Didier Beck's Weblog: August 2004

MUSIC: On heavy rotation

I was very positively surprised by the last music DVD I bought, i.e. a live from INXS, the Australian band, shot in July 1991 (!) in the London's Wembley Stadium. About 72'000 fans were present and were actively participating to this band's landmark - in the documentary, you feel that this concert was a turning point for the band and a kind of peak in their career. I rarely saw so many people (about two third!) dancing, shouting and applauding during the whole concert. Impressive!

This live version of the tracks is really more "rough" than the studio ones. Some are also very funky. All in all, I was quite impressed by the musicians, and specially by the rhythmical part (drummer, bass player).

The DVD is remastered in Dolby Digital 5.1, with a good quality and volume distribution between the channels, which is definitely not the case with all the remastering. It also contains some very interesting documentaries about the concert, its preparation and the evolution of the pressure, stress and mood of the band.

NEWS: Winamp security vulnerability

[via Secunia]

Description:
A vulnerability has been reported in Winamp, which can be exploited by malicious people to compromise a user's system.

The problem is caused due to insufficient restrictions on Winamp skin zip files (.wsz). This can e.g. be exploited by a malicious website using a specially crafted Winamp skin to place and execute arbitrary programs. With Internet Explorer this can be done without user interaction.

An XML document in the Winamp skin zip file can reference a HTML document using the "browser" tag and get it to run in the "Local computer zone". This can be exploited to run an executable program embedded in the Winamp skin file using the "object" tag and the "codebase" attribute.

NOTE: The vulnerability is reportedly being exploited in the wild.

The vulnerability has been confirmed on a fully patched system with Winamp 5.04 using Internet Explorer 6.0 on Microsoft Windows XP SP1.

Solution:
Update to version 5.05.

WEEK-END: simple joy :-)

Our little boy (2 1/2 years) discovered this week-end two simple joys:

mowing...

making soap bubbles...

NEWS: 200'000 people against Bush in NY

[Via the Financial Times]

Interesting :-) About 200'000 people (source: protesters, United for Peace and Justice coalition) are demonstrating in the 7th Avenue in NY against the Bush's policies. The Republican National Convention opens on Monday, also in NY. It seems that Mr Bush wants to use the symbol of NY to establish his "leadership". Some of the New-Yorkers don't really agree with this usage. One of them said: “I'm furious that they have the nerve to come here, and use the emotion and pain of 9/11 for politics.”

WEBSITE: section -Entrepreneurship- updated

Let's find the different articles concerning "Change Management" I posted the last time in the Entrepreneurship section of my website.

I've also integrated the 9 posts in one pdf file.

WEEK-END: Strasbourg - France

I was this afternoon in Strasbourg (France). Really a very nice city!

TOOLS: Sauce Reader v1.7

New version 1.7 of Sauce Reader (review here and here). What are the new improvements and functionalities?

Integrated comment download, reading and posting using the Comment API.

Improved security for handling potentially unsafe HTML in feed items.

Support for common operations (e.g. delete item) from inside the browser window.

Feed reading with the browser window maximised (2-pane view).

NEWS: 'Dirty Dozen' spam producing countries

Sophos, anti-spam specialist, revealed on 24th August a new study about the biggest exporters of spams.

The top twelve spam producing countries are as follows:

United States South Korea China (& Hong Kong) Brazil Canada Japan Germany France Spain United Kingdom Mexico Taiwan	42.53% 15.42% 11.62% 6.17% 2.91% 2.87% 1.28% 1.24% 1.16% 1.15% 0.98% 0.91%
Others	11.76%

NEWS: working session in Zurich :-)

We had a very hard working session yesterday (actually half a day off, with some wakeboard on the lake, more pictures to come!) in Zurich. We began with one of our special "brainstorming"...in the McDo ;-) And yes we know "supersize me". And no, we don't really care ;-)

left: philippe, middle: laurent, right: lorenz (i'm behind the camera, the "big tasty" belongs to me)

Update: Laurent added his own view here :-)

NEWS: Blogger's birthday

[Via evhead]

Happy birthday Blogger!! Already 5 years old, wow :-)

Blogger looked like this for 5 years:

WEEK-END: Ecomusee of Alsace

I've seen yesterday some very beautiful old half-timbered houses at the Ecomusee of Alsace (only in French) - Alsace is a region of the north-east of France, near the German and Swiss borders, where I live and come from. My region is often represented by storks, which can be found also in the Ecomusee.

