TR Out Loud - April 10, 2009

Sonja Thompson: It's been a while since I've been in my little studio here, but I didn't miss the PLACE as much as I did the people. Now, we've got a lot of stuff to cover today, so let's get to it!

I'm Sonja Thompson, a senior editor for TechRepublic, and this is TROLOV -- or TR Out Loud on Video -- for April 10th, 2009.

What's everyone been talking about? According to the data, here are the top 5 discussions of the week:

#1: "Video: TR Out Loud - April 3, 2009." Oh, wait... there wasn't a TROLOV last Friday! April Fools!

#1: "It was right to fire the chairman of GM." In this post, John McKee, aka TechRepublic's CareerCoach, talks about why he thinks Obama was right to fire General Motor's CEO Richard Wagoner. John also included a poll, and at the time of this recording, the majority of respondents selected the option "Yes - someone needed to get this thing moving forward or we'll lose more tax money." Take a look at this discussion thread to see what the TR community thinks about this decision. I'll link to this and the other top discussions of the week in the blog notes.

Sonja Thompson: And the second most popular discussion of the week was started from a post that was written by Toni Bowers called "Career sabotage by co-workers: Does it really happen?" Now, Toni, you wrote this based on an experience that you heard about from a "friend" right?

Toni Bowers: You were the one who told me that everyone was out to get me, remember? Actually, I posted this, and I asked the question "Does this really happen?" facetiously because I knew it did. And people were like, "Take off your rose-colored glasses." Boy, they gave me almost 300 examples of how it happens.

Sonja Thompson: Wow, okay, so the last sentence of your post was you asking if people have ever experienced career sabotage. Were there some interesting stories about this in the discussion thread?

Toni Bowers: It just blew me away. They went from a co-worker sabotaging you by what he says behind your back or stealing credit for your work, and the other extreme was people actually logging on to your computer and visiting certain sites when you're not in the office. Scary stuff.

Sonja Thompson: Wow. Well, this was really good stuff, Toni, and now we're all paranoid.

Toni Bowers: Good, me too!

Sonja Thompson: Thanks again.

Toni Bowers: Bye.

Sonja Thompson: #3. "Conficker.C: April Fools or may be not." Michael Kassner posted this informative and insightful piece in TechRepublic's IT Security blog. Michael talks about the Conficker code, its various names, and what to do if your system is infected. He also says that, in his humble opinion, the exact date doesn't matter. What matters is if the millions of infected computers do get organized. Right on, Michael.

#4. "Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 install is broken." TechRepublic's Senior Editor Mark Kaelin has been covering IE 8 install issues, since he experienced them first-hand a couple of weeks ago, and there really aren't a lot of other places covering this information on the Web. Of course, this was the perfect place for the TR community to bash a Microsoft product -- BUT, there were actually some people in the discussion thread who claim IE 8 is GREAT. The verdict is still out... take a look and see!

#5. "Shocked: 'Indispensible' IT pro gets a job." Well, lookee here... TechRepublic member jdclyde landed a new job, and we are so happy for him! We even did a little cheer when I announced this news at our last editorial meeting. Keep your eyes peeled for another guest post from jdclyde in the TR Out Loud blog in the near future. Congrats, JD!

Before we get to the top members on the boards, I just want to remind people to check out the Questions of the Week post that are published every Monday on the TR Out Loud blog. People are actually sending me questions to feature in this post, so I'm counting on you all to help out. Pretty please?

Now, on to the TR members who were awarded the most thumbs up in the Questions forum over the past week:

Six people tied for 5th place: sidekick, robo_dev, Michael Jay, Maevinn, electronics_md, and The Scummy One

Five people tied for 4th place: t_mcnally_2001, Old Mycroft, ThumbsUp2, BFilmFan, and tardcart

Four people tied for 3rd place: Boxfiddler, CG IT, OH Smeg, and neilb

#2: Jacky Howe

And #1: seanferd

And here are the top 5 members with the most total posts on the site in the past seven days:

#5: Jacky Howe

#4: OH Smeg

#3: jdclyde

#2: seanferd

#1: The Scummy One

Sonja Thompson: You know who also had a break last week? TR's moderator, Tammy Cavadias. Not that she had a break from the spam, because that's never ending. Let's take a look at what kind of stuff she's been dealing with this past week.

