OpenOffice version 3

Microsoft released a new version of Office for the Mac about a year ago. Yes, Microsoft does have a Mac version of Office. I have been using it for years, but the previous versions operated in an emulation mode. The 2008 version runs in native OSX mode. This doesn't make much difference unless the document is large, but I've been working on large documents lately and wishing for better performance.

So I did a little research and discovered that a home edition of Office is available for under a hundred dollars. Reviews are mixed but the unanimous opinion is that performance is much improved. So I decided to grit my teeth, hand over $100 to Microsoft, and get on with my life.

But a couple of things have changed my mind.

First, I discovered that there's about 300 megabytes of updates that I get to apply to my newly-purchased product.

So I decided to check out OpenOffice. I've been watching this open-source alternative to Microsoft Office for years. My impression has been that it's a noble effort, but not really ready for prime time. But there's a new version of OpenOffice available. I downloaded version 3, and was pleasantly surprised.

The first surprise was that the size of the download for OpenOffice is smaller than the maintenance required for Microsoft Office. The installation was quick and straghtforward.

But the real surprise was how much the function and performance of the package have matured since the last time I checked. OpenOffice is finally a viable alternative to the commercial product. In fact, I rather prefer many of their user interface choices to the ones made by the Microsoft developers.

I haven't played much with the spreadsheet, presentation creation, equation writing, or other facilities of OpenOffice. But the word processor has handled the complex documents that prompted my desire for better performance with great aplomb, and now I have a full-featured word processor that works in native mode on my Mac, and I didn't have to shell out $100 to Microsoft to get it.

If you're in the market for the functions provided by Microsoft's Office suite, I suggest giving OpenOffice a try. I downloaded it today to a Microsoft platform and it seems to work fine there, too. It's a lot different from previous releases.

Do I have to say . . . you can obtain OpenOffice at OpenOffice.org.

Mercury in HFCS

An article produced by HealthDay reports traces of mercury in high-fructose corn syrup. This data is disputed by the HFCS producers. In typical Internet reporting fashion, I'm not sure who to believe.

When I read this, the first thing that occurred to me was a possible link with the problems beekeepers have had for the past few years. (Normal folks would be more concerned that teenagers consume vast amounts of HFCS.) This may be one of many factors contributing to the issue, since commercial beekeepers make extensive use of HFCS as a supplement food for their bees.

I'm still wrestling with the decision on whether to keep bees next summer. I do enjoy having them, but they're a lot of work. Unexpected disaster deployments can disrupt caring for them to the point that things that need to be done at specific times don't get done. Right now I'm leaning towards getting out of the bee business, but I haven't completely decided yet. I need to make a final decision soon since my bee supplier needs to know whether I'm a customer or not.

On a related (but not much) topic . . . the firewood supply is dwindling rapidly. This has been another cold winter, and I'm not sure that I'll have sufficient supplies to make it to warm weather. Part of my wood is stacked in a location that's not accessible after the first significant snowfall and we had snow early this year. Maybe if we have an early thaw I'll be able to tap that supply.

RSS issue

Three entries in one day? I am perhaps wearing out my welcome.

I wanted to mention an odd problem that I observed with the RSS feed for this blog. It is, perhaps, unique to the combination of software that I use, but I'm curious if anyone else observed the same behavior.

The RSS feed for the entry on spam contains only the blockquote of the spam email; it loses both my introductory and concluding comments. So if you saw this in the RSS feed . . . no, I'm not just publishing spam unchanged.

Dress code

CNN reports that one of the first things that changed with Obama was the rule that jackets must be worn in the Oval Office. This says as much to me as any other single item that has come out of the new administration. I remember when the jacket rule was relaxed at my place of work . . . you could take off your jacket when you were sitting at your desk. That was 1975.

Let's get past this pretentious crap and get down to work.

Mysteries of spam

I receive a lot of spam, at least by my definition of "a lot". The spam filters at pobox.com do a good job, and little of it makes its way to my inbox. I seldom read even those. But this one caught my eye this morning, possibly because of the ragged line length caused by an apparently-random infusion of carriage returns.

From: debixicowilliams
Date: January 25, 2009 6:07:07 AM CST
To: undisclosed-recipients:;
Subject: Hello

Hello

The most important thing in life is love and healthy and strong

relationships.That's the thing i desire most of all, Nothing in life can

change it, neither money or anything else.I am an ordinary young lady with a big and lonely heart... I don't have very high demands to the second half, I want my man to be sensitive, caring,

attentive and understanding.I want to give my love and tenderness to the only man, and after reading your profile,i decided to contacted you and if you are lonely too or your heart misses warmth and

attention,you can find me here and write a note to

Debora_williams60587@yahoo.com

by

Deborah

Spam mystifies me a bit in the general sense. It must be working; otherwise we wouldn't see it because there would be no point in sending it. That means that people are buying the potions to enhance their body parts, fake watches, and falling for the various scams that separate them from their money. I suppose that when you blast out several million emails it only takes a tiny response rate to make it worth your while. Kind of like the vote totals in the Minnesota race for US Senate.

