Kurt's Thoughts

Magnum P.I. is back, bitches!

NBC’s ‘Las Vegas’ Makes a ‘Magnum P.I.’ Reunion
http://www.accesshollywood.com/television/ah6536.shtml 

I was born in Hawaii and I grew up with Magnum P.I. so don’t hate!  All throughout college, when I was kickin’ back in my apartment or my dorm room, I’d watch reruns of Magnum P.I. every afternoon like clockwork.  And now, here I am watching Las Vegas and the show opens up with a verrrry familiar voice.

I think to myself, "Hey.  That sounds like T.C. but that can’t be because…" and then I realized I was watching a show that had just added Tom Selleck to the cast and looked up and stared at Larry Mannetti, Tom Selleck, and Roger Mosley:  The original cast of Magnum P.I..

YES.  I’M A CLOSET MAGNUM FAN
Magnum P.I. taught me the difference between man-to-man and floating zone defense in basketball.  Magnum P.I. taught me that the Ferrari was a really bad ass kickin’ ride and that every man should aspire to own one in their lifetime.  (I still do and as god is my witness, I will buy a Modena from the Ferrari dealership at the Wynn Hotel is Las Vegas when I retire.) Magnum P.I. taught me that guns, helicopters, and friends-that-can-hook-you-up-when-you-need-to-call-in-a-favor are really cool.

Also, Magnum P.I. taught me that being shorter-in-stature than "the rest of the team" yet smart & well-hooked-up could take you a long way like it did Rick, Larry Manetti’s weapons specialist character.  Larry – if you’re out there, thanks for helping to give a short kid someone to aspire to.

I’M STILL PISSED OFF
And yes, I’m still pissed off that they killed Magnum at the end.  I remember yelling, "NOOOOOOO!  WHHHHY??!?" 

ENOUGH ALREADY.  WHO ARE THE NEW CHARACTERS?
Larry Ryan, Roger Hartley, and "some British billionaire".  God, I love this show.  This has totally reinvigorated my interest in NBC’s Las Vegas, which was frankly going downhill with all the silliness that was going on that wasn’t Vegas related… until this little twist in the characters.

Check this out: (taken from Access Hollywood)

In an interview with the Las Vegas Sun, Manetti says Selleck came up with the idea for the reunion, “Tom plays this ranch guy in Nevada. The script first called for his two cowboy buddies to come in, but he changed it to where Roger and I replaced the cowboys. We were all in the Marines together. I play a multimillionaire who wears tailor-made suits and owns 250 nightclubs and restaurants around the country, and Roger owns this mega-aviation company, helicopters.”

In the ‘Magnum’ series Manetti played a nightclub owner and Mosley played a helicopter pilot. He told the Las Vegas Sun it seems like old times, “It’s great. The dialogue is the same as it was on ‘Magnum,‘ the same kind of banter. It was just like old times, except when we were taping I turned around and instead of seeing palm trees, I saw slot machines.”

John Hillerman, the fourth star of the series is not featured in the episode. According to Manetti he thinks Hillerman is retired. Manetti also tells the Las Vegas Sun that he and Mosley will have recurring roles in the series.

Oh, I so hope John Hillerman comes out of retirement to play the "British billionaire".

Are you kidding me?  Look at the price difference between HD DVD players and BluRay DVD players:

• $197.99 – Toshiba HD-A2 HD DVD Player + 5 Free HD DVDs
  http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-HD-A2-HD-DVD-Player/dp/B000IJV4BC/ref=sr_1_1/104-6632504-4438351?ie=UTF8&s=audio-video&qid=1193652927&sr=1-1
• $429.99 – Samsung BD-P1400 1080p Blu-Ray Disc Player + 5 Free BluRay DVDs
  http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-BD-P1400-1080p-Blu-Ray-Player/dp/B000TME35W/ref=sr_1_1/104-6632504-4438351?ie=UTF8&s=audio-video&qid=1193652978&sr=1-1

