Integrating Apache OpenOffice 4.0 with GMail using MAPI

Legend Netscape and Mozilla programmer Jamie Zawinski (aka JWZ) has  humorously stated in his Law on Software Development that "Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can."

While the popular OpenOffice open source office suite did not yet "expand to do e-mail", it allows sending documents from the program interface using whatever e-mail client program is configured on your system, be it Mozilla's Thunderbird, or Microsoft's bundled Windows Mail, or the former Outlook Express, on Lotus Notes, or Eudora, you name it.

The problem comes, as one AOO user recently pointed, when you expect apps that can fire your e-mail client to "work with GMail". The problem is that GMail is not an application. GMail is a web site. You can have an application like Open Office call your default web browser, and even tell it to load GMail with a compose window opened, but you still can't tell the browser to attach a given file to your new composed e-mail. At least not without some "glue code".

Rob Weir explained: "there is an industry standard for accessing email:  MAPI(Messaging Application Programming Interface).  OpenOffice works with any application that supports MAPI.   Most email clients support MAPI.  GMail does not.  That is their choice.  We can't force them to support MAPI.  But we're not writing custom support for every email client in existence.  We support the standard. "

Thats where "TVHGoogleMAPI" comes in. It is an Apache-license open source project that makes GMail a registered "Simple MAPI" protocol handler on Windows. I have tested it with Windows 7 (64-bit edition) and I confirm that it works.

You can download this app from its Google Code project page at:
http://code.google.com/p/tvhgooglemapi/downloads/detail?name=tvhgooglemapisetup-0.4.exe

The install was painless to me. Just follow the dialogs and it configures itself automatically. It just places an icon available from the Start button to uninstall it. Other than that it seems to work automagically. ;)

Screenshots are included below:

1. You load a document on AOO 4.0 and click on File-Send-Send document as E-Mail

2. The TVHGoogleMAPI program will ask for your GMail account credentials. See the disclaimer at the end of this post about security concerns.

3. GMail opens up with your system default web browser with a GMail email compose window, and the AOO document attached to it.

4. If you have GMail configured to use the new UGLY GMail COMPOSE WINDOW this is what you will see.

5. The other user receives your attached AOO 4.0 document in his e-mail.


A SPECIAL NOTE ABOUT SECURITY:
This APP, AS ANY INTEMEDIARY APP, REQUESTS YOUR GOOGLE ACOUNT CREDENTIALS, AND OFERS TO SAVE THE DATA SO YOU ARE NOT PROMPTED EVERY TIME. THIS COULD BE A SECURITY CONCERN FOR SOME.

 I did test this app with a new GMail account, not using my main one. I am not the author of this linked application and I have not audited its source code. If you are concerned about this, you might want to create a secondary GMail account just for this use, or enable two-step authentication. Use the app at your own risk.

I hope this helps people wishing to integrate Apache Open Office with GMail.
FC

Less is more

It should be an easy concept to grasp:
LESS LINES OF CODE EXECUTE FASTER THAN MORE LINES OF CODE

Yet, some people still need to see proof:

0. Win7 5x slower than XP
http://channel9.msdn.com/Forums/Coffeehouse/Test-shows-Windows-7-is-5x-slower-than-XP-in-UI-and-apps-load-slower-than-in-Vista

1. Vista: 25% slower than Windows XP
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/dec/06/microsoft

" We did informal tests, booting both Vista and XP on the same hardware, and Vista was between 15% and 25% slower than XP in benchmarks"

2. Inforworld: WInXP slower than Windows 2000

"Waiting for Windows XP"
http://web.archive.org/web/20071012211343rn_1/www.infoworld.com/articles/tc/xml/01/10/29/011029tcwinxp.html


" as indicated by results of independent testing performed by CSA Research and confirmed by our work in the InfoWorld Test Center. Our tests of the multitasking capabilities of Windows XP and Windows 2000 demonstrated that under the same heavy load on identical hardware, Windows 2000 significantly outperformed Windows XP. In the most extreme scenario, our Windows XP system took nearly twice as long to complete a workload as did the Windows 2000 client"

3. Win2k slower than NT4...

Microsoft looks to bury test results that show NT is faster than Win2000
http://web.archive.org/web/20061022093046/www.infoworld.com/articles/op/xml/01/03/05/010305opcringely.html

"Microsoft recently threw around its weight -- and its fat wallet --
to squash an independent testing lab from publishing benchmark results
that the lab ran for InfoWorld's sister publication NetworkWorld. The test
demonstrated that SQL Server 7 runs nearly twice as fast on Windows NT
4.0 than it does on Windows 2000 ."

