I’ve been tracking OpenOffice (using it exclusively on-and-off) and they are really progressing quickly through their RC (Release Candidates)

The wonderful thing about their recent announcement?

The first office suite to use the new OASIS OpenDocument format, the future-proof international standard for office software

So now all those Paranoid types can get the ‘standards’ compliant Office Productivity tool for which IBM and Sun have been pushing to save your soul from Microsoft.

Read: There’s been a lot of hoopla huffing and puffing over a ‘standard’ that only now exists?

Not even in Tonga.

From: OpenOffice 3.0 RC4 

OpenOffice.org is an open-source, multiplatform and multilingual office suite comparable with MS Office.
It is compatible with all other major office suites and is free to download, use, and distribute. It was previously known as StarOffice before it became an open-source project. OpenOffice comes with OpenWriter - a word processor, OpenCalc - a spreadsheet and OpenImpress - a presentational package.
* The first office suite to use the new OASIS OpenDocument format, the future-proof international standard for office software
* Easy to install, with a whole new look and feel, matched to the type of computer in use
* More intuitive, more easy to use than ever, with a host of new usability features
* Complete with Base: an easy-to-use database manager with a fully integrated database
* Compatible with other software packages - now understands even obscure and rarely used features in major competitors.
You may download OpenOffice.org completely free of any licence fees, use it for any purpose - private, educational, government and public administration, commercial - and pass on copies free of charge to family, friends, students, employees, etc.
News source: OpenOffice.org
Download: OpenOffice 3.0 RC3
View: Release notes
Read full story...

OpenOffice 3.0 RC4
Marcel Klum
Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:53:33 GMT

Game Over Man, Game Over ….

It looks like annoying flash has become a serious security threat.

But where does it leave the security bod out there trying to let people in their organisation use the Internet ?

Looks like a great opportunity for a security appliance border device between users and their web experience.

Net game turns PC into undercover surveillance zombie
Daniel Fleshbourne
Tue, 07 Oct 2008 18:17:02 GMT

Underscoring the severity of a new class of vulnerability known as clickjacking, a blogger has created a proof-of-concept game that uses a PC's video cam and microphone to secretly spy on the player. The demo, which is available here, appears to be a simple game that tests how quickly a user can click on a series of moving targets. Behind the scenes, it combines a generic clickjacking attack with weaknesses in Adobe's Flash technology to record the player using the PC's video camera and microphone.
The proof of concept is a powerful demonstration of the spooky implications behind clickjacking. The vulnerability allows malicious webmasters to control the links visitors click on. Once lured to a booby-trapped page, a user may think he's clicking on a link that leads to Google - when in fact it takes him to a money transfer page, a banner ad that's part of a click-fraud scheme, or any other destination the attacker chooses.
View: The full story @ The Reg
Read full story...

My editor of choice is Scite and there's been an enhancement with one of the 'packages' I use that just drives me crazy. Autocompletion of quotes and brackets. This feature autocompletes your quotes, such that everytime your enter a single or double quote " the editor will automatically put in the second ". Feature drives me crazy.

I get a phone call this morning from the ‘Eua clan pointing me to a new project their involved in.

http://peanutsfunnyfarm.blogspot.com

Peanut’s Funny Farm is an activity farm for underprivileged children aged up to 18 years. We have designed Peanut’s Funny Farm specifically to be a safe and happy environment for children and Animals. The children are welcome to come and stay at the farm where they can play with and care for animals, ride horses and take part in a number of different outdoor activities. Our goal is to help children spend some quality time with animals that do not judge them or cause harm to them, but will love them for who they are. We also give refuge and shelter to as many unwanted animals as possible.

Trust the ‘Eua mob to come all the way in from the Islands, to find happiness on a farm.

They’re out there with their palangi-loi mum helping out with setting up the facilities etc. If you think you can be part of the fun, or someone you may know may find it useful, head on over and take at look.

And a beautiful day in Sydney it is for being out doors.

