Severud @ SFSU

Gateway One one ups the iMac

2007-09-27T23:58:00.001-07:00

The Gateway One appears to be a formidable competitor for the Apple iMac. The entire front area of the computer is a speaker, the keyboard and seamless mouse are both wireless, it comes with a remote control for Windows Media Center and makes it easy to upgrade components such as storage and memory. If only Gateway new how to market such a nice product...

Story via SlashGear. Also see PC World's take on this.

Open Source @ SFSU

2007-09-26T19:43:00.001-07:00

Dr. Sameer Verma teaches, educates, and uses open source products at San Francisco State University. He also maintains a drupal-powered website named Open Source @ SFSU. At the September Campus Computing Coordinating Council (CCCC) meeting he presented the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC). Everyone got to touch and use an OLPC. Here are the slides from that presentation.

Malware removal CD

2007-07-28T22:45:00.001-07:00

Create a malware removal CD with free Microsoft tools:

Google informs the FCC of its commitment to open broadband platforms

2007-07-26T12:04:00.000-07:00

Read the Official Google Blog: Our commitment to open broadband platforms to learn about Google's effort to make the Internet available to more people in more places here in the U.S. of A.

Google purchases GrandCentral

2007-07-02T13:54:00.000-07:00

As predicted a while ago on Techcrunch Google announced its purchase of GrandCentral today. In case you aren't familiar with GC, it uses VoIP to provide you with a central phone number which, when dialed, will ring up to 6 numbers of your choice. You can easily tailor which numbers ring, screen calls, and even transfer a call to a different phone line without skipping a beat. The quality of the VoIP could use a bit of refinement but it works well enough at this point. With Google now onboard with GC the future of this service is quite bright.

I have five invites available for family and friends so if you know me and want one just let me know.

Guy Kawasaiki :: Ten Ways to Use LinkedIn

2007-06-28T07:58:00.000-07:00

Ever the one for great advice, Guy Kawasaki write about Ten Ways to Use LinkedIn including how to:

Increase your visibility
Improve your connectability
Improve your Google PageRank
and more...

OpenDNS serves 200 billionth request

2007-06-27T13:18:00.000-07:00

For something as boring as DNS a big congratulations is in order to OpenDNS for providing a free service that is actually quite useful along with being rock solid.

OT: What was that KTVU ad at the end of Idol?

2007-05-15T21:02:00.000-07:00

So tonight at about 9:01pm on KTVU up pops an ad -- just a moment before Melinda finishes singing -- that reads:

6 in 10 Americans
don't support the Iraq War.

So where are
the anti-war anthems
about Iraq?

Within a couple seconds it fades to:

where's the music?

Wednesday on
THE TEN O'CLOCK NEWS 2

Just as quickly the ad is gone and we're back at Idol with Seacrest asking the judges a final question. Very odd.

Wikipedia Article of the Day: Default Route

2007-04-04T10:23:00.000-07:00

Default Route

A default route, also known as the gateway of last resort, is the network route used by a router when no other known route exists for a given IP packet's destination address. All the packets for destinations not known by the router's routing table are sent to the default route. This route generally leads to another router, which treats the packet the same way: If the route is known, the packet will get forwarded to the known route. If not, the packet is forwarded to the default-route of that router which generally leads to another router. And so on. Each router traversal adds a one-hop distance to the route.

Once the router with a known route to a host destination is reached, the router determines which route is valid by finding the "most specific match". The network with the longest subnet mask that matches the destination IP address wins.

The default route in IPv4 (in CIDR notation) is 0.0.0.0/0, often called the quad-zero route. Since the subnet mask given is /0, it effectively specifies no network, and is the "shortest" match possible. A route lookup that doesn't match anything will naturally fall back onto this route. Similarly, in IPv6 the default address is given by ::/0.

Routers in an organization generally point the default route towards the router that has a connection to a network service provider. This way, packets with destinations outside the organization's local area network (LAN)—typically to the Internet, WAN, or VPN—will be forwarded by the router with the connection to that provider.

Host devices in an organization generally refer to the default route as a default gateway which can be, and usually is, a filtration device such as a firewall or Proxy server.

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Default_route

[ default route ]

CFA has tentative deal

2007-04-03T15:17:00.000-07:00

With the help of an independent fact finding recommendation the California Faculty Association has a tentative deal with an effective 24% increase over 4 years.

