For future records, when creating OOXML files from scratch, make sure to use the ‘-D’ option to not store directory entries in the ZIP archive. This makes the Office apps choke (at least on OS X).
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This is part 1 of a 4 part series on EC2.

Part 1 – EC2 Background

What is EC2?

EC2, or ‘Elastic Compute Cloud’ is a primary component of AWS (‘Amazon Web Services’).  EC2 is Amazon’s market offering for cloud computing.  EC2 allows individuals and organizations the ability to run a full instance of their favorite version of Linux or Windows on Amazon’s gear – the same gear, ostensibly, that runs Amazon.com itself.  Users are given the opportunity to host their systems, applications, and files in Amazon’s data centers, on Amazon’s bandwidth and Internet connectivity, and run everything on Amazon’s server hardware (including redundant storage, power, etc.).
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I’m working on an extensive post about the market dynamics and pricing of Amazon’s AWS EC2 Spot Instance market.  Here’s a sneak peak:

This is a presentation I developed and gave at HRGeeks ][, on March 14. The bulk of this was original research.

Grab the PDF here.

iPhone forensics, without the iPhone

These are impolite questions. Nobody asks them here by the cool pond tucked into a gentle hillside. Increasingly, nobody asks them outside the gates, either. It is impolite to wonder why our parents sent us all to college, and why generations of immigrants sweated and bled so their children could be educated, if it wasn’t so that we would all one day feel confident enough to look at a museum filled with dinosaurs rigged to run six furlongs at Belmont and make the not unreasonable point that it is all batshit crazy and that anyone who believes this righteous hooey should be kept away from sharp objects and his own money.

Read the rest here:  http://www.esquire.com/features/ESQ0207GREETINGS