Tammy Cavadias: Hi, everyone, Hi, Sonja. Well, we're back this week with the weekly Spam Buster report, and this is a complete beginner's guide to what a laptop is all about -- called the beginner's guide to laptop spamming. And next up we have the HIPPA spam -- the Health Insurance Portability Act. Hip-hip-hurray! Good-bye. See ya! And this tool will change the way you do business. iWorkWell.com. And if you don't work well, I guess you could always make money from home doing, what else, spamming from your laptop. Well, that'll do it for me this week. I'm off to finish doing my nice little tomatoes, so I can have some nice rotten tomatoes to throw at people, now that I found out that these little things will produce a lot more than I thought they would. I'll see you guys all next week. Bye.

Sonja Thompson: Earlier this week, I noticed that jdclyde had posted a question about whether or not I should be allowed to go on vacation ever again. Somewhere in the middle of that discussion, BFilmFan said that he figured out that I was really hanging out at some beach club, indulging on tropical girlie drink, oogling the local Tarzans, and dancing to the Ying Yang twins. OH Smeg suggested that my son Andrew Flip video me in the act, and so I promised I would do just that. Here are a couple little snippets of what I did on Spring Break.

Andrew Thompson: Whatcha doing, Mom?

Sonja Thompson: I'm playing Prince of Persia, PS3... Dead Space... Heavenly Sword... Ratchet and Clank... Assassin's Creed.

Sonja Thompson: And here's a little phone video, compliments of CG IT.

CG IT: Los Angeles skyline from downtown LA. This is CG IT.

Sonja Thompson: Tammy Cavadias sent in a few photos for the Garden Club gallery, but I need more, more, more photos to justify creating and publishing another community gallery on the site. Please send your Garden Club photos to trol@techrepublic.com.

I received a couple other photos recently -- this one from Al Fleage. He thinks that TechRepublic's Trivia Geek, Jay Garmon, is secretly Romulan. And this one from jdclyde, who claims that if I don't smile -- oh, and I've GOT to put on some Vulcan ears. You guys aren't right.

The last Question of the Week, sent in by The Scummy One, was: "When trying out Linux, how many distros did you download and install before finding one that you liked?" And I added, "If you haven't tried Linux, why not?" 

According to boxfiddler: "It only took distros to find one I like. Tried Fedora first. Yuk. Then Ubuntu. I'm liking that well enough that I'm still using it."

Here are the distro ---TK--- has used over the years: "Fedora Core 4   6, Open Suse 10.1, PCLinuxOS, Mint Linux, Ubuntu 4.10 (still have it), Mepis, Mandriva, Lindows, and finally sold on Ubuntu 8.10." 

Jdclyde said: "I've been using Linux for servers for a decade now, starting with RedHat and moving to SuSE. For a desktop, I downloaded and installed Mint. I also have SuSE SLES10 on a laptop, but it's not as user friendly."

According to Hal 9000: "The first one I tried was Debian and I like it, but that doesn't mean that I'm not still looking. I have downloaded hundreds by now, and while I do like SuSE, Mandriva, and GE OS, I seem to always return to Debian as my distro of choice."

This week's Question of the Week, sent in by TR member jck, is: "Do you think that technology, if implemented well, could have prevented the current economic recession?" And since this is a yes or no question, I'd like to add, "What technology, if any, do you think will help turn around the economy?" Please send your answers to trol@techrepublic.com.

And finally, the TR Pet of the Week is Abbey, sent in by woodd47. Is that your shoe, Abbey?

Many thanks to CG IT, Tammy, Al Fleagle, jdclyde, boxfiddler, ---TK---, Hal 9000, jck, and woodd47 for participating in today's show. If I've mentioned your name on today's TROLOV, please send me an e-mail with your mailing address and swag item of choice.

And if YOU'D like to earn some free TechRepublic swag, just send me an e-mail with an answer to the Question of the Week, a brand new Question of the Week, a comment about the show, a photo (Garden Club members), or a small video to trol@techrepublic.com.

Also, keep sending in IT tips for guest contributor posts on the TR Out Loud blog. I'm counting on you guys and gals! Don't make me hold TROLOV for ransom. Nah, I wouldn't do that -- would I?

I'm Sonja Thompson, and this is TR Out Loud.