?
Technorati tags: Internet Technology, Search Engines, Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, Ask.com.
Google is cracking down, telling people to stop using "google" as a verb, as in, "He asked me out and I googled him to see if he was a crackpot or something."
Most people would have the same reaction as the bloggers quoted in the CNET article linked above, but there are reasons to try and take steps to protect a trademarked word. Remember Aspirin?
Aspirin (with a capital "A") was trademarked by Bayer (along with "Heroin", a pain reliever that Bayer thought had a better future) in 1899.
But the German company Bayer teamed up with BASF and Hoechst to manufacture clorine gas for use during the First World War. In retribution, the Treaty of Versailles included a provision to strip Bayer of its patent and trademark in Britain, France, America and Russia.
The US government sold the right to use the trademark Aspirin to Sterling Drug in 1918. But:
Even before the patent for the drug expired in 1917, Bayer had been unable to stop competitors from copying the formula and using the name elsewhere, and so, with a flooded market, the public was unable to recognize "Aspirin" as coming from only one manufacturer. Sterling was subsequently unable to prevent "Aspirin" from being ruled a genericized trademark in a U.S. federal court in 1921.
A trademark is said to be "genericized" when the word enters into everyday use as a description for a product or service, a process sometimes refered to as genericide.
I remember Xerox running ads asking people to please make "photocopies", not xeroxes. That's because there has been a long history of genericide. All of these were once trademarks: aspirin, brassiere, cellophane, cola, corn flakes, escalator, granola, gunk, heroin, jungle gym, kerosene, linoleum, raisin bran, shredded wheat, tabloid, thermos, touch-tone, trampoline, yo-yo, and zipper.
Now for some terms that, so far, haven't lost trademark status:
Some products which are still registered trademarks despite the assault on their names include AstroTurf, Baggies, Band-Aid, Beer Nuts, Breathalyzer, Brillo Pads, Dacron, Dumpster, Frisbee, Hi-Liter, Hula-Hoop, iPod, Jacuzzi, Jeep, Jell-O, Jockey Shorts, Kitty Litter, Kleenex, Kool-aid, Laundromat, Liquid Paper, Magic Marker, Muzak, Novocain, Palm, Ping-Pong, Play-Doh, Popsicle, Post-it Note, Q-Tip, Realtor, Rollerblade, Scotch Tape, Scrabble, Seeing Eye (dog), Sheetrock, Slim Jim, Styrofoam, Super glue, Technicolor, Teflon, TelePrompTer, Vaseline, Velcro, Walkman and Ziploc.
We can add Google to that last list, for now.
As for me, I have to go google something on Yahoo.
While researching project methodologies today, I came across a study performed late last year: The Impact of Offshore Software and IT Services Outsourcing on the U.S. Economy and the IT Industry.
Commissioned by the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) [a group that consists of 375 corporate members -- including Microsoft and IBM], the study researched more than just America offshoring IT jobs, but rather looked at global sourcing of programming and services.
The findings include:
- The cost savings and use of offshore resources lower inflation, increase productivity, and lower interest rates. This boosts spending and increases economic activity;
- Worldwide sourcing of IT services and software increases total employment in the United States. This activity generated an additional 257,042 net new U.S. jobs in 2005; by 2010, net new jobs will total 337,625;
- Workers enjoy higher real wages. Global sourcing adds to the take-home pay of the average U.S. worker. With inflation kept low and productivity high, worldwide sourcing will increase real hourly wages in the U.S. by $0.06 in 2005, climbing to $0.12 in 2010;
- Demand for U.S. exports increases due to global sourcing. Countries can buy more because they can sell more; the U.S. has more to sell through increased investment in new products and services, better productivity and lower inflation. Global sourcing contributed $5.1 billion to U.S. exports in 2005, growing to $9.7 billion by 2010;
I find the continuing frantic desperation of programmers over the offshoring trend surprising. Sure, at first we were all worried. But I've been in IT long enough to see how these things go in cycles.
I've seen companies make drastic reductions in staff in order to hire contractors and save money on benefits. I've seen that cycle end as companies decided that keeping the experience and knowledge in-house made more sense, and that employees are more committed to quality and are willing to be held accountable.
I've seen companies turn to application service providers (ASP) to run whole sections of their IT services. I've seen companies decide that the SAs (Service Agreements) that ASPs promise can't be counted on and that doing it themselves results in faster turnaround and increases production uptime.
