StarOffice 8 Update 10

StarOffice 8 Update 10 has finally been released as patch 120187-14 for Windows.

Contrary to previous patches, this one was quite troublesome to install: on both of my Windows machines (both with SO8 U9 already installed) the installation failed quit at the end with a failure to read the source .MSI file (claimed to be a network error, but that was just a crappy error message, all install sources were local). It then removed the whole U9 update, but StarOffice refused to load afterwards (incl reboot) because of missing DLLs and/or DLL entry points.

I had to repair SO8 base, then re-apply U10...

As I said, happened twice for me – cost me 2hrs each time ... so be careful.

Xing now shows contact map on Google Maps

Xing just added great (beta) feature to the Contacts page.
You can now view your contacts as a map using - of course - Google Maps.

Here's my map (you might want to click to enlarge)



Works surprisingly well, i.e. most of the people seem to have meaningful addresses in their profile.
And the visualization - as often - adds information.

(shell) History meme

Just stumbled upon this nice piece of not-so-useful tricks... but fun.
via Tim Bray ongoing � History

history | tr -s ' ' | cut -d ' ' -f 3 | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -n 10
92 tarantella
69 ls
26 cd
13 clear
12 tail
11 rm
11 exec
11 cat
 8 date
 7 man

I must have been doing a lot of SGD/tarantella stuff lately. Can't explain the date, though ;-)

Dopplr and city data - no progress

I ranted about this earlier, but there is still no improvement.
Dopplr does a lousy job regarding its 'catalog' of city data.
Sad.

Citrix Rumors...

I heard a lot of rumors during the last year or so about Microsoft buying Citrix... now IBM and Cisco joined the list...

Rumors of IBM or Cisco buying Citrix?, from Brian Madden on BrianMadden.com

MacBook Air

I had the chance to "lift" an MacBook Air recently, because a co-worker got himself such a beast.
Boy... great device... really.

One can argue about the lack of ports and connectivity.
E.g. only one USB port and no ethernet, only WiFi.
Not the perfect enterprise laptop, therefore.

But to me it is the iPhone of laptops... gets people hungry for Apple.
Drags them into the stores and to the Apple brand.
Any maybe get a more "enterprisy" device.

Surely a plus for Apple.

docs.sun.com

Whoever changed the application or infrastructure behind docs.sun.com...


Thank you.

Performance and responsiveness is now on a level where you can actually work with it.

Java Conference in Austria

Finally, Sun talks Java again in Austria. [1]

On June 19th there will be a one day Java Conference called JavaDeus[2] in St. Pölten.
Free admission of course.

Topics will cover Java 7, Netbeans, openESB... as well as some not-so-directly-Java-related stuff like MySql and Solaris Dtrace... stuff for developers, if you will.
Details can be found here at www.sun.at/javadeus08



[1] Not only do I work for Sun, but I'm also involved in organizing this event.
[2] don't blame me for the name.

Speed Dial killed my Firefox

Strange... I have been using the Speed Dial extension for Firefox for quite some while now, and a couple of days it started to kill my Firefox after startup...
First I though it was the Norton §$%&/() product.... but then I played around with
firefox.exe -safe-mode
and voila it worked again.

Disabling extension by extension revealed that Speed Dial 0.7.0.8 was the culprit.

So it had to let it go.

Got rid of my printer

A couple of days ago I got rid of my printer at home... and old Lexmark [1] ink printer.
First of all because it was broken.
Secondly because it has been broken for about half a year... and I never really did mind... because I did not even want to print anything.
So now was a good time to discard it.[2]

Boy, did I suddenly gain space on my desk.

And I'm one more step closer to the paperless (home) office.
If that will ever work.

Reminds me of the decade old saying "We'll have the paperless toilet before we have the paperless office."

Still true today.


[1] well exIBMers just have to buy Lexmark, don't they.
[2] actual trigger was windowcleaning... and I had to move the printer to the side to get access to the window.

Worst german computer term ever

Well, maybe not the eternal #1 ... but still a good candidate is .... drum roll ...

SCHALTFLÄCHE

This is the german term quite frequently used for buttons & push-buttons.
Literally it means "switch(ing) area"...
as in switching gears or switching the light on ...
and area as in they area where you can actually do the switching.

This is such a stupid and inappropriate term...

Boy, even leo knows about it.

How to recognize malware?

The best indicator if a piece of software is malware (i.e. any kind of malicious software that wants to harm you or others) is that it does NOT come with a 4-10 page disclaimer and license agreement that you actually have to scroll down and read - page by page - and accept.

If it comes with one of them, its legitimate software that actually ran through a legal department. No malware there.
If it does not come with it... be afraid, be very afraid...

Then again, if a legal department was involved with the release of software, ... be afraid as well... or even panic!