The Ecomusee of Alsace is the largest open-air museum in Europe, visited by nearly 400'000 visitors yearly.

It contains about 70 traditional style buildings which were dismantled piece by piece in their village of origin and reassembled in this living museum. It features constructions dating from the 12th to the 19th century. Visitors can study the technical evolution of traditional building methods.

A half-timbered house from a little village called "Artolsheim", near the Rhine. I was built in 1561. This house was salvaged from destruction in 1987 at the last minute... Above: before the transport and renovation, below: how it looks like today.

ecomusee

The one below comes from Gommersdorf and was built in 1682.

ecomusee

All that made the daily life of this period (and specially the 19th and 20th centuries), the work and the celebrations of the past generations, is collected and demonstrated. You can also enjoy numerous activities and historical reenactments, as seeing (and hearing) this old tractor.

Really a beautiful place I recommend if you visit our region!

BLOG: re-design

I re-designed my blog, based on the design of my website. All comments and critics are welcome ;-)

PS: crazy how easy it is to implement the re-design with the template and CSS. Cool!

NEWS: somebody (still) doesn't have a Gmail account?

As an early tester of Gmail, I have (again) the possibility to invite 6 persons to open a Gmail account. Let me know if you (still) haven't got one!!

I only need your first name, last name and email address. Please send me directly an email with your request.

Update: all invitations are gone!

NEWS: some statistics about spam

A recent study of MessageLabs concerning the evolution of spam was published here. It gives some interesting statistics about spam during the first semester 2004:

5.0 billion emails scanned (anti-spam service), thereof 3.2 billion identified as spam, i.e. 63.5%. In comparison, during the same period in 2002, the quote represented 1.5%, in 2003 37.9%.

5.6 billion emails scanned (anti-virus service), thereof 468 million containing virus, i.e. 8.3%. In comparison, during the same period in 2002, the quote represented 0.3%, in 2003 0.5%.

MessageLabs intercepted about 1.5 million phising emails (emails containing URLs to fraudulent websites) during the same period.

WEBSITE: section -Utilities- updated

I've updated my Utilities' section of my website. This one contains now information about 4 tools:

TOOLS: new version of Skype is out

Version 1.0.0.29 of Skype is out.

NEWS: Google IPO launch

NEWS: Yahoo has its blog

Yahoo opened its blog.

TOOLS: evaluation phase conclusion of SauceReader

Since Mai 14, 2004, I'm using intensively Sauce Reader from Synop as feed-reader and I would like to summarize my impression, as an "evaluation phase conclusion" (for my other posts, have a look here, here and here) :

What's Cool

Great user interface: clean, intuitive Outlook 2003 style user interface

Sauce Reader toolbar available in Internet Explorer

Very good usability

Since this version: performance, stability and a quite good memory foot-print

Customization of keyboard shortcuts

Great desktop alert when new feed items arrive

Feed discovery and one-click subscription to RSS and Atom feeds

Pop-up blocking, complete default browser support

Integrated weblogging environment with full posting functionality (including image uploading)

Great full-text search functionality (within archived items)

Support for content in any language or character encoding

Automatic application updates

Support of proxy, great feature to stay tuned at work

Free for personal use, reasonnable price for commercial use ($25US per license)

Last but not least, very active development team, professional alpha- and beta-phase

Room for improvement

I'm still not totally convinced by the "posting" module. The development team improved a lot the possibilities, stability and performance. But I still prefer to use the very simple Blogger web interface. Perhaps out of habit? Let's see.

Conclusion

All in all, I still think that Sauce Reader is the best aggregator at this moment (on Microsoft platform). The last developments of this tool (five releases now!) give me a very convincing impression of the Synop's capability and user orientation.

