Archive | 2005

Did MS flip-flop on supporting OpenDocument formats?

By Ted Roche on October 28, 2005 in Microsoft, OpenSource, Technology

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

By Ted Roche on October 28, 2005 in Technology

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?

The Death Star meets Terminator 2000

By Ted Roche on October 27, 2005 in Technology

The NYT > Home Page reports AT&T Lives On as New Buyer Adopts Brand Name. “SBC Communications, which is awaiting regulatory approval to buy AT&T, announced today that it will adopt the AT&T name once the acquisition is approved.” By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS.

So, the U.S. government split “The Phone Company” into little bits that have each grown separately and now merge back into a super-conglomerate again. Some may see this as a waste of money. Others think that the boom in cellular, VOIP, DSL, broadband and other innovations has moved far more quickly with more competition in the marketplace. I’m in the second camp.

Apache vs. IIS: 50 million vs. 15 million

By Ted Roche on October 26, 2005 in OpenSource, Technology

Slashdot has its monthly feeding frenzy over the Netcraft numbers: Apache Webserver Surpasses 50 Million Website Mark. chris81 writes “For the first time ever, the Apache Web Server is powering more than 50 million websites, according to Netcraft’s Web Server Survey for October. Although relative share fell by 0.67 percent, the total number of sites powered by Apache grew to over 52 million. Microsoft’s IIS finished second with more than 15 million sites served.”

Taming Visual FoxPro SQL: Real World Data Solutions in VFP, the latest from Hentzenwerke

By Ted Roche on October 25, 2005 in FoxPro

Well, Hentzenwerke Publishing has announced Tamar E. Granor and della Martin’s latest work, “Taming Visual FoxPro SQL: Real World Data Solutions in VFP,” available for purchase and download (in PDF format) from the Hentzewerke site. Follow the link above for more information, a table of contents, sample chapter (not yet posted) and ordering information. Looking forward to reading this one. Whil Hentzen writes,

“You know how once in a while you run into a book that grows on you – each time you read it, there seems to be more in there than the last time you picked it up?… 152 pages of sheer delight. For us programming types, at least. “

Stephen J. Vaughan-Nichols likes Microsoft, well, a little

By Ted Roche on October 25, 2005 in FoxPro, Microsoft, OpenSource

Stephen J. Vaughan-Nichols is not well-known as a Microsoft fan; on the contrary, he tends to be one of their outspoken critics. So, I was pleased when I saw him praise Microsoft in his recent eWeek opinion column:

I haven’t been a big fan of personal database programs for a long time now. The only one out there these days that I care for at all is Microsoft’s Visual FoxPro. Yes, I can say good things about Microsoft products—when they really are good.

MySQL 5.0 released for production use

By Ted Roche on October 24, 2005 in LAMP, MySQL, OpenSource, Technology

The Latest Updates from MySQL AB RSS Feed notes MySQL 5.0 Now Available for Production Use. “MySQL AB today announced the general availability of MySQL 5.0, the most significant product upgrade in the company’s ten-year history. The major new version delivers advanced SQL standard-compliant features such as stored procedures, triggers, views & new pluggable storage engines. Over 30 enterprise platform and tool vendors have also expressed enthusiastic support for the new release of the world’s most popular open source database.”

Shipping no WINE before it’s time, twelve years to beta

By Ted Roche on October 22, 2005 in FoxPro, OpenSource, Technology

OSNews notes After 12 Years of Work, WINE is Going Beta. “After roughly 12 years of work, the Wine Project is about to take its widely used Windows translation layer to a place it has not been in all that time: beta. Wine Project leader Alexandre Julliard, who has worked on the software nearly since its beginning in 1993 and maintained it since 1994, said in an interview yesterday that the beta release is “a matter of days away.” He has since updated that forecast and said it would be released on Tuesday, October 25th.”

A remarkable platform, WINE Is Not an Emulator, but rather a thin layer that maps Win32 calls to matching Linux calls, running some applications even faster than on their native OS. Note that Visual FoxPro is a popular item in the Application Database, named to the Top 10 Silver List.

FireFox Logs One Hundred Million Downloads

By Ted Roche on October 20, 2005 in OpenSource, Security, Technology

Last OSNews post for the morning, I promise! They report Firefox Sees 100 Millionth Download. “Just shy of Firefox’s first birthday party, the Mozilla Foundation celebrated the 100 millionth download of its Web browser Wednesday. “This is a great milestone. Our massive, worldwide community of grassroots marketers and users – not to mention the developers – have helped to put out a product that’s really kicking butt,” said Asa Dotzler, the Mozilla liaison to the SpreadFirefox community.”

Ubuntu 5.10 Server Released

By Ted Roche on October 20, 2005 in OpenSource, Technology

OSNews notes Ubuntu 5.10 Server Released. “The Ubuntu team is proud to announce Ubuntu 5.10 Server, the first release of Ubuntu designed especially for server environments. Like the standard desktop Ubuntu, it occupies a single CD. However, it is distinguished by the following features: Includes server-oriented kernels with out-of-the-box automatic support for multiprocessor systems; Includes a wide variety of popular server applications such as apache, mysql, postgresql, php, zope, openldap, bind, samba, and more.” Visit the OSNews site for links to download the CD image for PowerPC, i386 and AMD64.

Ubuntu has taken the world by storm, recently highlighted as the Desktop OS of choice in Linux Journal poll. I’ve been impressed with the Debian-based distribution. It will be interesting to see what innovations they bring to their server version.

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