July 30, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Pole axed: Microsoft and XP, Apple and Porn
Over the past two months my minions and I have been running surveys on the BuzzDash home site and the Tynan on Technology blog to take users' temperature on issues such as censorship and innovation. Now it's finally time to report on what we've found. The results may surprise you.
First Question: If someone built an Internet free from pornography, would you come? (Hold your dirty jokes to the end, please).
With 375 votes tallied, the score is “Yes” 22 percent, “No” 61 percent, and “Define pornography, please” with 17 percent. In other words, three-quarters of Netizens either don't want or don't trust ISPs or Uncle Sam to filter the Net. No big surprises there, IHMO. Johnshier comments:
"Ewww. I'm really disgusted that 25 percent of the people voted yes. I'm just as disgusted if not more so at the people who think that judgment is needed to define pornography. I am strongly against censorship in all its forms."
Question Deux: You're buying a new OS. Which one would you pick?
More than 400 people responded to this one, and the results are: Windows Vista (13 percent), Windows XP (70 percent), Linux (8 percent), and the Mac OS (9 percent). Frankly, this one surprised me. Oh, I knew Vista would take it in the shorts, but I expected a stronger showing by the Mac OS. The Apple fanboys were probably too busy trying to get MobileMe to work to weigh in. Commenter Austin says,
"I run XP on four machines and Ubuntu on another machine. Hell will freeze over before I install Vista. Dell's customer support may stink to high heaven but their marketing is smart to continue selling XP."
Question the third: "Complete the following sentence: The Apple iPhone is...."
Here's a real shocker. "God's gift to geeks" (24 percent) lost to "Overhyped and underpowered" (57 percent). Didn't see that coming. Sixteen percent of our 160+ voters consider it just another smart phone, and the rest responded "What's an iPhone?" (You people really need to get out more.)
Finally, Question IV: "What company has created the most innovative technology?"
This was a much tighter race than I'd anticipated. With 128 votes counted, Apple leads with 35 percent, followed closely by Google (30 percent) and Microsoft (25 percent). Sony and Palm bring up the rear. I thought Apple and Google might split the vote, but I'm shocked Redmond registered so high. Then again, maybe I picked the wrong mix of companies. Someone calling him/herself The Geekster suggested a lineup of "Intel, Apple, Xerox, and Motorola." Not a bad call. Maybe we'll use that for a future poll.
What do you want to know? Suggest a poll idea below, or or e-mail me direct: cringe (at) infoworld (dot) com. Top tipsters qualify for Polish swag.
Posted by Robert X. Cringely on July 30, 2008 03:00 AM
July 23, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Data security meets disco fever
Here's a travel advisory: The next time you find yourself in a foreign city at night with nothing to do, take my advice: rent a movie in your hotel room. Don't go to discos. And if you do go out, don't bring a smart phone with you.
A high-ranking UK official got Shanghai'd in Shanghai last January, possibly compromising the cyber security of the British government. Out partying at a disco in the Forbidden City, he went home with an attractive Chinese national. He woke up with a smile on his face, but the girl and his Blackberry were missing. (Hey, at least he still had his kidneys.)
According to the Times of London:
A senior official said yesterday that the incident had all the hallmarks of a suspected honeytrap by Chinese intelligence. ....Experts say that even if the aide’s device did not contain anything top secret, it might enable a hostile intelligence service to hack into the Downing Street server, potentially gaining access to No 10’s e-mail traffic and text messages.
Though many of the reader responses to this story are priceless, this one from “Graham” in South Africa stands out:
“I have to sympathise with this guy. Last Tuesday night I was picked up by a young lady and one thing led to another and the next morning I discovered she'd stolen 100 rand from my wallet. It happened again on Thursday night, then Saturday, and with any luck it will happen again tomorrow.”
Downing Street claims it suffered “no compromise to security” in the incident. China hotly denies its spies are involved. Right. I believe them. But with the Beijing "high-tech" Olympics coming up in a few weeks, this hasn't made anyone feel safer about cyber security in China. Again, per the Times:
Joel Brenner, the US government’s top counter-intelligence official, warned: “So many people are going to the Olympics and are going to get electronically undressed.”
Which doesn't sound nearly as much fun as being physically undressed, though equally risky. The good news: This now gives Olympics tourists something to worry about besides the air quality in Beijing. Using a Blackberry in China can't be that much more dangerous than simply breathing.
David Gewirtz, author of Where Have All the Emails Gone?, notes that US government officials are not much better at protecting their Blackberries than their lascivious British counterparts. Karl Rove has allegedly lost several of the gadgets, no doubt containing his secret plans for world domination. Last April White House staffers left a half dozen of the smart phones outside a conference room in New Orleans, then claimed they were stolen by a member of the Mexican delegation. (No doubt dressed as Salma Hayek.)