FC

ZDNet trolling for anti-Javascript language, another ´anti-something´ Microsoft tech

Microsoft, like many firms -Google too-, suffers from the "NIH syndrome" (Not Invented Here). And it isn´t hard to imagine they aren´t too happy to see one of the key pieces of the modern AJAX paradigm and web apps is Javascript/ECMAscript, not invented by them, but at Netscape and now developed at Mozilla.

So I have recently stumbled upon this piece by a ZiffGatesNet writer
http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-typescript-can-the-father-of-c-save-us-from-the-tyranny-of-javascript-7000005054/?s_cid=e539 outrageously titled "can the father of C# save us from the tyranny of Javascript?" that aims to boost interest in a Microsoft language that wants to dethrone Javascript.

I started laughing when he decided to quote Miguel de Icaza as an authorized ¨open source¨ figure. It seems that not being happy with his Mono Failure (Microsoft .Net clone for Linux) and his Moonlight failure (a failed clone of another failure, Microsoft´s Silverlight) he now wants to give a helping hand in destroying Javascript, as the he and others in the .Net camp have tried to destroy Java -unsuccesfully- for years now.

Back to the story, the headline is eye-catching no doubt about it, as it speaks of this new Microsoft language freeing us from the "Tyranny of Javascript". But when you read the story, there´s no substance about what tyranny we need to be saved from.

So, here´s my two simple answers to this long tirade:

1.there´s no "Javascript tyranny" interesting that the word "tyranny" is present only in the headline, with no substance in the article to back up that claim.
2. The headline asks a question, and the answer lies in "Betteridge´s Law of Headlines" which states: "Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word 'no'*
 
So there :-P
FC
PS: Nobody outside of Microsoft and Microsoft-only shops will get to use this language, for the same reasons that hampered .Net and Silverlight adoption: microsoft´s languages only work well and fully on Microsoft´s own OSs. They´re just means to justify Microsoft´s uber-end for the last couple of decades : "Windows Everywhere".

Foxconn riots - and some exclusive footage from India

After this

Foxconn China plant closed after 2,000 riot
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/24/us-hon-hai-idUSBRE88N00L20120924

...comes this secretly videotaped footage of a huge riot at one undisclosed Fx.conn factory in India.


Alleged riot at one FC India factory :)

Sorry, I can´t reveal my sources...

FC

The anti-Btrfs FUD must stop...

If you read the Whackypedia entry on "Butter FS" (Btrfs), you see:

"Btrfs (B-tree file system, variously pronounced "Butter F S", "Butterfuss", "Better F S",^[1] or "B-tree F S"^[2]) is a GPL-licensed copy-on-write file system for Linux. Development began at Oracle Corporation in 2007. It is still in heavy development and marked as unstable"



ewww... SCARY!

But then there´s another view:

https://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/linuxcon-japan/bo
---
LinuxCon Japan 2012 | Presentations
"On The Way to a Healthy Btrfs Towards Enterprise"
by  Liu Bo, Fujitsu
---

Let me quote:
"Btrfs has been on full development for about 5 years and it does make lots of progress on both features and performance, but why does everybody keep tagging it with ""experimental""? And why do people
still think of it as a vulnerable one for production use? As a goal of production use, we have been strengthening several features, making improvements on performance and keeping fixing bugs to make btrfs
stable, for instance, ""snapshot aware defrag"", ""extent buffer cache"", ""rbtree lock contention"", etc. This talk will cover the above"
---

From its web "Liu Bo has been working on Linux kernel development since late 2010 as a Fujitsu engineer. He has been working on filesystem field and he's now focusing on btrfs development".

RHEL 7 to get Btrfs support
http://www.h-online.com/open/imgs/45/8/8/4/6/5/1/43-6b4e69889ee000ca.png

"RHEL 7 will support ext4, XFS, and Btrfs (boot and data)"

Then you have SuSE:
https://www.suse.com/releasenotes/x86_64/SUSE-SLES/11-SP2/

"With SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 SP2, the btrfs file system joins ext3, reiserfs, xfs and ocfs2 as *commercially supported file systems*. Each file system offers disctinct advantages. While the installation
default is ext3, we recommend xfs when maximizing data performance is desired, and *btrfs as a root file system when snapshotting and rollback capabilities are required. Btrfs is supported as a root file
system (i.e. the file system for the operating system) across all architectures of SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 SP2*. "

https://blogs.oracle.com/wim/entry/oracle_linux_6_update_3

"OL6.3 that boots up uek (2.6.39-200.24.1) as install kernel and uses btrfs as the default filesystem for installation. So latest and greatest direct access to btrfs, a modern well-tested, current kernel,
freely available. "

So, again, why does people insist in calling Btrfs "experimental" and "unstable"?. Do you think SUSE and Oracle both ship an unstable FS as a comercially supported feature??.

