Bill McGonigle, over at Resigned to the Bittersweet Truth, blogs, “Automatic updates are the only rational approach for most businesses in today’s world of 24/7 Internet connectivity, malware and 0-day vulnerabilities…” read the entire post here.
Archive | October 28, 2005
Reserve April 21-24, 2006 for a trip to Milwaukee?
On his Hentzenwerke Publishing website, Whil Hentzen says, “Reserve April 21-24, 2006 for a trip to Milwaukee. That’s all I can say right now. Trust me.”
Yeah, right. Wonder what he’s up to…
I’ll bet April in Milwaukee is almost as nice as the Novembers we’ve spent there at GLGDW…
Did MS flip-flop on supporting OpenDocument formats?
Slashdot post: MS Office 12 To Utilize ODF?. J. Random Luser writes “Groklaw is carrying a story about Microsoft quietly engaging a French company to develop Open Document filters for Office 12, due out mid-2006. The SourceForge project claims to be an import filter for MS Office, and that is how the developer describes it. But ZDNet quotes Ray Ozzie as talking about an export filter from MS Office, and this french blog takes Ozzie at his word. Ostensibly the tarball unpacks as OpenOfficePlugin, and SourceForge has the WindowsInstaller.msi listed as ‘platform independent’.” From the ZDNet article: “Ozzie told me that supporting ODF in Office isn’t a matter of principle. Microsoft isn’t opposed to supporting other formats. The company just announced support for PDF, and he added that the Open Office XML format has an ‘extremely liberal’ license.”
Follow-up: Check out the weasly words in Microsoft’s denial (citation lost): “We have no plans to directly support the OpenDocument format at this time,” I suppose that leaves open the back door of “indirectly supporting” by paying a third-party to write an import/export filter.
David Berlind follows up with long but insightful piece, “Hidden OpenDocument agenda uncovered in Massachusetts” concluding with the words, “If that’s not enough for Microsoft, then one can only assume that some other agenda is indeed in play. Just not the one that has so far been implicated.“
Cheap plastic printers, consumables and razor blades
Rick Schummer, over at Shedding Some Light warns: Epson – you are on your last strike… “I really hate hardware. Yes, I have said this a million times, and I mean it. I hate recommending it, I hate buying it, I hate shopping for it, and I hate the fact that I need it to so the thing I love doing every day, which is creating software. OK, a million and four times.”
“So what the heck is the deal with “disposable printers”? I hate it. At least the US$300 HP InkJet printer I purchased years ago lasted several years. Maybe this is better though as I get the same life out of my US$300 bucks and get newer and better features each time.”
Well, that and a lot of aggravation. Like leasing cars at ridiculously low rates only to screw the consumer at turn-in time, print manufacturers have figured out they can sell flimsy printers at next-to-nothing costs, wear down the consumer with overpriced (and proprietary and DRMed) consumables (why is it printers always die when you have a new cartridge?) and then let the cheap plastic chassis die a quick death. Who loses? The consumer, who’s computer always dies at the worst possible minute, whose new software is likely 91% compatible, and whose toxic waste dump is filling up with this junk.
“A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.” My time and energy is worth a heck of a lot more. I’d look for a medium-duty office printer rather than the bargain-of-the-week, and check some comparative reviews to ensure the complete cost, including consumables over the life of the printer, are reasonable. However, it’s been a couple of years since I’ve shopped for a printer. Are there any good bargains left out there? Not the $49 give-away-the-razor and gouge-em-on-blades bargains, but real bargains?