Rob's Ramblings at the End of the Desert

This website is devoted to providing useful information which I run across in my wanderings on the web. All opinions expressed here, by me, are my own. Where I have provided links or text that is the opinion of others, those opinions are the property of other persons, and are presented for your consideration. I do select what is presented, but do not filter, censor or otherwise modify those opinions shared here.... Thanks for stopping by - Rob Winchell

Wednesday, May 28, 2003

Congratulations to LinuxTag and Novell who have both come out against SCO regarding their lawsuit against IBM. The press release and letter from Jack L. Messman, Chairman, President and CEO of Novell is worthy of framing. You really must give it a read. Novell makes it very plain that based on copyrights and other legal agreements that SCO doesn't even own what they claim was infringed upon. Way to go Mr. Messman!!!!

I suspect that IBM will join the fray soon with a formal statement and that sometime VERY soon, SCO will go find a rock to hide under.

I also predict that it will only be a matter of hours, days or weeks before Microsoft "decides" that it is not such a good idea to working towards a licensing deal with SCO... Keep your eyes open, because this is liable to be a very quiet and subdued distancing on Microsoft's part.

Well, I am disappointed... I have been testing SpamArrest (won't give the link -- don't recommend them). Seems they decided that they would attempt to play both sides. They couldn't resist the emails that they had access to via their customers. They began sending unsolicited emails to everyone who went through their site. OOPS -- that to me is an adequate definition of S P A M ! ! ! ! So, although it decreased my spam by as much as 80 - 85%, it is not a workable solution. It may be that the only reasonable solution for SPAM is a good ISP with filtering software like SPAMAssassin or a local solution on your machine. The sad saga goes on... S P A M should be ILLEGAL!!!

Tuesday, May 27, 2003

Powerline networking is becoming more mainstream. Check out the Homeplug Networking Association product listings for vendors who have developed products that comply with the established standards. The FAQ answers lots of questions. 14Mbps networking to all the outlets in your house. Pretty COOL!!

Friday, May 16, 2003

For those of you interested in homeplug (AC power) networking, I have tracked down one possible answer to one of my questions. Can a powerline adapter/bridge be plugged into a UPS, power strip, or surge protector? From the Seimens web site manual for their SpeedStream 2524 Wireless DSL/Cable Router - "The SpeedStream Powerline Wireless Router has built-in surge protection. It is not recommended to plug the router into a power strip, surge protector or UPS as the Powerline connection speed and quality will be affected." Not much of a limitation, but make sure to protect your network cable via UPS.

Need to know how to work with your videos and video files? Want to create VCDs and/or DVDs? -- check out VCDHelp or DVDHelp.

Thursday, May 15, 2003

Well, much to the disappointment of many of us, InfoWorld has changed their format again and this time, they have dropped many of there long-time columnists. Do not dispair though, many of the columns are now available online, either as individual columns, weblogs or newsletters delivered to you. Here is the list, which to their credit was in the letter section of the 5 May, 2003 Infoworld:
Bob Lewis' blog for Infoworld - He also has a newsletter
Wayne Rash and Mario Apicella - Subscription page for Infoworld online newsletters
Ed Foster
Bob Lewis
Brian Livingston
Russ Pavlicek

Wednesday, May 07, 2003

At the LVPCUG General meeting... tonight a cool presentation on ebay.

Been wandering the world with your wireless capable computer or PDA? Now there's a way to lookup those public networks on 802.11 Hotspots and info on the wireless industry at 802.11 Planet.

Tuesday, May 06, 2003

Another pet peeve department -- S P A M (that is ILLEGAL commercial bulk emailing). Thanks to Al Gibes, the Online Guy for the tip on this one. On to the unabashed plug sideline, checkout Al Gibes' weekly column in the Review Journal Click on the Online Guy. In his 5 May column, Al highlighted a new service called Spamarrest . The concept here is that you can control the acceptable list of senders OR they can interact with a web site to authorize themselves. This process will prevent automated emailers from being accepted since the interaction includes entering a word in a dialog box that is visible as a graphic. Hard for a machine to interpret and respond (You will notice that I did NOT say impossible).