Sheesh, I´ve lost data with IBM´s "supposedly ´GA´" version of JFS for OS/2 once...

Back to Btrfs... it´s in the mainline Linux Kernel since February so with the adoption by RHEL 7, it´ll become mainstream sooner rather than later...

Here is a good video to get you interested on Btrfs and why it matters...

Just my $0.02...
FC

Java is based on reason, like Humanism. :)

I read this funny post "if programming languages were religions..." over here , and couldn' t help writing the rebuttal below with regards to its characterization of Java:

Totally wrong on Java. See, some people -often whom have never used it- continue saying Java "is dead", "is so 1990s" yet, Java continues being relevant ever more each day, and is now free (GPL open source, OpenJDK). Then some said Java was going to die after the Oracle acquisition of Sun Microsystems, they were proved wrong once again, with Oracle investing in Java, opening OpenJDK even more, making JavaFX open source (OpenJFX), making OpenJDK the reference implementation of JDK7, and even getting IBM, Apple and Twitter aboard the OpenJDK project. Plus, Apple donated its OSX JRE code to OpenJDK as well.

So does it make it like "fundamentalist christianity"? don' t think so, more like humanism...

See, Java is NOT ONLY a programming language, Java is actually 3 things: a programming language, a virtual machine, and a level playing field software ecosystem. So you can write cross platform Java apps without even writing a single line of Java source code, thanks to dynamic languages that run atop the Java VM. That' s why there' s JRuby, Jython, xRuby (ruby to java bytecode compiler), Scala, JGo, NetRexx (open source REXX for the JVM - www.netrexx.org), and you can even write Java apps with Basic, thanks to Jabaco (www.jabaco.org).

So, in the end, Java understands that all the people has its own beliefs, and people of all beliefs are welcome to come to the Java VM, which is based on the rational belief that "porting code"  from one OS to another is silly, and that all apps should run on all OSs. It' s based on reason, like humanism.

;-)
FC

Thanks Armstrong for inspiring a generation...

Thanks, Armstrong, for inspiring a generation with regards to #Moon & #space travel.


...fake or true tv footage, it really doesn´t matter...


What a better way to pay homage to him than with #OMD ´s "Apollo 11" song.... immortalizing in the lyrics the "ONE GIANT LEAP FOR MANKIND..."

FC

Reader´s feedback says sometimes I´m not full of sh..

It´s really nice when you write a news story and someone writes back, months later, "from inside" -a big corp- saying "hey you hit the nail on the head".

 Photo courtesy (CC) of Marco Repola @ IStoleThe.TV

I wish that came back more often, but I guess that also means I hit the nail on the head only once a while. ;)

This was my story on Oracle´s decomission of "Sun Download Manager"
http://news.techeye.net/software/oracle-quietly-buries-sun-download-manager

And this the feedback the story got, posted by the SDM product manager Gary Zellerbach:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
12 Aug 00:42

Hi Fernando, I was the co-inventor and Product Manager of Sun Download Manager (SDM) from its inception (~2001) until its recent "retirement." I was surprised to see this article -- frankly, I wasn't sure if anyone had noticed, but obviously you did! 

You seem very perceptive and make some salient points. For the record, I believe the main reason SDM was discontinued was due to lack of engineering resources to update it. As you pointed out, first there was the the desire to rebrand it as "Oracle Download Manager." More importantly, as you also noticed, was the lack of HTTPS support, which was not a problem on the Sun Download Center, but meant that SDM simply did *not* work with Oracle's primary product download site. That was a serious issue. 

To be fair, there was interest expressed in updating SDM and a desire for Oracle to have a good download manager for its customers, but when push came to shove, it was deemed there were higher priority needs for the download engineers. Soon after SDM was retired, my brief stint at Oracle came to end as well. I understand the need to prioritize resources but did not agree with the lack of communication. I wanted to post a blog with a heads-up and explanation about why it was being discontinued. But I was advised not to by my management, as it is company policy not to pre-announce product changes. The most I could do was to insist that customers not get a 404 when hitting the former SDM web pages, and so I got a redirect put in to the FAQ you saw. 

