Fisher’s Rush to Announce – Oops, No Website
Filed under: 2010 Ohio U.S. Senate Race, Technology, ohio politics
As posted earlier, I don’t begrudge Lee Fisher for coming out of the blocks just because Jennifer Brunner announced today. Brunner now has to share the media cycle.
What is fairly pathetic is that Brunner has a good looking start of a website with a tasty little campaign video featuring old people, young people, people of color and they’re all for Jennifer!
The fact is, Fisher is notoriously thoughtful and, let’s just say, deliberative. Today, he talked about the fire in his belly. Well, I think what Fisher agonized over for the past 4 to 6 weeks was not so much whether to run but how. He should have had a website up, even if it was just a blog ready to go live on a moment’s notice.
Who’s running his communications?
Brunner wins this initial battle.
First Impression of Google’s GDrive: Scary
Maybe I’m a little paranoid right now because I’m reading James Bamford’s, The Shadow Factory, but this story about an offering Google is bringing to market perhaps later this year is a bit disconcerting.
The concept behind the GDrive is that you would access the internet through some sort of device and what you now know as “your computer” would reside on one of Google’s benevolent servers. The way I think of it is the old dummy terminals in offices where the computer you worked on didn’t store or run anything locally, it gathered all of your data and software from a mainframe or server as you needed it.
Two things jumped to mind when I read about this product. First, why? We’re getting into a time where we do things with technology merely because we can. For instance, cell phones with cameras. I don’t want a camera on my cell phone. I don’t use it, when people send me pictures from their phones, half the time I can’t see what the hell they are unless I get them onto my computer. A camera on my phone might have utility if I were a spy, but I’m not.
Second is trust. Why should I trust Google, a private company with ALL of my private data. I can’t even trust the federal government to respect my private information, why trust Google or any other business? I thought about everything on my home pc and I’m screwed if that data is breached. I take above average security precautions, and most importantly, when I choose to, I can unplug from the Internet and I’m my own safe and secure little standalone just out doing my thing. If all my crap was coralled in the GDrive data barn, that stuff is out there, connected, (or connectable) 24/7.
How long will it take for the hackers of the world to get bored with exploiting Microsoft products and turn their attention to Google, once it has all of our stuff? After all, the end game in this is not to make PCs obsolete, it’s too make Microsoft Windows obsolete. With cloud computing, who needs the obligatory copy of Windows that ships with every machine? If Google were to supplant Microsoft in its core business, the target is now on Google’s back. Last time I looked, Google didn’t have all the smart programmers and mathemeticians on its payroll.
The good thing about product offerings is that we, the public, will get to make the choice. It’ll take some convincing for me to send the contents of my hard drive to Google.
Full Disclosure: I use Google for the ads and analytics for Clips & Comment — I’m totally satisfied with that service — Oh, and my homepage is Google search.
Cornficker: A ‘Digital Pearl Harbor?’
Hide Your Women and Children – Time to Hit Your Electronic Bunkers
Is the New York Times trying to scare me?
Their coverage today of the Cornficker internet worm had some of the following hot licks:
Hot Lick 1 -
Worms like Conficker not only ricochet around the Internet at lightning speed, they harness infected computers into unified systems called botnets, which can then accept programming instructions from their clandestine masters. “If you’re looking for a digital Pearl Harbor, we now have the Japanese ships steaming toward us on the horizon,” said Rick Wesson, chief executive of Support Intelligence, a computer security consulting firm based in San Francisco.
Hot Lick 2 -
“I don’t know why people aren’t more afraid of these programs,” said Merrick L. Furst, a computer scientist at Georgia Tech. “This is like having a mole in your organization that can do things like send out any information it finds on machines it infects.”
Hot Lick 3 -
Computer security researchers expect that within days or weeks the bot-herder who controls the programs will send out commands to force the botnet to perform some as yet unknown illegal activity.
The Switch Is Final: Now Completely Weaned From Microsoft Internet Explorer
A few weeks ago I declared that I was finally completely fed up with Microsoft. Fed up with the constant security holes, the locking up and crashing of Internet Explorer, and I found out that Microsoft had been hiding the very issue that was plaguing my IE browser.
I switched to Firefox. Click on the graphic above and you can too. All I can say is flawless. Install was easy. I got rid of the shortcut to IE on my desktop and set Firefox as the default browser. All of my bookmarks were intact and I’ve only had to install one or two “add-ons” for my regular browsing habits.
The Internet Explorer Problem Microsoft Has Been Trying to Hide
I Think I’ve About Had It With These Guys
About two or three months ago my web browser (IE 7) began locking up. I run Vista and after anywhere from two to five minutes I would get the “not responding” rigamarole.
This is annoying as hell, it’s 2008 for God’s sake, how long has Microsoft had to perfect the web browser? How many more resources has Microsoft put into the web browser than any other company or Open Source developer? When I went to the Microsoft help website and pasted in error codes or wrote descriptions of what’s going on – nothing helpful.
Now I think I know what the problem is – and Microsoft has been trying to hide it:
A malignant security flaw found in all versions of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser has yet to be fixed, and the problem is spreading. Microsoft detailed the flaw in a security update blog post six days ago. Since then, the problem has spread across the globe, hitting at least 2 million computers.
Unlike other computer exploits, this one does not require users to click on fishy links or download mysterious software: it plagues computers that simply open an infected Web page.
Internet Explorer is currently used by 69 percent of Web surfers. The flaw hides inside the data binding function of the browser and causes IE to quit unexpectedly and reopen vulnerable to prying eyes. — Brennon Slattery, PC World
I’ve stuck with Microsoft through thick and thin. An early adopter of WordPerfect, I eventually switched to Word. From there, I embraced the entire office suite. I’ve never strayed from Internet Explorer and used to get irritated when I would use a machine with Netscape.
However, once I became more involved with the World Wide Web as a blogger and paid attention to online communities, I started to listen to the complaints about Internet Explorer. As I began moving more of my own life’s business online, I paid more attention to security.
Finally, about four months ago I downloaded Firefox and use it from time to time. After reading Slattery’s piece today, I’m going to try and discipline myself to use it full-time.
Mainly, I’m just tired of Microsoft’s crap. I’m tired of enabling a company that creates the largest security holes in cyberspace.
