Coredump

I've just tried out Enigmail . It seems pretty okay: it installs via a Thunderbird extension and integrates seamlessly with the mail client and GnuPG . Adding a digital signature is as easy as opening a dialog box to select a key. Keys are managed through a front-end GUI , OpenPGP Key Manager , with functionalities such as generating server pairs, exporting and importing keys, and uploading and downloading keys to and from various available keyservers on the net. My new GPG key is 0x02D17A07 . The public key can be downloaded from pgp.mit.edu . Relevant links Enigmail Gnu Privacy Guard OpenPGP

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

There are several ways to secure email communications, foremost of which are encryption and anti-virus. Fortunately, there are free (as in beer and speech) tools out there that fulfill these requirements. My WinXP box has been virus- and worm-free since I installed it. Why? No, not because of Service Pack 2. Thanks to AVG Ant-Virus Free Edition , I have a relatively safe computing environment, despite the flaws inherent to the OS. AVG has its own email scanner that integrates very well with Mozilla Thunderbird . Setting up the scanner is quite easy, even through my SSL -enabled GMail POP account. Dubbed by Wired News as "safe emailing for dummies", Ciphire Mail provides strong encryption and authentication while maintaining a friendly face for most users. Setting up Ciphire is as easy as choosing an email account to work on and adding a passphrase for encryption and authentication. Ciphire takes it from there: digitally signing messages, checking if Ciphire-encrypted mes...

So the PCS has spoken : they made a boo-boo over the application form asking for "vital" statistics; they're pushing through with the beauty pageant, er, what the heck are they calling it? (as Sacha Chua said , "if it waddles like a duck, quacks like a duck..."); personality counts in IT, yadayada. I still question their intentions, though, "honest mistake" notwithstanding. I think they should have told people outright that this was a popularity-slash-beauty contest . The "Digital Pinay" moniker is just to generate buzz, nothing more. It has nothing to do with Filipino women striking their own in the digital plain. It's got nothing to do with women in general asserting their equality in an already egalitarian field. It has everything to do with the objectification of women, of putting forward (or is it backward?) the proposition that looks matter over talent and skills. And I thought IT will be spared from all that feudalistic crap. Sad, ...

Blogs are becoming ubiquitous. A sure sign of that is when other apps are suddenly sprouting bearing blog-this, blog-that features. Take Photobucket , for example. Before, it was just a nifty free image-hosting service. Now, they offer a blogging feature similar to that of Flickr . The interface may not be as sleek, but the functionality is there. For now, it supports LiveJournal and Blogger . Setting up is a breeze — just give away your username and password. And, oh: am not that hot about that last one, though, giving away the password. Maybe something like the Flickr feature, where you're prompted for a password every time you post a blog entry from within the service. All in all, it's a great help. No more cutting and pasting of image hotlinks from one tab to another. Blogging is getting easier. Yay!

Heh. I'm not a manga fan, but I like the artform. So when I stumbled upon this online manga , I just got glued on. The copy is well written. The art is a bit rough for my taste, but I like the effect. The storyline is engaging. The characters are, well, cool. Somehow, I can't relate, but yeah, I like it. That's usually enough for me. :)

A recently launched contest by the Philippine's premier computer organization, the Philippine Computer Society, is getting a lot of flak from the IT community.Dubbed "Search for Digital Pinay", the contest is "a nationwide search in both the 'Professional and Co-Ed Categories' for the woman who best exemplifies the qualities expected of future women leaders of the Philippine information and communications technology (ICT) industry. Okay, so far, so good. But wait, there's more: the application form asks for, among other things, years of experience in IT, height, bust size, waist measurement, etc. WTF?! To add salt to the wound, the criteria for judging includes 20% for text votes ('people's choice'?), 40% for intelligence, 20% for beauty and presentability, and 20% for poise and personality. As a blogger points out: So let me see: that’s 60% for popularity and appearance based criteria, and 40% for intelligence and technical knowledge. Oh yeah...