IT offshoring is the same. It works great for some projects (well defined requirements, documented specifications, enough time to allow for differences in time zones to stretch the project out). I can get a skilled programmer in America for $60/hour (and up) or one in India for less than $15/hour.
But nothing will ever take the place of meeting with users, showing prototypes, flexibility in project management and iterative software development.
Our jobs are safe as long as we continue to do them well.
Technorati tags: Offshoring, Economy, Exports, Wages, IT, IS, Information Technology, Information Systems, Project Management, Information Technology Association of America, ITAA, Software Development, Programming, Programmers.
Microsoft made it's LiveWriter WYSIWYG tool available to beta testers today (download here).
It's a fairly massive download and can install much more than just the blogging tool (like their new Desktop Search), but the installation was painless and error free.
This is my first post using it (hence the lack of any meaningful content) so I am playing with things like inserting pictures:
This is Bubba, whom I named because he is a little bit fat, a little bit lazy and a lot smarter than he lets on.
In this picture Bubba is engaged in his second-favorite activity. His first favorite involves a lap and a hand that can be coaxed away from the laptop which he displaced when jumping up on the lap.
So far, the user experience of LiveWriter is very favorable -- if you can use Word then you can use LiveWriter. On the other hand, there are some things I don't like, but I'll wait to write about those after a few days testing when I can make a good analysis.
Gartner has released the 2006 Emerging Technologies Hype Cycle in which three "key technology themes" are identified. These are "new or heavily hyped technologies" that are expect to mature and have significant impact within the next ten years.
Predictably, the list starts out with Web 2.0 and includes AJAX. On this one they are undoubtedly correct. On the others, I'm not so sure.
For instance, the hype about Unified Modeling Language (UML) being used to create platform-independent applications sounds awfully familiar. Anyone remember the promise of CASE tools and how they were going to change the software industry? Probably not. That's because the reality never lived up to the hype.
HT to NeoBinaries, who also informs us that the second beta of release of Firefox 2.0 has been delayed until the 15th of August.
Technorati Tags: Technology, Geek Stuff.
According to Mapquest, it is just over 15 miles from the middle of a small town called Millington (population 10,433 in Y2K) to my front door. Driving time is estimated to be 21 minutes.
So you can imagine my incredulity when I ordered a printer and watched this unravel:
| Date | Time | Activity | Location |
| 08/07/06 | 20:00:00 | Sortation Center Departure | EARTH CITY, MO |
| 08/05/06 | 14:13:48 | Sortation Center Arrival | EARTH CITY, MO |
| 08/05/06 | 06:10:31 | Sortation Center Departure | GROVE CITY, OH |
| 08/03/06 | 13:18:00 | Sortation Center Arrival | GROVE CITY, OH |
| 08/03/06 | 02:51:42 | Sortation Center Departure | ATLANTA, GA |
| 08/02/06 | 07:00:00 | Sortation Center Arrival | ATLANTA, GA |
| 08/01/06 | 23:00:00 | Pickup | MILLINGTON, TN |
The package was shipped using SmartPost from FedEx, which I have used once before. That time it took two weeks for a memory card (about the size of a half a book of matches) to get to me from California. Bad enough, but eight days to go 21 miles and instead it traveled about 1,755 miles?!
Ain't modern technology (and free shipping) wonderful?
| Date | Time | Activity | Location |
| 07/20/2006 | 16:06:00 | Sortation Center Arrival | EARTH CITY, MO |
| 07/20/2006 | 06:15:43 | Sortation Center Departure | NEW BERLIN, WI |
| 07/13/2006 | 10:59:00 | Sortation Center Arrival | NEW BERLIN, WI |
| 07/11/2006 | 13:42:28 | Sortation Center Departure | LOS ANGELES, CA |
| 07/10/2006 | 19:26:52 | Sortation Center Arrival | LOS ANGELES, CA |
| 07/10/2006 | 00:00:00 | Pickup | CITY OF INDUSTRY, CA |
Today's the 24th, which means that after two weeks this package is still sitting in a warehouse in Missouri. "Anticipated" delivery date is the 28th. It spent one week sitting in Wisconson! Why? This is a tiny memory card for a digital camera (2 GB SD).
This is my first experience with shipping via SmartPost from FedEx and I have to say that it sucks big time. No wonder shipping was free. I guess they don't count the frustration factor.
Protolize, the Ultimate Web Designers Resource, via Digg.
