Here it is, Christmas Eve. I'm a bit disappointed that I don't know more about the history of the holiday, and I'm referring to it's non-Christian beginnings. I've heard about Father Frost in Russia, but I don't know squat. A quick search reveals that Saint Nick is actually a Christian recycling of the Greek god Poseidon, which seems to fit in a nice way. The whole tree thing sounds smacks of Druidism, perhaps I'll look into that tomorrow.

Whatever you believe, I hope you're doing well, reader.

I just have to recommend this product I bought. It's a file comparison utility, and it's the best twenty bucks I ever spent. It's "Beyond Compare", by Scooter Software.

As a developer, I'm always comparing versions of files from here and there. As someone who collaborates on HTML, it's easy for people to step on each other when your only connection is a remote FTP server. BC let's you open up local and remote versions of files simultaneously and do a line by line comparison. Out of the box it's extremely powerful and intuitive, and with deep customization features it only gets better.

As a general computer user, I use BC all the time to compare folder structures, do quick backups to remote drives, stuff like that.

If you compare files and folders, or you should and you just cut and paste instead like I used to, you have to get this thing.

Perhaps you are, like me, using SpamNet, a fine anti-spam solution by Cloudmark. You may have noticed in the new version you get popups every now and then asking you to refer your friends as potiential customers.

This seems like spam to me, doesn't it to you? I emailed the marketing director at Cloudmark and got some results. To turn it off, follow these instructions...

Please do the following:
1. Choose Start > Run and type REGEDIT
2. Navigate to the following key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Cloudmark\SpamNet\DialogPrefs
3. Double click on SignatureOffer.
4. Change the value of this from 1 to 0 with a Base of Decimal.

Happy spam destruction,

Jamie