Here’s hoping.  I know it’ll encourage me to post more.  I find I defintly prefer clients to browsers.  You see RSS and Podcast’s what you’ve done to me!  Now if I can get a client that’ll let me do my Tesco’s shopping I’ll be laughing.

“Computers are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid; humans are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant; together they are powerful beyond imagination.” — Albert Einstein

I’m so excited I’m fit to burst!

I am a member of The British Computer Society and our branch here in
Belfast, last night held a smashing event.

It was the first event of it’s kind I’ve ever been to and I’m definitly
going to attend the one of the 15th of May. Where Paul Hanna of CISCO
systems will be giving a talk on Internet Security.

So what was last nights lecture about?

It was an overview of this revolutionary approach to computing.

The guy that spoke was a guy called Charles Ross.

Never heard of him? Me either. A quick google should bring up loads of
results for him. He has been there it seems at so many firsts. He
co-authored the program that throws the prices up each day on the stock
exchange!

Last nights event was focusing on security, and in particular how Quantum
Computing will change things like crypto beyond anything we’ve known.

Charles is attending a meeting on Tuesday night to push for the UK to buy
some of this Quantum hardware.

Computers as we use them today fall into the catagory of Digital Computing.
Binary, 1’s and 0’s. Two states, 1 for on and 0 for off. With Quantum
Computing you are not just restricted by these two states.

The Computing power we could achieve is something in the range of 2 to the
power of, (I can’t remember the exact figure but it calculates out at), a
trillian trillian trillian times more than todays Digital Computers. If it
can only be harnessed.

Why this is so exciting for security and in particular crypto is….

Actually, let me summerise what Charles Ross said last night, as he’s by far
far far more qualified than me. (Who in truth knew hardly anything on the
subject, bar a cursery glance at wikkipedia before heading out).

In physics there are things called Photons. There is also this very very
cool concept called intanglement. This is where if you intangle two photons
together and then seperate them, and then you alter one of the photons the
other alters as well. No matter what distance they are apart. In real-time
they have only manage to get this over certain measured distances and it
struggled over the atlantic. However, if you take this concept and plop it
into security, more importantly concerning files that are locked down with
encryption. In theary you can actually tell if someone has tampered with
your encrypted file!

Therefore in the future potentially saving industrys an awful lot of money
in not only theft of data but also security measures.

Quantum Computing has much much more potentially to offer than just security
though. Medically, and yes even for adaptive technology or adaptive like
technology like speech recognition.

It was fantastic to chat to real geeks. By geek I mean people who are
enthusiastic by technology and Computing. It would probably shock you all
to chat to some of the students in my class. Sometimes I think some of them
picked the name for what degree they’d do out of a lucky dip!

Well that’s me for now, go and check out Quantum Computing. I dont’ claim
to know an awful awful lot about it, but that’s ok because neither do the
experts yet!

I’m being very stereotypical here, from the stubborn old man who’s reluctant to change.

I’ve several geek friends who poke fun because I still use Outlook Express I don’t change to anything else because, hey! It does what I want it to do. I use my rules, and most if not all the advance settings, with the exception of digital sigs. Never had the need for them.

And as for the old argument of what a hassle it is to backup it’s settings. Not for me I’ve an application that does that for me and wraps it up in this nice executeable file. Ready to be used when needed.

To me an email clients an email client. If all I’m doing is sending/receiving mails from the thing and having a handy address book why change just for change sake?

if I was using more detailed tools such as Calaender etc I might consider switching to Microsoft Outlook 2007, but I’m just not.

I’m skilled enough that I can use a product if I need too and I do some prep by experimenting with a product rather than going completely cold at it. overhalling how you do things just for peers isn’t always the best move.

I’m the kinda guy who’s not content using a products basic features and being done with it. I like to poke about under any hatch that’s opened or I can open.

So here’s a cool trick i just found that is going to save me under XP, (as they’ve change the mail system in Vista), alot of desk thwacking.

Anyone still using Windows Messenger? Yup! I’m using that too, why? It sends/receivies messages, and the odd file if I need to. I’ve no interest in winks, web cams, funky toolbars etc. Windows Messenger does the job. Untill…. It’s this annoying habit o fputting your contacts list into the address book of Outlook Express.

Want that to stop?

1. Go to run.

2. Type regidt and click OK.

3. Go to the registry entry,
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Outlook Express

4. Right click on Outlook Express and click New.

5. Select Dword Value and enter 2 in the edit field.

6. Close regedit.

This should stop the intagration between Outlook Express and Windows Messenger.

Ah, my address book PC and mobile sync should be alot lesss painful now.

That’s all for now.

Dj paddy