Michael Gracie

The US government, as well as 19 state governments and a slew of foriegn ones, has spent tens (maybe hundreds) of millions of dollars slamming the Microsoft monopoly. They got a few weak orders, and Microsoft still stands, relatively the same as it was.

It took ragtag teams of software engineers to create Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP, OpenOffice, FreeBSD, Perl, Python, Eclipse, and on and on and on. As Jeff Matthews so aptly points out, some of the most creative applications around likely aren’t using Microsoft products at all. They are likely using the “stuff” mentioned above.

A politician once took credit for the internet. I wonder how long until one tries taking credit for open source.

Markets work.

The NSA has been snagged serving cookies to it’s website visitors’ computers, despite federal rules against the practice. The cookies expire when? 2035. Hmm. Who else does such things?

They had an excuse - an overlooked software upgrade. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Bush Administration now pins the whole spying fiasco on the NSA, citing a rogue macro in Word that screws up court orders.

As if worrying about Bill Gate’s “end of spam” prediction wasn’t enough to throw me into depression, I now see there is a telco starting up a news service for security professionals. Spamroll is no great shakes to begin with, but the competition is just too much!

Tops on the list of news will be headlines such as “AT&T Does Something? About Spam” and “AT&T Did This? in the Spyware Wars” and “AT&T Lobbies Someone? About Computer Security.”

Nail in the coffin.

You have to love wrapping up the year, for better or for worse.

Topping the spam list for 2005, in the world according to AOL, Donald Trump wants you on The Apprentice, and your significant other (female) thinks you need some help.

On a more depressing note, 2005 is shaping up to be the worst year yet for computer security breaches, and if you add all the unencrypted tapes that were stolen off the backs of delivery trucks, it is definitely the worst.

But there are good signs brewing for ‘06. Computer security experts made a list of top tech needs for the coming year. If only those types of jobs weren’t so thankless.

The Conference Board has just release the latest Consumer Confidence Index (CCI), and the numbers have rebounded nicely for December. Who the hell is the Conference Board polling?

Retailers are desperately seeking AFTER-Christmas sales to shore up their year, domestic auto makers spent the summer giving away cars at the expense of any year end bump, and we just saw housing sales decline (month-on-month) the most in a decade. Meanwhile, my personal, unofficial poll, yielded the following…
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Windows Live Messenger is in an invitation only beta-test - a cute little scenario stolen from the early Gmail days (except that Microsoft can only invite their own users). A few of those invites were subsequently posted on eBay (think Gmail invites again), and I suspect by someone with a vested interest in hyping the whole thing. That hype may now backfire.
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I was wondering when someone would provide a generic solution for the spyware. You are forced to install several anti-spyware packages because the firms that make them classify their targets based on which way the wind blows. I thought if someone put together a free package which was distributed anonymously over the net, the spyware companies would have nobody to get mad at. My wishes have not be granted, at least not with respect to spyware.
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National Public Radio noted that there were a lot of data theft incidents in 2005, but the government didn’t do much about it. They may wonder why - I don’t.

If you were a politician, and you had the following two choices, which would you pick?

1) Stay up late, read about the consequences of data theft and how the cost is passed on to your constituents, then take all your cohorts to lunch, one by one, and try to convince them the bill you just drafted makes sense because it serves the people;

or

2) Listen to a paid consultant for some big data mining company talk about how difficult it is to stop data theft, while you sip champagne, in a Gulfsteam 5, on the way to a $500 round of golf.

Tough choice.

Hackers broke into the website of the southwest Florida Better Business Bureau, and defaced it with politico-economic messages. Of course, if the BBB is still being as careless as they have in the past, none of this surprises me.

If someone has a copy of the “logo” and email address that was left behind, I’d love to see it.

While this comment by “Bailey Savings and Loan” (over at the Daily Kos) might seem a bit outlandish, the repercussions described are not.

I’ve heard at least one very intelligent person discuss the possibility of a depression fueled by overzealous indebtedness, something the US and its citizens assuredly have.

How about adding a few points to it…
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