June 30th, 2008 Pete Brower
I found a few items last week in the new file encryption feature I was testing that concerned me. I was able to corrupt my data files in a certain way. So, we are going to delay the limited beta release for a few days so that I can make sure my fixes are solid. I don’t think anyone wants to load a beta that has the potential to corrupt data. The problems I found were fairly straight forward as were the fixes. I just really like to error on the side of safety. Being a short week I would expect our new date to be a week from today. Monday July 7th.
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June 25th, 2008 Al Kalter
It was probably about 15-20 years ago that I was asked to arrange a speaker for my weekly Rotary meeting, and I invited in a representative of a new company to demonstrate a new technology - the cellular telephone. We were all impressed, and several of us got to try out the device that afternoon. Making calls just because we could do so now seems to be limited to those few minutes after landing when the flight attendant tells us that it’s OK to reconnect to our electronic world. But only the most prescient among our Rotary group back then could have foreseen the way cell phones would become dominant in our lives.
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June 25th, 2008 Pete Brower
The 4.3 beta release is still moving forward and I think we will have a Linux limited beta ready by the 30th. We will follow that with other platforms as we port the code and compile. That may take several weeks before we have all the platforms available for beta testing. We also need to complete an upgrade conversion utility. A lot of the file structures in System Admin have changed and we must write the conversion tool to get those files restructured.
Limited Beta? I’ve had some questions about what that means. Well, that means you need to contact us about your interest in testing and we will work out what you are willing to test and get you a copy of the software when it is available. It will not be available for general download at this point. With the System Admin file changes we don’t think it’s a good idea to have everyone downloading it and creating problems with their current production installs. Obviously you DO NOT want to run this beta (or any beta) in production. That being said, if you are willing and have time to run this beta isolated from your production environment please contact us.
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June 18th, 2008 Al Kalter
I don’t demand a lot from a hotel room. Having done a bit of traveling over the years, I’ve established my list of requirements to a few basics - a comfortable bed, a desk to work at, a high speed internet connection (of course), and a TV with a decent selection of channels and a working remote, with, ideally, a sleep button. Eventually, I did have all of those things at the “Historic Mayfair Hotel” in Los Angeles last week. But it still qualifies as one of the worst hotel experiences I’ve ever had.
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June 6th, 2008 Al Kalter
Earlier this spring, I bought my daughter an iPod. Apparently, she had been the only person under 25 not to already own one, but that was mostly by her own request. She was happy with her CD player, and kept saying she didn’t want an iPod. Until recently. Buying one for her provided me the opportunity to see how these omnipresent things work, and to ponder the impact they’ve had on our world.
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June 3rd, 2008 Pete Brower
Well, we’ve been very busy testing and are getting close to going into a limited beta. We have set a deadline of June 23rd as the cutoff date for fixing and testing. That will give us a week to clean up the documentation, build the release, do test installs, and fix anything we find in that process. Then we will have the beta available on June 30th for download and beta testing. This will be a limited beta. If you would like to be involved please let us know. If you participate there will likely be areas of the release that we ask you to test specifically. So if you volunteer to help please make sure you have the time needed to test and the willingness to test some areas we specifically ask you to test. Thank you for your patience and support as we’ve worked through this release.
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