Ivory Terminal

In a Threat Level post, Wired mentions a new media campaign and the associated backlash.  

This just seems like history repeating itself especially with the exposure of a new generation to Harvey Milk after the recent film.  Has anyone else noticed the uncanny resemblance between Anita Bryant and Sarah Palin?

I deleted my myspace and facebook accounts after finally getting one too many requests/messages/etc from accounts that mostly represented bands or brands.  I still think that the social network halflife is measured in months, but I do like Twitter.  I came across this on Wired.com and had a nice little shiver.  It may be funky and offbeat bands, but just wait…  

I also got my first friend request from a random rap artist.  I wish them all the success in the world as the love the service, but I think this is the beginning of the end.  Call in the fail whale.

Sticking with the topic of screen resolution, I am happy to see that the resolution of laptops is making it into mainstream technology news. Recently, the topic has been revived by Microsoft’s news ads targeting Macs, when many of the Apple fanboys pointed out that a 17” laptop picked in the first ad contained a 1440×900 display.

We have not yet arrived in the land of resolution independence, but consumers are becoming used to high-density screens, likely because of popular mobile phones like the new Blackberry models and the iPhone, with some DPI’s in the 200s.

As an Apple user, I am thrilled to see tech reviewers mention laptop screen resolution as a buying guide. Beyond gaming laptops, few manufacturers are adding high-resolution screens. Lenovo deserves a mention for their fantastic Thinkpad line, recently bolstered with the x200s with a 12.1” 1440×900 screen. By comparison, the 1280×800 panel in my MacBook Air is like a Lite Brite.

Hopefully Windows 7 and Snow Leopard will turn more people onto higher resolution screens, and pressure more manufacturers to offer models (at least BTO options) with higher densities.

In the mean time, it is starting to look like the x200s is the perfect “netbook”. The Dell Mini 10 with high-density screen seemed almost perfect (1366×768), but I have been tempted by the hopped-up Japanese-market Vaio P-Series computers available on Dynamism (1600×768). However, for a price similar to the P-Series, the x200s offers a C2D chip and an available 9-cell battery. High density options are here, and it is time to reward the manufacturers giving us more desktop space with less. Hopefully Apple and others will take notice.

Like most Mac users addicted to megapixels, I add new spaces even more often than I add new monitors. Currently, with about 8MP of LCD’s and six spaces, I stare into a glorious ~48 megapixel world from my desk.

Spaces, Apple’s name for virtual desktops, allows users to create different environments, seemingly for different tasks. It is a savior for everything from work/life balance to privacy, and it is one of the most compelling arguments for why Windows only lives in VMs on my workstation.

Compliments aside, I think that spaces and virtual desktops have a long way to grow. Currently, I run several VM’s and applications that I would like to have a dedicated physical monitor, something that is not possible with the current software. Of course, one can dictate that an application always be on the forefront of the desktop space that it occupies, but that does not quite do it for me. Digital graphics representation is becoming an ever more important part of our lives, and it would be fantastic to be able to control each monitor like a separate physical machine.

In the next iteration of OSX and Linux environments, I would like to see a number of features. First, I would like to have the ability to assign applications and VMs their own monitors, treating them like completely separate machines. This would mean that if other monitors were turned on or off, the separated panels would not be impacted. This could allow for substantial energy savings by giving a user the ability to turn off unneeded monitors while still being able to see necessary output. Next, I would like to be able to select which monitors participate in spaces, leaving a scratch monitor that is application agnostic like a clipboard for applications. This would allow a user to drag an “alias” of output or programs onto a monitor that would remain identical in every space, comparing graphics or figures from programs that normally occupy different spaces. This can be done by dragging applications to corners in the current environment, but there is no command I know of that will put them back. Finally, I would like to see a command that would create “derivative” spaces where the visible applications do not change, but which monitor they are displayed on does. For instance, if using three identical monitors (positioned L-C-R), a derivative command could be created to move applications from L or R to the center panel.

