When
· Naughties
· · 2004
· · · January
· · · · 26 (3 entries)
Anne Sofie von Otter · Went to a concert last night by Anne Sofie von Otter and pianist Bengt Forsberg. She isn’t in the list of my top ten or maybe even fifty singers, and I didn’t know a single one of the songs performed, and while a couple were pretty good I don’t think they’re going into heavy rotation on the car stereo any time soon. But you know what? I had a blast; concerts are almost always worth going to. Herewith some notes on why, and on some of the music ...
Security Blanket · Today I turned on the FileVault thingie on my Mac, so every atom of my data is 128-bit encrypted (Pleasingly, there doesn’t seem to be any perceptible slowdown). On top of which, we’re running another 128 bits of encryption on the WiFi around the house, plus the link to the ongoing web host is via
ssh which is RSA, uh I forget how many bits in my key. So these humble letters have been through a whole lotta bit-bangin’ along their route from my fingertips to your retina. Getting all this set up takes more work than it really ought to, but it’s getting easier, and once the arrangements are there, it totally doesn’t get in the way. Which is a good thing, because the Internet is a rough neighborhood, and in a rough neighborhood you don’t send your kids walking off to school alone. No more should you send your vulnerable little words out on its mean streets without some cryptographic Block Parents lending a hand.New Virus, Yow · This virus that’s going around trying to get you to click on a .PIF because it’s partial or has non-ASCII in it or whatever, it’s hitting my inbox harder than it’s ever been hit before. Maybe we’re watching a record being set; the mind boggles at the thought of the billions of these things that are swooshing around mailspace. The stories say the virus-hounds haven’t figured out what it does yet. Well, I can tell you one thing it does: mail itself to everyone in your address book, faking a signature from someone else in your address book. Er, maybe the world should stop using Outlook. Just a suggestion. [Update: Jon Udell writes me to point at this excellent four-year-old piece; the email client there is Outlook and he still uses it, and the way he uses it makes it safe. He’s right and I was wrong: The problem isn’t Outlook, it’s Windows.]
