June 2003

Need help with Sametime authentication

by Volker Weber

I am having some difficulties with single sign-on between WebSphere and Sametime. The Sametime Links toolkit advises to take the LTPA token and pass this on to Sametime. However that does not seem to work. The "links" never show anybody as being present.

The SSO configuration itself seems to be working just fine. I can log into a WebSphere application and then open the Sametime Conference Center and I find myself already logged in there.

If you look at WebSphere Portal you will see that this seems to ignore the LTPA token and instead passes an ST token to the Sametime server and that actually does work very well. I could use the same mechanism if I would only know how to generate this token for a user that has already logged into WebSphere.

What do we have? WebSphere Application Server 4.02 with WebSphere Portal 4.2, Domino 5.0.11 as an LDAP source, Sametime 3.0 SP1 on Domino 5.0.10.

Any help is appreciated.

Go get iChat AV

by Volker Weber

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If you have a Mac and you are not using iChat AV yet, go get it. It is amazing. No, you don't need the new iSight camera. Your Mac will do. Instant internet phone! I just tested it with John Head on the other side of the world and it is almost like being there. He was using his Powerbook and I was sitting here with Lucy, no microphones or headsets, and we could easily chat with the built-in gear.

iChat AV is free as a beta that runs out at the end of the year. You will need to buy Panther (MacOS X 10.3) when that comes out to use it in 2004 and beyond.

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Another member in the family

by Volker Weber

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Thomas got his first Mac this week. And for a really good deal. Maybe I should start taking commission from Apple. :-)

I think he has made an excellent choice. The price for 15" Powerbook has come down a lot in the last weeks. The machine comes with an Airport card installed and he has the 1GHz G4 with 512 meg of RAM, superdrive, 60 gig hard drive, and (in contrast to the 12" model) a PC-Card slot.

I know there is rumor about a new 15" machine coming up but the Titanium Powerbook is one exceptional machine. Welcome to the club, Thomas.

Portalizing Domino Applications for WebSphere Portal

by Volker Weber

Draft for new IBM Redbook to be published in August:

This IBM Redbook describes how to integrate existing Domino applications to the IBM WebSphere Portal.

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[via Ben Poole]

Microsoft Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 in English and German

by Volker Weber

Microsoft released Service Pack 4 for Windows 2000 today. Get it here.

Need help with Mac installer packages

by Volker Weber

It turns out, I was far off with my rant about the broken Notes installer. You don't need to write your own installers to spell disaster. It helps if you break the package. Here is a side by side comparison of the Notes 6.0.1 installer and the Notes 6.0.2CF1 installer that fails: (click to enlarge)

sidebysideTN.png

I need your help now. I know, that I can simply drag the Classic installer out of the failing package, but how do I add the symbolic link? It won't let me add anything. Or can you point me to a utility that lets me create my own installer package?

Google search of the day

by Volker Weber

A message to our russian friends: There is no use for a Domino Designer 6 crack. The version you download from IBM has been pre-cracked for you.

Under construction

by Volker Weber

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Backup to camcorder

by Volker Weber

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Connect the DV camera to your firewire port. Then use DV Backup to backup computer files to the camcorder. Nope, that is not a joke.

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Hydra receives WWDC Design Award

by Volker Weber

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At last night's Eighth Annual Apple Design Awards, Apple honored Martin Ott, Martin Pittenauer, Dominik Wagner, and Ulrich Bauer, a team of four german students, for the creation of Hydra, a collaborative editor that allows a team of connected users to work on the same document at the same time.

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Quote of the day

by Volker Weber

Linus Torvalds outspoken:

I allege that SCO is full of it

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Feed not only validates but is also funky

by Volker Weber

If you are unaware of politics in Blogistan you have no idea what I am talking about -- and you should not even care. But just for the record, this humble feed does not only validate but is also funky.

Apple defends performance claims

by Volker Weber

Greg Joswiak, vice president of hardware product marketing at Apple, in a phone interview today, defended Apple's performance claims for its upcoming Power Mac G5, after they came under fire in the wake of yesterday's announcement. Read on for the details.

