ureadit

If you’ve paid any attention to the rate at which I post to this blog, you’d see that I’ve been very good until about two weeks ago, when my folks visited me here in Southern California from their home in St. Louis. During their visit, I had a limited amount of time to gather enough material to post daily, so I gave myself a break. Of course, having done that, I got used to the break and extended it way beyond when my folks went back to St. Louis. So besides working on my taxes, what have I been doing with my time away from the blog? I’ve been immersing myself into Drupal with the hope that I could put together another cool website using its technology.

Currently, you’re reading this blog on a Joomla installation. I chose Joomla over WordPress because I felt the latter did not have all the features I wanted. Unlike WordPress, you can host multiple blogs on Joomla. Also, you can post articles in a number of different formats. And, one thing I really like, you can put “kill-dates” on the articles so that they automagically remove themselves after a period of time. This makes Joomla a much easier environment to sell ads and maintain a dynamic web experience with many dimensions.

I’d been putting off learning about Drupal because I was happy with my current solution. But I can procrastinate for only so long, and so, besides working many hours on my taxes over the past week, I decided to take the plunge and investigate Drupal. What I found both delighted and disappointed me. I’ve broken down these perceptions in the following two lists, aptly named “Delighted” and “Disappointed”.

It’s disappointing to see one of the giants of the computer industry resorting to trash-talk when it’s transparently obvious he’s trying to make a few dollars by spreading FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt). I’m talking about what I blogged about several days ago, where I stuck my neck out and stated that Apple’s iPad is destined to failure. The situation took a turn for the worse a few days ago when Steve Jobs – Apple’s visionary leader – resorted to trash-talking Adobe Flash while in a closed door meeting with several Wall Street executives.

To be more specific, Jobs referred to Flash as a dying technology, and Apple doesn’t invest in dying technologies. I cannot attribute a direct quote because the Wall Street meeting was not recorded, but several witnesses corroborated on what Jobs reportedly said.

Though in a business sense, it is understandable why Jobs said these terrible things about Adobe Flash, it is disappointing nevertheless because it simply is not the full truth. Of course, I don’t pretend to have a monopoly on the truth, but as a significant user of Apple’s iTunes software, I have some cynical insight.

It’s no secret that I really enjoy high-tech. Ever since I was a kid, I get excited about the latest high-tech innovation or gadget. I made a career out of this passion, and over many years, I’ve seen how things not directly related to high tech are affected by it. Movie making is a good example. Thirty years ago, who would have thought that you could create a movie almost completely inside a computer? Avatar has proven that this can be done, and though it was expensive to produce, it proved that the technology is ready. Avatar is not necessarily ground-breaking in its innovative use of computers, though it has brought attention to what is now possible. It’s also raised some questions as to whether or not actors will have to take a position in the unemployment line, now that they can be replaced by avatars.

In my opinion, nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, I believe the job of acting will only get more difficult and demanding.

A long time ago in a galaxy far away, it was not at all certain that the IBM PC would prevail. Back in the late 1970s to the mid 1980s, there were several competitors all gunning for the emerging home computer market. There was Commodore, Atari, Timex-Sinclair, Radio Shack, Texas Instruments, Apple, and several others. Many of these machines had a “closed” architecture, which meant that their electrical designs were not available to third parties who might be interested in manufacturing add-ons. Texas Instruments took this mindset to the limit by closing both its hardware and software architectures on its TI-99/4A home computer. In other words, people who bought this machine could only purchase hardware add-ons and software from Texas Instruments. The problem was that Texas Instruments couldn’t innovate in their hardware and software products fast enough to meet the growing demand. They were trying to be all things to everyone, and in the end, after peaking at about 35% market share, Texas Instruments could only watch helplessly as their competitors passed them and left them in the dust.

The lesson? Without the innovation, quickness and flexibility of the open market, any high-tech product is vulnerable to suffocation.

Which brings me to Apple’s latest product, the iPad.

At my day job, which I’ve managed to hang onto for over ten years now, I’m exposed to all the new network technologies, and very often I’m asked to write about them or teach them or create online webinars around them. I think one of the more intriguing trends in computer networking lately has been something called “Carrier Ethernet.” It may not seem like much to the everyday user of the Internet (e.g.; you), but it does mean a lot to the Internet Service Providers, who plan to use Carrier Ethernet to vastly decrease their costs and increase their service.

So what is Carrier Ethernet?

Carrier Ethernet (CE) is a technology where the basic Ethernet standard is used directly over “core” Internet switches, effectively leveraging the simplicity of your home computer network over a world-wide network. In other words, your home network, which uses a communication standard known as Ethernet, will interface with your local Internet Service Provider (ISP) without needing to be converted to some other type of protocol.

Why is this significant?

Sorry about the lack of posts lately. My folks are visiting for the weekend, and it’s been difficult to find the time to focus on a blog entry. I did manage to find something interesting in a drive-by blog reading today, and I thought you might be interested as well: Google wants to get into the Internet Service Provider (ISP) business.

I’m not sure about the wisdom of allowing a single company to fill yet another critical link in our online lives, but the Google-ISP proposal looks tempting.