I mean it’s not even close.  HD DVD Players are HALF the cost of BluRay Players.  And what’s even more amazing is the fact that HD DVD is a functionally superior format.  With it’s amazing overlaying capabilities and advanced technologies like:

• having gorgeous "floating" interactive menus
• picture-in-picture videos with director’s expressions overlaying the movie
• side-by-side movie comparisons like before & after shots
• dynamic Internet downloaded content displayed at-play-time
• dual format discs with both standard definition & high definition on a single disc
• quick disc boot up time
• universal compatibility
• availability of ‘managed copy’ providing copies to be made to home video servers

…HD DVD continues to be the superior format.  And with the emergence of "holiday pricing", it now look much more affordable as well.

I find it so difficult to understand how Penny Arcade is lavished more praise upon than Ctrl-Alt-Del.  I laugh my ass off every time I read CAD.  I mean, Tim Buckley is a genius… GENIUS!  Why aren’t you reading his comic, dammit!  Do it now!

<taken from http://ctrlaltdel-online.com/comic.php?d=20070914>

Best Friends & local humane groups rescued 200 dogs from a large puppy mill in southern Virginia that was shut down by the authorities recently. 

A "puppy mill" is is a business that churns out puppies for sale & profit, despite the fact that:

• 4,000,000~5,000,000 animals die in animal shelters every year.
  (For those interested in the math, this is roughly 11,000 deaths every day.)
• 20% of all animals in shelters are pure bred – mostly from puppy mill breeders with "overstock" or poorly raised animals that are surrendered by those that buy them.
• It’s estimated that 500,000 dogs are bred in puppy mills every year.
• There are more than 6000 licensed commercial kennels in the US. (and untold number unlicensed)

A video was created to commemorate the rescue of these animals and the great work that Best Friends and other non-profit animal rescue organizations perform.  Under the heading of "Putting Cruelty Out of Business", Best Friends has a campaign to help rescue and rehabilitate puppy mill dogs.

• http://network.bestfriends.org/puppymillrescue/news/ 

In these times of distrust & lack of accountability, if you can’t reach out to help your fellow man, try to at least find it in your heart to help those who have no one to turn to and are in dire straits through no fault of their own.

Help balance the failings of our society by helping those that not only can’t help themselves but were never there of their own accord.

Huh?  What is this?

I don’t know if you’ve seen this logo before, (it’s been around for almost a year now) but it’s kind of the symbol of something that started in Microsoft UK.  A guy I know, Steve Clayton, created with cartoonist Hugh MacLeod, this thing they called "The Blue Monster". 

It’s a symbol of the resurgence of the driving renegade mentality amongst some of the more "independent thinking" employees to stop letting everyone else (particularly our own Marketing & PR departments) talk about what we think is cool and start doing the talking ourselves.

I have to admit, it does symbolize a lot of the reasons I myself blog.  I’m tired of the ungodly spin that "others" put on our products.  I would simply prefer to interpret the products myself in the context of my customer’s business needs and make my thoughts public. 

I mean, the proof is in the pudding:  From a corporate marketing perspective, no one ever reads our product datasheets any more.  Why?  Because they aren’t clear, to the point, and there’s too many words to describe what should otherwise be a few sentences and some screen snapshots.

Then there’s people like Walt Mossberg who believe they’re the face of reality.  The fact is, I haven’t read an article from him that reflects either my own opinions or those of my customers in YEARS.  But unfortunately, he’s in the Wall Street Journal which makes him an unavoidable force to be reckoned with because those who make decisions often don’t know any better and form their opinions on the basis of his own … err… questionable views.

No, I prefer to talk about our technologies and identify what’s cool on my own.   I think that’s the power of the blogosphere.  And if you don’t agree, it’s not like I’m published in every issue of WSJ:  Simply, switch off and don’t read.  It’s that easy.

