Yesterday a client asked me to help him pick the right Certificate for his secure server. He believes he needs "128-bit".

VeriSign, the best-known name among the providors of secure server certificates, charges $849 for their Secure Site Pro cert. I told the client that he could do better by working with Thawte, who only charges $300 for essentially the same product.

Well, this morning he called me back to say that he'd found COMODO Group, who only charges -- get this -- $49.

Thawte had two things going for them: they were less expensive, and they weren't VeriSign. We all hate VeriSign as much as we hate NetSol, right (and now they're the same company)? Unfortunately VeriSign bought out Thawte recently, so they get your money either way.

Comodo's certificate is one-sixth the price of Thawte's, for essentially the same product, and their certificate is accepted by virtually every browser out there. Admittedly, VeriSign offers their NetSure insurance plan, which is "an extended warranty program that protects VeriSign Server ID customers against economic loss resulting from the theft, corruption, impersonation, or loss of use of a certificate."

This is a no-brainer.

Somebody purchased a license to LaunchBar for me today, without saying anything to me about it so I can't give him/her credit here. I'm sure that was the point. ;-).

Thank you, mystery friend.

(There are only two people I can think of that would do this. One of them is probably still sleeping right now.)

The local NPR station said this morning that SBC has completed its takeover of Connecticut's telephone company, SNET.

I'm not sure why they bothered to report it... they've been "in the process" of merging the two companies for a couple of years now, and this bit of news really didn't mean anything.

Actually, "merging" is the phrase they use in their ads here in CT. They're even using the name "SBC-SNET," as if the two companies were actually equals who have been merged.

Hah! Not even close. SBC is a monster, with over 220,000 employees and $69,000,000,000 per year in revenues. At it's biggest, I believe SNET never had more than 30,000 employees (can't find exact numbers). They didn't merge... SNET was "swallowed hole."