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Apple accused of cheating over G5 benchmarks

by Volker Weber

The Register has this story:

Benchmark results cited by Apple at the launch of its Power Mac G5 desktops yesterday have already come under fire for seeming to not only tweak the Mac test system to improve its performance beyond anything an ordinary user might experience, but crippling rival systems to deliver below-par average user performance.

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Get out of debt or get rich quick

by Volker Weber

Ed quotes Bill Gates:

Like almost everyone, I receive a lot of spam every day, much of it offering to help me get out of debt or get rich quick. It's ridiculous.

An Apple a day ...

by Volker Weber

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Back from the eye of the storm. Did you ever see a flying sat dish? Not the two feet diameter type, but those who are mounted on a back of a truck. Well this one made a really big dent into a 5" steel rail. The trip to the WWDC keynote was fun. Two days of talking to really bright folks who take you dead serious - no monkey business.

I also have a new favorite hotel in Berlin now. I used to like the Esplanade Grand Hotel very much. Its design is very cool, Bauhaus type. But now I have learned that the InterContinental has a new club floor with incredible features. I will be posting some pictures to my gallery tomorrow, maybe even later tonight. I don't often happen to see the same brand of TV at home and in a hotel suite. :-) As an appetizer - this was on a small table greeting me upon arrival:

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Well, I got to see a lot more Apples that day. I really do like the design of the new G5 systems. Today I had the opportunity to look at them even closer. The current G4 quicksilver machines look really old in comparison. I also had the opportunity to play with the new Apple camera for half an hour and really wanted to keep it. No dice.

And BTW: I found the two commercials that made me take a closer look at both the iPod and the iMac.

Last but not least, I made some new acquaintances like Jörg, and met a lot of old ones, amongst them Cherno, Detlef, Flo, Timm.

Finally a big thank you goes to Martin K and the rest of your team. Simply the best.

Google search of the day

by Volker Weber

I would not believe people actually search for that. Let me see how long it takes until someone finds this:

Sex is dirty only if it's done right.

IBM do you read me?

by Volker Weber

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Opens, shows up on the Dock, closes. No messages. Just fails. Has anybody actually tried this before releasing it?

Notes and Domino 6.0.2 CF1 around the corner

by Volker Weber

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Notes and Domino 6.0.2 was only released in Japan. Instead of releasing it in other language versions IBM has been working on Critical Fix 1 of this release. It is not yet available to the public but should be any day now. It has been available internally and for business partners already for a few days and I am wondering why it has not been posted yet.

Does anybody have an idea why the MacOS X Notes Installer does not work? It opens , shows up on the Dock and disappears.

Was tun gegen Spam

by Markus Nolte

Immer wieder ärgere ich mich über einen Haufen unerwünschter Emails. Der Einsatz von Technik zur Unterbindung ist eine Variante. Hierzu gibt es bei den verschiedenen Provider mehr oder weniger wirksame Optionen, Emails bestimmter Absender oder Quellen zu unterbinden.

Ärgerlich ist, dass der Anwender sich die Arbeit machen muss, sich um die konkrete passende Einrichtung zu kümmen.

Zumindest Urhebern aus dem Inland kann man rechtliche Schritte androhen. Der Aufwand sich der rechtlichen Schritte zu erwehren, könnte so manchen Versender von unaufgeforderten Emails abschrecken. Gute Hinweise für die Rechtslage und Vorlagen findet man bei Rechtsinformationen - E-Mail-Marketing.

Reporting live from WWDC 2003

by Volker Weber

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I have created a new sub-weblog at http://vowe.net/apple/ to report live from Steve Jobs' keynote monday evening CET. I am keeping my fingers crossed that there is sufficient bandwidth in the conference center.

Domino 6.5 Milestone 2 released

by Volker Weber

Get it here. IBM, now get 6.0.2 out the door please. :-)

World Domination (on a budget)

by Esther Schindler

Perhaps this is something that SCO should read. Oh. Wait. Their new business plan is "look around here and find someone you can sue."