Let it not be said that the U.S. Government – or at least the government of South Carolina – is not doing anything about terrorism. Rather than sitting on their hands and talking about doing something, they actually put a law into motion that requires proper paperwork is to be filed if you plan to subvert or overthrow the U.S. Government or the government of South Carolina.

Check out the South Carolina Legislature website. This stuff is too difficult to make up. It must be real.

It turns out that if you indeed do belong to a nefarious group hell-bent on overthrowing the state or U.S. Government, you can put yourself on the right side of the law simply by registering your subversive organization with the proper paperwork, filed with the South Carolina Secretary of State.

Now that it’s February 9, it’s time to take down your Christmas tree, if you haven’t done so already. Personally, I take down the tree on January 1. I like to get it out of the way before all the Christmas bills land in my mailbox. There’s nothing worse than getting into a sour mood over money spent on Christmas and then have to look at the Christmas tree. I’m afraid the visual association will poison my mind and carry the sudden “Humbug” attitude into the next Christmas season.

And while you’re at it, you may want to think about changing your passwords on all your important accounts. I know I’ve mentioned this concept in the recent past, but now it’s time once again to visit this perpetual ritual. Changing your passwords often is a hedge against identity theft and other terrible disasters.

There are perhaps a gazillion ways to speed up your network access when using Windows. I happened to come across one that fixes a nagging attribute that can sometimes trip you up. Be warned, however, that you’ll have to make a registry edit. This pertains to Microsoft XP and Vista. I don’t know Windows 7 well enough to comment on it yet, so you may want to check this with Microsoft before making this change.

Here’s the problem: You want to go to a website, so you enter the URL address into your browser, and you fully expect the website to appear. But for some reason, you get a mysterious message about the website being unavailable. For example, I use Verizon FIOS, and I’ll get a Verizon web page that says, “Sorry, ‘www.xxxxxxx.com’ does not exist or is not available.’ This could be the result a temporary network problem due to congestion. The network problem may be resolved in a few seconds; however, it’ll take your PC at least 5 minutes to recover from this situation. In other words, even though the network is working, it takes your PC five minutes to figure it out.

So what’s going on?

If you haven’t already heard about the 3D drawing program from Google called “SketchUp,” check it out at the Google site. Over the years, I’ve played around with several 3D packages including Blender, Carrara and GarageGames. All of them have advantages and disadvantages, but SketchUp gets big points for being perhaps the simplest to use.

You can download a free version of SketchUp and get started right away. I highly recommend that you watch a few of their training videos first so that you can get accustomed to their approach to 3D. When you run their software, the splash screen gives you a link to their video training pages.

You can run SketchUp for free, or there’s a “paid” version for $495. I’m not expert enough at it yet to comment on whether or not the $495 is a good value, but I do know that from paying for several other 3D packages, $495 is about the average.

Much has been appearing in the press lately about the concept of virtual machines. I suspect this trend will continue into the foreseeable future, as the economics and practicality of virtual machines is realized by mainstream businesses.

But what is it? I’ll give the short answer in this blog.

A virtual computer is nothing more than a sophisticated piece of software that runs on a computer, and its main purpose is to simulate the actions of . . . another computer! Why run software to simulate a computer when the software itself already runs on a computer? It does seem a bit redundant to build a computer only to simulate a computer, but there are some big advantages to doing this:

Sorry about the short blog this time around. I attended an improv show that starred a lot of nice young talent, including my 15-year-old son. It’s quite amazing to see your kid out there, thinking on his own and coming up with original ideas on the spot. Everyone did a wonderful job, and they all had me laughing for an hour and a half. It was an excellent way to end the week.

It was a long week at the office, but I do enjoy working in the office. That sounds crazy, I know, but the reason I enjoy working in the office is because until about 18 months ago, I spent nearly 10 years on the road. Or, should I say, in the air. I’m so totally done with traveling. It’s a privilege to stay in the office and go home every night.

But those years of living on the road have taught me some practical things about life, including what to do if you should lose your passport. Fortunately, I’ve not had this happen to me, but several of my colleagues have either A) lost their passport, B) had their passport stolen, or C) been mugged. In all cases, losing your passport while in a foreign country can be a bit terrifying. The degree of terror depends on the country you’re in, but in any case, it’s unsettling.

WARNING: International scammers that operate beyond the reach of U.S. Law are using ordinary citizens to help them funnel illegal money to their accounts. You can easily be duped into taking part in this scheme if you are not careful.

So how does it work?

Here’s how, in story format:

Mr. Scammer, currently residing in the Czech Republic, wants to be rich, so he decides to rob a bank located in the United States. He chooses a bank, which we’ll call “U.S. Bank,” because it has some very wealthy customers and its security for online transactions doesn’t seem too strict. Starting with a list of bank customers, Mr. Scammer tries different nefarious means of guessing usernames and passwords. Because he’s casting such a wide net over a lot of customers, he increases the odds that he’ll get lucky. And indeed, after several weeks, he is finally rewarded with a welcome screen to a corporate bank account. Searching through the account, he finds that there is over a million dollars sitting there, just waiting to be taken. Mr. Scammer gets very excited. He sees himself sitting on the beach in Cabo San Lucas, mai tai in hand, pretty girls all around, and plenty of warm sunshine.

