This blog doesn’t normally do political topics, or share political humor… but this story from The Onion is just too delicious to pass up.I got Condoleezza [Rice] a beautiful blue blazer, and for my wife [Lynne] I bought a diamond necklace, a new winter coat, and this neat little motorized airplane ornament to hang on […]
There’s a new version of the ISO 9001 quality standard coming. The proposed draft, ISO 9001:2008, is an incremental evolution over the previous version, ISO 9001:2000. It should be out in October or November. The ISO 9000 family addresses quality management. There are three specifications in the family, of which ISO 9001 is the biggie: […]
This week, the Daily Telegraph has been running a list of the 100 ugliest cars, according to a reader poll. Some of the cars may not be familiar to you, since they weren’t sold in the U.S. Those funny little European cars are really, well, funny. Ninety-four of the cars on this list I agree […]
Major newspapers and news services keep “file” obituaries for famous living people — celebrities, political leaders, business leaders, and the like. That way, if something horrible happens, most of the person’s life story is already researched and written. (Cue your recording of Dirty Laundry, by Don Henley.) Every so often, one of those file obits […]
A story in the Daily Mail describes a 916-foot cruise ship, The Enchantment of the Seas — and how it was extended by 73 feet to add 151 more cabins, pool enhancements and another restaurant. The story says, Such measures may seem extreme, but the £30 million cost of the job is just a fraction […]
For the past week, every time I post on the blog, I’ve been told that Blogger has received my Aug. 19 request for a human review of the blog (see “Google Spam Blog update“). Today, we’re back to square one. Blogger has again forgotten about the Aug. 19 request. Blogger has again told me that […]
My Glaswegian wife was delighted to find across a Scots version of the Wikipedia. Or, as they say, Guid tae see ye at the Scots Wikipædia, the first encyclopædia in the Scots leid! Started in June 2005, it’s up to 2,464 articles. There are also versions of the Wikipedia in other languages spoken in the […]
We experienced abnormally high CPU and memory utilization on our Web servers over the weekend, and were wondering why. Now, we think we know: there’s a new SQL Injection attack making the rounds of the Internet. The problems we experienced were exactly as Greg Hughes describes in his Aug. 12 blog entry, “SQL Injection attacks […]
The quote marks in the headline make it particularly ironic. Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick
MIT Press’s massive new tome is excellently researched, thorough and a must-have for your deskside bookcase. Just make sure the shelf is sturdy enough for its 1,322 pages: This is not a book to carry in your hand luggage for your next airplane trip. “Design Concepts in Programming Languages,” by Franklyn Turbak and David Gifford, […]
I received this sad e-mail from a software development manager who lives and works outside the United States. He was writing about an upcoming technology conference: Hi Alan, We had planned to send two developers to the conference, but the recent changes in US Customs initiatives has caused a change in our company policy for […]
I’m playing with my new rare-earth element sample set, and loving it. The rare-earth set came in a nice wood base with cover. I bought it from Metallium Inc., for $125, and it arrived a few days ago. The rare-earth elements — the 17 elements encompassing scandium (21), yttrium (39), and lanthanum (57) through lutetium […]
You have a Mac, and someone e-mails you a document created with Microsoft Office 2007 for Windows, or Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac. If the file is in Microsoft’s new Open XML file format (with a .docx or .xlsx extension), here are three ways you can read it. • Use Office 2008. If you have […]
In a rule approved on Aug. 19, the U.S. government promises to reduce the number of automated recording telemarketing calls you receive. Those changes can’t come too soon. Every day this week, my phone has rung with the same recording message: “Don’t be alarmed, but this is your final opportunity to get lower interest rates….” […]
Why would you buy communications services from a value-subtracted reseller? I’m helping a local non-profit revamp its telecommunications infrastructure. We’re seeking a solution that combines telephony and broadband enough to support a staff of about 20 individuals. Bandwidth and phone requirements are consistent with the needs of a small office, but occasionally traffic can burst […]
