Mittwoch, 5. Februar 2003

Age is not a problem: Mum proves that she is becoming more techno-savvy day by day - here is a book recommendation you may like Mum. (via BoingBoing). At the moment Mum has 2 computers in her small house - the old PC and the shiny new laptop. Now she has a normal phone connection (courtesy of BT). So although she has a laptop she still needs to connect to the phone line using a modem (inside the laptop) and a long cable. Instead of the cable, I suggested a wireless connection last night on the phone. Now I have no idea what might be possible in the wireless area considering she only has a normal phone line (me knows only WLAN DSL routers). So - open to suggestions on that one (I suppose a normal modem equipped with bluetooth or WLAN is the answer..). Has to be cheap! And easy to install - or you can help her by making your way to the Norfolk part of the UK.

Weblogs.com question: How do you use webogs.com? I would like to be able to set an alert for when certain weblogs update (that could be tracked through weblogs.com) and then for some flag to go up in my task bar. Rather like: "You have mail". Another one for the LazyWeb.

Steve's back: Steve is recovering from the storm and noting the following: As I get back up to date with the world I see that nothing has really changed. This is something to keep in mind as you check your email every ten minutes, update your rss aggregator every 15, and check slashdot every 30. Remember my weblog subtitle Steve?

Columbia mystery: At last - the revelation we've been waiting for. And we just knew it didn't just break up - didn't we.

Interesting reading: Read this quaterly filing from Microsoft. Not all of it - just search for "open source" and read that paragraph. Here is a single line quote (actually 2 lines) from there (my emphasis): Nonetheless, the popularization of the Open Source movement continues to pose a significant challenge to the Company’s business model, including recent efforts by proponents of the Open Source model to convince governments worldwide to mandate the use of Open Source software in their purchase and deployment of software products. To the extent the Open Source model gains increasing market acceptance, sales of the Company’s products may decline, the Company may have to reduce the prices it charges for its products, and revenues and operating margins may consequently decline. Now go back and read this.

Funny Penguins: I was looking for a catchy title to a presentation this morning as I walked from home to where I get the bus (via the local cemetery - but that's a different story). Anyway, the presentation is to be on how commercial entities can adopt open source successfully. So, there I am walking past the snow capped graves when suddenly this pops into my head: "Penguins are only human after all". Which seemed great because the penguin is an easily recognizable open source "symbol" and much of the presentation will deal with the community aspects. Now it gets ... um... strange....When I got to the bus-stop there was a girl waiting to catch the same bus. She was wearing a large button that depicted - you guessed it - two penguins. I smiled to myself at the coincedence. On the journey to work (which only takes around 20 minutes) I happened to glance out a shop window. There, hanging in the window was a large poster - depicting - yep you guessed right again - about 20 penguins. Ok - I'm ready - what gives?

Cancelled: Unfortunately we have had to cancel our weekend visit to go and see Frank and family. It will be a few days before the kids are over their bouts of sniffling, coughing and slight fever. On the other hand it will give me a chance to upgrade the family PC from Windows 98 to 2000.