The Best Metaphor for KM Yet.  Outstanding!

What a brilliant way to describe why you need KM technology:

I had just brought up the old adage that only 20% of the knowledge in a company is usually stored in knowledge-bases whilst the other 80% walks home every night and how, whilst this might be true, it doesn't seem to be effective in convincing people to invest in knowledge management.

"Imagine you are running a factory and every night 80% of the machinery walked home and maybe wouldn't come back the next morning.  How quickly do you think you would invest in ways of keeping it?"

http://radio.weblogs.com/0107808/2002/09/12.html#a383

Way to go Matt!

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Photos of the Day

"Sandy"

"Sandy 2"

Nahant Harbor, 9/16/2002 approx 7:03

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Excellent MySQL Performance Real World Piece

Another outstanding piece of content from Jeremy:

MySQL, Linux and Thread Caching

In case you're curious as to why this is tagged as being about PHP it's only because I know that the rest of this application is built with PHP.

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Good Guide to LCD Monitors

Given that I'm a resolution freak (1600x1200x32 bit; usually like 20-30 windows open), I keep finding that the LCD monitor I want is always a year or two away.  I do really, really want one though and ran across this outstanding guide to LCD displays. 

Tom's Hardware

What was surprising to me was a) Prices are much lower than I thought and b) That the no-name brands ranked as highly as they did.

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Sweet: Essential Blogging Is Now On Amazon!

I'm sure many of the people reading know that I'm one of the authors of Essential Blogging.  I just got the thrill of seeing that it's finally on Amazon -- with the cover even:

Amazon Link to Essential Blogging

If anyone out there actually read it and wants to post and Amazon review (nudge, nudge, nudge), that would be greatly appreciated.

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WebLogs for Hire

Looking to get paid for blogging?  If so you should definitely check out Dane's new project:

http://www.weblogs4hire.com/

Very cool.  And, yes, I even took the time to sign up.

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Why Won't the Government Pressure Microsoft on Security?

Well it's not just me who thinks that Microsoft needs to clean up their act.  Now www.news.com is publicly asking "Why Won't Uncle Sam Pressure Microsoft on Security?".  Excellent article:

http://news.com.com/2010-1074-957970.html

And, yes, I do have a bias towards Microsoft when it comes to security -- they simply do a poor job in this area and have for years and years.

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Interesting Web Based RSS / RDF News Aggregator

I only gave it a very cursory look over but a) it seems to work b) absolutely simple, brain dead sign up service c) has got lots of feeds already d) lets you create your own custom tabs to organize news which is very, very nice

http://www.fyuze.com/

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A Classic Shoe Comic

If you have a cell phone, go see:

http://www.uclick.com/client/kcs/tmsho/

Note: If you don't go to see this today, 9/16 the you need to use this approach:

If a person visits http://macnelly.com/shoefolder/shoe_archive.asp (the official Shoe site) today, they get that cartoon.  If they visit it later, and select 9/16/2002 in the archives box, then click View, they'll get the right one.

Thanks to Guy K. Haas (who is still blog free) for a) this pointer and b) the correction.

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Marketing 101: Humor in Marketing - Perl Programmers Anonymous

Although I don't do much in perl these days I am still on the Perl Jobs mailing list where a variety of perl programming jobs are featured along with Perl freelancers.  I'm a huge fan of humor in marketing and, while you don't often see it applied to "marketing yourself", it certainly can be done.  Here's a great example that I just found in my inbox from 8/27 (I know I'm way, way, way, way behind on email):

[Setting: Perl Programmers Anonymous meeting]

Hi,

I'm Mike, and I'm a Perl programmer.

[response from audience: "Hi, Mike"]

I have tried to like C. I even worked in Java for a while.  No matter what I tried, I couldn't help it. It was like all I could think about was getting a job where all I did was Perl.

[sympathetic nods]

I was employed as an SAP consultant, doing 4GL work for companies like DuPont and Owens-Corning. At first it was interesting enough, but pretty soon I knew that I just coulnd't keep living the lie. I was a Perl programmer, I knew it, and it was just impossible to hide.