PS1: have a look at the reviews of Robert Scoble and of Laurent.
PS2: my review was linked by Synop on their product homepage ;-)

PRIVATE: first QTVR file :-)

I'm a kind of panorama-addicted person :-) I tested quite a lot of utilities and I'm using now PanoramaFactory (test here and here).

I just tried one of its function, the possibility to produce a QuickTime Virtual Reality (QTVR) movie. You need to install the Apple's free QuickTime viewer. The file is about 3.3 MB.

WEEK-END: double rainbows in the sky

NEWS: celebration of laziness in France...

[Via Loic]

A French Employee's Work Celebrates the Sloth Ethic

This article will improve again France's image abroad.

"Corinne Maier, the author of "Bonjour Paresse," a sort of slacker manifesto whose title translates as "Hello Laziness," has become a countercultural heroine almost overnight by encouraging the country's workers to adopt her strategy of "active disengagement" - calculated loafing - to escape the horrors of disinterested endeavor."

"But she works just 20 hours a week writing dry economic reports at the state electric utility, Électricité de France, for which she is paid about $2,000 a month"

"Her employer of 12 years was not amused. Irritated that she identified herself as an Électricité de France employee on the back cover of her book, company officials wrote her a stern letter accusing her of inattention at meetings, leaving work early and "spreading gangrene from within," just as her book advocates. They demanded that she appear for a disciplinary hearing, though the original Aug. 17 date has been pushed back to September. That's because Ms. Maier is going on vacation."

I'm again completely shocked by the growing abyss between this kind of lazy people and the rest of the world.

I was this week with some Romanian colleagues and i was totally impressed by their willingness to develop themselves, their company and their country. I mentionned this example to them, to explain that they are *not* the only ones who have to fight against bureaucracy and laziness. They laughed a lot...and that's perhaps the only positive point about this story.

I hate having to pay taxes for this person, her boss and her company. and I do not want to know how many state employees are working in this way...

NEWS: the Olympic games!

BUSINESS: Change Management (09)

Conclusion: steps of a successful change process

Creating credible managing support: select strong personalities who have visible, public commitment for the change team and support of change

Establishing a need for change: make clear the reasons of change driven by threats or opportunities (or both), the need for change must exceed its resistance

Developping a vision: develop a widely shared and understood vision, describe the desired outcome of change

Mobilising commitment: try to motivate as many promoters and multipliers of change as possible, communicate, communicate, ...., with doubters and opponents

Handling emotions and resistance: there are no change processes without resistance, work with resistance not against it, re-negociate the psychological contract

Making change last: celebrate early wins, integrate change initiatives with other key projects and with the actual management practices

Anchoring the change in the culture: alterations of culture aspects is almost a prerequisite for a sustaining change, be aware of the "hidden rules" of your organization

---------------
Source: G. Müller-Stewens / Ch. Lechner

BLOG: server down since yesterday but now ok

My hoster OVH had some problems since yesterday (noon - GMT+1:00). Now it seems that they fixed the problem. It was the first issue within about three months, the support and the information flow worked well.

Sorry for the inconvenience!

TOOLS: Disk Defragmenter - PerfectDisk from Raxco

As you perhaps know, even though NTFS is more resistant to fragmentation than FAT, it can and does still fragment... This situation is incredibly stressed if you are developping some softwares. So, as manager or developer, we are confronted with this annoying unresolved disk fragmentation problem.

The first discussion was to know if the Microsoft built-in defragmenter can solve this issue. The answer is clearly no. If you have already used it, you know what I mean. Then, we normally had to buy some Diskeeper licenses. We already tested this tool, without being convinced... Laurent, as a Microsoft .NET MVP (Most Valuable Professional), received a free-of-charge license of PerfectDisk from Raxco. We had a look at this product (see below) and ... decided to buy it (normal price for a download version for workstation) for different (we think ;-) good reasons. You can find some information in the Data Sheet.

The first feedbacks of our users are very good!

