This evening, I made the leap to WordPress 2.1. Following the steps outlined over on wordpress.org, the upgrade went off without a hitch. Overall, I like the new features. A particular favorite is the Visual/Code tabs in the editor. Long overdue genius. The only real issue is the broken blogroll in my variant Hemingway theme. Friends will have to suffer without my massive link traffic for a bit.

I also took the opportunity to upgrade to Tiger Admin 3.0. The jury is still out on this upgrade. The new Tiger UI is essentially the same, but more compact; perhaps too much so. I’ll bang around on it and see if my opinion changes.

For what it is … a blog-centric CMS, Worpress remains the “king of the hill”, particularly in the PHP side of blogging. However, Drupal grows more and more interesting everyday. I’ve come to believe that it is the “king of the hill” for broader, richer CMS applications like communities, news sites and the like. I like them both very much.

Thanks to Tommy for this golden nugget. I damn near pissed my pants laughing.

With the addition of just five words, the provision sponsored by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., was signed into law by President Bush, and makes civilian government employees and journalists eligible for prosecution under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the Washington Post reported Monday.

“U.S. civilians can face military trials” - The Washington Times

Unconstitutional. Facist. Unamerican. Designed to silence the press and whistleblowers. All in the alleged name of national security. In a word … chilling.

My cousin recently wrote for advice on preventing email SPAM and viruses. After writing her back, it occured to me that the information might be helpful to others, so here you go.

You can read the following link and it can provide some general clues on how to prevent SPAM:

http://www.itsecurity.com/features/email-inbox-security-011107/

That article might be a little technically intimidatig for some folsk, so I will add/emphasize a few things:

1) Never, ever, ever …. click on the “Unsubscribe” link on SPAM. I know it seems counter-intuitive, but SPAMers use those links to CONFIRM a good email address and send more SPAM. Only click unsubscribe links from vendors who you are 100% sure you signed up for. Even then, be careful with the information they request in the unsubscribe process, because it may be a “phisihing” scam. See the following link for more info.

http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/email/phishing.mspx

2) Never, under any circumstance, post your email on a public web page, forum, etc. SPAMers have tools which harvest email addresses from public websites. For physical security reasons, don’t post home/business address, phone numbers or pictures of your kids on public websites either. Private (requires password and login) are usually OK if you trust and know the company (Microsoft, Apple, etc.) . Even then, exercise discretion.

3) When sending email to a group, always include the group in the BCC field, not the TO or CC field. This way, if the email is forwarded, the entire list is not forwarded to someone who may have an email harvester virus on their PC.

Finally, the best way I’ve found to prevent SPAM and viruses is to use GMAIL from Google. It is 100% free and they have absolutely the best server-side SPAM and Virus tools around. I get almost no SPAM … EVER. People try to send it to me, but Gmail’s filters catch it before it goes in my inbox. And in three years of using it, I’ve never gotten a false positive (where a good email is marked as SPAM).

If you want a Gmail account, I’ll send you a GMail invitation … just email me through the contact form here on the website. I usually recommend that you get one for each member of your family, even the kids. Set up email addresses for your kids now … so, when they are a little older and ask for them, you can give them one that you can monitor if needed. The Internet can be a scary place for kids. A little foresight can help them stay safe without depriving them of all of the significant educational benefits of the Internet.

So, why Gmail? It is free and easy to use. You can access the Internet through any ISP (juno.com, cox.com, etc.) and access your email at gmail.com or your mail client. GMail can be pulled into your favorite email software very easily. I use Thunderbird. And, if you are traveling, you can access your email securely at gmail.com.

Typically, I set up Gmail accounts with firstname.lastname@gmail.com format. That is a great general purpose format (work, family, friends, etc.). For ebills, online bank statement and catalogs and such, I set up one with my street name (i.e. 123MainStreet@gmail.com). This keeps household “mail” … which is subject to a lot of legitimate marketing email … separate from from the work and personal stuff I really want to read.

Finally, if you move email to Gmail, it is pretty simple to import contacts from whatever ISP or mail client your use now (Juno, AOL, etc.). Then, just send an email to everyone telling them to update their address books.

I hope this helps.

PS: I do not work for or own stock in Google. I just love the service!