Michael Gracie

People are so annoyed with spam, that they seem willing to give up usability for a little better protection. Case in point, Yahoo! Mail versus Gmail.

Interestingly, I use both services for certain things, and I have found both pretty good at filtering spam. I’ve also found both about as useable as you can expect from a webmail interface. Nevertheless, I’ll stick to POP, as I don’t really care about the storage capabilities I get from outside services. I’d rather be able to drag and drop an mbox folder to my desktop, zip and encrypt - lock it away for safekeeping, away from any potential prying eyes, but still have ready access myself.

That’s my idea of usability.
Read more »

You’ve gotta love entrepreneurs. They are the folks that risk their lives for dreams, cooked up in garages and basements and on coffee house napkins. They are the cogs that make the machine work. I personally adore the looks in their eyes when their fledgling enterprises get some press - some validation that their idea was recognized. It is exciting as all getup.

When the promotion is misdirected, however, I think it is deserving of sneers, as in the case of Ernst & Young and Ernst & Young and a spyware/spamming outfit.

:-/ —-> That’s the best sneer I could muster online.

Now E&Y really doesn’t gets the benefit of doubt. In fact, I think they might just be clueless.

Even pleas from “America’s Digital Goddess” aren’t going to help much.

TQMCube shows that spam doesn’t seem to be slowing. So while I offered choices, I’d say the thoughtful, hard work approach is likely the best option for protecting yourself from the onslaught.

Yea, the political blogosphere is grassroot, people-powered, and other such malarkey. But there is too much blabber about corporate funding, and how it is so one-sided. Bottom line - fundraising birds seem to ride whatever wind blows their way.

Throw a bunch of monkeys in a barrel, and what do you have? Uh, too many cooks in the kitchen?

The political blogosphere was once touted as the cure for mainstream media bias and mainstream politics - a right-down-the-middle inoculation for the everyday citizen. Unfortunately, any idiot reading poli-blogs know good and well those weblogs are about as biased as it gets - encapsulated piles of high school cheerleaders. So, you grow loyal to one set of them, you get one side and make one side of every story (while moderating any intelligible commentary), and you wind up with a pile of ill-formed talking points in your quiver. Your brain has turned to mush because you’ve lost the capability to think for yourself - the tin-foil hat interference notwithstanding.

I once questioned whether the political blogosphere could be controlled, but an answer is already forming up quite nicely.

What are the ingredients for a full-blown meltdown?

Start with a bunch of organization and courting from the mainstream politicos. Add a right-wing blogger, turned MSM right-wing blogger, turned plagiarist. Throw in some more questionable dealings, including a possible stock pump-and-dump scam.

Now that you are cooking, just blind the real issues by generating a big pissing contest over the minute:

- Create obscure issue (out of nothing);
- Defend (nothing);
- Call people liars (over nothing).

“Nothing” new, bold, or world-changing in politics here.

I’m waiting for the next round. And begging for the knockout blow, so the noise will cease and I can comfortably resume buying media stocks.
Read more »

If encryption is such a simple tool to protect data, then why do so few people use it?

Then again, zip encryption, wrapped in PGP virtual disks, wrapped in FileVault may be taking it a bit too far.

Actually, I am not that obsessive - PGP alone works just fine.

When you hear about identity theft, you usually think “that happens every day - I’ll just get a new credit card number.” Bruce Schneier has already shed light on that - most stolen identities are never used. That’s good.

But, I’ll bet you never thought of it as “Holy shit! Eighty people are using my social security number.” In fact, I know you haven’t. I wonder what Bruce would have to say there.

Maybe being “on the grid” is not such a bad thing after all.

The never…ending…battle.

Ideas don’t mean much, unless your idea of execution is filing some documents via ETAS. Those who “do” are going to pay the price for those who “don’t,” and everyone is going to feel the resultant pain of floundering innovation.

At least I know nobody pays attention to this blog (or at very least the subtitle).
Read more »

A flaw in Excel has opened users to malicious attacks. An email-born file is floating around that contains a Trojan horse that perpetuates more malicious downloads. Microsoft may get around to fixing the problem, but maybe they should ask Armando Amado to kick in a few bucks for some help.

One way or another, spreadsheets cost you. Those Google Spreadsheets may not look so bad after all.

According to Postini, better than 85% of all email traffic is now spam.

One of two things is going to happen here. Either internet users are going to adopt a new form of communication (and it isn’t IM, as spam there is rising rapidly as well), or someone is going to solve the spam problem and become an instant multi-billionaire.

I am going to say the former is more likely. And maybe we should start looking at a substitute for DNS while we’re at it.

***UPDATE***

Ah, just in time - OpenDNS to the rescue.