Steve’s Stuff

I found this from John Dvorak coffee-spitting funny:

It looks like the best Microsoft can do is provide us with an incredibly bland facade that seems more like something coming from General Electric during the announcement of a new afterburner technology for a jet engine. As an example of how peculiar this all is, can you look at the Microsoft Vista Web site and determine the message? See the Microsoft site.

The site, if you were uncertain as to the nature of the product, looks like an advertisement for an expensive prescription drug for constipation. Seriously, that’s exactly what it looks like.

Vista, Dvorak

I’ve just set up a new computer at the office and despite a careful archive of all downloaded installation files, I’ve lost the files necessary to install the commercial version of PGP. It turns out that the commercial PGP is not really necessary anymore. I’ve used these tools:

• Windows Privacy Tray (WinPT): WinPT provides an icon in the sytem tray that allows you to edit keys and encrypt/decrypt/sign the contents of the clipboard or the current window. It included GPG.
• Gnu Privacy Guard (GPG): GPG is the core of the encryption program. This is a command line tool. With WinPT, using it at the command line is completely optional. I installed GPG after WinPT because the version supplied with WinPT is not the most current.
• Enigmail: Enigmail integrates GPG with the Mozilla Thunderbird mail program.

GPG, PGP, GnuPG

I’ve noticed a recent upsurge in stock related spam. Our anti-spam filters have been tweaked and they’re keeping out more of the mail. This story in EWeek dissects a network of compromised computers that can easily pump out 1 billion stock spam messages in a day.

spam

At last, we’ve switched our affinity email for members to Google’s hosted domain system. We’re at http://www.ccim.net.

CCIM DOT NET subscribers can now create a personalized Google home page, too.