It's the Friday before a bank holiday. Is anyone still working?

While you're waiting to go down to the pub, how about downloading and installing some non-Microsoft software. You could start with Mozilla Firebird as an alternative to Internet Explorer. When that just works and works better, you can start turning your attention to another email client and a complete Office suite. After that there's instant messaging and many others.

Just because it came free with your machine, doesn't mean it's the best solution. [from: JB Ecademy]

Picking the Friday before the August Bank Holiday was a sure-fire winner for www.slackerday.com. Yes! It's National Slacker Day! Turn off the PC, sit back, relax and contemplate the teachings of J.R. "Bob" Dobbs (Praise Bob), the greatest Living Slack Master (True enlightenment or double your money back).



[from: JB Ecademy]

Do you use Outlook Express? You Fool! Oh, sorry, wrong post.

Anyway if you use Outlook Express, go to OE-QuoteFix and install it. This little program add on is highly recommended. I wish there was on of these for Outlook but sadly nobody's done one yet. Any bored MS C# or dotnet programmers out there fancy having a go?

[Edited to add] The Outlook version is at http://flash.to/outlook-quotefix/ [from: JB Ecademy]

Do you use Outlook Express? You Fool! Oh, sorry, wrong post.

Anyway if you use Outlook Express, go to OE-QuoteFix and install it. This little program add on is highly recommended. I wish there was on of these for Outlook but sadly nobody's done one yet. Any bored MS C# or dotnet programmers out there fancy having a go? [from: JB Ecademy]

The Register on Outlook Express : So, farewell, we've always hated you anyway. And if you ask us, people using this malware magnet want their heads examined.

Social Software : Joi says email is officially broken because 17% of messages are rejected as spam. Never mind the false positives, the point is that your average F500 employee spends 3-4 hours per day using email, almost 50% of email is spam and 30% is occupational spam. Email volume is growing at 30% per year, invading our time and effectiveness. Email is no longer a productivity tool.

Outlook is bleak - Where do you want to go today? Anywhere but Outlook! I got back last night from a two-day vacation to over 2000 emails in my inbox. Over 1300 were spams correctly tagged as such by our server's Spam Assassin. Of the remaining mail, several hundred were" real" messages, and another several hundred were debris resulting from the latest round of Outlook viruses. Outlook is a joke. No sane computer user today should use it.

Kevin says the SoBig virus may be the last straw and We have to confront the reality: either email is broken, Microsoft's email software is broken, or those two statements are the same..

This is all quite sad. Email is so good. And right now it's so broken. I wish I knew what the answer is. But right now I don't have any solutions except to keep fighting the bad side with technology and fighting the bad social side with rants like this. [from: JB Ecademy]

In Animal news today, Giant gerbils infest China A.N.Expert writes, "Up to 16" long, the Giant Gerbil communicates with quick, rapid foot thumping and high pitched whistling". Not unlike your average sysadmin then... [from: JB Ecademy]

Do you run a corporate anti-virus or anti-spam firewall that auto-responds to the apparent sender? Do you have an auto-responder "I'm on holiday" message setup? Does your company auto-respond to all incoming emails with "Thank you for your message, we'll get back to you"? Do you have an auto-responder that says "I've got your email, I'll read it later"?

Do you know anyone who has, uses or manages any of these things?

Well, PLEASE TURN THEM OFF.

They're broken. They send messages to the wrong people. They lie. And they add no meaningful value to communication.

All they do is clog up people's email systems and waste their time.

You've probably guessed by now that the combination of managing a bunch of Ecademy addresses and mailing lists, using a long lived private email address, the holiday season , the SOBIG.f and Blaster viruses means that I'm getting more than my fair share of rubbish, useless emails. And I'm sick of it.

See also this report in the Register. [from: JB Ecademy]

This time it's California - Silicon Valley commuters.

Wi-Fi to ride the rails [from: JB Wifi]

Armed with a Mac running some free tools, this guy tested what it would take to break his own WiFi setup. It starts with an AP with SSID turned off, Mac filtering and WEP enabled. Pretty much everything we would tell somebody to do to secure their network.

Here's the conclusion.

.:[ Security-Protocols ]:. : Post Mortem
I hope this little experiment gives you some idea of what you are up against when relying on the built-in security measures of 802.11b. Using inexpensive hardware and freely available tools, a typical Wi-Fi network can be easily cracked in a mere hour and a half (although it will probably take a bit longer on average, depending on how busy the network is, potentially offset by a bit of luck).