PerfectDisk features not present in the Microsoft built-in defragmenter

Single Pass defragmentation of data files and free spaces: consolidation of free space to slow the rate of re-fragmentation

File Placement Strategy: categorization data on the disk according to usage patterns, while consolidating free space in the largest contiguous areas possible

Ability to defragment drives with minimal free space (as little as 5%, normally => 15-20%)

Places MFT for improved performance

Defragments Pagefile

Defragments Hibernate File

Disk Trending feature to track fragmentation

Certified by Microsoft

PerfectDisk features not present in Diskeeper

Single pass defragmentation of data files and free spaces

File placement strategy

Free space requirement

MTF placement

Defrag of NTFS Metadata, pagefile and hibernate file

Certified by Microsoft

PS: so or so, a company which is working for Gibson (yes, Gibson is using PerfectDisk ;-), is a good company!

MUSIC: on heavy rotation

Do you know the Sting's DVD: "...All this time"? You should. And I cannot express my feelings better than Soaring Heart....

Sting is an artist in the truest sense, May 13, 2002

This review has been locked up in my heart for a long time. It is one of those enormously emotional products I love that I feel inadequate to review; however, that is the best reason for reviewing it. I believe most people know that this concert was held in Sting's home in Italy, that he and his gifted band had been practicing for less than 2 weeks and that they had to decide whether to go on and do the show knowing of the horrific events of that day (September 11, 2001.) Besides the music, their discussion of this decision is one of the highlights of this DVD. "Fragile," dedicated to the victims is the opening song and it is played and sung PERFECTLY with tenderness, respect and musical brilliance. The entire DVD sound and picture quality is second to none I've ever seen, the songs are slightly different than we've heard them (more jazzy/bluesy) and it is a change that shows how much Sting has grown as an person, not just an artist. The band he has put together is entirely and impressively gifted, coming from around the world--Brazil, Argentina, Algeria, France, England, North America and more. Each one adds to the magical eclecticism of the music and atmosphere. They comprise an entertaining and interesting group of musicians to watch AND listen to.

I have always respected Sting but never so much than after seeing this. The DVD is absolutely flawless. I can't give a higher recommendation. This is my highest recommendation. On a 1-10 scale with 1 the worst and 10 the best. This tops even a ten. There are really no words to express all of my feelings. STING...ALL THIS TIME must be EXPERIENCED. Whether or not you are a fan of Sting is irrelevant, because AFTER you watch this you WILL BE.

It has one of the best menus I've ever seen with loads of options: to play the documentary, the concert or both at the same time with a feature to hit "S" (enter) after each practiced song (that was chosen to use in the concert--obviously in keeping respect for the ones that had lost their lives, many tunes were omitted in the concert that are on the warmup/practice/jam sessions. Which are, by the way, enjoyable to watch.)

What I want to emphasize the most is the way Sting starts off somber and respectful and ends up letting himself go inside the music whichs floods his soul with JOY, which, in turn, the rapport between him and his band sets up a chain reaction that fills everyone playing and listening with JOY. THAT, my friends, is what Music is all About. This is so inspiring to me and I believe it will be to you too.

Sting said it best, "You know, we were all put on this earth to be happy. We all deserve to be happy. They can't kill our joy. We can't let them do that."

KEEP SMILIN' AND SOAR!
SOARING HEART

NEWS: Mozilla Firefox

[Via Rodrigo]

Two things about Firefox (I already posted here concerning this great browser):

1) Mozilla released the version 0.9.3 of Firefox.
2) Mozilla Firefox won two awards at the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo: Best of Show and Best open source solution.

NEWS: Mercedes-Benz Mixed Tape

[Via vowe]

Mercedes-Benz is releasing every 6-8 weeks a so-called Mixed Tape, which is a "blend of exclusive MP3s by new, international artists". The Mixed Tape 02 has just been released, featuring 15 brand new tracks as part of a free and legal download compilation. All styles are represented. The MP3's quality is ok (192kbit, 44,1kHz stereo). Good experience ;-)