I've written in this space before about how I think the Unifying Theory of Advertising doesn't work on the Internet. There are too many ways in which a user can ignore or outright disable ads. This cuts down on the number of people who view the ads, and in turn, how many people buy the stuff featured in the ads.

Read/Write Web today takes issue with the advertising technology at the heart of Facebook's potential $15 billion valuation (based on Microsoft paying $240 million for a 1.6% stake).

The problem, writes Alex Iskold, is that "people are not coming to Facebook to click ads." Ignoring for a moment the other half of Iskold's thesis -- that Facebook isn't capable of delivering relevant ads that people want to click on -- we're left with a problem that could bring down Web 2.0.

I've said it before: people don't like advertising. They tolerate because they have to, and whenever they can easily get around it, they do. Advertising is reaching a saturation point, and it won't be long before people, fed up with constantly being marketed at, abandon forums that contain advertising in favor of forums that don't. If Facebook becomes too ad-oriented, it runs the risk of alienating its users at worst, and losing revenue from users who don't buy the products advertised. Once the revenue goes down, then ad-based social networking sites -- which are most of them -- will find themselves in the unemployment line right behind Web 1.0.

Posted by Mark at 3:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

John C. Dvorak writes today in PC Magazine about the impending "Web 2.0" bubble. "Web 2.0" refers to social networking and user-generated content websites like MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, and Flickr. "Bubble" refers to the overvaluation of these companies and the eventual collapse of the Web 2.0 business model once investors pull their money out.

Why will they pull their money out? Lots of promises without the coincident profitability. The original "dot-com" bubble burst because companies promised a lot of stuff without generating a lot of money. Says Dvorak, "We were told that you'd be buying sandwiches over the Internet and having them delivered the next day by FedEx." There actually were several dot-com startups that delivered groceries that you purchased online. And while these were very whiz-bang companies, not enough people bought into their promises of changing the world to make them profitable. People don't want to buy groceries online; they want to go to the store and see them!

The Web 2.0 bubble, says Dvorak, will be worse. But why? He cites several reasons, but I can think of one big one: advertising. Advertising is fueling the Web 2.0 phenomenon. It's traditional advertising, like context-sensitive search results (such as Google Ads) or big, flashy banners on MySpace. The inherent assumption in advertising theory (if there is such a thing) is that the existence of an ad is prima facie evidence that revenue will be generated from that ad, because a person who sees an ad will necessarily buy whatever is advertised.

This ignores a few things: (1) some people aren't morons (that is, they don't automatically buy whatever is shown to them in an ad); and (2) not everyone sees the ads that you place there (due to pop-up blockers, ad blockers, or TiVo). If people can avoid advertising, they will. And I cite Second Life as my example. Second Life was touted as a revolution: you could do business in a virtual world without ever paying the fixed costs that having a business entails. Need to have a meeting? Have it in Second Life! Companies with advertising to do jumped onto this, creating stores and marketplaces in Second Life where users could purchase branded stuff.

The problem is: no one cared:

But the sites of many of the companies remaining in Second Life are empty. During a recent in-world visit, Best Buy Co.'s Geek Squad Island was devoid of visitors and the virtual staff that was supposed to be online.

The schedule of events on Sun Microsystems Inc.'s site was blank, and the green landscape of Dell Island was deserted. Signs posted on the window of the empty American Apparel store said it had closed up shop.

McGuinness said Starwood's venture into Second Life did accomplish something. Feedback from denizens gave Aloft ideas for its physical hotels.

The point is that, given advertising or none, people choose no advertising. Or no branding. Or no shopping. Advertising encourages people to buy things they need, but once everyone has everything he or she needs, advertising moves into its next phase of existence: convincing people to buy things they don't need. Convincing them that there's a void in their life that can only be filled by Banana Republic jeans, Budweiser, or Chevrolet. In the United States, shopping is a past-time. In Second Life, not so much. In an episode of The Simpsons where giant, metal advertising characters came to life and tried to destroy the town, Lisa observed that if you don't pay attention to them, they'll go away. It appears that Second Life has also learned how to use advertising's silver bullet: when no one responds, the advertisers move on.

This is Second Life, but it could be the rest of the Internet, which is much more predicated on advertising revenue than Second Life. In fact, advertising revenue is probably the number one business model, with subscriptions close behind. Advertisers pay Google or Facebook to place their ads on the page, in the hope that visitors will be attracted to these ads and then purchase the products. The entire model operates under the assumption that all ads that are put out there will be seen by consumers; and, as a correlation, all consumers who see those ads will go out and buy the products. As I said at the beginning of this article, those two assumptions are flawed, and when companies realize this, they'll pull some of their billions out of the Internet. Ad-blocking software is very prevalent, and all modern browsers (Internet Explorer 7, Safari, Firefox) offer popup-blocking options. Just because an ad is placed on a website doesn't mean that it will ever be seen. I have popup and ad-blocking software on all my web browsers: I hardly ever see advertisements.

Web 2.0 gets its money from these advertisements. That's why Rupert Murdoch paid $500 million for MySpace, and why Google paid $1.6 billion for YouTube. It's the prospect of reaching an advertising audience. But what if that audience won't see the ads, or won't click on them? The advertisers will pull out, and suddenly the social networking sites will go back to being mere social networking sites, devoid of advertising. This is a good thing for users, but a bad thing for Web 2.0 proprietors, who depend on that revenue to keep the sites going.

Posted by Mark at 5:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In 1994, Congress passed -- and Bill Clinton signed -- the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, which, even before the Internet was popular, demanded federal snooping access to the Internet.

Tomorrow, May 14, 2007, is the deadline set forth in CALEA, by which time all ISPs must have installed backdoors into their systems to allow The Feds easy access. It's strange to think that this is a privacy-invading law that was passed before September 11. It was passed before the Oklahoma City bombings, even.

Thankfully (?), the law doesn't require that an ISP be able to decrypt encrypted customer communications, as long as it was the customer, and not the ISP, that encrypted the communications.

[Via Wired Threat Level blog.]

Posted by Mark at 1:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In its latest "Get a Mac" ad, Apple accurately highlights one of the problems of Windows Vista: its security.

