TrueCrypt 5.0!

Last night, just after midnight, my RSS reader picked up a notice that the new 5.0 version of TrueCrypt (my favorite cross-platform drive encryption program) is now available. It has several very neat-sounding new features, including the ability to encrypt the system drive (under Windows), a standard GUI under Linux (it only had command-line support …

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“Vista successor, Windows 7 to be released next year? | APC Magazine”

Great. If it reverses some of the truly bone-headed decisions that Vista was graced with — such as the Hollywood-friendly but user-hostile DRM stuff that’s built in — then it can’t come soon enough. And apparently even Microsoft secretly agrees… Pulling such a major release forward would be out of character for Microsoft. Could this …

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Antivirus Programs

Every so often, some company will say something about a virus or antivirus program (such as this), and the comments on it (if allowed) will be filled with an OS flame war. I’ve used PC-based computers since 1989 or thereabouts. In that time, I’ve been attacked by two viruses — one in 1997, a DOS …

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Getting SpamBayes/ThunderBayes Working (Under Linux)

Thunderbird’s built-in spam filter is pretty good, more accurate (and a lot easier to set up and use) than several others I’ve tried, but even so it’s accuracy still leaves something to be desired. I don’t get anywhere near as much spam now as I used to, but roughly half of my daily e-mail is …

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“Office 2003 update blocks older file formats”

After all the government kerfuffle over the last couple years about moving to an open format for office documents (because proprietary formats could be discontinued by the vendor at any time, rendering documents stored in them unreadable), I’m shocked to read that after the latest Office 2003 update, Office can no longer access older format …

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“The art of software murder”

For those who strongly dislike Microsoft’s latest offering and how it’s being crammed down everyone’s throats, I offer this article. The last few paragraphs say it all: What would it be like if a single piece of software were simultaneously afflicted with all the maladies listed above? It would surely be a gloomy prospect. To …

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Cross-Platform GUI Programming

Over the last week or so, I’ve been working on a test program for Project X. The requirements pretty much dictated a GUI solution, but while I work primarily under Linux, the other developer on it works primarily in Windows, and we use both C++ and Lisp for this project. Any programmer who’s tried to …

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