So what's the scam on this one? If I send email to my good buddy Debora, will she try to sell me something? Convince me that I need to send money to obtain her love and tenderness? Is the text in the message so rough because that's the best that the author can compose, or is it carefully constructed to appeal to the target audience?

Ah, the wonders and the mysteries of the Internet.

You have been hacked. Maybe.

I missed this announcement in the flurry of coverage of the inauguration. Here's another company you never heard of that may end up causing you some grief.

Heartland Payment Systems is one of the companies that processes authorizations for credit/debit card transactions. It's one of those out-of-mind companies that you interact with every day and don't think about until something dire happens. It seems that their computer system was compromised some time last year and credit card information was flowing somewhere. They don't know where; they don't know how much; they don't know the time period involved. In fact, it took from October until this week for computer forensics experts to confirm that there was a problem. The issue was noticed by the credit card companies based on elevated levels of fraud related to transactions processed by Heartland but whoever hacked them covered their tracks very well. (The other explanation is that the effort to uncover the problem was half hearted, but I'd like to think that the company would bring in the best talent available to address an issue that will likely result in their demise as a viable corporation.)

This is not the first incident of this type, but it may be the largest. Heartland services 250,000 businesses and the number of individuals affected could easily be in the tens of millions. That might include you. Given the difficulty they've had in isolating this problem, it's going to be hard to narrow down who was actually affected or could potentially be affected in the future. Re-issuing tens of millions of credit cards is a daunting task.

Moral of the story: Keep an eye on your credit card statements. This type of fraud often results in a charge that's so small the the customer figures it's more trouble to question it than to just pay it. "I don't remember buying this, but I must have since it's on the bill." Multiply that small amount by several thousand and someone just got rich.

Credit cards are a big convenience, but it's things like this that offset that convenience. I hope that the industry gets its act together because if they provide their customers with this kind of hassle we'll decide that the inconvenience of using cash is preferable to the potential problems of using credit cards.

White house technology: XP

I was both amused and sympathetic when I read an article in today's Washington Post with the headline of "Staff Finds White House in the Technological Dark Ages."

Take a bunch of young folks who are used to every technological bell and whistle that's available and put them in a bureaucracy in which the norm for a workstation is Windows XP, and the predictable comment is "It is kind of like going from an Xbox to an Atari."

The White House atmosphere is unique in many ways. In fact, unique isn't a strong enough term for the place on earth with the most stringent requirements for security plus a requirement for saving all communications for posterity. I do not envy the security professionals who must cope with the physical security and the technology requirements of that environment. It takes a long time to vet changes.

On the other hand, one would think that the absolute best minds in the country would be there helping to make this happen. Surely any IT professional would jump at the chance to be a part of the team. A few startup glitches are inevitable for this kind of transition, but the newspaper story makes it sound like incompetence reigned supreme. We will probably never know how this all settles out, other than a few visible things like whether the White House web site gets updated.

Juval Aviv

Today I was pushed over the brink on the issue of mass emails from an individual who has been sending me stuff for years. I got two emails from him today, one on immigration policy and one breathless prediction from Juval Aviv that terrorists will hit several cities in the US simultaneously. I found the immigration thing offensive, and when snopes.com popped up as the first link when I did a Google search on Juval Aviv, I knew what I was in for.

I hate to ask this person to stop sending me this material. I know he thinks that he is doing me a favor, and I expect that he'll be hurt that I don't appreciate his efforts. But I did it anyway. To add insult to injury, he's not using BCC when he sends the email, so everyone can see everyone else's email address. My email address doesn't need any additional publicity; I already receive more than 100 spams each day.

This Juval Aviv thing is interesting, in a depressing sort of way. The email claims him to be a terrorist expert from Israel, and I actually agree with a lot of what he apparently has to say. "Apparently" because none of this is cited directly back to Aviv; it's all circulating in email. There are still active discussions on his prediction of eminent attack, although it was apparently first made in 2005.

This is such a good illustration of the gullibility of the average citizen. People read things on the Internet or in printed media or see it on TV and it must be right. Back when I did it for a living, we spent as much time on hoax viruses as we did on the real thing. People receive an email that appears to come from Microsoft, and suddenly the world is ending. So of course the first thing that they want to do is share this information with all of their friends. Don't bother to check it; it came from Microsoft!

It makes me wonder how democracy can work, not that I have any alternatives to suggest.

Warming up

I know it's getting warmer outside because the battery in the outside temperature sensor is working again. It's up to -21. The official temperature is -24 so the sun shining on the sensor is skewing its reading a bit.

The forecast for Friday night is for freezing drizzle and a low of 5. That must be an interesting weather picture with warmer air aloft. The local TV weather guys have discovered an entertaining trick of tossing a cup of hot water into the air and observing it turn immediately into ice. They have this outdoor studio where they report the weather . . . I would accuse them of being macho except that the female weather people show up out there too.

