Viewing "Greg's" Blogs

Well today is my birthday.  I'm turning 40.  Hard to believe, the number just sounds so old.  But I feel the best I ever have.  This morning (as part of someone's tradition) I decided to swim 4000 meters (40 x 100), at lunch I ran 4 miles all sub 7:20.  After work I rode 40 miles.  Of course I ate 4000 calories during the day.

I do need to thank my staff for surprising me with a little party at 1 pm.  The pizza and cupcakes were great. 

One other note I have is more of a complaint on our current society.  What is going on with our news media?  Isn't it enough that they blow the H1N1 virus out of hand? Now we have the "Fremont Sniper" shooting windows in cars.  Well it was a pellet gun.  You just had to watch the entire time to get the whole story.  They sure were playing up the way it was mentioned as well.  I honestly believe this is what caused gas prices to go up and down last year and is somewhat responsible for our financial crisis.

Maybe it's time to ignore them.

If you think you're getting a lot of spam these days, well, that's because you are. In Microsoft's latest biannual report on the state of computer security, the company says that in the second half of 2008, a full 97.3 percent of email traffic was unwanted spam (or malicious email like phishing attacks and outright viruses). Surprisingly though, that's down a bit from the first half of last year, when total spam volume reached a whopping 98.4 percent of all email sent.

The latest report (which covers security through the end of 2008, so Conficker isn't part of the package) is available for download here. (Be warned: The full report is 184 pages long. Consider checking out the smaller highlight report instead.)

The good news: Spam filters are getting better than ever. Microsoft's filter system for Exchange now scrubs out 39 out of every 40 emails sent. Spam also saw that slight decline thanks to the shut down last year of the ISP McColo, a major haven for spammers who suddenly had to go shopping elsewhere.