NEW ORLEANS – Louisiana small businesses still struggling after the 2005 hurricanes will be eligible for one year of free Microsoft software licensing, Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-New Orleans, said.

Under the program, which starts in September, eligible businesses can purchase a three-year license for Microsoft software, such as Windows and Office. Businesses can bring the first year's invoice to any Louisiana Small Business Development Center. Microsoft will pay the amount.

Buy three, get a rebate on one year? Wow, some help.

Anybody considering this offer would be better off with Linux and OpenOffice.org.

"Storm" is a variant of a work program that infects a Windows-based PC, turning it inot a "zombie." These "zombie" computers become mail servers that can be controlled by the spammer responsible for infecting your computer. Not only can the spammer use your computer to send thousands of e-mail messages for their paying customers, they can also use your PC as part of a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack. A DDoS attack is where thousands of zombie-PCs will attempt to access a website simultaneously, forcing the servers to shut down.

What's really nasty about the Storm worm is that its authors are good at social engineering. You've probably seen e-mails over the last few weeks saying "You've received an e-card from a friend" or some such. That's the hook to get you to browse to malware-infested websites and download programs that contain the worm.

This week, it's a different tactic. Instead of the e-card come-on, the Storm guys are sending out e-mails that look like a friend is pointing you to a YouTube video. Naturally you'll be curious, so you click, going to the same malware sites. They try to get you to download a "viewer" which is really the worm.

Don't get ensnared by this sort of social engineering!

• Install Virus Protection
• Don't click-through to unknown websites
• Trust noone!
• Use common sense...

Always keep in mind that these worms are put out in the world by professionals, not just kids looking to make a name for themselves in hackerdom. Zombie-bot networks of PCs make their owners millions. They fight dirty, attacking the "white hat" hackers that try to stop them. Use common sense and don't let your PC do their bidding!

Dell will host a major storage product unveiling in September, and we've got our money on an iSCSI storage device the company has been hinting at for months as part of the show.

The Register has learned that Dell is set to unveil a new iSCSI system called MD3000i. The unit will reportedly run on the same physical platform as the MD3000, which is Dell's direct attached SAS device.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Yes, a judge has confirmed that Novell owns the copyrights to the Unix operating system, but that doesn't mean the company plans to start suing people for using Linux. It will leave such behavior to companies that don't own the copyrights. Like SCO.

No kidding. AT&T Bell Labs was where UNIX was invented. Because of an anti-trust consent decree from the 50s, Ma Bell couldn't sell UNIX, so they licensed it for nothing to UC Berkeley, which started that branch of the OS. That branch spawned *BSD, Digital UNIX/Tru64, and SunOS. When Ma Bell was broken up in 1984, they sued Berkeley to try to rein in the product, but that ship had already sailed. Still, their copyrights were still intact, and passed to Lucent Technologies when Bell Labs spun off from the Death Star. Then Lucent sold UNIX to Novell. End of discussion.

SCO got started because two guys named Gates and Allen were in the operating system porting business, and they wanted to port UNIX to the PC. Ma Bell said, OK, but you have to change the name, in case your product sucks. They did, and XENIX was born. Microsoft gave up on the product, and their Santa Cruz Operation became an independent company. Still, their product originated with the Death Star, so it transferred to Novell. Novell sold the trademark to SCO in 1995, but not the copyright to the product.

And that's a good thing, given how popular Linux is now. The notion of everyone having to pony up to SCO was disturbing. Fortunately, Novell's put that issue to bed:

"We have absolutely no intention of using our Unix copyright ownership to attack Linux," Novell spokesperson Bruce Lowry told The Reg. "We've had those copyrights for the past 14 or 15 years. The fact that the court has reaffirmed them doesn't mean we're now going to change the way we operate. We've never indicated we would use those copyrights against Linux - and we wouldn't. In fact, we want to defend Linux."

and considering Novell owns SuSe Linux now, that makes perfect sense.

Sun Microsystems has nailed its biggest Solaris x86 win to date by lining up IBM as a firm backer of the operating system.

The two companies today revealed that IBM will offer Solaris x86 as an option on a number of its Xeon- and Opteron-based servers by year end. This arrangement provides Sun with its first real Tier 1 OEM partner on the Solaris x86 front. In addition, the two companies have decided to examine Solaris running on IBM's mainframes and even - gasp - its Power-based systems.

"Just pragmatically, there are a lot of customers that love Solaris and are loyal to it," said IBM's systems chief Bill Zeitler, during a conference call.

better look out, dogs and cats are starting to live together.

Seriously, the reason this makes sense is simple: Solaris is robust and has huge enterprise-level penetration. AIX never made it past the risc boxes, and Linux doesn't haqve Solaris' level of adoption and acceptance (and probably never will). Clustering solutions for Solaris are much further along than Linux as well.

