voluntaryXchange

Apple Is 10 Years Behind Microsoft

One of the world’s experts on malware says Apple needs to step up its game:

… Eugene (Yevgeny) Kaspersky, co-founder and CEO of the security firm, has now gone further in statement made at the Infosecurity Europe 2012 conference.

“I think [Apple] are ten years behind Microsoft in terms of security,” Kaspersky told CBR. “For many years I’ve been saying that from a security point of view there is no big difference between Mac and Windows. It’s always been possible to develop Mac malware …

… He then reiterated what his employees and many security researchers have been saying for years: Apple needs to step up its game.

“Apple is now entering the same world as Microsoft has been in for more than 10 years: updates, security patches and so on,” Kaspersky said. “We now expect to see more and more because cyber criminals learn from success … They will understand very soon that they have the same problems Microsoft had ten or 12 years ago. They will have to make changes in terms of the cycle of updates and so on and will be forced to invest more into their security audits for the software. That’s what Microsoft did in the past … They had to do a lot of work to check the code to find mistakes and vulnerabilities. Now it’s time for Apple …

One nice thing about being in a business school is that the number of worshippers at the Jobs’ shrine isn’t that big.

Technorati Tags: apple,malware,behind,microsoft

Product Recommendation for Cleaning Keyboards

My colleague Tyler Stillman remarked that there’s 100 calories of food stuck in his keyboard.

But my keyboard is much cleaner thanks to this product:

This is like the kids’ toy “slime”, only thicker. You push it into your keyboard and it works its way under and around the keys. The more you push the further in it goes. You pull it out gently, and the dust, crumbs and gunk come out with it.

It worked pretty well on a cloth wrist rest and a mouse rug too.

Technorati Tags: cyber,clean,keyboard

The Facebook Net

As of December 2010:

What I wonder is, given the recent research on using lights visible from space to estimate GDP, how would something like this work when the government of China is clearly self-selecting out.

Via I Love Charts.

Technorati Tags: facebook,network,space,connections,light

Tweeters Flamed

Sometimes I forget about posts I’ve drafted. I wrote this a couple of years ago. The quote is still good, but check out the footnote. Can I call ‘em or what?

Megan McArdle:*

Oscar Wilde who once referred to fox hunting as "the unspeakable pursuing the inedible".  Julian Sanchez savagely dissects the 21st century version:  the unbearable tweeting the unremarkable.

Of course, I suspect this is what the vXspouse thinks of this blog.

* Not sure if she’s adopting her new husband’s last name. I’m guessing she won’t.

Technorati Tags: wilde,tweet

5 Seconds of Cool

No biggie: just click through to Nick Kwiatek’s homepage and then move your mouse around this guys site. Fun!

Via Kottke.

Technorati Tags: ascii,flowing,text,background

OMG, You Gotta’ Try This

It’s a bit buggy, but go to this State Farm link, and enter a name and an address (the name doesn’t have to be yours, and the address merely has to be that of someone’s house … but you’ll laugh harder if it’s your name and address).

Then wait for it. It took about 2 minutes to load. And it was a little buggy: there were two scripts Firefox had me stop, but after that it still worked.

Via bookofjoe.

Technorati Tags: state,farm,chaos,in,your,town

Technology Is About Allowing You to Control More Capital

In growth modeling, we call this labor-augmenting technology: it allows a person to use more capital simultaneously, it is not about making it possible for a piece of capital to use more people.

The scary things about this photo is that 1) I turned 16 in 1980, 2) I never dressed like that (instead, think Spicoli), and 3) most of the technology shown didn’t exist at the consumer level until the mid 1980’s.

I’m no expert, but in the early 1980’s I was a teenager, with some money, and a lot of interest in early adoption of technology. I may not have had everything first, but if I didn’t, I knew someone who did. That, of course, does not count middle-aged men with a lot of free cash flow to spend on stuff. If they got high end stuff earlier, I didn’t see it much, and if I did, they didn’t let a dirtbag like me touch it.

So, this description is for a price point in 1980 of $100-300 … something like $300-900 in current dollars. Not for someone who might have dropped a thousand dollars at some high end store.