What is Clonezilla

You're probably familiar with the popular proprietary commercial package

Norton Ghost®, and its OpenSource counterpart, Partition Image. The problem with these software packages is that it takes a lot of time to massively clone systems to many computers. You've probably also heard of Symantec's solution to this problem, Symantec Ghost Corporate Edition® with multicasting. Well, now there is an OpenSource clone system (OCS) solution called Clonezilla with unicasting and multicasting!

Clonezilla, based on DRBL, Partition Image, ntfsclone, and udpcast, allows you to do bare metal backup and recovery. Two types of Clonezilla are available, Clonezilla live and Clonezilla server edition. Clonezilla live is suitable for single machine backup and restore. While Clonezilla server edition is for massive deployment, it can clone many (40 plus!) computers simultaneously. Clonezilla saves and restores only used blocks in the harddisk. This increases the clone efficiency. At the NCHC's Classroom C, Clonezilla server edition was used to clone 41 computers simultaneously. It took only about 10 minutes to clone a 5.6 GBytes system image to all 41 computers via multicasting!

Some people still don’t think they need a disk image backup solution, and they may not.

But if you have to maintain a network of computers (whether for a school, work, or social club) today’s increased capacity in disk drives (and their relatively lower prices) demands you consider this as a solution for making your maintenance life easier.

Computers can be configured to ‘wake-up’ to certain peripheral device activities, something (as I recall) pioneered in the PC Space by Apple’s Nubus back in the ‘dark ages?’ The idea is that we can conserve electricity by putting our computers to ‘sleep’ and have some event (such as someone wanting to talk with the computer) wake up the computer.

Today, ‘wake-up’ is a common feature offered on computers.

Apart from the security implications of a computer activating (or being owned) when you plug in a Firewire / IEE1394 device (such as some external drives and Digitial Video Cameras) there’s a nice feature in Windows Vista that would ‘wake-up’ my laptop when I move my external/usb mouse.

Wake-up on USB is a nice feature, that you love half the time, and hate the other half.

Put the laptop into sleep, or just let the screen saver do it and go away from your desk for a cup of coffee or something. It is seriously convenient to just get to back, bump the mouse and be back online browsing the web (oops, working!!!.)

On the other hand, it is hugely inconvenient to put the laptop to sleep, shutdown the screen and then have someone else bump the mouse for the laptop to be active while the screen is down (i.e. no clear indicator for me that my battery is draining away.) It doesn’t help that it seems that since I have my laptop authenticate after waking up, it doesn’t go back to sleep so my battery can be totally drained with the lid down.

Don’t even go into the problem that many people have, where something wakes Windows/Laptop up while it’s in your bag giving the laptop a good chance to drain the battery and heat it self up silly.

As a given, if you put your Windows box into sleep mode, and you don’t want it to wake-up because you’re putting the laptop into your bag, pull all the USB devices out before Windows gets into ‘sleep’ nirvana.

The lessons.

Decide on the level of inconvenience your prefer. Until Windows is intelligent enough to figure out that Monday ~ Friday between 5:00 and 6:00pm when I put the thing to sleep, I don’t want it to wake up until I open the lid, live with it. Actually, if Windows and this laptop can just figure out I don’t ever want the laptop to wake-up while the lid is down, that would be a huge success.

Like, how often do you hear of people on battery power turning on their laptops while the screen is shut. they must be in a different world over at Redmond?

For battery life, get another power-brick for your laptop (unfortunately I’m over-geeked and carry two laptops with one power-brick between them.) Come to me sayeth Windows, for I will make your yoke heavy.

Of all the naysayers, fanboys out there for Google’s new engine.

Has anyone noticed the contribution Google is doing by BSD licensing the product?

Just as OpenBSD ‘saved’ the world by contributing OpenSSH as a BSD licensed product (so everyone and their dog can use the best SSH server/client without reprisals or arguments) is Google trying to push Chrome’s Javascript Engine V8 to become a new standard that everyone can use ?

If V8 is faster, more compliant then any other pseudo javascript engine out there, then why would you not incorporate it into your browser? Especially if it gives your end-users (browsers and developers) a better experience.

