NotesTracker Guide Version 5.3 has been added to Docstoc

NotesTracker is alive and well, and the guide for Version 5.3 Guide has been added to Docstoc.

View or download the guide at
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/159510147/NotesTracker-Guide-Version-53

The guide introduces NotesTracker, explaining what it is and how it can be of value to your organization by enhancing your IBM Notes and Domino applications.

Following that is a section that shows how to configure and administer NotesTracker in each application, and finally a section for Notes developers explaining the steps used to add NotesTracker to the design of the applications.

Hyperlinks in the table of contents make it easy to jump to the various sections and subsections.

Legally, the bank owns a depositor’s funds–Super Scary!

What happened in Cyprus to bank depositors’ funds surely must have scared everyone a lot—except for the bankers themselves that is.

Those of us outside Cyprus would all have thought to ourselves “Thank goodness that can’t happen in my country” and gone on with our day-to-day existence.

But apparently that’s not the case already in some countries, and probably in more and more countries over time.

Read this scary article by Ellen Brown at the Web Of Debt website:
It Can Happen Here: The Confiscation Scheme Planned for US and UK Depositors

Apparently New Zealand plus probably other countries are planning something similar.

“Can the banks do that?” she asks (emphasis mine):

Although few depositors realize it, legally the bank owns the depositor’s funds as soon as they are put in the bank. Our money becomes the bank’s, and we become unsecured creditors holding IOUs or promises to pay. (See here and here.) But until now the bank has been obligated to pay the money back on demand in the form of cash. Under the FDIC-BOE plan, our IOUs will be converted into “bank equity.” The bank will get the money and we will get stock in the bank. With any luck we may be able to sell the stock to someone else, but when and at what price? Most people keep a deposit account so they can have ready cash to pay the bills.

. . . If our IOUs are converted to bank stock, they will no longer be subject to insurance protection but will be “at risk” and vulnerable to being wiped out, just as the Lehman Brothers shareholders were in 2008.

To become even more scared, you only have to read an earlier post of hers:
A Safe and a Shotgun or Publicly-owned Banks? The Battle of Cyprus

This has got me pondering how to make my funds safer. Stuffed under the mattress, or buried in a biscuit tin under the lemon tree in the back yard?

NotesTracker Guide Version 5.3 has been added to Scribd

NotesTracker is alive and well, and the guide for Version 5.3 Guide has been added to Scribd.

View or download the guide at
http://www.scribd.com/doc/148077501/NotesTracker-Version-5-3-Guide

The guide introduces NotesTracker, explaining what it is and how it can be of value to your organization by enhancing your IBM Notes and Domino applications.

Following that is a section that shows how to configure and administer NotesTracker in each application, and finally a section for Notes developers explaining the steps used to add NotesTracker to the design of the applications.

Hyperlinks in the table of contents make it easy to jump to the various sections and subsections.

Some free widgets for your website

I just stumbled upon a range of free widgets that should add value to your web sites, blogs and other online publications.

Because of the nature of the website (oilprice.com) the widgets are all related to energy, precious metals, and related financial matters.

You’ll find them here:
Energy Widgets | Metal Widgets | Financial Widgets | News Widgets | Clocks Widgets

Here are a few of them in action…

    

    

    

           

Do dogs show empathy? It could well be so.

Just back from checking that our pooch was comfortable on a clear. cool early Winter’s night here Down Under in Melbourne. He was okay, and seemed to appreciate the visit!

Back inside, I went to ABC Australia’s Catalyst science show’s website to catch up on their latest episode. You may recall that back in April I pointed out a story about dogs cute appearance probably being due to their facial musculature (see Cute Canines, Eyes That Engage You and watch the video).

Well, in this week’s new episode there’s another intriguing story, this one about dog empathy which the story describes as:

“. . . the naturally occurring subjective experience of similarity between the feelings expressed by self and others without losing sight of whose feelings belong to who. Translated, what that means is to have true empathy, you have to not only feel someone's pain, you have to know that the emotion belongs to them and not to yourself.”

Watch the video. What do you think?

I’m somewhat convinced. I do know that if I’m playing with my dog (and others before him), I only have to howl or yelp in a certain way – making the sort of sound you hear if you accidentally tread on the dog, or if the dog gets bitten in a dogfight – then consistently the dog will immediately stop whatever he’s doing and cuddle up close to to me as if to offer sympathy.

