Last night I managed to pull a serious Munson. My car battery was dead, so I jumped it from my wife’s car. Then both batteries were dead (her car literally shut down when I tried to start mine). Then my brother in law came over, and managed to jump both cars. We left them running, then turned them off- and both were dead again. One more trip from my brother in law and we were up and running. We drove around for a bit and then stopped to run an errand. We stopped, and restarted, one car at a time so we always had one running vehicle. Both restarted, so we ran them for a minute longer and then ran our errand. Come back, and both are dead. Mall security jumped her car, drove on the highways for 20 minutes, parked it at home. Dead. Dead. Dead. Her car is a hybrid, and we think my battery is dead and something about jumping it blew something in her electrical system.

Good times, my friends. Good times.

At least I get some amusement this morning out of this article with some of the usual statistical dribble used to scare people into buying products.

There’s no need to go into detail- it’s just a survey talking about how few companies perform email encryption, how hard and manual it is, and how employees would use it more if it were easier. This is all, of course, tied into some Nevada law and sponsored by an email encryption vendor.

They forget, of course, to mention how few compromises there are of unencrypted email. No reference at all to any real cases where encryption would have prevented the loss of personal data (never mind any fraud associated with said loss). In short, nothing useful to help you make any kind of risk decision.

Remember, I’m not against numbers, nor am I against email encryption (I use it occasionally for business communications), but I am against silly numbers with no bearing to anything important. We need more quality metrics and surveys, not this dribble that likely won’t fool a single security professional into buying a product. You might, likely, use email encryption anyway, but this sure won’t affect your decision.

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