So it was D-day for MS Vista

Yesterday Microsoft officialy released Vista to the wider public. So why would one upgrade?

From the little bit I seen about Vista and read about it, I can find no reason to upgrade. Firstly you would probably need a new faster CPU, more memory and a much more powerfull graphics card with lots of memory. And what do you get for this .. juts more bling. You will still write the same documents, fill the same spreadsheets, play most of the same games and all this will probably be slower than on your existing Windows XP.

Rather than upgrade to Vista, why not switch totally to some Linux distribution. No hardware to spend money on, no OS to spend money on and your machine will in all likelyhood be faster so you will be more productive in the end. And you would have access to thousands of software applications for FREE — let me say that again FREE — it is going to cost you nothing.

So what is the ultimate goal why Microsoft want you to upgrade to Vista — make more money. You as the consumer will not get much value for that hard earned money you going to give Microsoft. So use the money rather to enjoy life and change to something thats not going to cost you any money and give you freedom of choice, ie Switch to Linux.

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WordPress Upgraded

I have just upgraded my instance of WrodPress from version 2.0.5 to version 2.0.6. If you see anything that is not what it should be then please let me know. Readers that get my feed via FeedBurner should pay particular attention since there was a bug in the released 2.0.6 version that has since been patched.

Update [16-01-2007]:  The bug that is patched, mentioned above, is actually patched in version 2.0.7 which this blog is now running.

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Building Second Life on Linux (Ubuntu)

This one is for for Andy who is looking for a stable Linux version.  Now that the SecondLife client code is released as Open Source, he can do it himself. 

Allison Randal has build it on both Mac OS X and Ubuntu. Seems that the Mac build was a bit easier than the Linux one … Linux one build successfully but crashes when trying to log into the live SecondLife world.  Well I am sure you coding geeks will get it working, I will just wait till a good working Linux build for Ubuntu is available before I go down that road.

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SPAM and what to do …

I have a couple of email accounts (that does not include my work [IBM] address) which I have to monitor on a daily basis.  Over the years these accounts have landed up in the clutches of Spammers which meant that I receive close to 500 SPAM emails each and every day.

I use Thunderbird as my mail client which work well in catching all this Spam but it means that I have to download all the email from my email servers.

Since a couple of weeks ago I started using MailWasher Pro from FireTrust.  What a difference this has made .. basically you can setup as many email accounts in it and then it will download only the headers and first couple of lines of the email.  It will then apply all its build-in SPAM rules and any other rules that you might have defined to mark the mails as either SPAM or Legitimate.  It support Whitelists, Blacklist, Blacklist Servers and Friendslists. When it is done marking all the email you just process it and MailWasher Pro goes and delete all the unwanted Spam and Junk from your email server. So when you use your email client (Thunderbird in my case) to download you email, all that is left over to download is Legitimate emails.

Here is some stats from my use of it:
mwsummary - 2007-01-04

And how the SPAM was classified:
mwspam - 2007-01-04

The Pro version is a Shareware version and if I do not find anything else with the same capabilities over the next week or so I will register this.  I prefer to use Open Source software but have not come accross anything with the same features as MailWasher Pro.  If anybody know of a Open Source/Free product with this features then please let me know so that I can have a look at it.

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So, took my Superhero quiz …

Follow Kelly’s lead and took my Superhero quiz.

Your results:
You are Spider-Man

Spider-Man
65%
Superman
65%
Supergirl
61%
Green Lantern
60%
The Flash
50%
Robin
45%
Hulk
45%
Iron Man
40%
Wonder Woman
36%
Batman
25%
Catwoman
10%
You are intelligent, witty,
a bit geeky and have great
power and responsibility.


Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test

hmmm … where does that SuperGirl stuff comes from … and why am I a Spider-Man and not a Superman if both the scores are the same?.

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Out with the old, in with the new

Happy New Year to all and may 2007 be everything you want.

But it is also time to look back at 2006.  What a year I had — if anybody told me at the beginning of 2006 that I would end the year working for IBM, I would have laughed at them.  How wrong would I have been.

2006 was a good and stressful year. For the most part of it we had to keep under wraps the negotiations between Safmarine and IBM .. it was only in the latter part of the year it became public knowledge.  Then all the serious work started to move all the people and work over to IBM .. what a stressful period and this is going to keep us still busy for months to come.

On the personal front .. I am healthy and cannot complain.  My kids are young adults (almost) and makes this father very proud.  I started playing golf again and bought a new car.

Onto 2007 … I am not one for resolutions since we seldom stick to it.  Not because we do not want to but because life is so unpredictable that it usually take us in different directions.  I have one simple resolution .. try to stop working 50 hour weeks and spend more time on seeing our beautiful country and spend time with friends.

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