You only have to do a simple search or two and you’ll find much other material about the unique dog-human relationship.

Fascinating Facts about Flu - What Flu is and isn’t

As southern winter sets in here Down Under, I’m aware that for the previous two years I suffered a number of quite nasty attacks of what I called “the Flu” – But was it really influenza, or something else, and will I succumb again this year despite again getting jabbed with Flu vaccine?

Just-published this first week of June 2013 is a “Facts about Flu” series of articles in The Conversation that sheds light on this topic. There are insights and clarifications, as well as lots of shadowy and dark areas where our knowledge remains deficient.

This excellent series is as follows:

Part one: Of influenza, flu, potions and key opinion leaders

Part two: Influenza vaccine for 2013: who, what, why and when?

Part three: H1N1, H5N1, H7N9? What on earth does it all mean

Part four: The Tamiflu saga shows why all research data should be public

Part five: CSL’s flu vaccine leaves a hole in Australia’s pandemic plan

Part six: Should flu shots be mandatory for health-care workers?

Part seven: The Holy Grail of influenza research: a universal flu vaccine

Part eight: Is it really the flu? The other viruses making you ill in winter

Part nine: The heart of the matter: how effective is the flu jab really?

Enjoy excellent online jigsaw puzzles at Jigsaw Explorer

I just came across a site with outstanding interactive jigsaw puzzles, go to Jigsaw Explorer if such puzzles turn you on.

For example, this tower at Beget, Spain (with the option selected to remind you what the “box top” is for the puzzle):

Actually, rather than jigsaws my definite preference is for word puzzles, not only as a consumer but and in the past I’ve created some crosswords that were based around various themes in information technology.

Unfortunately they’re now offline after a redesign of the site where I created them, and the site owner isn’t interested in bringing them back to life.

I really should create some more of these interactive crosswords, this time on my own site so that nobody can take them offline. I used the highly recommended Crossword Forge to build them:

Crosswords take a long time to compile, especially when the choice of words is confined to a theme rather than the general language. Software like Crossword Forge significantly eases the burden.

Windows 8 will not save Network Discovery settings (yet another unwanted issue)

Late in January 2013 I upgraded my main desktop  work system from Windows 7 Ultimate to Windows 8 Pro (both 64-bit), which went quite smoothly on the whole.

I had problems with an external hard disk docking device’s USB 3.0 driver that took some trouble to sort out. The dock would run in USB 2.0 mode only until I eventually found an updated driver that gave back the USB 3.0 capability I had been enjoying under Windows 7. Usually Windows Update does all this, but in this case it not discover the updated driver, and in the end I had to telephone the manufacturer in the USA to get the required information.

I had to reinstall a few of my (very many) applications, and tweak some of the Windows 8 settings, but eventually – after installing Classic Shell to give back the Start button and equally important the heritage Windows hierarchical menu structure needed to maintain control over all those (very many) applications.

So now I have the desktop system running almost exactly like Windows 7, at full productivity and avoiding the stupid “Modern UI” tiled approach that is not at all appropriate for a non-touchscreen desktop system. (Just last week I purchased a touchscreen slate device running Windows 8 Pro, and the tiled UI works reasonably well in that environment.)

However I am experiencing a major Windows networking problem at the moment, which remains unresolved despite my spending many hours seeking a solution. (I think this problem arose only in the last month or so, but I experiment with a vast amount of software that might be responsible, and am unsure about the timing and about any possible cause.)

I run a simple Windows workgroup (no domain or homegroup), and utilize the username/password method to control all logins across the network.

The symptom is that, while the main system cannot access any of the other Windows systems, including my new Windows 8 tablet, the others can access each other across the network but none can gain access to the main Windows 8 system.

UPDATE:
The following screenshot should help in explaining what I now get -- on the Windows 8 main system -- with Windows Explorer (a.k.a. File Explorer) when I attempt to browse from the main system to other systems:



I know from painful experience in past years that this is a network browsing issue, so on the main Windows 8 system I immediately went to the Network and Sharing Center panel with Change advanced sharing settings and clicked on it:



From past experience with Windows 7 I know that this networking problem is usually solved by ensuring that network discovery is turned on, which is done by selecting the following  two circled radio buttons:



However after doing this (and saving the changes) I found that the networking issue remained. Upon returning to the Advanced sharing settings panel I found that these two settings were still turned off. Repeating the steps always came up with the same result: network discovery always remains off.

