Microsoft Education Competencies: Humor

Microsoft has a very funny page about the serious side of Humor - how to define, measure and improve humor as a competency. Here is one of the interview questions they suggest to evaluate a candidate's level of humor:

Microsoft Education Competencies: Humor: "Tell me about a time when you used humor to defuse a tense situation. How did you approach it? What was the outcome? What did you learn from the situation? Have you been able to apply what you learned in a new situation where humor was appropriate?"

Linux Live CD as a secure client machine for remote connectivity

To minimize chances that a compromised remote machine might connect to a secure network, I have toyed with the option of a secure virtual machine as a VPN client. This is another, similar approach to securing a network from potentially compromised remote hardware.

Can Ubuntu save online banking? - Computerworld Blogs: "CNL [Bank] is seriously considering making available free Ubuntu Linux bootable 'live CD' discs in its branches and by mail. The discs would boot up Linux run Firefox and be configured to go directly to CNL Bank s Web site. 'Everything you need to do will be sandboxed within that CD ' he says. That should protect customers from increasingly common drive-by downloads and other vectors for malicious code that may infect and lurk on PCs waiting to steal the user account names passwords and challenge questions normally required to access online banking. A bootable CD works because it s isolated from the host PC environment. Malware on the host can t touch it - and any malware picked up when running from the CD-ROM goes away once the CD is ejected. 'When you eject the CD you have removed everything off the machine ' McLaughlin [a Certified Information Security Professional and CIO of CNL Bank] says."

Happy new year 2010!!

Top 10 Underhyped Webapps, 2009 Edition - Webapps - Lifehacker

Top 10 Underhyped Webapps, 2009 Edition - Webapps - Lifehacker:

"Lovely Charts succeeds at what it promises. The Flash-based webapp produces
very clean-looking charts for all kinds of purposes, be it a flowchart to
describe a process, a diagram describing a network setup, conference seating, or
whatever you might want to sketch out on the back of a napkin."

ZoomIt

ZoomIt: "ZoomIt is screen zoom and annotation tool for technical presentations that include application demonstrations. ZoomIt runs unobtrusively in the tray and activates with customizable hotkeys to zoom in on an area of the screen, move around while zoomed, and draw on the zoomed image."

Robot Dog Therapy: Science Videos - Science News - ScienCentral

Cool stuff from my alma mater Saint Louis University:

There's no forgetting that Aibo is a robot pup, but he makes a good companion for nursing home residents, according to a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Directors Association.

William Banks, a physician and author of the new study, says that playtime with Aibo reduces loneliness in nursing homes as much as visits from a real-live drooling and shedding animal. "We thought there would be a difference in loneliness between the two," says Banks. "What we found basically was that the living dog and Aibo were equally effective in decreasing loneliness."

Robot Dog Therapy: Science Videos - Science News - ScienCentral

Windows Tip: Sysinternals Live is One-Stop Shop for Launching Must-Have Utilities

From Lifehacker.com:

If you've ever done any serious Windows troubleshooting, you've no doubt come across a freeware utility or two by Sysinternals...

...you can point your browser to http://live.sysinternals.com/ for no-nonsense access to any Sysinternals tool. Even better, though, you can open up Windows Explorer and point it to \\live.sysinternals.com\ to browse and launch any Sysinternals app as though you've already downloaded and installed it on your computer. That means next time you're doing tech support for friends and you forgot your PC Rescue Kit, you can quickly get to any Sysinternals tool for help.

Windows Tip: Sysinternals Live is One-Stop Shop for Launching Must-Have Utilities