Thoughts on technology, investing, marketing, and entrepreneurship.

Category: Open Source

OpenOffice to the rescue

Speaking of writing, OpenOffice.org saved my butt today. A large Microsoft Word document I was working on ballooned to over 300M, making even the autosave feature take over 10 minutes (I’m not exaggerating). Finally, in frustration, I opened up the document in OpenOffice.org Writer, finished my editing, and then saved it back to Word. The new file […]

Google code

This may not be news to some, but Google Code was released rather quietly in what looks mid to late March. I just happened to stumble on it here, but I figure more people know about this and I’ve just been oblivious to the development (pun intended).

Study finds Windows more secure than Linux

Can it be true? Is a Windows server more secure than Linux? Common technical opinion tells us this cannot be. So, when I read this article from (and ), I was astounded.

Two Florida researchers presented their findings to an RSA Conference of computer-security professionals. Apparently, one was a Microsoft enthusiast, the other Linux. My first thought was that this was another Microsoft sponsored study, so that is obviously not the case. Comparing Windows Server 2003 and Red Hat Enterprise Server 3, their research computed a metric called days of risk described as “the period from when a vulnerability is first reported to when a patch is issued.” The researchers found that on average the Windows server configuration had just over 30 days of risk versus 71 days for the Red Hat configuration.

This is obviously going to be very controversial. Hopefully, though, more objective studies like this one will be performed to spark constructive debate on the topic.

Additional resources:
Linux fan concedes Microsoft is more secure
Study finds Windows more secure than Linux (Mikehall’s Embedded WebLog)
Windows More Secure Than Linux? (Say Anything)

Spell checking via Firefox extension

The more I post to my blog, the more I miss a spell checker. To this point, I’ve found myself writing posts in Microsoft Word for the spell checking capability and then cutting and pasting to my blog. This isn’t exactly efficient. I’ve found I get in the habit of just typing along to keep the flow of my thoughts moving and leaving the typos for software to take care of. It’s not that I can’t spell, but why take the time in the middle of your thoughts to pause and correct typing error? Software should make your life easier, right? When searching for an ideal platform to run my blogs, this was my biggest gripe – no readily available spell checking.

So, it finally struck me to search looking around for alternatives. After some serious searching, I found a plug-in for Firefox called SpellBound. Apparently, IE has had something similar for a while (not that I knew about it either) in a plug-in called ieSpell. With my almost 100% reliance on Firefox over IE now, I was pleased to see an extension already there fulfilling a need.

The SpellBound extension for Firefox will check any form on a web page by simply right clicking and selecting the “Check Spelling” menu item. You do have to check each form individually, but this is a minor complaint for the functionality provided. SpellBound spell checks very well, but please remember this is not the same as spell checking in Word. There are minor bugs and words that are missed. The ability to add words to a dictionary does exist though and this assists tremendously in improving the spell checking accuracy.