Month: April 2005

These guys are selling… uhh… domains? Yeah, domains.

Huh.

In his lated book, Beyond Fear, security guru Bruce Schneier goes beyond cryptography and network security to challenge our post-9/11 national security practices. Here are some quotes:

“We’re seeing so much nonsense after 9/11, and so many people are saying things about security, about terrorism, that just makes no sense.”

“Homeland security measures are an enormous waste of money.”

“If the goal of security is to protect against yesterday’s attacks, we’re really good at it.”

“More people are killed every year by pigs than by sharks, which shows you how good we are at evaluating risk.”

“Did you ever wonder why tweezers are confiscated at security checkpoints, but matches and cigarette lighters– actual combustible materials– are not? If the tweezers lobby had more power, I’m sure they would be allowed on board as well.”

“When the U.S. Government says that security against terrorism is worth curtailing individual civil liberties, it’s because the cost of that decision is not borne by those making it.”

“People make bad security trade-offs when they’re scared.”

Amen, brother!

The stupid lawsuits in this country never really seem to end. Today Apple Computer released its latest version of the OS X operating system, called “Tiger”. They were prompty sued by Tiger Direct, a company that sells computer hardward (including, ironically, Apple products). Apparently Tiger Direct thinks they should have exclusive rights to the word “tiger”, and they’re dismayed that if you go to any web search engine and type the word, they’re not in the top of the results any more– Apple’s operating system is.

What a crock. Apparently we’re not allowed to use regular English words any more, because in so doing we might mess up someone’s marketing plan. Luckily “cyberschroeder” hasn’t been infringed upon yet– a Google search on the word turns up four results for my web site, and one for my friend Myles’ site, which is simply referring to mine.

“If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.”

— Rene Descartes

In a classic e-mail “oops”, someone at Hain Celestial accidentally sent a meeting reminder (notice?) to a local Linux user’s group– with membership in the thousands. Boy, there’s nothing like blundering in front of a huge audience like that.

The funny thing is that I know this guy, since I worked with him on a project a long time ago. He’s pretty savvy, so I can only imagine it was a complete accident and right now he’s wondering what to do about it…

But perhaps the best part of the message is the classic idiotic legal disclaimer:

“This e-mail is sent by The Hain Celestial Group, Inc. or one of its subsidiaries, and may contain information that is privileged and/ or confidential. If you are not the intended recipient, please do not review, disclose, copy or distribute. Please delete the e-mail and any attachments and notify us immediately.”

So… I’m thinking I’m not the “intended recipient”. But of course by the time I’ve read the disclaimer I’ve already violated it, since I’ve “reviewed” the message. Dang. Now the Hain lawyers are going to be all over me. And, of course it makes me wonder whether I should follow the last instructions and notify the guy… imagine having a couple thousand Linux users on the newsgroup all writing to you to basically inform you that you’re a doofus.

“Maybe we hyped it up a little bit too much,” Microsoft group product manager Greg Sullivan told Information Week in an interview before the WinHEC conference being held this week. He added, “We’re set up to pleasantly surprise people who don’t have super-high expectations for
Longhorn.”

“Eagles may soar, but weasels don’t get sucked into jet engines.”

— John Benfield

“If there is no God, who pops up the next Kleenex?”

— Art Hoppe

From a Fark Photoshop contest… just too funny…

I’m in the process of organizing my digital music collection– it’s been “in process” for well over a year now– and as things are becoming more stable I’m at a point where I have everything in a huge directory structure. For fun, I created a playlist called The Big List o’ Everything, loaded it into XMMS, and hit “random play”.

Whee!

Now I get this crazy mix of music… a piece of classical music, perhaps, followed by some hard rock, a chapter out of the “Harry Potter” audio book, and some obscure song I’ve never heard from one of Laralee’s old CD’s. Wild, wacky stuff.