Trustworthy Internet

An interesting request, one that I second. A lot of work will be required, along with a lot of cooperation and a lot of time.

Amplify’d from www.winsupersite.com

It's Time for a Trustworthy Internet Initiative

Trustworthy Computing was a sea change for Microsoft. Remember that throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, Microsoft subscribed to the "more is always better" philosophy for software design. So when Windows 2000 popped up, the IIS web server wasn't just installed by default, it was also enabled by default, and it wasn't configured in a particularly safe way either. This was purposeful, as Microsoft wanted people to discover and use IIS.  But it was insecure.

Today, of course, Microsoft is a different company with a different outlook on security. And the hacking landscape has changed with it: As Microsoft's dominant OS has become more hardened over time, hackers have moved to lower-hanging fruit, first with Microsoft's popular Office applications and then with third-party applications, especially those from Adobe.

And that's the problem: Despite Microsoft's high-profile switch to a more secure development process, and despite documenting the changes it's made so that others could make similar changes, most software makers, virtually all of them in fact, haven't caught on. And as we move into a new generation of ever-connected systems and cloud services, our exposure to vulnerabilities—or what Microsoft calls the attack surface—has grown exponentially.

I'm thinking of course of the recent high profile Anonymous/Lulzsec hack attacks on AT&T, Fox, Sony, various US and international governmental organizations, the Arizona State Police, and others. Suddenly, the world is being held virtual hostage by what appears to be a loose knit (if not totally disconnected) group of disaffected teenager and young adult loners. One perhaps imagines them sitting in their parents' basements, peering at their monitors over giant cups of Mountain Dew or whatever. But you can forget these outdated stereotypes: Today's hackers have a much richer, more connected, and more damaging set of computing resources to attack. And they're doing so with gusto.

It's time to stop them. And what's required, I think, is an industry-wide agreement to do for Internet- and cloud-based computing what Microsoft's Trustworthy initiative did for the software giant. That is, we need a Trustworthy Internet initiative.

The first hopeful sign in a new version of the Domain Naming System (DNS) called Secure DNS, or DNSSEC. This scheme, which is being tested in Singapore, is perhaps the model for the future Internet. It's based on three secure data centers, in Singapore, San Jose, and Zurich, which are protected by five layers of physical, electronic, and cryptographic security. According to a report in the New York Times, four of the five layers are now in place, with the fifth, the physical security, now being built.

And if your understanding of Internet history is up to date, you'll appreciate the irony here: The Internet was of course designed to ensure communication in the event of a nuclear disaster, so it was designed without a center, or core, and is instead distributed with a means for messages to continue seeking alternate routes until delivered. But this resiliency is what now makes the Internet so insecure, since it provides the bad guys with many ways in which to hide their identity and pose as others.

However it happens, I think it's time for mankind to step it up collectively, work together, and fix what is very clearly a broken patchwork built on an insecure foundation. As with a growing body of other issues—global warming, the food and water supply, and global nuclear security—this is a problem that increasingly affects us all. Read more at www.winsupersite.com

 

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Protecting Private Information on Smart Phones

I find this development interesting. It goes direct to the heart of privacy concerns in the smartphone market. I have noticed many applications that ask for permissions that aren't needed or support functionality that I am not interested in. More granular, user-based control over application permissions would be welcome.



AppFence is not yet available (apparently), but there are other applications that provide similar protections, referenced in the comments to the original article.

Amplify’d from www.schneier.com

Protecting Private Information on Smart Phones

AppFence is a technology -- with a working prototype -- that protects personal information on smart phones. It does this by either substituting innocuous information in place of sensitive information or blocking attempts by the application to send the sensitive information over the network.

The significance of systems like AppFence is that they have the potential to change the balance of power in privacy between mobile application developers and users. Today, application developers get to choose what information an application will have access to, and the user faces a take-it-or-leave-it proposition: users must either grant all the permissions requested by the application developer or abandon installation. Take-it-or-leave it offers may make it easier for applications to obtain access to information that users don't want applications to have. Many applications take advantage of this to gain access to users' device identifiers and location for behavioral tracking and advertising. Systems like AppFence could make it harder for applications to access these types of information without more explicit consent and cooperation from users.