IE7 reviewed by Pamibe.
Help the spread of Firefox and make money too! Explorer Destroyer, via Slashdot.
A new RSS ticker for Firefox,
Download videos from 60 sites using Firefox extension VideoDownloader.
Scientists make water run uphill, via Digg.
Semen is an anti-depressant, via Digg.
Financial Experts Debate Implications Of Aging Population from FuturePundit.
The world's first USB turntable.
Gadgets for the Lazy from Wired, via Slashdot.
Lindgaard and her team presented volunteers with the briefest glimpses of web pages previously rated as being either easy on the eye or particularly jarring, and asked them to rate the websites on a sliding scale of visual appeal. Even though the images flashed up for just 50 milliseconds, roughly the duration of a single frame of standard television footage, their verdicts tallied well with judgements made after a longer period of scrutiny.What should be taken away from this?
So what are the key ingredients of a good-looking website? Caudron suggests that the amount of graphics on the page should be strictly limited, perhaps to a single eye-catching image. "It's not about getting as much stuff on the page as possible," he says.Something that Right Wing Nation should keep in mind, given current activities.These days, enlightened web users want to see a "puritan" approach, Caudron adds. It's about getting information across in the quickest, simplest way possible. For this reason, many commercial websites now follow a fairly regular set of rules. For example, westerners tend to look at the top-left corner of a page first, so that's where the company logo should go. And most users also expect to see a search function in the top right.
HT to Digg
Technorati Tags: Website, Geek Stuff, Web Design.
A simple semiconductor chip has been used to generate pairs of entangled photons, a vital step towards making quantum computers a reality.Famously dubbed “spooky action at a distance” by Einstein, entanglement is the mysterious phenomenon of quantum particles whereby two particles such as photons behave as one regardless of how far apart they are. It is widely regarded as essential to the development of quantum computers and quantum cryptography. ...
Entangled photons have been previously generated using laser beams, but this is bulky and complex. “Semiconductor devices are attractive as they are compact and robust,” says Shields. “Furthermore, since they can be produced using standard techniques, they could potentially be mass-manufactured for a fraction of the cost.”
This computer case was handcrafted by 19-year old Nicholas Falzone from mahogany, ebony, and spruce woods:The design is primarily based on Japanese lamps and shoji screens. The Japanese attention to detail carries over to the craftsmanship of the case since it took approximately 300 hours to construct and contains approximately 130 wood joints, most of which were done entirely by hand with my Japanese chisels and dozuki saw.
The Japanese influence is obvious. The craftsmanship takes a closer look:
Everything that was painted, including fans, PSU, and all of the screws and nuts in this case were first sanded, primed, sprayed with gloss black, then clear coated, and sanded and polished to give everything a mirror finish to match the plexiglass.Nicholas is an architecture student who had never built a computer before. Not only is this one a beauty, but the benchmarks show that it is a fairly decent gaming machine as well.
More pictures are available.
The good news is that the interface is basically the same and the browser is "still lean, mean, fast, and clean." Improvements include being able to drag-n-drop tabs to reorder them and faster navigation due to "intelligent caching" of some pages already visited.
But the most important Firefox tuneups are under the hood. Application and extension updates are now pushed to the background. This relieves the burden of having to upgrade the application and extensions manually, as with Firefox 1.0, and ensures that the latest security patches are applied. Mozilla will have the ability to shut down holes as soon as they are found by pushing security patches to the browser. Many of these updates will be, according to the Mozilla Organization, less than 500KB, so they'll be unobtrusive (if noticeable at all).Excellent news which will no doubt contribute to the continued growth of the product (23% of the page views of this blog are from Firefox as IE drops to just under 70%).
Dear Sir/Madam,What, you don't know my gender? You're the CIA for Pete's sake! I live right here. No dealing with shadey characters during the investiagation. No life-threatening tours to the exotic foreign lands to get information. No wonder you blew it on WMD in Iraq!
we have logged your IP-address on more than 30 illegal Websites.Uh . . . yeah. I'm an international terrorist and you're sending me email? Or are they animal porn sites, maybe penquins and pandas engaging in unspeakable cross-species acts? So why would the CIA care? The message begins to lose all credibility to even the most moronic net-clicker.
