When I first encountered Google in 1998, while working on an upcoming
ecommerce site (I noticed all these GoogleBot entries in my webserver
logs), I was impressed with the search engine's simplicity, performance,
and ability to show me apparently very relevant results.

While I write this, I wonder if Google is the new Evil Empire. No 
longer in some garage somewhere, it is sucking IT's best talent from 
all over the world and building an adsense-driven web experience like
nothing we've seen before. At least the ads look better, and integrate
better into your website. But, they are still advertisements, which will
always be a bit ugly in my mind.

I actually commend Google for their many contributions to the internet
experience, but some of the things they've done recently are getting
quite disturbing. I'll mention the two that make me the most wary:


Censoring Chinese Search Results
Google has a deal with the Chinese government to censor results that
have keywords that government dislikes. This deal allows Google to 
do business in China, but it puts the company in a collusionary 
relationship with the oppressive, anti-democratic government of the
largest country in the world.


Google Desktop Search is EVIL!!!
Google recently paid Dell a huge amount of money to get a shortcut 
installed on all Dell desktops to install the Google Desktop Search.
On the face of it, desktop search is a really cool, useful tool, as 
those of us who can never remember where they put this or that file
- or even what they might have named it - can just enter some words 
that might be in the file and find it quickly. The problem is, and
this is big, folks: THE INDEX LIVES ON GOOGLE's SERVERS! Your
tax returns, proprietary company information, personal diary, photos,
whatever you do on your computer now lives on Google's servers where
they claim it isn't being used for anything nefarious but are you
prepared to believe them just because you are getting something of
value from them in return? Even if their motives are on the up-and-up,
what if someone actually nefarious (think Homeland Security) gets 
access to this information? Do you like the implication?

If you value privacy, if you don't want your proprietary information
to end up on the wild Internet, then turn off Google Desktop Search
and forbid your users from using it now!

There is actually a way to configure Google Desktop not to save your
information in their central indexes, but it is just too easy to use
the default configuration without realizing the implications.

I'm not saying Google is evil, but it is currently doing more and more
apparently evil things. Can you guess how they may behave when they start 
getting actual competition in the marketplace?

PS.
Note how contradictory I am, with my "Get Firefox with Google Toolbar" link 
in the upper-right of all my pages. This is just an experiment, to see if I 
can actually get a dollar out of it (for me to get a dollar, one of you
Winblows users needs to click on the link, download and install Firefox for
the first time, and then run it at least once). Firefox is an excellent 
browser, and Google does now employ a good amount of the talent behind it.

© 2006 Paul McNett       [/Computing/Opinion] permanent link

Is this dialog not the most hostile in existence?



I mean, okay. Microsoft is trying hard to get secure, and I feel some
sympathy for that: because of their legacy, they have to wedge security
on top of the fluffy user interface house of cards they've built up 
over the years. In this case, lots of virii were propagating because it
was just too darn easy to harvest people's address books for email 
addresses to send more virii and spam to. So, instead of fixing the
problem in a smart way, they plopped this dialog box up to intercept 
the address book access and annoy the user. 

Sure, if you aren't expecting another program to be accessing your 
address book, this dialog will alert you that you have a problem. But,
what if you know full well that a program you have installed will be
doing such access, and it is okay by you? Well, you can answer 'Yes'
to allow the access, but that only works for this go-around. You can
say "Allow access for x minutes", but the maximum number of minutes 
is 10. Yes, no kidding. 

In my case, I want to answer 'no' because the program in question isn't
even accessing the address book, and it doesn't need address book info.
But, like 'Yes', 'No' only works for this go-around. 'Help' basically
tells you what I just did, but in a fluffier, more polished fashion.

What a crock. Me? I'm Microsoft-free on my network. But I feel somewhat
evil because people pay me to keep their Microsoft networks humming.
Issues such as this keep me from being able to do my job in an efficient
fashion, costing my clients more money and costing me my remaining 
non-grey hairs.