Meanwhile, in a classic display of chutzpah, the US Department of Homeland Security has issued a private warning to government officials and private executives about “foreign governments” (aka the Chinese) stopping them at the border and copying information off their laptops and smart phones -- tactics the DHS feels perfectly happy to employ for US citizens returning to this country. The DHS also warns of foreign agents quietly slurping data off cell phones via compromised Bluetooth connections and installing eavesdropping devices [PDF] on Blackberries.
The DHS won't publicly acknowledge the threat for fearing of ticking off the Chinese, who might retaliate by ... copying information off our laptops and spying on our smart phones. Or maybe they'll just send hot Asian mommas to discos looking for lonely US diplomats.
To quote my favorite British spy: “It's shagadelic, baby.” Or better yet: “Oh behave.”
Got any good data security or spy stories? Post them below or email me direct: cringe (at) infoworld (dot) com. Top tips qualify for cool swag. However, if you are captured, Notes From the Field will disavow any knowledge of your involvement.
Posted by Robert X. Cringely on July 23, 2008 06:29 AM
July 09, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Everybody's got something to hide (except for me and my YouTube)
So a New York judge last week ordered Google to hand over 12 terabytes of YouTube user information to Viacom. Yes, we know what you watched last summer, or at least Viacom's attorneys soon will.
The owners of Comedy Central and VH1 are attempting to prove that more people watch pirated clips of John Stewart and Behind The Music than, say, the Wii Fit Girl or that goofy guy dancing his way around the globe (video). In the aggregate, maybe more people are watching clips of The Daily Show on them Internets. But a viral video will still draw more eyeballs than any single thing the mainstream media can belch out, regardless of how clever Stewart is. Partly that's because most people who'd want to see it already have, for free, over the airwaves. (Which makes YouTube's harm to Viacom exactly bupkis.)
Trouble is, our video viewing habits are supposed to be protected by federal law. After a reporter went dumpster diving on Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork in 1987 and came up with Blockbuster rental receipts (he was looking for porn, but mostly he found Hitchcock and Fellini) Congress passed a law explicitly protecting the privacy of movie rentals. The judge in the Viacom case, Louis Stanton, decided that watching a YouTube video somehow qualified as less worthy of protection than Bork's VCR. (I'd like to see what's in Stanton's NetFlix queue -- or maybe he's a SugarDVD fan.)
The usual answer from people who claim to be perfectly happy having attorneys rooting around their private lives like squirrels in a nuthouse is that they've "got nothing to hide." To which I usually say, "terrific, now drop your pants." Everybody's got something to hide, even if it probably isn't what they watched on YouTube. Even the Transparent Society geeks who believe the path to total freedom lies in having everything exposed in plain view still wear clothes and keep their Social Security cards in their pockets.
The right to keep one's thoughts and interests private -- and by extension, things that indicate thoughts and interests, like books and movies -- is one of the keys to democracy. Nobody can demand to know what's going on between my ears (and trust me, you don't want to know). That's the way I like it.
The real problem here is the obsession with data collection that infects Google, Microsoft, and other major service providers. If there's a reason to keep a running record of every YouTube video I've watched or Web search I've run over the last 18 months, I can't see it -- and Google has done a p*** poor job of explaining why they need it. Because if a record is out there, you're almost guaranteed that some day a lawyer with a subpoena (or a spook with an electronic back door) may come looking for it. And there will be nothing you can do about it.
Got nothing to hide? Prove it by posting something scandalous below, or email it to me: cringe (at) infoworld (dot) com. Top tipsters qualify for cool swag.
Posted by Robert X. Cringely on July 9, 2008 06:02 AM
October 29, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Just when you thought the TJX data breach couldn't get any uglier, it does. In documents filed with the court last week, a group of New England banks claim that the clue-challenged retailer had 94 million credit card numbers stolen by hackers -- or more than double the previous number TJX had claimed.
The other numbers are equally staggering:
* The hackers moved more than 80GB of data across the Net from TJX's servers to a site in California. TJX never noticed.
* The thieves installed a sniffer on the TJX servers for more than 7 months, stealing unencrypted data as it passed through the network. TJX never noticed.
* Estimated losses from the theft range between $68 million and $83 million -- surpassing the biggest bank heist of all time. Of course, TJX doesn't have to pay out, the banks do.
* TJX failed to follow 9 of the 12 high-level security procedures outlined by the Payment Card Industry guidelines (but hey, 25 percent is better than nothing, right?).
* According to the banks, security consultants notified TJX that its systems were about as secure as wet tissue paper back in 2004, or about a year before the breach occurred.
Yet despite all this, sales at the company's stores (which include TJ Maxx, Marshalls, and Bob's Stores) are actually rising.
I can only think of one thing dumber than TJX's behavior in this case, and that's anyone who still shops at their stores. Or at least, who pays with anything but cash.
Got more tails of rampant retail stupidity? Share them below or send them to me direct. Top tipsters may qualify for swag unavailable at any TJX store.
Posted by Robert X. Cringely on October 29, 2007 08:44 AM
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