EXAMPLE:  SOFTGRID
Take for instance, Softgrid – the technology we acquired from Softricity:
This is some of the coolest stuff we’ve ever gotten our hands on. 

However the spin on the product is COMPLETELY WRONG:

1. APPLICATION VIRTUALIZATION?
   There’s nothing "virtual" about the applications when you use SoftGrid.  What SoftGrid does is it virtualizes the Windows operating system and provides a synthetic interface to all of Windows APIs and libraries.  What SoftGrid ultimately is, is OS VIRTUALIZATION, in the same way that Virtual Server is MACHINE VIRTUALIZATION by presenting synthetic hardware to Windows operating systems.
   
2. STREAMING & MOBILE DELIVERY?
   I’m so tired of people (mostly ex-Softricity) trying to pitch Softgrid as a mobile delivery framework for laptop users that streams applications to machines first and foremost.  Folks – NO ONE USES IT THIS WAY.  At least none of the customers I know of. 

   SoftGrid’s primary selling point is as a means for eliminating compatibility issues between applications.  Every application runs in it’s own memory space as if it were the only application running in Windows.  You can have Word 2000, Word 2001, and Word 2003 all running at the same time, and run a couple JavaVMs while you’re at it.  This mechanism reduces the cost of ownership of applications in a dramatic fashion that is readily obvious to customers.

   …the value of streaming applications to laptop users is arguable when most customers already have existing desktop management solutions in place.  Why would you want to incorporate a completely new management framework into your organization?  (We are in fact making the SoftGrid streaming capabilities a part of System Center Configuration Manager so in the future, these features will be available to existing SCCM customers, but that’s a ways away)

All I can say is that the more bloggers we have from Microsoft coming out of the woodwork, talking about our stuff and talking about it with the verve and passion that our products and strategies deserve, then the better off Microsoft will be.  Breaking down the barriers of monolithic culture will be what carries Microsoft forward in the future.

Vive la Revolution!

This was forwarded to me by one of my account executives. 

Randy Pausch is a CS professor at Carnegie Mellon. He’s 47, a father of three, and he’s dying of cancer. There’s a tradition at CMU, where professors are honored at their last lecture, and are free to pass on whatever message they see fit. Randy’s is an entertaining and insightful talk about chasing your childhood dreams and he does it through anecdotes that are near and dear to our nerdy hearts. It’ll really hit you emotionally, though, when his speech is done and you realize that this man will likely die in a few months and this speech is his parting message.

http://www.cmu.edu/homepage/multimedia/randy-pausch-lecture.shtml

Check this out.  The AP wrote an article about Larry Ellison selling 1,000,000 shares of Oracle stock today:
http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/ticker/article.aspx?Feed=AP&Date=20071025&ID=7566697&Symbol=ORCL

What’s much more interesting that apparently slipped the eyes of the AP is that he actually sold 1,000,000 shares of Oracle stock EVERYDAY over the last month – so far that’s been 20 Million shares.
http://moneycentral.msn.com/investor/invsub/insider/trans.asp?Symbol=ORCL

This equates to a liquidation of 2% of his entire Oracle stock holdings in a single month.  Larry Ellison has about 1 billion shares remaining.

What do you make of that?

OMGROTFLMAOBBQKHAAAAAAAN!

Microsoft Blames Hollywood for Record Halo 3 Sales
Redmond, WA – Microsoft executives blamed higher ticket prices and a "lack of originality" for record sales of Halo 3.  "We thought we’d get some good sales, but nothing like this," said Microsoft executive Bob Frederickson. "But with escalating ticket prices and the crappy movies Hollywood has been putting out. People are just hungry for entertainment."

LINK:  http://www.bbspot.com/News/2007/10/microsoft-blames-hollywood-for-halo-3-record-sales.html

UPDATE:
I just read that the dog’s been placed in another home.  Admittedly, this had me a little surprised at first but upon reflection, not so much.