I have spent many hours scouring the Web looking for a resolution, to no avail. Others have encountered the same issue, but none of the suggested solutions (such as ensuring that a certain set of Windows services all are started)  had any effect on my system.

What can be causing these two network discovery radio buttons always to switch back to the OFF position (or, more correctly, never to be allowed to switch to the ON position)? A key observation is that whenever I temporarily turn Windows Firewall off, the networking access issue goes away, and when I turn the Firewall back on the issue comes back.

So far, I have not been able to determine what Windows Firewall configuration setting or feature/function could be causing this. Certainly it’s not die to some deliberate action on my part.
I have tried the troubleshooter, to no avail:



I've examined Windows Firewall settings, to no avail (not that I’m an expert in this field):



I've looked at various group policy settings, to no avail. I’m even less of an expert here, and could easily be looking in the wrong places:




One possible inkling of what might be awry in my main Windows 8 system comes from digging into the Allow an app or feature through Windows Firewall settings:



This yields a list of applications, in alphabetical order, the central part of which is:



My friend Paul in Canberra took time out the other day to have a look inside Windows Firewall on his Windows 8 system, and pointed out that he had an entry for Network Discovery. (Thanks Paul, this gave me a promising new area to explore.)

When I examine this list in a virtual test machine, as expected I get a different list, but the interesting thing is that – unlike on my main Windows 8 system – this virtual system  contains an entry for Network Discovery:



So this is where I’m at today.  Why doesn’t my system have this Network Discovery entry in the Windows Firewall list of allowed apps? It’s certainly not due to some explicit action that I took. I have that certain feeling that this is related to why I cannot turn network discovery on unless Windows Firewall is turned off.

Any feedback and suggestions would be most welcome!

A way to repair Windows Firewall, and Windows connectivity problems resuming from Sleep mode
BE SURE TO VISIT THIS LATER POST

Cute Canines - Eyes That Engage You

My mother adored cats, and I was brought up with felines of all fur colors, temperaments ranging from cuddly to haughty, taking control as they do all over the house. But my wife hates cats, so it’s been dogs during my married life.

I’ve gotten to really like dogs, and I’m in good company. For example, British prime minister Winston Churchill in the movie The Gathering Storm is pictured one day sitting in the farm section of his country property pondering the animals around him. He comments to an approaching visitor:

“You know, a cat looks down upon a man, and a dog looks up to a man, but a pig will look a man in the eye and see his equal.”

I don’t know about pigs, the closest I’ve ever been to one is while eating ham or bacon. Can’t say that I’ve eaten cat or dog (knowingly at least, but then again I have been to parts of Asia).

The dogs that we’ve had have always been cute and devoted. What is it about dogs that makes them into “man’s best friend” as is generally accepted?

Of course, there’s the services they faithfully carry out for us: watchdogs, seeing-eye dogs, wartime duty, lifesaving, farm dogs effortlessly shepherding sheep, and much. much more.

But it was an episode of the outstanding Catalyst science program Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) that put forward another fascinating insight. Catalyst features stories about dogs every now and again.

For example, there’s this story about dogs’ eyes:

It was thought, that like humans, all dogs have the same eye structure and see the world the same way. But Australian researchers have discovered that dogs had a completely different retina. Amazingly, it means different dogs see the world completely differently.

All very interesting, but it doesn’t answer my question of why, of all domestic animals, dogs seem so cute and appealing (compared with cats, especially).

It seems that there could be a good scientific reason for this. There’s now a plausible theory that it all has to do with dogs’ eyebrows.

Watch the video, and read the transcript.

Are you convinced?

Sometimes I wonder if Microsoft developers really think

I’ve just been  was using the Windows 8 registry editor (regedit.exe) in an attempt to remove the remnants of an application that wouldn’t uninstall cleanly.

Even with my shiny new 8-core processor, twin fast Intel SSDs in RAID configuration plus 32 GB of RAM (rarely is even a quarter of this RAM used), there were periods of up to a minute when the registry editor was scanning for a search string.

During this boring period it simply displayed the following bland, deadly boring [Windows 8 flat, colorless, unappealing] dialog box:

I wonder why on earth some of Microsoft’s developers seem so short-sighted and not to think about the user’s experience. . . . Searching the registry for what, fellas?

In this case, if it was me writing the registry editor then the above dialog would for sure have looked something like this quick mock-up:

It ain’t rocket science!