The problem is that the mobile OS providers might not like AppFence. Google probably doesn't care, but Apple is one of the biggest consumers of iPhone personal information. Right now, the prototype only works on Android, because it requires flashing the phone. In theory, the technology can be made to work on any mobile OS, but good luck getting Apple to agree to it. Read more at www.schneier.com

 

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This kind of thing makes iCloud less interesting for me. Google Docs, Music, and Gmail have their own individual quotas; same for Hotmail and Skydrive. 5 gigs is not a lot for today's phones, and not that much for email either.

Amplify’d from thenextweb.com

If you use up your iCloud storage, you’ll stop getting email

An email received by a Macrumors reader shows what happens when the iCloud space allotted to your iOS devices is used up. The email comes addressed from the ‘MobileMe Quota Service’ and specifies that your devices will no longer back up or save data to iCloud. It also lists the actions you can take once you’ve received the mail.

The interesting bit here is that iCloud storage is linked to your me.com email address as well. That means that if you use up your storage space with iPhone backups, you will stop receiving email to your me.com address. This seems like a poor way to handle email and having a shared storage space with backups, which can very quickly increase in size (my iPad backup is 3GB and I don’t even have all of my apps reinstalled after upgrading to iOS 5), seems like a quick way to annoy users of the new iCloud email service.

It’s unclear at this point whether the email that you get sent will just disappear, get bounced back to the recipient or be held in a queue until you upgrade your storage or delete backups. Apple has yet to announce pricing on additional iCloud storage.

See more at thenextweb.com

 

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An interesting viewpoint, now that the deal has received FTC approval. Microsoft, of course, could still horribly bungle the whole thing, but if it were to evolve as posited below, then it really could be that "this deal may represent yet another nail in the coffin of traditional land lines, another step down the path toward purely IP-based communications."

Amplify’d from www.windowsitpro.com

What Skype Really Means to Microsoft

But this deal is not just about adding Skype to Microsoft's secret sauce. For this to really make sense, Microsoft will need to deeply integrate these technologies across products. That is, if you're a Skype user and you're logged on to the service from any of these products or services, you should be able to reach any of your contacts, regardless of how they're connected, and vice versa. For example, there's no reason you couldn't get an IP-based call while playing games on the Xbox 360, while the person calling is utilizing a PC laptop and headset while on a Wi-Fi enabled flight.

Perhaps this pervasiveness is the real secret behind Microsoft's desire for Skype. And while it may take a while for the software giant to integrate this technology into its various products, one might further conjecture that by providing both client/server and peer-to-peer alternatives for online communications, Microsoft will arrive at an overall infrastructure that is more reliable than anything the competition could muster. In fact, this deal may represent yet another nail in the coffin of traditional land lines, another step down the path toward purely IP-based communications.

And that's why I think Microsoft's deal for Skype, finally, does in fact make sense. When the company announced this deal, I didn't get it. But if you accept that the future of what we now think of phone calls—essentially audio communications, but also video and video conferencing—is going entirely IP, with the Skype deal, Microsoft is right in the center of things. And regardless of the details of how the company intends to implement this technology, that nicely positions Microsoft for the next big wave of technology adoption as we collectively, as a planet, move to mobile devices as our primary form of computing. And if successful, it will provide Microsoft with yet another chance to position itself in users' minds as the company that is making it all happen. Read more at www.windowsitpro.com

 

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Why doesn't part of its vaunted "archetype branding" model contain the item "make sure you have freedom to use trademark?" Just asking.

Amplify’d from thenextweb.com

Apple sued by iCloud Communications over iCloud trademark

While I’m no legal expert, it does appear that Apple has some explaining to do. Specifically, iCloud Communications is claiming that Apple’s heavy promotion of the iCloud product is damaging to its business and has all but removed the branding of the name from itself and placed it onto Apple.

