Z Trek: The Alan Zeichick Weblog
First impressions of Google Chrome, courtesy of Offspring
Son Michael has been working with the beta of Google's new Chrome browser for Windows. Sadly, his ancient father is waiting for the Mac version to come out (there's a sign-up box for notifications).Here's what Offspring has to say about it:Today…
Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld advertise shoes
The first Microsoft commercial with Jerry Seinfeld debuted today. It featured the comedian meeting up with Bill Gates at a shoe store, where they eat churros, try on shoes, and otherwise pal it up.Yes, Seinfeld is the new pitchman for Microsoft.…
Cast your nominations for the ACM Turing Award
A public service announcement to my fellow computer scientists, techies and other interested parties, on behalf of the Association for Computing Machinery:ACM Bulletin Service Today's Topic: ACM Awards Call for Nominations September 4, 2008Each…
Penn Jillette for President?
As Penn Jillette, the magician, musician and now political commentator writes for CNN,I don't want anyone as president who promises to take care of me. I may be stupid, but I want a chance to try to be a grown-up and take care of my family.…
Will a big price cut boost the Xbox 360’s fortunes?
Microsoft today slashed the price of the Xbox 360 game console, which beginning on Friday will cost as little as $199. The system comes in three versions:• Xbox 360 Arcade, $199.99 — includes the console and one wireless controller, and…
Wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?
The consulate general of Sweden kindly invited me to this seminar, but I can't make it. Perhaps you'll want to attend? They did say that it was okay to forward this invitation.INVITATIONThe Consulate General of Sweden and NASDAQ OMX invite you…
What the frak! Battlestar Galactica meme takes off
It came from the original Battlestar Galactica television show in the 1970s, but "frak," as a generic swear word, is all over the delightfully reimagined series, which debuted in 2003.And according to this story on CNN, "The curse word 'Battlestar…
I love the Lotus Esprit, and so do Daily Telegraph readers
Last week, I mentioned a story in the Daily Telegraph, which presented the 100 ugliest cars based on a reader poll.It turns out the the British newspaper had already done its list of "the 100 most beautiful cars of all time: Beauties and beasts"…
Cheney waits until last minute to buy Sept. 11 gifts
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,…
Dilbert and Wally will rejoice: ISO 9001 is being updated for 2008
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…
Some ugly cars, and some not so ugly cars
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…
Steve Jobs is not dead
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…
Forget a stretched limo – how about a stretched cruise ship?
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…
Blogger still thinks this is a spam blog
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…
Och aye, it’s a wee Scots encyclopaedia!
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…
SQL Injection attack acted like a Denial of Service attack
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…
Funny headline typo on CNN.com….
The quote marks in the headline make it particularly ironic.Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick
Recommended read: ‘Design Concepts in Programming Languages’
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…
Electronic searches keep foreign businesspeople out of the U.S.
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…
Gadolinium is shiny, Europium is dull
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…
DOCX options for Mac users who don’t have Microsoft Office 2008
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…
Good news regarding telemarketing calls that play recorded messages
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:…
Value Subtracted Resellers and the hunt for bandwidth
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…
Launching print products in a digital age
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…
BZ Media makes the Inc. 5,000 for the second year in a row
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,…
Google Spam Blog update
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…
Sun wants $1,358.95 for a one-year service contact for a three-year-old workstation
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…
You’re a slacker, Luke Skywalker!
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…
I’m living under a rock, says ‘My Internet Business’ scammer
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…
Cilk Arts’ good eBook on multicore coding
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…