ndmckinney|net » internet

Firefox 4 (Beta 8) First Impressions

Nick — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 16:30:38 +0000

After a couple hours of playing with the latest Firefox on my Mac, I’ve come to a conclusion: Mozilla has Google on the brain. The browser is certainly quick, but I’m not sure I’m going back to it. Safari and Google have stolen my heart. The Good: Loads pages quickly; provides me a way to [...]

In Defense of $5,000/MB

Nick — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 10:05:18 +0000

“AT&T is dead.” Well, it’s not dead, but the Wall Street Journal claims that we should be making plans for the funeral. According to the WSJ, AT&T is holding onto an obsolete, monolithic business model that is neither supportive of their customer nor fostering of technological advances. The chief complaint: the extremely high cost of [...]

Microsoft Complies with European Comission for 2 Months

Nick — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 10:04:53 +0000

Longer than anyone thought, but still a poor showing nevertheless. [From Microsoft kills Windows 7E, puts IE back in upcoming OS - Network World]

FCC Inquires About Google Voice App Rejection

Nick — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 00:19:44 +0000

TechCrunch is reporting that the FCC has sent letters of inquiry to Apple, AT&T and Google regarding the rejection of Google Voice related apps from Apple’s app store. In the letters, the FCC is asking both Apple and AT&T about their levels of decision making in approving/rejecting apps. AT&T has maintained that it has no [...]

Copyright, Remix Culture and a “Modicum of Creativity”

Nick — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 18:54:17 +0000

As an idle lawyer, I’ve got plenty of time to continue my study of the law. An area in which I have great interest is intellectual property law, especially copyrights and trademarks. I recently read a Supreme Court dealing with the intersection of copyrights, facts and compilations of facts, Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone [...]

Pros and Cons of Asymmetric Cryptography

Nick — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 02:01:56 +0000

Quick disclaimer: I love cryptography. I don’t fully understand the math that goes into it, but I love it all the same. Something that has baffled me for quite some time is why we don’t see more cryptography in consumer computing. Passwords, simple authentication tokens, are ubiquitous, even on single-user Windows computers. Real encryption, on [...]

What Kills Old Technology?

Nick — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 05:07:11 +0000

When I was much, much younger, I was online. Every summer, I would spend a couple weeks with my grandparents. My uncle, a professor of computer science at a nearby college, secured for me a spare computer, a modem, and user account. A handshake later and I was connected to the network. A further authentication [...]

The Network Really is the Computer

Nick — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 12:01:36 +0000

Sun Microsystems, one of the stalwarts of the computing industry, has a simple motto: “the network is the computer.” Yesterday, Google took that motto to an entirely new level with the announcement of it’s Chrome OS. Details on Chrome are sparse (which has not stopped technology writers from writing ad nauseum about all the features [...]

Government Botnets

Nick — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 16:40:11 +0000

Earlier this morning, while listening to a story about the use of social media in Iran, a thought occurred to me: would governments have a need for their own botnets? To be clear, I’m not suggesting that governments have any such networks nor are actively creating them. I am not suggesting, either, some massive international [...]

FTC: Sears Violated Customer Privacy Through the Sin of Omission

Nick — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 16:32:07 +0000

The Federal Trade Commission today entered a consent order today finding that Sears Holdings Management Corporation (Sears and Kmart) by which Sears settled FTC charges of failing to disclose the scope of collection and usage of customer data and web activity. This, according to a statement by the FTC, constituted a deceptive practice. Affected customers [...]

Journalist or Blogger?

Nick — Mon, 11 May 2009 22:07:50 +0000

Newspapers are in trouble, so report the newspapers. So does network television, also facing new challenges from both cable television and the internet. This week, NPR’s On the Media posed the question on how to save newspapers. They played excerpts from a recent Senate commerce committee hearing on the future of journalism. After pointing fingers [...]

In the Clouds

Nick — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 21:13:43 +0000

Recently, my hosting company, Laughing Squid, established a new cloud hosting service dubbed “Ultra Squid“. Today, for essentially the same cost I’ve been paying, I now get over three times the storage, two and half times the bandwidth, more databases, and tons of email storage space. I’ve been using LS for years and found it [...]

The Fatal Shortcoming of Social Media

Nick — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 23:01:28 +0000

Twitter, for example, allows greater access to content that Facebook; my "tweets" are republished on this site without any hassle (as well as on my Facebook page, which recently has changed to look more like Twitter). ... Twitter seems to be better than most at opening up their systems to the outside world; they have a published, well-documented API that allows anyone to write applications to access their servers; the problem here is that you still must access their servers.

O Hai

Nick — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 07:59:55 +0000

I love that flickr is so friendly.

Google almost ready to acquire DoubleClick

Nick — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 15:25:30 +0000

According to a number of news sources, the FTC stated today that it will not oppose the proposed acquisition of DoubleClick by Google. The proposed deal, at US$ 3.1 billion deal would make Google the largest internet advertising company in the world. However, the European Commission has not yet ruled on whether or not Google’s [...]

Honest Journalism?

Nick — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 07:23:00 +0000

Either way, I'm curious whether or not major (and minor, for that matter) media publications should disclose when they make changes of any sort, no matter how innocent, after publication.

...My question is this: is it better to have a full disclosure policy (à la Boing Boing), a limited disclosure policy (the Reuters model), or to simply make changes and hope no one notices (the Slate way)?

Ecto 3 Alpha

Nick — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 14:03:22 +0000

I’ve just downloaded the alpha release of Adriaan Tijsseling’s ecto blogging software. It’s a revamped version of ecto2, although “ecto3 is not ecto2″. Among the new features, ecto3 includes a new rich-text editor, as well as support for a number of other blog APIs. That’s about all I have right now. I’m just posting to [...]

Transmit is the worst FTP product ever.

Nick — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 02:42:19 +0000

If you visit my site recently, you might notice the look has changed. This is because the FTP client, Transmit, has deleted all the content of my WordPress directory when I tried to update it today. My content stayed intact (it’s in a database elsewhere), but all my themes, plugins, and add-ons have been destroyed. [...]

What’s the Point of Blog Spam?

Nick — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 05:58:38 +0000

I’ve more or less declared victory in the war on blog spam. Using some nifty filters, I’ve been able to catch automated posts on my site and prevent them from being posted. Like email spam, I’m having a hard time figuring out what the point of it all is. I have two theories why people [...]

Why Does This Work?

Nick — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 04:22:03 +0000

The BBC is reporting that internet scams from Nigeria are costing the UK billions of pounds. How in the world is it possible that this still works? I’ve never even seen one of scam letters before. How exactly does all this work? “Dear Sir: I don’t know you, and you don’t know me. But if [...]