Important:Ah yes, a zip file. The CIA wants me to fill out a questionairre about my surfing activities? Perhaps they want to know if I secure my wireless with 128 double-byte, DoD-developed, super-secret encryption or if I'm letting the neighbor kids download movies and music straight from the talented minds of Hollywood denizens before it's even been recorded via my criminally-open web channel. CIA, dedicated to protecting the wallets of the super-rich that support the RIAA!
Please answer our questions!
The list of questions are attached.
Yours faithfully,OMG! A search for "Steven Allison" finds a concert organist and a gas meter reader and pizza delivery driver in southern California, but no one even remotely connected to the CIA. So it must be true!
Steven Allison
I really don't have time for this, but every once in a while it's fun to make fun of spammers, even though they are the most loathsome form of life in existence and deserve to be hunted down and tortured until they die in screaming agony.
Hmmm, I wonder if I can make any money on this spam thing. "Dear Sir/Madam, do you hate Bush with every fiber of your being? Please click on this innocent-looking link that says 'BusHitler' but really takes you to a chat room filled with fat, middle-aged men pretending to be lesbians so I can make a dollar." What's wrong with that?
Update: It seems that the FBI has also been listed as the originator of this kind of email, has issued a denial and a warning to users not to open email attachments (duh!) and is investigating.
And yes, the attachment that was sent to me was infected with a worm: W32.Sober.X@mm.
Microsoft is calling the next version of Office "the most significant release in more than 10 years," according to a corporate statement. ...Only one more year to wait for general release. Ah, who am I kidding? It'll be 2007 before we get to see the real thing (along with Vista — which Gartner says to ignore until 2008 anyway).Company officials said they will offer Beta 1 versions of Word 12, Excel 12, PowerPoint 12, Outlook 12, Access 12, InfoPath 12, OneNote 12, Publisher 12, Project 12, Visio 12, and Groove Virtual Office 12. ...
The new charting/graphics engine is aimed at allowing users to "apply design options in a matter of a few clicks," the spokeswoman said. And the aforementioned "To Do" bar, which will be built into Outlook 12 Beta 1, will bring together appointments, tasks and e-mail in a single view, she added.
Beta 2 will be much bigger and broader, and is slated for this spring, the spokeswoman said. Users interested in testing Beta 2 can sign up now on the Office Preview Web site.
Gates also said Israel's vibrant high-tech sector will play an important role in the global marketplace and pledged to strengthen cooperation with the country. He offered $1.4 million for local startups and pledged to connect tens of thousands Israeli children to the Internet.OK, support startups in the only real democracy in the Middle East earns my support for Bill. I promise to quit calling him Satan — at least for a while."It's no exaggeration to say that the kind of innovation going on in Israel is critical to the future of the technology business," Gates told reporters.
Gates said Microsoft is quickly branching out beyond its core business of desktop software, saying the company is developing software for use in automobiles, videogames and cell phones.Oops, that didn't take long. My car is going to reboot in the middle of traffic and it's going to be Beelzebub's fault!
Christen Krogh, Opera's vice president of engineering, insisted the move was not prompted by the success of Firefox, whose rapid growth in usage has threatened to push Internet Explorer's market share below 90 percent for the first time in years.I'm sticking with Firefox, although Opera is a pretty good alternative.
This post is to demonstrate how to create a page with these characteristics:
This framework is used for my default skin (click here to change skins). I created it by combining ideas from these sources:
We'll take a look at each of these in order.
First we'll build the framework for a three column layout that has the content for the middle column coded before the other two columns. As I said before, this comes directly from Douglas Livingstone.
The columns are created by coding a series of divs to create boxes within boxes. Let's look at each box.
The first box is called iehackwrap. The only reason for this box is to solve a centering problem with IE5. If you don't want to coddle people that are still using IE5 or if you don't want to center your content then you can just leave it out.
Next comes boxwrap. This fits within iehackwrap and sets the total width for your 3 columns. I've set it to be 800 pixels wide with a solid, dark blue border around the whole thing. The CSS, html and result look like this:
.iehackwrap {
text-align: center;
}
.boxwrap {
width: 800px;
margin-left: auto;
margin-right: auto;
border: 1px solid #00a;
}
/* ie hack: */
.iehackwrap {
text-align: center; }
.boxwrap {
text-align: justify; }
<body>
<div class="iehackwrap">
<div class="boxwrap">
</div>
</div>
</body>
| 
|
Next we create the header that spans all three columns:
.boxheader {
width: 800px;
border-bottom: 1px solid #00a;
background: #CAD4E3;
clear: both;
}
<body>
<div class="iehackwrap">
<div class="boxwrap">
<div class="boxheader">
Header text goes here
</div>
</div>
</div>
</body>
| 
|
So far so good. Now it starts to get tricky. We draw a box that encloses the two left columns. Don't worry, well get to the right-hand column in a minute, although we do have to calculate it's size now. I want the right column to be 190 pixels, which leaves 610 pixels for the other two. (The grey box below is for illustration only — there isn't a background color for this box, or indeed for any of the column boxes.)
