Are bloggers a new kind of competition?

Day By Day by Chris Muir, cartoon for: 2/15/2005

I found this cartoon quite interesting. There's an arrogance to the blogsphere and popular sites especially in considering themselves the only real media source or the new thing. Blogs continue to be exceptionally good at fact checking and getting lots of incremental opinion out there. X says something, Y comments on it and adds two cents and so on. But I certainly would not consider them new competition. There has been competition as long as there was more than one media outlet. Any given paper would absolutely LOVE to have shown an alternative publication was inaccurate. Forbes Digital uncovering Stephen Glass is a great example. If there was one thing that bloggers do well it is turn up the volume on stories or points which were previously lost in the noise. This can be an exceptionally good thing or an exceptionally bad thing. I think one of the major problems is that the vast majority of bloggers (myself included!) simply pass the story on with no additional information other than their opinion. I know how subjective the mind perceives things and, trust me, just because you read something in 14 blogs that all linked to the same story does not mean everyone believes it.

Extreme Isolation Noise Reduction Headphones

Quiet Headphones: EX29 Extreme Isolation Noise Reduction Headphones

Now THIS is why Google is so cool. It's a search engine that reads ME. I was browsing around in my web page looking for a link that I wanted to post and I caught this in the ad section. I love it!

As for the headphones, how do you reduce noise more than your standard noise cancelling headphones? Why you bring it to the EXTREME of course! 29dB is a lot... it's effectively 1000x quieter than whatever you're listening to right now. When I foolishly waste $89.99 (plus shipping) on it, I'll let you know how they work.

Spectacularly nice things about having a blog

One of the best parts about having a blog is that when you say something controversial/ intelligent/stupid/etc, someone who is equally, if not more, controversial/intelligent/stupid/etc comes along to give you feedback. Hopefully she is more intelligent than stupid, but any feedback is great. Certainly this was the case when an individual commented on my post of a few weeks ago. It was quite thorough, and I hated the thought of the comment being buried in an archived comment. So, in its entirety:

Generally speaking, of course, Joel is correct. But every once in a while you learn that the model that a piece of software implements genuinely is broken, and you're left with no choice but to revisit the architecture. If the state of the art in software development were more advanced than it is, "revisiting the architecture" wouldn't mean "rewrite," but here we are.

So why a Coyotos? The reason is that it's an object-capability OS, and only object-capability security addresses two major flaws in the traditional ACL model that Windows, Mac OS X, Linux... use. They are the Confused Deputy Problem and the Grant Matcher Puzzle. The overwhelming majority of security issues that Windows exhibits are of the Confused Deputy type.

You can indeed paper over a lot of the issues in Windows; see Polaris: Toward Virus Safe Computing for Windows XP (PDF) for an initial attempt. But pay careful attention to the limitations and consider the costs that this approach imposes in the form of installing an external "shell" and the overhead of some of the file-copying operations that it performs under the covers.

So while it's true that something like Coyotos isn't like to ever become mainstream, what will hopefully happen is that it will inspire the Microsofts and Apples and Linus Torvalds of the world to migrate from ACLs to object-capability security in future OS releases.
To the degree that the project is a research experiment and encourages behavior in more commonly used OSs, I very much agree with him. And because the amount I know about ACLs and confused deputies certainly does not match up with Mr. Snively, I will not debate this point either. It is a problem that we, as computer users, attach so much value to legacy, and ultimately may lock us into the decisions that were made 15 years ago when it came to designing a security model. If we were willing (or able) to throw it all away, there is no doubt there would be new and better ways to design the products today. But of all the product redesign and refactoring I've seen while maintaining some semblance of compatibility, I remain confident that people will be able to rework Linux and Windows XP to attempt to address these problems. With Mr. Snively's comments, at least I now know what to look for.

D

Gartner takes Microsoft to task

Gartner takes Microsoft to task | CNET News.com

I always wondered what it would be like being in the public eye and having your every move scrutinized. Politicians must chomp at the bit about stuff like this... or would if they weren't on the talking head networks 24/7 attempting to explain their position but ultimately offering up something so vanilla that no one knows where they stand. Back to the point, Gartner wrote some pointed comments about what MS should be doing and not doing... for example:


[...] Microsoft has missed an opportunity to make it clear what role it wants to play in the security market, by not stating its intentions, Gartner analyst Neil MacDonald said in an advisory published Friday. The company needs to "articulate whether it plans to be a leader in consumer and enterprise security solutions across desktop, server and server gateway," he said.

"Microsoft's overriding goal should be to eliminate the need for (antivirus) and (anti-spyware) products, not simply to enter the market with look-alike products at lower prices," MacDonald added.