© 2005 Paul McNett       [/Computing/Opinion] permanent link

Back in 1991, in the evening after a long day at classes at UC Santa Cruz,
and after a trip to Safeway with some roommates, we started talking about
how every product these days has a unique identifier attached, readable by
simply scanning the UPC code.

Influenced as college students tend to be, we tried to extrapolate to gain
a vision of the future, and what we saw were Americans everywhere, walking
around and conducting normal business, with UPC codes burned on their 
foreheads. The codes would have to be on a part of the body one couldn't
remove, we reasoned. 

Everyone would be trackable and identifiable. There would be UPC scanners 
everywhere we went: grocery stores ("hello Mr. McNett, glad to see you again. 
How are those Trojan ribbed condoms you purchased last week working for you?"), 
banks ("at your income level, we can make a special offer today"), and airports 
("stop that man, he's a United frequent flyer but now he's flying American").

It was all very funny, and great belly laughs were had by all. There were
underlying privacy concerns, of course, but none of us thought that any self-
respecting American citizen would ever concede to having a UPC code burned on
their forehead. I mean, Americans are patriotic but we have our limits. So,
our privacy is safe, we thought.

We were wrong. 

Technology is amazing, and I am hooked. Did you know that we now have the 
capability of putting a unique identifier (an electronic UPC code) into a
chip the size of a grain of salt, and injecting that under the skin to be
accessed without our knowledge at grocery stores, banks, and airports?

The technology is known as RFID (Radio Frequency ID), and is being harnessed
at all levels of the supply chain: warehouses tag their boxes and pallets,
Walmart tags its products, ranchers tag their cattle. Think how easy it will
be to track inventory in a retail store or warehouse when everything is tagged,
and the computer system knows when a given box leaves or enters the room. In
other words, this is great technology that will revolutionize how business 
processes are implemented.

However, I find myself wanting to call up my old buddies Timothy, Rob, Chad
and Steven to discuss this UPC-Branding on the forehead thing. It isn't that
the government will one day mandate that everyone gets tagged. No, that would 
cause too much of an uproar. What will more likely occur is that as the 
technology gets integrated into our culture and society, we ourselves will
individually come to rely on it, and accept it. It will be very convenient to
walk up to an ATM and not have to enter a PIN - just ask for cash and your
account is properly debited with no further interaction needed.

When we go to get government services, register for school or visit the hospital,
we'll be offered the opportunity to get an injection so that we don't have to stand
in line next time. Pretty soon, the majority of us will have these tags in our
bodies - perhaps many dozens of them - and we'll see it as normal and not worry
about it.

Is this what we want?

© 2004 Paul McNett       [/Computing/Opinion] permanent link

Steve Balmer (paraphrased) says that the $56 Billion belongs to
the shareholders, and shouldn't be used for employee benefits.
But just how did Microsoft achieve the market dominance it now
enjoys, if not on the shoulders of its employees?

Balmer goes on to say that Microsoft is facing mounting threats
to its dominance by Open Source Software, and a growing perception
among the common computer user that Microsoft Windows just isn't 
secure enough to use for business.

I think Microsoft is getting bogged down with too many projects, 
changing targets, marketing hype that doesn't match its technological
gains, and the realization that the Open Source community is 
producing much better software, much faster, and it is only getting
better at it over time.

Internet Explorer hasn't been upgraded in years, and now Mozilla
FireFox 0.91 is the best browser on the planet. In other words, 
given enough time, Netscape wins the browser war.

Outlook and Outlook Express are becoming more irrelevant. Most 
people only use the email/address book capability of Outlook, and
Mozilla ThunderBird does a better job of handling email and contacts
than Outlook does. There are other upcoming offerings that will 
replace the calendaring features of Outlook. Actually, if you are 
running Linux, the alternative is already available to you:
Novell/Ximian Evolution.