Now I see the redirect appears to have been removed too. (BTW, while the redirect is gone, the FAQ is still available here: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/indexes/downloads/sdlc-faq-091624.html ) I can't disagree with much of your editorial perspective, though hopefully my comments help fill out the background.

I don't know Oracle's future plans as to whether they'll ever offer another download manager. I do know, though, that SDM had a great run, was downloaded and used literally millions of times, saved Sun a ton of money on bandwidth and support costs over the years, and was a great example of Java programming. Thank you for noticing it disappeared. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

What can I say, thanks to you, Gary, for the kind words and taking the time to write back, confirming some of my perceptions from afar.

FC

Dana Blakenhorn joins the anti-Oracle parrots club

Below is my response to Dana Blakenhorn' s article titled "What Oracle
is hiding"
http://www.thestreet.com/story/11534615/1/what-oracle-is-hiding.html

I' m not holding my breath waiting for him to publish it.... (it' s
"under moderation" as I write this).

////

Wow, you really really hate Oracle, don' t you?. Take a look at the
world around you Dana. The financial markets are plummeting. That' s
where Sun used to sell many of its hardware. Guess there aren' t many
Lehman Brothers to buy Sun hardware nowadays right?
http://sun.systemnews.com/articles/69/1/news/11449

Your rest of your article is pure drivel. Who cares about Apache's
Java implementation and its fight with Sun/Oracle, it' s history.

OpenJDK is where the action is at, and Apple contributed its OSX Java
code to OpenJDK. Twitter has joined OpenJDK along with IBM, too. So I
guess the writing is on the wall, right?. OpenJDK is a sucess, no
matter how Ziff-Gates and its anti-Java writers would like to spin it.
And Oracle has been a great steward of Java, investing in OpenJDK,
NetBeans (the Java IDE), Virtualbox, and Glassfish, among other former
Sun open source projects. Plus, Linux will be on equal footing with
Windows server'  ReFS thanks to the Oracle-developed Btrfs.

So next time you slam Oracle, keep in mind you' re hurting the firm
that is driving Java forward and one great contributor to Linux and
the open source ecosystem. Shame on you!

FC
////

How to run .jnlp Java Web Start JWS apps with OpenJDK Java on Linux and Firefox

In the Windows world, Java Web Start apps run "automagically". That is, if you install Java, that' s all there is to it.

 The Sun/Oracle Java Runtime install takes care of installing the Java runtime, the Java plug-in (for all browsers on the system), and also the required bits to run Java Web Start (javaws.exe). So when you click on a .jnlp link on a web page to launch a Java desktop application, the app just starts, you se the Java splash screen, and seconds later, the app pops up.

(If it is the first time you run an app from such vendor, a security dialog comes up asking if you know and want to trust that developer and its cryptographic signature from that dev going forward, or just authorize it this time, or cancel -not run it-).

In the Linux world, Java (as the GPL Open Source project it now is) is called "OpenJDK". But if you install OpenJDK alone, you don' t get the "Plug-in" (the component needed to run applets inside a web browser AND Java Web Start apps).

For that, -the Java Plug-in- you need "IcedTea" which is the name given to the Java Plug-in that goes along with OpenJDK.

Why they choose to confuse the user with two different package names is beyond me (actually, I know why, it has to do with the project's history, but that' s of no interest to end users). If you ask me, Icedtea should be renamed to "OpenJDK-plugin".

But that is besides the point.

Having said that, -please have patience- here' s the solution to run Java .jnlp on Firefox on Linux.

1. You need to install "Icedtea".
OK, so you installed Icedtea, clicked on a Java Wesbtart app launcher link (.jnlp) and got an odd dialog from the browser asking what do you want to do with the .jnlp file?.

Don' t despair. That happens because while you have:.

1. A functioning JRE installed (OpenJDK)
2. A functioning Java plug-in (IcedTea) installed,

... that the Icedtea installation has NOT configured Icedtea as a browser "helper app" to appropiately launch JNLP files.

So how do you fix it?!??!?! Simple: ;-)

1. Select "Open With" and instead of the default app (ie Fedora wants to open .jnlp links with gEdit), click on the app name to "choose another"
2. Then navigate to /bin and select "javaws'
3. Select "Do this automatically for files like this from now on"
4. Click "OK"

...the Java app will launch.

And from that point on, all Java Web Start apps will run when you click on the launcher link.

(again, the first time you run any given app you' ll have to authorize it, but not from that point onwards if the crypto signature is maintained).

 

Does this need to be so irritatingly complex? of course not.

