Category: Internet matters

Posts about the internet

Not generic boilerplate text

British journalist George Monbiot has turned the ‘about me’ page on his blog into a sort of mini-autobiography. It is an interesting read. For instance, he describes some of the time he spent in West Papua, traveling with forged papers:

We were as reckless and foolish as only young men can be – this is why wars get fought. We threw ourselves into and out of a great deal of trouble. At one point we had to walk and canoe for four weeks from the central highlands to the south coast. We became lost in the forest for several days and ate insects and rats to stay alive. I was stung almost to death by hornets. We also had some close brushes with the occupying Indonesian army.

It’s comforting to know that people can have such adventures and go on to write books about climate change and columns for The Guardian.

FileVault in Lion

While the interface changes in Mac OS X Lion are confusing, the whole-disk encryption provided by FileVault is a definite step forward.

People who have their laptops stolen and then find their confidential documents posted all over the internet really have no excuse. If it is sensitive, it should be encrypted – especially if it is on a portable device that cannot be wiped remotely.

I hope a future release of iOS includes comparable whole-disk encryption capabilities. iPhones and iPads are even easier to lose than laptops.

Fight spam! Gain life satisfaction!

Spammers are getting especially annoying these days, with targeted messages.

I have been striking back, though. My honey pot has recently caught a few of them red-handed, to be reported to such authorities as there are for such things.

If you run a web server and you want to help combat the scourge of spam, consider joining Project Honeypot.

You get a certain definite measure of satisfaction when they email you to let you know that your honeypot has helped to identify a server contributing to spam, such as by harvesting email addresses.

So far, I have contributed to the identification of a few dozen malicious IP addresses, hopefully preventing quite a lot of spam.

Quiet Google

I really hate Google Instant and autocomplete – largely because I hate any user interface element that causes things on screen to change in unexpected ways. I also hate websites where little ‘preview’ windows instantly pop up when your cursor crosses over a link. When something unexpected pops up on my computer, I always think: “Waah! Something unexpected and unwelcome has surprised me unpleasantly!” and never: “How delightful! My computer did just what I wanted, without me even asking!”.

I am rather annoyed that even when you turn off Google Instant, Google turns it back on for your account after a few weeks. They really want those extra advertising revenues.

It is possible to avoid both annoying features by searching Google using this link. I call it ‘Quiet Google’ and it helps conserve a measure of calm in the universe.

Steve Jobs

I was sorry to hear this morning that Steve Jobs has died. I think he is a man who changed the world significantly, particularly in terms of how human beings and computers interact. Most of what has gotten better about computers since 1980 or so has been the ease and intuitiveness of using them, and Apple is responsible for a lot of that. Apple makes elegant machines that are pleasant to use and allow you to do good work on them. The iPod also substantially changed how people experience music, and brought a great deal of enjoyment to millions of people.

I hope computers and electronics in general continue to develop in that direction, though perhaps with less of the obsessive controlling quality that has also been part of the Apple philosophy.

I know very little about Steve Jobs as a man, but I appreciate the work he did and regret that he died so young.

No iPhone 5, reduced gadget envy

Apple shareholders and gadget geeks are lamenting how an iPhone 5 was not announced.

One thing that occurs to me is that owners of the iPhone 4 probably benefit. Nobody is going to feel left out or insecure because they have an iPhone 4 rather than the marginally improved 4S. A real iPhone 5, however, would have made a lot of people feel inadequate for having the ‘old’ model.

Of course, it is exactly that pattern of new gadget envy that has allowed Apple to charge such premium prices for their gear and derive such substantial profits.

Cross-platform crypto

The world really needs a secure, free, easy-to-use, cross-platform encryption system. At the most basic, it would allow you to have a USB drive with encrypted contents and be able to access those contents using a passphrase from any computer – Mac, PC, Linux, etc – you happen to use.

Big bonus points if you can run the software without administrative privileges. That’s important, since so many work, public, and borrowed computers will not allow you to install software that requires an admin password.

I pleaded for such a thing back in 2008, but I still don’t think it exists.

Constancy

There is a real sense in which this site has been the most constant part of my life since 2005. During that time, I moved from Vancouver to Oxford to Ottawa to Toronto. The group of people who I spent time with shifted several times. I moved from school to employment – from shooting using a Canon A510 point and shoot digital camera to using a 5D Mk II – from exploring the British isles by minibus to exploring North America by Greyhound.

The content has shifted somewhat, the banners have changed, but this is still basically the same thing it was six years ago – a way to stay in touch with friends around the world, discuss ideas, and generally think things through by writing them down.