A year in the life of Fedora - I found this message both entertaining and sad. The entertaining aspect was certainly that someone would take the time to write it all up in IRC format!

Why Encrypted E-mail Doesn't Work - Wound up reading this article on encrypted e-mail. While I dispute the author's assertion that S/MIME is the defacto standard for encrypted e-mail (I would argue there isn't one - and would also say that I get more people trying to use PGP to encrypt e-mail to me than I ever have for S/MIME), I do not disagree with his central thesis. Put simply, it is this:

More people don't use encrypted e-mail because the e-mail clients are miserable with regard to encryption.

Absolutely! I look right now at some people I know that would like to know more about using PGP-encrypted e-mail. Unfortunately, the e-mail client they use, Lotus Notes, does not have an easy way to support PGP. The workaround I show them involves writing your text, highlighting it, copying it to the clipboard, triggering WinPT to encrypt the contents, and then pasting it back into the Notes memo. (You should just be able to highlight the text and let WinPT do its thing, but Notes seems to do something funky with the window focus that disallows this.) It is not something for the casual user.

In contrast, of course, there is good old mutt, or the new Mozilla Thunderbird client with Enigmail installed. I use the latter for my home account and it works like a dream. Whenever I get a PGP-signed message, it automagically checks the sig. When I want to encrypt or decrypt, it is just simple button presses. Works beautifully...

But until everyone else has a mail client that works that well, encrypted e-mail just will not have widespread adoption.

S/MIME - I should clarify, though, that having a mail client that supports encryption is only half the battle. Many people point out that Outlook and Outlook Express do support encryption... the only thing is that it is S/MIME. And so the second half of the issue is being able to successfully configure the encryption support. As Jon Udell points out in his article on identity and S/MIME configuring your mail client to support S/MIME is not exactly easy. And how many people have actually gone and obtained a free personal certificate from Thawte?

Yes, I am a Network Geek - Lest there be any doubt, my current hotel setup out here at N+I will conclusively validate that statement. First of all, I have a Linksys wireless router connected to the high-speed Internet port.

Connected into that router, I have a Mitel phone connected back to our Teleworker server in Ottawa, giving me secure VoIP over the Internet back to the corporate office. Yes, this is one of my products, so I am admittedly biased, but, not being a "phone guy", this thing still blows me away whenever I use it. I mean, think about what it is doing... I have a 4-digit extension off of our phone switch back in Ottawa. I can punch in anyone's extension and talk to them (and them to me). I can push 9 and dial any local Ottawa numbers, such as dialling home to check messages - or calling Lori's cell phone. And all of that with secure encryption - and with voice quality that is really like I'm right there at the office (i.e. way better than cellular!). And it's doing this all over the Internet! This is where VoIP starts to be VERY cool.

Also connected to that router, of course, is my laptop via wireless. I have a nice hotel room with a patio looking out into the desert. The room is a mini-suite as well, and so now I can sit wherever I want, including out on the patio and browse the web. Cool stuff.

Of course the wireless is locked down. The router supports WPA, but I think I have to upgrade my laptop, so in the meantime I'm using 128-bit WEP with a strong passphrase and, more importantly, I'm restricting connections to only the MAC address of my wireless card. I've also disabled SSID broadcast.... doing all I can to lock it down. I'm here at a conference with a load of other network and security folks - you can't tell me no one will be scanning for WiFi networks.

A Promotion You Probably Won't See in Wal-Mart - Driving across New Hampshire on the weekend I saw this sign "Free chainsaw with purchase of a new tractor." Funny thing is, I bet the promotion works.

First they give us cold food, then they make us pay - Amazing to see the continued decline of food service on board commercial airplanes in the U.S. Years ago, of course, we had nice hot meals served to us... lasagna or chicken or beef or eggs or whatever... along with overdone vegetables or rice, etc. I don't recall it ever being overly good, but it was at least hot and had some nutritional substance. It was ever served on little trays with... gasp... real silverware.

That was one of the first casualties. The "cutlery" became the plastic type prepacked in a little bag. But then the hot meals went away, too. Replaced by cold sandwiches.... or bagels or rolls. Soon it was just a little "box meal" with a very prepackaged sandwich no doubt chock full of preservatives, trans-fats and all that. Served with some time of sugary snack made by some large corporation.

For a while, then, it seemed that all they would give you on flights was bags of pretzels. (Peanuts went away due to allergies, although not being a peanut fan, this change was perfectly fine with me.)

And now, the final insult. I noticed on my US Air ticket that it said "Food available for purchase" and indeed it was. That same lousy box lunch was now available for "only $7"! And a meal of a chicken club sandwich was available for $10. That seemed to come in a box from the restaurant T.G.I.Fridays who probably wound up paying the airline for the ability to provide those meals.

Yet, in all of these years, I haven't really seen a tremendous decline in the airfare I pay. Yes, on certain routes it has. But on other routes it is the same or more. I know that fuel costs have increased, as has labor, etc.... all in a post 9/11 world when in theory fewer people are travelling. Still, it is indeed sad to see the decline.