[ SFSU ]

Gamle dager (olden days)

2007-04-03T12:42:00.000-07:00

Imagine upgrading someone from their tried-n-true scroll to the hip-n-new book. Oh, the problems you'll have trying to explain it to the users.

This is from a show called Øystein & Meg (Øystein & I) produced by the Norwegian Broadcasting television channel NRK in 2001. It's written by Knut Nærum and performed by Øystein Bache and Rune Gokstad.

Helt fantastisk!

No more Everything Technology on KSFO

2007-04-03T00:17:00.000-07:00

KSFO has discontinued Bob O'Donnell's Everything Technology show on Saturdays. The poor replacement is now on KGO on Sundays hosted by Leo Laporte. Bob is still providing the occasional podcast and here's the one from March 10, 2007.

New job

2007-04-01T00:01:00.000-07:00

I'm happy to announce that I've just accepted not 1, not 2, but 3 new jobs; one each at Microsoft, Google, and Apple, Inc. While I will continue to fulfill my role as lead seat warmer at San Francisco State "Working Together to be a" University here are my new roles effective immediately:

My role at Microsoft is to fill the shoes of Robert Scoble and Michael Gartenberg as lead evangelist and in so doing prove that even if you don't use any Microsoft product you should still find a way to donate as much money as you can to a company that tries so hard. To donate please use the new PayPal competitor: Microsoft Windows Live Express Local Donator and Easy Payment for mobile beta.
As Chief Strategist for Apple (with top security clearance) my role will be to promote the new iRan mission and extol the clear benefits of the iRack presence in the marketplace.
At Google I'll coordinate all beta signage, helping to find consensus on color and location of all beta tags within logos.

With all this experience I expect that by tomorrow I will become the newly appointed czar of Web 2.0 M&A for the newly combined TechCrunch-Digg-Technorati-Twitter-MySpace. Shortly thereafter I will announce Web 3.0.

Creative Commons use on flickr

2007-03-31T12:33:00.000-07:00

If I had to guess I would say that most flickr users don't know what Creative Commons (CC) is let alone that flickr makes it easy for them to apply CC licenses to their photos. That guess may or may not be true but what is interesting is the growth of CC licensed content. Note that Wikipedia can only use CC-BY and CC-BY-SA, which account for ~3.5M and ~2.5M photos, respectively.

Ref: http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/3507198/

[ CreativeCommons ]

Linux+ Study Guide

2007-03-27T13:51:00.000-07:00

ArsGeek reports that a Linux+ Study Guide is now available. This may be a good primer for those moving to Ubuntu and other Linux distros.

[ linux ]

Ubuntu.com now using Drupal

2007-03-18T19:24:00.000-07:00

Unbuntu.com has relaunched it's website and has done so using Drupal. This was an excelent choice and further demonstrates that Drupal is a fantastic product for any and all to use.

Some of the reasons cited for choosing Drupal include its excellent documentation, ease of extension via modules, its responsive security team, and its ease in adding & editing content. I would also note that Drupal is quite easy to install, almost as easy as WordPress, and allows you to have a website up and running within minutes.

Out of the box, Drupal is ready for a single or multiple users and contributors, provides RSS for all content areas, indexes your content for easy searching, is compliant with web standards.

All versions of Vista may be virtualized

2007-02-22T22:55:00.000-08:00

According to the Houston Chronicle, Microsoft employee Scott Woodgate seems to confirm a myth that the End User License Agreement (EULA) for Windows Vista prevents some versions from being installed on a virtual machine.

As Ed Bott correctly points out, the EULA prevents one from reusing the license to install Vista Home Basic or Premium once it has been installed somewhere. Contrast that with Vista Enterprise and Ultimate which allow you to create up to 4 virtual installations of Vista (or XP) on that machine.

Microsoft continues to disrespect Apple users at its own peril. Cancel or Allow?

You are coming to a sad realization...

2007-02-21T20:53:00.000-08:00

Cancel or Allow?

If you don't find the new Mac advertisement funny then perhaps you haven't experienced enough Vista joy. Seriously. It's true. And it hurts. Microsoft needs to find its NextStep.