In the ad, a secret service-looking guy stands behind PC, asking him if he wants to "cancel or allow" practically anything he does. Several websites have pointed out that Vista's new "security" is less secure than it is annoying, since it asks you to authorize even normal functions. I can't remember off-hand where those websites are, but I'll bring up a few of the good points they discussed:

• Vista is inconsistent in when it asks for permission to do things. Even opening the Microsoft Management Console requires you to click "continue." As one website pointed out, Mac OS asks for your authorization only for a few things; therefore, you will be trained to understand that when it asks you for your password, you could be doing something dangerous. Microsoft's approach -- parodied excellently in the above-mentioned ad -- is to ask you for approval even for things that aren't system-critical. This trains the user to merely click past the dialogue without thinking about what he or she is doing.
• Vista is also inconsistent in the way it asks for your authorization. Clicking "continue" or "cancel" is one way it asks for permission to do something. An entirely separate dialogue opens when you run an application installer that may make changes to the system; in that dialogue, you must click "allow" or "cancel." If you're not an administrator, there is a third dialogue that can pop up, asking you to actually type in an administrator's name and password. There is still a fourth method of authorization: it's the holdover from Windows XP SP2 that asks you if you want to run the particular program (and includes a checkbox for "don't ask me again" for that program). Mac OS, on the other hand, always asks for your authorization in the same way, so you're never confused about what's going on.
• Clicking "okay" does not make anything secure. The action of clicking a single button may be performed by the user automatically, as I mentioned above, without thinking. It may also be performed by spyware, which can move the mouse or emulate a mouse click. Mac OS requires you to type in a password. The time it takes to remember the password and physically type it in is time that you could use to think about what you're doing. Also, spyware doesn't know your password, so it can't emulate your typing it in.
• In Vista, you can actually turn this protection off. As PC points out in the ad, either you get all the alert dialogues, or you get none of them. In Mac OS, turning off these warnings isn't an option (unless you're the root user, and a root user isn't enabled by default, so the average user will never "accidentally" turn off warning dialogues), even if you're an administrator. This means that you -- or spyware -- can't blow past an installation.

The point is that Windows Vista doesn't encourage good security practices. It actually discourages them in favor of what Microsoft thinks is a happier user experience. Or it poorly implements them for an annoying user experience that makes people just shut the security off.

Interestingly, this is only the third "Get a Mac" ad (of the many ads they've made so far) that mentions Windows (but not Microsoft) by name. The first was the ad that introduced Boot camp; the second was the "surgery" ad that showed PC being prepped for his "upgrade" to Windows Vista.

(Via TUAW.)

Posted by Mark at 3:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

SAN FRANCISCO -- Part of my job will require supporting users running Microsoft's newest operating system, Windows Vista. So I had to install it on my computer. My "computer" is actually a virtual machine running under Parallels Desktop for Mac on a 2.16 GHz 20" iMac Core 2 Duo. I'd love to have the Aero Glass interface (and, indeed, the 128 MB video card could handle it), but Windows doesn't recognize the special Parallels drivers, so it won't do anything like that.

Here's the low down: Windows Vista isn't as terrible as I thought it would be.

Security

Windows Vista actually enforces "administrator" rights like Unix does. This is good. What's bad, though, is that it does so in three different, inconsistent ways. Vista may ask you to "allow" a program (or installer) to run much like Windows XP SP2 requires you to allow certain programs to run. This prevents programs from installing stealthily, which was the major problem with Windows XP. Vista may ask you if you wish to "continue" with the execution of a program that it determines could be potentially risky. Finally, Vista may ask you to type in your full-blown administrator name and password. It may ask for all of these or a combination of them.

It's good that Vista has security in mind, but it's bad that Microsoft implemented security in a half-assed way. On Mac OS, if you want to install anything that's not a drag-and-drop into your own user folder, you must -- always! -- supply an administrator's name and password. No questions, no deviations. If you are about to install something on Mac OS that modifies the operating system, you have to be authenticated.

It's not enough that Vista requires you to click a button; certainly a smart program could create a macro that clicks the button or at least emulates, to the operating system, clicking a button. It's tremendously more difficult to find out your name and password. This is good for multiple users, as well; anyone who isn't an administrator could potentially install stuff on your computer just by clicking a button. They don't need to know a password.

Multiple users

Whereas Windows 9x had no multi-user support to speak of (except for multi-user logins which just saved some settings and Start Menu configurations), Windows XP did have support for multiple users. Windows Vista continues this trend, which is good. But, again, the benchmark for multiple-user support is Mac OS, where not only are one user's settings totally separate from another user's settings, but users can't even see each other's folders. In fact, not even an administrator can see other user's folders. Only the root user (which is disabled by default but can be enabled by any administrator) can see other user's folders. In Windows Vista, anyone can see anyone else's stuff. Why is this still going on?

Functionality

Vista took a nose-dive in the user interface department. It's more difficult in Vista to find what you're looking for than it was in Windows XP. For example, how do I find out my IP address? A user of moderate knowledge could go to a command line and type "ipconfig." But Windows Vista wants to be graphically based. Okay, let's bite. The first thing you would do is go to the Start Menu and then to Network. But Network doesn't display your network settings; it displays the stuff on your network. You'll need to click Network and Sharing Center in the menu bar of the Network window to get to the settings. The next window looks familiar; it's almost like the Network Settings control panel from Windows XP, but it provides a little more information. For example, if you're connected to a domain, it will tell you what the domain is. That's great! But it doesn't tell you what your IP address is. For that, you'll need to "View Status" of your local area connection. But even that doesn't tell you your IP address like it did in Windows XP. You must click "Details" and then you can figure out your IP address.

The Lowdown

Some people -- like major marketing companies -- would like you to believe that Windows Vista is a next-generation, super-duper operating system. It's not. It's merely the next iteration after Windows XP. Microsoft spent the last six years slowly stripping away features and, in the same way that they rewrote Windows 2000 and called it Windows XP, they rewrote Windows 2003 and called it Windows Vista. There's no reason to upgrade to Vista, especially if you have an older machine. The sexy Aero Glass interface will only work on machines with a real video card, so if you purchased a bargain-basement machine from Dell with onboard Intel video, you're out of luck. What you'll be using will look and act pretty much like Windows XP. And when the "Home Premium" version of Vista (which is the only "home" version that doesn't suck) costs $300, why bother?

Posted by Mark at 6:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

AppleInsider reports that movie industry executives refuse to license their films to the iTunes Music Store unless Apple locks down the content in a way that makes them happy:

"The studios want to avoid the experience of the music industry, which has yet to recover from years of illegal digital piracy," the report states. It quotes one studio executive involved in the talks as saying Apple must introduce a "new model" for feature film content delivery.

It is debatable and, by all independent analyses, extremely unlikely, that piracy is responsible for a decrease in music industry revenue. Never mind that (1) companies similar in size to the aggregate size of the RIAA's member companies experienced a similar downturn in revenue; (2) the music companies have actually been releasing fewer units than before their downturn; and (3) it may just be possible that consumers are buying less corporate music because they don't like it.

The RIAA and MPAA have always argued that DRM is essential to their online business models. Without DRM, they argue, we wouldn't be able to provide the content to you; therefore, in order to provide content to you, we must DRM it. This flawed logic implies that DRM is necessary for online content distribution, when, in fact, these industries only require DRM so that they can be sure that no one will ever -- ever -- use their content in a way that they don't want.

But this isn't news. Music companies have been pressing Apple to fall into their way of doing things for years. Music companies want Apple to adopt a variable pricing scheme that makes popular tracks more expensive than unpopular ones. Ever since the inception of the iTunes Music Store, Steve Jobs has sold all music for the same price, regardless of popularity. The only things that makes albums more expensive at the iTunes Music Store is the amount of stuff included (i.e. a multi-disc collection is more expensive than a single-disc album).