I introduced Perl and MySQL to the company and built an internal tool to track their consultants, saving them a hundred thousand dollars on some system that they were considering purchasing. Even when the job wasn't supposed to be a Perl job, it became one when I got there.

[knowing looks and sighs]

Then came OO Perl. First it was just a little here and there, extending a module or two with a couple of extra methods.  Then before I knew it I was doing everything with h2xs, making my stuff installable with "perl Makefile.PL && make && make install", using autoload rampantly and getting really rabid about ensuring inheritability. I couldn't stop myself! All I wanted to do was push it to the next level.

[mutters of "boy, have I been there!"]

Please help me feed my addiction!

[wild applause]

mike south

PS Perl programmer, Adept level, available immediately. I live in the Raleigh NC area, love telecommuting, but would be open to the possbility of relocating. Experienced with Linux, DBI, Apache, GD, etd.

http://fulcrum.org/msouth/resume.txt

http://fulcrum.org/msouth/perl_summary.txt

http://fulcrum.org/msouth/perl_details.txt

I'd hire him if I needed a perl dude!  Absolutely hilarious (albeit definitely a lot of in jokes here).

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If I Was Steve Jobs .... or Mira Rethought

I've blogged a few times about how I think that Mira, Microsoft upcoming new Wireless tablet, is a loser.  There's no question that it was born during the dot com heyday and not rethought since.  It will fail and Microsoft will (once again) take three tries to get it right.  Since Mira lacks a local keyboard or the ability to be used concurrently by different users, it's more of a "browse the web from the couch thing" than something useful.  Still there is something interesting here: Let's Bring Back Terminals (but make them wireless).  That's right terminals.  Machines without local discs and I think that Apple should be the one to do it.  Let me explain. 

I recently did a very interesting experiment, I took an old, pretty much dead laptop (400 mhz celeron, 192 megs RAM) and installed Windows XP and a WiFi card on it.  This is a machine that's been in my junk pile for a year or so now and isn't usable by normal standards.  Still it can run a web browser and an IM client albeit slowly.  Then I moved it upstairs to my night table, right next to my bed (no snide comments please).  And, guess what, those early morning insomniac email checks?  No longer have to go downstairs.  Instant messages?  Piece of cake.  Best of all?  My MP3 collection !!!  The way I look at it is that between email and IM, having a terminal right next to your bed is just like having a phone next to your bed.  It just plain makes sense. 

So here's the product I'd like to see:

• Wireless Monitor -- Doesn't even have to be big; a 13" LCD could be fine
• Wireless Keyboard with built in mouse pad or trackpoint (preferred) Since you often use this sitting up, not in a desk chair, the keyboard needs to have the pointing device integrated.
• Ability to access web or non-web applications
• 1 power cord w/ relatively small power brick
• Substantial, weighty base (perhaps empty that you fill with sand to save shipping weight) -- it doesn't matter when you knock your clock radio over.  It does matter when you knock over your terminal

Depending on price, I can easily see a family buying 2 or three of these such as one for little Billy's room another for his sister and so on.  The more I use PCs, the more I realize what a tower of babel we've created.  PCs are just plain hard to maintain and storage is just a bloody nightmare.  Having one main machine for the "house" and then terminals off it makes a lot more sense from a maintenance perspective than a machine for each family member, each of which has to get updated, configured, virus proofed, backed up, etc. 

Here's another reason why you might want this for little Billy or his sister: Child Safety.  As much as I am a civil liberties freak and very, very, very open minded, even I will admit that there is a lot of stuff out on the Internet that perhaps children shouldn't be seeing.  When someone has their own machine with their own disc storage, it's a lot harder for Mom and Dad to know what's going on.  You should also bear in mind that since parents these days are often being held legally responsible for their children's actions, this actually makes some real sense.

Note: I'm not disregarding the fact that little Billy may often know more about his computer than Mom or Dad.  Still, while we'd all like to think that kids always know more about computers than their parents, it's not always the case.  Not every kid is a hacker who can bust through security restrictions. 

That's it.  Terminals.  Make sense to anyone besides me?

