Just found out that my very good friend Alec has had a bike accident in France, no details yet asides from the scarey comment that The fireman said that he will probably live, but we know no more than that currently..
Hang in there mate..
Just found out that my very good friend Alec has had a bike accident in France, no details yet asides from the scarey comment that The fireman said that he will probably live, but we know no more than that currently..
Hang in there mate..
It used to be the joke was “Friends don’t let friends do Windows” – well now it’s a case of many a true word spoken in jest.
The UK anti-virus company Sophos is reportedly recommending that you don’t use Windows any more due to its increasing vulnerability to attack.
Security threats to PCs with Microsoft Windows have increased so much that computer users should consider using a Mac, says a leading security firm.
As someone who is constantly having to fight spam because of Windows PC’s that have become infected by viruses, trojans and other malware I second the call – please think twice before buying a Windows PC!
From the Linux kernel mailing list, circa June 1998:
Streams was originally a victory of standards people over sanity
Via Groklaw 🙂
It was the possum wot done the gaff, guv’nor, and no mistake..
There is a video over on YouTube called Crouching Tiger, Hidden Possum, but I’m pretty sure that it’s really a quoll instead, wandering around a garden during the day. Take a peek and see what you think..
You remember those old jokes like the signs that say “credit only granted to those over 80 accompanied by both parents” ?
Well how about this for a new twist:
If the employee is unable to attend work for reasons other than an emergency (as determined by the company), the employee must provide 12 hours verbal notice. If the employee breaches this clause, the employee expressly authorises the company to deduct from the employee’s weekly remuneration the amount of $200.
In other words, if you are going to be too sick to work you need to give at least 12 hours notice beforehand, otherwise you get fined $200 in addition to not getting paid for the time you are unable to work.
Unfortunately this is not a joke, this is from the very real “Australian Workplace Agreement” which a mining company tried to force Lorissa Stevens to sign, with the company representative apparently attempting to browbeat her into signing.
Lorissa Stevens: She stood over me, basically said that if I didn’t sign the AWA that I would not have a job with the company, and that she would personally go out of her way to destroy me and make sure I didn’t enter in on another Hunter Valley mine site again.
In addition to this craziness the AWA in question also abolishes their workers sick leave (hence no pay for being off sick) as well as cutting their pay rates.
This is in a mining industry where safety is meant to be a top priority, but obviously it can’t be that important to this mob if they’re willing to risk making sick people work to avoid getting fined in addition to no pay..
Boy am I glad I don’t use Windows! I don’t have to worry about another company deciding that I don’t have the right to use my computer..
There is a ZDNet blog article relating a conversation someone had with a Microsoft support person which was posted to the interesting people list in which the MS support person said:
“in the fall, having the latest WGA will become mandatory and if its not installed, Windows will give a 30 day warning and when the 30 days is up and WGA isn’t installed, Windows will stop working, so you might as well install WGA now.”
I don’t think this is actually likely to be true as the only way they could be sure to disable Windows it if WGA wasn’t installed is to have planned this from the first release of Windows XP, otherwise they’d have no guarantee that the code they need to do this would be installed.
However, the ZDNet person questioned Microsoft and only got this in response:
As we have mentioned previously, as the WGA Notifications program expands in the future, customers may be required to participate. Microsoft is gathering feedback in select markets to learn how it can best meet its customers’ needs and will keep customers informed of any changes to the program.
Now given that MSFT is already being sued over WGA for violating the Washington Consumer Protection Act, Washington Anti-Spyware Laws, California Consumer Legal Remedies Act, California Anti-Spyware Laws, California Business and Professions Code and California’s Unfair Competition Law you would think that they would take this opportunity for a good PR exercise about it..
The Judge in the SCO versus IBM case has just ruled that 187 of SCO’s list of allegedly misused materials are to be struck due to “lack of specificity”, in other words they couldn’t provide any details at all to back up their allegations.
Recently I’ve added a three new tools to my anti-spam arsenal. A few weeks back Rich gave me a heads up that he’d gotten the time to modify the WP 2.0 Akismet plugin to allow you to simply ban spamming IP addresses to your blog based on what Akismet classifies as spam.
Basically you get a top-10 of comments ordered by IP address and URL allowing you to quickly dispatch (and ban in the case of IP addresses) those evil posts. It works rather nicely, I must say.
This evening I’ve just added the Did You Pass Maths plugin from Aussie Steven Herod which is kind of a numeric captcha plugin for comments.
But this won’t stop trackback spam which seems to come in bursts, so I’ve also added the Trackback Validator Plugin from the Computer Security Lab at Rice University which visits the referrers of trackbacks received to ensure that there is really a link to you from that site in that page.
It’s not infallible as spammers can still configure a fake blog with links to your site, but they believe that when that happens it is no longer completely a spam trackback as it does originate from a real posting somewhere – just that you may disagree with the content and agenda behind it.
So, we’ll see what happens!
The oldest known living animal, 175 year old Harriet the Tortoise has died of a heart attack following a short illness at Australia Zoo in Queensland.
Whilst it was long thought that Harriet was collected by Charles Darwin on his visit to the Galapagos Islands, genetic testing has shown that although she was born prior to his visit she actually came from a population that lived on an island that Darwin didn’t visit.