The problem is that the Icedtea developers think about things like developers, not end users. :-(

FC
PS:Oh, did I mention my favorite Java Web Start apps? There's a lot, but you should start by taking a look at http://ho.io/mu-commander and http://ho.io/JShot

Top Five Twitter Annoyances

Since I´ve got an addictive personality, I´ve become addicted to Twitter as of late. Before that I was addicted to Facebook, and before that, to e-mail mailing lists (an addiction that is hard to cure and continues to this day, I reckon ;).

As such, I´ve started to realize a number of annoyances with Twitter, and most important, how Twitter could fix it... of course "...for fun and profit". ;)

#1. DMs. Direct Messages. The user interface is a mess. The chat-like presentation might be good for short exchanges, but once the "conversation" and exchanges of DMs progresses, this becomes a wasteful choice, and a long string of short messages dilapidating screen real state.

#2. Twitter should embrace OPEN PROTOCOLS, more on this below.

#3. Twitter DMs could offer an e-mail gateway. It´s simple, by creating an email gateway to the Internet world, yourtwitteraccount@twitter.com becomes your e-mail address. Anything received at yourusername@twitter.com becomes a DM to you. Of course, to keep up with the twitter spirit, messages would have to be stripped of all attachments, and plaintext messages cut to the first 140 chars. Not doing so would create lots of problems to twitter (capacity problems, storage cost, viruses, phishing, etc)

#4. Likewise, it should be possible to access your DMs Inbox via an open protocol. For this, nothing better than IMAP. You should be able to point any e-mail client to, say, imap.twitter.com, and check your DMs "Inbox", your "Sent" folder, etc.

#5. There is no easy way to download all your old tweets directly from the TW interface. As Google offers the option to "back up all your data", with its "Data Liberation Front" initiative, it should be possible to log-in to your Twitter "my account" area and choose to download a .zip compressed file of all your tweets, everything you have said on twitter both since the account creation, or the last month, or the last week, the user´s choice. I know, you´re telling me that´d be "too expensive" both in CPU and resources, when, how about making this a PAID option, only for people who pay a small yearly fee. (I´m thinking $10/year would be the magic number. Do the math.)

#6 Like Google´s Blogger email posting feature, it should be possible to create tweets by email. IE email yourusername.somepersonalid#@twitter.com and whatever you put on the subject line becomes a tweet.

What´s this for? it´d be great for script writers, to automate the sending of tweets effortlessly without having to deal with oAuth, Twitter APIs and the like.

That´s, imho the top-five Twitter shortcomings. (I know I said five.. )

FC

Google Wallet, Hate and Gloating in Forbes

When I read the Forbes article whose URL I include below, I was instantly reminded of a funny line from
the Cohen Brothers film "Burn after Reading" when one of the characters says "you´re worse than a moron, you´re part of a League of Morons".

http://www.forbes.com/sites/quickerbettertech/2011/09/26/google-launches-the-ultimate-jobs-killer/2/

Watch out for gloating about "killing unproductive jobs", and snide remarks on supermarket employees and, of course, government, who apparently can train people but "only so much" (ie "there´s little point in training idiots", seems to be his angle).

btw: his entire reasoning is flawed, he can´t just scan barcodes and walk away with his merchandise, because who will check he paid for everything he bought?, guess he will have to unload everything again.
;)

The solution to his "Problems" (if one can call it that) are two:

1. Web sites and home delivery. I don´t know about the US of A but down here all major supermarket chains have web sites where you can order stuff and have it delivered, in some instances the same day, in
others the next day, for really little cost. In two instances you pay on-line, in other the delivery cleak that arrives to your home carries a posnet card reader that works wirelessly (a card swiper connected
via GSM/3G)

2. RFID tags built into every packing container of stuff you buy at the supermarket. That would really help the supermarket tally everything you´re walking away without the tedious unloading-reloading
of stuff. But in this approach the cashier at the supermarket would keep his job (it has to, anyway, for people that would still pay cash).

In other words, payment is NOT the delay, accounting for stuff is, so Google Wallet or no-wallet doesn´t make any difference with regards to the "tedious process" of groceries shopping that this guy complains about.

FC

Enough with wireless, it´s gonna get us all fried in microwaves

A lawyer or lawyer wannabe from Harvard (sorry I haven´t had time to check his credentials) writes: "I’m also big on open spectrum and unlicensed wireless"

I used the opportunity to write a comment in his blog about why I think wireless sucks and why we should stop polluting the airwaves just to give business to the RF equipment peddlers and  just postpone  DOING THE UNAVOIDABLE, which is eventually digging ditches and laying out fiber to every home.

