Matthew's Weblog

SecurityFocus examined a court’s reaction to one of the laptop-with-personal-data losses and suggested we should have strict liability for data breaches and my question is why don’t we already?  The court’s argument that no one protects data so no one has to is silly in my mind. An average “reasonable man” may not encrypt data, but you don’t hire them – or shouldn’t – to run data security.  You hire experts.  Every expert I have talked to (admittedly a small sample of only dozens) says: “Encrypt.”

So let’s use a “reasonable expert” standard instead.  Any lawmakers feel game to write that one up?

…from someone who proclaims he speculates wildly, Robert X. Cringley. Running XP apps on OSX would be really good for me… and really good for Apple.

As Larry Lessig feared, lawmakers didn’t force Net Neutrality. Not only did they clearly not understand the issue or the repercussions, they’re forgetting what happened the last time they believed the Baby Bells. We’re still paying for that mistake, and it is getting worse.

Without a guarantee, the key is that newcomers (without deep pockets) won’t be able to get to consumers on a level playing field. Read Isen’s stuff to get a good feel for how drastic that could be… he’s very astute and has enough insider info and perspectives that it could be really scary if the Bells are left unchecked by regulation…

It took me a while to find and read this article about Microsoft’s new zealotry (WSJ login required), but it drives home the lessons many people (in Extreme Programming, Agile, Open Source, etc) are pushing – focus on making code modular and making it well, and good things follow.

It’s about time.

So I’ve found a clear description of the reason I hate the idea of hosted email… I don’t control it. TR did an article on why it’s scary to use Gmail for your email.

Just think about it before you put your information out there…

So I had heard about 802.11n but never gave it much of a thought until reading a Technology Review article about it – and I agree with their analysis, media inside the home will be the primary reason to adopt it. Time to stream TV to that mobile set in the kitchen everyone has been talking about for years, and finally it’s moderately practical.

Just don’t cut your fingers instead of the carrots…

Now that generating power is becoming more difficult (rising gas prices pushing costs) it is nice to see that there are a number of new power-storage technologies being investigated to capture and not waste the power we do generate… from rethinking lead-acid batteries, tweaking nuclear decay goodies, upgrades to Lithium batteries, to building fuel cells. The more we can capture and hold, the more compelling solar and other renewable technologies become important and we can wean the country (the world?) from oil.

An interesting article about the direction(s) Google may be heading: Google Organizes the Globe

Trouble is, Google Mobile still doesn’t work on my Verizon Treo. I wonder when Verizon will see that as a problem and help fix it…

For the future, I’ll be investigating OpenVZ, after getting interested by reading an interview with Andrey Savochkin who deals with the kernel modifications necessary for making it work…

A nice, clear synopsis in the last paragraph makes me feel better about not setting up sudo on my machines… and makes me realize when I’ll need to.

Sudo vs. Root: The Real Story