Watch BZ Media president Ted Bahr explain why our company is bullish about print publishing — even though we recently scaled back the launch of Systems Management News. Earlier this week, Ted was interviewed on “From Print to Digital,” a Web-based television show from Scribe Media. This week’s episode focused on publishers bucking the Web-über-alles […]
BZ Media was just named to the 2008 Inc. 5,000 — the list of the fastest growing private companies in America. In the 2008 listing, BZ Media is ranked as the 3,597th fastest growing company. That’s a drop from where we were on the 2007 listing, which was in the 2,529th position. The reasons: Investment […]
Blogger still thinks this is a spam blog — and the company forgot that it promised on Aug. 12 to have a human review the site. A warning page, appearing after my previous post, told me that I must request a review in order to have the site unclassified. So, for a third time, I’ve […]
Sun Microsystems has figured out how to make money by giving away free hardware. It charges a small fortune for hardware and software support. In this case, I just received a quote for $1,358.95 for a one-year service agreement for my three-year-old Sun Ultra 20 workstation. Let me provide some background. At JavaOne 2005, Sun […]
This dialog in this two-minute Lego Star Wars parody video is a little hard to understand, but it’s wickedly funny. It’s probably funnier than the new movie, “Star Wars: The Clone Wars.” Yes, it’s from 2006. Yes, I’m a little slow to find these things sometimes! Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick
Today’s spam scam has the not-too-unusual subject line, “5 BIG Reasons to Join My Internet Business…” But the best part is the first paragraph: Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you have heard about the massively successful launch of My Internet Business. Nope, sorry, I haven’t heard about your multi-level marketing scheme, Kylon & […]
Multithreaded development in low-level language can be tricky, in large part due to race conditions, deadlocks, and the like. For example, say you have two threads. Perhaps the first thread is waiting on input from the second thread — while the second thread is waiting on input from the first thread. Oops. There are a […]
It was embarrassing! I was sitting in a address at a conference in San Francisco, taking notes. My trusty 12” PowerBook G4 told me that it had about 45 minutes of battery life remaining, more than enough for my purposes. (I often use that computer for day trips, because it’s smaller and lighter than my […]
I haven’t lost a cell phone yet. In the 1990s, I left a brand-new Sony Discman, on its maiden cross-country flight, in a seat-back pocket. It was never to be seen again. Also, in that decade, I dropped my Day-Timer datebook at O’Hare Airport, but the airport’s lost-and-found department mailed it back to me. I’ve […]
It’s a pleasure to write praise for a government agency, instead of a complaint. In this case, the California Dept. of Motor Vehicles deserves the compliment. Saturday, August 9: My driver’s license renewal form comes in the mail. “Congratulations, you are eligible to renew by mail/Internet,” the letter reads. Sunday, August 10: I log in […]
Within the past few days, Google has suffered short-term e-mail outages on its Gmail service. The company acknowledges one outage, but there were several periods this week when Gmail wasn’t accessible via its Web interface or through POP3. (I alluded to this in yesterday’s posting, “Google insists that Z Trek is a ‘spam blog.’ “) […]
I’ve written about several domain-name scams before, such as the Century Net Group Stocks Limited one, the Karl Fischer one, and the Asia Domain Name Registration Limited one. Going by the number of hits to my blog every day from people searching the Internet for ‘Karl Fischer,’ that one is still going strong. Here’s the […]
Twice now, Blogger (owned by Google) has imposed limitations on my blog, claiming that it “has characteristics of a spam blog.” Charming. The first time came on at the end of July. An email from Blogger warned that my blog was locked, and would be deleted soon. Hello, Your blog at: http://ztrek.blogspot.com/ has been identified […]
Good enough is good enough. But how good is good enough? That’s the question being asked by Bola Rotibi, one of the industry’s savviest analysts. You may know Bola from her time at Ovum, one of the U.K.’s leading analyst firms. These days, Bola is at MWD Advisors, a British firm formed in 2005. In […]
Apple currently offers two keyboards for its desktop and notebook Macs. • If you opt for the wired standard keyboard, you get a full-sized keyboard with full alphanumeric keys, function keys, 22-key numeric keypad and 16-key cursor keypad. The benefit of the aluminum full-sized keyboard is that it’s less expensive ($49.95), doesn’t require batteries, and […]