At first thought, why in God’s name would you place the dog in a home different from one that clearly wanted it?  Well, there’s some easy explanations.

1. Someone came to adopt the dog before Ellen’s hairdresser’s family did.  Why wouldn’t you hold it?  Well, if you wanted the media circus to go away, this would be a quick way to deal with it.
2. The family never approached the adoption group to adopt the dog properly and felt intimidated about approaching the family after the death threats, the TMZ/People Magazine/CNN media circus.  So they quickly found an adopting family to put the situation to rest.

The bottom line is that if the family had just approached the adoption organization and asked to properly follow the adoption procedure, I doubt this would have happened.

And I’m sure there was a "defiance" element to all of this on behalf of Mutts & Moms.  After reading some of the things written at http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20152846,00.html, I’m sure there was a little "me against the world" attitude coming off of the adoption leadership.  But hell – wouldn’t you be aggressively on guard if you were dealing with a media mogul that had "broken the rules"?

I will throw this in there however: 
If the family did at any time approach Mutts & Moms to adopt the dog before anyone else did, and the adoption group explicitly chose to adopt the dog to someone else for no reason other than what one could only describe as "spite", then this would definitely be mean spirited, cruel, and frankly dumb, being that this could have all had a happy ending in this scenario with everyone saving face.

ORIGINAL POST:
I understand that Ellen DeGeneres adopted a dog and subsequently gave the dog away to someone else violating the adoption contract stating that transferring ownership is prohibited. 

STRIKE ONE
Folks – This is a very standard policy of animal adoption stipulated in the adoption contract:  You don’t give away an animal after it’s been adopted.  Period.  End of story.  It doesn’t matter the adopted dog doesn’t get along with a cat that’s already present in the home.  You return it to the adoption organization and you do NOT GIVE IT AWAY. 

When people give adopted pets away like this, the adoption organization’s careful screening/interviewing process is all for naught, so naturally the dog was retrieved after it was discovered that Ellen DeGeneres reportedly wrongfully broke the contract.

STRIKE TWO
What made the situation even worse was that Ellen decided to take things to the airwaves.  She intentionally used her TV show to tell the world in a tear jerking statement pleading her ignorance of the very contract she signed, then telling her viewership that the adoption group should return the dog to the family Ellen gave it to – despite her contractual obligations to return the dog to the adoption group.  In that instant, she wrongfully turned millions of TV viewers against a small, two-person adoption organization called "Mutts and Moms".  Then she talked to the likes of TMZ, who managed to turn the story into a "little girl vs. maniacal woman". (http://www.tmz.com/2007/10/15/ellen-degeneres-doggone-nightmare/58)  How about a little balance in the story TMZ and tell what happens to thousands of dogs that get misplaced in inappropriate homes?  Or is that too hard to imagine that someone would actually care for the welfare of the dog before the whimpering of a kid?

So naturally, the nutjobs came out of the woodwork.  Both Marina Batkis and Vanessa Chekroun, the founders of the adoption organization have been deluged with email, phone calls, and several death threats.  They even had to take down their web site on Petfinder (http://www.muttsandmoms.org/) meaning all those dogs that Mutt & Moms were trying to find homes for will need to continue to go without homes because they’re not being advertised as available for adoption.

STRIKE THREE
Ellen, apparently realizing she made a bad situation even worse, continued to make it worse by getting on the airwaves again, prolonging the entire catastrophe, and generating even MORE publicity by saying, "I want nothing, nothing more than that dog returned to that family. But you don’t resort to violence. So anybody out there, please stop that. Please don’t threaten or do whatever."

Oh yeah.  That’ll fix it.  One things for sure:  I hope Ellen’s lawyers are warmed up, because it appears that Mutts & Moms have signed up a lawyer to do the talking for them.  See the link:  http://www.wtopnews.com/?nid=114&sid=1268988. 

I smell a large cash donation to Mutts & Moms being made on behalf of one E. DEGENERES.  Out of court of course.