Steve Jobs: "Teachers Unions are what's wrong with our schools"

2007-02-20T23:17:00.000-08:00

Steve Jobs may be doing a great job of running Apple, Inc. but he sure doesn't know what he's talking about when it comes to education. Speaking at an event sponsored by the Texas Public Education Reform Foundation he said unionization was "off-the-charts crazy" and compared schools to small companies with the principal analogous to the CEO. I would respectfully submit to Mr. Jobs that many of the problems come from management above the principal and go all the way up to the Governor. The district offices, the legislature, and the Governor are the ones who do the most harm to our education system and not the hard working teachers who put much more into their jobs than they receive in compensation.

I challenge Steve Jobs to come up with a list of "bad" teachers and compare it to my list of bad administrators. I'll win every time. To be fair we should weight the rankings. Someone with the title equivalent of CFO or General Counsel should carry more weight than someone doing the equivalent job of a quality assurance tester working onsite at ASUSTek's facilities. But we'll handicap Steve-o and give The Governator, Deukmejian, Wilson and all the other education-friendly Republican Governors the same importance as an energetic, inspiring History teacher who has no tenure (and no job come July 1).

Please, Steve, continue the analogy and start talking about the people who are responsible for allocating funds and the gross mismanagement they have allowed on their watch. Then come back and we can talk about the teachers.

What single thing do you dislike most about Vista?

2007-01-28T10:23:00.000-08:00

There are some things about Windows Vista that I like but at this point they are few compared to the dislikes. The new volume licensing is a mess; the control panel would be simply unusable were it not for the search feature that was copied from OSX; the boot screen is a boring, ugly green progress bar something-or-other; and the glitches, glitches, glitches. I just can't stand those GLITCHES, GLITCHES, GLITCHES!

Do I dare even mention how chaty and annoying UAC is? Oh, and I still suffer the app that pops up in front while I'm typing only to be dismissed before I can read it because it thought one of the keys I pressed was meant for it. How sad.

So, are you one of the brave souls using Vista? Can you really find the single thing you dislike most about Windows Vista? I sure can't.

R.I.P. FrontPage

2007-01-04T14:49:00.000-08:00

With the release of Office 2007 comes the fact that FrontPage is no more. Well, actually it has split into two products: SharePoint Designer and Expression Web. Both products are standalone and thus not included in any of the Office suites. If you have Windows Server 2003 then SharePoint services is a free add-on and SharePoint Designer can help you to customize it. If you don't use SharePoint and your looking to upgrade FrontPage then Expression Web will be the product for you.

[ Severud ]

Happy New Year

2007-01-01T00:00:00.000-08:00

What changes are in store for the year ahead?

Will Vista provide Microsoft continued domination of the desktop or will MacOS or Linux make further inroads?
Will the social aspects and AJAXyness of Web2.0 supplant more fat client apps?
Will more DRM content restriction and prevention be shoved down the throats of unsuspecting consumers?
How will video become easier for noobs to share and view... in high quality... on their TV?

No doubt there are more and better questions to pose and I'm certain your favorite search engine can find them for you.

Tuberculosis coverup at SFSU?

2006-12-22T10:17:00.000-08:00

According to CBS5.com, 250 students may have been exposed to a person with an active case of tuberculosis and only "those who may have been exposed" have been told. Excuse me? What's sad is the communication to staff, faculty, and students about this did not occur. Instead, we get unsolicited emails from above about Israel/Palestine issues and the Governor's fabulous budget but not about this. Maybe it's management's way of saying "Happy Holidays".

Only those who have been exposed have been tested? How do they know who has been exposed? Did they ask me if I have been in the Psychology and Ethnic Studies building at the time this person was there? No. Were only students tested? Are faculty and staff immune to the bacterium? Maybe the asbestos we're inhaling protects us???

The silence is deafening.

[ tuberculosis ]

Top countries with most prisoners per capita

2006-12-09T12:29:00.000-08:00

Swivel is calling itself the YouTube of data. Use it to share data, compare data, and comment. Here's some interesting data:

[ Swivel ]

VirusScan 8.5i released

2006-11-29T12:23:00.001-08:00

McAfee VirusScan 8.5i is complete. It supports Windows Vista, Office 2007, and many new features. If you use ProtectionPilot you'll need version 1.5 which should also be available soon.