dive into mark

Words - the last, best way to differentiate yourself online. [via LucDesk] To quote Rosencrantz (or possibly Guildenstern): “Words, words, they’re all we have to go on.”

StarOffice 6.0 beta is out. [via Slashdot] This is a free Office clone. It is available in English and German for Windows, Linux/i386, and Solaris/Sparc. I downloaded the English Windows version. Initial impressions:

• It’s large as downloads go (96 MB), but much much smaller than Microsoft Office. And yes, I have legitimately had to download Microsoft Office (my company’s site-licensed version, from our file server, through our VPN) to re-install it when things went horribly wrong one day.
• The interface is slick. Much, much nicer than StarOffice 5.2, which lamely attempted to take over your entire desktop and keep you within StarOffice. Each application is now separate, but it’s definitely an integrated application suite, just like MS Office. File/New gives you a submenu to create a new document of any type (word processing, HTML, spreadsheet, presentation, drawing, and so forth).
• It happily co-exists alongside Microsoft Office 2000. It doesn’t attempt to take over your file associations; double-clicking on your Word files will still open Microsoft Word. It does, however, install a QuickStart application that sits in your system tray and gives you File/New and Open options. A non-pixel-hogging version of the Microsoft Office bar. Slick.
• It comes with a buttload of filters that no one will ever use. Let’s be honest, the only filters that matter are Microsoft Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. I have successfully opened all the Microsoft Word documents I have at my disposal (mostly functional specs given to us by clients, and technical specs written in-house). These are not the most complex Word documents in the world, but they have headers, footers, outlines, auto-numbered lists, embedded pictures, tables, and highlighted revision-controlled changes. All displayed without a hitch, edited without a hitch, and I was able to re-save the document with a few changes and then open it in Microsoft Word 2000. I don’t have any Excel spreadsheets to test at the moment, but given my experience with Word documents, I wouldn’t expect any problems.
• To ease migration within your company (and to keep you compatible with the vast hordes of unenlightened masses outside your company), you can set StarOffice to automatically save in Microsoft Word/Excel/Powerpoint 2000 (or 97) format. Go to Tools/Options, then select Load/Save, then set your default document format for each type of document.

Overall, I’m quite impressed. For what I use Office for, this could easily replace The Real Thing. I wonder how many other people will come to the same conclusion.

Weapons for her. [via MemePool] I especially like the steel mace with cow print fake fur. It would, of course, require a matching cow print fake fur miniskirt. Which, unfortunately, my girlfriend has.

New essay: Knowledge management (it all sounds so good). This is a response to John Robb’s ideas about knowledge management using weblogs.

Updated essay: Generation XL (originally written August 28, 2001).

Just received this email from my father:

We all are being asked to make sacrifices in this time of peril. Read in the paper yesterday that the demand for bomb-sniffing dogs has risen astronomically. The FAA has allocated $6 million to train 90 new dogs. This translates to $66,667 per dog. Goes on to say that Labs are the best breed for this purpose. So I’m (reluctantly) going to offer up Angie [his dog] “for the good of the nation” to get the training. I’ll only ask for a small portion of the training cost (since she already is trained to sniff out anything food- or cat-shit related). Figure that should give her a good start.

We’ll miss her, but hey, we all need to make sacrifices in this time of America Under Attack. And perhaps we’ll be able to visit her at whatever airport she gets assigned to.

Get the current time by XML-RPC [via Scripting News] Hmm, I usually just ask Google. Or look at my watch. (Just kidding, Dave. I can definitely see the benefit of this. It just sounds so funny. I can just picture you, all excited, showing it to your wife tonight: “Look, look, honey. I can use the most powerful worldwide network ever created to call one server in San Francisco using XML-RPC that calls another server at the National Institute of Standards using the RFC 868 protocol to get the current time. Isn’t that amazing?” Dave, you are truly a geek’s geek.)

RIAA mulling how to shut down new generation of P2P file sharing networks [via Slashdot]

Bruce Schneier: The Futility of Digital Copy Prevention

Bruce Schneier: Protecting Copyright in the Digital World

Every time I write about the impossibility of effectively protecting digital files on a general-purpose computer, I get responses from people decrying the death of copyright. “How will authors and artists get paid for their work?” they ask me. Truth be told, I don’t know. I feel rather like the physicist who just explained relativity to a group of would-be interstellar travelers, only to be asked: “How do you expect us to get to the stars, then?” I’m sorry, but I don’t know that, either.

Thank you to all my readers who emailed me letters of support yesterday. You will be happy to know that I have gained the support of higher level executives in my company, and the weblog will continue uncensored. Whether I would have continued it without their support is a question I’m glad I don’t have to answer today.

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