Day: June 17, 2011

New version, security enhancements, and a stable version (3.3.3) for the remainder of the year… go for it! And, if you are an “early adopter” go for 3.4!

LibreOffice 3.3.3 Is Ready For Download

“The Document Foundation announces the availability of LibreOffice 3.3.3, a new release of the most stable version of the free office suite for personal productivity, targeting corporate users. LibreOffice 3.3.3 is already available for download at the following address: https://www.libreoffice.org/download.

According to Thorsten Behrens, a developer and member of the TDF Steering Committee, ‘LibreOffice 3.3.3 fixes several bugs and improves the security of the suite, to specifically address the needs of corporate deployments, where stability is more important than new features. This branch will be maintained until the end of the year, to allow a smooth and safe transition to LibreOffice 3.4.x.’

LibreOffice 3.3.3 is available for Windows, MacOS X and Linux (DEB and RPM), in over 100 different languages (more than twice the language coverage of comparable proprietary products). Users of LibreOffice 3.3.2 are invited to update their software.

Ouch. First Sony, now game developer Bioware has been hacked! Bioware is the GameMaster’s favorite gaming company. Dewd. I’m bummed.

18,000 BioWare Accounts Compromised in Latest Attack

“In a breach that’s being called ‘extremely limited’ in scope, the accounts of about 18,000 Neverwinter Nights forum users have been compromised.

According to EA, this is a ‘very small percentage of total users,’ and among the information potentially exposed were e-mail addresses, account usernames, passwords, countries, and birth dates. Any account that was connected to an EA Account opens the door for any information connected with the latter (such as a mailing address and billing address) to have also been accessed.

EA and BioWare became aware of the breach on June 14 and began securing the servers for BioWare Edmonton’s NN forums. Legacy BioWare accounts have been disabled and any affected EA Accounts have had their password reset, which is one indication that your account was affected. E-mails have also been sent out to those users who are involved. If your EA Account password still works and you didn’t receive an e-mail informing you of the situation, you should be safe.”

Wow. hard to imagine that IBM has been around that long… but it has!

100 Years of IBM: Milestones

“IBM is celebrating the 100th anniversary of its founding Thursday. Led by American capitalist icons Thomas J. Watson, Sr. and Thomas J. Watson, Jr. until the 1970s, the company grew from a pre-World War I conglomeration of companies making tabulating machines and time-keeping devices into a globe-spanning technology behemoth that pioneered the development of electronic computers and dominated the mainframe era.

The company holds a mind-boggling array of patents and pioneered advances in a wide range of technologies including punched cards, processors, transistors, storage, word-processing, databases and OSes. As one of the emblematic 20th-century corporations, IBM also went through turbulent times. The U.S. government brought several antitrust lawsuits against the company, and critics have attacked it for alleged cosiness with repressive regimes. After Tom Watson Jr. retired in the 1971, the company seemed to lose its way as mainframe computing began to face competition from smaller, more modular systems. Increasing bureaucracy contributed to missteps during the PC revolution, and IBM suffered a series of annual losses in the early 1990s. Under the reins of then-CEO Lou Gerstner, starting in the mid-90s, the company bounced back to profit by focusing on software, system integration and other services, which remain key to the company’s growth today.”

Blackberry has been “the phone” for business users… but it is old, tired, and very far behind the times! My Android phone (a Motorola Droid-X) is light years ahead of my former phone (a Blackberry Storm)… is RIM doomed?

RIM Financial Outlook Dismal, 500,000 Playbooks Shipped

“Research in Motion (RIM) announced its first quarter financial results for fiscal 2012 on Thursday, and the outlook isn’t pretty.

Revenue was up 16% but earnings per share and net income were down from Q1 2011. The company said it shipped 13.2 million BlackBerry handheld devices and 500,000 BlackBerry Playbook tablets during the most-recent quarter.

Co-CEO Jim Balsillie said Thursday that RIM is having problems gaining traction in new markets and shipping updated products.

‘Fiscal 2012 has gotten off to a challenging start. The slowdown we saw in the first quarter is continuing into Q2, and delays in new product introductions into the very late part of August is leading to a lower than expected outlook in the second quarter. RIM’s business is profitable and remains solid overall with growing market share in numerous markets around the world and a strong balance sheet with almost $3 billion in cash. We believe that with the new products scheduled for launch in the next few months and realigning our cost structure, RIM will see strong profit growth in the latter part of fiscal 2012.’

Once the world leader in smartphones, RIM has had a difficult time transitioning — not just to the emerging tablet space but to the app-centric nature of the mobile market. Additionally, RIM is being challenged by Apple, Google and Microsoft in the enterprise space, where the BlackBerry used to be ubiquitous.”