I do not get paid to write about, or for, InformationWeek magazine. They just happen to have great articles which warrant comment on my part. However, if they have an affiliate program, I would be very interested!
Today’s InformationWeek Daily, their email newsletter, talked about one misconception surrounding Open Source software. The article, Warning: Bad Men In Black Hats! addresses the idea that Open Source is more vulnerable to attack than closed source/proprietary software because anyone can look at the code of the application.
- With open source, everyone can see the code. Therefore anyone can use it maliciously to hack you.
- With proprietary software, very few people can see the code. Therefore the number of people who can use it maliciously to hack you is that much smaller.
- Wrong!
I won’t steal the whole article from their site, and you should subscribe to the great newsletter.
The main point is bag guys are going to get source code for proprietary software if they want it bad enough. Just like a burglar is going to get into your house if they really want to. Security is essentially just steps to make access more difficult for a malicious person.
Security is not something you can apply from the top down but something that has to be baked into what you’re doing from the bottom up (or inside out, as it were).
If you are interested in Home Security, check out my post about Arming My Home.
After only 186 posts on EllisBenus.com I figured out what kind of blog this needs to be.
If you are a fellow blogger, then you have read at least a dozen articles about focusing your blog, or picking a niche to write about. Until now, I’ve never had any idea what my blog was about. There has never been an overarching theme or consistent post type which I wrote.
In October 2007 I wrote a post that went without being noticed or acted upon. The name of that post was Get Famous by Sharing all your Ideas. Over 2 years ago I said this was going to be an idea blog, and I somehow forgot about it. Go figure, it was just another one of my ideas!
Great question! As I shared in October, tons of ideas assail me everyday. Whether they are money making ideas or just small experiments, I cannot act upon all of them.
Here, at EllisBenus.com, I want to unload the burden of these ideas upon the crowd. If anyone decides to run with one of the ideas published here, Go For It! Just share it with us here. It would be truly enjoyable seeing how something I envisioned came to pass.
As a young(er) man, 24, I have started paying more attention to politics and the world around me. A large part of that has to due with taxes and starting my own business several years ago. Unfortunately, I am deeply troubled by what I see.
Since I have only recently started attempting to get involved, it’s been frustrating to figure out how to do so.
I would really like to start a Political Blog which, instead of being about politics, world & national events, etc… it would instead cover one person’s journey from absolute political ignorance to an informed and involved political citizen of the United State of America.
The blog would start off with Post #1, “I want to get more involved” and hopefully take everyone step-by-step through the process of learning, researching, speaking, sharing, contacting, and becoming involved in politics.
This does not necessarily mean becoming a politician, but merely one informed and active voter.
Thank you for your time.
The whole idea of a blog is to share, so please do in the Comments.
If you decide to start a beginners journey political blog, please let me know and I would love to link to your new site!
A friend of mine recently sent me an email with several political bumper stickers which are for sale on Cafe Press.
Click on any bumper sticker below to navigate to the page where you can purchase one.
These are all great statements. My personal favorite is “Keep the change and I’ll keep my Gun and Money.” AND “Because everyone deserves some of what you’ve worked hard for!”
InformationWeek.com is a great resource for all things technology. At the bottom of this post you will see 5 other articles I’ve used InformationWeek as a resource for.
In today’s newsletter they shared, A Modest Proposal On How Microsoft Can Clobber Apple.
The most important pieces have been pulled out and shared below:
Mac market share is receding due to the recession. … CEO Steve Jobs said that Mac users are loyal. They’ll postpone buying, but they won’t switch to Windows. That was true during the last recession — but is it still true today?
The last recession was 2000-2003 or so…, At that time, there was a broad canyon between Mac and Windows applications. If you had a Mac, you weren’t likely to go to Windows because of the financial cost of switching all your applications, and migrating all your data,….
Since then, we’ve seen a big change in Macs. Most applications for the Mac can also be found on Windows,…. In particular, Web browsers are now the most important apps on users’ PCs, and the main Mac Web browsers, Firefox and Safari, which didn’t exist during the last recession, are also available on Windows. And technology such as Boot Camp, Parallels, and VMware Fusion lets you run Windows on the Mac, which means many Mac users have a hand in the Windows world.
These factors worked in Apple’s favor in recent years, removing barriers for people looking to switch from Windows to the Mac. Now, they can work against Apple, if people start thinking about switching back.
Windows and the Mac are much closer together today than they were during the last recession. A Mac user who needed a new computer in 2001-2 might wait until the economy improved. Mac users needing a new computer today might price-shop and decide, “The heck with it. I’ll get a Windows machine today. I’ll think about whether to get another Mac when the economy recovers.”