While I am sure that Mr. MacDonald's views are appreciated, I am also sure that those in Redmond probably have already evaluated those points of view. What is the purpose of an article like this? Is it to encourage (however subtly) MS to change their strategy? With 50,000 people working there, you can pretty much be assured that someone has thought of that strategy, and are likely already pursuing it. The problem with such opinionated statements is that MS is not in a binary situation; they can actually release a low-cost solution in the marketplace as well as developing the means to solve the root causes. As to why they are not talking about this, one can argue that with all the noise they have been making about Trustworthy Computing, they have been talking about it. But let's go back to the article:


James Turner, security analyst at Frost & Sullivan, told ZDNet Australia that Microsoft's security strategy is a "commercially sensitive" area and that the company is not obliged to reveal its strategy.

I wish there was a tag in HTML that was "blatantly obvious but thanks for stating it anyway because it appears that not everyone is getting it". Suffice it to say that tag would appear here.

One more thing about the article though:


"The decision to restrict IE 7.0 to the XP platform also suggests that Microsoft wants to force users of older platforms to upgrade, if they want improved security," he wrote. "If Microsoft wishes to be seen as a responsible industry leader in maintaining security for its products and its customers, it should provide IE 7.0 for Windows 2000 users."

MacDonald said that Microsoft should rebuild IE with security in mind from the bottom up, rather than make "evolutionary" security improvements to the browser software.

Ok, the WORST thing in the world that MS could do would be to rewrite a product with SEVEN versions from the ground up. Because that paid off so well for Netscape. As to whether or not the product will appear as part of Windows 2000, that is an interesting question. I do not think that a lack of an IE upgrade would strongly encourage people to upgrade their OS, but it may cause them to switch to Firefox (unlikely) or mega lock down their Windows 2000 desktops (very likely).

Napster DRM Broken

Users bypass copy protection on portable Napster

I'm not sure why this made such news. The "analog hole" is a known phenomenon. Until you have a system which is 100% DRMed until it comes out the speaker, you will always have problems with this. Actually, even then, you could put a high quality mic up to the speaker and record it back into digital. OR you could have some composer come along and listen to it and re-record it! Ok, that last one is a bit much, but the problem here is (and always will be) that our ears are not DRMed and there needs to be some conversion from a secure format to an insecure format for us to hear it. Welcome to the digital to analog world.

Man Causes Greenhouse Effect

New proof that man has caused global warming via the TimesOnline

Isn't this the very core of the scientific method? You observe something. You hypothesize what the cause is. Then you test the hypothesis. If you believe that, then man has caused global warming.

Actually, that's a bit of a stretch. First let me say that I believe that man HAS caused global warming, and that we ARE in a period of weather destabilization because of the effect we (as a population) have had. But that said, the problem with this and many other pieces of research which depend on models of this sort is that, as the mutual fund folks like to say, "Past performance does not indicate future results." Yep, this model correctly predicted the past 40 years of climate change. But the only proof of this is making a prediction today and seeing if it come true in the next 10 or 15 years. Which is exactly why we (as a population) have such trouble doing anything that involves action beyond the next fiscal year. We're a very short sighted lot; Johnny in 15 years can figure out his own problems, I want my job shoveling toxic waste now! Whenever it comes to things like this, I generally try and behave with the principle that one person doing something means nothing but a hundred million people doing something means something. Yep, the additional CO2 I caused to be spewed into the atmosphere by throwing one additional plastic cup away is probably damn near zero. But a hundred million people doing the same is a real problem.

Whether or not we need government regulation to step in and help a hundred million people not do something is a blog for another day.

Hanging Alarm Clock

Hanging Alarm Clock via Gizmodo

Now THIS would work! The snooze button is simply slapping the alarm clock which is hanging over your bed. The catch is that every time you snooze it gets a little further away by retracting the cord and getting closer to the ceiling. Eventually it'll get so high that you'll never be able to reach it from bed. I love it!

Jigsaw Puzzle Alarm Clock

Gizmodo : Jigsaw Puzzle Alarm Clock via Gizmodo

I've tried everything to force me to get up in the morning. I've tried setting the alarm clock ahead, putting it across the room, hiding it, you name it. The above is an interesting idea, in that it tries to force you to solve a puzzle to turn it off. But let me tell you, I doubt you've seen a smarter person in the world than me when I'm half asleep trying to turn the alarm off. I have a level of focus and dexterity two seconds after I wake up that rivals anyone in the world at that moment. No matter how complicated it was, if it involved defusing a multi-trigger bomb while flying upside down in a monkey navigated rocket propelled hover sled I'd be able to do it if it meant getting those sweet sweet five more minutes of sleep. This thing just will not cut it.