It seems that spamming efforts have increased dramatically over the past few weeks, as much as doubling since the beginning of October according to some industry professionals. Trying to combat the spam is getting harder and harder, even for those who have been fighting spam for years. Some companies choose to monitor their employee’s email, as part of their own actions or regulatory obligations, but this does little to prevent the effects of spam and the results are debatable. Especially when it comes to malicious spam, which may include viruses, trojans, and/or worms, or may simply be phishing emails. Even those educated and informed seem to be at-risk for being tricked. After all, we are only human.

Without any International regulations that help prevent spam, there will be no headway made in ending this electronic plague. Even with six anti-spamming bodies coming together to fight spam, there is no real direction or plan of action, and the six groups present didn’t include North America’s Anti-Spam Technical Alliance, formed by online heavyweights Microsoft, Yahoo!, and Earthlink. There is obviously no quick fix, and things are likely to get worse before they get better. At least you won’t have to try hard to get a supply of little blue pills or tips on the next big company to hit the stock market.

This is probably the most in-depth review of the new OS. I didn’t read the entire article myself, but check it out.

It’s taken five years, enough lines of code to span the globe several times, countless thousands of hours of developer time, and so many builds, betas, and release candidates that you’d need a cluster-based supercomputer to keep track of them all — but Windows Vista is finally here.

The Best and Worst of Windows Vista

For those in the general population, the big news of the day from Microsoft is probably the official release of the Zune portable music player. Most of the tech community has probably been past this for quite some time. However, Microsoft continues to make headlines, this time withÂ? Code Name: Longhorn, the successor to Windows Server 2003.

On the heels of the completion of Vista and Office, Microsoft Tuesday opened up its annual IT Forum conference by confirming the road map for the next beta of Lonhorn Server, announcing the release of its long-awaited PowerShell command line tool, and unveiling a host of new and upcoming releases of platform and application management tools.

Click here for the full story.

For more information about the Beta 2 version of Longhorn for users, please see this article.

As mentioned, we are starting to get back on track with the blog and starting to get more regular with our posts. You might see a little more diversity in the posts. I’ve started looking a lot more at online security and have started contributing to the company blog for Dyrand Systems Inc.Â? If things go really well, I may even get to start watching my net-girlfriend again, Maria Sandstone - Now get back to work!

1. AOL, MSFT, GOOG: What Are They Doing in the SandboxÂ? - The big boys are looking at being more inventive. It’s getting more and more expensive to buy the next-great-thing, and they really do have the resources to develop them.

2. Microsoft’s Entertainment Domination PlanÂ? - I remember having the debate with my Dad about 10 years ago now over who would end up controlling your entertainment needs - Sony or Microsoft. He might have picked the winner on this one.

3. The Web 2.0 Short-Sellers’ ListÂ? - It’s almost impossible to get away from talk about the bubble bursting, again.Â? PaulÂ? KedroskyÂ? was given an interesting question, that he mishandled,Â? and gives a couple interesting points to consider.

4. The Best and the Worst of the Web 2.0 SummitÂ? - Although I didn’t keep up with it personally, from an industry standpoint, this is obviously a big deal, and I know the people at GigaOm would provide some great commentary on what went down.

5. Windows Vista ReviewÂ? - As I mentioned, there is definitely more reading about security in my daily dose of information, and this article reflects that. Hard to ignore when the Dark Side makes this kind of release.

Honourable mention: Being election week and all, it’s only fitting to mention the controversy surrounding the electronic voting machines. We wrote a post about it earlier this week - here.

I post this today knowing that I will be heading to The Legion tomorrow, and will be spending time with family and friends, enjoying those freedoms that were earned through the sacrifices of so many men and women before me.Â? I hope everyone takes time to remember…

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.