Extracted from a notice just in from Jacqueline McNally, OpenOffice.org Marketing Project Lead, jacqueline@openoffice.org

OpenOffice.org, home of the world’s leading open-source office productivity suite, today announced a packed programme for their second international conference.

Following the success of last year’s inaugural conference, which drew over 300 developers and users from government, education and business, the OpenOffice.org Conference 2004 is scheduled to take place from September 22-24th, 2004 at the Humboldt-Universität, Erwin Schrödinger-Zentrum Adlershof in Berlin, Germany.

The Conference promises the same eclectic mix that made last year’s event such a success, bringing together the interests and expertise of government, business, and independent developers to offer a programme that powerfully shows the trend of open-source development in business today.

The Conference offers tracks in OpenOffice.org development; XML; the OpenOffice.org Community; commercialising, integrating, and supporting OpenOffice.org; and migration methodology including case studies of OpenOffice.org in government and business.

Attendees will see a demonstration of the advanced capabilities and features of OpenOffice.org 2.0, not due out until March 2005.

Keynotes include those by Simon Phipps, Sun Microsystem’s pundit on open source; and Christian Hardy and Christophe Cazin, who have lead the French administration’s migration not only to OpenOffice.org but to other open-source technologies.

The OpenOffice.org Conference 2004 (OOoCon2004) is proudly sponsored by Premium Sponsors, Software AG and Sun Microsystems, Inc.

For full conference details and how to register see
http://marketing.openoffice.org/ooocon2004/.

This message was posted to the OOo [discuss] list on 26 August. http://www.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=discuss&msgNo=40842

Hello everyone,

We have a very important announcement, and a call for help.

Our very own Ryan Singer (marketing project) has been meeting with the Mozilla Foundation, to forge an alliance between our two projects.

This is a very exciting time. There has always been a cordial relationship between our two projects. And there are natural synergies between the two.

For starters, Mozilla will begin shipping a Mozilla+OOo CD from their mozilla store.

This is where YOU come in (yes, you). We need 3 volunteers to work with Ryan:

• One to help with art.
• One to help with marketing material.
• One to help with technical issues (in particular, an installer).

The Mozilla team will provide 3 volunteers to match.

If you have been wanting to contribute to OOo, THIS IS YOUR CHANCE!!

This is what you should do next:

• Join the marketing list.
  dev-subscribe@marketing.openoffice.org
• If you can help with art, also join the art list.
  art-subscribe@marketing.openoffice.org
• If you can help with an installer, also join the distribution list:
  dev-subscribe@distribution.openoffice.org

I look forward to meeting you at marketing.

Cheers, Daniel Carrera

Microsoft announced last week that Longhorn, to ship in 2006, won’t include WinFS, the next-generation file system that Microsoft has been touting for some time. WinFS was designed to make it easy to store and find any information on your PC. It promised to make illogical folder organization a thing of the past, and let you categorize your data any way you want, without the straightjacket of tree-like hard disk structures we’ve all come to hate.

If you’re surprised that Longhorn has been scaled back, and that WinFS would be the primary victim, you haven’t been paying attention. Longhorn has been delayed time and time again, and Microsoft has been recently been hinting that when it ships, it won’t include all of its promised features. More evidence came earlier this summer, when it became clear that the upcoming Office 12 will support older versions of Windows in addition to Longhorn. Originally, it was only supposed to support Longhorn.

WinFS was the logical piece to leave out. The task of re-architecting a file system from the ground up, and making it as groundbreaking as Microsoft planned, was daunting enough. But also making it backwards-compatible made it that much tougher.

Better to ship Longhorn by 2006 without WinFS than delay it even longer. Windows XP was released in 2001, and so the 2006 release date will mean five years between major Windows revisions, the longest time between Windows revs in Microsoft history.

Once again, Microsoft has shown that its reach exceeds its grasp. Missed deadlines are certainly nothing new to the company; neither is promised technology materializing late. But I’d prefer that Microsoft set aggressive technology goals, and then be forced by market forces to reign them in, than that it be complacent about new technology and be content to merely fix Windows at the edges. It’s been complacent about Internet Explorer, and IE has become inferior to browsers like FireFox as a result. So here’s a cheer for Microsoft’s initial attempt to get WinFS into Longhorn, and let’s just hope that the new file system eventually makes it in our direction.

What do you think of the decision not to include WinFS in Longhorn? Let me know.

By way of introduction, I thought I’d say a bit about my background and interests, and how I came to be involved with OpenOffice.org.

My first exposure to computing was in 1969-70, when I did the statistical analysis for my Master of Science degree (in plant ecology) using punch cards and Fortran IV. This experience did not whet my enthusiasm for computers or programming, but 11 years later (after moving to Australia and working as a scientific editor for various research organizations) I got a job editing an in-house magazine for CSIRO’s Division of Computing Research (later CSIRONET).