To make matters somewhat worse, there’s some accusation that Apple’s services are nearly identical to the ones being offered by iCloud Communciations:

The goods and services with which Apple intends to use the “iCloud” mark are identical to or closely related to the goods and services that have been offered by iCloud Communications under the iCloud Marks since its formation in 2005.  However, due to the worldwide media coverage given to and generated by Apple’s announcement of its “iCloud” services and the ensuing saturation advertising campaign pursued by Apple, the media and the general public have quickly come to associate the mark “iCloud” with Apple, rather than iCloud Communications.

There’s no specific amount of monetary relief set, but the suit does call for “all profits, gains and advantages” as well as “all monetary damages sustained”. Further, the suit asks for Apple to refrain from using the iCloud name and to “deliver for destruction all labels, signs, prints, insignia, letterhead, brochures, business cards, invoices and any other written or recorded material” with the iCloud name. Read more at thenextweb.com

 

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Integrity

Normally, I find this kind of thing amusing. As an OSU alum, I find it even more amusing. With all the football problems and Coach Tressel resigning ... karma?

Amplify’d from verydemotivational.memebase.com

See more at verydemotivational.memebase.com

 

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Steve Gibson had an excellent technical discussion on Bitcoin here: http://www.grc.com/sn/sn-287.htm. From that I can say that the article is incorrect when it says the only way to get them is through the exchanges at $10 a bitcoin; however, it is much faster and more certain. I suppose that it is inevitable that something like Bitcoin would be used drug trafficing or the like, because of the untraceability and inability to control this kind of currency. There is probably an interesting analysis to be had here; an economy based on Bitcoin might be more brittle, since the system doesn't inherently allow for inflation or expansion of the money supply.

But back to the article: how much is concern over the drugs and how much is concern for the government not getting its cut? And at this point, is there anything the government can really do about it?

Amplify’d from www.reuters.com

Senators seek crackdown on "Bitcoin" currency

Democratic Senators Charles Schumer of New York and Joe Manchin of West Virginia wrote to Attorney General Eric Holder and Drug Enforcement Administration head Michele Leonhart in a letter that expressed concerns about the underground website "Silk Road" and the use of Bitcoins to make purchases there.

The letter prompted a discussion among Bitcoin enthusiasts about whether the government was capable of closing related bank accounts and thereby stifling the currency.

Silk Road buyers pay with Bitcoins and sellers mail the drugs, the Gawker blog reported. The transactions leave no traditional money trail for investigators to follow, and leave it hard to prove a package recipient knew in advance what was in a shipment. "The only method of payment for these illegal purchases is an untraceable peer-to-peer currency known as Bitcoins. After purchasing Bitcoins through an exchange, a user can create an account on Silk Road and start purchasing illegal drugs from individuals around the world and have them delivered to their homes within days," the senators' letter states. "We urge you to take immediate action and shut down the Silk Road network." The DEA is "absolutely" concerned about Bitcoins and other anonymous digital currencies, agency spokeswoman Dawn Dearden said when asked for a response to the senators' concerns.

Silk Road may be hard to close. It could easily move from server to server around the globe and change its Web address and name at will, while remaining accessible through Tor. However, Bitcoins must be purchased with real money; of late, they have been selling for roughly $10 each.

One user described this process as simply "growing pains" and asserted that the government "can't stop a peer-to-peer service." U.S. law enforcers might have difficulty stopping Bitcoins without help from their peers in other countries. While little information about Bitcoin exchanges is publicly available, an item posted on a website called Bitcoin Watch states that Mt. Gox's bank account is in Japan, and anecdotal evidence suggests many other exchanges operate outside of the US. Read more at www.reuters.com

 

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All not well in AOL land? I thought the attraction of Huffington was the concept of getting contributors to work for free; how can that be bad for the bottom line? That said, these are not good signs. I wonder about the future of Tech Crunch and Engadget, although I thought Tech Crunch was already slipping a little.