If you're lucky, some of your surplus computer and IT equipment will come with documentation. It probably won't be for the equipment you've bought, but it will be documentation. Read it anyway.

Why? Because more evil plots have been foiled as a direct result of villains foolishly disclosing the details of their plans to their enemies than all other reasons combined. Wading through a few manuals for high-end networking equipment won't stop you from blurting out the details of your plots, but if you can master their style, you'll never have to worry that anyone will understand those details well enough to thwart anything.

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Hydra 1.1 released

by Volker Weber

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Hydra, the collaborative editor, has been updated to version 1.1. Among an impressive list of new features there is one that I particularly like: Block editing. See the movie (Quicktime 1.4MB).

This is an excellent tool for Extreme Programming (XP).

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Successful branding, not

by Volker Weber

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Imagine for a second, your company Powergen would be located in Italia (Italy for unilingual folks), what would be your best shot at a URL? Oh, the logo? You mean that logo? Yes, they operate also in Italia.

[via IT&W]

Wir schicken ein iPod zum Service, Teil 2

by Volker Weber

[Fortsetzung von Teil 1]

Woodstock ist wieder da. Es hat ein bisserl länger gedauert, als ich erwartet hatte. Da er nicht vollständig defekt war, konnte ich ihn immerhin so lange nutzen, bis DHL das Abholpaket zugestellt hatte. Vor einer Viertelstunde habe ich ihn per Fireware an Lucy angeschlossen und jetzt saugt er sich wieder voll:

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Apple hat Woodstock wieder zurückgeschickt und nicht gegen ein anderes Gerät ausgetauscht. Das gefällt mir insofern ganz gut, dass ich seine Historie kenne und mich nicht mit einem anderen "refurbished" Gerät anfreunden muss. Was mir weniger gefällt: Anscheinend ist es nicht so einfach, das Gerät spurlos zu reparieren, jedenfalls kam es mit ein paar Schrammen und einer leichten Delle zurück, die vorher definitiv nicht auf der Rückseite zu sehen waren. Keine Showstopper, aber auch nicht das, was ich von Apple bisher gewohnt bin. Zählen wir mal zusammen:

3. Juni: erster Anruf bei AppleCare um 17.15: "Ausserhalb unserer Geschäftszeiten ..."
4. Juni: zweiter und dritter Anruf bei AppleCare
5. Juni: DHL schafft es nicht, den Abholkarton zu liefern
6. Juni: DHL meldet dieses Versagen
10. Juni: DHL liefert den Karton (und holt ihn abends wieder ab)
16. Juni vormittags: vierter Anruf bei AppleCare: "Das Gerät wurde am 13. Juni fertig, aber nicht mehr von DHL abgeholt".
16. Juni nachmittags: DHL liefert den Karton bereits aus.

Jetzt bin ich mal gespannt, ob der Fehler auch tatsächlich weg ist.

Back in town

by Volker Weber

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Just came back from a nice weekend celebrating Sabine's birthday in this 18th century château in Strasbourg. We had a wonderful time, did not get to sleep before 4 am and still had a good rest in this quiet (after the party it was indeed quiet) 70 acre park.

However, I did miss another party in Scotland, that I really would have wanted to attend. We will come another time, Nick, I promise.

It takes a genius ...

by Volker Weber

The Segway Human Transporter is absolutely idiot proof. It will stay upright no matter what you do. Unless ... you forget to turn it on?

Flash click to view

by Volker Weber

I can't say it better than Ned Batchelder:

If you are using Mozilla Firebird, you want to go install Flash Click to View, an oddly named, but marvelously effective extension. It only does one thing, but it does it beautifully. It replaces all Flash content with an empty box that says "flash [[Click to play]]". Of course, clicking the box plays the Flash. This extension plus the menu pick "Block images from this server" together mean that I see virtually no ads. Bliss.

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Still one of my favorite sites

by Volker Weber

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Do you happen to be over 18?