ANY HOME IS NOT A GOOD HOME
First of all, I have more experience than 99% of the people out there in getting animals adopted, and the whole, "Isn’t just getting a home for the dog enough" argument doesn’t hold water.  Why?  It’s the equivalent of the old Machiavellian rule, "The ends justifies the means".  The people supporting Ellen are probably the same folks that publicly denounce Bush’s invasive Patriot Act which purports to permit wiretapping on US citizen’s phones without warrants to "protect the welfare of the citizens of the United States", because hey – "Ends justifies the means" right?

Yes, I’ve worked with animal rescues for quite a while, an unknown home is NOT a good home.  I can tell you that I’ve seen my share of dogs that have been adopted into THE WRONG HOMES – and this can be a veritable death sentence to the poor dog. 

In the same way that people wrongfully assume that dog shelters are filled with nothing but "abused animals", (which is completely and totally untrue – most of the animals are anything but abused, but rather, are just lost souls without some place consistent to live at) people also wrongly assume that "any home is a good home."

• I’ve seen dogs accidentally go into places with unsanitary conditions.
• I’ve heard of dogs going to homes with abusive children.
• I’ve seen dogs almost go to new homes with other existing, aggressive, territorial dogs.
• I’ve seen dogs go to homes with family members that don’t have the intellectual capacity to properly treat the animal nicely in an unsupervised fashion.
• I’ve seen dogs go to hoarders – people that adopt dogs repeatedly because of a mental condition they have.  One dog went to a home with dozens of other dogs.  (It was later retrieved of course)
• I’ve seen many people attempt to adopt dogs with the intention of "teaching it to fight other dogs".
• I’ve seen folks adopt dogs only by outright lying all the way through the screening process, only to be caught later during the subsequent "check up" on the dog.

RULES ARE RULES… TO PROTECT EVERYONE, NOT JUST THE DOG
It doesn’t matter what Ellen’s intentions were.  The rules exist for a very good reason. 

The safety & security of the life of a dog TRUMPS A CHILD’S HURT FEELINGS.
(Even when a big name celebrity is the one that screws things up.)

The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and boy, for Mutts & Moms, they were riding in a limo straight to the hell they’re in right now driven by Ellen’s personal chauffeur.

But what about Ellen?  Isn’t she just as capable of identifying a suitable home for the dog?  Here’s the part that’s going to rock your world:  Probably.  But that’s neither up to her or you or me to decide.  We live in a litigious society and the organization that harbors the adoptee is ultimately responsible for the dogs welfare.

This area of community service has its share of complete & utter quacks, folks – and this includes the activists as well as the overbearing public.  These are the folks that will string you up a flagpole with threats of legal action and calls to the police claiming animal abuse or improper treatment.  All it takes is one call and you’re in a world of hurt both financially as well as time-wise, not to mention it’ll drive you batty.

Gettin’ the picture now?  Knowingly allowing Ellen to place the dog without following strict guidelines places the adoption group in the uncomfortable position of being open to assault by some nutjob fanatic.  And believe me – there’s plenty of those out there.

THE ANSWER?
The sick part is there’s a very simple answer to all of this, and it’s not pleading and begging on TV to "return the dog" to the home that it was never destined for: 

Just have the family go to get screened properly.

This is so simple and it could have all been avoided.  All they have to do is go to the adoption organization and be interviewed properly and go through the screening test.  End of story.  Their home will likely need to be inspected and their children interviewed as well.  In other words, do it right:  Go through the process as an adopter would and if it works out, great!  If not, that’s the way it goes.

But don’t take your plea to TV.  That’s taking a sledgehammer to thumbtack.  I’d donate a bunch of money to Mutts & Moms… if I could reach them.  Unfortunately, they’ve been smeared off the map.

