Cloud Computing's Cuckoo
Ben Edelman points out yet another privacy lapse at one of Google's cloud computing services. Handing your private data to remote servers not under your control is not really different from nailing private information to the next tree.
Brilliant ID
OpenID is an idea that's not yet universally known, understood or accepted, but we see already some incompatibilities. Now the Big G throws its heavyweight behind yet another variation of the theme. And in case you don't know: yes - it's good to throw all ones' security eggs into one basket.
New Search Engine
Yet another new search engine. Yet again the promise of learning to understand. And yet again not quite what one expects.
Cops committing Crimes
Who do you trust these days? Certainly not those who talk about security and who at the same time demonstrate that they don't understand its implications on the other.
The Voice of Reason
Talk of getting to the point. I love the first sentence.
Change of Scenery
Nick La has several examples of how to use large backgrounds irrespective of monitor size when designing a site.
Youtube solves Crimes
Youtube is becoming more and more a tool to solve strange crimes.
Approach with Caution
"Surprisingly, manual workers were less likely to have faecal contamination [on their hands] than professionals[1], students, retired or unemployed people."
[1] http://www.nursingtimes.net/clinicalnews/2008/10/commuters_hands_contaminated_with_faecal_bacteria.html
Why are they surprised?
Bad Company
Brilliant Digital Entertainment, an Australian software company, is touting some technology claiming to be able to scan every file that passes between an ISP and its customers. Looks like they're bad company:
7 February 2004 - KaZaA's Sharman Networks and Brilliant Digital Entertainment in Australia were raided for copyright violations...
Google knows everything
Google is now able to tell you who links to pages on your site that are no longer there.
Ten years ago you would have checked your referer log.
It's a long Way for Jimbo to get his Jet
Seth Finkelstein in the Guardian: "It's informative to observe how long Wales has been pursuing a strategy of selling advertising around other people's work."
Sorry Mr Palin
John Cleese on Sarah Palin's intellect. Concluding that Michael Palin no longer is the funniest Palin around. I think he's wrong. She's not funny. She's dangerous.
Sometimes Quality Search Results aren't surprising
Complete Search is a new "search engine" combining semantics with full text search. It gets a lot of praise for what it does. I'm not suggesting it doesn't deserve it. I'm just highlighting the fact that it skirts around some important issues by searching only in document collections of a very known quality.
Institutional Security
When it comes to security only real professionals should be considered. Not by what they say. Check what they're doing first.
Some Service
He was knighted for services to banking in 2004.
The BBC announcing the latest rescue deals for banana republic style banks.
Don't rock the Boat
"The last thing we need is popular blogs AND the mass media spreading despair and schadenfreude at a time like this," Dare Obasanjo, a Microsoft employee and the son of a former President of Nigeria. He's known for his outrageous actions as an individual and as a representative of Microsoft.
Better than crosses and garlic!
Messages from Earth[1] - including a photo of George W Bush chosen to illustrate evil - have been sent to a distant planet that could be home to intelligent life.
[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/3166709/Messages-from-Earth-sent-to-distant-planet-by-Bebo.html
Affiliate Marketing Fraud
By paying partners only when a sale actually occurs, advertisers often expect to substantially eliminate fraud. After all, if commissions are only due when a user makes a purchase, what can go wrong? Unfortunately a lot according to Ben Edelman, who has been analysing the shadier alleys of the web for several years now.
For your next Facelift
Swiss Miss has a guide to choosing colours [for your brand] which could come in handy when you next facelift your site.
Honky Tonk Kentucky Boy
Apparently some people still don't know that it's naive for non US entities to register a .com domain. As the Washington Post reports, any old judge in the US has ways and means to thoroughly disrupt business.
There's still Hope
The fact that this comic led to this feature shows that all's not lost.
Philips is 0wnable
Although it's 2008 in many places, the password and many other files are still available on a Philips server - despite attempts to notify those responsible.
Web Coaching for Yahoo
Philip Greenspun found yet another reason why Yahoo has lost its shine long ago.
Funchal 500
Last month Falmouth was host to the Funchal 500 regatta. Despite the drenching rain I was able to take a very few photos.
The Semantics of Ethics
Banks have learnt that profits and living standards are aided by shifting problems and liabilities onto someone else. They're now changing goal posts for credit card transactions. Up until now the risk of a transaction has been shared by the card holder, the merchant and the credit card company. They're now shifting liability onto the card holder alone.
They call it 3D Secure, Verified by Visa or MasterCard SecureCode. The problem is, it's less secure than a plain HTTPS transaction. And half the time it doesn't work. For starters, the way it's been implemented is risky. Merchants embed a remotely sourced Iframe in their HTML for the user to answer some additional questions, the results of which are then transferred to a server run by the credit card companies. Execution of some of the logic is caused in the user's browser by running Javascript he download from somewhere.
Problem: as a user you don't see where the Iframe and associated scripting trickery is coming from, and where the answers are going to. Although the browser indicates that the encrypted HTML page comes from the source you believe it to come from, you don't know if this also applies to the Iframe or code to be executed. Selling this to the user as an additional security measure without telling him whose security they're talking about is probably the way the world works now. That doesn't make it right.
And then there's the practical side. If you subscribe to the technical mailings of your transaction provider, you'll get frequent notifications about intermittent problems with the "technology".
Despite this traditional transactions - those without the insecure elements introduced for the liability shift - are now called insecure transactions. These demand increased charges as of next month. Only "secure" transactions, those where the user unwittingly loads Iframes and scripts from another server, are deemed secure now and processed without additional cost to the merchant.