News broke this morning: eBay to buy Skype for 2.6 billion in cash, stock. Crazy.

And for exactly twice that dollar amount, Oracle is working to buy Siebel.

So, in essence what they're telling us is that Skype is worth 50% of what Siebel is worth? Does this make any real sense?

Today I once again had the pleasure of working closely with Cops on Top, a non-profit organization that undertakes mountain climbing expeditions to the highest points in the world in order to remember and recognized the sacrifice of police officers killed in the line of duty.

Today expedition teams from across the United States and Canada took off for their respective state or territory high points to remember the first responders who were killed helping others on September 11th, 2001. We've enabled the teams to dial in via mobile or satellite phones, and their audio blogs are posted to the Cops on Top climber's weblog.

Congratulations and thanks to all the police officers and their team mates who undertook expeditions today. As a former cop and someone who's seen the positive impact the Cops on Top program has, I can tell you it means a lot to many people.

Hey, if all else fails, boot to a USB drive, right? Only problem is, who wants to haul around an external hard drive?

Actually, Tom's Hardware has an article on installing and running Windows XP on a USB flash drive. Windows in your pocket - it doesn't get much easier than that eh?

Boot up, access the Windows install and do whatever you need. Great idea.

Notes from the article:

• A USB flash drive with at least 256 MB of storage is enough for the uses described in this article. Additional system tools or applications require more space. The upper bound limits for storage in this case is 2 GB - a byproduct of the tool's use of FAT16 for the local file system.
• Most new motherboards recognize USB flash drives as valid boot media. But conventional motherboards that are more than two years old aren't likely to boot from a USB flash drive. But in many cases, this omission can be remedied through a BIOS update for that board.
• 1.5 GB of unused disk space is the maximum needed for the tool to do its job, particularly if you want to pre-install Service Pack 2 and RAM disk capabilities. 190 MB of unused space is all that's needed to use PE Builder and the applications described in this article, however. Additional plug-ins will increase storage requirements, as will additional tools or software.
• 512 MB of USB flash drive storage space is needed only if boot-up works from a RAM disk. Otherwise, 256 MB is big enough.
• Access to a USB 2.0 port is not mandatory, though booting with a USB 1.1 port takes about five times longer.
• A Windows XP Setup CD works fine as a foundation for PE Builder to generate the USB flash drive's contents.

We're not all perfect, bulletproof or even smart. Funny how it works that way. In fact, there's a certain percentage of IT and security pros out there that come up with bone-headed, stupid ideas - and who make decisions based on those ideas.

Marcus Ranum wrote about what he calls "The Six Dumbest Ideas in Computer Security." It's a good read, and I agree with almost everything he says there:

http://www.ranum.com/security/computer_security/editorials/dumb/

In reality, anyone in the IT and security field should have a solid, well-formed opinion that they can back up on everything Marcus mentions in his essay.

(via Bruce Schneier)

Damn you, Apple.

Stop teasing me with higher-cost hardware that has that extra "woah dude, woah" factor.

I can't afford to be tempted like this. Stop!

Ya gotta admit it, that nano is pretty sweet. Take the smallness they went for with the Shuffle (which, by the way, is about as useless as the stick of gum it's often compared to) and then put back all the cool stuff about the iPod (you know, like menus and the touch control) and then double or quadruple the storage capacity compared to the Shuffle, and there ya go. Oh yeah, and that color display is nice, of course.

Okay, okay - I'll think about it.

Grrrr...

This is how exciting my weekends are. Here I'm on IM with my next door neighbor this fine Saturday morning (which is weird enough, in an antisocial sort of way, now that I think about it):

Yeah, yeah whatever.   I have yet to see a "good chat client" that I truly want to use on Linux (we were discussing IM clients). Don't get me wrong - Linux is great. I have a couple of secret (I do have a rep to uphold ya know...) little Linux-y things going on. 

(And yeah, I know - my typing sucks)

The Linksys WRT54G is a great little WiFi (Wireless-G) home router, and there are a number of communities out there that  have created custom firmware to run on them. But one of the risks of flashing your router with new and different firmware is that you might just end up with a useless brick, typically characterized by red flashing lights and a severe lack of functionality.

If you can't get a SFTP upload of the default Linksys firmware to apply to the router using their utility, it's possibly toast. But there are still a few options (try at your own risk).

First of all, though: Have you tried to upload a fresh copy of the Linksys firmware using the Linksys utility you can download from their web site? Was your router running the Linksys firmware or one of the community firmware builds when the problem started? Depending on the firmware and router version, you might find that you need to go back to an older/original firmware file, then re-apply the custom one. Your mileage may vary, but if you're bricked you might not be worried about things like warranties. Just be aware of the fact once you start messing with stuff, warranties are often a thing of the past.

Here's a few links to try to help - feel free to leave a comment if you know of others:

• Red Diag or Power Light Blinking on the WRT54G:
  http://tinyurl.com/7al4s
• For the courageous:
  http://nino.net/blogs/nino/archive/2005/06/09/744.aspx
• More info on un-bricking it:
  http://www.barik.net/archive/2004/12/03/220751/

Ruth at RCM Technologies sent along an opening they have for a guru-level SharePoint business consultant in the Beverly Hills, California area. If you or someone you know if interested, give Ruth a call or send her an email (her contact info is at the bottom of this post):

RCM Technologies is a leading provider of comprehensive of Information Technology solutions for customers in the Financials Services, Healthcare, Insurance, Communications, Entertainment, and Pharmaceutical markets is looking for a Business Systems Consultant for a project in the Beverly Hills area. 