If you want to browse to websites without leaving a trail, there is a special mode called “Incognito” when using the Google Chrome browser. Any website you visit while in the incognito mode will not be recorded as part of your browsing history. The incognito mode also prevents your browser from storing any cookies or recording the fact that you downloaded a file. Essentially, the incognito mode leaves no trace whatsoever of any website you’ve visited while browsing.

To enable this mode while in Chrome, you can hit the Ctrl+Shift+N (Windows) or ⌘-Shift-N (Mac). Or, you can simply search for the wrench icon in the upper right side of an already open browser window, pull down the menu and select the “New incognito window” item.

This evening I’m trying out eyeglasses for the first time. I’ve never had to wear glasses before, but then, I’ve never turned 50 before either. I suppose everything wears out with age, and my eyes are no exception. The glasses are the “progressive lens” type, which means that the focal length changes gradually as I look through different parts of the lens. Basically, the lower the angle I cast my eyes, the shorter the focal length. Thus, the lower part of my vision looks distorted, and since I’ve developed astigmatism in my eyes over the years, the glasses, which now correct for it, gives me the illusion that the earth is on a slant.

Anyway, what does this have to do with my blog? Well, I’m going to stretch a bit and say that as things get older, they change, and so it is with IPv4. IPv4, the currently deployed protocol that carries Internet traffic, has just about hit its limit. Its replacement, IPv6, is on its way in, and it seems to be accelerating in popularity. For example, Google just enabled YouTube for IPv6, and instantly, they were flooded with IPv6 traffic. Apparently there are a lot of early IPv6 adopters out there just waiting for the popular sites to implement the new Internet standard so they can be among the first to use it.

I’ve written many times in the past about personal security when online, and I’ve assumed all along that banks are operating in your best interest. Now, from left field, comes a recent study from the Computer Laboratory at the University of Cambridge (UK) that is highly critical of recent online security developments in the banking industry. At the heart of the matter is something called “3-D Secure” or “3DS” You may see the brand names “Verified by Visa” or “MasterCard SecureCode” being used to reference the 3DS technology.

The 3DS technology was developed for the purpose of minimizing online fraudulent credit card transactions. As such, much of its implementation consists of a new set of agreements that allows merchants to take on less liability for fraudulent transactions. (Good for merchant.) However, it also allows banks to pass more of the liability for fraudulent transactions on to the customer. (Good for bank. Bad for customer.)

My weight-control method involves watching the calories I take in every day and counting them against the calories that I burn. The question is, how many calories does my body burn in an average day? You can find a good answer to that question at the calorie calculator on the Calories-Per-Hour website.

So given my age, height, gender and activity level, the calorie calculator says that I burn about 2,700 calories a day. To not gain weight, I need only make sure I don’t exceed that number in calories that I eat.

A few years back, I decided to mothball an old Gateway PC that I’d purchased back in 2002. I hadn’t scavenged it for parts, so it remained intact at the back of the coat closet under the stairs. Quite frankly, I forgot I had it until I went digging through the coat closet about two weeks ago. “Oh yeah,” I said when I stumbled across it. “I remember this thing. I wonder if it still works.” I thought it might be worth spending some time to see if it worked, and if so, it would make a nice desktop for my wife, who’s been using an old beat-up laptop for the past year or so.

So I plugged in the little beast, turned it on, and it came to life. It ran, albeit very slowly. My senile 50-year-old brain suddenly remembered that before I mothballed the PC, it was under heavy use for a year or two, and registry-induced constipation had slowed it to a crawl. I decided to reinstall XP on it and see if I could get it running at a decent clip again.

A friend of mine contacted me via email this morning and had an interesting problem to solve. Until about a year ago, he had a personal blog at Blogspot (now Blogger), where he posted a lot of content.  For the sake of argument, the blog’s URL address was www.xyz.blogger.com. At the time, he had the basic URL www.xyz.com reserved through another server, but he decided to use the blogger URL instead because of its ability to get him blogging without the hassle.

About a year ago, he took a hiatus and did not post any content. In fact, he pulled down all the content on his Blogger site, and the whole blogging experience was put on hold.

Now he wants to begin blogging again, but he prefers to NOT use the Blogger site, but would rather use the www.xyz.com site instead. The problem was, however, that every time he put the www.xyz.com address into his browser, he somehow ended up back at the old Blogger site, which by this time, had nothing but a blank page.

Though I don’t consider myself an expert on network security, I have learned a lot over the years, and I have come to appreciate the essential role that simple logic plays in security. For example, you wouldn’t lock a door and then hang the key on a string tied to the doorknob, would you? It doesn’t make sense; therefore, it is bad security policy.

I found a good example of how a failure in basic logic resulted in an online theft of nearly a million dollars. For more details, you can see the blog on Krebs Security. Basically, it all boiled down to a bank customer who had a password that was broken. Breaking passwords is a full-time occupation for lots of criminals, because it pays so well. In this particular case, a password to an online bank account was broken, and the cyber thief proceeded to get money from the account.