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Yike and Double Yike: Outlook Express Security Hole

This is a tough one to beat.  And, what's worse, is that I couldn't even find a way to turn off this message re-assembly "feature".  Anyone know how?  What's also bad is that Outlook Express is normally more secure than Outlook itself.  Sigh. 

The Beyond Security team reports that a largely unused feature in the Outlook Express mail client has, literally, opened up a new way for virus writers to bypass standard anti-virus software packages.

The feature, known as "message fragmentation and re-assembly", is meant to allow users who want to send large e-mails to split the mail into smaller chunks. When they send the mail, the receiving client re-assembles the mail to make up the whole.

Beyond Security notes that by splitting up virus messages, writers may well be able to bypass the normal checking routines because the virus signature will be split into multiple parts, making it difficult to recognise.

More

Note -- this basically doesn't affect people that use Outlook 2000 or Outlook XP since this feature is off by default.

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Very Cool Networking Stuff (If You Are, Well, Geeky That Is)

Here are a couple of cool networking things.  Did you know that there are several, seemingly undocumented, private IP subnetwork ranges beyond 10. and 192..  My buddy www.apokalyptik.com found these over the weekend, did the research to confirm them, and they seem real.  Still he's NEVER seen these documented and neither have I.  Very bizarre. (The new ones are in bold).

• 192.168.X.Y
• 10.X.Y.Z
• 82.X.Y.Z
• 83.X.Y.Z
• 84.X.Y.Z
• 85.X.Y.Z
• 86.X.Y.Z
• 87.X.Y.Z
• 88.X.Y.Z
• 89.X.Y.Z
• 90.X.Y.Z
• 91.X.Y.Z
• 92.X.Y.Z
• 93.X.Y.Z
• 94.X.Y.Z
• 95.X.Y.Z

Note -- in case the above description of these doesn't make much sense here's the quick, albeit not perfect description.  Every machine on the Internet has an IP address such as 64.14.1.94; the address of the server where this blog is located.  When you have a computer on an internal local area network, you don't want to use an IP address of a machine located on the Internet since it could cause problems, particularly when you need to access that machine by IP address.  The addresses above are NOT routable and NOT used on the public internet meaning they are very, very safe for use on internal networks.

Also, I printed this a while ago but it's still cool: The domain name http://www.example.com/ (i.e. example.com) is NEVER in use and solely for use in technical documentation so you can write in a manual bob@example.com and know that poor Bob won't get yet another spam.  Thanks to my friend Guy Haas for this one.

 

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A New Game: Google Pursuit

In honor of everyone's current fascination with Google i.e. Google Cooking, Google Whacking, I give you the new game: Google Trivia!  Here's how it works:

1. Come up with a triva question such as "Who was the third astronaut in the Apollo 11 mission?  You know -- the one who stayed on the ship and didn't walk on the moon?"
2. The goal is to come up with a Google query that answers the question.  Here's the scoring:
• Shortest query wins top price: 5 points per question.
• Add 1 point if the answer can be found right from the Google result list
• Add 1 point if the answer can be found in the 1st page of results
• Subtract 1 point for each web page you open from the results list that DOESN'T have the answer
• Add 1 point if it is in the 1st 3 listings on the results list
3. Here's the query I came up with for the question in #1:
• Armstrong Aldrin Moon
• It's short (3 words)
• Here's the url which has the answer: http://www.astronauts.org/astronauts/armstrong.htm
• The answer is Michael Collins
• It's the 2nd hit in the hit list: Google Query

Comments?  Or did the allergies I suffer from this weekend permanently warp my brain ? (I couldn't code or write very much but I still could google!)

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Build Your Own Mac

That's right -- build your own Mac!  I know that PC folks do this all the time but I've never heard of Mac folks doing it.  Courtesy of www.slashdot.com:

http://www.macopz.com/buildamac/

In case you are wondering "Why the *)(#$*)(#$  would I want to build my own mac?"  Here's the answer: Case Size.  It's not uncommon to have 4 or more full size drives in a PC case whereas most Mac cases only hold 1 or 2.  Internal drives are cheaper than external drives and less cumbersome / fewer cables.

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Outstanding Article on RDF

If you care about this stuff then you should read this from Burning Bird:

http://weblog.burningbird.net/archives/000528.php

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