The virtual desktops currently available are miles ahead of any other workflow options, but I have been given an inch and want a mile. Particularly for Apple, these enhanced features could be coupled with the Fingerworks-offshoot multi-touch gestures. If implemented correctly, an improved spaces could approach the usability of the fabled “touch wall”. I cannot think of a better excuse to add multi-touch to the desktop input devices, creating a truly unique hardware/software line.

On a shopping trip to Ikea, I was surprised to find that the only option at checkout was an automated cashier. Usually, I only use automated cashiers at my local grocery, and their attraction is limited only to the fact that many people are averse to them; making the lines shorter compared to the stations manned by cashiers.

Ikea is usually a trendsetter in the world of big box retailing, and I will not be surprised to see the automated stations show up in more large retailers, like Costco and Best Buy. Usually at the grocery store, I find the automated cashiers to be slow and demanding (forcing you to put an item in a bag even if you do not want one) in addition to being unable to deal with unmarked goods like produce, but there is no doubt this technology will be improved if it becomes the norm.

It must be fairly scary to those who count on a cashier position for their livelihood, since the positions will likely be eliminated quickly and at multiple retailers, making a simple employer switch unlikely. It is also not a stretch to imagine that older cashiers (more likely to command higher wages and hold full-time positions) will be disproportionately let go as younger employees are kept on to man the computerized replacements.

Speaking of job security, upon exiting Ikea in my area, there is now a sign with a clock for the weekdays and each weekend day, colored in red, yellow, and green, showing shoppers when the downtimes are. I would sure be scared looking at that sign as a customer-service employee.

Lately I have been involved in a lot of talks about encryption.  As laptops become more important, and people are literally storing their digital lives on them, some level of encryption is a good idea to protect data in the event of theft.

Most of the time when encryption comes up, breaches are the first thing mentioned.  ”I heard that by freezing the RAM you can take data off of a sleeping computer”, etc.  Most of these claims are likely true, but like anything else, data protection is a continuum.  For the purpose of this discussion, we will compare encryption to cars.  Triple AES-768 will be an Abrams Battle Tank (there is harder out there, but it is not going to move around much), and a system password will be a convertible.  An Abrams and a convertible both have measures to protect the interior of a vehicle.  Even though an Abrams is comparatively impenetrable, you see a lot more convertibles on the road.  Why is this when the smaller car does not do nearly as good of a job at protecting items in it?  To begin, an Abrams costs millions of dollars, weighs 70 tons, and is not normally accessible to the public.  To a novice computer user, the AES-standard is an impossible concept.  It is difficult to implement, requires a great deal of specialized knowledge, and is slow and bulky.  Since our hypothetical user would at least like some protection from unexpected bad weather, a convertible is in order.  It is cheap to run, accessible, and sporty.

You never hear people, even the Phil & Ted stroller-pushing new moms, mention that they want an A1 Battle Tank.  Many try with an Escalade or the like, but once again, there is a continuum.  They do not want the tank because they understand the costs and limitations of a 70-ton treaded vehicle (not to mention tearing up the subdivision).  They understand that depleted-uranium armor is not needed to get from home to day care and back.  

However, when we transfer the analogy back to the digital world, this understanding goes away.  Everyone all of a sudden wants the most hardened security in the world, regardless of their status as a target or their activities.  I manage to offend many people when I mention that the weakest link in any modern encryption platform is the user.  They may get tired of slow read times and turn off disk encryption, they may use the same key for encryption or computer protection as they use to log into Gmail.  They may write the key on a post it and leave it on their monitor, or tell a friend their password or e-mail it to themselves in case they forget.  Even if they do not do these things, passwords are incredibly uncreative, and the concept of a passphrase is not yet mainstream.  Knowing full well that most users will do things like this, it is hardly worth debating the relative merits and flaws of various encryption algorithms and standards.  Users also need to understand their status as a target.  Someone must be highly motivated to even attempt to guess a password, yet alone break disk encryption.  If they are sufficiently motivated, any casual protection standards will not be a significant deterrent, and it is always a good idea to have a backup plan if you lose your data or if someone else gets it.  Things like identity theft are a huge pain, but armoring yourself so heavily that you stand out from the pack will honestly just make people curious.  Like the tank, there is no point having the armor unless you are willing to go through the training to operate it, and spend a great deal of time with maintenance.  An Abrams with the keys left on a panel marked “car keys” in the garage is an awfully expensive front.