Fortunately, Apple is more responsive to its consumers than Microsoft, and Steve Jobs is stubborn enough not to be bullied by music industry executives. When the music companies came to Microsoft and said that they wanted a device that would barely function, and when it did, it would function the way music companies wanted it to, Microsoft said, "Where do we sign?" Apple designed the iPod and the iTunes Music Store by asking, "What features do consumers want?" DRM is probably not at the top of the list.

Posted by Mark at 11:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Over the weekend, I wrote about how a professor at Bridgewater University used one of my blog entries in his class. I emailed him to ask him how he happened to choose my entry, and what his students thought of it. His response:

Hello Mr. Wilson,

Thanks for your e-mail. The class you came upon is an "intro to liberal arts" class that centers around writing reflective essays on a variety of personal development topics. Since this fall was an election season, your blog entry served to stimulate discussion on what is "liberal" and what is "conservative."

I found your blog through a "liberal vs. conservative" Google search. The course syllabus indicated the link to your site. Students had to visit your link directly to access your blog entry.

This group of first year college students seemed very accepting of your comments. I was surprised that the general topic of contemporary politics did not bring the type of enthusiastic discussion that I anticipated.

Best regards,
Tom Rosengarth

Oh, man! I had hoped I would inspire spirited debate. Then again, it could be that first-year college students are apathetic about most things in general, if they do the readings at all.

Posted by Mark at 11:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Andy Ihnatko of The Chicago Sun-Times writes his review of the Microsoft Zune player. His recommendation:

"Avoid," is my general message. The Zune is a square wheel, a product that's so absurd and so obviously immune to success that it evokes something akin to a sense of pity.

Once again, Microsoft proves its schizophrenia: on the one hand, it wants to make good products. On the other hand, its good products are inhibited by its awful operating system and its necessity to do what its business partners want it to (i.e., put DRM into the system).

Posted by Mark at 8:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This is an excellent discussion of the differences between Intel Macs and Intel PCs. As the author observes, now that Apple is using Intel processors, Apple isn't making Macs; it's making next-generation PCs. Apple's use of Intel's GUID Partition Table (GPT) format and its EFI firmware have gotten it away from the legacy universe of PCs, which still operate using technology from the 1980s.

Indeed, HP still ships its computers with PS/2 mice and keyboards (leading those of us in the IT field to collect mountains of USB-to-PS/2 adapters that must ship with every PC-compatible mouse and keyboard, just in case), whereas Apple introduced the iMac in 1998 with USB mice and keyboards. Apple also dumped the 3 1/2-inch floppy drive in 1998, something that PC manufacturers still include, despite the fact that modern data can't begin to fit on a 1.44 MB disk that reads and writes at about 100 KB/sec. Solid-state flash drives are cheap (you can get 128 MB of storage -- which is plenty for the average user -- for $20), fast (USB 2.0 transmits data at 400 Mb/s, or 50 MB/s, compared to the floppy drive's 0.1 MB/s), convenient (any computer with a USB port can read data from a USB drive, and Windows automatically detects and installs pretty much every kind of USB drive), and robust (there are no moving parts in a USB drive, meaning that disks crashing or becoming corrupt due to mechanical or physical problems is impossible).

It's amazing that HP and Dell are still using technology that is 20 years old to produce PCs. Those PCs still boot into a DOS-looking screen, they still rely on the old BIOS architecture for their firmware, and some of them still ship with parallel (Centronics) ports, which no one even uses anymore (all modern printers either connect via RJ45 or USB jacks). In making the transition to Intel processors, Apple has created what the PC of 2006 should look like: a machine that abandons any hint of DOS, that utilizes only the most modern peripherals and components, and that allows for backward compatibility without mandating it. (If you want a floppy drive, for example, you can just plug a USB floppy drive into your Mac; however, space isn't wasted in producing an OEM floppy drive for the sake of the minority who still use floppies.) And PC manufacturers certainly haven't adopted IEEE 1394 "FireWire" ports, even though FireWire 400 actually transmits data faster than USB 2.0, due to the way in which the data is routed by the system.

And then there's Windows. Windows 95 was a hearty attempt to get rid of DOS. Even as late as Windows 3.1, Microsoft's operating system was just a user interface that floated on top of DOS, which did the real behind-the-scenes work. Windows 95 was the first time that Windows was actually the operating system in control. Windows XP was a further evolution, ending the Windows 9x (95, 98, 98se, Me) train and instead branching off the Windows 2000 train. But Windows XP still contains ridiculous legacy components that wouldn't be there if Microsoft had set out to refurbish its operating system. Microsoft didn't rebuild Windows from the ground up in order to create XP; rather, it smushed together Windows 2000 and Windows 98 to create an OS that had the pretty functionality of the consumer-level Windows 98 and the back-end robustness of the professional-level Windows 2000.

In fact, take a look at RoughlyDrafted's multi-part series "Leopard vs. Vista," in which the author explains the major differences between the Leopard experience and the Vista experience and why most pro-Windows advocates obfuscate their arguments and why Microsoft and Apple can't even be compared, because they cater to different markets, have different goals, and even perform different functions. (Microsoft, for example, makes only the operating system; Apple, on the other hand, makes both the OS and the hardware, which is a significant difference, as you'll discover.)

Posted by Mark at 3:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Microsoft is counting on its gigantic market-share to force its new mobile media player (I don't call it an "MP3" player for reasons that will become clear below) into people's homes in the same way that it forced Internet Explorer into people's homes: laziness.

First of all, the use of Microsoft's Zune player requires Windows Media Player. In the computing world, the field of competition in the "OS media player" struggle consists of two parties: Windows Media Player and iTunes. Back in college, WinAMP and MusicMatch Jukebox were viable alternatives, although MusicMatch was clunky and WinAMP 3 was beset with enough bugs to make me look for something else. And lo, there was iTunes: a simple, elegant, perfectly functional music management program that did all the things I wanted it to. By the time I graduated, most of the people I knew were using iTunes to manage their music -- and why not? For one thing, it allowed changing ID3 information for multiple files, something that's really useful if you have an entire album filled with incorrect information (which happens often). For another, the menu and interface structure is a whole lot better than WMP, which hides its menus all in the name of looking "sleek" or something like that. Apple managed to create a product that is both sleek and functional. (This, however, is not an "Apple is better than Microsoft" debate; WinAMP's interface was also sleek and functional.)

The secret to Apple's success was that it didn't bow to music industry pressure and force consumers to use its DRMed format for all of their music. Apple understood that consumers liked the MP3 format for its convenience, ease of use, and portability, and allowed consumers to put their existing MP3s on an iPod without forcing them to convert the files to AAC or some other format.

Not so much with Zune. According to Medialoper, Microsoft will try what others have tried -- and failed at -- before: namely, requiring DRMed files on the music player. Brian, who used to work at the Sony outlet store in Grove City, told me a horror story about a Sony digital music player he bought a few years ago. Apparently, once the Sony OS-based software was installed, it proceeded to go through the entire computer and convert any pre-existing music into Sony's proprietary, DRMed file format. If Medialoper is correct, Zune will behave in a similar way:

Unfortunately Zune’s wireless music sharing is turning out to be one of those features that seemed better when it was just a rumor. While Zune users will be able share music with friends, there’s a catch (isn’t there always). As Jim noted earlier, recipients of shared songs will only be able to listen to them three times or for three days, whichever comes first. It sort of sounds like a really bad tire warranty.

