Hello colleagues, friends, and acquaintences!
I have been meaning to send out this email which I have had sitting in my
drafts folder for many months but never got around to it. I just created a
little mailing list to help manage my contacts so ignore the welcome
message you just got.
Lots of big news to report:
Copilot Communications has been acquired by Telepacket Inc of Temecula.
This is good news for our customers because Copilot Communications
customers will become Telepacket customers and will have access to all of
the new features we are working on for the phone system plus better
worldwide PSTN connectivity and nationwide and potentially worldwide
DID's.
As for me personally, I am now working for Telepacket in the capacity of
Director of Software Development. I will continue to operate Copilot
Consulting (Linux oriented consulting business) although on a more
part-time basis and will probably be referring a lot of work to my
colleagues. Telepacket is sending me to Vietnam to manage their Ho Chi
Minh City office and lead a team of programmers over there on a
semi-permanent basis. I will be returning to the US every couple of months
for meetings and various personal business. I expect to depart in
approximately 6 weeks and will be there for at least a year and
potentially much longer as long as things continue to go well.
Before I go I am going to cram in as much fun in the US as I can. This
includes a couple of ski trips and finishing up my seaplane rating. I want
to get in as much flying as I can because General Aviation simply doesn't
exist in Vietnam since it is illegal to own an airplane over there. You
can find pics of my seaplane adventure in the photo gallery at my personal
website: http://ultraviolet.org
And now on to the tech news and links: Today's theme is viruses.
We've all heard about and probably had Windows viruses on our Windows
PC's. Most people just assume viruses are a basic fact of computing and
perfectly normal. It has pretty much become an accepted fact of life that
we need antivirus software. But that is not really the case. Very special
circumstances have to arise to allow computer viruses to spread and it
just so happens that Windows provides an ideal breeding ground. Linux, on
the other hand does not get viruses. Why? I recently stumbled across this
article which does a nice job of summing it up:
http://librenix.com/?inode=21
Just ran across this one today: "Why do PC users put up with so many
viruses and worms?"
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2005/02/04/notes020405.DTL
(Note that a modern Macintosh is a Unix computer)
Department of Homeland Security Computer Emergency Response Team
recommends NOT using Internet Explorer and I emphatically agree:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=74&e=3&u=/cmp/20040702/tc_cmp/22103407
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/internet/07/02/alternative.browsers.ap/index.html
http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/713878
Mozilla ( http://www.mozilla.org ) is the way to go for a web browser
these days.
And just for giggles, check out this funny Linspire ad which unfortunately
requires your browser to have the Flash plugin:
http://www.linspire.com/RunLinspireFlash.php
I hope this email finds you all well!
