Yahoo cube (Photo credit: dajobe)

BFirst let me share some good articles to read from some academic friends of mine:

• 13 Ways Companies Kill Creativity 13 Ways
• 21 Skills We Need the Most in a 21st Century Economy 21 Skills
• 25 iPad Apps to Get Your Creative Juices Flowing Apps
• 25 Hashtags Every MBA Student Should Follow Hashtags
• 14 Ways Social Media May Soon Change Your Doctor’s Visit 14 Ways
• What 25 Personal Finance Experts Desperately Want New Grads to Know Finance Experts
• 20 Best Smartphone Apps to Combat School Stress smart phones
• The 9 Worst Employee Freak-Outs in History Employee Freak-Outs
• 15 Secrets of the Most Successful Self-Learners 15 Secrets
• 10 of the Most Coveted College Internships College Internships
• The Biggest Villains Behind Today’s Student Loan Crisis Biggest Villains
• 20 Interesting Ways Colleges are Using Pinterest 20 Interesting Ways
• 18 Proven Ways to Help Recruiters Find You on LinkedIn 18 Proven Ways

Yahoo resume mistake?

Let me focus your attention on a Yahoo Executive that had to step down.  It’s because he lied about his degree.

Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson Officially Steps Down [UPDATED] Yahoo resume mistake

The problem is that Scott Thompson claimed he “graduated with a degree in accounting and computer science in 1978 from Stonehill College.”  In reality, he only had an accounting degree.

But here’s my issue.  The story also says this: “Thompson, who was before the president of PayPal, became CEO of Yahoo on January 4.”  So if he was president of PayPal, that should get him a job as CEO at Yahoo.  Why continue the same degree lie, which is meaningless – when you have been in top management at another firm?

LibreOffice-3.4 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

What’s LibreOffice up to?

LibreOffice started because they didn’t like that OpenOffice was run by Oracle.  They started their own version.  But a few months ago, OpenOffice was turned over to the Apache foundation.

In last weekend’s blog post I mentioned having trouble installing Open Office (i.e. Apache version) on my HP windows computer.  I had to manually click on the setup file, after all the files expanded into temporary storage.

When I tried installing LibreOffice on my HP and Dell computers, I got an error with Dell.  It kept prompting me to close an already installed LibreOffice – no such animal.  But I was able to install it on my HP machine with no issue.

Two competing open source office products?  Why not?  I suspect the issue is the number of people and organizations provides product support.  This will keep the fire going. Let’s survey some articles from this week:

• Lotus Symphony realigns with Apache OpenOffice Lotus Symphony
• A Tale of Two Suites: Do We Still Need OpenOffice.org? A Tale of Two Suites
• Can Apache OpenOffice Still Compete with LibreOffice? Still Compete

I suspect that Microsoft office development will fuel the enhancement requests on LibreOffice and OpenOffice.

Now I will keep both versions running on my HP computer.  They seem to work with the same document types.  So it should be easy to work on the same document in either office product.

I wonder if Oracle just wanted to get out of the free open source business?  Or did they find LibreOffice a threat and figured an Apache donation would be a good strategic move?

Business Traveler’s Mobile Dependence Infographic created by PC Housing

• 7 Foreign Languages Today’s Business Students Should Learn onlinebusinessdeg…
• 10 Gadgets Moms Love the Most http://bit.ly/JfihUK 
• The 10 Most Impressive Virtual High Schools in the U.S. http://bit.ly/JBrTVo

Opinion polling for the United States presidential election, 2008, Barack Obama Mitt Romney (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Same sex marriage and politics
Obama announced that he supports gay marriage.  Mitt Romney mentioned that he was against it.  I’m sure Rick Santurum would oppose it also.  The reason?  Mitt Romney belongs to the Church of Latter Day Saints.  Rick Santurum belongs to the Roman Catholic Church.  Both churches  – along with Eastern Orthodox Churches – would oppose the Obama position.

Then ABC News does some analysis.  It’s shown that Obama’s declaration is popular with the younger generation.  It is also popular with a slim US majority.  So it appears this is a good political stance – or is it?

For years, I belonged to a  US Quaker church.  They believed in the inner light and worshipped in silence.  Then two males approached the church body.  They would join the church if they could get married there.  I made a choice and left the church, once I found out the church would marry the couple and let them join.

I still have friends among that Quaker body and receive their email newsletter.  But I can’t belong to their church.

Then came the news that Mitt Romney bullied some male – supposedly gay – in high school.  Some of his fellow high school witnesses are now doctors, lawyers and other professionals.  But the ABC news service asked a good question.  Isn’t the timing of this story a bit convenient?

My focus is on the economy.  Whether Obama eats hot chili peppers or Romney dances the rumba isn’t that important.  What matters to me is whom can best fix the economy.

OpenOffice under Apache

Its been a few months since Oracle turned over OpenOffice to Apache.  I have installed the first Apache release on my Dell and HP Windows computer.  There were a couple of minor glitches:

With the new release, you must specify a Java JRE.  There is this annoying button that prompts you, when you open a document.  It takes a while to go away, even when I try to follow the directions.  If you have a Windows environment, there should be a Sun JRE it finds automatically.

On my HP machine, the installer extracts the files but stops.  I had to go into the directory where the extracted files are found.  Then I had to click on the setup file to complete the installation.  I’m not sure what the problem is.  But I’m using the production version. I also notice that Open Office writer opens up on Windows start-up.

I still think OpenOffice under Apache will be better than under Oracle.  Not that Oracle had any issues – mind you.  I just like the Apache model and approach.

It should be interesting to see how the coming months shape up.  I joined their Facebook page and group.  Right now, there are not many people on it.