The third edition of ValleySchwag has arrived. Yet again, there is a nice collection of goodies – well worth the membership fee.
While a bit less loaded than last time , I’m still quite impressed with the package they’ve put together. The two big hits this time are the rather cool shirt from imeem and the laptop bag (see below) from MI6. While the bag doesn’t have the padding of my regular bag, it’s a lot lighter, so I know it’ll see some use.
All in all, I’m quite happy with this months package, and I’ll certainly be looking forward to the next round. For those interested, here’s a list of vendor’s that provided something cool for this months package:
- imeem – Mostly-cool t-shirt
- MI6 – The laptop bag pictured above.
- jeteye – A useful little pen (the clicky type, that are so useful for annoying those in near-by cubicles).
- Channel 9 – Microsoft’s Channel 9 provided a highly throw-able version of their mascot, Channel 9 Guy.
- Macromedia – A might-be-useful-someday key chain (bottom left corner of the picture above.
- There are also about 5 other companies that provided stickers.
I installed Vista last night twice; the first was an upgrade from XP Pro on my laptop, the other a fresh install on my desktop. The experience was quite interesting for both; here are a few thoughts about the process:
Laptop My laptop has a fairly modest configuration, 1.73GHz Pentium M, 512MB, 80GB hard-drive, and Mobil Intel 915 64MB for the graphics. It’s been running Windows XP Pro, last night I went through the upgrade process to Vista Business.
It’s time for everyone from the industry, developers, and the government to declare war on ransomware and make it as hard as possible for them to ply their insidious trade. There have been false starts and baby steps, diligent fighters without enough resources, and vendors that have only given a nod to the issue. It’s time to use every tool reasonably available to stop this scourge.
For so many in the industry that have dedicated so much of their time and effort to this fight, this statement may seem to diminish their efforts, but that is not my intent.
During a recent discussion about the DarkMatter CA on a Mozilla mailing list, it was found that their 64-bit serial numbers weren’t actually 64 bits, and it opened a can of worms. It turns out that the serial number was effectively 63 bits, which is a violation of the CA/B Forum Baseline Requirements that state it must contain 64 bits of output from a secure random number generator (CSPRNG). As a result of this finding, 2,000,000 certificates or more may need to be replaced by Google, Apple, GoDaddy and various others.
For the second year I am publishing a year-in-review – something I had generally avoided in the past, as the tone of these posts is typically just cynicism and negativity. Looking back at 2015, it wasn’t all positive (what year is?), but there was certainly some good, and there are great things to look forward to.
In a season filled with empty marketing pitches, worthless predictions, and pointless projections – it’s important to look at the good and avoid the cynicism overload that is all too common.
Inspired by a post from Scott Arciszewski, I’ve decided to go ahead and publish a year in review post. This is something that I’ve generally avoided in the past, as the tone of these posts is more often than not, just cynicism and negativity. After seeing Scott’s post, it made me think about how such a review can be used to send a positive message — something desperately needed.
Year after year, we see predictions, projections, and sales pitches — and the cynical responses that they always generate.
