Tuesday, May 31, 2005

Keyboard Cleaning

Here's how to clean your keyboard in a dishwasher (apparently). How about cleaning laptop keyboards?

Sunday, May 29, 2005

Ground Rules for the Windows-Macintosh World

David Pogue writes eloquently in the New York Times about all issues related to personal technology. He's one of my favourite authors. In the above link to his NY Time article of 26 May 2005 he writes about some ground rules in the war between proponents of different operating sytems. He writes about Windows and Macintosh, but this also applies to Linux, Unix, and anything else that people use.

I like No. 2 the best. It resonates with me.

2. No condemning something until you've tried it.


I happen to use Windows and Linux. I like both. I won't trash either. But I notice a few things:

: Windows users typically don't know, or sometimes have not heard of, Linux
: Linux users know that Windows is junk, crashes all the time, or they tell me how they hate Bill Gates.

Neither of these positions are worthly of continued discussion and I won't take the bait--although if the listener is willing, I will tell Windows-using people about Linux and tell Linux-using people that they can't count on winning the war based on expectations that Windows crashes all the time.

Friday, May 20, 2005

Honeynet publishes fascinating paper on Phishing

Extremely well written paper on phishing practices. They review the actual techniques, examples, etc. Worth the read.

Tuesday, May 17, 2005

Why Projects Don't Fail

This fascinating article talks about the features of failed projects ... not to pick on them but to enhance an understanding in the interest of continuous development.

Interesting points in the article about the projects that don't fail:
  • Alignment with the overall vision of the organisation.
  • Scope is well defined at the beginning. Scope should not be allowed to expand.
  • Clear sustained vision.
  • Qualified team to execute the project

Sunday, May 15, 2005

Buzztracker

This impresses me.

"Buzztracker is software that visualizes frequencies and relationships between locations in the Google world news directory. Buzztracker tries to show you how interconnected the world is: big events in one area ripple to other areas across the globe. Connections between cities thousands of miles apart become apparent at a glance."

So simple, elegant, and informative. Why didn't I think of that?

Tuesday, May 10, 2005

You Get What You Don't Expect

I use Mozilla's Firefox browser for most web browsing. It's 21st century software and does a terrific job. I think the main reason I use it is due to it's tabbed browser windows.

There are many who use and advocate it because it's "not-Microsoft". I never understood that. Some use it because it's "secure, unlike Microsoft's browser which is a disaster". I never understood that either as a) Internet Explorer is not a diaster and b) Firefox was built by humans and humans never do everything perfect; especially when attacked by other humans. If this were true, then technology would have stopped warfare centuries ago.

Well, Firefix has a very significant security-related flaw. One that was not supposed to be there, according to the vocal proponents. See the link.

I'm not bothered about the flaw. It's being dealt with. I'm bothered about the advocacy.