Go Google, Go IE9

Took off my jacket @ Newtown station because the night air, though chilly, was warm enough for only a single ‘jumper/cardigan.’

Train gets in, I get on, and immediately have to put the jacket back on. Geez the train is freezing.

But let’s just blame the State Government Owned, and Operated Railroad operators for the continuing incompetence. Or, better yet, let’s blame the lackey worker who has to put in double-shifts and isn’t allowed to question the efficiency of the network. After all, the current government (State) has only had 10+ years running the show, they haven’t yet completely put their buddies into all posts in the organisation.

The previous government really screwed things up when they sacked all those incompetent managers and replaced everyone. 10 years is about minimum to get our buddies back into the system and totally screw the populace.

Democracy, the NSW freedom to ‘game’ the system so you can legally screw people!

With the right amount of money, what is the ‘real’ difference between democracy and dictatorship?

My sister-in-law suffered sadly for beauty on Saturday, then spent Sunday coiled up in front of the television keeping warm (supposedly) or was that not going to church so she could watch movies.

It seems a sad maxim of the ‘civilised society’ that so many link their self-worth to their exterior outlook, or just as sadly the number of brand things dangling.

Too sady, too true.

Rail travellers are used to private papers hawking themselves for FREE espousing some agenda (I don’t know because I don’t read it often enough) providing quick, short term entertainment and presumably paid by advertisers.

This morning we were greeted at the gate to Bankstown Rail by a hawker giving away free Daily Telegraph rags, wow. Everyone at the station seemed to have a copy, whilst other stations didn’t have travellers getting on loaded down with the paper.

Kudos to the Telegraph for trying to get their message out. There used to be a reason when the regular print press would give away free copies, but this time around I’m mystified.

Of course, my dad religiously buys the paper so they’ve wrung their litre of blood from our family.

Dad’s rugby fanaticism hasn’t spilled over to buying the “the official” paper for the NSW Rugby Team – Waratahs (one of the sponsors being the Sydney Morning Herald www.smh.com.au)

I had hoped that that Sonny Bill William’s saga would have died away by now, but I guess it just wanted to have as many people push across their own agenda items. Sonny Bill Williams (SBW) is an incredible high profile athlete who played Rugby League in Sydney for the Canterbury Bankstown Bulldogs. My son’s team.

In short, SBW left in July for France, breaking an existing player contract (with lot’s of money) to go to France for even more money. The bigger story is more complicated, otherwise the ditched club and industry (CB Bulldogs, Australia’s National Rugby League) wouldn’t be spending heaps of money on lawyers to try and prevent SBW from playing in France.

Apart from the legal jurisdictional, sovereignty land mines with this law suite, you have to wonder how real this effort is in suing someone to come back and play for you.  How is that to work? Supposedly SBW will be forced to come back and play with the CBB, and he is supposedly going to run on the park every week-end putting in his best because he has been shown the LOVE by his club.

Breaking Contract.

I’ve heard some flawed commentators (former players) going on and on about how vile this whole thing of breaking his contract. All while forgetting their own high profile, press covered, contractual fights where he and his employer reneged on a number of contractual details.

Contracts are for the benefit of the guy/gal with the biggest stick. Unfortunately for the NRL, SBW spewed in their face and put himself a distance away where he hopes the NRL’s big stick can’t touch him.

You really have to watch “The Legend of Johnny Lingo” to get a Pacific view of what contract negotiations should be, as opposed to the bastardised system it is now. It shouldn’t just be a Pacific view.

Differences

If you are running a Million/Billion dollar organisation, such as the the NRL or Australian Rugby Union (ARU) and are dependent on Pacific Islanders as part of your product, then I think it behoves you as a business to get a better understanding of your product.

If in Australia and you manage such a corporation and you’ve never been to a Kava Party, or a Hangi, a Pacific Wedding, or a Funeral, never seen at least “The Laughing Samoans,” or “Sione’s Wedding,” or God forbid you’ve never seen “The Legend of Johnny Lingo,” please don’t even assert that you have any idea about your Pacific bread.

