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cool places — Comments Off on Places to visit. Issue 2
31
Mar 07

Places to visit. Issue 2

music — Comments Off on Music Video Clip of the day: Scorpions “Wind of Change”
30
Mar 07

Music Video Clip of the day: Scorpions “Wind of Change”

“Wind of Change” is a 1990 power ballad written by Klaus Meine, vocalist of Scorpions. The lyrics celebrate the political changes in Eastern Europe at that time – such as the fall of the Berlin Wall, the increasing freedom in the communist bloc (which would soon lead to the fall of the USSR), and the clearly imminent end of the Cold War.

me / software — Comments Off on Play the win-win GAIM!
30
Mar 07

Play the win-win GAIM!

A win-win game is a type of game which is designed in a way that all participants can profit from it in one way or the other. (wikipedia)

Quite a few… Don’t you agree? Of course you do! – quite of few different IM (Instant Messaging) software solutions are out there for humanity to use. Funny enough, geography put its "social walls" in between groups of people around the globe, and we all use and know about different tools and products just because "we are from here"… Here is a quick example:

    ICQ was developed by the Israeli company Mirabilis, and first version of the program was released in November 1996. It is very popular in Europe and Asia, but if you ask people in United States, you’ll see an emptiness in the eyes and sometimes a quite common response – "what queue!?".
    Although people from Europe know and use ICQ they prefer MSN that was developed and distributed in US by Microsoft between 1999 and 2005 for computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system.
    People from US use MSN too, but mostly prefer AOL’s AIM which was released in US by company called AOL in May of 1997.

There are "others that use others", and another disturbing fact is that if you need to talk to somebody from US, and you live in Europe, you need to install and run MSN in addition to AIM – so now you have two different applications running. And if you need to use ICQ, guess what – there is another application that you need to install – quite inconvenient. But along with 21st century came GAIM (and brothers: Trillian, Adium and Miranda), which broke, and still brakes, those geographical "social walls" by uniting/combining all the above instant messengers together in one very functional and great looking product. Hence now, by using GAIM, you do not have to install several different applications on your computer, you just install GAIM, and put all your accounts (MSN, AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, GoogleTalk, …) into it and use it. It offers "Tabbed message windows", "Logging", "Encrypted messaging" and many more, and of course it is open source, free, runs on multiple operating systems and just plain cool! You did not do it yet!? Go here, download and try it out – feel free to post any comments here, or just e-mail me, if you have any questions – good luck!

P.S.       GAIM is far from being classified as news, however, in many companies I go to, I meet people (a number of people) who are using several instant messengers, who never heard about tabs, so they have 7 windows, if they talk to 7 different people, instead of having one with 7 tabs, and when I ask them "do you know what ICQ is?", they still make me smile with a reply: "what queue!?"

cool places — Comments Off on Places to visit. Issue 1
30
Mar 07

Places to visit. Issue 1

action — Comments Off on Does Verizon Fiber Optics “Do Evil”?
28
Mar 07

Does Verizon Fiber Optics “Do Evil”?

“With great power comes great responsibility” —Uncle Ben to Peter Parker. Spider Man

Verizon FiOS (Fiber Optic Service) is another example of a “growing power”. Everybody is talking about it, everybody wants it, BUT don’t rush yourself to get it just yet… Before you do, be aware of “THE CATCH”…

    If you want to get an e-mail account, you go to GMAIL, and sign up – no tricks, no catches, you get exactly what you want.
    If you need a domain name, you go to GoDaddy, get yourself a domain, and get exactly what you want
    If you need to keep/store you pictures online, you go to Flickr, upload pictures, and get exactly what you want.

If you want “Fiber Optical” ISP, you go to Verizon, pay the premium, and along with a great speed (can’t take that from them) you may get NOT what you want.

Here is what many, not necessarily very technical, people were tricked/entrapped by:

    Be aware – very cruel thing that Verizon FiOS does is it blocks outgoing (80 – http) and incoming (25 – smtp) ports! Now you cannot host your website/blog/contact page/etc or a mail server from home. (They offer 1G of personal web space/online storage, but common – you get 2-3Gb with a single GMAIL account for free…)

    Same as with DSL you have to have a router from Verizon – and not from NewEgg…

    One more thing – after you ‘trade in’ your copper wires for FiOS (yes, they remove them), during a power outage, you now lose your phone line too. (— pointed out by Roscoe – thank you!)

“Be aware of Evil”, plus if you host from home “think twice” before switching..

The problem here is not only with blocking ports, router, etc.. but with how much more does Verizon cover up? How many more “surprises” will be introduced in the future?

They are big, they are powerful, they are the only huge “fiber optic” player out there – how will they use this power? There is no “power middle” – there is either “power good” or “power bad”… where will “power verizon” on this scale be?

The dilemma remains to be.. “To get or not to get?” – Should “I” Get the Good stuff from the Evil company?

Should “I”?

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