Flow of Logic

Online Privacy does not exist

Sun, 03 May 09 00:08:14 -0700

Everyone that thinks that online privacy exists, raise your hand.

Regardless of whether or not you raised your hand, you are partially right and partially wrong.

Online privacy does exist in the sense that websites can promise that they will not share your information with the general public. But think about this. They are promising that they will not share your information, but just because they won’t share it doesn’t mean they don’t have it. In fact, there is a book that talks about how much Google knows about you.

On many forums, they have what they call Private Messages. This is a misnomer. Your Private Messages are about as private as a conversation to your friend in a coffee shop. Those within earshot can hear everything you are talking about in the coffee shop. Likewise, the administrator (probably) can, and so does anyone with access to the database.

What happens with most forums is that they store everything, including posts, threads, and private messages in plain text. This means that anyone that opens the database can read your so-called private message in whole. The people running the forum might be honest people and decide not to read your message. But what happens when the site gets hacked? What happens if the people running the site are not honest?

Think about your email. If you are using GMail or Yahoo! or (god forbid) Hotmail, your email is in a database so huge nobody will bother reading it. But what if it is on a corporate mail server? Corporate mail servers should get few enough emails daily to make looking through them a feasible task.

No matter how private you think something online is, it is not. It is stored somewhere, and the chances of it being stored in plain text are very high. You might want to watch what you say, eh?

It's official: The Pirate Bay has lost

Fri, 17 Apr 09 11:16:10 -0700

As some of you may or may not know, popular torrent site The Pirate Bay went on trial in February. After a week-long trial in which it seemed like the prosecution had made complete fools of themselves, the trial ended.

The official verdict has come out: TPB has lost the trial, and all "members" of the non-existent "team" have each been sentenced to one year in jail and and a fine of $905,000 in damages. The four defendants are, of course, appealing.

The irony of the decision? Much like the movies and music that get leaked on TPB and similar sites, the decision was leaked before the actual release.

Sources:

TPB's response to this can be seen on their front page:

Don't worry - we're from the internets. It's going to be alright. :-)

Predictions for 2009

Fri, 02 Jan 09 12:40:46 -0800

Here are a few of my predictions for this year:

Yahoo! will take a nosedive, then straggle along, not recovering, but not completely dying off either.
OJ Simpson will (finally) be put behind bars, some people will celebrate, most people will forget about it the day after.
There will be in outrage about the revelation about text message costs (actually NYTimes is a bit slow on the uptake, some dude figured this out months ago) but people will continue to text like their lives depend on it
Windows 7 will be praised for being better than Vista, but bashed for still being Windows, and therefore apparently equating with crap.
In the event that it is confirmed that Steve Jobs does in fact have health issues, A lot of Mac fans will jump ship - but will have nowhere to go, as they don't want to go with Windows, and can't figure out Linux.
Speaking of Linux, it will still not be the year of Linux because Linux is still too complicated for your average Windows and Mac users.
Internet Explorer 6 will, unfortunately, still not die out, making hundreds of thousands of web designers want to tear their hair out.
Silent Rickrolling will not be the meme of 2009.

So, what are your predictions for 2009?

The internet, companies, and other ramblings

Thu, 01 Jan 09 22:32:54 -0800

So, another year come and gone. This post is basically ramblings, this might take a bit, and might go all over the place. Try to follow.

First of all, what is this Web 2.0 bullshit? Back in the late 1990's, there was this huge dot-com thing, and all the companies were trying to climb on the bandwagon in time, when suddenly, they all realized that it was completely empty and nonexistent, and it collapsed. Fast forward a bit less than 10 years, and we have this thing called Web 2.0, and all the companies are trying to climb on the bandwagon in time, and sooner or later (or has it already happened?), they will all realize that it's completely empty and nonexistent, and it will collapse. Kaboom. I mean, seriously, what is Web 2.0? In the end? A shiny gradient logo.

Next up is Microsoft. For those of you that don't keep up, all 30GB Zunes failed universally yesterday. If that's not enough, in a few hours, a DIY fix was released. And then, some dude manages to isolate the cause of the problem. All of this happens before Microsoft can respond, and when they do, the solution is... that it will fix itself. Great, 3 blows to Microsoft in one day and they issue a bullshit fix. Oh, remember how it was leaked on Monday? ~~I also remember reading something about Microsoft downsizing, if/when I find the article, I'll put it here.~~ EDIT: There are also rumors going around about Microsoft laying off 10-17% of employees.

~~And... I forgot the rest of it. Oh well.~~

EDIT: Oh, here we go, now I remember. There was that whole thing about Steve Jobs' health and that he won't be presenting at MacWorld. I think Apple's stock dropped about $100 when people found out. I mean, for most people, Steve Jobs == Apple. Remember that decade when Jobs wasn't part of Apple? No? I'm not surprised, Apple didn't really do much. Okay, I'm done now.