.boxbody {
width: 610px;
float: left;
}
<body>
<div class="iehackwrap">
<div class="boxwrap">
<div class="boxheader">
Header text goes here
</div>
<div class="boxbody">
</div>
</div>
</div>
</body>
| 
|
We said that we wanted the center box coded before either side column, right? So it comes next. We just draw that box inside the box we just created and float it to the right. You must remember that the two column widths in boxbody must add up the total width of boxbody, which in this case is 610 pixels. I want to leave 130 pixels for the left column, which leaves 470 for the center.
.boxcenter {
width: 470px;
float: right;
font-size: .9em;
}
<body>
<div class="iehackwrap">
<div class="boxwrap">
<div class="boxheader">
Header text goes here
</div>
<div class="boxbody">
<div class="boxcenter">
Center text goes here.
Lots and lots of
dynamic content!
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</body>
| 
|
It's time to fill in the other two columns. Notice that the left column fits within the "boxcenter" box while the right column gois outside of it, like so:
.boxleft {
width: 130px;
float: left;
}
.boxright {
width: 190px;
float: right;
}
<body>
<div class="iehackwrap">
<div class="boxwrap">
<div class="boxheader">
Header text goes here
</div>
<div class="boxbody">
<div class="boxcenter">
Center text goes here.
Lots and lots of dynamic content!
</div>
<div class="boxleft">
Text for left column goes here
</div>
</div>
<div class="boxright">
Text for right column goes here
</div>
</div>
</div>
</body>
According to Donald, we need to add one little hackish thing because some browsers don't like the fact that boxbody doesn't have any floated content:
.boxclear { clear: both; }
<body>
<div class="iehackwrap">
<div class="boxwrap">
<div class="boxheader">
Header text goes here
</div>
<div class="boxbody">
<div class="boxcenter">
Center text goes here.
Lots and lots of dynamic content!
</div>
<div class="boxleft">
Text for left column goes here
</div>
<div class="boxclear"> </div>
</div>
<div class="boxright">
Text for right column goes here
</div>
<div class="boxclear"> </div>
</div>
</div>
</body>
All that's left is to draw the footer. This will go outside the "boxbody" div. Here's the whole thing in one file so you can just cut and paste in a text file to easily try it out:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 | 
|
Simple, yes? Remember to go to Donald's page for additional explanation. He has some excellent documentation on what each of the divs are for and how to calculate the column widths (as well as a possible bug).
As suggested by A List Apart, I created Faux Columns by creating a background graphic that looks like this (only bigger — mine is 800 pixels wide and 12 pixels high):
Note that not only does this result in equal column length no matter which column as the most content, it also allows you to have cool effects on your background like color fades.
Of course, you have to put the image in your CSS code:
.boxwrap {
width: 800px;
margin-left: auto;
margin-right: auto;
border: 1px solid #00a;
text-align: left;
margin-bottom: 1em;
background: #fff
url(systemfiles/ap-3-col-background.jpg) repeat;
}
I'm not even going to try explaining how to do menus. You could just copy the code from this page but a better thing to do would be to check out A List Apart. Lists are, after all, their specialty. Some examples:
Notice that by using the techniques from A List Apart I am able to display menus horizontally in skin 1 and vertically in skin 2. Same html, just a different CSS file!
I am as much unlike a web designer as a cantelope is unlike a round, brown rock. They make look the same, but just try to eat a rock — or smash a nut with a cantelope.
The veracity of my disavowal of advanced web knowledge should be readily proven by the choice of color scheme for this page. An artist I'm not. And advanced CSS is beyond me.
But I have hopefully given someone enough to do what I did — start with a little something and hack around until something useful and semi-pleasing comes out.
Good luck!
