I have read Ed Bott’s fantastic article on Windows & WGA from this morning and almost exploded. What? How on Earth could something like this be legally possible to undertake? Shouldn’t this be the proverbial last drop before we see a massive migration to one of the Linux distros? We see stories about surviving without Windows pop up left and right; hell, this morning there was something about Linux becoming mandatory in Korea. And yet we cling on. Still, my intent is to analyze this move, not bash at it mindlessly (which may be the more appropriate thing to do).
1. WGA is poorly written. Months after it’s been released its code is still in Beta stage. I can think of countless times when I encountered problems because of the WGA mayhem. I’ve had it give me problems on an Advanced Server 2003, insisting that my copy of the server was not genuine, and although a call to MS resolved the issue, I was still forced to restore the fileserver to an earlier date, which was a nightmare considering that it also acts as my primary domain controller.

So, after adopting a new blog package, changing the theme a few times, switching domains, plugins, choice of content and a lessened degree of privacy, please, don’t shoot me for the continued imperfect look of this blog.

Thank you all for your e-mails, pointing out overflow issues, pixel shaders being out of place, etc.  It’s just that I’ve finally gotten through working out the form of the site, and now will come the time to work out the rest – colours, theme, all of the css hell.  And being a 100% FireFox user, I’ll have to revise my decisions in IE as well, since – and shame on you – I still get some 40% hits from IE-based viewers.

Whether you belong to the camp of social activists and would like to see governments subsidizing our homeless citizens or to the crowd that would see the same government enacting laws to clean up our modern streets of annoying beggars, one thing is certain – you do not associate the homeless with the Internet.

Yet here they are, slowly making their move towards the still vastly uncontrolled and liberal domain. Some do it to make a living, others to promote their grassroots ideologies a la mode de early Radio Free Europe (some have even started podcasting). Indeed, the decreased (or in some cases non-existent) costs of Internet access are allowing even the most impoverished of social strata transcend into the digital age.

So, is this something or what? Technically not a rainbow, though it certainly has that arc-en-ciel look and feel to it. I can’t help having to stare at this picture in sheer amazement. Technology may be fascinating, but nature is truly wondrous.

First, there’s the unfortunate evil – Outlook. Most of us hate it, but most of us use it. Then there’s two really nifty developments like Webcalendar and Google Calendar. It’d be perfect to be able to synch either one (or both) with Outlook – unfortunately, it seems that nothing, or almost nothing does it now. It’s starting to drive me insane.

So, here’s my question – if I developed the above as donation-ware – would people care to use it and donate? What features would you like to see. What’s most important for you – Outlook-to-Google, Google-to-Outlook, general iCalendar-to-Outlook or vice-versa? Let me know – I have little to no time available, but if there’s enough feedback, I might just go ahead and do this thing.