(funny) Crap website? Try feng shui

Crap website? Try feng shui | The Register

Is your website underperforming? Does it lack spiritual balance? Do you have the sneaking suspicion that an inauspicious alignment of html elements may be to blame?

Not funny enough? Here's more:

"Just as the world comprises of the five basic elements, each website has five elements and these need to be in balance with one another. Earth is the layout, fire is the colour, air is the HTML, space is name of the website, and water is the font and graphics."

(criminal) That explains a lot...

Gates becomes a higher power [printer-friendly] | The Register

"People think of me as this technical guy," Bill Gates once told me. "In fact, the important point to remember about my background is the fact that I was brought up to be a lawyer. My family are all corporate lawyers, and the conversation at every breakfast was always over the latest legal developments in the business space. You might say it's in my blood."

And here's another great quote:

"It's important for a corporate leader to know the difference between what is actually illegal, and what people assume should be illegal."

(life) Sir!

Circumstantial evidence that allowing people to call you "Sir" (assuming they are doing it in the first place!!) is bad for the group.

I have a peer in another organisation, someone I respect highly, and get along with very well both personally and (on the now rare occasions when we work together) professionally.

He recently told me that his team tends to take every suggestion he makes as a directive, instead of just a suggestion. That's pretty bad; indeed, the only thing worse could be if they also do not contradict him when they have a differing opinion.

Since I have never thought of him as the dictatorial type (in fact he is a very jolly, easy-going, friendly, guy!) I can only imagine this is because he has never actively tried to stop his team calling him "Sir", or perhaps even encouraged it subtly due to the 10+ year age gap that he has with his team.

Thankfully I will not have this problem. Maybe the opposite, since my team (even younger than his) has now actually started pulling my leg once in a while!

(funny) the perils of aggressive spam blocking

First, if you're offended by stuff like this, my apologies. My first excuse is that I honestly doubt anyone actually visits my site. My second excuse is that this really is a technical issue :-)

Rochdale man fails to prevent neighbour's erection | The Register

A Rochdale man has failed to prevent his neighbour extending his property after the local council's email filtering system blocked two missives containing the word "erection", the BBC reports.

(malware) Unbelievable...

Australian IT - Microsoft takes on net nasties (double click | David Frith, JUNE 06, 2006)

It seems Steve was at a friend's wedding reception when the bride's father complained that his PC had slowed to a crawl and would Steve mind taking a look.

Allchin says Ballmer, the world's 13th wealthiest man with a fortune of about $18 billion, spent almost two days trying to rid the PC of worms, viruses, spyware, malware and severe fragmentation without success.

He lumped the thing back to Microsoft's headquarters and turned it over to a team of top engineers, who spent several days on the machine, finding it infected with more than 100 pieces of malware, some of which were nearly impossible to eradicate.

[...]

If the man at the top and a team of Microsoft's best engineers faced defeat, what chance do ordinary punters have of keeping their Windows PCs virus-free?

I think this story is a complete fabrication. I can't believe Ballmer has friends ;-)

(malware) Vista's endless security warnings

Priceless...

Schneier on Security: Microsoft Vista's Endless Security Warnings

It sounds like a good system. But this is Microsoft, we're talking about here. They completely botched UAP.

The bad news, then, is that UAP is a sad, sad joke. It's the most annoying feature that Microsoft has ever added to any software product, and yes, that includes that ridiculous Clippy character from older Office versions.

(criminal) Microsoft at its shoddy and arrogant worst

This is from Don Tennant, editor in chief of Computerworld.

Rotten Effort

Last week, Dale Frantz, CIO at Auto Warehousing Co., brought to my attention an alarming business practice that shows Microsoft at its shoddy and arrogant worst.

(criminal) Everyone wants to "own" your PC

Bruce Schneier is always on the ball!

Wired News: Everyone Wants to 'Own' Your PC

It used to be that only malicious hackers were trying to own your computers. [...]

Now, things are not so simple. There are all sorts of interests vying for control of your computer. [...] All these companies want to own your computer.

Absolutely hilarious! Stephen Colbert pisses off Bush big time

...and a few others along with him, as collateral damage

Daily Kos: Re-Improved Colbert transcript (now with complete text of Colbert-Thomas video!)

(malware) MS says recovery impossible in severe infections

This is a great article, with an unusual amount of frankness from a Microsoft employee talking about how bad things really are now.

Microsoft Says Recovery from Malware Becoming Impossible

"At Microsoft, we are fielding 2,000 attacks per hour. We are a constant target, and you have to assume your Internet-facing service is also a big target," Danseglio said.

So what are we doing running Windows on our internet facing servers? Waiting for a wake-up call?

[There are other quotes in that article that merit replay and/or serious discussion. No time now -- but sometime later today I will expand this blog entry.]