Wanting Online Privacy Is For the Naive
Grand Central to become Google Voice
InformationWeek Helps You Pick a Linux
Tux is Cold and Quiet in Classrooms
There Can Only Be One!
One developer recently left Google and wrote a goodbye message on his blog. Douglas Bowman was previously the Visual Design Lead at the Big Blue G.
Doug’s post titled, Goodbye Google, is only the second employee complaint I have ever seen.
Bowman faults Google for being incredibly reliant on data to make decisions, down to the minuscule:
Yes, it’s true that a team at Google couldn’t decide between two blues, so they’re testing 41 shades between each blue to see which one performs better. I had a recent debate over whether a border should be 3, 4 or 5 pixels wide, and was asked to prove my case.
Bowman continues in his post with a statement that I feel nullifies any negative impact of Google’s data decision dependency:
I can’t fault Google for this reliance on data. And I can’t exactly point to financial failure or a shrinking number of users to prove it has done anything wrong. Billions of shareholder dollars are at stake. The company has millions of users around the world to please. That’s no easy task.
Alliteration aside, Google does have a lot riding on their decisions. They are the biggest player in the marketing, which also makes them the biggest target, and their “Don’t Be Evil” slogan has just made the scrutiny all the more poignant.
Finally, Douglas compares Google to an Aircraft carrier, the largest seagoing vessels currently known to man, and himself to a small dingy.
Google [is] a massive aircraft carrier, and I [am] just a small dinghy trying to push it a few degrees North.
This is arguably the most critical statement.
Reread the above statement, but remove Google’s name. Which company first comes to mind?
Never before would I have thought Google could be compared to these companies, who are all struggling.
I do not want to see the big G go down, let alone turn into Microsoft. They have done too much good, and should be able to continue doing so indefinitely!
As a strong skeptic of “depression,” I have recently been challenged on my beliefs. Instead of calling it depression, I’m going to say that I’ve recently felt very “down.”
This evening my wife and I were driving home and at a time no later than 7:00 pm, I was ready to lay down and go to sleep. This is incredibly uncharacteristic for me, a person who routinely sleeps 6 hours a night.
My wife gave me that, “you must be kidding” look only women can contort their face into, and I decided to do something productive instead.
Recently we started some landscaping projects around the house, and a truck load of mulch was dropped late last week to finish off our home projects. That pile was sitting in the driveway staring back at me, challenging me to just lay down and worry about it, tomorrow. You know, the tomorrow that never comes…
Regardless, the shovel was retrieved, and the pile started to disappear. As the poop brown pile slowly diminished I noted that my frustrations, angst, and general feeling of “blah” shrank with it. By the time the pile was dispersed throughout the yard I felt better than when I started.
Give this a shot yourself the next time you feel the “blah” creeping in.
Pick a simple project that you can start immediately. Do not muddle things up with a lot of planning or thinking.
Start small. Start VERY small. My mulch pile was simple and easy to start moving. One shovel full at a time and in less than an hour I had most of the flower beds and trees looking spiffy and new.
Do not attempt to tackle something large. Seriously, I mean small… If you want to clean, then start with the linen closet, not your 200 square foot walk in. The whole idea is to accomplish something quickly to boost yourself to chase the blah away.
K.I.S.S. Last time, Keep It Simple, Silly! You are absolutely right that organizing the two car garage which cannot fit a bicycle into it would feel great, but that is not in our scope.
Choose a project which takes less than One Hour.
That’s all. Obviously, if someone is suffering from clinical depression, thoughts of suicide, or more serious mental instabilities, shoveling mulch in the front yard is not going to cure them.
Let us know in the comments what your “blah shoveling” project is!
1) You should not buy into penny pinching with brown bag lunches to save your financial health. Don’t get me wrong, taking your lunch saves big bucks and I do so almost every day.
2) Do not buy something that will force you to cook or take your lunch if you are not used to this lifestyle. So many couples buy or rent a place saying, “Oh well, we’ll just have to eat at home more and take our lunches.”
If you can only afford something by changing your lifestyle, then YOU CANNOT AFFORD IT!
The Simple Dollar just posted an article Quality of Life and Consumer Spending addressing this.
I’ve never understood the unending supply of articles telling people to skip a cup of coffee or brown bag lunch just to save a few dollars. It helps, sure, but it won’t save you if you’ve made bad decisions on major expenses. I completely agree that if you plan carefully and take care of the big things – the long term major expenses in your budget – there’s far less need to sweat the small things. So many people buy a more expensive home than they can easily afford, cars they can’t afford, big expensive vacations or a houseful of new furniture they can live without. Even the choice of how many children to have and when has a huge impact on finances.