The sun is amazingly powerful considering the outdoor temperature. It feels good, especially if you're indoors while enjoying it. Real Soon Now we get to the point in the year when the average temperature starts to rise -- almost as cheering as the days getting longer. The cats have discovered the advantage of sleeping in the sun. They've also discovered the wonders of snuggling together into a cat ball. I've not seen all three of them pasted to each other at the same time, but it's not unusual to see pairings of two.

Schools are open here today. I don't envy the wait for a school bus. I wonder if the heaters in the bus can keep up at this temperature. My furnace fan hasn't turned off in days. It's amazing how much wood I burn in weather like this; I may run out again this year like I did last year. And I'm actually happy that I don't have any bees to worry about; it's this kind of prolonged cold weather that is hardest on them.

Keep warm.

The gift of death

Here’s a thought-provoking and rather depressing article from the Washington Post entitled “The Dying of the Light.” I don’t like the title. The topic is the difficulty of dying in today’s health system, described by a doctor in St. Paul. Having been through this with my dad, I realize that it’s a difficult issue.

Race for Minnesota Senator

Back on the day after the election in November, I mentioned the Senate race in Minnesota. At that instant, the incumbent was leading Al Franken by 1,123 votes. Since then we've been treated to an amazingly complex recount procedure in Minnesota that has been very instructive on the whole process. Overall, our mechanisms for counting votes have looked very good. But when you're talking about the vote margin involved here, I stand by my comment made November 5 that we really cannot know who won this race.

Today the state Canvassing Board will presumably declare Franken the winner. He is ahead by 225 votes, based on a hand recount of the 3+ million votes. This will open up the next chapter of the saga - court challenges. If you want the gory details, there are any number of sources including an article in today's Washington Post. But the bottom line remains - all the machinations of the recount are functionally equivalent to a coin toss. The idea of a "winner" in a race this close is simply naive. The margin of error in the election process dwarfs the vote difference between the two candidates.

For example, there's the issue of rejected absentee ballots. This wasn't even an idea that had crossed my mind before the recount brought it into public display; I just assumed that if I submitted an absentee ballot that it would be counted. This is true in the vast majority those submitted, but in this election even a few votes makes a difference. There was the ballot from an elderly voter that was rejected because the person who delivered it to the courthouse wasn't a registered voter. There was the one from an election judge who works outside her precinct on election day that was rejected because the dates didn't match on the voter and witness lines. The moral of this story: If you want to vote absentee, be sure to do it early so that the election officials have time to notify you if there's a problem . . . at least in Minnesota, where they actually do notify you if you've provided time to do so.

This race won't be decided soon. My guess is that the process will drag on into at least March, and it could be mid year before we have two Senators again.

YAQ and a milestone

YAQ: Yet Another Quilt. This one is for a nephew and is very colorful space-alien fabric. My only contribution to this one is the quilting, which I did as fun and a learning exercise in free-motion quilting. The aliens in the fabric panels provided a good base for practice in free-motion quilting. I think that the style, colors, and design exactly matches the intended recipient. I hope that he’s happy with it.

And the breakthrough: Our two big cats, Shadow and Bub, sleeping together in a cat ball. This is a first. These are the two cats who fought for “top cat” position for a while, and have apparently made peace. In spite of the fact that it looks like Bub (the larger black and white cat) seems to be taking the most of the bed, it’s actually Shadow (the grey one) who is the dominant cat. But it’s nice to see the two of them co-existing in a bed.

The weather today has been pretty abysmal, with a little freezing drizzle, lots of fine wind, and cold. Generally wretched. The cats don’t spend a lot of time outdoors in this weather; they’re not stupid. But they’re bored. I’ll be glad when the weather moderates and they spend more time outside. They will, too.

Happy security in 2009

About a month ago, I mentioned a tool from Belarc that checked your Microsoft system to be sure that all current maintenance had been installed. This is great, but the Belarc tool does not check any third-party products like Adobe Reader, Java, or the scores of other software products that you might have installed. Today I discovered the Secunia Personal Software Inspector.

This product does a scan of your Microsoft computer and identifies scores of non-Microsoft products. It even discovered my Netflix movie viewer. What’s more, it informs you if any of these products are not up to date with maintenance and provides a link to the vendor’s site for obtaining the latest upgrade. It will find products that you didn’t even realize were installed on your system.

Secunia’s business is security and they maintain an extensive database of vulnerabilities. The free version of their scanning software is only available for personal use. Please don’t abuse the valuable service that this company is providing by violating their license agreement.

iPhone

Some of you who are reading this are in touch with the iPhone phenomenon. Some of you might even be reading these words on an iPhone. But I wasn’t aware of quite how big a splash this device has made until I read this article.

The environment is compared to the early days of the personal computer with several potential Microsofts competing, but "it's a 100-yard dash, and Apple is already 75 yards down the track while the other guys are still trying to get out of the blocks."

Then there are the guys who are raking in big bucks by writing applications for the iPhone. You wouldn’t think that something that costs $.99 could make you rich, but when you consider the 300 million downloads since July . . .