When I encountered my first word processor (on an Apple IIe), I was hooked. For most of my life I had written (and later edited and published) material using a typewriter. Finding an easy way to make corrections was wonderful. Later (around 1986) I met a personal laser printer, and again fell in love. Never mind that it was huge and cost around A$12,000. I must confess that my first look at a Macintosh left me unimpressed, but within a few years I embraced GUIs and desktop publishing. Then in 1988 I got a job writing and editing user guides for a company producing desktop laser printers. I’ve been involved, one way or another, in technical writing and editing for software products (and the occasional hardware) ever since.

After declaring myself “retired” a few years ago, I began writing and self-publishing books, turning boxes of notes and teaching materials into books on electronic editing, online help, and Microsoft Word. Eventually I decided I wanted to get off the treadmill of costly software upgrades (no longer needing to have whatever product my clients required), so about two years ago I started looking at open source software. I wanted to move to Linux, but I also wanted to be sure that I could replace all the Windows programs I use regularly with something with the same or better functionality, without the necessity of dealing with command line interfaces. Been there, done that, years ago; not interested in doing it again if I have a choice.

Someone suggested OpenOffice.org as a possible candidate for the office suite I wanted. Since it had a Windows version as well as a Linux version (among others), it was a good candidate to try out.

When I first tried OOo, it was at around version 1.0.0 or 1.0.1. The help files were pathetic in those days; I described them at the time as “badly written, badly organized, badly indexed, and frequently wrong.” To be fair, the help has improved a great deal since then, though the indexing still needs a lot of improvement. I’ve had enough experience that I can work out the basics in about 15 minutes and then go looking for the more advanced stuff like fields, templates, styles, master documents, complex page layouts, and so on. At the time no books about OOo had been published, although one (the OpenOffice.org Resource Kit) was in the works.

After spending a ridiculous amount of time figuring out how to do what I wanted (with a lot of help from the various discussion lists on the OpenOffice.org website), I had an impressive stack of notes. I thought, “I might as well turn this into a book,” which I did. Later I updated that self-published book to OOo1.1. Recently O’Reilly republished the second edition as OpenOffice.org Writer: The Free Alternative to Microsoft Word. Now I’m looking at the other components of OOo as well as open source programs to replace other software; I’ll talk about some of that later.

My other interests include accessible websites, CSS, science fiction, and travel in the Australian outback. More about that later, too!

Spam these days is more than an annoyance – it increasingly carries malware payloads that can do serious damage to your PC, steal your identity, or turn your PC into a zombie that carries out denial of service attacks.

So anything that law enforcement can do to fight spam should be a good thing, right? Well, not quite, as I’ll explain.

Federal and state agencies have launched “Operation Slam Spam,” in which dozens of spammers, identity theft artists, and scammers have been arrested or will be prosecuted for doing the kind of slimy stuff that has become an online epidemic. Good thing, you might say. And I agree, at least partially.

Here’s the catch: Much of the money for the effort was paid for by a private business, and not just any private business, but by the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), an industry lobbying group whose members blanket your real-world mailbox with junk mail, and which has fought against stronger anti-spam laws.

So what’s wrong with that?

First off, prosecutions shouldn’t be bought and sold on the open market.

Then there’s the problem with the DMA itself. The reason it funded Operation Slam Spam is crystal clear: It hopes that a big-publicity prosecution will convince people that the laws on the books against spam are working, and all that’s needed is to use the law to go after the bad guys. If it can convince people of that, it will consider its money well spent.

The truth is, though, that the federal Can Spam Act has failed. Spam has been getting worse, not better, since the law went on the books. The law is rarely adhered to. And because the law supercedes state laws, some of which were far tougher, it has helped keep spammers in business.

So when the prosecution makes its big splash, turn a cold eye on it, and to understand why it’s happening, remember the advice of Woodward and Bernstein when they cracked the Watergate scandal: “Follow the money.”

What do you think about spam prosecutions? Let me know.

A week ago, I warned people that they should hold off for a month before installing SP2 because of the inevitable bugs that’ll accompany the initial rollout. Well, the bugs have arrived.

No great surprise - Microsoft has listed nearly 50 applications that have trouble with SP2, ranging from games to anti-virus software, anti-spyware software, network management software, and a host of products from Microsoft itself, including g Visual Studio .Net, Operations Manager, SQL Server and Systems Management Server. For details, see this Knowledge Base article.

Some companies, like IBM, are banning the update for now. Many others are less than enthusiastic about it.

A main culprit is the Windows Firewall, which is turned on by default in SP2. (For some reason, though, it wasn’t turned on by default in my installation.) For security, the Windows Firewall is better than nothing, but much inferior to ZoneAlarm and other personal firewalls.

The worst thing about SP2, though, is not what it does, but what it doesn’t do. It doesn’t overhaul Internet Explorer, which is in much need of updating. True, there’s an excellent IE popup blocker in SP2, as well as a safer way to manage downloads. But can’t Microsoft do something as simple as let people use tabs for browsing? The fact that Microsoft can’t be bothered to add this simple feature shows that it takes its browser market domination for granted.

Still, despite SP2’s shortcomings, it’s still worth the download. There’s greater security, and the popup blocker is one of the niftiest ones I’ve seen. So wait a few more weeks, then install it.

But it looks like for the real improvements to come, we’ll have to wait for Longhorn - and that wait will make the wait for SP2 seem like the blink of an eye.

