(Source coredump.cx) This is not an exciting story: I happened to be browsing aimlessly through case studies and other publications released by Microsoft as a part of their "Get the facts" initiative. At one point, I stumbled upon a Word file I wanted to read - and as soon as I ran it through wvWare, I noticed there is a good deal of amusing change tracking information still recorded within the document. Naturally, publishing documents with "collaboration" data is not unheard of in the corporate world, but the fact Microsoft had became a victim of their own technology, and had failed to run their own tools against these publications makes it more entertaining.

A pointless idea came to my mind that instant: why not run a gentle web spider against all Microsoft sites in English, specifically looking for other instances of tracking data not removed from documents? I coded a bunch of scripts and let them run through the night, fetching approximately 10,000 unique documents; over 10% was identified as containing change tracking records. I decided to collect only those with deleted text still present, yielding a crop of over 5% of all documents. Quite impressive. Below, you will find a brief (and rest assured, incomplete) list of the most entertaining samples I’ve run into, along with some speculation (and only speculation) as to the reasons we see them. link The tool used

As Stefan has sent me many new quotes, I did finally update my quote collection again.

 Version 0.7.0 of FreeRIDE has been released and is available for download!

 For details and downloads, go to:

    http://freeride.rubyforge.org/

    Many bugs have been fixed and there is also a bunch of new features
    (Experimental code Refactoring, Preferences plugin available, Debugger
    fully functional on Linux and Windows...)

    The Window's version still runs FreeRIDE with its own private copy of
    Ruby (that will not interfere with your installed version), but this
    private copy of Ruby is now version 1.8.2 preview 2.

    Linux users will find both a tgz and a rpm file ready for use with
    your own copy of Ruby.

    === FreeRIDE Overview ===

    FreeRIDE aims to be a full-featured, first-class IDE on a par with
    those available for other languages, with all the best-of-breed
    features that you would expect in a high-end IDE.

    Some of FreeRIDE's features include:

    * Multi-file editing
    * Syntax highlighting
    * Auto-indenting
    * Code Folding
    * Source navigation by module, class, method, etc.
    * Integrated debugging
    * Written in Ruby for easy extension

    Some planned features include:
    * Full internationalization
    * High-end refactoring support
    * Remote pair programming

    In its current state, FreeRIDE cannot yet be called a real IDE. What
    is does have is a stable infrastructure with all the working plumbing
    needed for the hordes of anxious Ruby developers that want to create
    plugins to extend the functionality of FreeRIDE. The FreeRIDE team
    will be working on such FreeRIDE plugins that we will individually
    release to incrementally improve the FreeRIDE system. Periodically we
    will rollup these added plugins into new releases of FreeRIDE.

    Even if you have not officially joined the FreeRIDE team you can still
    create plugins for you own use, share them with others, or send them
    to us and we will make them available for download from our project
    wiki. We may even ask for your permission to include them in the
    FreeRIDE core distribution.

Registration and Infopage

high-resolution version

A simple CAPTCHA ("Completely Automatic Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart") written in Ruby. This will dynamically create an image containing a key displayed on a noisy background, which the user must enter into a text box. link

Alternatively, as Ari has pointed out in ruby-talk:

 Alter the engine so that external URLs go to a non-indexed-by-
 search-engines "leaving the site" page. It effectively kills any
 pagerank that adding a link would add to the linkee. That's both good
 and bad, but it's a short-term solution.

 It may be that a simple HTTP redirect script would work, too, but I'm
 not sure.

 This came up in conversation with a client today - the problem with
 projects is the equivalent of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.
 The more control you want on their status (or position), the less you
 have over their velocity. Pick one of the two - and pick wisely.