Monthly Archives: December 2005

Windows is dangerous

Posted on December 29, 2005 by ward

Another exploit is loose in Windows land; this one is for XP and 2003 server and there is no patch yet from Microsoft. It’s got to do with the parsing of WMF files, which apparently are Windows Meta Files (pictures … Continue reading →

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Copyright down under

Posted on December 28, 2005 by ward

Good news from Australia – the Australian government will soon legalize time and media-shifting of copyrighted materials for personal use. So it will become legal for Australians to make MP3s from their CDs, and to use their VCRs to record … Continue reading →

Posted in Copyright, patents, and trademarks | Leave a comment

San Antonio

Posted on December 22, 2005 by ward

A bit quiter for a few days, after all it is the holiday season. I’m in San Antonio visiting family, and I can now confirm that everything is bigger in Texas. Even the christmas tree ornaments. Happy holidays!

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Open Document

Posted on December 16, 2005 by ward

So Microsoft is working really hard to derail the Massachusetts efforts to adopt a truely open standard for its documents. Bravely, Massachusetts decided in September to adopt the newly finalized OpenDocument standard for all its office documents, ensuring that the … Continue reading →

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Bad European Politics

Posted on December 14, 2005 by ward

So, thanks to the Conservatives and Socialists in the European Parliament (the two biggest fractions), a European Directive has been passed for mandatory data retention. It needs to be implemented in national law within 2 years in all of the … Continue reading →

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Ergonomics

Posted on December 11, 2005 by ward

I’ve been looking at upgrading my work-from-home environment to make it more ergonomic. The department of labor has some information and a checklist that is quite handy to evaluate your current work setup, and see where improvements can be made. … Continue reading →

Posted in Everything else | 1 Comment

Kudos to Dell

Posted on December 10, 2005 by ward

I had not thought I would (ever?) say this, but I’ve got a warm fuzzy feeling for Dell right now. They have done something no other computer manufacturer has done before: they’ve released a 100% GPL’ed solution for upgrading the … Continue reading →

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Defensive publishing

Posted on December 9, 2005 by ward

The BBC reports that India has embarked on a massive defensive publishing project. They are building the ‘Traditional Knowledge Digital Library’, a 30 million page (!) encyclopedia describing traditional medicine, and will release it into the public domain. Why? They … Continue reading →

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