What do you think of SP2? Let me know.

Related link: http://www.ttgnet.com/daynotes/2004/2004-34.html#Tuesday

Bob Thompson writes this morning:

“Windows XP Service Pack 2 shows all the early signs of becoming an unmitigated disaster. IBM issued an internal memo telling their employees not to install SP2 until further notice, if ever. Several of my readers have said
that they have no plans to install SP2, despite the fact that Microsoft labels it a critical update. The problem is that SP2 breaks other software. Lots of other software. And the workarounds for a particular broken package, if indeed there are any, can be pretty complex, involving editing the registry, opening or closing particular ports manually, and so on. Not something you want users doing, and not something that IT departments have the resources to do machine by machine.”

I have great respect for Bob, but he’s off the mark with his assertions here. Let me take them step by step.

IBM did issue a memo halting installation of SP2. They did the same when Windows 2000 was first released, saying here were issues with TCP/IP and DNS, as I recall. But what smart company doesn’t delay installing a new service pack for any application, including an operating system, until proper testing has been done? My thinking is that IBM wants to spend a few months ensuring their own applications will work with SP2, which is a smart step.

Perhaps several of Bob’s readers don’t have any plans to install the update, and that’s fine. I don’t see how that is a reliable metric that indicates a real problem with the service pack. I have no plans to buy a new car, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want one or think one would be put to good use. To say that “no plans” is a representative statement of the quality of the service pack is imprecise at best.

SP2 does break software, but it breaks software that was doing security wrong. Microsoft finally says, “Hey, program, we’re not going to allow you to do this that way.” They are enforcing security standards and programs
that break were doing things incorrectly. Besides, SP2 has been in beta for months and months and months. I do know there were last minute changes before RTM, but they broke one-off applications that aren’t in wide, wide use. The fact that Symantec products don’t work is only the fault of
Symantec for not being more proactive in development and testing.

Workarounds to make these products that are all but purposefully broken are complex, and you know why? Because you have to work at making SP2 do things the wrong way. Oh, what a problem.

I’m really growing weary of hearing everyone take Microsoft to task for the company’s lack of fundamental security awareness. These same people then take Microsoft to task for incorporating improvements into an operating system that break other insecure applications. So you want security, and you want applications that work. Don’t blame Microsoft for this one. I’ve been running SP2 for months and months and it’s the most stable OS I have used to date. And I run a business on Linux.

Do you think SP2 is a disaster?

The interminable delay is finally over – SP2 has finally arrived. It’s being first rolled out as a network install, and then it’ll be gradually rolled out to the rest of the world as well, via Automatic Updates. Eventually, it’ll be available as a standalone download.

But just because the update is available, should you install it? I’ve been beta testing the software for months now, and here’s my recommendation - wait and do it in a month.

The update itself is a worthy one. There’s a very nice popup blocker, a more useful front-end to wireless networking, better downloading security, and a lot of extra security under the hood.

The much-ballyhooed update of the Windows Firewall isn’t particularly worthwhile. It’s really just a prettier face on a still not-particularly useful firewall. Almost any other personal firewall, like ZoneAlarm, is far superior. It’s now turned on by default, though, which is good for individual users, but could be problematic for IT folks.

All in all, it’s certainly worth the download. So why wait? It’s this simple: Microsoft rarely gets anything right out of the gate. Expect installation woes and bug fixes. For example, even Microsoft’s own CRM package is broken by SP2. So how do you think it’ll get along with other applications?

So wait a month and let others be the guinea pigs. By that time, most of the problems should be fixed. It should be smooth sailing from there - or at least as smooth as Windows ever gets.

Have you used SP2 or do you plan to? Why or why not? Let me know.

Internet Explorer has constantly come under fire for its numerous security vulnerabilities, so much so that the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (CERT) issued an advisory that recommends that people consider using a different browser. (For more details, see my weblog about it.)

That recommendation brought a gleam to the eyes of some Mozilla and Firefox users who have a holier-than-thou attitude when it comes to Internet Explorer. They gloated that once again, the world’s most popular browser has been shown to have the world’s biggest security holes.

But they should gloat no more. All browsers, Mozilla and Firefox among them, are bedeviled by security holes. Just recently, for example, it was discovered that a security bug makes Mozilla and Firefox vulnerable to phishing attacks. That’s certainly not the first security bug, and it will be far from the last.

Now, it’s true that Mozilla and Firefox are inherently more secure than IE, in large part because they’re more isolated from the operating system. And the Mozilla Foundation has been more willing than Microsoft to confront the problem head-on, even announcing a $500 bounty for every critical security bug anyone can find. But the browsers are also more secure because they lack some of IE’s functionality, such as the ability to run ActiveX controls. I’m a big fan of Firefox, but for me, that’s still one of the browser’s biggest drawbacks.

As Mozilla and Firefox slowly gain popularity because of Internet Explorer’s security flaws, expect them to be increasingly targeted. Expect more attacks, more flaws uncovered, and less security. It’s going to be the price of success.

What do you think about security bugs in IE, Mozilla, and Firefox? Let me know.