This is good news, because in order to take full advantage of the new OS you are going to have to start saving your pennies for a pretty hefty computer:
"Longhorn will provide an absolutely fabulous gaming experience," Russell told WinHEC attendees. In order to be able to take the fullest advantage of Longhorn as a gaming platform, Russell suggested PC makers gravitate toward 64-bit dual-core processors, 1 GB of memory, 56 MB of graphics memory and advanced LDDM support.I wonder what that'll cost?
Thanks to Patrick of Lowest Common Denominator for telling me to tone down the blue lines. I think it looks better now.
Thanks to Chris from How Liberal is the Daily? for telling me to make the menu buttons bold. They are indeed easier to read this way. I'm leaving the special features at the top though -- my way of giving back to the 'sphere.
Thanks to Hidden Nook for telling me about the free Web Optimization service. It caused me to change a couple of things and I'm still investigating others.
And thanks to Marvin from Little Red Blog for the encouragement.
I'm still open to suggestions for improvement.
I put the width of an "hr" element (horizontal rule) at 100%. This caused the float box next to it to drop. Removing the width property kept the width at 100% but stopped IE from freaking out.
I really hate CSS.
If anyone has float problems you can find all your answers at Curing Float Drops and Wraps from the Nemesis Project.
I've been working on a new layout recently. Comments would be appreciated.
And yeah, I know the buttons across the top don't all work. I'm still working on a few things.
The geeks among us will note that it is fixed-width at 800 pixels (for those with older technology and/or older eyes), three column (sorry, I like three columns), equal column length no matter which column has the most content, and the content column (the center one) is coded before the two side columns (so it loads while stuff in the sides are still figuring out what to do and it's better for search engines too).
I've tested in IE 6 and the latest Firefox, but nothing else.
No comments are out-of-bounds — color scheme, graphics, layout, margins, whatever. Thanks.
Update: It seems that I screwed something up in getting the margins "just right". Firefox still looks great but the first column dropped below the rest of the content. Gads, I hate CSS!
Back to the drawing board.
The Motley Fool downplays the significance of the event:
Exaggerating the dangers of outsourcing and sending data abroad won't make our data any more secure. On the contrary, the facts of the Mphasis case suggest that in some cases, data may be safer once sent abroad. Reflect for a moment on how quickly the alleged criminals in Pune were caught. Consider for a second the fact that they were caught by the "cybercrime unit" of the Pune police force. Ponder for a minute the fact that a place most of us have never even heard of before (really? "Pune?") even has something called a "cybercrime unit." I know my hometown doesn't.What the Fool does not say is that the criminals were caught only after the Citibank customers noticed that the money was missing from their accounts. There were no safeguards put into place that stopped the crime.
Technology firm Forrester Research disagrees with the Motley Fool, saying that the incident will undermine call center expansion by as much as 30%:
The Forrester report said unlike past negative BPO headlines, this was not a lapse of judgment or an issue of poor customer service: the incident was an organised and systematic plot to steal customers' money.E-Commerce News traces offshore security problems to these causes:Forrester said this breach of sensitive customer data will have far-reaching negative connotations for the offshore BPO space. ...
MphasiS' Pune centre was BS 7799 (a security certification) and CMM Level 5-certified (quality certification), theft still occurred and Forrester said the rising attrition rates in the call centre space -- 50 per cent to 100 per cent -- undermine suppliers' ability to adhere to processes and sufficiently check backgrounds. ...
Forrester has cautioned all IT vendors to be ready for an onslaught of audits and reviews as CIOs and business executives look to reassure senior management that their IT work is not at risk. The report says while this may lengthen sales cycles and slow project ramp-ups, it will not have as broad an impact on IT services as it will on BPO.
Forrester expected firms to establish their own captive centres over which they believe they exert greater control following the theft.
"This crime is a wake-up call," said Pavan Duggal, an advocate in India's Supreme Court. "There is an urgent need for far more due diligence in Indian outsourcing companies than is being currently done."Whatever the end result of this case, another couple of incidents like this will significantly damage the fledgling Indian IT services industry.He said not all companies fully comply with the Indian Information Technology Act, which requires companies to introduce strict procedures for data protection.
The FBI warned Tuesday that a computer virus is being spread through unsolicited e-mails that purport to come from the FBI.The e-mails appear to come from an fbi.gov address. They tell recipients that they have accessed illegal Web sites and that their Internet use has been monitored by the FBI's "Internet Fraud Complaint Center," the FBI said.
The messages then direct recipients to open an attachment and answer questions. The computer virus is in the attachment.