This is initially an 8 week project. There is a high likelihood of extension after the initial phase is completed.

This project is slated to start ASAP.

Job Description

Responsible for providing business solutions to enterprise-wide technology initiatives.  Candidate must be a self starter with excellent communication skills.  Background in web testing and training on web based systems.  Formal classroom experience is not mandatory. 

• Acts as a liaison between business/user and the technical developer 
• Plan and analyze business initiatives to be solved with business systems. 
• Provides technical expertise in identifying, evaluating, and developing effective procedures and systems requirements that meet business requirements. 
• Works with business user to provide assessment of developed system in respect to the user’s needs.  Also provide training and resolve issues and questions. \
• Participates in validating existing design features with specific system requirements and specifications. 
  Initiates systems testing. 
• Acts as internal consultant within technology and business groups by re-engineering technical processes for greater efficiencies with significant impact to the business.

Required Experience or Knowledge of the following technologies/functions

• Microsoft SharePoint 2003 - Candidates must be expert level in SharePoint
• .NET development
• SharePoint implementation/migration experience
• Please send your resume as a Word document. You may also reach me at the number below.

Thank you,
Ruth Lozano
RCM Technologies
Anaheim, CA
800-972-6269 x220
ruth.lozano(at)rcmt.com
www.rcmt.com

eWeek is reporting that eBay is in talks to buy Skype, a remarkably popular voice and text communication IM program.

Skype's popular and cool, but I have to say that industry references to Skype as a VoIP player are (IMHO) poorly thought out. Why? Because Skype uses no industry standards in their communication - they created their own proprietary protocols, which means they don't interoperate with other systems. What Skype needs to do in order to play the full VoIP field is add (note - I said "add" not change) SIP and other standards-based capabilities to their product for communication and connectivity. If they do that, they might just make some money and own a huge market. But they'll have to hurry if they haven't already started.

Also - why in the world would an auction company buy a IM and Internet calling company? Is eBay really that lost? Their share price after the rumor broke seems to show it may be a bad idea. Or maybe I'm missing something here, but on its face it seems a bit ridiculous.

Gateway's announced a widescreen format Tablet PC - cool design, and it has dedicated ATI graphics, which should be nice in the Vista world of Aero Glass. PC Magazine has a review here:

"The CX200 is a workhorse: It's loaded with the fastest Pentium M (770) processor currently available, 1GB of RAM, and the ATI Mobility Radeon X600 graphics chipset. Unfortunately, the system couldn't run our SYSmark 2004 SE and MobileMark 2005 benchmark tests because of the tests' limitations, but other systems with this type of configuration perform very well on day-to-day computing tasks. Both the Doom 3 and Splinter Cell games ran smoothly. The 3DMark 2005 scores were very respectable at 996 (1,024-by-768), something rarely seen on a tablet..."

MSN Search has opened up the ability to search for/in RSS using the "feed:" operator. Cool stuff.

That probably explains the previous MSNBot behavior. Ah, it does, according to the MSN Search Blog over at MSDN.

I've been researching some specific technology needs, and figured I'd post here and see if anyone working in the collaboration/groupware/SharePoint world has any ideas. I've got my own research, and am speaking to a few others I know, but the community is bound to have some good input.

What I need is a Yahoo-Groups-like system, but it needs to be private and deployed on the LAN (for security purposes). Threaded discussions, with an email interface to contribute and receive updates. In a perfect world, it would build into SharePoint (we use it as an intranet platform), or at least lend itself to being displayed there. And while I am aware of future software possibilities, I can't wait for v.next in this case.

Indexed, searchable content, with opt-in and opt-out lists that can be moderated if needed, are also important.

Any ideas? Please - let me know!

Things I have considered:

• Groove - http://www.groove.net - and Groove Mobile Workspace for SharePoint, which looks like a possibility
• KAOrg - http://www.kaorg.com/ - which is interesting, but it's not very grown-up

The three brightest objects in the night sky - Venus, Jupiter and the Crescent Moon - all together at once...

(click for larger image)

President Bush has issued proclamations that the United States flag be flown at half staff through September 20th to honor the memory of the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Another order requires the flag be flown at half-staff through September 13th to honor the death of Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist.

For people with flags that are attached to a fixed pole, it turns out there is an appropriate way to fly those flags, even though you can't actually move them on the pole. I described that here last year, when several people I know asked me how to fly their fixed flags on their porches at half-staff.

For flags that can't be lowered, such as those on many homes, the American Legion says attaching a black ribbon or streamer to the top of the flag is an acceptable alternative. The ribbon should be the same width as a stripe on the flag and the same length as the flag.

If the flag is hanging on a wall, make three black bows from the same material and place one bow at each of the mounting points.

Bill Whittle is an expressive genius. He has a way of bringing out common sense and putting things in perspective, for me anyhow.

Rather than race, rather than religion, this time Bill focuses at length on a concept we all need to think about: Tribes.

"Courage isn’t free. It is taught, taught by certain tribes who have been around enough and seen enough incoming storms to know what one looks like. And I think the people of this nation, and those of New Orleans, specifically, desire and deserve some fundamental lessons in courage."

There's no way to concisely describe what he's written - so go read it for yourself. Yes, it's long and there's some harsh language, but the message is clear. Whether you agree with Bill on every point is not nearly as important as whether or not you take the time to read.