Category: Internet matters

Posts about the internet

SOPA blackout

Many websites in the United States, Canada, and around the world are joining together to protest SOPA – the Stop Online Piracy Act.

The bill, which could become law in the United States, would have unfortunate consequences for the internet as a whole. I agree with Michael Geist that Canadians should be concerned.

I remember the exciting beginning of the internet, where people thought it was a medium that effectively could not be censored and which would allow people to freely and honestly share information. Some of the sites that still do that most successfully – sites like Wikipedia – are threatened by laws that make them excessively liable for copyright violations and by imposing other restrictions.

As Wikipedia puts it:

The United States Congress is currently considering striking out major rights of free speech and other laws which make Wikipedia possible, forcing us to censor our editor discussions and the information we show you for the benefit of lobbyists. If passed, it would destroy the freedom of individuals to write without censorship, on every website we have, in any language, anywhere in the world.

Here’s hoping this show of opposition from some of the most important sites on the web will help kill this legislation.

Open-source Mac software

There seems to be some useful software here: Open Source Mac – Free Mac software, all open-source, all OS X.

For the unfamiliar, open-source software is software where the authors provide the underlying computer code to everybody. That lets you examine how it really works, compile it to run on a range of machines, and make custom modifications.

Much open source software is free.

P.S. While I am appreciative of free and open-source software, there are a few pieces of commercial software that I really wish I could buy for a bit less money: the latest version of Photoshop, a copy of Office for my laptop, a commercial version of PGP, etc. EndNote would also be useful, as I ramp up research for my doctoral thesis.

Where Macs come from

This week’s episode of This American Life is powerful and thought- provoking. It’s about manufacturing in China, the ten million person city of Shenzhen, and how most of our computers and phones and miscellaneous gadgets are made by hand by millions of workers working at least twelve hours a day.

Apple has been conducting its own investigations of labour practices among its suppliers and has been publishing annual reports about them since 2007.

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Posted from my iPhone

[Update: 25 March 2012] This American Life discovered that the episode they broadcast on Apple factories contained a number of fabrications. They have retracted the episode and released another detailing what went wrong in their fact checking process: “We’ve discovered that one of our most popular episodes contained numerous fabrications. This week, we detail the errors in Mike Daisey’s story about visiting Foxconn, which makes iPads and other products for Apple in China. Marketplace’s China correspondent Rob Schmitz discovered the fabrications.”

Stratfor hacked

A few times before, I have mentioned the website Stratfor. They normally provide a very ‘realist‘ take on global politics. They have interesting sources of information and arguments, and I have found them to be worth reading.

Unfortunately, their entire database of past and present subscribers has been stolen by hackers and released online. If you have ever given them your credit card number, you should probably contact your credit card company immediately to cancel it and have a new card issued with an updated number.

It’s probably a good idea to change your credit card number every few years, regardless. The people at MasterCard said that website hacks like this happen all the time. So often, in fact, that they didn’t want to hear any details about it at all. There are probably a lot of websites that would not notify their users in the event of a breach like the one Stratfor has suffered.

As a side note, this hack demonstrates a couple of things about security. First, the more you hold yourself up as being an expert about security, the more alluring a target you risk making yourself for hackers driven by prestige. This is why the websites of people like the CIA are targeted so often (though such hacks probably aren’t indicative of significant security breaches). Second, there are reputational risks associated with having lax security, especially if you represent yourself as a security expert. I have no doubt that Stratfor’s business will suffer at least a bit because of this.

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.