On Saturday, the very unofficial Google Operating System blog noticed that the Mountain View outfit was offering a completely free version of Sun Microsystem's StarOffice 8, the office productivity suite that Sun sells for $70 a pop. When contacted, Google confirmed that its version "includes all the major functionality of the paid consumer version."

The suite is available as part of the Google Pack, a free collection of downloadable applications first launched in January of 2006. The Pack offers several apps owned by Google itself, including Google Talk, Google Toolbar, Google Earth, and the sleek photo-manager Picasa. But you'll also find third-party tools, such as the Adobe Reader, the RealPlayer, and Skype's voice-over-IP client.< /blockquote>

At first, this seems counter-intuitive. Google's trying to push the concept of using the on-line word processor and spreadsheet in Google Apps. But Google gets the concept of Personal Continuity. You have to be able to do things off-line, when you're on the beach, in the coffee shop, etc. Sure, you can just download OpenOffice.org right now, but the business mindset is to offer a commercial product. StarOffice has value-added goodies to justify the $70 or so a copy Sun gets for it.

]]> http://www.seashell-software.com/archives/2007/08/network-applica.html http://www.seashell-software.com/archives/2007/08/network-applica.html Personal Continuity Thu, 16 Aug 2007 09:49:38 -0600 There are two types of people who use time management/calendar software: Those who look for just the right package to meet their needs and those who use whatever their employer uses, or whatever came with their PC. The overwhelming number of corporate users implement Microsoft Outlook (using Microsoft Exchange on the server side). They've paid for it as part of their MS-Office licensing, and the open source community has never been able to come up with a groupware solution to rival the Outlook/Exchange combo.

The typical corporate employee integrates their personal scheduling information into their Outlook calendar. That way, it's all in one place and they can sync the info to their phone or PDA. Personal entries (doctor appointments, family activities, club meetings, etc.) can be blocked as private in the company calendar. Work colleagues know you're not available, but why remains with you.

Aside from the obvious personal continuity issue of what if you're escorted off the premises, there are a number of problems with reliance on the company's Exchange server. The first and most significant is sharing the information in your calendar with others. Your work colleagues can see your schedule, since they're behind the corporate firewall, but what about your spouse, or your kids? What if you're active in a church group, Masonic lodge, or other social organization? While those groups don't put money in your checking account like your job does, the time you put into them is just as important to you. Corporate intranets and groupware implementations on those intranets are designed to make the company successful. If you reap personal benefits from using Outlook on their network, that's tangential.

Setting up a personal calendar isn't all that difficult. All you need is a personal copy of Microsoft Office, or an open source package such as Evolution or Sunbird. Sharing that information is tricky, though. Outlook calendars can be shared when they're on the same network, but users separated geographically would need to set up a back-end server. If your PC is lost, stolen or damaged, your calendar goes with it.

Google Calendar enables you to add scheduling capability to your iGoogle virtual desktop. Just click the Google Calendar gadget on the default desktop:

And you'll be directed to set up a new calendar. The process is fairly painless:

Since we're creating an Internet-based calendar, we can grant access to the calendar to others. Those who you wish to have access to your calendar must also be Google Calendar users; if they're not, Google will send them an e-mail inviting them to set themselves up.

Now you're set up, so it's time to start scheduling events. Let's put in a lunch meeting on Friday. Clicking on 12pm on Friday on the calendar pops up a small scheduling window:

A default appointment with the name we give it is created. We can drill into that appointment by clicking on it once it appears on the calendar. This gives us a detail window where we can flesh out the meeting:

We can modify the hours, specify a location (which can be mapped by Google Maps), and even invite others to the meeting. Additionally, Google Calendar can be instructed to remind you of the appointment, via an on-screen pop-up, an e-mail, or a SMS (text) message to your mobile phone:

Once you get to this point, it's up to you to actually put your schedule to work. Add in your appointments, meetings, etc. Share your schedule with colleagues and family members, and you're off and running.

One very useful feature of Google Calendar is its ability to allow you to create multiple calendars. Let's say you're a small business owner and are active in a networking organization such as BNI. After you create your personal calendar, you can create a separate calendar for your BNI activities. When you log into Google Calendar, the two calendars will merge so you see your full schedule. Since the BNI chapter's activities are separate, though, they can be shared with other members of your chapter. They can invite others to meetings, business card exchanges, social gatherings, you name it. Apply the same concept to all your business and social activities and you get a very powerful tool.

Colleagues, family, and friends who don't use Google Calendar aren't left out, however. If you have a personal homepage or blog, you can imbed your calendar in that site. This gives everyone a view of what you're up to and when you're up to it.

