A guide to avoid identity theft

A friend just linked me up to this nice guide about avoiding identity theft. It is certainly a worthwhile read.

Nice picture of Denmark from above

A friend on IRC just showed me this nice picture of Denmark from above.

Thanks Loudergood!

KDE 3.5 has been released!

A new version of my favorite desktop environment, KDE, has just been released. This release is the last major update to the 3.x series before KDE 4 which as the version implies, will be based on Qt 4 from Trolltech.

You can see some of the improvements in this release by reading this nice visual guide.

Thanks to all the people working on KDE for making an absolutely great desktop environment!

The future of Firefox - Updated!

According to several sites and blogs, Mozilla Firefox 1.5 should be released to day. I've been using the betas and the release candidates for quite a while and I must say it is a really nice upgrade from Firefox 1.0.x. It's faster, uses less memory (even though it still uses quite a bit), the popup blocking have been improved and the update system has been completely revamped (was needed too!). Furthermore the engine has been seriously improved.

So, what is in the plans for Firefox after 1.5 is released? According to this blog post, we should get new releases every 6-9 months and they are very focused on fixing security bugs as fast as possible if/when they are found (and as everyone knows, there WILL be bugs).

If you haven't tried out Firefox yet, you owe yourself to try it out.

* Firefox 1.5 has been released, grab it here.

Some more about the MS announcement + Google Analytics

If you're not familiar with it, then I higly recommend Andy Updegrove's blog. In one of his latest posts, there's some more info about the British Library's support for Microsofts move. As always, you should take press releases with a large bucket of salt.

In other news, I'm using Google Analytics here on my little blog and besides some small glitches in the interface, it is a pretty impressive service.

It also shows what I already knew - my blog is hardly the most visisted :p

Microsoft opens document formats...maybe

Microsoft made a splash the other day with their annoucement that they would make their document format an open standard. This news have been reported in the news everywhere but sadly most of todays news media are very uncritical and simply reports what companies write in their press releases like it's the one and only truth. Of course, sometimes that is okay, but a little fact checking seldom hurts.

That certainly counts for everything Microsoft makes a press release about since they are what I consider the unofficial world champions in lobbying and marketing - you can only admire the impressive stuff they are able to pull off. I don't admire their ethics and morale quite as much ;)

This time it's no different, just look at how Microsoft worked in the background to derail ODF in Massachusetts - it is quite impressive. It also makes you wonder how much the politicians actually care about the citizens?

Microsoft claims they will open up, which I sincerely hope is true. The only problem is that Microsofts definition of an open standard most likely isn't the same as many others (me included). A truly open standard should (as the name implies) be freely available without any restrictions whatsoever. That's the case with the new OpenDocument format (ODF), but can the same be said of Microsofts OpenXML format? It is no doubt too early to pass judgement on that, but I have my doubts, just look at the questions David Berlind asks in his blog and this comparison by Andy Updegrove.

New CD design from Sony

Sony is about to launch a new CD design which they think will be an instant hit - the design can be seen here.

A response to Sony

I absolutely love this funny comment!

Thank you Sony!

I'm one of those people that for a long time have been trying to make people aware of the problems that comes with DRM systems like the copy protection software that's been added to music CD's for quite a while now. Sadly it is very difficult for us simple people to get the media's attention. They want a good story, one that hurts people - "good versus bad" or "big evil against little person". Until now it has been a one-sided debate about the very evil pirates that robs the poor music industry for billions upon billions of dollars and if you dared to say anything differently, you'd be flamed and burn marked as a freak and a supporter of those evil pirates.

You changed all that Sony and I'm very grateful that you decided to spend a lot of money to make it possible to get the media's attention! You brilliant plan to secretly install a rootkit on your customers computers is amazingly evil. Add to that the fact that you seem to be able to continue to come up with more evil stuff every day simply stuns me. You must have some really fantastic people working there, otherwise I can't imagine you'd be able to make this thing happen and continue getting that much attention to the campaign!

Thanks again Sony - I'll do my part to make sure that your message gets spread to as many as I can!