[edit 2010-05-10]
I posted this on my facebook account and received a well-deserved lambasting for up-voting the article.  I hadn’t thought hard enough on the problem of domain trusting with such a distributed, flexible, and multi-point service such as email.  Mat Whitney gave me a lesson on the difficulties of domain reputations when the domain is something like gmail.com or live.com — they’re publicly available and that’s where the majority of spam comes from, so how can you trust any sender from that domain without specifically white-listing the address?  That means there are only baby-steps in security available through a huge effort on the part of IT administrators with the technologies described in The Register’s article.  I take back my promotion of this article until I am able to speak more intelligently on the matter.   Whoops!
[end edit]

——————————————

www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/09/email_and_trust/

An article on The Register writes about finally adopting existing technology (software, not hardware) to allow people to trust their inboxes again.  With all the worms, identity theft attempts, scams, and general nogoodnickism that happens via email today, users are hesitant to open emails even from addresses they recognize.  It’s like getting a package delivered by USPS and wondering if you’ll find a pipe bomb or anthrax in each one.  Well, in the digital word, electronic messages can be signed in such a way that trust can be (largely) restored and, as with the Web, “feature rich” email is the way of the future.

The article describes that, as everyone should realize, social hubs like Facebook and [the defunct] Google Wave will grow in popularity and virtual size and will begin to experience the same problems that email users have to deal with daily.  Identity theft, worms (www.google.com/search?q=koobface), and hijacked accounts occur in Facebook already and there will be no long-term decrease in these activities because they are making money with them.

My words of advice: read the article; expect trust-restoring technologies in the near future that may look a little different from the email you’re familiar with, but will be fundementally the same; be wary of what you put on social media sites (Facebook, Google profiles, MySpace, etc.); be wary of who you friend and who you show your information to.  I absolutely DO NOT advise to stop using social media websites because they carry value (that’s for a different article), but realize that it’s just a picture and text — the person you think is behind that profile may not be who you expect.

As always, your thoughts/opinions/comments/defamations/flattery/proposals are welcome.  I have to refuse some of those on principle but send them anyway.

Go here: mrdoob.com/lab/javascript/harmony/. Play with Harmony. You’ll get it. It. Is. Dope! HTML5 is the media-rich future of the World Wide Web and this sort of thing is going to become more prevalent very quickly. I’m excited!

The server I was hosted on before started going belly-up, so I moved over to www.bluehost.com (as recommended by E$). So far I’m pleased with the experience: it wasn’t seamless by any means, but there’s a good support team and other than a couple Gallery2 plugins that don’t work right, I’m back in action.

I recently had a moment of clarity with regards to my historical stance on downloading software that I have not paid for. It wasn’t the sort of clarity that helps me to pass on my point of view to others, but the sort that is more or less self-defining.

A new jailbroken iPhone application has been released into the wild that allows users to install cracked versions of pay apps as if they paid for it. It’s no different than using a cracked version of Photoshop or Premier or any other pirated software, but it’s new because it’s on th iPhone! The new app is called Installous (available at www.hackulo.us) and it is a great idea.

I saw my friend using a very expensive application ($70) that he hadn’t paid for and I though, “I want to do that too!” I downloaded the app and installed a couple games that are normally pay-only. I was messing around a little more today and it dawned on me again, after many years … I don’t want to pirate software.

This was particularly poignant because I was recently speaking with someone about the importance of revisiting semi-religious decisions like this with some regularity. I don’t know that I can take a stand against the moral implications of piracy, because I’m honestly not against the concept of learning how to use an application from the cracked (i.e. pirated) versions. But I can say that I have followed-through with my conscience regarding my desires to “have” and to “be able to resist”. I have learned to do without these toys this long, and I can do without them longer if I don’t want to pay for them.

What are your thoughts on piracy? Do you feel you’re just saving money? Do you care?

(Written from my iPhone)

Hey everyone, I just wanted to let you know that MANDIANT Highlighter v1.1.1 is released and ready to rock and roll!

MANDIANT is proud to announce a new version of Highlighter (version 1.1.1).

Ok, so Highlighter is that log file analysis tool that Jason Luttgens and I created and Nick Harbour contributed a huge amount to in version 1.1 (thanks Nick!).

I am not promoting either Happy Feet or Missy Elliot (because I’ve never seen Happy Feet, though I like Missy).

Jason Luttgens and I were interviewed by Bret Padres and Ovie Carroll over at the CyberSpeak podcast regarding our log analysis tool, Highlighter. Take some time to listen if you’re interested — the interview begins at 18m 10s, though I recommend listening to the whole podcast because those guys are fun and their content relevant.

A nice chart to help you associate to the metric system

xkcd.com/526/ or click image for full size.

Converting to Metric

I don’t really keep up with all the podcasts that I like, so this post is a little dated.