Zune accomplishes this amazingly stupid feat by wrapping shared music in a proprietary layer of DRM, regardless of what format the original content may be in. If Microsoft’s claims are to be believed, this on-the-fly DRM will be seamless and automatic - which must be some kind of first for Microsoft.

What Microsoft has created is a new form of viral DRM. Zune will intentionally infect your music with the DRM virus before passing it along to one of your friends. After three listens the poor song dies a horrible DRM enabled death. Talk about innovation.

Microsoft will undoubtedly claim this limitation is designed to support artists and prevent piracy. There’s just one problem. Not all artists want their music protected by DRM. Furthermore, not all artists benefit from having their music protected by DRM.

So, even if the music you wish to share is licensed under a Creative Commons License (which specifically forbids DRM), Microsoft will blatantly violate the license because it's more important to catch people trying to violate copyright than it is to allow people to use their devices in the way they want. This may alienate a lot of customers once those customers realize what's going on.

This whole "wireless functionality" business is also doomed to failure. What good is sharing music wirelessly if you get "3 days/3 plays"? This feature was imposed on Zune by music companies, who would not have given licenses to Microsoft unless they were absolutely sure the content could be completely locked down. Music companies are not in the business of letting you own your music; they're in the business of giving you licenses to your music and then telling you what you may do with the music you have a license to. Using the "license" trick also enables them to change the license at any time, so theoretically, they would be well within their rights to make it so that you can only play a song once, and then you have to re-purchase the song from Microsoft.

Wireless functionality is a neat idea ... maybe for a few times. Apple thought about it briefly for its next generation of iPod, but scrapped it because it would diminish battery life faster.

I feel that Microsoft will push Zune on Windows customers and hope that those customers will go with Zune because of inertia; "Hey, I already have Windows and Windows Media Player, why shouldn't I have a Zune?" This might have worked five years ago, but Apple is already here with a superior product. Why did I get an iPod? Because, after a thorough review of all the music players out there, I concluded that the iPod had the best features and the most functionality, and that holds true today. Microsoft also priced its Zune player on the same level as the 30 GB iPod, so the "Apple is too expensive" argument doesn't fly in the digital music player field. Since price is no longer a factor, I expect that customers will still flock to the iPod because of its functionality. And who knows? Maybe they'll be suspicious about Microsoft products after spending the last five years running weekly anti-spyware and antivirus programs to get rid of all the garbage that can be installed on Windows XP.

Posted by Mark at 11:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Not only does spam email advertise a variety of stock options and sexual enhancement tools, it also provides us with things to think about. Take these examples of fine philosophical discourse, seemingly randomly generated, from spam emails:

Many hands make light work A creaking door hangs longest. Look before you leap. You cannot lose what you never had Half a loaf is better than none. Dont count the days, make the days count!

He who dares wins When man done suck cane he dash peeling pan ground. Smile and the world smiles with you, snore and you sleep alone A good mate is the road map for the spaghetti junction of life.

A heart at peace gives life to the body, but envy rots the bones. You cannot burn the candle at both ends There's a light at the end of the tunnel. Yesterday is ashes; tomorrow wood Only today does the fire burn brightly

How profound! Little did I know that, at the "spaghetti junction of life," which is a metaphor for Cialis (I think), I would need a good mate to help me with the road map.

Posted by Mark at 1:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I had totally forgotten to blog about the issue of 'net neutrality, and then I read an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle today from Stanford University law professor and EFF boardmember Lawrence Lessig. Apparently, Congress will vote today on a 'net neutrality bill, and they could vote to either keep the Internet free, or create a "premium" tier of Internet, the content of which will be pay-only. Lessig explains:

Now Congress faces a legislative decision. Will we reinstate net neutrality and keep the Internet free? Or will we let it die at the hands of network owners itching to become content gatekeepers? The implications of permanently losing network neutrality could not be more serious. The legislation, backed by companies such as AT&T, Verizon and Comcast, would allow the firms to create different tiers of online service. They would be able to sell access to the express lane to deep-pocketed corporations and relegate everyone else to the digital equivalent of a winding dirt road. Worse still, these gatekeepers would determine who gets premium treatment and who doesn't.

As Lessig points out, practically everyone is against the idea of a two-tiered Internet -- except ISPs like Verizon, AT&T, and Comcast. In a world of net neutrality, phone and cable companies lose, since they don't get the opportunity to charge for what they determine is "premium" content.

If you'd like to read the legislation, it is available via THOMAS, the federal legislation database. It is called H.R. 5252, the "Communications Opportunity, Promotion, and Enhancement Act of 2006."

As an aside, I didn't know that bills were now available in XML. Awesome! Internal references are hyperlinks, so if some text refers to some other part of the bill, you can click on the link and go to that reference.

Posted by Mark at 9:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Two months ago, Apple announced Boot Camp, a preview of a utility to be included in Mac OS 10.5, Leopard. Boot Camp is a utility that allows users of Intel-based Macintoshes to install a Windows XP boot partition on their machines.

Sure, that's great. But say you're in the business of installing custom disk images onto lots of computers, some of them Intel Macs and some of them PowerPC. An Intel Mac won't boot from a PowerPC version of Mac OS X, and vice versa. So, you thought you'd install the Intel Mac OS X on your external FireWire drive. Right?

Wrong. You probably got a big "X" over the drive when you tried to install Mac OS X from the installation DVD. This "X" means that Mac OS X can't be installed on that drive. What gives?

As this website points out, there are going to be some problems if you don't format the external drive correctly:

The Intel-based Macs are the first Macs to use Intel's Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI). Originally intended to replace the PC's aging and unloved Basic Input Output System (BIOS), EFI has found its way into the new Macs, taking over for Open Firmware in PowerPC-based Macs.

Tagging along with EFI is a new partition scheme: GUID Partition Table (GPT); GUID itself is an acronym, expanding to Globally Unique Identifier. GUIDs are locally generated, world-unique random numbers, which make them handy for uniquely identifying all kinds of things without a centralized organization or database. GUIDs are a great way to identify hard disk partitions, enabling the operating system to track volumes even if the device interface changes (as would happen if you ripped your old hard drive out of your Mac and tossed it into a FireWire enclosure).

GPT replaces Apple Partition Map (APM) as the boot partition scheme for Intel-based Macs. And therein lies the rub. Intel-based Macs can't boot from older APM drives, and PowerPC-based Macs can't boot from newer GPT drives. This appears to be a permanent situation - each scheme makes incompatible assumptions about the layout of physical block 1 on the disk. While GPT was designed to be compatible with Master Block Record (MBR, the PC's old partition scheme), it doesn't play nicely with APM.