Here´s my comment to him:

You advocate "open spectrum and unlicensed wireless"... OH YEAH, the one with the most big-ass signal booster wins, and "overlaps" the less powerfull transmitters. That anarchic scenario was tried: it was Citizen´s Band. The one with the biggest bad-add booster won, overlapping all others around.

 OF COURSE, I know, there are differences between wi-fi and CB.... modern technologies aren´t analog and they do spread spectrum and frequency hopping, along with time division and other techniques. BUT STILL, the base principles are the same: there is only a finite amount of bandwidth by going wireless. And in densely populated areas, there is not enough for everyone downloading 10mbit+ at once.

My biggest concern is that going forrward, advocates of this "free for all" mayhem are going to get us all cooked in microwaves. I´ve already seen Wi-Fi "signal boosters" available "under the counter" that exceed the FCC limits, yet are sold for point-to-point links to be installed by amateurs. And since they don´t have the technical means to aim the antennas correctly, it´s highly likely someone at a high rise flat is going to get beamed "by accident" with those signals.

THANKS VERY MUCH, but I pass. Why insist with wireless when FTTH is just around the corner?. With fiber, you can just lay out as many parallel fibres on a duct as you need, until you reach the bandwidth you need. If there´s more need, you dig another ditch and lay more pipes and fill those with fiber.

Give me a break with wireless, already.

Yeah, I know... but wireless broadband is so convenient! what´s the worst that could happen?

FC

Boy, are CIA alumni hard to kill!

The world´s most famous CIA alumni and famous mass murderer is apparently dead.

Now, I´m awaiting for Obama´s "Mission accomplished" photo-op a la GWB, and surely a total retreat of troops from the Middle East (sarcasm).

In any case, good news about someone who should have never been engineered by the USA.

Osama Bin Laden: supported by the US and Pakistan (BBC)
http://pages.citebite.com/k5c9g8r9ukgq





Some critics have called his death "cold-blooded murder or a gangland execution dressed up as 'justice'" which is a good point, why the killing and not detention. But think about it.... one would think that the capture of him alive would have ended in a months-long trial and, ultimately, execution. Besides, I don´t think that if he was armed, that he would have allowed that to happen.

FC
PS: The celebrations of "common people" in the streets are understandable. When was the last time the people of the USA as a whole -not republicans or democrats- celebrated something? I say good for you all. Even if it´s only a momentary illusion of achievement and collective cheering that actually means nothing for the inmediate day-to-day lives of most the people cheering.

Manufacturing Dissent

Thanks to my colleague JohnO I get to read this FP article


http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/02/16/revolution_u?sms_ss=email&at_xt=4d5ef64e97c4ebf6%2C0


"The Serbian capital is home to the Center for Applied NonViolent Action and Strategies, or CANVAS, an organization run by young Serbs who had cut their teeth in the late 1990s student uprising against Slobodan Milosevic. After ousting him, they embarked on the ambitious project of figuring out how to translate their success to other countries. "

My take: Oh really?

U.S. Advice Guided Milosevic Opposition
Political Consultants Helped Yugoslav Opposition
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18395-2000Dec3?language=printer

Who really brought down Milosevic?
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A0DE6D81F3BF935A15752C1A9669C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=4

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Just how much money backed this objective is not clear. The United States Agency for International Development says that $25 million was appropriated just this year. Several hundred thousand dollars were given directly to Otpor for ''demonstration-support material, like T-shirts and stickers,'' says Donald L. Pressley, the assistant administrator. Otpor leaders intimate they also received a lot of covert aid -- a subject on which there is no comment in Washington. 

At the International Republican Institute, another nongovernmental Washington group financed partly by A.I.D., an official named Daniel Calingaert says he met Otpor leaders ''7 to 10 times'' in Hungary and Montenegro, beginning in October 1999. Some of the $1.8 million the institute spent in Serbia in the last year was ''provided direct to Otpor,'' he says. By this fall, Otpor was no ramshackle students' group; it was a well-oiled movement backed by several million dollars from the United States.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/nov/26/ukraine.usa

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
while the gains of the orange-bedecked "chestnut revolution" are Ukraine's, the campaign is an American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in western branding and mass marketing that, in four countries in four years, has been used to try to salvage rigged elections and topple unsavoury regimes.

Funded and organised by the US government, deploying US consultancies, pollsters, diplomats, the two big American parties and US non-government organisations, the campaign was first used in Europe in Belgrade in 2000 to beat Slobodan Milosevic at the ballot box.