OH DAMN!  This was too awesome not to take the time out of my work to post:

…

When Gabe Newell, one of Valve’s founders, was asked by Edge magazine whether or not he still had any issue with the PlayStation 3’s design architecture, he replied, “Absolutely. I think [PS3 is] a waste of everybody’s time. Investing in the Cell, investing in the SPE gives you no long-term benefits. There’s nothing there that you’re going to apply to anything else. You’re not going to gain anything except a hatred of the architecture they’ve created. I don’t think they’re going to make money off their box. I don’t think it’s a good solution.”

Newell also pointed out that porting the PC game to the Xbox 360 wasn’t an effortless experience either, but that Microsoft’s system was far more receptive to the developer’s technologies. “We’ve learned that you can create a framework where all you need to do is recompile for each of those three platforms. You know, that’s a sort of abstraction of our goal. With The Orange Box we could do that, so getting Left 4 Dead up on the 360 was like a day’s worth of work. It requires a big technology investment to be able to do that. I was pretty skeptical that we would; I thought there was going to be more work than that.”

…

Valve Software’s Gabe Newell Speaks on Porting Games to Consoles
LINK:  http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=9270

For those of you whom I haven’t told my crazy conspiracy theory on why we released Halo 3 when we did:

Halo 3 was suspiciously released on the precise night (Monday Sept, 24^th) that NBC & Fox and other networks had the Season Premieres of their primetime line ups.  Being that NBC is part of Universal
Pictures and Fox is part of 20^th Century Fox, the same studios that pulled out of the $100 million “Halo Movie”, is it a coincidence that Halo 3 was released on the very week that the all-important Nielsen ratings measurements were taken (the ratings upon which advertising is priced at)… INSTEAD of the traditional timeframe for Halo’s previous launches which has historically been November.   This would sure be an interesting way to show the strength of the Halo-brand to traditional media entertainment outlets.  Well, it turns out there may actually be some others that are implying something similar.

Bad Box Office? Blame ‘Halo’
Film Execs Fault Blockbuster Video Game for Worst October Ticket Sales in Years
http://adage.com/article?article_id=121130

Of course this could all be a bunch of hooey. It’s not like I know the ‘Industry’. <grin>

OMG.  This is fantastic.

http://images.video.msn.com/flash/soapbox1_1.swf
Video: One Semester of Spanish Spanish Love Song

…No-remebro-how-to say-"Eleven"…

<taken from http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/126915/ibm-lotus-symphony-beta.html>

Product Reviews – Office software

IBM Lotus Symphony Beta [PC Pro]
COMPANY: IBM
PRICE: Free  
RATING:
ISSUE: 0  DATE: Oct 07

Verdict:
Confusing menus, poor feedback and a lack of innovative features leave Symphony looking flat.

Yet another entrant into world of free office suites, the only element of this new offering to bear similarity to the old Lotus Symphony for DOS is its name.

The user interface is completely new, built with the Eclipse development environment, but the meat of the code behind the scenes is a cut down version of OpenOffice.

The interface
The main user interface presents all your open documents (whether word processing, presentations or spreadsheets) as tabs within the same main window. Above the document tabs are menus which change according to which type of document has focus. Below the tabs is a row of small toolbars which again change according to the document type. The document you’re working on takes up the majority of the window with a side bar to the right to set properties for the current object.

The side bar can be a bit limited at times. In word processing it lets you deal with the text and paragraph properties but insert an image and the side bar goes blank forcing you to use a modal dialog box to set things like cropping, wrapping etc. You can float the side bar off the edge of the window or hide it if you don’t want to see it.

The major ideas in the UI are good but the implementation is patchy. There’s a list of styles to use in the word processor but it won’t dock in the side bar, only float. There’s a button next to the tabs to show thumbnails of all the documents you have open but it doesn’t keep up with changes to your documents so the thumbnails may not match reality. And confusingly, a big friendly button labelled "Open" actually creates new documents rather than opening existing ones.