When you go into Disk Utility (/Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility) to erase the FireWire disk, unbeknownst to you, Disk Utility is formatting the drive using the APM scheme by default. To change this option, click on the "Partition" tab and then the "Options" button, where you will be greeted by three partitioning options (in addition to the ones already available in the "Erase" tab): Apple Partition Map (the default for PowerPC-based Macs), GUID Partition Scheme (the default for Intel-based Macs), and Master Boot Record (the default for Windows and DOS-based computers since time immemorial). If you want your FireWire drive to be a bootable volume for your Intel-based Mac, choose GUID Partition Scheme, and suddenly you'll be able to install Intel-based Mac OS X on your external drive.

Great! Woo! But what if you support a bunch of users who use both Intel and PowerPC-based Macs? Disk Utility won't let you partition a disk in multiple ways -- at least, not in one fell swoop. Here's a link to an article detailing how to install both Mac OS X for Intel and PowerPC on different partitions on the same physical disk. It requires several steps and takes a while, but it appears to work. Plus, it saves you from having to either (1) buy two FireWire drives and/or (2) cart two drives around with you.

Posted by Mark at 3:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

An Italian design group called Molleindustria has produced the McDonald's video game. Using Flash, they've created a SimCity-style representation of the McDonald's corporate structure. You must oversee grain and soy production in, cow production, store management, and corporate marketing. The game is clearly anti-McDonald's and is designed to demonstrate how corrupt and evil capitalism is (like most Europeans, these Italians are probably socialists).

Some of the evil capitalist things you can do in the game are:

• Demolish a native village in South America to create more land for cow pasture or grain
• Use genetically-modified soy to increase soy output (soy feeds the cows when they're in the slaughterhouse)
• Add animal waste to the soy when they're isn't enough soy
• Add hormones to the soy to increase beef production
• Reward McDonald's store employees with a trite "badge" for doing a good job
• Use marketing techniques to get people to buy more product (by targeting children specifically, for example) or as damage control, such as when an obesity group claims your product causes obesity

The game is very pretty and very well-designed, but like most European socialist beliefs, I have to take issue with some things.

McDonald's doesn't add animal waste to its feed ("shit" is specifically mentioned in the tutorial). Why would animal waste be nutritious? It's toxic and it doesn't contain any nutrients. Someone at Molleindustria thought this would be a good way to gross people out ("Horrors! McDonald's puts animal shit in animal feed? That's disgusting!") and encourage them not to buy McDonald's, but it just doesn't make sense. Corporations may do horrible things, but only when it makes sense.

That word "genetically modified" is here again. Despite no evidence whatsoever to support their claims, European socialists hate genetically-modified crops, which they call "Frankenfoods." I don't even know what they think is going on when it comes to GM foods: do they think we're creating a race of super-plants? Do they think we're putting mind-control serum into the plants? No, they're just being reactionary, because when a multinational corporation does anything, it is necessarily bad, especially when a multinational corporation messes with Mother Nature. But did anyone mention to these people that we have been genetically modifying food -- by splicing cuttings from plants together -- for thousands of years?

On an economic level, genetically-modified foods increase output and lower costs because you have to plant less. You can engineer plants that are more yielding and more resistant to pests, meaning that you cut down on pesticide use (wait a second, I thought you people didn't like pesticides!) and you can make more money with the same amount of land use.

Second, when it comes to growing food, socialists love organic. It's somehow "better" than regular food growth, because it doesn't use pesticides, and that makes it more "natural." Well, this concept of "nature" is just as fabricated as the old Romantic notion that farmers and poor people are more virtuous than everyone else. Because organically-grown food doesn't use pesticides, there's more crop lost to pests. This means that, to compensate for the lost crop and generate the same yield as non-organic crops, organic growers must grow approximately four times as much as non-organic growers, and this means about four times as much land use. If the world were convinced by the organic argument, then a lot of the world's population would starve. We don't even have enough arable land on planet Earth to allow for organic production. Either the "organic all the way" people (and by this, I mean the people who want to impose organic growth on everyone else, not the organic people who prefer it for themselves) haven't thought much about the issue, or they want a good portion of the population to starve and die. This latter suggestion would be most consistent with the idea of "sustainability," which involves having a much smaller population than we do now. In that case, the organic movement would be very sinister, as it would be encouraging people to die in order to promote sustainable growth.

Third, what does "organic" mean, anyway? Like I said, it's a fabrication. Human beings have been using pesticides since they first starting growing crops over five thousand years ago. They used pesticides because pests were eating their crops and they had to do something about it! (Please read the last sentence with a Lewis Black inflection on the italicized words.) Human beings have the capability to solve problems and use technology. Are we not supposed to do these things? If so, we would have been killed by lions thousands of years ago. There is a difference, certainly, between using a careful application of pesticides to control pests while keeping crops safe and coating everything we see in DDT. Many of these European socialists, I feel, can't see the distinction. All pesticides, to them, are DDT. There is no middle ground. In this way, they're a lot like neoconservatives. Same style of argument.

Problem is, I have to deal with this all the time in Berkeley, since there are a lot of European-style people there. Lousy hippies.

Posted by Mark at 12:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Last week, rumors surfaced that Apple was holding some sort of super-duper event Feb. 28, during which Steve Jobs would unveil some "fun" new products.

Think Secret reports that the product is probably the iPod Hi-Fi Boombox. Until now, Apple hasn't gotten into the iPod accessories business, leaving that to other companies like Griffin and Belkin. Now, though, if Think Secret is correct, Apple may soon start selling its own devices that "will deliver unique capabilities beyond what today's third-party docking speaker systems offer."

There are also rumors floating around that Apple's "fun" new product could be the touch-screen iPod. Rumors abound that the next generation iPod will feature a 3.5" screen and a touchscreen navigation wheel, eliminating the mechanical click wheel.

Posted by Mark at 9:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In case you haven't heard, AOL and Yahoo revealed last week that their solution to the problem of spam email was to charge users who send email from an aol.com or yahoo.com address.

The charge won't be mandatory, however. Using a technology called Goodmail, AOL and Yahoo will prevent mail from people who pay the fee from being marked as spam. Users of the service must assure Yahoo and AOL that they won't email anyone who hasn't requested to be emailed. After paying the fee -- which could be as high as one cent per email -- and giving Yahoo or AOL an assurance, senders' emails will never be marked as spam in AOL or Yahoo's mail systems.

Great idea, right? It will stop spam, won't it? I mean, a financial burden is a disincentive to engage in a particular practice (cf. Oakland's new ordinance regarding litter, or charging companies for polluting), right?

Not really.

First, all the system does is remove a barrier. It doesn't impose new barriers for spam emails. AOL and Yahoo have blacklists for filtering out spam emails. All this Goodmail system will do is remove XYZ Corporation from the blacklist. Spammers will continue to come up with new and innovative ways of getting around the mail filters.