If you’ve not gone to church with a Pacific Islander, you’re never going to understand the social binding integration of Pasifika.

Recent high-profile (huge money spinner) moves by ‘Isileli Folau at the Melbourne Storm moving to Brisbane, as well as Digby Ioane moving from the Western Australia Force back to Brisbane should have rung bells in the hallowed halls.

Islanders aren’t whites, they’re not blacks, they’re not like your other products. They’re loyalties and frames of reference are different.

In New Zealand the whole Islander thing was forced on the white culture by the gangs, and has evolved into a deeper cohesion between the different cultures. Of course, people being forcibly moved from their land may some day display anti-social behaviour and in retrospect you’ve got to consider the Maori and Samoan response have been quite civilised. In Australia, minor cultures are easily subverted and/or ignored.

Move On

The SBW saga highlights a number of shortcomings in the existing entertainment industry using athletes.

Either the industries learn from it and deal with it in a constructive manner or things are going to get from worse to worse.

The Pacific Islander issue needs to be reviewed and dealt with, that’s one way forward. This has always been a problem brushed under the table in Rugby League and increasing in Rugby Union.

Was having some serious problems with my music collection on the phone and after a couple of days of fiddling here and there I pulled the MicroSD out, plugged into the Laptop and …

Format solved the problem.

Before formatting the MicroSD I took a look around and sure enough there was a directly with a funny label implying that it was used by my phone for something, and the files inside that directory was full squiggly funny little characters (hint: good indicator of a disk corruption)

I wanted to trash the disk anyway, for a clean slate set up.

The problems I was having were Windows Mobile Pocket Edition (whatever version) would index my music 1,000+ songs, but I couldn’t get a song listed at all. Meanwhile, if I open the file by double-clicking it in Explorer it would happily play the song.

The 2nd problem, when I listed the categories/genres it would have some old genres that I had long excommunicated from my desktop. Deleting the music files and re-copying the music hadn’t helped, so there was obviously a collection of knowledge somewhere else storing this old outdated information.

I guess I could have just deleted that “metadata” folder, but while I was there, it was just as sweet to wipe the whole thing and feel refreshed with the new start.

The phone really is a computer.

Solution #1. Reboot

Solution #2. Format

I know people have been rebooting their iPhones, I wonder how you wipe stuff ?

I’m tickled happy I got a phone that supported microSD storage, I bought and 8GB card to go with my 2GB (which O4 got for her phone) and the 1GB stick that came with the phone. 32GB has been publicly announced (the design limit for this particular phone.)

I can upgrade by just buying a card, too cool (obviously waiting for the price to be practical, and my collection to become unmanageable.)

Woo hoo, built my first box in aeons.

Been playing with various bits and pieces at work trying to piece together at least another functional box. Sometime later we decided that we needed a new box and we would look at reusing as many components from the trash pile I was playing with.

Unfortunately, bits and pieces of the trash pile was working, but together there was no ensemble. We decided to get new bits for the parts that looked like were dead and yesterday was my turn to put the bits together (and pray I don’t fry anything.)

I think the last time I actually had to put a box together from scratch was back in 1998? As I recall we had a bum machine at QSC and had to get the motherboard from Australia(?) Ever since then I’ve basically had some under my wings that I told to read the Taiwanese documentation and cable the box together. Of course that was an experience in itself in finding ports not working because they just weren’t wired up.

Anyhow, a relative newbie and not wanting to ever open this box again I made sure every lose wire got plugged into something even if there was no likelihood that it would ever get used. Double checked the bits I couldn’t figure out with our resident hardware dude, crossed my fingers and pushed 240v into the machine.

Poof, no-sound, nothing! Woo hooo, go software dude. In the distant pass, when computers don’t power up, and you’re somewhat certain that the power supply works fine, pull the PCI boards out and see what happens. So, pulled out a few boards and voila machine sings beautifully.

That wasn’t too bad, now was it?

What are you using?

I was on the phone helping out a client with one of their machines when he asked,

What are you using ?