So ein Quark

by Volker Weber

Sie haben Post:

Sehr geehrter E-Plus E-Mail Kunde! den E-Mail Service für alle Mail-Konten mit den Endungen "imail.de" und "eplus-online.de" möchten wir für Sie noch attraktiver und bequemer gestalten. Deshalb werden ab dem 1. Juli 2003 E-Mails aus den folgenden Ordnern automatisch nach einer definierten Vorhaltezeit aus Ihrem E-Mail Konto gelöscht ...So profitieren Sie von einem höheren Nutzungskomfort, da es nun in den meisten Fällen nicht mehr notwendig ist, nicht abgeholte oder gelöschte E-Mails manuell zu entfernen, ...

Ist es heute schon so schwer geworden, Klartext zu reden?

Werter Kunde, wenn Sie Ihre Post auf unseren Servern rumliegen lassen, dann kostet das Geld. Ihr Geld. Deshalb schmeissen wir den Kram, der Sie nicht interessiert, ab 1. Juli regelmäßig weg. Das spart Geld. Ihr Geld.

Nicht gut, was? Könnte ja jemand auf die Idee kommen, dass die nervige Fernsehwerbung auch gespart werden könnte. Aber wer braucht dann noch die Leute, die sowas texten?

Tomcat in a box

by Volker Weber

Schrödinger has been updated and is now called 1.0.1. Most other vendors would have called it 2.0. :-) Changelog here.

Caution: Highly addictive

by Volker Weber

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Weblog parody

by Volker Weber

Funny, very funny. Must read. Well, only must, if you are into blogs.

[Thanks, Ed]

When one website is not enough

by Volker Weber

Just found this in my referrers: Jeff Chaussee, who is running this site, is now not only running a second site of his own but rather three: Chausse.org, Ridiculent.com, and Webslice. com. I like his comment about Frontpage: "... learned to hack HTML, and gave Frontpage orders not to come within 500 yards of me." Myself, I got away from Frontpage with Fusion, on to Dreamweaver, and finally ended up with server side CMS.

Jeff, I am really flattered by your collection of notable techies. Better take a screenshot before you make up your mind. ;-)

Groove and Excel combined

by Volker Weber

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Ashok is finally getting there: Share your Excel spreadsheets via Groove. The sheets live inside Groove, but you edit them with Excel. As you make changes they get propagated to other members of your shared space, immediately. Currently this is the Wild West. Anyone in the space can edit everything. I really wonder how it will handle "replication conflicts".

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A job well done

by Volker Weber

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Wolfgang has fixed his site. He went from over 600 standards violations to zero. It no longer crashes Safari and I can once again read his site without using an extra browser. Well done !

Update: He has fiddled with it and now it crashes the browser again. KISS !

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Wir schicken ein iPod zum Service, Teil 1

by Volker Weber

Woodstock hat einen Defekt. Irgendwas mit der Platte. Ab und an kann er einen Track nicht lesen. Wenn ich ihn danach an Lucy hänge, dann rotiert auf seinem Display eine Platte unter einer Lupe. Eine halbe Stunde später ist ihm mächtig warm, aber es erscheint ein Häkchen an der Scheibe. Ich lese das als Checkdisk.

Nach einem kleinen Ausflug ins Service-Menü und einem richtigen Check ist alles klar: HDD FAIL 0X00000070. Eine Sache für den Service. Garantie ist bis Januar 2004, also kein Problem.

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Priceless

by Volker Weber

I don't believe they would really run this commercial. :-)

Here's why camera phones are so popular

by Volker Weber

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[Images on this site are click through :-)]

What would she get for a filet mignon?

by Esther Schindler

According to the Smoking Gun, a woman in California was charged with a felony for stealing a tri-tip steak. Doesn't that mean it has to be worth more than fifty bucks?

Validate your code

by Volker Weber

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Wolfgang is still fighting with his website. It is killing Safari.

