Michael Schubart’s Weblog

Sometimes, when I send an e-mail like this

Subject: Request for…

Hello Bob, could you please…

I get a response like this:

Subject: Re: *** SPAM: Request for…

Hello Michael, sure, it costs…

How lame is that? Apparently they are running an automated filter which thinks that my mail is spam and tags it by adding “*** SPAM:” to the subject. Obviously, since they reply to me, my mail is not spam. Instead of covering the mistake by removing the tag from their reply, they just hit the “Reply” button without thinking.

The response can be read as “We think your message is junk, but we’ll reply anyway.” I’ve seen this at work, from vendors. Is this the message you’d want to send to your customers?

A cell phone with a built-in digital camera is hardly remarkable these days, but the Kyocera A5502K has two cameras:

One camera is located on the back of the phone. Another camera on the front of the phone, next to the display, lets you take pictures of yourself while checking your own image on the display…

From the NinJava mailing list:

Well, it’s been a while but we finally got things organized. Hope to see everyone there!

Our next meeting is scheduled for Monday, June 27th 28th, 2004 from 7:00 PM. We’re meeting again at Temple University. See below for details.

********** MEETING AGENDA **********

The meeting’s agenda is as follows:

7:00pm - 7:15pm Networking and Setup

7:15 - 9:00 PM “Requirements Driven Engineering and Borland’s Caliber RM tool” by Shigeru Yamada of Borland International.

Defining the requirements for a project before beginning on design and coding is a commonly accepted software engineering practice. The process of gathering, managing and tracking requirements can be quite difficult. This talk will discuss the process of gathering and managing requirements and how this can be achieved using a tool such as Borland’s Caliber RM software. A demonstration of Caliber RM will be shown.

Bio: Shigeru Yamada has worked in the software industry in both Silicon Valley and Japan. He currently works for Borland in Tokyo, as Director of Professional Service Group and System Engineering Group.

———–LOCATION———–

On the fifth floor out the elevator’s turn left and left at the of the hall is room 500.

This URL has access info for TUJ: http://www.tuj.ac.jp/newsite/main/maps/index.html

I’ll try to be there.

Two days ago I wrote about how Textpattern’s licensing situation seemed rather unclear. Well, yesterday Dean Allen released the latest version and clearly says: “It’s GPL.” Good decision!

Is your face too big? Help is near: Wear this stylish mask while taking a bath to achieve a cute small face (”kogao”). Seen in a drug store in Nagoya.

My blog is now powered by WordPress. The comment spam on the previous MovableType installation was getting out of hand, which I took as an opportunity to switch to an open source solution.

I also looked at Textpattern but decided to go with WP for the following reasons:

• TP is developed mostly by one guy, while WP lists several developers.
• The WP developement is more transparent, with a SourceForge project and a CVS repository.
• I’m not sure how open source TP really is or will be in the future: The license is not on the web site, this post claims it’s BSD, this one tries to explain how the license works without telling what the license actually is. See also here and here (”free for personal sites”). WP, on the other hand, is GPL. Period.
• With WP, I found it easier to customize permalinks into a format I like.
• Importing my MT data went more smoothly with WP.

PS: Comments are now enabled again.

Update: As of version g1.19, Textpattern is GPL.