My personal data is protected to the highest standards that I can understand and maintain, and I am willing to accept performance slowdowns to compensate.  However, beyond a certain point, my data protection priority shifts from protection from theft to protection from loss.  If a dedicated team decides to devote tremendous resources, they will likely be able to obtain portions of my data.  However, it would take an incredible feat to remove my data in a way that I too would lose it.  Part of my redundancy involves offsite storage transfered online, and it is ironic that in choosing this redundancy, I expose my files to the wild land of the Internet.  Even if you hide yourself in an impenetrable cocoon, you then have to worry about redundancy, and if you are paranoid enough, multiple site redundancy.  At some point, one must bow to reason and realize that if someone wants your data badly enough, they will be able to obtain it, and the harder your security, the more likely it is that you will be the link in the chain that gives.  A tank is not necessary to protect your family photos, just make sure you have your top up when you go out in bad weather…

If you are worried about your protection standards, just make a better password, and read up about data protection.  As you understand a little more, you can switch to some home directory or full-disk options, and fall down the spiral of paranoia from there.  

Until recently, the mobile phone has been a quiet place in the world of telemarketing. As someone that uses mobile phones for all of my lines, I have greatly appreciated the lack of interruption. Considering that my lifetime score to positively responding to an unsolicited telemarketing call is zero, this has been a great relationship for both parties. Thanks to laws, lack of phonebooks, opt-outs, and so on, most of the calls that I receive are wanted, or at least not out of place.

Now that mobile phones are not only commonplace but even replacing landlines for mainstream consumers, the telemarketers must have needed a profit-saving change.

My blissful silence was halted by an e-mail this afternoon from GE’s capital arm announcing that the terms to my service were changing:

“You agree that GE Money Bank and any other owner or servicer of your account may contact you about your account using any contact information or cell phone numbers you provide (whether previously provided or provided in the future).

You expressly agree to the use of any automatic telephone dialing system and/or artificial or prerecorded voice when contacting you, even if you are charged for the call under your phone plan.

The above provision will become part of your account agreement if you consent to the provision by (i) using your account more than 15 days after this notice is delivered to you or (ii) keeping your account open after March 15, 2009. If you do either of these things, we will conclude that you have consented to being contacted on your cell phone in this way. If you do not want to be contacted on your cell phone in this way, you may call us at ***-***-**** at any time.”

I am left with two choices: Close my account ASAP, or agree to be bothered by all kinds of robot nonsense not stopped by conventional preventions because I have explicitly agreed to the contact.

Normally, I would instantly send them packing, but after reading an article on Wired.com about similar changes to American Express terms (discussing the security issue with the change which I did not even consider), I can only assume this change will quickly spread over the whole credit card community. Although this is an exceedingly aggravating change of terms, I am not sure that I am willing to give up credit cards as a whole. I have already called the opt-out number I was given, and opted out my mobile phone. Based on the wording of the message above, I will be interested to see if my account is closed.

I am not looking forward to having similar terms added to all kinds of phone-based (and unrelated) services. Everyone has been asking how Twitter and Facebook and the like are going to make money, and I am afraid that this is part of the answer.

 Last week, hulu.com was forced to remove Boxee media center compatibility. As someone currently calibrating my very first television (not a typo), I find this maddening.

Admittedly, my willingness to get a television centered on the fact that I could use it primarily as a large computer monitor. I imagine that computing/viewing will be about a four to one ratio. Personally, I have never been a cable television customer, and I do not intend to ever be one. To me, viewing Hulu content via Boxee would have added a set of eyeballs to Hulu content without taking away a customer from broadcast or cable television. It would have been a win for everyone. Little did I know that when I signed up for Hulu (after signing up for Boxee), the content stream already had a kill date.

