Bruce Schneier has often spoken out against “security theater” (if you don’t know that term, it’s worth reading his new article). In Schneier on Security: In Praise of Security Theater, Schneier actually talks about the real pros and cons of security theater and instances in which it even makes sense. I don’t read tons of security-related material, but this is the best accessible, high-level description I’ve seen for “how to think intelligently about security”. This kind of thing should be a must-read for our members of Congress.
Politics, Technology
macfuse brings the goodness of the FUSE project to the Mac, and the project just keeps getting better. I’m just about to install the newest version, which apparently features a small GUI to help you mount volumes. Additionally, the project has released a new SpotlightFS that is like the Finder’s SmartFolders, but these work from the command line! Way cool.
Technology
Yes, the iPhone is cool. Way cool, even. Apple TV looks like a nice product as well. But, this is “Mac” World Expo, right?
I’m a Mac user and I was more interested in the things that weren’t announced today: a new 12″ MacBook Pro, iLife ‘07 and iWork ‘07. We all know they’re coming… My guess is that iLife and iWork have been put on hold to coincide with the release of Leopard, and will possibly require Leopard. Oh well, I’ll just have to wait on the software updates.
The interesting thing about today’s keynote is that you can’t have either of the products that Jobs was talking about right now. They’re taking orders for Apple TV, which ships in February… that’s not too far off. But the iPhone isn’t coming until June. This is not the kind of announcements that Jobs has been known for.
Interestingly, though, I think there’s a good reason to have announced the iPhone now. It’s been rumored for months now, and it would likely have been impossible to keep details from leaking between now and the release date. The iPhone would have made far less of a splash if the details we saw today were known in advance.
I’ll just have to keep an eye on the next Steve Jobs presentation, which will likely be the one that I’m waiting for.
Technology
Parallels Desktop for Mac lets you run Windows (and other OSes) on your Intel Mac. I’ve had it for a few days, but one of my coworkers showed me the “Parallels Tools” today. Wow. Make sure you install the tools when you use Parallels with Windows. It’s so cool. The mouse seamlessly moves between Mac OS and Windows as the cursor goes over the Windows window. And, full screen mode looks right now (before I had black bars on both sides of my MacBook Pro’s widescreen display). I haven’t tried to VMware beta on the Mac, but I can say that Parallels at least is most excellent.
Technology
GetBundle for TextMate makes it super easy to install one of the 3.4 billion TextMate bundles that are available.
Linkage, Technology
The release notes for Arbor Peakflow SP mention “Zombie army detection”. I’m sure that was written with a straight face. Still, not many companies can list that as a feature of their product. Imagine a car: the new Chevy Impaler with Zombie Army Detection and BrainChaff (courtesy of Brains4Zombies) protects you and your family from the zombie armies that are just waiting to attack.
The botnet and zombie army detection features of Peakflow SP are actually quite useful, but it is still a fun thing to see in print.
Technology
Like many Mac+Unix users, I’m a big fan of TextMate. Congrats to Allan on winning an Apple Design Award! It’s well-deserved. TextMate takes good advantage of the Mac’s graceful UI and Unix innards. Thanks to Jeff Shell for the pointer.
Technology
TechCrunch has the story today: GoodStorm to offer e-commerce widget with 50% revenue split for bloggers, talking about a new service called MeCommerce. There’s a whole bunch going on in this one that makes me take notice. 1) MeCommerce was put together by FrozenBear and runs TurboGears under the hood. 2) 50% of retail markup (not revenue, as TechCrunch states) is a sweet deal. 3) People can buy things without leaving your site… not necessary, but cool. 4) GoodStorm looks like a better deal than CafePress when it comes to shirts.
Technology, TurboGears
Like probably everyone else in the world, I’ve worked in a company that was hampered by inefficient spreadsheet mailing. I’m sure that many geeks other than myself have tried to come up with solutions to this problem. The Google Spreadsheet announcement is not a big surprise, and I think it makes a lot of sense. It’s hard to get people to change, and people are used to making spreadsheets, even when they’re not the “right” tool for the job.
The one thing that I think many will question is how sensitive of data they’re willing to put up on Google. Of course, thousands trust Salesforce.com with their pre-sales data, which is quite sensitive information. It’ll be an interesting psychology experiment to see how Google Spreadsheet gets used.
Technology
