Computing

Topics related to computers and computing

The password problem

December 24, 2004

NoTrueBill has a post about Yahoo's choice to stand by its privacy policy and deny the family of a soldier killed in Iraq access to the deceased's email account.

The issue raises another problem, which is an extension of something that has been brought up on Slashdot before. What do you do to make sure that people can continue to access your data once you're no longer here? In some cases it's even more dificult, what happens to the servers when the person who knew the password is no longer here. Boone's post raises the suggestion that you might want people reading your email, but what about the server where your blog lives?

One possible solution is to keep an envelope sealed with common passwords in a safe place such as a safety deposit box. Of course this is only as good as the other people who may have access to the box and only if they will continue to have access. And of course it depends upon trusting those with access. It may be possible to keep them at a trusted attorney or similar location.

The big evil company

December 21, 2004

News.com reports that Apple has been granted subpoenas in its efforts to determine the identity of the person or persons who leaked information about its upcoming product Asteroid. So we learn for certain that these are upcoming releases, or they would not be "Trade Secrets."

It seems that Apple has the absolute right to pursue and attempt to stop the leaks of proprietary information. Many would probably argue quite aptly that Apple has even the responsibility to do so in order to protect its corporate information. All of that being said, it's a sad day. Not unexpected, just sad. I'll diverge into my story here.

I've been looking for a device just like Asteroid. I probably would have purchased one by now. But I have a pretty good idea that the company that came up with the best interface (so far) for an MP3 player, the company who above all else has great designs is coming out with just what I need. So, instead of plunking down the greenbacks for another company's gear I'm waiting for Apple to release their gear. This pre-announcement is making them more money, not less. Are we to believe Apple thinks nobody outside Cupertino thinks they're working on things like this?

It's somewhat ironic that Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble wrote to Bill Gates last weekend about how to do development of the iPod killer out in the open.

Flaw found in Google's new desktop search

December 20, 2004

News comes today of a security problem with Google Desktop. The somewhat funny part for me is I asked a somewhat prominent blogger about this when it first came out.In spite of the years of blather by this person about open community, sharing experiences, etc. they basically said it was so simple that I was stupid to suggest such a thing. Part of the lesson here is to be very wary of people who repeatedly ask for help and when that help is offered can't be bothered to even reply with an acknowledgment of the offer (also something that has happened several times with this blogger).

The little details

December 19, 2004

With the help of a great article at MacDevCenter I got my source control moved to Subversion this weekend. Having gotten it all working I was really bummed when I got home and it didn't work. A few painful hours later I remembered that you must also remember to open up the port on the firewall when you're running a webserver on a non-standard port. Duh!

Google Print

December 11, 2004

The Google Print beta product looks really cool. It will be interesting to see how it progresses. How will this mesh with the Take Control books that TidBits is publishing? Seems like a great match. Take the books which sold for not a lot and allow them to be served up with paid ads in Google.

Apple's changed start page

December 9, 2004

There were hints it was coming, but Apple has gone and done it. Yes the new and improved Apple start page has been released. This is the default page for Safari. The thing is the old Apple Stat Page was great. There was enough news from the Netscape sites to keep it worth looking at. And there was good Apple content. Now the page is merely Apple marketing. I'd guess the number of people looking at it will go down. Apple's been running a script in between it's default address (http://livepage.apple.com/) for the last few weeks. I'm not privy to what goes on inside Apple but I'm sure somebody is convinced a lot more people will look at it. Unfortunately it doesn't have enough real content to keep my interest. The comments posted over at Mac World echo my thoughts that mindshare is going to go away with this change.

Who are the good domain name Registrars out there?

December 8, 2004

A question for everyone, who are the good domain name registrars out there? Don't email me an answer because I won't get it. You see eNameCo.com has managed to bungle completely a change of name servers. Several of my key domains now respond to whois by saying there are no name servers for the domains. Here's the timeline, on Monday I tried to use the web interface and change the names. It said there was an error and it couldn't complete. Tuesday I noticed some odd bounces to email saying my domain had to exist to send email. Later Tuesday I started looking at whois and sure enough it says NO NAMESERVERS LISTED.

So I call the bozos, once they decide to get in the office this morning. They say "it's right in our database it just isn't showing up on Internic." News flash - I don't give a damn if it shows up in eNameCo's database. What I care about is does it show up in the Internic response to whois queries.

So the long and short is I'll be looking for a new registrar. I almost moved them today but given the lack of email and the probable confusion a transfer will add on top of their screw up, I'll have to wait. But when I do transfer who should I transfer to?

The day after

November 29, 2004

Trying to catch up after the holiday.

Dave Winer is working on eliminating referer spam. I'm not sure how his system works, and undoubtedly it's better than I would have thought of but it seems to me I sometimes see as "referrer" the last page someone visited even if they didn't click on a link. So if I go to www.scripting.com after visiting a page with no link to Scripting News will it get blacklisted.

I mention this because I was looking at Scripting News on my new Treo650 this morning. What RSS readers are available for Palm/Treo devices. Most of my blogging could rapidly become mBlogging. The best part is never sitting somewhere and wishing I had something to read. For the podcasting crowd we need a aggregator that can be run in the PalmOS and uses the built in networking to catch podcasts.

The big deal

November 10, 2004

After weeks of speculation Microsoft released it's new search tool tonight. I haven't seen anything this unimpressive for a long time. If as the old saying goes Windows '95 = Macintosh '84 then apparently Microsoft Search '04 = Google '00. One of the same big problems remains, if you want to get indexed the only option they list is a commercial venture that explains how to get businesses listed. I currently have a portfolio of some very active sites and lots of great content and only about 10% are commercial. I also don't quite get the distinction that allows one to search for a particular type of page (Word, Excel, Power Point, PDF, or HTML) and then the very next option is a search by file type (that oddly includes PDF but only shows .doc as an example). This does nothing to replace MetaCrawler of old (not the current version) as one of the best search sites ever.

Subscribe to Computing