Second, the system creates a slippery slope: charging for emails. While it only applies to people who want to use it, the precedent has been set. Companies are now charging for emails. The Electronic Frontier Foundation's legal director, Cindy Cohn, warns:

Even email senders who just want to reach Dad@aol.com may eventually be in trouble. Once a pay-to-speak system like this gets going, it will be increasing difficult for people who don't pay to get their mail through. The system has no way to distinguish between ordinary mail and bulk mail, spam and non-spam, personal and commercial mail. It just gives preference to people who pay.

"Payment" is, in this system, a proxy for "not spam." The problem is that this isn't always true. Things that are not spam might not be paid for. Things might be paid for that are spam. There's plenty of wiggle-room for false positives (something marked as "not spam" that is spam and something marked as "spam" that's not spam). In any security system in which you're trying to restrict access to just the people you want, false positives mean that the system isn't working, and a dysfunctional system might be worse than no system at all.

We have lots of proxies in our society. "Race" often stands in for "poverty." "Wealth" often stands in for "virtue." The beauty of the Internet is that those proxies don't exist. Putting the Goodmail scheme into place would create a new one: if you have to charge for it, then it must not be junk. Free is bad. Costliness is good. Except, the Internet functions on being free. This is why people run away in droves from websites that require pay subscriptions (except for porn sites, because the demand for porn is apparently perfectly inelastic). As Cohn notes in her blog entry, being free is "a feature that has driven the digital revolution. It allows groups to scale up from a dozen friends to a hundred people who love knitting to half-a-million concerned citizens without a major bankroll."

On a philosophical level, charging for email is a bad idea. On a pragmatic level, it's a bad idea: it won't solve the problem of spam email (or spammers will go to other ISPs for free email addresses, or they'll write viruses to turn infected computers into zombie mass-mailers).

Posted by Mark at 2:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

CNet reports that Apple's share price closed yesterday at $80.86. This is sort of a coincidental joke. Yesterday was the day that Apple unveiled its new Intel-powered Macs, and "8086" was the internal number given to Intel's first major consumer processor back in 1978. (For this reason, Intel processors that follow in this line of architecture are called "x86" -- 80286, 80386, 80486, and the 80586, which was called the "Pentium.")

Just something that's slightly hilarious. If you're a nerd.

Posted by Mark at 9:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As expected, Steve Jobs announced at the keynote address of the MacWorld Expo the first Intel-based Macintosh, the MacBook Pro, a laptop powered by an Intel Core Duo processor (it is dual-core, meaning it has two processors on the same chip). The MacBook Pro comes with a built-in iSight camera and Front Row, the application for remote control access first introduced on the iMac. The MacBook Pro claims to be "4x faster" than PowerBooks and, starting at $1999, it's more affordable. The MacBook Pro comes in only one size -- a 15.4" widescreen display -- but can be outfitted with either a 1.67 or a 1.83 GHz dual-core processor. The MacBook Pro also supports Serial ATA and has a frontside bus speed of 667 MHz.

The MacBook Pro also introduces the "MagSafe" power adapter connector, which holds the power cord in place with a magnet. This comes in response to complaints that previous PowerBook connectors were held in place too strongly, causing the whole machine to fall off the desk if someone tripped over the power cord. Now, the force holding the power cord in place is less strong than the force of friction between the computer and the tabletop, meaning that if someone trips on the cord, the cord will simply pop out instead of the computer careening off the tabletop.

The 1.67 GHz MacBook Pro costs $1,999, while the 1.83 GHz version comes in at $2,499. The 1.83 GHz version is different from the 1.67 GHz version not only in processor speed, but also memory (1 GB of RAM instead of 512 MB), hard drive capacity (100 GB instead of 80 GB), and video memory (256 MB instead of 128 MB). Both models have SuperDrives, Serial ATA hard drives, and ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 video cards.

Jobs also introduced the newest incarnation of the iMac, which also uses an Intel Core Duo processor. The new iMac has a top speed of 2 GHz and comes in either a 17" or 20" widescreen display.

The 17" iMac has a speed of 1.83 GHz and comes with a 160 GB Serial ATA hard drive. The 20" iMac has a speed of 2.0 GHz and comes with a 250 GB Serial ATA hard drive. Aside from that, both models are the same, including dual-layer DVD burning. The 17" model starts at $1,299, while the 20" version costs $1,699.

What's startling is that the MacBook Pro and the iMac are the first Macintosh computers to be powered by Intel chips instead of Motorola-designed PowerPC chips. Reportedly, porting Mac OS X to an x86-based processor has resulted in a tremendous performance increase. (Curiously, putting Windows on ever-faster processors doesn't increase Windows' performance.)

Think Secret expected to see an iBook instead of what is essentially a PowerBook with an Intel processor, but no doubt Apple will release a lower-end version of the MacBook Pro for the iBook market (maybe single-core instead of dual-core). Expect prices of G4 PowerBooks and G5 iMacs to fall as techies start buying up the x86-based Macs.

Jobs also introduced, as planned, iLife '06, which contains all the applications found in iLife '05 plus a new application called iWeb. iWeb is used, according to the Apple website, "to create websites, blogs, and podcasts." True to the user-friendly nature of Apple applications, a user can "drag, drop, and design using [his] choice of web templates, then publish live to [his] .Mac account." It was really the only thing missing from iLife '05 and provides a more compelling reason to buy a .Mac account, which, until now, only really allowed for email and storage space. Creating a web page was something you had to do in another program. Now, a user can create a webpage using entirely Apple software and services.

But wait! There's more! Jobs also announced a new member of the iPod family, the iPod Radio Remote, which allows you to listen to the radio with your iPod, a feature that has been sorely lacking ever since the iPod's introduction in 2001.

With all of these new products come software updates. Mac users should expect to see iTunes 6.0.2 and QuickTime 7.0.4 in the "Software Updates" application today.

Posted by Mark at 11:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Now that I'm in Oakland, I thought about attending the MacWorld Expo, the January event that showcases Apple's new products for the year. It's also the place where Jobs adds, "Just one more thing ..." to his keynote address, signaling the introduction of some cool new piece of hardware or software. Think Secret hypothesizes that Jobs will formally introduce x86-based iBooks and PowerMacs to the public today at 9 AM PST, as well as iLife '06, the newest version of Apple's iLife '05 (iTunes, iCal, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, though iLife '06 will have a new program, iWeb), and an updated Mac Mini.

Yes, I wanted to go. Until I learned that it cost $1,700 to attend MacWorld Expo. So, I figure that I'll just read about what happens. One day, I'll be able to spend $1,700 on a ticket to MacWorld Expo. I went to a Microsoft convention for free and got a goodie bag filled with sundry goods and a copy of Windows XP. If that's in the goodie bag for a free convention, the MacWorld Expo goodie bag had better have a Mac Mini in it.

As soon as I know what the super cool surprise is, I'll report about it.

Posted by Mark at 9:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm going to add a new feature to my website and I'm going to call it something like "Things My Mom Needs to Know About Computers." It will consist of several different tutorials about doing things that parents that aren't computer-savvy might not know. I asked my own mom what things she might need help with, since I'm not there anymore, and she suggested that sending email was number one on the list.