Starting at the top left and going clockwise:

• Camcorders existed in 1980, but the first time I ever saw a regular person with one was outside the Louvre in 1984, and it was a lot bigger than that.
• The phone: absolutely, positively, did not exist in 1980. AT&T was fighting tooth and nail to keep alternative phone designs illegal. You could buy novelty phones at the mall (which didn’t look as sleek as that one) but it was actually a violation of your phone contract to use one. People did anyway. A small, utilitarian, office-type phone like shown here: I didn’t see one of those until I went to London in 1983.
• The headphones. No way. In 1980 they would have been the really big ones that cover your whole ear … and which hurt after a while because they were airtight and you couldn’t relieve any pressure changes.
• Boomboxes were around in 1980.
• That little Sony TV wasn’t around until well after the tape-playing Walkman came out for Christmas 1980.
• I’m not sure about that typewriter. They may have been around in 1980, but I don’t remember that little LED display until much later.
• Videocassettes were around (I even watched a videotape in the school library in 1975). But my dad was an early adopter of VCR’s and we didn’t get one until early 1982. We were the only ones to have one of those for quite a long time (although there was a video store so someone else must have had them).
• That calculator might have existed, but probably with a red or green LED screen rather than the black and white one shown. I got one of those around 1985-6.
• That VCR looks like VHS. In 1982 you could only get Beta. That does look like a single Beta tape in the background.
• That’s a CD! So not 1980. They existed then, somewhere. The first time I saw one was in the summer of 1985 — a friend who’s parents had both died when he was a teenager and who inherited their money had splurged on one. I got one in the summer of 1986, and I was the only one who had one for months and or years.
• That little stereo system in the background? I didn’t see one of those until 1992. There needed to be a lot of improvement in getting amplifiers to generate less heat to make that possible. In 1980 a stereo was a bunch of components that were about 20 by 10 by 4 inches … and you really weren’t supposed to stack them because they got too hot.
• BTW: the displays on the audio and video equipment in 1980 would have been analog variations on the VU Meter. You might have found a few LED displays by 1982.
• Audio cassette tapes were definitely around in 1980. I got my first in 1978, and I can remember them at least a year before that.
• Those speakers? No way would someone have those in 1980. If your speakers weren’t 5-10 times the volume of those, you were a nerd.
• The Walkman? I saw my first one in the early spring of 1981 (again, a rich kid had one). I bought my first one in Fall 1981 for my freshman year of college. It was not a Sony, it was some French knock-off that I ordered from a classified ad in the back of an electronics magazine. It was the only one around at my university, and was a great conversation starter with girls. Oh … and that Walkman they’re showing? They didn’t get that small until 1983.
• The micro-cassette (dictation) recorder might very well have been around in 1980.
• I’m not even sure what that thing is in the guys left breast-pocket.

Labor-augmenting technology put all of that capability in your pocket.

Technorati Tags: technology,1980,2010,labor-augmenting

Tacocopter

I am not making this up. There is a Silicon Valley start-up with a plan to deliver tacos by unmanned drone as soon as the Feds permit it.

Technorati Tags: tacocopter,drone,delivery

A Joke for Coders

Test your code before it matters. This goes for your spreadsheets too … if you didn’t’ think they count as “code”.

Technorati Tags: excel,test,code,production

Google Tip: Image Search

Wow … this is such a cool tool … but it’s in need of a real use.

Here’s a (frivolous) example of what you can do with Google Image Search.

Suppose you see a picture you want on the internet, but it’s too small. Drag and drop that image onto Google Image Search and it will find better versions.

So, consider those thumbnails that pop up on the side of popular sites. Like this (100 x 75) one:

First, right click it, and save the image to your hard drive. Then open Google Images. What you see is what looks like a normal search bar, but when you drag the image over it, it will prompt you to drop the image.

Then Google goes and searches for similar images on the internet. In the case of this stock photo used to advertise work-at-home schemes, Google returns several hundred images, including this (550 x 368) one with about 30 times as much detail:

But, it’s not foolproof. A lot of it seems to be based on matching colors in various parts of the image. So this (110 x 80)  thumbnail downloaded from the same ad-filled sidebar:

yields no matches, but a number of suggested images that don’t match, like this:

The thing about this tool is … what on earth is its legitimate use? I’ve known about it for a few months, and I haven’t come up with one yet. I mean, you could do something like input a thumbnail of Renoir’s Dance at Bougival to try and find a wallpaper sized version (yes, this works).

N.B. Yes, I used the image of the pretty girl to get your attention. But, no, I’ve used this tool a few dozen times and it has never returned a photo that was pornographic. I have also submitted some photos that some would regard as pornographic, and it doesn’t return pornography to those either.

Technorati Tags: google,image,search,renoir