Amplify’d from gawker.com

The Implosion of the Huffington Post-AOL Merger

The question for AOL shareholders is whether the financial solvency of their company will fall casualty to Huffington's latest, and perhaps messiest, attempt at reshaping the world to her own desires. If the volume and ferocity of the charges against the publisher are anything to go by, and if you can set aside that they come from a notoriously thin skinned professional caste, that might just be the case. Here's the rundown of the allegations:

Arianna "subverted the wishes of her board" in selling the Huffington Post to AOL, after two board members insisted HuffPo could go public for more than three times what AOL paid. "AOL... represented a platform and partner for Arianna to greatly accelerate her ambitions," investor Fred Harman told Forbes. "Nothing was going to stand in the way."

Arianna is a selfish disaster of a manager. As former HuffPo chief revenue officer Greg Coleman told Forbes of the AOL deal, "she wanted three things: a big bag of gold, a big fat contract, which she deserved, and … unilateral decision making over her world. And that is where you're going to have some problems... Arianna's a world-class politician, a world-class media maven and a genius at p.r., but she's not an experienced manager." Her underlings would seem to agree; one told Business Insider she was "unpredictable" and "unsteady," adding, "Several editors are racing to close book deals to be write the 'Devil Wear's Prada' of the digital age."

Her entourage hates her

All websites must bear her name. Business Insider's source points out that standalone AOL websites with their own domain names are all being converted into directories on HuffPo, which in many cases is demonstrably true. "No one thinks consolidating to huffingtonpost.com is a good idea from a consumer or an advertiser perspective, but no one will stop Arianna."

Arianna has an 'enemies list.' Read more at gawker.com

 

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On Anthony Weiner's Character

So, I follow Yglesias; sometimes he has some interesting insights, and sometimes he is out to lunch. As far as I'm concerned, if you want to look at Anthony Weiner's character, you should look at his, well, character. Let's see: recently married, pregnant wife, sexting like a horn dog. Which he has apparently done for _years_. I'd say his character is reasonably clear. And wanting.

Now, he isn't my congressman, so it is up to his constituents whether he should resign. I don't know if I would call for his resignation over this. He has been an effective politician. I even agree with him on some issues (although he tends to be shrill and whiny). But the idea that we should divorce his political career from his character is incomprehensible. Why can't we ask how he feels on regulating sexting? On internet privacy issues? Why should I trust him to make decisions about things that affect me, when his character is so clearly at odds with mine?

"The kind of character that matters for a public official isn't the same as the kind that matters to be a good husband and father" seems logically loose to me. I _don't_ want a public official to neglect his family out of hard work any more than I want to neglect my own family out of hard work. And hard work isn't the issue here; being a hyper-sexting horn dog gets normal people in big trouble, sometimes with severe consequences. What if one of the recipients was a 15 year old? Maybe if we paid more attention to character and voted fewer boorish jackanapes into office (and there's a lot of them), our political system wouldn't be in such a mess.



This kind of hypocritical apologism is really not helpful.

Amplify’d from thinkprogress.org

If You’re Interested In Anthony Weiner’s Character, You Should Look At His Career As A Politician

One way to see this through an extreme case is perhaps just to observe that the demands of being President of the United States are straightforwardly incompatible with being a model husband and father. The hours, the travel, and the stress just don’t make it add up. But it can’t be the case that all Presidents of the United States lack the requisite character to be President of the United States. It has to be the case that the kind of character that matters for a public official isn’t the same as the kind of character that matters to be a good husband and father. After all, you want a responsible public official to neglect his family and friends (“hard-working”), to display a certain kind of ruthlessness and cunning (“negotiation”), to be a bit of a phony in certain situations (“diplomacy”), and all kinds of other things that don’t carry over straightforwardly from personal life to public affairs. Read more at thinkprogress.org

 

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Obviously not an unbiased opinion, but perhaps a useful counterpoint to the "Only Apple does it right" meme, which I don't subscribe to and never have. I certainly think the new Windows UI is intriguing, and would like the chance to see how to interact with a full-fledged computer with it.