Because the application is maintained by Google, you don't have to worry about installing software on either the front- or back-end. Everything happens in your web browser, and Google's servers do the heavy lifting. The cost to you? Nothinglike other Google applications, Google Calendar is ad-driven.

Once you have your calendar set up, the Google Calendar gadget for your iGoogle virtual desktop is your quick-review source. Maintaining personal continuity is possible from anywhere!

]]> http://www.seashell-software.com/archives/2007/08/personal-contin-3.html http://www.seashell-software.com/archives/2007/08/personal-contin-3.html Personal Continuity Wed, 15 Aug 2007 11:01:01 -0600 "Portal" web pages have been around for years. Every copy of Netscape used to start by default at Netscape's home page, making it one of the most valuable pieces of web real estate in the late 1990s. Internet Explorer,. when downloaded from Microsoft, points you immediately to MSN, and Firefox starts you off with a Google search screen.

Now that we have a Gmail account, we can use that to create an iGoogle desktop. iGoogle is a customized portal page for Gmail users. Your iGoogle desktop starts with some useful boxes on screen. These boxes, or "gadgets," as Google refers to them, are independent applications. The initial desktop starts with news, weather, date/time, gadgets, along with one for YouTube, the video-hosting site now owned by Google.

When you sign into iGoogle with your Gmail username and password, you can begin to customize your desktop. I've re-arranged things a bit, removing the Google News gadget, adding gadgets for Wikipedia search, to-do list, and quote-of-the-day.

I'm a huge soccer fan, and the Internet is the best way to keep up with my favorite leagues and teams. Sport information is not something I need immediately when I log on, so I added a "tab" to my iGoogle desktop for sport-related gadgets.

Re-positioning the gadgets on the page is simple: Grab the gadget's title bar and move it where you want it. The active gadget will displace whatever is there. Play around with this and get a combination of gadgets that works for you.

Now you have a virtual desktop, complete with personal e-mail. You should be able to bring up iGoogle from behind most corporate firewalls and security. With the right combination of gadgets, iGoogle can be an effective corporate desktop tool as well as your personal continuity mainstay.

]]> http://www.seashell-software.com/archives/2007/08/personal-contin-2.html http://www.seashell-software.com/archives/2007/08/personal-contin-2.html Personal Continuity Sun, 12 Aug 2007 21:34:29 -0600 You've been escorted off the premises as part of a "downsizing" at your place of work. You used both desktop and laptop computers, but both belonged to the company. You're left with personal belongings in your box, but the personal data is still in your office.

A virtual desktop presence enables you to avoid this situation. As soon as you leave the building, you don't get on the subway, rather you head towards the nearest Internet cafe, log in, and let your colleagues and friends know what happened immediately. You can jump right on employment websites and begin the search for a new position.

Whether it's bouncing back after losing a job or temporary relocation because of a natural disaster, virtual desktop gives you access to the tools you need to maintain your on-line presence anywhere. There is no cost involved to create your virtual desktop; providers of this service rely on advertising revenue to operate the service, and you're the potential buyer.

The first step in creating a virtual desktop is to establish an account with a service provider, such as Yahoo!, MSN, or Google. Let's look at the newest of these three, Gmail by Google.

If you already have a Gmail account, you're ready to move on to our next step. If you already use a web-based e-mail service such as Hotmail or Yahoo!, keep reading. You can use that address as your "secondary e-mail" for Gmail. Keep in mind, our goal here is to create a virtual desktop, not merely an e-mail presence. Google's service and applications are the most robust of the three providers. Their applications give us a firm base upon which we can build that desktop.

With that in mind, go to www.google.com and click the "Gmail" link at the top. You'll then see the opening Gmail screen:

Click the blue "pick a name" button in the bottom right and proceed to the sign-up screen.

Here we'll enter a potential username. Since this is our virtual office e-mail, keep this username more professional-sounding. If you want a less formal nickname, etc., make two accounts. A good start is to input your name as "firstname.lastname" which is good for setting yourself up on job-hunting sites, professional forums, etc.

Make sure you put in a "strong" password to protect your account. I'm a big fan of the old CompuServe-style password of two unrelated words separated by a punctuation mark, like street%onion.

This screen continues with a challenge-question. Gmail suggests some possibilities for this question, and even lets you make up your own.

Complete the sign-up, and you'll be asked to login to Gmail with your just-created username and password. You'll then be directed to your Inbox, where a welcoming message will be waiting for you:

As you can see, the right-hand column is where Google makes their money. Don't begrudge them that ad space, it's allowing us to be totally virtual.

Now that we have a Gmail account, let's make a desktop.