I just ran his code through the validator. Error number 604 (yes, sixhundredandfour) says: Line 233, column 6: end tag for element "FORM" which is not open. -- This really cries for a fix.

Update: Wolfgang has made tremendous progress with his code. If it were not for the missing doctype it would validate without a problem. The above link forces the doctype so it does validate. It turned out the problem is in his CSS code but that can also be fixed. Keeping out fingers crossed.

Speed-start your Linux app 2003

by Volker Weber

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And I thought that everybody knew about this program already. :-) Well, even very well informed people didn't. There you go:

Hungry for Linux apps? We're serving up IBM middleware for Linux (DB2 Universal Database, WebSphere Application Server, WebSphere Studio Site Developer, WebSphere MQ, Lotus Domino, Tivoli Access Manager, and more) on a free Linux Software Evaluation Kit (SEK) -- plus all the free tech support and training you need to get started!

That's right. They will send you four CDs with free code. Sure, it's only free for a limited time but you can apply for a new license when it runs out and the code is not time bombed. The program manager does not really care. The only expensive stuff is the free tech support. And you probably won't need it anyway. These guys want developers to write applications. That's the deal.

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Technical Briefing on Web Services

by Volker Weber

IBM recently had a free one day roadshow on Web Services with two very seasoned speakers. Low on marekting high on technical content. Yes, they are referring to IBM products but it is still excellent stuff:

Web services connection: This presentation covers the connecting technologies behind Web services, including the Web services architecture and the basics of SOAP, WSDL, UDDI, and WS-Inspection.

Web services developer productivity: This presentation covers IBM's WebSphere Studio Application Developer, illustrating the Web services features built in to the product. First we create a Web service from a Java bean, then we create a proxy and a test client for our service. After that, we integrate data from a DB2 database into our project and serve that relational data as part of a Web service.

Choosing the right foundation: In these slides, we look at the features of the WebSphere platform and the WebSphere SDK for Web services. We wrap up with a discussion of interoperability, including services hosted on .Net, WebSphere, and Perl, with clients written in C#, Java, and Perl for each of the three services.

Web services resources: This is the final presentation of Web Services Briefing Day; it covers lots of resources available to Web services developers. The resources include free tutorials from developerWorks, IBM Redbooks, alphaWorks tools, IBM marketing programs, and free software from Apache and Eclipse.org.

Find these presentations and more on developerWorks, more specifically on the speaker pages for Marc Colan and Doug Tidwell.

Spacious

by Volker Weber

Does this ring a bell? (Quicktime 1,2 MB)

No self respecting cat would permit this

by Esther Schindler

Which doesn't stop it from being extremely funny.

Beer ice cream?

by Esther Schindler

I like beer and I like ice cream, but this is too much even for me.

Jackie Maxwell, director of Doddington Dairy said: "We were looking for an ice cream flavour that was distinctive, and had a strong identity with the region.

"Newcastle Brown Ale has all of that. "

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The Bug Count Also Rises

by Esther Schindler

Literature meets software development, courtesy of James Gosling.

US crypto export in a nutshell

by Volker Weber

Ray explains US crypto export regulations:

Yes, software is still to a certain extent treated like a munition. I'll attempt to give a few (admittedly oversimplified) rules of thumb related to export of encryption software.

Corollary: If you do crypto you are better off not operating from the US.

Palm Announces Acquisition of Handspring

by Volker Weber

Palm actually has two parts: Palm Solutions (devices) and PalmSource (Palm OS). PalmSource will first spin off, then Palm Solutions will merge with Handspring. A name for this new company will be announced later. "Palm Springs"? :-)

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Eat your own dogfood

by Volker Weber

IBM has moved parts of Lotus Developer Domain to WebSphere Portal. I am really curious about what they can do in the future in terms of personalization and profiling once they move the more interesting things there.