Amplify’d from www.winsupersite.com

Three Screens: Celebrating Microsoft's Cohesive New User Experience Strategy

Are you considering porting this new Windows Phone OS to a tablet? I asked. Microsoft told me it had no plans to do so. And when I pressed them on this, the answer was prudent and logical enough: Look, we're late to the game with a modern smartphone, they basically said. We need to focus on that first.

Fair enough. But throughout 2010, as I slaved away on the book and watched Windows Phone mature, my mind kept drifting to that same premise. Windows Phone is beautiful. Wouldn't Windows Phone OS make for a wonderful tablet platform? Shouldn't Microsoft simply copy Apple's strategy and move its smart phone OS up to a bigger device, rather than moving its bigger and heavier Windows desktop OS "down" to a tablet?

And no one was more vocal than I. Convinced that Apple's strategy of starting over, in effect, with something smaller, lighter, and less weighed down by legacy technology baggage was the right one, I wondered aloud, early and often, why Microsoft wasn't porting Windows Phone OS to tablets. And as Apple's iPad juggernaut gained steam throughout the year, Microsoft's lack of a tablet strategy seemed all the more curious.

The thing is, what Ballmer discussed at CES 2011 was real. This year, PC makers really are shipping a wide range of tablet-type PCs, both convertible laptops and true, iPad-style slate PCs. They are running "Oak Trail" Atom processors or second-generation "Sandy Bridge" Core i-Series processors, which mean that they will actually deliver great battery life and performance, something that simply wasn't true of the meager PC tablet selection a year earlier. But hardware alone cannot fix the ills of the PC tablet, as we all know. The problem is Windows.

In the parlance of the Microsoft Office team, Windows UI evolutions since Windows 95 have been like "putting lipstick on pig," even when the changes are seemingly big, such as the richly saturated color change in Windows XP or the translucent glass effects in Windows Vista. But the underlying UI is the same, really. And all you need to do to prove this to yourself is to switch your own PC into Classic mode or, in Windows 7, what's called Windows Classic. Yes, it's a bit different, but not much. That's Windows 95 staring back at you.

And that's fine. The Windows 95-style UI serves as well today, on traditional PCs using a keyboard and a mouse. It served us well as we used ever-higher resolutions displays, as we transitioned from 4:3 square monitors to widescreen HDTV displays and multiple monitors. It even worked fine with the ahead-of-their-time experiments with Tablet PCs (using a stylus to interact with the small onscreen elements) or Media Center (controlling Windows with a remote control in the living room).

But where this UI finally started falling apart was when computing turned to touch and then multitouch control. It added touch support to the Tablet PC versions of Windows XP years ago, and to the Ultra-Mobile PC ("Origami") UIs, and then multitouch in Windows 7. But as has been the case for years, the Windows UI simply isn't optimized for touch. Still isn't. So while touch and multitouch are now fully integrated technologies in all mainstream versions of Windows, few people use the technology. Few even know it exists.

What Ballmer knew in January, what Microsoft couldn't say at the time, was that it was well aware of these problems. But while Microsoft never had any intention of letting a new and unproven platform--Windows Phone OS--dictate its future in the tablet market, it had every intention of utilizing the Windows Phone user experience--which some refer to as "Metro"--in a much broader range of products. Including Windows on tablets, yes. But not just Windows on tablets.

So last week we got our first real glimpse at a Windows 8 user experience. And while many were quick to point out that this new Start screen, which is both a replacement for the Start Menu and a rich platform in its own right, bears a startling similarity to Windows Phone's Metro UI, few understood the real implication of this experience. And that is this: Microsoft has heard your cries to bring Windows Phone to a tablet. But what you didn't realize was that Microsoft had been planning for quite some time now to instead bring a new, cohesive user experience to virtually every end user product it makes: phones and tablets, yes, but also notebook and desktop PCs, the living room, and, I think (or at least hope), the server.