Recognise this?
Some of the more traditional elements are even more confusing. The File > Open menu, for example, has another level of menu containing the single item "File…". And why do you have to "Create | Graphic from File…" when you simply want to insert an image into your document?

We’re also bemused by an ‘Auto Recogniser’. It appears on the Tools menu and is mentioned in the help text – but that tells you how to turn it on or off and change the colour or style of its line – not what it actually does. Then there’s "Create | Drawing Object…" which doesn’t as the ellipsis character implies, open another dialog to gather more information but shows or hides a toolbar and, if your window is narrow and the toolbars are all on one row (the default), you’ll actually only see one button of this toolbar.

Poor suggestions
It gets worse: when typing text, Symphony’s word processor is extremely annoying. It constantly suggests the word you might be trying to type, expecting you to press Enter to accept the suggestion. It also checks your spelling very aggressively, underlining words with red squiggles before you have finished typing them. This constant squiggle and suggestion is very wearing.

Yet another problem is that characters typed sometimes appear bold when they aren’t or appear malformed with half characters showing alongside the real ones – possibly beta bugs, but rather major ones, even at this stage of the game. Symphony is supposedly the same code as used in Lotus Notes 8, released in August 2007 – and that certainly has its own display glitches.

Poor presentation
Out of the box, Symphony uses Times New Roman for body text and Arial for headings which nowadays look old fashioned. The presentations module includes 19 different templates of backgrounds and layouts but they all look hopelessly tired.

Creating a new page in the presentation involves going through another dialog to name the page and choose the layout. The dialog presents a thumbnail but that only shows one possible layout, not changing whether you choose "Title, Chart, Text" or "Title, Table". With separate dialogs to set transitions and animations it can be quite difficult to make professional looking presentations.

The spreadsheets component is reasonably competent as far as it goes but also has inconsistencies. You can set the shadow on a cell from the side bar but not the border. To do that you need to use a modal dialog. There are useful functions such as VLOOKUP to get values from a table but no way to validate that input conforms to one of the values in a list. Charting is slow and clunky on all but the simplest examples.

Format support
Symphony’s default file formats are ODF (Open Document Format) as used in OpenOffice, StarOffice. It will open and save Microsoft Office files from Office 97-2002 (XP). But it doesn’t support the Office 2003 or new Office2007 file formats (OOXML). When you open a Microsoft Office file you’re presented with a generic message which says "this document contains features and formatting that may not save correctly when opened". It doesn’t specify which will be lost or mangled.

The verdict
Confusing menus and toolbars and a preponderance of separate and modal dialogs makes IBM Lotus Symphony more difficult to use than it should be. While we welcome another competitor to the market, Symphony in its current form is mightily out-gunned by Openoffice 2.0, also free, which has all the same features, plus plenty more. We’ll keep monitoring this upstart’s progress though, and bring you a full review of the suite on http://www.pcpro.co.uk once it makes release.

By Simon Jones

I was reading this post (http://www.xbox360fanboy.com/2007/10/03/bungie-gets-all-the-flaming-helmet-fun/) and found it interesting that no one seems to explain where the ‘flame’ concept came from.

A few years ago back when they were developing Halo 2, Jason Jones, the grand-high-poobah of Bungie, made a comment about what Halo 2 was purported to be in his mind:

“Halo 2 is a lot like Halo, only it’s Halo on fire, going 130 miles per hour through a hospital zone, being chased by helicopters and ninjas,” explained Jason Jones, head of Bungie Studios. “And the ninjas are all on fire, too.”

Ever since then, the ‘Flaming Ninjas’ have been the emblematic symbol of Bungie.  This is why you see Flaming Ninja insignia available as shoulder patches in multiplayer Halo 2 to this day.

Now I suppose, they’ve taken this to a completely new level:  There’s now a Flaming Head motif specifically for Bungie employees at Microsoft.

[photo stolen from http://www.xbox360fanboy.com/2007/10/03/bungie-gets-all-the-flaming-helmet-fun/]