Robert Warmack’s Blog

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/04/disney-scores-sweetheart-hulu-deal/

Hulu scores a deal with Disney!  More of my precious shows centralized in Hulu - nothing could make me happier.  I know it’s sad, but I love spending my spare time on Hulu.  I know there is a war out there for who will dominate this new entertainment delivery method, but I think Hulu signing on more big names will help to tip the market towards my favorite purveyor!

Hulu or Vevo or any other provider, I love to watch my favorite shows on my own time.

A technology is only as good as the ones that support it!  Twitter was hacked again! (http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/05/twitter-breached-again/)  Was it really Twitter that was hacked?  Certainly, Twitter felt the reprecussions of the hack, but through no flaw of their own.  Twitter is recieving the bad press for the hack of a Yahoo! e-mail account.

Security has only recently come into the public-eye as an important issure, so there are widely divergent security practices among applications in the public sector.  As companies spend massive quantities of money securing their businesses and their applications, more people are beginning to realise that they are only as secure as weakest technology/application that they employ.

What’s more - companies can only be as secure as their customers allow them to be.  Simple passwords, passwords related to personal information, default passwords are all great conveiniences until they are quickly guessed or cracked by an information theif.  Sadly, people don’t want companies to dictate zealous password requirements to them for their own good.  Will society ever let companies help consumers to help themselves?

The USA is set to revise its cyber security policy!  Most experts would say that their new plans are a day late and a dollar short.  With China already testing our (lack of) security in some of our most sensitive areas, (Top secret research stole from our ministry of defense!) our governement should have started protecting itself upon the installation of their computer services; however, our governement doesn’t even seem to know who is suppposed to be in charge of security!  Recently, the governemnt has commissioned a new agency to supplement the work done by the NSA, CIA, and the rest of the alphabet soup that is our government.

Is this new movement to improve our “child-like” and “broken” truly enough?  Can we simply stitch up this leaking boat or are we going to have to radically rethink our systems?  Is the behemoth of big government compatible with the cutting-edge of technology?  Certainly, the answers to these questions will come out in the next few years.  If we can’t come up with positive answers to these fears the USA might have more to fear than this depression.  Wired has worked on chronicling this transformation - let’s hope the deplorable policies soon come to an end. (http://www.wired.com/sterling/2009/05/usa-to-radicall.html)

I came across this article and thought that it had some relevance to what we have been covering in class.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/183666

This man tried to blog for a living.  He convinced himself that there would be some sort of pay off if he invested heavily enough into his blog.  In fact, many companies seem to have expected some hefty payouts from some unknown source!  It seems that “ABC News Web site predicted that by 2010 the blogosphere would create ‘a whole new group of major corporations and media stars’ and that ‘billions of dollars will be made by those prescient enough to either get onboard or invest in these companies,’” and this became a rather common sentiment in the “blogosphere”; however, reality seems to be setting in for many of these individuals and comapnies.

Though blogs are able to propel popular authors to virtual stardom, there isn’t much in terms of old-fashioned monetary payout to be had from the standard blog.  Certainly good-will and marketing efforts are important and in the realm of blogging, but companies looking for a hard payout are finding themselves sorely disappointed.

Blog #2

http://www.portfolio.com/views/columns/dual-perspectives/2009/02/02/All-Together-Now

I found this article very interesting because it discussed the future of cars and more specifically how they will be designed and manufactured by the various auto-mobile makers in the future.  Although from the title I initially expected an article about what types of features and gadgets could be expected from cars in the future, what I actually found was an interesting article detailing how car manufacturers are going to survive in the difficult economy that we find ourselves in.  The answer, in short, working together and decreasing uniqueness of the underlying parts that make up each car.

At first this struck me as an odd concept because at the moment I think of various car brands and types as being fairly unique and the idea that they would all be homogenized products did not appeal to me.  However, as I read through the article more thoroughly I began to like the idea.  Essentially all of the underlying components such as the chasis, nuts and bolts, suspension, etc would be standardized creating just a few templates such as a “truck” template and a “sports car” template etc.  Then customization would occur after this with unique tires, plastic body work, fairing, interior design etc.  When looking at it from this perspective I suddenly realized how much money this could save the consumer!  No longer would I have to order that special part only made for this one brand of car in this one year that is in incredibly short supply and only made in Germany but stored in Japan that it would take 3 weeks to ship and a full months paycheck to pay for!

All in all it may sound like they are being lazy and skimping on quality, but by making some standards they can ensure parts and labor will become somewhat standardized which should increase competition among car manufacturers and decrease costs for the final consumers.

http://blog.wired.com/business/2009/02/how-the-governm.html

It is of no surprise that the Digital Television transition was as much of a debacle as it was.  This article does an excellent job of breaking down some of the major problems involved with this transition and explaining why it went so poorly.  Generally speaking if there was not already a plethora of available evidence to support the notion that the governments painfully slow and inept methods were inadequate for managing or implementing any technological innovations or improvements, then this would be another prime example.

One of the most interesting things about the article is how it quantifies and monetizes the government attempts at advertising and rolling out the transition details.  It helps put the governments wildly inaccurate perception of the value of a dollar into perspective when looking at the billions of dollars of opportunity cost spent on informing the public about the transition which MOST people were already compliant with and those who were not did not have enough knowledge about the technology involved to even understand what the transition was.

I know personally my grandmother asked me to explain this digital tv transition on multiple occasions; asking what it meant, how it would effect her, what she needed to do about it, etc.  Even with the hundreds of millions of dollars spent by the government on advertising they were still unable to explain even WHAT it was that was going to happen in sufficient enough detail for my grandmother to understand.  I am oh so glad we are talking about putting the government in charge of health care.

Nothing is safe and nothing is sacred. If you use the web, there are companies out there that have you profiled and have your information recorded. Most desktops come with some sort of protection on them - protection that is often rendered useless by uninterested and uninformed users. It’s bad enough if you use wired communications, but if you attempt anything wireless you have effectively signed away your right to privacy.

WPA (the standard for most wireless internet traffic) has been rendered almost useless by the cracking tools which now exist. The standard WPA can easily be cracked in less then ten minutes by a knowledgeable person with the correct tools. Distributions such as BackTrack have helped the number of script kiddies proliferate beyond what most people would imagine. So if our standard form wifi connections aren’t safe, what about our light-weight mobile apps? I have met several security experts who have sworn off all but rudimentary mobile web access due to a lack of security for the platforms. Your information is not secure!

I know colleges are supposed to foster the dissemination of information, but I would have thought after two embarrassing security incidents that UT wouldn’t be so cavalier with the information they are entrusted with. Student’s information should not be set to “public” as the default. People shouldn’t have to specifically ask to be protected when entrusting an institution with their information because most people aren’t informed well enough to know that this could become a problem. The policy-makers, on the other hand, should know of the dangers presented with these information policies and they should have acted accordingly.

Well, we aren’t being protected, so it is up to each person to protect themselves. Run DAILY virus and malware checks on your computer. Ensure that your firewalls are activated and configured correctly. Most importantly, STAY UPDATED! Though you may still be vulnerable to 0-day attacks, the likelyhood that you will be a target is negligible. Be smart - protect yourself.