Oct 21: UK Caller ID (clid) modem
Ahh, at last. I've nearly got on order a modem that the tech guys at Zoom tell me will work on the BT Caller ID system. It's the 3049-72-00c, and it's not easy to find without that number. That's one thing. The other is that there are lots of modems that use the same case design and are not UK CLID compatible. Hummph.
Oct 12: Sensitive Spam, anyone?
I have been receiving a spate of email spam messages, many of them talking up stocks and shares. They differ from the preponderance of the irritating deluge in the particular way they circumvent Baysian analysis by systems like SpamAssassin. It's not unusual to find random words and characters at the bottom of an email for exactly that reason, but this is an example of the latest ploy: Read More
Oct 7: LinuxWorld 2005
Had a great time, and met loads of folks at a business level, some working in London, some more local than that, even (High Wycombe). Will be very handy to be able to partner with more estabished companies where possible on larger jobs. After the jump, I ramble a bit more.
The conferences were really quite high-powered and very valuable. I ended up going mainly to the tech ones, which I felt were more useful to me in content. The business ones (I went to some) seemed to either point out the cost and revenue advantages of using Open Source, or denied the relevance of such figures all together and talked about qualitative and philosphical advantages. All good stuff, but I was right to stay mainly in the tech talks and be wowed by the developments in PHP5 explained by Rasmus himself, or look at how Knoppix came together and get some insight from the creator (Klaus Knopper). Mark Shuttleworth did what Mark Shuttleworth does. As founder of Thawte and Ubuntu Linux (the distro I'm playing with at the moment, and find quite acceptable), he can probably be excused to some extent. He says he doesn't mind if Ubuntu costs him a couple of mil per year to run. Nice little hobby, I'm sure.
In case anyone's interested, I'm now a certification notary for Thawte, so if you want 10 points on your certificate (takes 100 to be allowed to use your name in it - i.e. make it actually useful!), but I can help you find other local notaries. Expect to get signed e-mails from me from now on, and encrypted ones if I think you should know what you're doing! Read More
The conferences were really quite high-powered and very valuable. I ended up going mainly to the tech ones, which I felt were more useful to me in content. The business ones (I went to some) seemed to either point out the cost and revenue advantages of using Open Source, or denied the relevance of such figures all together and talked about qualitative and philosphical advantages. All good stuff, but I was right to stay mainly in the tech talks and be wowed by the developments in PHP5 explained by Rasmus himself, or look at how Knoppix came together and get some insight from the creator (Klaus Knopper). Mark Shuttleworth did what Mark Shuttleworth does. As founder of Thawte and Ubuntu Linux (the distro I'm playing with at the moment, and find quite acceptable), he can probably be excused to some extent. He says he doesn't mind if Ubuntu costs him a couple of mil per year to run. Nice little hobby, I'm sure.
In case anyone's interested, I'm now a certification notary for Thawte, so if you want 10 points on your certificate (takes 100 to be allowed to use your name in it - i.e. make it actually useful!), but I can help you find other local notaries. Expect to get signed e-mails from me from now on, and encrypted ones if I think you should know what you're doing! Read More