May
14
May
13
Rumsfeld On 2006 Election: “The Correction For That…Is An Attack” - Politics on The Huffington Post
Filed Under Rant, Security | Leave a Comment
Rumsfeld On 2006 Election: “The Correction For That…Is An Attack” - Politics on The Huffington Post.
Really? Rumsfeld wanted another attack so Republicans could be voted back into office? These are the type of people that would stop at nothing to get and remain in power.
I’m going to say it one more time, if republicans get voted back into the White House, I’m leaving the country.
May
13
Dear Apple, Why Doesn’t My iPhone Have A Scramble Pad?.
This is a key example of security not being thought in during design. It would be trivial of Apple to randomly place the 10 numbers in the keypad so that when you put in your PIN, the numbers aren’t in the same place each time. But, nobody thought about it.
Dear Apple, I would be happy to come on board as your Security Champ in any of your product groups. Ping me. 
May
12
Powerset
Filed Under Rant, internet | Leave a Comment
Came across an article for a new search engine that is trying to use meaning to understand the web, instead of keywords. Powerset is the name, it is currently beta, limited to wikipedia and Freebase.
For those that think Google is the end-all be-all of tech companies, keep in mind that Google makes more than 90% of it’s revenue from paid advertising from keyword search. Gmail, Google Reader, Google News and all the other stuff in Google Labs exists to make their search better, and more targeted so they can improve on their distribution and specialization of ads. The second half of that equation is eyes – at this point, more people know and trust Google to present relevent results, including the ads, so they get more revenue from advertisers targeting consumers. If they are no longer the leader in search, their revenue and earnings from ads will quickly follow.
Looking forward to seeing how Powerset does.
ED. More from this Powerset review and this review from TechCrunch.
Apr
24
Etymology*:
Forename:
Origin: Teutonic (Root: William)
Meaning: Will Helmet
Top 5 Facts:
- 33% of the letters are vowels. Of one million first and last names we looked at, 60.6% have a higher vowel make-up. This means you are averagely envoweled.
- Backwards, it is Llib Ttoirram… nice ring to it, huh?
- In Pig Latin, it is Illbay Arriottmay.
- In ASCII binary it is…
01000010 01101001 01101100 01101100 00100000 01001101 01100001 01110010 01110010 01101001 01101111 01110100 01110100 - People with this first name are probably: Male. So, there’s a 98% likelihood you sweat just thinking of the price of shaver blades.
3 Things You Didn’t Know:
- Your personal power animal is the Black Widow Spider
-
Your ‘Numerology’ number is 5. If it wasn’t bulls**t, it would mean that you are adventurous, mercurial, and sensual. You seek growth through adventure and different life experiences. Although you are a critical thinker, you can sometimes over-ponder an issue.
- According to the US Census Bureau°, 0.112% of US residents have the first name ‘Bill’ and 0.0021% have the surname ‘Marriott’. The US has around 300 million residents, so we guesstimate there are 7 ‘Bill Marriott’s.
Apr
22
I have written about this before, but not on this blog. I am a bit of a privacy enthusiast, er, advocate, er zealot. This is a story about our US courts upholding a law that says boarder agents can search a laptop, smart phone or anything else electronic, without any real suspicion. I think this is a real problem. While I can understand the argument (not against the fourth amendment since it is only in effect when you are entering or leaving the country), I don’t agree with it. This could be a real problem for businesses with their employees entering and leaving the country. In fact, Microsoft has setup development centers in Vancouver due to the Visa restrictions in the post 9-11 US. The ability for border agents to search through electronic files of anyone coming or going may push companies to simply by-pass the SU and disallow interaction with or travel to the US by their international employees, for threat that their IP may be compromised by border agents.
to the US lawmakers: You are going to make it very easy for people to simply bypass going to the US under threats like this, which will cost many of our companies greatly in tourism and trade dollars. Policies like this is the reason the US is among the worst countries in the world with respect to privacy.
Apr
21
Ticket Leap
Filed Under internet | Comments Off
There appears to be a new ticket selling services called TicketLeap. They are creating a competitor to TicketMaster or other similar services. I don’t really understand how you actually *get* tickets, they seem to say that you can print them out of your email, but I don’t know if they include bar codes, or other scan-able code to get you in.
Seems like a smaller service for not full time event coordinators. Could be useful.
Apr
19
Unintended consequences of ease of publishing
Filed Under Rant | Leave a Comment
I’m reading a book called the The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet by Daniel Solove (which BTW you can download for free from his website if you don’t want to spend the $16). Basic premise argues how to account for privacy in a world where it is marginally more difficult to post something to the Internet than it is to write an email.
Case in point: Juicy Campus. This website allows anyone to post anything about anyone. Primary audience is college students that like to gossip. You don’t have to post under your real name, you don’t have to say who you are, frankly, you don’t even have to post the truth. This have been covered over and over again.
Now we have a socialite wife in NYC posting a rant about her divorce on Youtube, and includes some nasty tidbits about her husbands habits. I am a big proponent of the interaction that “Web 2.0″, or whatever you want to call it, creates. I like the fact that everyday people have the ability to create, share, remix. However, because of technologies like the Wayback Machine, this stuff never, ever goes away. While it may be fun or feel good now, you will never get it back. For those posting to Juicy Campus, remember that you too will be looking for a job one day and more and more HR recruiters are using search engines to do research on potential candidates. And if you really think that a video on Youtube will make you feel better, you might want to invest in therapy instead of putting that out there for all eternity. It’s not just your enemies reputation that will be affected, it is yours too.
Technorati Tags: internet, privacy