The biggest advantage of Boxee is the easy interface with remote controls. I could use Boxee without having a keyboard and mouse on the couch, something rather important to me when watching content with other people. I have been busy ripping my movies (all owned) to a hard disk so they are all available on the panel.

I set up my media center around Boxee, not around Hulu, and I almost feel bad about punishing Hulu’s great model by no longer watching it. However, I just do not see myself breaking out the keyboard to access Hulu programming. I would like to have some space between myself and the keyboard when entertaining myself or others.

I realize that I am in a small minority being so averse to television, but I feel like it is worth mentioning that there are technologically inclined users with disposable income for whom Hulu via Boxee added net eyeballs with no corresponding loss to traditional broadcasting methods.

Related, it must be a humungous victory for Boxee, OSX, and Linux to have a media center that terrifies the broadcasters before even having a public Windows version. My guess is that anybody hacking an Apple TV (is there a use for them stock?) or creating a dedicated computer-based media center was probably not a huge cable customer in the first place, and in this case the content owners are angering an enthusiast market that will find a way around them out of spite in addition to necessity.

And now back to my regularly scheduled computer interface…

Previously, I wrote about how Facebook was becoming another Myspace, and it was time for the nerds to move on. Taking my own advice, I deleted both accounts today.

As when leaving a job, I thought for a moment about sending a mass message, but that seemed to be completely besides the point. I did use both services to keep up with marginal friends, mostly from previous geographic locations. In my haste, I will lose contact information for some of them, but I figure if they need me, I am easier to find than I would like to be, and if I truly need them and a search is not working, I can always write a mutual aquintance and get contact info.

The process was a little different for the two services, and I would give Facebook a win* **. Deleting a Myspace account was a surprisingly easy task. I think it shows how little money these sites make per user by how easy it is to delete. Try to do the same with a Verizon wireless account (still pending for me, and it is sure not making me want to use them ever again).

I am going to keep my Twitter account for now, figuring that it is good for most of what I used other social networks for, and Twitter is at least on the rise of the social network lifecycle.

*Only easy because instructions to permanently delete an account was the top FAQ after the privacy thing.

**Account is only deleted if one does not log into the service for 14 days, an impossibly long time in the virtual world.

My top reasons why Facebook is about to get paved over by easy-to-start more trendy competitors:

1.   The marginal facebook user knows less and less about computers. Once a social network expands beyond the college kids and the nerds this will always be true.  The people that originally made up the group to not necessarily want their every move broadcast to the linked world.  The feature allowing users to view albums of non-friends that friends are in was the end.

2.   Once social networks go public (shareholder public), they are required to (quickly) monetize a model with a very short halflife, made up of consumers who will revolt if you charge them a cent for the service.  Setting up the next twitter might take a couple of days and a couple of servers.  There are no barriers to entry and few paths to monetization.  This point is often expanded upon on this site when recommending that niche-market companies avoid growth-models that require them to abandon their enthusiast customer-base.

3.   The networking effect is not as pronounced as the economists think it is.  Having an extra 30 million users does not make the service more valuable to the people using social networks as semi-walled gardens, in fact, it makes it less so.  

4.  Facebook is making all of the same mistakes as myspace:

a.  Opening the doors to everyone (including 419 script-kiddies).  Hacked account-holders often do not come back, and requests for Western Union wires* piss off everyone. 

b.  Allowing increased customization (profiles are starting to look like old geocities flash sites and myspace pages [not flattering]). 

c.  Encouraging (paid and annoying) app development in an environment where everyone only wants to hear “free” or “easy”. 

d.  Allowing ever more intrusive ads to generate revenue, which turns off the desirable users.

e.  Datamining as a last resort to generate revenue, at which point the sophisticated users find the next social network where we are not getting annoyed by promoters.