What does this mean for wireless security? Should we run screaming to our system administrators and toss the whole lot into the garbage? Of course not. This whole exercise is presented to drive home this point: If you are concerned about wireless security, you must use strong application-layer encryption and authentication. Much of the rest of this chapter details other freely available tools that you can use to protect your network and your wireless users against these attacks.

So if you're concerned, use SSL for your email and a VPN for any corporate access. [from: JB Wifi]

According to Wireless Rides the Rails, GNER is introduing WiFi on it's London to Scotland trains powered by a Satellite broadband connection. So whether Pierre Danon thinks it's necessary or desirable, it's happening anyway. There's no mention of which WISP will be providing billing and authentication services. [from: JB Wifi]

If you haven't yet discovered reading web news with RSS, head on over to Weblogs Compendium - RSS Readers, and try a couple of programs from the list that suit your PC platform. I can recommend Amphetadesk, Newsgator, Netnewswire. [from: JB Ecademy]

I'm usually fairly up beat but On our oncoming future dystopia is quite the most depressing piece I've read in a long while. Tell me the view through the looking glass isn't really like this.

"the former Soviet Union proceeded in the last twenty years from totalitarianism, through a period of kleptocracy and into a semblance of democracy. The US seems to be going in an exact reverse progression. If the Administration's program to concentrate corporate power and rape our natural resources isn't soon reversed, the US will be a kleptocracy." [from: JB Ecademy]

If you're wondering what is RSS, or you've seen the little XML gifs on Ecademy and wondering what they're for, check out Lockergnome's RSS Resource

There's a full list of known RSS readers and lots of other info. Needless to say the news on the site is available in RSS. [from: JB Ecademy]

A couple of people expressed surprise that their profile is showing up in Google. Some clarification is in order.

1. Anyone can hide their profile. It is then never viewable.

2. The main part of your profile is visible to anyone including guests who are not logged in. Which means including Google.

3. Contact information (phone, mobile, email, first line of address) is under user control. Even if these are set to visible they are still only visible to logged in Power networkers (including green star)

4. Some of this information is also available as machine readable FOAF RDF-XML. This is under user control. This also includes links to people in your network who have enabled FOAF. These links never show email address but do include a cryptographic SHA1 hash of the email address. FOAF data respects the settings in 1,2,3 for both the main person and any links to others.

I think this achieves a good balance between exposing data and privacy.

I'd like to propose a single change which is to make the FOAF default on rather than off. Since there is exactly the same data viewable in html as in XML, I don't see any problem with this. However at Christmas when I started this, it kicked up a small storm.

All of this (with the exception of FOAF) is broadly similar to the approach taken by the other sites such as Ryze.

Comments please.
[from: JB Ecademy]

Results from the Defcon Wireless Shootout

35 miles from a mountain down the Great Basin Highway. "On Friday, August 1, the antenna was built completely from scratch in the desert, on the side of the mountain, in the rain. The large horn was comprised of metal pipes and window screen wire mesh. It had a transmitting element made from cardboard, duct tape and aluminum foil -- and both components worked spectacularly. A bath towel was used to provide shade over the laptop screen, which was otherwise unreadable in the glare of the desert, even with the clouds overhead."

And 5 miles with a pair of cantennas. [from: JB Wifi]

The Register : Some 20 respondents said a 'Wi-Fi hot-spot' is something that has been left out in the sun too long and gone a bit rank.

But at least 30% got it right.

Methinks the Hotspot operators could do with a little marketing in the name of basic education. If the customer doesn't know about what your selling or even what the product is, then they won't buy it. [from: JB Wifi]

Google News Alerts breaks cover from the labs.

But come on Google, where's the XML or RSS version of Google News and News Search? We know you're thinking about it. [from: JB Ecademy]

Richard Allan's Weblog is from another UK MP. Who's next? [from: JB Ecademy]

Now this I like. Stupid Security: Exposing Fake Security Since 2003 Does exactly what it says on the tin. I hate security, it just gets in the way. And there's always a way round it. [from: JB Ecademy]

One of those re-installing Windows horror stories. dive into mark tells it with humour. [from: JB Ecademy]