Yet if you arrange your life so that major expenses are not consuming all of your income and then some, you can actually eat lunch out once awhile, buy that cup of coffee, or see a movie. Quality of life goes up dramatically. At that point, if you want to save on little things also, it becomes a choice, rather than a constant necessity just to survive.
from Sydney on SmartSpending
I take my lunch to work on a regular basis; however, relating to The Simple Dollar’s post, my uncle and I eat lunch together almost every Wednesday afternoon.
Being a very financially conscious person I crunched the numbers and realized this costs me around $28 each month.
Spending that time with my uncle is worth a heck of a lot more than the $28 to me.
Find out what is worth it to you, and calculate the balance in your life.
A few hours ago I wrote that Wanting Online Privacy Is For the Naive, and now three great articles just appeared which I thought needed sharing.
Privacychoice Stops Advertisers from Profiling You
Opt Out of Google’s Targeted Ads
Ditch Google For A Day: 10 Amazing Search Engines To Try out
Michael Hickins of InformationWeek hit the nail on the head Thursday morning when he explained Why You Shouldn’t Expect Online Privacy.
While Mr. Hickins seems to focus a little too much on the Pornography side of online privacy, he makes some refreshingly accurate points. While everyone is screaming about their right to keep information private online Michael strips their excuses bare in just a few short paragraphs.
Simply, uh… Google, do a web search, on the phrase “google targeted advertising.”
Google, Facebook, MySpace and other large agregators of personal information all give away their services for FREE. Hickins hits the nail on the head with his statement:
But companies whose services I use for F-R-E-E? I have no expectation that they will do anything but try to monetize my existence in any way they can… And since I like their services enough to use them, I hope they actually do make money off me so that they can stay in business.
Google Reads Your Email! Well, no one at Google reads your email, but a program does, and advertisements appear based on your communications.
How many of us have clicked on those advertisements at the top. I know I have. Why? Because the ads were relevant to what I was talking about, interested in, and wanted to know more about.
As a business owner, I greatly appreciate Google’s advertising. Advertisement is the life blood of business. Without new and repeat customers, any company will dry up and disappear, and none of us, small business owners, are going to get bail outs!
The more customer qualification that is done before they reaches my door, the better. Someone who is researching Web Design and clicks on my advertisement’s link is a lot more likely to buy, than someone just stumbling across my blog. Keep ‘em coming G!
Anything you are given for free always has a catch. The catch here is your information. Google wants to know what websites you visit so they can send you more relevant ads.
However, as Mr. Hickins points out, any service which you pay for should jealously guard your data.
Free is, in fact, the issue here. If I have a purely commercial relationship with a company…I’m generating revenue for it very directly. Same thing with my bank.
[My bank] wants me as a depositor so that it can claim to have enough deposits to cover its collateralized debt obligations. Those people must guard my data jealously
Bottom line, you filled out the forms and checked the boxes to use that free service. They reserve the right to use your information in any way that’s legal and beneficial.
The service is FREE! What do you have to complain about? It is because Gmail is reading your email that it’s free. It is because those ads show up on Facebook that you can gossip with your friends.
I know no one is worrying about Google’s fate, but there are plenty of sites I use for free (like Pandora) that are hanging off the hairy edge of existence, and I want them to hold on for dear life.
Amen! Personally, I am worried about Google. This phenomenal organization’s “Don’t Be Evil” slogan has leveled some big guns toward it. Wired’s story, The Plot To Kill Google sure opened my eyes to the perils this great company faces.
While Google might have deep enough pockets to fend off the wolves, there are many more services that do not. Keep them in mind.
Listen to Google’s advice.
InformationWeek.com posted a great article: Google Voice Rises To Replace GrandCentral.
The most exciting line of the entire article is the second sentence.
The service will remain in private beta for existing GrandCentral users for a few more weeks. But after that, Google expects to open Google Voice to the general public.
As someone who applied for Beta access to Grand Central but never got through, I am uber excited. The feature list of Google’s expanded offering is also cause for even greater excitement.
“Now that voice mail is text, everything is searchable.” Now voice-mail recordings can evem be embedded in any Web page
While I may never have gotten a Grand Central Beta Invite, I will certainly be a Google Talk user when they publicly launch the service!
Phone numbers, Web Site URL’s and Email Addresses all need to be finally handled equally.
Its easy to forward several email accounts or website URL’s to one location.
Gmail allows anyone to send email using any email account they own.
And so much more!
Now we need the same freedom with our phones and phone numbers.
Having a consistent, never-changing phone number is just as important as your website address!
Once again, Thanks Google!