Richard Miles, the US ambassador in Belgrade, played a key role. And by last year, as US ambassador in Tbilisi, he repeated the trick in Georgia, coaching Mikhail Saakashvili in how to bring down Eduard Shevardnadze.

Ten months after the success in Belgrade, the US ambassador in Minsk, Michael Kozak, a veteran of similar operations in central America, notably in Nicaragua, organised a near identical campaign to try to defeat the Belarus hardman, Alexander Lukashenko.

That one failed. "There will be no Kostunica in Belarus," the Belarus president declared, referring to the victory in Belgrade. But experience gained in Serbia, Georgia and Belarus has been invaluable in plotting to beat the regime of Leonid Kuchma in Kiev.

The operation - engineering democracy through the ballot box and civil disobedience - is now so slick that the methods have matured into a template for winning other people's elections. In the centre of Belgrade, there is a dingy office staffed by computer-literate youngsters who call themselves the Centre for Non-violent Resistance.

If you want to know how to beat a regime that controls the mass media, the judges, the courts, the security apparatus and the voting stations, the young Belgrade activists are for hire.

(...)The Democratic party's National Democratic Institute, the Republican party's International Republican Institute, the US state department and USAid are the main agencies involved in these grassroots campaigns as well as the Freedom House NGO and billionaire George Soros's open society institute.

US pollsters and professional consultants are hired to organise focus groups and use psephological data to plot strategy. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Leaving aside the issue of the qualities -or lack thereof- of the respective governments overthrowed, I´d love to go to the US of A and start a "grassroots" spray-painting and civil disobedience campaign against the government of the US of A.... then see how far do I get before getting thrown into jail... ;)

FC

Otto Reich says Uncle Sam will use its whip at LatAm once again!

US: Election results augur new policy toward Latin America – Americas Forum
http://www.hacer.org/latam/?p=6000

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"The November 2nd midterm elections that swept Republicans into power in the House of Representatives will bring in a more firm policy towards Latin America’s budding autocrats, Ambassador Otto Reich, former Assistant Secretary of State, recently told Americas Forum."
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Oh yea, Otto Reich...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Reich

Otto Reich´s legacy of white propaganda
http://rt.com/Top_News/2010-11-04/otto-reich-white-propaganda.html

Covert Propaganda: the Otto Reich File
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB40/

FC

Nestor Kirchner died. Uno menos. Este no jode mas.

 ̶A̶n̶d̶ ̶h̶e̶ ̶d̶i̶d̶ ̶a̶l̶l̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶,̶ ̶p̶l̶u̶s̶ ̶r̶e̶p̶a̶y̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶d̶e̶b̶t̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶I̶M̶F̶.̶ ̶A̶r̶g̶e̶n̶t̶i̶n̶a̶ ̶h̶a̶s̶ ̶b̶e̶e̶n̶ ̶e̶n̶j̶o̶y̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶h̶i̶g̶h̶ ̶g̶r̶o̶w̶t̶h̶ ̶r̶a̶t̶e̶s̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶l̶o̶w̶ ̶u̶n̶e̶m̶p̶l̶o̶y̶m̶e̶n̶t̶ ̶e̶v̶e̶r̶ ̶s̶i̶n̶c̶e̶.̶

̶

̶O̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶e̶i̶g̶n̶ ̶p̶o̶l̶i̶c̶y̶ ̶l̶e̶v̶e̶l̶,̶ ̶K̶i̶r̶c̶h̶n̶e̶r̶ ̶w̶a̶s̶ ̶e̶s̶s̶e̶n̶t̶i̶a̶l̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶r̶e̶g̶i̶o̶n̶a̶l̶ ̶i̶n̶t̶e̶g̶r̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶p̶o̶l̶i̶c̶i̶e̶s̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶c̶r̶e̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶U̶N̶A̶S̶U̶R̶,̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶u̶n̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶S̶o̶u̶t̶h̶ ̶A̶m̶e̶r̶i̶c̶a̶n̶ ̶c̶o̶u̶n̶t̶r̶i̶e̶s̶.̶ ̶

̶

̶S̶o̶,̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶n̶k̶s̶ ̶N̶e̶s̶t̶o̶r̶ ̶K̶i̶r̶c̶h̶n̶e̶r̶.̶

̶

̶T̶h̶a̶n̶k̶s̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶c̶r̶e̶a̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶"̶E̶n̶c̶u̶e̶n̶t̶r̶o̶"̶,̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶p̶u̶b̶l̶i̶c̶ ̶e̶d̶u̶c̶a̶t̶i̶v̶e̶ ̶T̶V̶ ̶c̶h̶a̶n̶n̶e̶l̶.̶