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ZOË Maintenance Release 0.4.4

by Volker Weber

Enhanced SMTP server. Better handling of message forwarding. Proper handling of Blind Carbon Copy (BCC). SMTP Authentication

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MacOS X in a window via Mac-on-Linux - on a Mac

by Volker Weber

Now that's almost a little bit too much for me:

In a recent Slashdot article, someone asked if it were possible to create a fully-featured bootable Linux LiveCD for the Macintosh. We thought this was a great idea. So today, we are releasing two full-featured LiveCDs for the PowerPC: one with KDE 3, and another with GNOME 2. Take a look at the KDE LiveCD running MacOS X in a window via Mac-on-Linux.

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E.T. phone home

by Volker Weber

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Once in a while I receive a message via Groove that is already a few days old. Groove used to be the best way to reach me fast and in a secure way. No longer. Simple reason: It is chained to Windows and does not run on other platforms. And it has a closed protocol so nobody else can create the missing link. Yes, I know - web services, yada yada. Nevertheless I open it once in a while. It just hates to be left alone for more than two weeks. All kinds of things break after that time.

There are three better ways to get to me. E-mail works best unless you make it look like spam. :-) If I "know" you from e-mail or personal contacts then instant messaging works best. When I am online and able to receive messages you will find me on AIM as voweXXL. I use iChat on the Mac and Trillian on the PC.

If those two things fail, call me. On the mobile, since I never seem to be around the other phones. If you fail to send your caller ID it will lower your chances that I am interested in answering the call.

Notes and Domino 6.0.2 around the corner

by Volker Weber

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It's available already. But only in Japanese. Well, that's where the sun rises first. :-)

Sorry, no beige

by Volker Weber

Lucy, Woodstock & Co receive another award: Jonathan Ive, Designer of the Year.

With the release of the new iMac, its chief designer Jonathan Ive has cemented his reputation as the Armani of Apple. So what motivates the man whose motto remains "Sorry, no beige"?

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IBM Shares Halted

by Volker Weber

Monday June 2, 4:47 pm ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Shares of International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM - News) were halted on Monday in over-the-counter trading, pending news.

IBM said in a statement shortly after the halt it is the subject of an investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (News - Websites).

It said the probe is related to revenue recognition in 2000 and 2001.

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[Thanks, Thomas]

Which OS are You?

by Volker Weber

Which OS are You?

Inquiring minds

by Volker Weber

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Audio streaming with Andromeda

by Volker Weber

Turnstyle explains how you can stream your iTunes library with Andromeda after Apple has dumbed down ithis capability:

Andromeda makes it easy to play music over your home LAN, corporate intranet, or the Web. A single PHP or ASP script turns your collection of files into a complete, sophisticted, streaming web site.

What I found more interesting in this post is how easily you can turn on PHP support in Mac OS X:

cd /etc/httpd
sudo apxs -e -a -n php4 libexec/httpd/libphp4.so
echo 'echo "AddType application/x-httpd-php .php" >> /etc/httpd/httpd.conf' | sudo sh -s

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Migrating from Microsoft Exchange 5.5 to Lotus Notes and Domino 6

by Volker Weber

This IBM Redbook describes how to migrate from Microsoft Exchange 5.5 to IBM Lotus Notes and Domino 6.

First two chapters of the redbook discuss why an organization using Exchange 5.5. would want to move to Domino 6 and what kind of benefits can be gained. We lay out the different options that such an organization has for a future messaging infrastructure and discuss the pros and cons of each alternative.

Third chapter is written for project managers responsible for planning and managing the project and IT Architects who design the migration project and the future infrastructure. We discuss various topics that should be considered during the migration project. We give guidelines for creating the project plan and detail the individual steps related to it.

The last part of the book is written for technical specialists responsible for the implementation of the project. Chapters detail different coexistence and migration scenarios. We guide the reader through step by step the installation and setup of the coexistence and migration tools. We then show how to migrate users, messaging and calendaring information. We also detail the migration and coexistence results using the tools available on the market.

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Geek test

by Esther Schindler

This geek test isn't just about computers.

I scored: 29.78304% - Total Geek

Old vowe.net archive pages

I explain difficult concepts in simple ways. For free, and for money. Clue procurement and bullshit detection.

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