Do your parents need helping doing things with the computer? Would you like to see a tutorial about that thing? Maybe you need help doing something but are too embarrassed to say that you don't know how to do it. Just let me know and we won't judge you.

Posted by Mark at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

According to David A. Justiss's Dictionary of Monsters, which provides an index of mythical creatures and monsters, a "sedhe" is a fairy. The word sedhe is Gaelic and is pronounced "shee":

They are often very dangerous even if they seem friendly. They are very selective about who they let into their world (and who they let back out), and often have strict rules about not telling anyone where they live or where the entrance to the land of faerie is. The result of breaking their rules is often death or a devastating curse. Some, like the banshee, seem undead and others more like demons than fairies. Even when types of Irish or Europeon fairies seem harmless and helpful, they are afraid of clergy or religious people which usually implies something demonic.

A banshee, though Irish, is not a fairy and is not undead. Nevertheless, David A. Justiss claims that the word "banshee" comes from the Gaelic "Bean-sedhe," which means "woman of the sedhe." A banshee is the ghost of a woman who has drowned her children; this is why she is most frequently seen next to rivers. Seeing a banshee is a "forerunner," meaning an indication of your impending death. It's a common misconceptions that banshees wail; they don't wail, they cry. And if you're seeing the banshee, and she's crying, then she's crying for you, because she knows you're about to die.

So, not only is SEDHE the Spanish Society for the History of Education, but it's also a fairy.

Posted by Mark at 9:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

At a conference today announcing its fourth-quarter sales figures, Apple CEO Steve Jobs also unveiled some new Apple products. Speculation had been circulating at places like Think Secret that the next version of the iPod would have video-playback capability. It was the next logical step, after all. Jobs revealed the fifth generation iPod, which has a larger (2.5" diagonal) backlit, color LCD screen and a smaller click-wheel a la iPod Nano. The fifth-generation iPod is available in standard white or glossy black. It comes in two sizes: 30 GB ($299, the same as the fourth-generation 20 GB iPod) and 60 GB ($399, the same price as the fourth-generation 60 GB iPod). The iPod U2 Edition has been phased out. I suspect many people bought it because of its glossy black color, but now that Apple makes a glossy black regular iPod, there's no reason to pay more money for DRM-crippled U2 songs just so you can have a black case.

Jobs announced a deal with ABC in which the iTunes Music Store would provide full-length episodes of Lost and Desperate Housewives for $1.99 each the day after they air. The iTunes Music Store also has a new video download department. I don't suspect all television viewing will now move to the iPod -- since viewers like large screens -- but it will certainly allow people to be distracted by their iPods while walking around town in a new and different way.

Apple also unveiled its new iMac G5, which looks a lot like the old iMac G5, except this one has a remote control and a built-in iSight camera. The new iMac G5 is available in a 1.9 GHz 17" model ($1299) or a 2.1 GHz 20" model ($1699). The new iMac G5 still sports a PowerPC processor, but it contains DDR2 RAM instead of DDR RAM. Think Secret expected to see updates to the PowerBook and Power Mac lines, but they were not unveiled today. The only updates possible for the PowerBook would be a change from DDR to DDR2 RAM and a switch to a slightly faster G4 processor. Any Power Mac update is expected to be a switch to a dual-core G5 processor. Don't expect a G5 PowerBook anytime in the near ... ever.

Along with a new iPod came a new version of iTunes, iTunes 6, which interfaces with the iTunes Music Store's new video download section. And along with a new version of iTunes came a new version of QuickTime, QuickTime 7.0.3.

Posted by Mark at 7:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Lord: Please stop making it easy for people who have no idea how to design a web page to make web pages. Thanks a million. Oh, and P.S.: If could find time to firebomb Xanga, that would be great.

Posted by Mark at 1:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

CNet reports that a new variant of the old Bagle virus is coursing through the Internet.

It's interesting to note how viruses have changed in the last thirty or so years. When computer viruses began, they were the projects of kids looking to cause trouble. Today's most prolific viruses, though, are designed to turn an infected computer into a spam robot, sending thousands of spam emails all over the world.

What have I been saying about the pervasiveness of marketing? If this keeps up, James Bond's next villain will try to engage in a hostile takeover of a major company -- literally. Whatever happened to being bad for bad's sake? It's been swallowed up by the prospect of 25 cents per spam email.

Even worse, today's viruses are smart. They automatically terminate processes associated with antivirus and anti-spyware software. They block access to security websites. They effectively strip a computer of its protection. Remember how everyone keeps telling you to install antivirus software? Whether you have it or not doesn't matter to the new Bagle virus, or any other of dozens of viruses. It will terminate the process, anyway. And you want to try to start up in safe mode? Yeah, that doesn't matter, either. It's there in safe mode. I've worked on computers for days trying to get rid of all the crap stuck on them, and sometimes I've had to give up and format the hard drive, because the virus or spyware so pervaded the operating system that there was no way to get rid of it all. Two years ago, this was nothing more than an interesting exception to the spyware/virus rule. Spyware back then was easy to get rid of through "Add/Remove Programs." Now, the spyware hides deep within the registry and file structure. It masquerades as a dozen fake applications in the C:\Windows\System directory. It terminates your anti-spyware program. It blocks web access to Symantec's website. "Add/Remove Programs" doesn't work anymore.

And why spam? As Bruce Schneier points out, it's because people actually read it. Some people read spam emails, and since the cost of sending spam emails is ridiculously low, it doesn't take a lot of people to read those emails and buy those products to make the emails profitable. We've got one of two options, here: (1) alter people's web-browsing habits so they don't open spam emails; or (2) levy fines against known spam senders. This last one is hard, because spam senders are often not companies, or if they are, they're companies whose "official policies" are to not send spam, while at the same time they pay Eastern European hackers 25 cents per spam email sent with the new spam virus that the kid wrote. What's happened to the world when corporations have infiltrated run-of-the-mill mischief? Pretty soon, punks will be spraypainting buildings and bridges with the Pepsi logo instead of regular old grafitti -- and Pepsi will pay them for their troubles.

Meanwhile, over here at SEDHE, the comment-spam is getting smarter. Now, whatever robots that are sending comment spam are including what appear to be random URLs from actual blogs along with links to the crap that they're advertising. This makes it difficult to program MT-Blacklist, since each individual comment spam contains a different URL and a different, randomly-generated fake email address. The point of comment spam is not to have people click on the links. The point of comment spam is for the owner of the blog to ignore the spam until such time as the page with the comment spam link on it gets archived by the search engines. The more pages there are with the same link, the higher the search result, and the more money these companies can weasel out of advertisers. This strategy takes advantage primarily of Google's search algorithms, which don't just search the Internet for text strings, but also index searches based on how many other web pages are linking to a particular web page. This is precisely how Kerry supporters got the phrase "miserable failure" to link to the White House website as the number one search result in 2004: by taking advantage of Google's unique feature of seeing how many pages link to a given page. The same goes for comment spam and trackback spam.

