Articles related to computer security, physical security, and similar things.
Remember that mosquito-frying laser idea I mentioned last year? It turns out I’m not the only one who had it — and it’s getting closer to reality. 😀 Anyone who wants to get me one for Christmas is welcome to. 😉
I can’t understand groups like this so-called “One Million Moms” organization. What is it about lesbians that they fear so much? Why do they let themselves fear so much? That’s a rhetorical question. I know exactly what they fear, and how it gets associated with anyone who’s different: fear-mongering politicians and religious “leaders” whose power …
Continue reading ‘“Ellen Wins: One Million Moms Group Concedes JCPenney Fight”’ »
Oops, another perfectly good disaster scenario down the drain. Unless something like the metavirus from the novel Snow Crash appears, capable of infecting both humans and computers, I think we’re fairly safe on that front. At this rate, right-leaning politicians and other fear-mongers must be seeing a new disaster on the horizon: running out of …
Continue reading ‘“The cyber-weapons paradox: ‘They’re not that dangerous’”’ »
We’re gearing up to release our first program for the general public in quite some time, so we’re going to need a real website again, rather than the one-page placeholder that I put up several years ago. The last time I had to design a website was before the turn of the century. I started …
Continue reading ‘Git makes website maintenance easy too!’ »
It’s so hard to find a good, credible, looming disaster to panic about, and then those pesky scientists keep destroying the few that we manage to find. Runaway global warming keeps getting kicked in the teeth by inconvenient facts. Nuclear power disasters persistently refuse to be anywhere near as disastrous as people hope. Scientific advancement …
Continue reading ‘“RIP: Peak Oil – we won’t be running out any time soon”’ »
I did this (thanks for the early heads-up, Ploni), though I had a few problems getting to the history page. Once I managed it, I was appalled to see how much stuff they’d managed to associate with me… nothing damning, just massive amounts of it. If someone wanted to cause me problems, or wanted to …
Continue reading ‘“How to remove your Google Web History”’ »
Ever since I read Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age, I’ve been wondering what would happen when anyone could download a set of plans and print their own, for example, Star Wars toys. And more to the point, what would happen when those plans could be pirated. Anything digital can easily be copied; the Internet is …
Continue reading ‘“The Pirate Bay torrents printable 3D objects”’ »
I’ve always stressed that passwords should never be shared with anyone, to everyone I discuss them with — the only passwords that my wife and I both know are the ones to the iTunes and e-book accounts that we both share. Unfortunately there’s a problem when it comes to minors: parents only have a limited …
Continue reading ‘“Password Sharing Among American Teenagers”’ »
Good God… someone actually advocating an intelligent solution to movie piracy, in a mainstream business magazine?! Unbelievable! Listen up, Hollywood. As an independent software developer, I’ve been dealing with Internet piracy for longer than you — without a single lawyer, let alone an army of them, and often on a shoestring budget. The facts in …
Continue reading ‘“You Will Never Kill Piracy, and Piracy Will Never Kill You”’ »
I have decidedly mixed feelings about this. Like any tool, it could be either good or evil depending on who wields it, but the amount of power it provides greatly amplifies both possible outcomes — and in another five or ten years, it will probably be available to anyone who’s willing to spend the money. …
Continue reading ‘“Incoming! Self-guiding bullet could strike from a mile away”’ »