Lest we forget
December 29, 2005
Immediately prior to Christmas, I contacted Eduardo Loigorri, the man who brought us Exchequer Software . As an aside, Eduardo was one of the first to pioneer collaboration among accounting products.
He was in Thailand when the tsunami struck in 2004 and has been spearheading relief efforts in the area on his frequent visits to that part of the world. I had contacted Eduardo as I was one of the first people he spoke to at the time. I recall the situation vivdly, talking to him over a poor GSM line to Phuket. Last year, I advised a number of press colleagues about the situation as they had much better outlets than I at the time.
This year, I promised I would post an entry when I heard from him. Today is that day. Altough a little delayed from the date Eduardo originally wrote, he says (in part):
"I have just returned from a trip to see the latest batch of boats being completed in Krabi. There were five in total and although I did not specifically ask that they be finished first, all the boats completed were the tributes to Theo van Dort and named in association with him as the boat builders knew of his passing away and what it meant to me.
The thought that Theo’s spirit lives on in part through these boats is very poignant and fitting to a man who himself was very much a free spirit. I was also told that a group of the fishermen have saved up some money and want to hold a service to thank the trust and also remember all those who lost their lives within their respective fishing communities. It will soon be a year since the tsunami struck, and this will be a difficult time for many of the families. I have accepted their invitation but also told them at as well as honouring the dead we should also celebrate those who survived.Even after all this time, there is no shortage of fishermen still in desperate need of boats. Every time I visit these fishermen more come and ask to meet me with sad stories of hardship, broken promises from the government to supply boats, and a desperate desire to get back to the life they know. I am still humbled by their determination to rebuild their lives in a dignified and honourable way. Many of those who we have donated boats to are alternating the days they use them so it can be shared with those less fortunate. Sometimes it staggers me to see such a selfless community sprit amongst these very poor people.
I had imagined that one year on, things would begin to wind down as far as the trust was concerned, but there is no sign of it so far. Although most of the trust funds have been exhausted, I am determined to continue the work here, I find it impossible to ignore the pleas for help which continue to reach me."
There’s little to add except to express my personal admiration for a person who has put aside his professional life to give something to a people who have been blighted. That takes dedication and courage. If you are interested in donating to the continuing relief effort then be assured that 100% of all monies collected go towards relief efforts.
For those that don’t know, Theo Van Dort was the founder of TAS Books and the inspiration behind BASDA , the trade association behind much of the software that is in use in accounting departments and offices in the UK.
New exploit blows by fully patched Windows XP systems
December 29, 2005
I don’t usually post this kind of stuff but it is sufficiently important to warrant some attention. According to quotes used at Sunbelt Blog:
"Microsoft Windows WMF graphics rendering engine is affected by a remote code execution vulnerability. The problem presents itself when a user views a malicious WMF formatted file, triggering the vulnerability when the engine attempts to parse the file. The issue may be exploited remotely or by a local attacker. Any code execution that occurs will be with SYSTEM privileges due to the nature of the affected engine. Microsoft Windows XP is considered to be vulnerable at the moment. It is likely that other Windows operating systems are affected as well."
This is a particularly virulent attack that creates mayhem on the desktop. Short of a fix from Microsoft and a possible reformatting of the hard drive, it’s one you need to look out for. Even if you think you’re up to date and not vulnerable you should at least skim read the technical stuff around this. There are links on the Sunbelt Blog site.
I’d recommend thinking about moving away from Internet Explorer and onto Firefox. It’s not so vulnerable to attack, in part because it is a relatively minor player. That doesn’t make it ‘worse’ but a whole lot more secure.
wikiCalc update
December 29, 2005
Anticipating the naysayers, I got in touch with Dan Bricklin on the status of wikiCalc . Here’s his reply:
"I hope to have the next alpha release in a week or two. I’ll see. I’m deep into Ajax to make the cell editing feel more like a client-side app, and when I have that working I’ll do a release. It will have multi-platform working (Linux, Mac, server-side CGI and mod_perl), multi-user with login/logout, and more. Still to be done: Undo, copy/delete/etc page, link to page on site, copy between pages, export, and other cleanups.
There’s so much — this is taking a long time. But it’s coming out better than I expected."
Many people are of the view that new products should be released little and often. I have a lot of sympathy with that view in many application areas. This is not one of them.
I’d rather have an app I can road test against competitors to see whether the functionality is what I am likely to need before I consider jumping ship. So I’ll be happy to wait and see what Dan serves up.
Is there such a thing as a free lunch?
December 29, 2005
When developers talk about their real world experience with open source technologies then it’s worth taking note: Xooglers, a site run by an ex-Google developer makes the point . When talking about the switch from MySQL as the foundation for Google Adwords to a commercial (read expensive database) and the subsequent performance problems, he says:
"The moral of the story is that sometimes, and in particular with free software, you get more than what you pay for. There are a lot of companies out there paying dearly for commercial databases (and operating systems for that matter). As far as I’m concerned they might as well be flushing that money down the toilet. Actually, they might be better off. We certainly would have been."
When thinking about your practice management and accounts prep packages in particular, doesn’t it occur to you that if they had been developed in a different way, they might not represent the substantial tax you pay every year for the pleasure of automating what should be a relatively simple set of tasks?
In the case of accounts prep, the worst part is you’re paying for something that’s being commoditised. So any value is being constantly eroded anyway. In the case of practice management, there’s nothing there that can’t be done with the new crop of tools that are free or very low cost services. The only difference is that it takes some programming to drop them all into a portal style of presentation. Makes you think doesn’t it?