̶

̶T̶h̶a̶n̶k̶s̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶b̶i̶g̶g̶e̶s̶t̶ ̶p̶u̶b̶l̶i̶c̶ ̶w̶o̶r̶k̶s̶ ̶p̶r̶o̶g̶r̶a̶m̶m̶e̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶r̶e̶c̶e̶n̶t̶ ̶a̶r̶g̶e̶n̶t̶i̶n̶e̶ ̶h̶i̶s̶t̶o̶r̶y̶.̶

̶

̶T̶h̶a̶n̶k̶s̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶b̶o̶o̶s̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶e̶d̶u̶c̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶,̶ ̶s̶c̶i̶e̶n̶c̶e̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶t̶e̶c̶h̶n̶o̶l̶o̶g̶y̶ ̶b̶u̶d̶g̶e̶t̶s̶.̶

̶

̶T̶h̶a̶n̶k̶s̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶S̶A̶N̶E̶ ̶f̶i̶s̶c̶a̶l̶ ̶p̶o̶l̶i̶c̶i̶e̶s̶,̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶D̶U̶A̶L̶ ̶S̶U̶R̶P̶L̶U̶S̶E̶S̶ ̶(̶f̶i̶s̶c̶a̶l̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶t̶r̶a̶d̶e̶ ̶s̶u̶r̶p̶l̶u̶s̶e̶s̶)̶.̶

̶

̶T̶h̶a̶n̶k̶s̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶r̶e̶s̶t̶o̶r̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶o̶u̶r̶ ̶f̶a̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶p̶o̶l̶i̶t̶i̶c̶s̶,̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶s̶a̶n̶e̶ ̶p̶u̶b̶l̶i̶c̶ ̶p̶o̶l̶i̶c̶i̶e̶s̶.̶

Fué el líder de una de las bandas más creativas a la hora de asolar el erario público. Este no jode más. 

FC

Forget VNC, TurboVNC, TightVNC, UltraVNC, RealVNC... the good one is Tiger, TigerVNC

It seems like it was only yesterday that a team of very creative people at a joint research facility in Cambridge, UK -operated at the time by Italian firm Olivetti and US database giant Oracle (talk about strange bedfellows)- created "Virtual Network Computing" or VNC for short.

Then, over the years, the concept of a free software implementation of a "remote desktop" began to catch on (once upon a time people would buy propietary products to do this sort of thing, like "PC Anywhere" or IBM Desktop on Call, Win2You, etc, just to name a few).

Well, the problem with VNC was that while the underlying RFB protocol was very strong, some bean counter *ssholes at AT&T who first bought the reserach labs later decided they´d rather use the money more wisely and proceeded to shut down the ORL research labs in Cambridge. The Guardian lamented it here.

Over the years, people started making VNC stronger, faster, and forks of the original VNC started to appear: TightVNC, TurboVNC, UltraVNC, and finally... RealVNC.

So, fast forward to 2010... What of all flavours of VNC to use?.

My answer: none of the above.

My choice is TigerVNC.

TigerVNC is a fork of RealVNC, incorporating many of the improvements from TightVNC and better security (which on RealVNC are features in the paid/commercial version only).

See:
http://tigervnc.org

Windows and linux builds are available at:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/tigervnc/files/

From the site: “TigerVNC is an advanced VNC implementation. It is based on the fourth generation of VNC. TigerVNC also includes features from the TightVNC and TurboVNC projects.

This includes accelerated JPEG compression. TigerVNC supports the latest X.Org X server.”

Hope this helps...
FC

Calacanis pants on fire

"Liar, liar, pants on fire!"
http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/11/facebook-calacanis-is-lying/

It seems "serial entrepreneur" or "Netscape.com portal destroyer" as I´d call him, is in trouble again.

FC

ICANN´s Tina Dam was a big deal

ICANN´s Tina Dam, whom I had never seen before, was on CNN last Friday discussing the news story of native language domain names for Middle East languages.... and surprisingly, she said it´s "really hard to explain" why the new availability of URLs in Arabic is "such a big deal" (CNN anchor´s question) for Middle East people...

D´oh!.

Couldn´t she make the point that the current system of typing in western characters for URLs would be akin to us westerners having to type URLs and domain names in Kanji or some other foreign character set?.

Double D´oh!.

Like the saying goes... sometimes common sense is the least common of all.

FC
PS: Tina Dam is a hottie.

Still, maybe she wasn´t well prepared for such hard-hitting questions. ;)