“Stupid Users?” Well, Yes… But Don’t Let Them Know That You Know!

This article makes some good points about IT pros being “snide”… however, if users wouldn’t keep being stupid, we wouldn’t be so prone to “roll our eyes!” Help us out, folks!

Why It’s Time to Lose the Snide IT Attitude

“In the years before the tech bubble burst, IT was king: there was a huge demand for professionals with technical prowess and an overwhelming shortage of able bodies. Techies could pick their job and name their salary. They could wear jeans and t-shirts to meetings and nobody would raise an eyebrow. They could roll their eyes when an employee had the gauche to not know where to put their Ethernet card.”

OK, I don’t expect my users to know where a put an ethernet card… however, I DO expect them not to click attachments in e-mail, not to go to “evil” websites, and I really WOULD like them to know how to “map” a drive on the network! Is THAT asking too much?

Tell ya what… I will try to be more circumspect with my attitude… and YOU folks try and be a little more computer savvy! In the words of the great philosopher, “Can’t we all just get along?”

Open Source Project Wipes the Floor with the Competition!

Open Source rocks! Ajax is cool. Web-based applications that look like desktop apps are the future! Now, here’s a collaboration suite that simply totally rocks. I double-dog dare you to take the time to watch the flash demo at this link and not admit that this is the future!!

Zimbra Flash Demo

Come’on, now! I dare ya! It takes about 15 minutes. Keep in mind this is Open Source… and it makes Microsoft look like a bunch of pikers! OWA?! Ha!

Canonical (Ubuntu) Expects to be Profitable within Two Years

Ubuntu Linux is BIG! And, the company expects to be a profitable company doing free and Open Source Linux within two years!

Canonical seeks profit from free Ubuntu

“Canonical is the 65-employee start-up behind a popular version of Linux called ‘Ubuntu’. The company is betting that it can win a place in the market using a strategy that dominant Linux seller Red Hat has dropped. Red Hat offers two versions of Linux: Fedora Core and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Fedora Core is free, but relatively untested and unsupported by Red Hat, while RHEL is supported and certified, but must be purchased. With Canonical’s Ubuntu, however, the free and supported versions are identical–the approach Red Hat abandoned in 2003. ‘We believe that Ubuntu should be free to everyone–not just a trial version, but our very best version,’ said Christopher Kenyon, Canonical’s business development manager. The South African company even ships free CDs anywhere in the world. Using that strategy, it expects profitability within 24 months, he added.

Star Trek Teleporting? Looks Like it is Getting Closer!

This is cool! What once was science fiction gets closer to reality every day!

Scientists teleport two different objects

“Beaming people in ‘Star Trek’ fashion is still in the realms of science fiction, but physicists in Denmark have teleported information from light to matter bringing quantum communication and computing closer to reality. Until now scientists have teleported similar objects such as light or single atoms over short distances from one spot to another in a split second. But Professor Eugene Polzik and his team at the Niels Bohr Institute at Copenhagen University in Denmark have made a breakthrough by using both light and matter. ‘It is one step further because for the first time it involves teleportation between light and matter, two different objects. One is the carrier of information and the other one is the storage medium,’ Polzik explained in an interview on Wednesday. The experiment involved for the first time a macroscopic atomic object containing thousands of billions of atoms. They also teleported the information a distance of half a meter but believe it can be extended further.”

World of Warcraft on Linux? Yep.

The new Crossover Office beta supports World of Warcraft. Now, let me say, I am not a gamer. But, from what I hear, this is huge! Mainly because this type of game is a “stream-based” game such as Half Life 2 and Counterstrike. These games are popular and hard to transfer to a Linux environment… and now Crossover will support them. Dewd.

Bigger, better CrossOver adds WoW to Linux

“CodeWeavers CEO Jeremy White wants to make sure, though, that everyone understands that ‘this is still beta software, and there are many issues remaining; we still have a ways to go until we feel comfortable considering it ready for release. While we greatly appreciate feedback on this release, if you don’t like bleeding edge experimental software, we’d really rather you waited for a proper production version.'”

Try it and see what you think!

Is E-mail for “the Old?”

OK, I am a curmudgeon. It’s official. You would figure that that was a “moot point” since this is “Dr. Bill – The Computer Curmudgeon.” However, to seem “officially old” … “Yeah, sonny, I can remember waaay back when e-mail was cutting edge! We couldn’t get anyone to use it, and everybody thought I was crazy to promote it as a business tool! Why, back in that day I was known first as the ‘VAXman’, and then as ‘the Mailman’ because I pushed e-mail so hard. This was back in the late seventies and early eighties.” Well, now, kids are saying the e-mail is “so last century.”

Teens: E-mail is for old people

“Is e-mail only for the old? That’s the contention of a string of articles published in the last four months, the most recent appearing today in the Chronicle of Higher Education. The Chronicle says that in a study last year, ‘teenagers preferred new technology, like instant messaging or text messaging, for talking to friends and use e-mail to communicate with ‘old people.’ The Mercury News says, ‘For those of you who have just figured out how to zap spam or manage your inbox, prepare for the bad news: E-mail is, like, so yesterday.’ And then there’s USA Today, which makes the claim that ‘E-mail is so last millennium.'”

Toshiba and Lenova Recall Sony Batteries Too!

Sony batteries must really stink! Whoa!

Lenovo Recalls 560,000 Sony Batteries

“In conjunction with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, both IBM and Lenovo announced that they were calling for the voluntary recall of approximately 526,000 laptop batteries manufactured by Sony. Lenovo had announced earlier this week that it was investigating reports of issues with laptops containing batteries from the manufacturer. The two companies become the fourth and fifth computer makers behind Toshiba, Apple, and Dell to recall Sony batteries due to overheating problems. Altogether, nearly 6.8 million laptops have been affected, although in fairness Toshiba’s recall of 340,000 had to do more with a defect in the laptop manufacturing itself.”

The New Version of Wine Has Been Released

NO… not the liquid variety of Wine… the “Wine Is Not an Emulator” type. The software for Linux that allows you to run many Windows apps. Cool!

Latest Version of Wine

“This is release 0.9.22 of Wine, a free implementation of Windows on Unix.

What’s new in this release:
– The usual assortment of MSI improvements.
– Several bug fixes to the various common controls.
– Pixel shaders enabled by default in D3D.
– Various improvements to the build process.
– Many translation updates.
– Lots of bug fixes.”

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