“PDF995” is a nice program but PDFCreator is better. I found out about PDFCreator in the weekly newsletter from http://sourceforge.net so I decided to give it a try. Both PDF995 and PDFCreator use Ghostscript as their engine but PDFCreator use a newer version. Their is more user flexibility in PDFCreator and no popup ads. PDF995 is now uninstalled.

This all makes me wonder how Adobe is going to make the easy money from Acrobat. Hmm…

I have been working most of the day on fixing the dreamweaver templates and the css files for Legacy Farm. Earlier this week I looked at the log files for the site and decided that I really should make the site compatible with Netscape 4. It had been somewhat compatible in the past but was now hopelessly broken. After some research I ended up using Joshua Kaufman's version with a Netscape 4 hack and css layout from the Belgian Canadian Business Association. All of this stuff should be xhtml compatible. After some tweaking it looks good in both IE6 and Netscape 4.75. I will probably roll it out tomorrow after I make some more css changes to the css for the modern browsers.

Cracking Windows passwords in seconds. Researchers outline a way to speed the cracking of alphanumeric Windows passwords, reducing the time to break such codes to an average of 13.6 seconds from 1 minute 41 seconds. [CNET News.com]

This is an interesting article which focuses on the speed of cracking passwords that have been dumped to a file by the administrator. Although it appears to look like another password cracking tool, the primary significance of this article is to highlight how easily alphanumeric passwords can be broken on Windows systems. They achieve this speed by using lots of RAM, a large lookup table, and a weakness in password encryption on Windows systems.

Full story.

Thanks to those who serve

Christy Ferer is a 9/11 widow who recently was a member of a group of celebrities (including Robert DeNiro and Kid Rock, among others) that took an Armed Forces Entertainment Office and USO-sponsored trip to Iraq to show support for the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines still over there. Following is an e-note she sent her escorts about the experience. In her cover note, she said she intends to submit it to the NY Times for publication. It is really powerful, and very moving, and will make you proud that you have chosen to serve your country, and proud to be an American. Enjoy…and thanks as always for all you do for America's Air Force!

Brig Gen Ron Rand

When I told friends about my pilgrimage to Iraq to thank the U.S. troops, reaction was underwhelming at best.

Some were blunt. “Why are you going there?” They could not understand why it was important for me, a 9/11 widow, to express my support for the men and women stationed today in the Gulf.

But the reason seemed clear to me: 200,000 troops have been sent halfway around the world to stabilize the kind of culture that breeds terrorists like those who I believe began World War III on Sept. 11, 2001. Reaction was so politely negative that I began to doubt my role on the first USO/Tribeca Institute tour into newly occupied Iraq where, on average, a soldier a day is killed.

What I was not prepared for was to have soldiers show us the World Trade Center memorabilia they'd carried with them into the streets of Baghdad.

Looking into that sea of khaki gave me chills even in that blistering heat. To me, those troops were there to avenge the murder of my husband and 3,000 others. When I got to the microphone I told them we had not made this journey for condolences but to thank them and to tell them that the families of 9/11 think of them every day.

The crowd interrupted me with chants of “USA, USA, USA.” …. Full story

—Christy Ferer [The Braden Files]

Armstrong Picks Himself Up and Widens His Lead in Tour. Shaking off a crash that left him lying on the road, Lance Armstrong the dominator reappeared today. By Samuel Abt. [New York Times: NYT HomePage]

Lance can be so amazing! He has already been in one major crash on this Tour and has had several close calls. Hats off to Jan Ullrich, Tyler Hamilton, and the others who did not resume racing until Lance had returned to the peloton. This was the same courtesy Lance bestowed on Jan two years ago when Jan crashed. The Tour is still open for Jan or Andrei to win but I think the rumors of Lance's demise are greatly exaggerated. Lance is not going to lose the Tour for them. Jan or Andrei will have to win it the old fashioned way.

I was reading an article on recommended low cost or free software and found this reference to PDF995. I like PDF files and I really like them for archiving paper documents. For some time I wished I had a PDF version of my tax returns. I previously owned a copy of PDF Writer from Acrobat and that capability still matched most of my needs. I am unwilling to spend big bucks on a low priority item so this free version really appealed to me. I tried it and it works as advertised. The ads that popup with the free version are annoying but for only $9.95 I can make them go away permanently. Pretty darn cool!

Anonymous. “God is not dead but alive and well and working on a much less ambitious project.” [Quotes of the Day]

Yes, I finally installed a UPS on my server. I have not had any file problems due to power outages but I believe it is just a matter of time. A funny thing happened! We had a storm that came through and the power blipped. Two of my three computers rebooted. The good news is that the third computer was on the UPS and did not reboot. The bad news is that when I looked at the event log it said nothing happened. I am running the latest version of APC Personal UPS.