]]> http://www.seashell-software.com/archives/2007/08/personal-contin-1.html http://www.seashell-software.com/archives/2007/08/personal-contin-1.html Personal Continuity Sun, 12 Aug 2007 21:24:03 -0600 Computing professionals hear a lot about the concept of "business continuity," but there is hardly any emphasis on the concept of personal continuity

Microsoft defines "business continuity" as: "The ability of an organization to continue to function even after a disastrous event, accomplished through the deployment of redundant hardware and software, the use of fault tolerant systems, as well as a solidbackup and recovery strategy. "

Makes sense for a business, of course, to have a plan and strategy for when disaster strikes. But what about the individual? We who live in cities like New Orleans, where disaster is more than a theoretical concept, understand the need for disaster recovery at the personal/family level. These plans used to include grabbing the photo albums and other keepsakes when evacuating in the face of a hurricane. Now they include bringing the external hard disk, stacks of CD/DVD-ROMs, flash drives, you get the idea.

Having the data is a good first start, since that means recovery is possible. But what about continuity? In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, thousands of families were displaced for weeks to months. Employers were scrambling to re-assemble their staffs. Mobile phones in the New Orleans metro (504) area code were often unreliable in the first month post-storm. The Internet was a very important lifeline to many in terms of maintaining personal continuity.

Hurricanes and earthquakes are extreme examples of the need for a personal continuity plan. There are less extreme possibilities, however, that can be just as problematic if we're caught in them. Consider this scenario: You're sitting in your cubicle atwork when your manager calls you into her office. She informs you that the company is performing a series of layoffs and you are one of them. A representative from corporate security joins the meeting, to escort you off of the premises once you've cleaned out your desk. You're not allowed to access your computer; all you're leaving with are the family photos and desktop knickknacks you've accumulated over the years.

The loss of personal data on that work computer can be as much of a continuity problem as being displaced after a natural disaster. You've relied on that computer to store a number of personal items, such as your e-mail address book as well as various documents and spreadsheets.

Certainly you can re-create this data, but it's going to take time, and we all know the old saying about time being money. You've just been laid off; the faster you get moving, the faster you can recover.

The first step in developing a personal continuity strategy is to create a personal on-line presence. You need a "virtual desktop."

]]> http://www.seashell-software.com/archives/2007/08/personal-contin.html http://www.seashell-software.com/archives/2007/08/personal-contin.html Personal Continuity Sun, 12 Aug 2007 21:08:59 -0600 There are times when Microsoft makes a product announcement or a business decision, you look at it, and think, that's a cool idea. Then there are other times when it sounds like the inmates have truly taken over the asylum. This is one of the latter:

Free copies of some of Microsoft's office software will soon be available.

The software giant said it would make ad-supported copies of the Works package available within "months".

The programs will not run in a web browser but will be installed on a PC and have their cost offset by running adverts while in use.

The move has widely been seen as an attempt by Microsoft to counter the growing number of rivals offering web versions of popular office programs.

(via /.)

The Beeb refers to MS Works as an "office suite," but anyone who has tried to use that junk knows it for what it was originally intended: bait-and-switch. Works has always been cripple-ware, designed to hook you and get you to buy full-blown MS-Office. Now it's bait-and-switch with ads. Lovely.

The article also points out that MS is facing very real competition from web-based office suites such as Zoho, or Google's products, as well as OpenOffice (whether released by Sun or via www.OpenOffice.org.

If Microsoft had any sense, they'd make a free version of real Office. Limit the features a bit if you want, but make it real Word and Excel. There are folks who would look at commercials to use Word, but will say no way to Works and opt for OpenOffice.

]]> http://www.seashell-software.com/archives/2007/08/dont-these-peop.html http://www.seashell-software.com/archives/2007/08/dont-these-peop.html Microsoft Thu, 02 Aug 2007 12:50:00 -0600 this is no big shock:

Cisco will ditch the Linksys brand to bring all SMB and consumer gear under its single networking omnicorp banner.

CEO John Chambers blabbed the plan to journalists at a European roundtable last week.

Chambers opined: "The reason we kept Linksys' brand because it was better known in the US than even Cisco was for the consumer. As you go globally there's very little advantage in that."

Cisco bought Linksys four years ago, and it made a lot of sense to keep the brand around. Home users trust the Linksys brand, and if they had even heard of Cisco, they associated it with high-end routers that cost a lot more than they were willing to spend. So long as Cisco maintains the pricing on the home networking products, this isn't a bad idea.

A good example of where maintaining separate brands makes sense is when you can increase your retail display space with different brands. This is why Compaq still exists as a brand. In stores like Best Buy or CompUSA, HP branded machines are on the floor next to Compaq. That allows the company to present double the product compared to Toshiba, Sony, et. al.

]]> http://www.seashell-software.com/archives/2007/07/linksys-go-byeb.html http://www.seashell-software.com/archives/2007/07/linksys-go-byeb.html Local and Wide Area Networks Mon, 30 Jul 2007 12:53:36 -0600