gundy dot org

There is a cool video of the new Digg comment system. It really does look SLICK. Now it will be so much easier make comments like:

Really, Digg could be cool, but the level of discussion is like 12 year-old wannabe chatter. Every now-and-again there is an insightful comment but that hardly makes it worth the time. I haven’t bothered to register a user account there so I don’t really know what options there are to make things less dumb. The point is, that the default page (the face the world sees) is just juvenile. Maybe when Web 2.5 is out things will have improved ;)

MS acknowledges that their licensing can be confusing and they offer a free USB key preloaded with MS propaganda to help you in your path to licensing enlightenment. I doubt there is any info about the GPL on there :(

Find it here…

Click the link on the right of the page that says, “Get Yours!” and fill out the 4 question form. They will send you a free USB key in 6-8 weeks.

Answers are 2, T, T, T

Only problem is that it requires “Microsoft Passport” sign-in.

DevUtah’s February Geek Dinner will be held at the Miller Business Innovation Center on Wednesday February 22 at 6 PM.

David Spann and Alistair Cockburn will lead a discussion on “Introducing Agile to the Organization”. If you’ve heard of Agile methodologies but can’t get others in your organization interested; or if you’ve been a member of a high performing Agile team but can’t find the right words to convince upper management to spread the “gospel”, this discussion may be helpful. David and Alistair will take your questions before they begin and will respond to as many as possible. Being agile by nature, they want to meet your (the customer’s) interest. If you’ve only heard about Agile, feel free to do a little research and post beginner questions as well.

Speakers
David Spann is high-tech management consultant who focuses teams on making a reasonable return on investment while exceeding customer expectations. David has helped conduct each of the annual Agile Software Conferences since the first one held at Westminster College in 2002 and is currently involved with Alistair Cockburn in developing Utah’s Agile Project Leadership Network.

Alistair Cockburn is an internationally known project witchdoctor and strategist. He co-authored the 2001 Manifesto for Agile Software Development and the 2005 project management “Declaration of Inter-Dependence” and has written several best-selling books.

Grub
A build-your-own taco buffet will be catered by Megan Faulkner Brown.
The meal cost is $12. You can prepay from the wiki or just bring cash to pay at the door.

Please RSVP:
RSVP here.

Novell has been hard at work. The they have released their Xgl graphics subsystem and the ‘Compiz’ compositing manager and it’s source code which they have been developing in-house. I sure hope that the X.org guys are able to plug ‘n’ chug with it. The site has some good videos but the *sweet* vids are at LinuxEdge (pay no mind to the fuzzy .PNGs). Let’s hope this becomes stock for all Linux desktops - real soon now.

Blog spam is here.  It only took a few weeks.  Now “adult” themed sites feel like they get to leave comments here that are really just stupid links back to their site.  For now, I’ve disabled comments but this will only be until I figure out how to restrict the spam.

Plese feel free to comment on this.

Good news from Google Talk. It looks like they are opening up their IM servers to talk with *any* and *all* Jabber servers. This is the coolest news in IM history. With any luck it will bring down the closed networks as people jump on the open IM bandwagon.

In a nut shell…

Google Talk network supports open interoperability with hundreds of other communications service providers through a process known as federation. This means that a user on one service can communicate with users on another service without needing to sign up for, or sign in with, each service.

Google shows it understands the power of Open standards and networks. Keep up the good work.

Very few commercial software products are appealing enough to me to actually spend money on. Even fewer companies selling that software are decent enough for me to trust. VMware does *not* have problems with either of these. They have way cool products and they contribute back to the Open Source community (good karma there).

After “test driving” VMware Workstation for 30 days, I laid down the cash for a fully licensed copy. It will make working with Microsoft Windows way more convenient and almost bearable. I expect this to also help with my work on OpenClue.org.

This story has me outraged! I can’t believe that a web site would put a “cookie” on my computer!

The National Security Agency’s Internet site has been placing files on visitors’ computers that can track their Web surfing activity despite strict federal rules banning most of them. These files, known as “cookies,” disappeared after a privacy activist complained and The Associated Press made inquiries this week, and agency officials acknowledged Wednesday they had made a mistake. Nonetheless, the issue raises questions about privacy at a spy agency already on the defensive amid reports of a secretive eavesdropping program in the United States.

This is so stupid I don’t even know where to begin. It’s your computer. If you don’t want “cookies” from “big brother” or anyone else, don’t allow them! You control your computer not the NSA.

I hope they don’t log what IP address I’m coming from! What’s next, knowing what pages I visited on their server? This could be bad!

This is an attempt to make a mountain out of a molehill and would not be “news” at all if the media wasn’t trying to pile on the Bush administration.

What’s wrong with being a “me too”?

Blogs have peaked in “coolness” but they still do all of the things the made them sweet in the first place. You know, sometimes it’s just to hard to get around to doing stuff. I was writing my own blog from scratch back in the day. More important things came up and the blog was dropped (I still have the schema for a killer PostgreSQL back end). This was before things like WordPress were around and setting up a fully functioning blog only took 20 minutes :) My blog would have never been as sweet as what the WP team has come up with. Many thanks to them and many blogs to come!