Bill has RTMed his latest assault vying for world domination. After being asked what I thought about it, as if someone really cares what I think, I thought I would put a few comments here.

Vista is pretty. I don’t like it. I am a command line guy mostly. I can work faster with the CLI than I can with the GUI. Will I switch to Vista? Probably. Why? Well supporting Bill’s messes keeps the lights on around here. Read the complete article »

How good are your backups? If you were like me, I would have said outstanding last week. I mean, our local computer systems have system state backups. The all-important data is backed up locally and remotely nightly. Our servers get either a weekly or daily incremental (depending on its functionality) continuously. Our hosted web pages and their underlying databases have nightly backups as well. Everything was running so smoothly that a wrinkle, caused by me, went unnoticed for months. Then disaster struck. Not money making, or more importantly, money losing, but still a disaster. Our sites run off four databases clusters. This site was moved to a new cluster in May. That is the wrinkle. New database, need to add it to the backup sets. As I look back at the checklist (self created), that item is on the checklist, right after creating and doing initial tests on it. Read the complete article »

Email.

You love it, hate it, or just use it. Most people just use it as it was designed, a tool to communicate. Some people just hate it. They may even have an account, but do do not use it all. Those people that love it, they are a growing bunch, and they can be fanatical about it. These people swear that if email is down, they cannot work at all. They preach fire and damnation in front of the helpdesk swearing about how they should just go home since they cannot work. The funny thing is that most of those people receive a light amount of business related email daily. Some important things are communicated via email, but it isn’t the core of their work. Read the complete article »

Why? Not just the fine they are about to impose. Not that Microsoft already gave them the source code in question. (That was a great move by Microsoft BTW.) Not that they haven’t been unfair in how competitors are stifled to the point of bankruptcy. It is all about arrogance.

Don’t get me wrong, Microsoft has enough arrogance to go around plenty. But the prevailing attitude in Europe, at least Germany, France, and Belgium where I have done business, is that they are superior in all things. So be it. We will take our inferior American products and just leave. What would the EU say about that? Read the complete article »

A client calls you, they want a new website. You both agree to the terms and you start hacking. You build a dynamic site that’s fast, achieves everything the client wants, and more. You both agree to go gold on it. You proceed to bring the site up fully functional on the client’s backup server. After it is done. You bring the backup online, and bring down the main server. It’s late, you call it a day. Your client calls you first thing in the morning, he was bragging about his new site. And it didn’t show right, some of it didn’t show at all. How could this happen! He is so embarrassed! His friends are laughing at him now! I thought you knew what you were doing! Read the complete article »

All the hype about Google and Uncle Sam entering the center ring has me about filled up. This fight has hurt Google’s market share, and some other technology companies in the process. Reminiscent of Microsoft’s fight with the DoJ years ago. You peeps keep hyping on. In my opinion, the firestorm should be around the search engines that gave up the goods without a fight. These people understandably were looking at the 8,000lb schoolyard bully and feared for their corporate lives. Kudos to Google for staring the bully down! Let’s just hope they don’t get squashed!

‘Tis the season…to be busy. Our site move is nearly complete, however, the things that we still have to do are the time consuming things that we just don’t have time for. So we decided to run with the site ‘as is’ and catch up over the months. Microsoft does it with its production releases so we think that this is good for us too! Read the complete article »

A lot of people I know spend a lot of time on the internet. Most of us are computer professionals and need to read a lot articles and blogs just to keep up with current trends. These people are constantly bombarded by ads. I get tired of them (the ones that take over your monitor and move, etc) and I really got feed up last week (actually week before that but I am still recovering from Thanksgiving.) Like any good soldier, I set up my game plan and prepared to attack the enemy. Before I knew it, I had not only ad blasters, but spammers, Trojan and virus writers, and Sony’s root kit on my objective list! Ok, too broad of a scope, especially since I buy all my music online at big bad Wal-Mart. So for this phase only the ad blasters. Read the complete article »

I am one who has been skeptical about Software as a Service (SaaS) from day one. I prefer having my apps and data located where I can put my paws on them whenever and wherever I please. I do use off site backups and Katrina has even got me thinking about adding another tier to my backup strategy for regional disasters. But my operations always have had my stuff together. SaaS is encroaching fast on the enclave I have built up. SaaS is offering software at a significantly lower initial price point than outright purchase of a license. This allows business and consumers to get into using a product without the burden of paying thousands to get that license. Read the complete article »

If you have ever had someone copy your work and take credit for it, you really understand how I feel this week. A client called me up in a furry about a competitor’s website. A site that looks suspiciously like hers. Even the text is a very close match. If you view these side by side you would think that I made them both. Nevertheless, I did not. The other site came up months later, and seems to have copied verbatim, with little change, every single item it could on the site. All the copied graphics are in the public domain so couldn’t get them their. After my blood cooled some I went back and investigated some more. None of the copied items were “copyrighted.” © means that you own a real live copyright with the Copyright Office, while “copyrighted” means that you intend too. How many well meaning folks have used both without consideration of their meaning? Raise your hand if you have (btw, my hand is up too.)

So, the question is, what should we do about this other website. My client thinks they should take it down and use their own brain for a while. I would love to be paid for the original work I did that they just out right plundered. I do not really see what can be done about it. The changes they made are substandard anyway, so I am sure that applies across their business. A colleague asked me how I knew that my client’s site was first, just look at the registrar information. The site came up 2 weeks after my client had a heavy ad campaign that had her website featured in all ads.

Therefore, in the end, I sent them a bill, thanked them for copying something I worked hard on creating for my client, and praised them for making it look worse with the changes they had done. It has been 7 days and no response, but it was the holiday week. Maybe tomorrow I will have a check in the box….I do doubt it though!