But it doesn't stop there. All sorts of robots sign up for free Blogger accounts. They're mostly redirects to major porn websites, and they get a lot of hits because people have become wise to what URLs for major porn sites look like; a Blogger URL seems less like "corporate" porn. But, sadly, the online porn industry is smarter than you are. (In fact, the porn industry has pioneered a lot of the technology now commonly found on the web.)

Posted by Mark at 1:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

A file containing the social security numbers of every student who attended Miami University during the Fall 2002 semester somehow ended up in public webspace. From Miami's official press release:

Miami University is notifying all students who attended Miami during the fall 2002 semester that a report containing their names, Social Security numbers and grades had been inadvertently placed in a file accessible through the Internet.

University officials said that at this point they have no evidence of illegal use of the information, which included data on the 21,762 students enrolled on all Miami campuses in fall 2002. No other students were affected.

Officials say the information was in an isolated area of the university's network, in a file assigned to a now-retired faculty member, and thus avoided detection until this week when an alumna told Miami she had discovered the file after entering her name in a search engine.

“Nevertheless, private and confidential information was exposed, and we deeply regret the incident. We have removed the file and are writing the students and alumni to apologize. We also are taking steps to rectify the problem and to avoid a similar instance in the future," said J. Reid Christenberry, Miami's vice president for information technology.

As a recently former employee of Miami IT Services, I won't comment on this information.

Posted by Mark at 10:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Think Secret had been reporting that Apple was going to unveil something mind-boggling Sept. 7, something that would revolutionize the industry as much as the iPod had.

Eh, maybe not. Today, Apple unveiled exactly what we thought it would unveil: an iPod phone. Designed by Motorola and called the Rokr, the phone contains a 500 MB card for storing music, which can be played back on the phone using an iPod-like interface. It's available only through Cingular and requires a two-year contract. Oh, and it's $250. And it can store only 100 songs, no matter how much storage is installed. Man, when you put the two biggest DRM providers in the country -- an MP3 player manufacturer and a cell phone company -- together, you get ... oh, wait. You get more DRM.

But, sneakily, Apple also introduced new products into its regular iPod line. The newest member of the iPod family is the iPod Nano, a music player so thin that you could wear it in your ass for five years and not even know it was there. The iPod Nano replaces the iPod Mini and completes Apple's overhaul of its hard drive-based iPods. Recall that in July, Apple upgraded all its hard drive-based iPods (except the Minis) to 65,536-color screens, essentially making them all iPod Photos. It also introduced iTunes 4.9, capable of downloading podcasts. The iPod Nano creates the missing consistency in the design of all of Apple's hard drive-based iPods. The Mini was designed to be fruity and colorful; the Nano is a badass, available only in white or black. The Minis looked like children; the Nanos look like midget versions of real iPods. The iPod Nano comes in 2 GB or 4 GB versions. The 2 GB version retails for $199, while the 4 GB version retails for $249. Why would anyone buy these? Spend $50 more -- that's twenty percent more -- and get five hundred percent more storage space by buying the 20 GB iPod instead of the 4 GB iPod Nano. But people bought the Mini because of the "cute" factor. No one will be doing that with the Nano.

Posted by Mark at 3:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As a newly-christened Mac user, I'm sometimes appalled when a website I go to says I must be using IE 6 and Windows in order to access it (Wells Fargo Online Bill Pay comes to mind). And it's not a matter of actual, factual compatibility. A website knows what browser you're using because the website sends an HTTP_USER_AGENT request to your computer, and your computer responds by telling the website what browser it's using and what operating system it's using. Some web browsers -- most notably Opera -- can "spoof" as USER_AGENT request, responding with whatever you want. By default, Opera identifies itself as IE 6. And does this mean the website doesn't work? No! It works fine! It wasn't a precaution inserted there by the webmaster because he knew that there would be compatibility problems between his website and anything that wasn't IE 6. It was inserted because he was lazy and didn't want to have to create several stylesheets for several browsers. (Remember the good old days when websites had phrasing like "This webpage best viewed at 800x600 resolution using Internet Explorer 5"? Well, those days are gone, but some people still think we're living in 1998.

FEMA is one of those people. On its website, you can get information about disaster relief, but only if you're running IE 6 on a Windows machine:

My 90-year old mother sat out Katrina in her brother's home next door in Diamondhead, MS, about eight miles from the Mississippi coast where the hurricane's eye hit. They survived without injury but with massive destruction to their homes, and my mother has lost most of her possesions. I brought her to my home in California yesterday and this morning went to the FEMA website to register to start the assistance process.

To my dismay, our Federal emergency agency requires Microsoft Internet Explorer 6, and only IE 6, to use the website for disaster assistance. I don't want to be political about this, but this smacks of a serious leadership failure that the use of the Internet is reserved for only the Windows community. I will reserve my opinion of the administration for the op-ed pages, but I want to vent my dismay about this to the rest of the Mac community. I hope other Mac users let their political reps, newspapers and other media know of this marginalization. [...]

This person, Gary Mullins from MacInTouch, is right. The Internet is not a Windows community. In fact, given its structure, it's a *NIX community (Linux runs about half of the world's Internet servers.) As Matt can tell you, Internet Explorer isn't standards-compliant because Microsoft decided to make up its own standards, and dammit, the rest of the Internet will follow its standards, not W3C's standards.

Posted by Mark at 5:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Six Apart released version 3.2 of its Movable Type software Aug. 25, and I have to say that it is to Movable Type 3.1 what Windows Me was to Windows 98.

To be fair, Movable Type 3.2 has a lot of cool new features. Not the least of these new features is easier installation and upgrading. All previous versions of Movable Type required the use of a separate script, called mt-load.cgi if it were a clean install and mt-upgrade.cgi if it were an upgrade. These scripts then had to be deleted, as anyone could could execute them and re-initialize the system, deleting the old weblog and replacing it with a new one.

Another cool feature is a better plugin control system. It's "better" because it's centralized. Prior to MT 3.2, each plugin had its own control screen; MT 3.2 provides users with a one-stop shop for control of all your plugins.

By default, MT 3.2 comes with a spam-control plugin (not MT-Blacklist), which was a long time coming.

Unfortunately, MT 3.2, for all its good elements, is beset with bugs. Stroll through the Six Apart support forums and you'll find users beside themselves with problems, most of which have to do with importing entries or publishing new entries. In my case, every time I tried to publish a new entry, I received a "500 Server Error" after it told me it was rebuilding the entry ("rebuilding" is the process by which MT creates new files for the new entry). I received a similar error after I tried rebuilding all of the files, but only once it tried to rebuild the monthly archive indexes. In my experience, 500 Server Errors are caused by problems with file permissions, but all the permissions seemed to be okay.

Six Apart has been of little help to customers over the past week. Users posting questions in the forums maintain that Six Apart staff have been in the forums to help users in the past, but not this time. Either they're too swamped with problems from paying customers or they're busy working on bug fixes. MT 3.2 is an oddity, as most versions of MT didn't have such crazy problems. Even the transition from 2.661 to 3.0 wasn't this bad.