Solar Flare Could Disrupt Electrical Devices

In case you haven't heard, there has been some solar activity over the last couple of days that has thrown storms of electrical particles at the earth. For the most part although the storms have been notable, they have been relatively harmless. However, a storm was released this morning (10/28) that is the strongest since 1989 and the third strongest on record. In 1989 the storm triggered power outages in Canada. There are some technical variables that may effect how hard we are hit, but the storm is in a direct path to the earth and is expected to hit around noon Wednesday (10/29).

Besides a real colorful sky, satellites and other electrical equipment could be affected. This could include power outages. The storm will last for several hours with the potential for problems decreasing as time passes.

In addition to pulling out the old lead umbrella I would suggest that you be alert for potential issues that could affect your IT equipment. If the power does go out shut equipment that are on UPSs down and power off everything. After the power comes back on I would suggest waiting for a short period before powering everything back up. Many times surges will occur immediately after power is restored that can cause problems.

This should be mostly harmless other than the fact that your cell phone may not work for a while. But it's always better to be prepared! For more information click here.

Fake FBI Site Stealing Information

It starts with an email that appears to come from the FBI. The email message lures the user to a website that has the official FBI look and feel. The site lures the user to enter personal credit information so that it can be checked against a database of stolen credit cards.

The problem: It's all fake. The credit information is actually being stolen.

My question: Why would anyone ......

Do Not Call List Under Fire

The status of the Federal Do Not Call List is up in the air. First a judge decided that the FTC did not have the authority to operate the list. Congress quickly fixed that by clarifying the original law. And now another judge has said that the list prohibits free speech to commercial enterprises because the law excludes charity and political calls and picks on the poor marketing people.

What about the free speech of the 51 million people who have said they do not want these calls? Is no one listening. If 51 million people do not want my product or at least do not want to have it sold to them at 7:30am on a Sunday morning over the phone then I think I would get the hint.

I have an idea. Let's forward all these calls to the judges that are making these ridiculous rulings. At least let's get them all to move to California. I'm sure they could keep themselves busy there and let the 51 million of us that want to eat dinner uninterrupted by sales calls have our way.

Microsoft Takes Another Hit

It seems like Microsoft can't win lately. First, there's the monopoly thing, then all the security issues and of course the licensing that everyone seems to hate. If that's not enough, a group of 7 IT security researchers has published a paper claiming that the fact that Microsoft has an operating system monopoly is a critical national security risk.

Their premise is that because of the dominance of Windows and Office, a flaw might be discovered and if exploited would bring our whole cyberworld crashing down around us. In light of this potential disaster they are suggesting that businesses and governments factor in diversification of operating systems and applications. In addition to making Microsoft look like a potential terrorist nation, the authors claim that it is us purchasers that are dumb enough to let this happen and actually state that "the blame falls mostly on the buyers".

Some times propeller heads make me laugh but today my Microsoft stock went down $1.14! I think these guys have a plot. I wonder how many of them are ex-Novell, IBM, Sun, Unix people that simply have nothing better to do. Is there a risk? To some extent I would agree that this could be a problem. However, there are many other critical infrastructure components that could cause much more damage and much faster than by crashing my computer by breaking Outlook on me. My question to them is what specifically do they suggest other than not buying big bad Microsoft's products.

Microsoft to Release New Version of Office

Microsoft will be releasing Office 2003 on October 21st. The new Office System as Microsoft is calling it, will include upgrades to all the current modules including Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Access and Outlook. It will also for the first time have two new modules available.

Infopath is a new Office 2003 module that allow users to create and share XML based forms. It is a very powerful form tool that integrates with other products that conform to the XML data format.

OneNote is a new application that allows users to store and retrieve information in a notebook metaphor. Notes can be taken via the keyboard, handwriting, voice recognition or any combination of methods. Searches can be performed on keyboard and handwriting text.

I will post pricing and more information on Microsoft Office 2003 here soon.