…

I’m using Ubuntu now, and it’s much better now. I’m never going back.

Apart from using two laptops (one Vista the 2nd Ubuntu) what I’m using more and more these days is my HTC Touch II, a Windows Mobile phone.

I really wanted a phone with a good Media Player, because using Public Transport for 3 hours each day really sucks when you can’t find something productive to use with that time.

Strangely enough, I really don’t use the Media Player for much entertainment consumption (also known as, I have more music on the phone then anything else, but I mostly use the Media Player to listen to Podcasts.)

Apart for the standard phone features (taking a call, making a call, using the phone book/contacts) a feature of the phone I check every day, is the little weather app. It’s just a ‘rich’ client that connects on demand to some weather website and gives me a sweet summary of weather forecasts for Sydney.

Weather Forecast for Sydney? It’s cold, and staying cold.

The HTC Touch II is heaps slower than the iPhone, and doesn’t have the gazillion apps touted for that platform. But there seems to be a gazillion apps for Windows Mobile out on the Internet, there’s just not a single repository for finding them so you have to have some serious Search Fu to find them.

I’ve updated my touch to the current Windows Mobile 6.1 platform thanks to the community out there, and am looking at a few apps for their usefulness for my experience.

So, I’m sitting here on the train when some punk (yeah, yeah, just a little envy) gets on the train, see’s me showing off by having my laptop out and catching up on some good old news feeds (so I can spend the time at home with the kids instead of catching up on static news.)

He sits down and pulls out his iPod Touch.

OK, coool, he’s bopping his head up and down and “having a good time” although the sound leakage from his earphones either means his blowing his eardrums or it’s leaking sound badly from not being a good ear-piece.

“Hello? Yeah, I’m on the train to Bankstown. What? You want me to get out? OK, Cool”

Whoaaa, his eyePod works as a phone?

Now, he’s got me curious cause I haven’t seen an iPhone version 1.0 in Australia so I’m trying to discreetly peak at his iPod(phone) while he’s trying to be discreetly having everyone notice him? (Remember there were quite a few sales of the iPhone 1.0 in Tonga so we’ve seen it around.)

He’s bopping his head up and down, polishing his iPod(phone.) Looking at the side of his iPod, it is definitely slimmer than the iPhone’s I’ve seen. Hmm, definitely a metallic silver back, so it’s either an iPod or an import iPhone.

This story would be sad if it weren’t such a lark.

So, I pull out my el-cheapo Nokia 6300 and call O4. Ha, ha ha, I wonder if he’s going to call someone else with his iPod phone, 8-)

Had the misfortunate to not hear the announcement that the train had rerouted, and found myself on a ride to woop woop (a term for nowhere, as in the middle of woop woop.)

On the frequent occasion when the trains are running correctly, I board and ‘alight’ at Bankstown Station (part of the Bankstown Line) shown in the diagram as a dark orange shade. Getting on at Wynyard Station the sign post said Bankstown line, and the announcer said Bankstown line (the deep orange lines on the map) but we ended up on the dark green line, taking a peak hour shortcut on the dark-green tracks.

We went from the standard route Museum –> Central –> Redfern –> blah blah –> Beverly Hills ? Where the hell are we going ?

Anyhow, since continuing the ride to further woop woop was a guarantee of having no idea of when I was getting home, I decided I better get off the train at the next stop (together with another load of people.) I guess people getting on at the last station knew where they were going and the poor sods like me had no clue.

 

Anyhow, we seem to have had an express to woop woop, and I only got on the slow train back to civilisation, because I was routing through the “Airport Line.” Wow!! That’s some serious tunneling.

A number of years back, after decades of government promises, someone actually got a rail line to go through to the city’s major domestic and international airports. The airports look spartan and very modernish (like the New York City Subways on Planet of the Apes) but the real cool thing was just watching that tunnel go for ever and ever. That was one huge tunnel trip (presumbly because by the time someone actually decided to get the work done, the whole place had homes on them so the only way was to go underground.)

