Month: July 2008

Rick Green of the Hartford Courant speaks on the radio.  Link here.

Alex Eckelberry

Mike Osterman and I will be holding a webcast on July 17^th. Here’s the PR spin:

Join Osterman Research and Sunbelt Software for an informative 60-minute Webinar that could help your company improve message security and lower MS Exchange management costs.

Alex Eckelberry, CEO of Sunbelt Software, and Michael Osterman, President of Osterman Research, will lead this new Webinar, The Case for Server-based Messaging Security Solutions, to be held on Thursday July 17, 2008 at 1:00pm EDT / 10:00am PDT / 1800 UK Time / 1900 CET.

Michael Osterman will share insights gleaned from a just completed survey that dispel the fears of employing server-based email security solutions. He’ll help you understand the latest Exchange security risks and also offer reasons why an installed security solution may be the best option for you in countering those challenges. He will also take a humorous look at one administrator who installed security software on the server (and lived to tell about it).

Alex Eckelberry will then offer examples from the field and discuss the key elements an Exchange security solution must have, including why Sunbelt customers deploy a server-based solution.

In this Webinar you will also learn:

• What are the latest messaging and Exchange security threats?
• How can a solution running on Exchange save time and money?
• How did one administrator install software on his server live to tell about it?
• What are the common challenges and different solutions for Exchange security?
• What works for less downtime and faster message delivery?

To register please visit: http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/rd/?id=080710EB-OR_webcast

Alex Eckelberry

It’s been around for a couple of weeks, but for some reason, I never heard of it until recently. So… if you’re involved in IT, this video is for you. (Warning: harsh and offensive language.)

Alex Eckelberry
(With thanks to Steve Bass)

This is extraordinary and example of how technology may very well trump the old-school oil companies and commodities markets. First, it’s pretty gutsy for the companies to do this, and secondly, it’s a good example of corporations pushing grass-roots activism through online methods.

Major airlines are now lobbying their own customers to get Congress to do something about speculators. Speculators are arguably part of the raeson for the rise in prices, an issue I highlighted earlier on this blog.

Here is an example of what I received today. Millions of others are receiving the same letter today.

The text reads:

An Open letter to All Airline Customers:

Our country is facing a possible sharp economic downturn because of skyrocketing oil and fuel prices, but by pulling together, we can all do something to help now.

For airlines, ultra-expensive fuel means thousands of lost jobs and severe reductions in air service to both large and small communities. To the broader economy, oil prices mean slower activity and widespread economic pain. This pain can be alleviated, and that is why we are taking the extraordinary step of writing this joint letter to our customers. Since high oil prices are partly a response to normal market forces, the nation needs to focus on increased energy supplies and conservation. However, there is another side to this story because normal market forces are being dangerously amplified by poorly regulated market speculation.

Twenty years ago, 21 percent of oil contracts were purchased by speculators who trade oil on paper with no intention of ever taking delivery. Today, oil speculators purchase 66 percent of all oil futures contracts, and that reflects just the transactions that are known. Speculators buy up large amounts of oil and then sell it to each other again and again. A barrel of oil may trade 20-plus times before it is delivered and used; the price goes up with each trade and consumers pick up the final tab. Some market experts estimate that current prices reflect as much as $30 to $60 per barrel in unnecessary speculative costs.

Over seventy years ago, Congress established regulations to control excessive, largely unchecked market speculation and manipulation. However, over the past two decades, these regulatory limits have been weakened or removed. We believe that restoring and enforcing these limits, along with several other modest measures, will provide more disclosure, transparency and sound market oversight. Together, these reforms will help cool the over-heated oil market and permit the economy to prosper.

The nation needs to pull together to reform the oil markets and solve this growing problem.

We need your help. Get more information and contact Congress by visiting http://www.stopoilspeculationnow.com/.

Our only hope to bypass the strangehold of Big Oil (and it is a strangehold, despite all the PR otherwise) is through technology advances — by getting citizens active, by pushing bozo politicians to do the right thing, and by creating new, leapfroging alternative technologies.

Alex Eckelberry

The media is buzzing with the news that Iran is blasting missiles all around.

Turns out that one scary image is just photoshopped nonsense from Iran.

This is not the first time that the media has been tricked with photoshopped images, and it won’t be the last.

One has to be quite wary of the information presented as fact out there on those tubular internets and The Google.

Alex Eckelberry

I’m disgusted.

It’s ironic that those who pretend to stand up for freedom would, at the same time, so completely ignore the rights so basic to guaranteeing that very state.

Alex Eckelberry

Remember Julie? Rick Green, a journalist of high honor, writes about her plight:

You would have thought when Superior Court Judge Hillary B. Strackbein tossed out the trumped-up conviction of a substitute teacher last year that the state of Connecticut would have decided to leave Julie Amero alone.

Wrong.

Unbelievably, more than 13 months after Strackbein set aside Amero’s conviction on charges that she allowed seventh-graders to view pornography in her classroom, the state is apparently still planning to bring Amero back to trial.

Which means that as long as Amero is on the trial list, she must live with this hanging over her head.

Link here.

To say that I’m frustrated is a vast understatement.

Alex Eckelberry

Steven Thomas, co-founder of Webroot, has gone missing, and it looks very serious.

Our prayers are with the family during this extremely difficult time, and we sincerely hope that Steven is found soon.

(Steven Thomas and Kristen Talley founded Webroot many years ago, originally marketing a windows clean-up utility, WindowWasher. After Dave Moll joined them, they moved into the spyware category with SpySweeper and the rest is history. Thomas and Talley then cashed out after a large investment/buyout by a group of VCs several years ago. They are no longer part of the management of the company.)

Alex Eckelberry

This new version has been in development and beta testing for quite some time, and is probably one of the most solid releases of this product ever, going back to its beginning as the Kerio Personal Firewall.

The biggest addition is support for Vista 32 bit (with 64 bit native support on the roadmap).

However, there’s been a lot of under-the-hood improvements in many areas. These include:

• Significant improvement in network performance
• Significant improvement in packet filtering
• Enhanced Process Injection prevention to prevent code injection attempts into Windows system DLLs.
• Numerous stability issues corrected in the firewall service.
• Significant improvement in overall product stability.
• Updated Intrusion Detection rules
• Updated translation files for multiple languages

The new version can be download here, and it will also be available through the “Update” function inside SPF toward the end of the week.

The completion of this major development exercise lays the foundation for SPF’s inclusion into a future release of VIPRE, our upcoming antivirus+antispyware product.

Alex Eckelberry