For those who claim that, no, Paul, what we wanted was a simpler device, one devoid of Windows' complexity and so-called heaviness, I call BS. (And I'm not alone: Ed Bott has written his own put-down of the Chicken Little response to big, bad Windows on a tablet.)

Copying Apple would have been a mistake for Microsoft. Apple did what it did--create a new platform that was basically technologically on OS X but shared no common UI--because it had nothing to lose. The Mac market is relatively small--the company claims about 54 million active users today, but when the iPhone was hatched 6-7 years ago, it was probably closer 20-25 million tops--and no reason to worry about backwards compatibility. Microsoft, meanwhile, services a much larger community--somewhere between 1.1 and 1.2 billion PC users--and a much more diverse community comprised not just of consumers all kinds but also business users and, crucially, businesses that wish to really lock down the products their users access. These markets demand backwards compatibility, from both hardware and software standpoints. Windows will continue to address this need, as always.

What's amazing here is that Microsoft was able to create a single UI--a UI which, by the way, still has no actual name that anyone outside the company is aware of--that works well on phones, ARM-based slate devices (which will have no backwards compatibility with legacy Windows software), x86/x64-based slate and convertible tablets, netbooks, notebooks, Ultrabooks, PC desktops, the Xbox 360 and, perhaps, media center PCs, and, I hope, the server.

This single UI can be controlled with touch and multitouch, with keyboard and mouse, with a remote control or Xbox 360 hand controller, or with voice or Kinect-based hand gestures in the air. And it works. Read more at www.winsupersite.com

 

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An interesting article, positing where Facebook might be weak, and where competitors have a chance to entrench themselves. It isn't just about privacy concerns (which are discussed here http://alexschleber.amplify.com/2011/05/27/finally-a-possible-facebook-competitor-with-real-privacy/ ), but also perhaps a malaise stemming from not having active competition in this space, indicated here http://alexschleber.amplify.com/2011/06/06/no-not-really-can-facebook-kill-google-completely/ by the attitude of "Greg."

Amplify’d from thenextweb.com

The Unlit Social Graph

Flash forward to 2011.  We are now witnessing a similar dynamic, but the battlefield has shifted from search to social.  Just as Google had early dominance in lighting up a portion of the web, Facebook has early dominance in lighting up a portion of the world’s social graph.  But much like the Dark Web, there exists network upon network not yet graphed by Facebook, waiting to be mapped, organized, and optimized for communication.

This is the unlit social graph, and this is where Facebook is vulnerable.

For years I have been looking for a solution to the pick-up basketball problem.  I have a large-ish network of people that I play hoops with in San Francisco.  This network has not yet been lit up by any online service.  While most of these people are on Facebook, they are hard to organize as I don’t know many of their last names.  And furthermore, even if I did know their last names, I would feel awkward friending them on Facebook, as they’re not really my friends.

It’s a network, but it’s not a friend network, not a professional network, and not a work network.  This particular network is a place based network, aligned around various basketball courts in San Francisco.

And the opportunity is far larger than pick-up basketball, or even sports.  Every school is a network, every employer is a network, every bar is a network, every office building is a network, every hobby is a network, every neighborhood is a network, and at an extreme level, every shared interest is a network, regardless of location.

All of these networks share two common characteristics.  1) They are not yet graphed in a mainstream way by Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Jive, or any other dominant, online social service; and 2) They are all mappable with a smartphone.

Much like Google moved decisively to index huge swathes of the Dark Web, Facebook will almost certainly look at ways to better map some of the relationships discussed in this article.

But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t huge opportunities for thousands of startups.

As an entrepreneur, there is a lot to be excited about right now.  But for me it doesn’t get more exciting than finding and mapping the unlit social graph. Read more at thenextweb.com

 

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