The security problems with Internet Explorer and Outlook/Outlook
Express are too great to be ignored. Switching to FireFox/ThunderBird
is probably the single-best thing you can do to minimize your risk
while still using Microsoft Windows. This realization, should it 
become widespread, could undermine Microsoft in many ways, as it 
would untangle the consumer's reliance on Microsoft's bread and butter,
the operating system.

Office XP is Microsoft's flagship product now, but let's be honest:
how many more features could you possibly put into a productivity
suite? I think the 80/20 rule applies: 80% of Office users use only
20% of the features. In other words, 80% of the Microsoft Office users
in the world can choose to download, for free, the Open Source alternative
known as OpenOffice.org, and they can run this on Linux, Macintosh,
and Windows for true collaboration. Once a critical mass of users/managers
figure this out, Microsoft will have to start giving Office XP away
to compete.

They keep pushing back the release date of Longhorn, and taking
features out of the product. Administrators have been waiting for
Longhorn, the next major release of the Windows NT-based operating
system, for years now, and by the time it is finally released, it
may be too late to stem the tide of customers converting to Linux-based
solutions.

Balmer is worried. $56 Billion is a lot of cash, but a company of Microsoft's
size could burn through that pretty fast by using it to prop up their share
price and maintain credibility.

© 2004 Paul McNett       [/Computing/Opinion] permanent link

(This is a letter to the editor I wrote back in April, but the
Pinnacle News rejected it because it was too long.)

Has your computer gotten all bogged down somehow? Is it holding 
open an internet connection for some reason? Are programs 
running slowly or strangly? Does the mouse feel shaky or slow 
to respond? If so, your computer has probably contracted an 
email virus, and you are unknowingly spreading such virus to 
countless other users right now.

Or, perhaps your computer has contracted a virus simply by being
connected to the Internet. Yes, really, if you are running any
version of Microsoft Windows, and it is connected to the Internet,
even over a phone line, you are in danger of your system getting 
compromised. Modern worms and virii will find you.

Do this: go to http://vil.nai.com/vil/stinger/ to download 
McAfee's free Stinger tool, to remove the most common of the 
currently circulating email worms. Follow the instructions on 
that page and then reboot your computer.

And then reconsider your choice of Microsoft Windows for your 
next computer purchase. You have a choice, and even though the 
major computer distributors would have you think otherwise, 
there are better operating systems out there. If security, 
stability, reliability, and performance are important factors 
for you, you owe it to yourself to at least take some 
alternatives for a test drive.

For personal use, nothing beats Apple's Macintosh OS X operating 
system. It comes with everything you need for normal everyday 
use, such as browsing the web, sending email, listening to 
music, watching DVD movies, writing letters, making 
spreadsheets, and playing some really great games. And it 
doesn't crash or open stupid security holes. Really.

For business use, it is time to consider migrating to Linux. Red 
Hat and Novell both have compelling enterprise packages, but 
any experienced Linux administrator can likely set you up with 
a reliable, stable networking environment without having to 
purchase the expensive enterprise options. 

If you simply cannot move away from Windows because the 
transition would be just too costly, consider moving to more 
secure email, web browsing, and productivity applications. 
Mozilla (http://www.mozilla.org) makes the best browser on 
earth (FireFox) and is pretty close to making the best email 
client as well (ThunderBird). To replace Word, Excel, and 
Powerpoint, download OpenOffice from http://www.openoffice.org. 
All these applications are completely free of charge, the only 
cost being your time to download, install, and learn. It is an 
investment in the security of your data, and it is time to act. 
You'll plug the vast majority of security holes by simply 
switching to alternative desktop applications.

I use Windows, Linux, and Macintosh daily, and even though 
Microsoft has done a great job giving Windows a facelift over 
the years, it is mostly cosmetic fluff. The real innovation is 
happening in the world of open source, and mostly on the Linux 
and Macintosh platforms. While you need to take stock of all 
your requirements when making a new computer purchase, I 
implore you to at least consider the alternatives before 
blindly choosing the easy default of Windows XP.

© 2004 Paul McNett       [/Computing/Opinion] permanent link