We weighed dozens of variables, from the number of homes with wireless internet to the number of robotic surgeries performed at local hospitals, to rank U.S. cities by tech quotient.And the winner is Minneapolis
What made Minneapolis our high-tech champ? It ranked first among U.S. cities in innovative transportation solutions, fourth in energy technology. The city fell above the 50th percentile in every category measured, a broad-based showing of tech savvy that set it apart from the competition. With everything averaged together, there is no city in America where a culture of high technology has a more pervasive presence.Winners for individual categories are (winner of Energy category not given):
| San Diego | Medical & Emergency Tech |
| San Jose | High-Tech Jobs |
| Boston | High-Tech Education |
| Seattle | Connected Citizenry |
| Minneapolis | Transportation |
Mean score for all cities is 66. The top-ranked city in Tennessee is 69th-ranked Memphis with a score of 62 -- four points below average. Next is capitol city Nashville, ranked 87th with a score of 58. University-town Knoxville comes in at a disappointing 104th with a score of 55. Finally, Clarksville was second from the bottom at 126 with a score of 42.
We may be sub-average but by golly Memphis is the most technologically advanced city in Tennessee. Frightening, isn't it?
It scans the registry and shows what gets started automatically by the system. Click the "Consult" button and get a description of each program and whether it is required by the system, your choice, not required, not recommended or unknown (with over 4,600 programs in the knowledge base I have so far only run across one unknown and that was an application used in our business). It identifies spyware and adware, making it easy to stop it from running until you get a tool to remove it.
With a simple click in a checkbox a process is removed from your startup so the next time you reboot it will not be using system resources like some parisite. If you've made a mistake just run Startup Inspector again and check the box again -- the entry in the registry is renamed, not deleted, so it is easily restored.
I was able to take down the number of startup processes on my box from 27 to only 13. And every time I view a movie on the web using Quicktime (*gag*) it is automatically put back into my startup. But not for long!
Les Jones has more on the subject that makes one wonder whether the concept was ever really viable in the first place:
He tests the idea by fact-checking an entry he knows will deal with a tricky subject. It turns out that an earlier version of the article had it right, but it was later "corrected" with bad information. It's the open source "many eyes" solution gone bad, since - unlike software - factual and historical information isn't self-evidently correct or incorrect by looking at it or compiling it.
The engine has a lot of development to go but it can't be all bad: the top hit for "reformed liberal" is indeed AlphaPatriot!
[Hat tip to Stormfront T. Dragon]
It is the most wonderful web authoring software I have ever used.
It is vastly more powerful than NetObjects (which I have used) and easier than Dreamweaver (which I have not).
In two days I learned the tool, created a customer theme and put up a website for Jim Jamieson, candidate for TN House District 89.
That includes creating the navigation bar (with rollover) that I created using the WebCanvas part of the suite and the custom bullet images (also WebCanvas) -- these were two elements of the custom theme that I created for the site. It also has shared content that is stored in one file, so changing a bit of text in one place can be reflected on every page when the site is republished (this is the "Family Picnic" info on the right-hand side of every page except one, as well as the header which is stored on every page).
It has some weaknesses and peculiarities:
It is with the utmost confidence that I say: Namo rules!
The time that an unpatched PC can survive connected to the Internet has dropped to an average of 20 minutes, down from 40 minutes in 2003.That's "average" time. Those with ISPs that block certain ports last a little longer. Those that are on more unregulated networks (like a university) are toast in minutes.According to the latest data from the Internet Storm Center at the US-based SANS Institute, which provides research and education on security issues, the historical trend is continuing its downward journey, and has now reached a point at which it does not provide enough time to download the very patches that would protect a system from malware.
Microsoft has been granted a patent on the double-click by the US Patents and Trademark Office. The patent, number 6,727,830, was granted on April 27.An abstract of the application says: "A method and system are provided for extending the functionality of application buttons on a limited resource computing device. Alternative application functions are launched based on the length of time an application button is pressed. A default function for an application is launched if the button is pressed for a short, i.e., normal, period of time.
"An alternative function of the application is launched if the button is pressed for a long, (e.g., at least one second), period of time. Still another function can be launched if the application button is pressed multiple times within a short period of time, e.g., double click."