Mind you, if I don’t see that wonderful specimen of human perseverence, I’m sure I wouldn’t feel the worse for it.

I guess the lesson to be learned here, is don’t trust the signs, check things along the way and have a packed lunch in your bag for those days you really end up in the middle of woop woop.

The day didn’t start off to well when I made that mad dash for the train, to realise I’m on a different schedule today, don’t go straight to the city, get to the coffee house first.

In some forgotten point during the age of cavemen clubbing each other on the head to make a point, some social nazi decided that it was critical for the organisation of the community that new members be introduced through stages of ‘conditioning’ into the norms of the society. In the 20th century, the induction process is variously called by the Greek Fraternities as “hazing.”

It may even be illegal in some quarters, but who is going to get in the way of social unity, and progress ?

Mr. Dave put me through Nullcube’s rigorous induction process, with the simple line.

How do you feel about walking into town?

Scum bag!!

We had our pow-wow session early Monday morning before heading into town for some real work (i.e. non-administration stuff.) “How do you feel about walking into town?” I shoulda clobbered him on the spot then.

Mr. Dave cut a quick march ‘clip’ for us from our Newtown HQ (ha ha ha, HQ is the fanciful term for where our base toilets are located 8-) and off we went. Ho K, he’s decided that we don’t need to grab a cab and then comes up with a fanciful reason for why getting a cab into town wasn’t a good idea today (the 2nd opportunity where I shoulda just clobbered him.)

He’s doing good, ‘cause he’s into this walking thing and makes the farcical attempt to get to the gymn every now and then. Mind you, I haven’t done a long walk like this for a long long time, like 1999!

The distance we’re walking here is probably akin to walking from Tofoa into town, which isn’t a bad walk, unless you have some hee bee jebee fitness fanatic pushing the pace, and you hit Broadway (less than half way to our destination) and everything’s on an incline (the wrong way.) Google Maps estimates the distance at 3 miles.

Joel Spolsky reminds us of a business idea that comes other of the former Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC.) The discussion could be summarised as:

Administration is about keeping the lights on, not telling other people what they should do.

If you want to propose something, you own it, your tender it and get it out. Have the courage of your convictions, and take responsibility for your mouth.

Wouldn’t that be an ideal world?

Obviously, either the advice was not completely understood by DEC management, or it is not in itself sufficient for success (otherwise DEC the pioneer computer systems integrator, would not have been swallowed up by a PC box mover Compaq Computer Systems to be later swallowed again by HP.)

OK, I’ve been playing around with trying to get something to replace Microsoft Outlook for handling my “lists” of things to do, and calendaring would be nice.

I’m leaning very quickly at just getting back to using Outlook for the next six months.

My favourite potential replacement is Chandler from the http://www.chandlerproject.org. Unfortunately, it will randomly choose not to let me enter a new task/event. The data seems to never get lost between app restarts, reinstalls, but its very annoying not to be able add new “issues” which basically means I can’t trust the thing as a daily planner et. al. replacement.

It is rather slow to start up, but that’s one thing that you learn to accept when trying out replacement software (i.e. not critical at this point of assessment.)

Chandler has this nice GTD (Get Things Done) gui enhancement, which is neat although I wish the auto-sorting feature could be tweaked a little more (for example, if an event isn’t going to happen for a week, I don’t need it on my screen displacing other events that are going to happen sooner.

Chandler has a nice feature for synching your everything through their hub, or you can have your own server hub. This is way cool, and supports synching more than just your calendar (which is why I prefer this type of solution to just having Google Calendar)

The big Open Source Momma Personal Information Manager (PIM) replacement Novell’s Evolution has a near current Windows port, but it is dang slow. My hour on the train is over and the thing is still starting up.

I’ve started it up a couple of times, and I’m sure if I had 64 bit Windows with everything cached on a 12GB Ram machine, it might be faster (or normal startup speed for everyone else.) i might try colinux or andlinux and that might be a better solution.

But I can synch my Outlook with my phone. My phone has been out of date for the past 2 months as I have vainly attempted to get rid of Outlook.

Wax On!!