Gianluca Varisco

Be Careful - A ‘heads up’ for those men who may be regular Home Depot
customers.Over the last month I became a victim of a clever scam while out
shopping. Simply going out to get supplies has turned out to be quite
traumatic. Don’t be naive enough to think it couldn’t happen to you or
your friends.

Here’s how the scam works:

Two very hot girls come over to your car as you are
packing your shopping into the trunk. They both start wiping your
windshield with a rag and Windex, with their breasts almost falling out
of their skimpy T-shirts. It is impossible not to look.

When you thank them and offer them a tip, they say ‘No’ and instead ask
you for a ride to another Home Depot. You agree and they get in the
backseat. On the way, they start undressing. Then one of them climbs
over into the front seat and starts crawling all over you, while the
other one steals your wallet.

I had my wallet stolen May 4th, 9th, 10th, twice on the 15th, 17th, 20th
& 24th. Also June 1st, 4th, twice on the 8th, 16th, 23rd, 24th, three
times last Saturday and very likely again this upcoming weekend.

So tell your friends to be careful.

P.S. Wal-Mart has wallets on sale $2.99 each

Found here!

I just updated this blog to WordPress 2.6!

Here are some of the smaller features and improvements in 2.6:

• Word count! Never guess how many words are in your post anymore.
• Image captions, so you can add sweet captions like Political Ticker does under your images.
• Bulk management of plugins.
• A completely revamped image control to allow for easier inserting, floating, and resizing. It’s now fully integrated with the WYSIWYG.
• Drag-and-drop reordering of Galleries.
• Plugin update notification bubble.
• Customizable default avatars.
• You can now upload media when in full-screen mode.
• Remote publishing via XML-RPC and APP is now secure (off) by default, but you can turn it on easily through the options screen.
• Full SSL support in the core, and the ability to force SSL for security.
• You can now have many thousands of pages or categories with no interface issues.
• Ability to move your wp-config file and wp-content directories to a custom location, for “clean” SVN checkouts.
• Select a range of checkboxes with “shift-click.”
• You can toggle between the Flash uploader and the classic one.
• A number of proactive security enhancements, including cookies and database interactions.
• Stronger better faster versions of TinyMCE, jQuery, and jQuery UI.
• Version 2.6 fixes approximately 194 bugs.

Porte Aperte 2008
Anche quest’anno il servizio delle aule didattiche informatizzate dell’Area Sistemi Informativi dell’Università degli Studi di Pavia sarà presente a “Porte Aperte”, l’iniziativa ­ promossa dal COR ­ che ha lo scopo di promuovere e semplificare il processo decisionale agli studenti e alle loro famiglie che intendono iscriversi all’università.
Durante la manifestazione, che si svolgerà il prossimo 16 luglio nei magnifici cortili dell’Ateneo pavese, i tecnici dell’Aule Didattiche presenteranno agli studenti i servizi a loro offerti (accesso alla rete WiFi di Ateneo, autenticazione centralizzata per accedere dalle aule, ECDL).
Allo scopo di diffondere la cultura dell’Open Source, verranno distribuiti gratuitamente CD dell’ultima release di Linux Fedora 9 Live con diversi applicativi ritenuti di interessante uso didattico. Agli studenti verrà inoltre illustrato, durante i 3 incontri pevisti, l’uso del sistema operativo e dei pacchetti contenuti nel CD.

• Per maggiori informazioni: porteaperte.linux@unipv.it

The Free Software Foundation published in its Community blog the 5 real reasons to avoid iPhone 3G:

• iPhone completely blocks free software. Developers must pay a tax to Apple, who becomes the sole authority over what can and can’t be on everyone’s phones.
• iPhone endorses and supports Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) technology.
• iPhone exposes your whereabouts and provides ways for others to track you without your knowledge.
• iPhone won’t play patent- and DRM-free formats like Ogg Vorbis and Theora.
• iPhone is not the only option. There are better alternatives on the horizon that respect your freedom, don’t spy on you, play free media formats, and let you use free software — like the FreeRunner.

At the beginning, I thought about buying for myself an iPhone 3G (launched today in Italy), but due to its high costs (especially for the version without a long-term contract) I’d probably end to disassembly it as the iFixIt guys did yesterday ;-).

Last but not least, I’m totally in agree with FSFE: it’s not a news that Apple doesn’t care about its customers and their rights (WTF is privacy?).

Yesterday I entirely spent the morning at Novell offices in Sesto S. Giovanni (Milan, Italy) for their Web 2.0 Tour called “Collaboration Tour“.

Organized by Alessandra Vidili (Workgroup Sales Specialist in Novell), the event has also seen the partecipation of two of their Italian partners:

• Ounet Sistemi
• MSD Systems

Main topic of the event was their Collaboration Suite, made up of different components and products: GroupWise, Open Enterprise Server, Open Workgroup Suite, Teaming + Conferencing.

What I liked more is, without doubts, their Teaming + Conferencing solution based on ICECore technology: features such as Web and Voice Conferencing, Personal and Team Workspaces, Application and Desktop Sharing are really needed, nowadays, in an Enterprise environment.

Thanks Novell for have decided, at the end, to accept me as attendee