Gates described three approaches that may work:
One, which he called human interaction, would send a puzzle back to the sender. The puzzle would be designed so that only a human could solve it. The e-mail would be accepted only if the puzzle were solved.I think Billy has gone around the bend on this one. The first approach is too unweildy. The second too easily overcome with advances in technology. And the third is unenforceable (try collecting from a spammer in French Guiana).The second, which Gates called computational, would require that the sending computer carry out a calculation. Having to do the calculation repetitively would prove costly to the sender, he said.
The third approach, which is the one Gates predicted would become the accepted method, is monetary. It would require senders to pay a fee to a recipient. If the e-mail is legitimate, the recipient could choose to reject the fee.
Dubbed the "Father of the Web", he came up with a system over 10 years ago to organise, link and browse net pages. [SNIP]So while Al may have invented the internet, it took a Brit working in Switzerland to make the darn thing useful.The physicist created his hypertext program, which was to revolutionise the net, while he was at the particle physics institute, Cern, in Geneva.
The computer code he came up with let scientists easily share research findings across a computer network. In the early 1990s, it was dubbed the "world wide web", and is still the basis of the net as we know it.
Physicists say they have brought light to a complete halt for a fraction of a second and then sent it on its way, an achievement that could someday help scientists develop powerful new computers. [SNIP]The article is pretty vague but details were published in todays Nature journal:Harvard University researchers have now topped that feat by truly holding light and its energy in its tracks if only for a few hundred-thousandths of a second.
"We have succeeded in holding a light pulse still without taking all the energy away from it," said Mikhail D. Lukin, a Harvard physicist.
Related to the principles of EIT [electromagnetically induced transparency], Bajcsy et al. have developed a technique that allows light pulses to be stored in electromagnetic rather than atomic form, providing the first genuine realization of 'frozen' light. In their experiment, light propagating in a medium of rubidium atoms was turned into a stationary electromagnetic pulse that could be held and released after a controllable interval.This could be a significant step towards quantum computers. Whatever, its pretty damn impressive.
Hat tip to Tone the Man.
Microsoft will announce on Wednesday that it will offer two US$250,000 bounties for information that leads to the arrest of the people who released the MSBlast worm and the SoBig virus...
Oh those clever Israeli's:
An Israeli start-up has developed a processor that uses optics instead of silicon, enabling it to compute at the speed of light, the company said.
The unit's a bit bulky at the moment, but should be down to the size of a Palm Pilot in a few months, and hopefully to a single chip in five years.
It's conceivable this technology could become mainstream inside chips in 10 years time.
If this pans out it would have quite an impact. Such a computer would be capable of 8 trillion operations per second (or 8 teraflops) which is about a thousand times faster than standard processors - essentially a super-computer on a single chip.
On the other hand, the CIA is rumored to have a working quantum computer which works at an estimated 10 teraflops.
One can only ask how long it is before light speed is too slow . . .
If you have anything to do with the IT world, you know about the recent trend of sending application coding work offshore, typically to India, although Russia remains a oldie but a goodie, and Jamaica is making real progress in this arena.
Here are a pair of articles that addresses some of the drawbacks.
First, from Business Week, the Hidden Costs of IT Outsourcing:
Keith Franklin, president of Empowered Software Solutions in Burr Ridge, Ill., loves offshore outsourcing. It means more work for his 40-person company. Just last year, ESS, which specializes in developing applications for Microsoft's .Net platform for Web services, earned $500,000 in revenues from fixing buggy software written in India. It took ESS five months to repair a glitch-filled application for a Web portal. Most pages on the site weren't connected, turning updating into a nightmare. Some code was missing.The shoddy work didn't come cheap, either: The Indian outsourcer went $1 million overbudget. Franklin says he could have done the project for less than $900,000 -- right here in the U.S.
Network Computing has an excellent, impartial case study called How Offshore Outsourcing Failed Us:
Personally, I was excited about the promise of offshore outsourcing. If it worked, we'd be heroes to the business. Philosophically, I view free trade as highly beneficial to its participants.We met the key criteria for offshoring: centralized IT, process maturity and years of experience working with Indians both in the United States and offshore. We had executive sponsorship. We had IT commitment. We even had the perfect project to test the waters: a small, low-risk Web application for our real-estate division. The application's purpose is to provide screens for entering new location information. The application isn't complex: The back-end database is Microsoft SQL Server; server-side Java components implement business rules; and Java Server Pages (JSPs) are used for the front end. We use BEA Systems WebLogic as the application/Web server and Concurrent Version Systems (CVS) for source-code control.