Category: Geekdom

From an e-mail I just got from Outlook Tips:

In response to the Windows SharePoint Services and Windows Small Business Server 2003 installation issue, all Windows Small Business Server 2003 (standard and premium edition) customers are eligible to order five free Client Access Licenses (CALs). The offer is available now through February 5, 2004.

This offer is available to all Windows Small Business Server 2003 customers, including those who licensed the product prior to January 5, 2004. This offer includes Retail, Open, and OEM SKUs. To qualify, customers must provide a valid Windows Small Business Server 2003 product ID. Customers are eligible for one 5-pack CAL for each licensed copy of Windows Small Business Server 2003. Customers can choose either user or device CALs.

To order your five free CALs, complete the order form here. I actually have a copy of that server on order for work (once it gets here), so I know I’ll be taking advantage of this.

Apparently I was part of a class-action law-suit because I registered a domain years ago with Register.com. Register.com’s settlement in the case was to give coupons for domain registrations and renewals. Since all my domains are going through GoDaddy, and I don’t plan on moving them, these coupon code can go to whomever wants them (they’re $5 off coupons and will expire in nine months):

ZCA5REG (For New Registrations)

ZCA5REN (For Renewals)

I’m sure these aren’t coupons specific to me, but here you go anyway. Have fun!

Update: I’m bumping this back up to the top as I’ve updated my templates and this article in general pretty heavily. Be sure to check it out.

Note: To pull this off, you’ll have to invest $25. It’s worth it for great mailing list software, but if you’re a cheapskate, do not read past this point. Also note that I didn’t just conjure all this up after my surgery, it’s been done and ready to go for a while, I just got motivated to finish it up.

I’ve been a big fan of Mojo Mail (now called Dada Mail because somebody has too many lawyers and too much free time) for a long time. I originally set it up for my work site, and have always loved it.

I recently purchased (before I knew I needed surgery) the Pro version of the software which came with the Magic Book. The $25 Magic Book is the key to this — it’s loaded with tons of extra documentation, and it comes with a bunch of cool plugins. The one I like the most is an automated mailer that will send mailings at predefined intervals, pulling from Web pages, if need be. It’s called Beatitude.

I’ve been using Bloglet to send nightly mailings of the headlines on the site. Bloglet, while, simple, isn’t very flexible or powerful. So I thought, why couldn’t Beatitude be used to send off MovableType nightly entries?

As of three days ago, it is, in both a text and HTML formatted version. Sign up using the sign up form on the top right of this page, and read on below to see how I did this.

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Finally there is some official news of some sort. MovableType 2.65 has been released. It’s mostly a security release, but with it there is also an Atom feed template (with new tags for that particular template). Looks like they read my mind yesterday re: the Atom feed.

They also announced the forthcoming 3.0, which includes some nice features (on top of being free):

• Comment registration. As a response to both comment spam and to the increased usage of Movable Type on large community sites, we’ll be adding the option to restrict comments to registered users.
• Improved comment and TrackBack management features.
• New API hooks for plugin developers. Plugins will now be able to hook into many more pieces of Movable Type, including adding callbacks for saving and removing objects, building application methods with integration into the UI, and hooking into the publishing process. This opens up possibilities for plugins to add even more advanced functionality than they’re able to do now.
• User interface rebuilt using CSS. We’ve seen with TypePad that a CSS-based interface gives users very fast application response times, and gives us a flexible interface for making application-wide changes, and we want to give this same speed and flexibility to Movable Type users.
• Support for the Atom API. We’ve already added Atom syndication feed support in version 2.65 of Movable Type, and we’ll be adding publishing support for the API in 3.0.

They plan to announce more features, but aren’t ready to yet.

This Woody’s Office Watch column talks about a feature that’s slowly going to bite Microsoft in the butt if they keep using it: Word’s habit of keeping around revision and properties data in its documents. And it’s especially a problem if you post that document online, and we can find out a lot about Microsoft employees this way:

For example, there’s a document on Windows 2003 Server Virtualization at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/docs/virtualization.doc . It was written and edited by “Judith Bloch (Independent Contractor)”.

She sent it out for review in an email message with the subject line “VM release anticipated to today at noon — press release link needed for Microsoft.com product page”.

The template Judith used was located at P\\online\omvss\Shadow\Windows\

WNETServer\templates\WindowsServer2003Template.dot. (Remember six months ago when we had such a brouhaha about how difficult it would be to discover the names and precise locations of templates and documents?)

Ah, that’s not all. There was a fellow named Alfredo Pizzirani, involved in the reviews. Michael Kessler, Jane Dow and someone named seaton also made changes to the document. At least one of the pictures in the document was created in Adobe Photoshop.

I sure hope MS has its Photoshop licenses up to date.

They even site examples of independent studies that were, in fact, sent from the Microsoft offices. The article linked above cites a pile more examples.

Turn of the revision tracking feature, folks, unless you need it. And if you do, fine, but don’t post the docs online. If you do, convert them to PDFs first.

If you’re going to run Windows, you’ll have to pirate pay for that, but at least do everything else you need with freeware tools. The NeoWin forums has this very handy list of freeware tools for just about everything, recommended by its members, and I’m mostly posting it here so I don’t lose it.

Thanks to Waxy for this link. A CGI script in the default MovableType install (mt-send-entry.cgi) can be exploited by spammers in the same way that old FormMail scripts could. Rename it, if you don’t use it, or patch it. More info here.

Lowe’s, one of those big ol’ home improvement warehouse stores that (rumor has it) is going to built next to the other big ol’ home improvement warehouse store here in Bend, fell victim to one poor IT management. Granted, the guy who broke into their WiFi network did the wrongdoing, but Lowes needs to keep on top of a mission-critical system like that just a wee-bit better — they left it wide open for him to screen for credit card numbers, and do the damage he did.

Finally plowing through my RSS flagged entries here. Props to Ken to providing a link that shows you how to force Outlook to show text-only versions of e-mail, no matter the format sent to you. I’ll be installing this one at work.

Here’s a hint: It ain’t Windows. More than likely, it’s ITRON which is a real-time embedded OS that LinuxInsider.com says is used by more than 3-billion microprocessors found in mobile phones, digital cameras, CD players and many other electronic devices including even satellites.