Re:What's next? Web Wear
on
Techno Jacket
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· Score: 1
With Web Wear all you need to do is log into your clothes and with a few simple changes to the underlying HTML code, voila!
That worries me. I can already imagine perverts in the park taking advantage of the Flash plugin. Worse yet, what happens if you try to start a download and get a 404 Not Found, or 500 Internal Server Error?
The latest E-mail virus going around work today reminded me of something: When everything is an object, and everything is executable, there are security implications involved. Sure, it's cool to make computing "integrated", and it's cool to hide implementation details from the user. It's definitely not cool for my computer to be doing something I don't want it to do and something I didn't tell it to do. A few examples:
Macro viruses in Word and Excel. You can embed Visual Basic code in a Word document that does things you wouldn't want to do in a word processor.
Javascript and VBScript attachments in E-mail messages. There have been lots of well-publicized exploits here, and even a couple worms that start up by previewing a message.
Any other sort of E-mail attachment deceptively packaged to look like it's not an executable, when it really is.
Basically, any component-based system should include enough security so the user knows what's going on. Don't make the system so "well-integrated" that it's possible to write destructive executables that run without the user's knowledge or consent.
Here's the scoop: I work for a commercial software vendor who is porting some products to work on Linux. After researching this just a bit, I'm confused. The old GNU Library General Public License says that if you want to ship an application that uses a library, you have to accompany the work with source code or a written offer to provide the source code. The GNU Lesser General Public License says in section 6b that if you're linking with a shared library that's already present on the user's machine, you don't have to provide source code. (You still have to cite their copyright notice, though.) Meanwhile, at Red Hat's Developer Network page, they say the C library is covered by the GPL, not by either LGPL. The GNU page is surprisingly silent on the topic.
Since I work for a commercial developer, it's unlikely that management will be willing to distribute source code for the application. After all, we'd be giving away some very valuable secrets to our competitors, to say the least. And we can't ignore the Linux market any more. (I'll make the disclaimer here that I'm a developer, not a manager. I don't know if we've already covered these issues as a company.)
I'm hoping someone will have some thoughts or insights into this matter, so we don't end up violating the GPL and getting into legal hot water.
As much as I hate to recommend anything by Microsoft here at Slashdot, check out their Terraserver site at http://terraserver.microsoft.com. They explain the technical story behind how they store their images on their SQL Server database. I was a bit skeptical that you can do anything like that with a Microsoft product, but it seems to run well -- and they boast about their low downtime, too.
Who says the U.S. has to invent all the new technologies? We should do what we're best at: market it to a gullible public. It doesn't matter if the Finns and the Japanese can invent better cell phones, or the Swiss invented the World Wide Web. The U.S. does a better job than any other nation in convincing people that their lives will be SO much better if they get the latest technical doo-dad.
Of course, our marketing frenzies occasionally produce antitrust violations, and we have to live with more advertising per square inch than any other industrialized nation, but who cares? It's the all-important Digital Age! Go, USA! Whoo!
Now, where's that flag for the back of my pickup truck?
Actually, I'm afraid of what they'll do with the singing dancing paperclip when they implement this new "innovation". I can see it now:
"Hi! It looks like you're trying to get some work done! Want some help?" or: "Hi! It looks like you're using an Oracle database! Did you know that SQL Server is used in 90% of Fortune 500 companies?" or, worse yet: "Hi! It looks like you're surfing Slashdot again! Would you like some help trolling?"
I've had a dark, dystopian view of the future that theorizes that every flat surface will be covered either by graffiti or advertising. It won't stop until it gets to the point where advertisers beam ads onto my bathroom wall every morning, whether I want it or not. ("Hey, a captive audience! And a targeted audience, as well! Individualized content delivery!")
I guess I'm going to have to update my theory to include every kind of recorded sound as well. (Which is already happening, actually -- the last time I called someone and got a busy signal, it came with an ad by US West saying that for 75 cents, I could have the phone company call me back when they hung up.)
This sounds like a pretty accurate description of the company where I used to work. As an example, I remember when I was planning to buy a house, and I wanted to take a day off to go look around with my real estate agent. My boss told me that I couldn't take the day off because I had a critical problem to look at, and he said that taking any time off would jeopardize the future of the company. (I was investigating a problem with an unreleased product that was going to a prospective customer.) And that was a request for ONE DAY OFF. In the end, we lost the customer anyway, but that was mainly due to our inept sales force.
It wasn't much of a surprise when, several months later, I got a call at 1:30 AM reporting that a different customer was having problems with our product (now released). I dialed into their system and looked around for an hour and a half before finally figuring out that it was a network problem. During these incidents, and many more I don't have room to mention, I was told that I needed to put in a lot of extra effort because it would insure the success of the company. (Or, as my boss put it late one afternoon, "The whole company's falling apart and no one's here.")
The complete surprise came later, when the company (still doing poorly) decided to lay off almost all of its developers and to hire a new staff in another state. The new manager of the development group wrote a document castigating the current developers and managers. His proposal document said, "Our development has been done in an academic manner. We don't have any seasoned commercially qualified developers."
My point: Companies can always ask for a lot from their employees, but they have the power to turn around and kick you in the pants afterward. I hope this was an unusual case, but it could be more common than I think. Life's too short to be a workaholic and to stay chained to a desk, a cell phone, or an E-mail address 24 hours a day. I've changed jobs and I'm feeling much better now.
I'm curious: Does anyone out there know what kind of personal information a company would know about its customers other than what the customer knowingly provides? As an example, I'm pretty sure that Amazon.com knows the following about me:
My name, billing address, and shipping address(es) I've used. That's pretty obvious.
My E-mail address.
My credit card number. Obviously, I want to protect this. However, even though Amazon knows my credit card number, I'm reasonably sure they're not going to submit bogus charges against it. If that ever happened, I'd call my credit card company.
My ordering history. Yeah, this is personal, but it's not like they can use this against me. Of course, if I ordered Slashdot Trolling for Dummies, I might think differently. (Besides, their history doesn't reflect the fact that I bought some books as gifts, so they seem to think I'm interested in the book Measured Drawings of Eighteenth-Century American Furniture.)
They could have a list of books and other items I browsed, but never ordered. That doesn't necessarily reflect my interests, though, as I'm reasonably sure I won't be ordering Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
So, does Amazon.com know anything about me that I haven't told them? Or any other online retailer, for that matter? I can see that they could use my ordering history to get an idea of what my interests are, but that doesn't mean that they'll sucker me into buying every single book about Linux. If Amazon, or any other online retailer I've done business with, ever goes bankrupt and resells my customer information, I'm not entirely sure what the threat is. Sure, it's personal information and I'd really rather not have it resold, but I'd like to at least know how much of a threat this is.
I remember just a couple years ago that AT&T was making some big promises in their commercials -- kind of like the promises made in their article. "Have you ever been on the beach, yet still working at your office? You will." "Have you ever gotten lost in a deep dark forest and been rescued from hungry black bears, courtesy of AT&T? You will." I'm still waiting (although my memory is clearly fuzzy on what AT&T was promising.)
Of course computing is going to change ten, twenty, and thirty years from now. That said, I don't think it's going to change in the ways mentioned in this article -- not until people completely abandon the paradigms of files, directories (or "folders"), desktops, and every other concept we've been learning for the past ten years.
According to a recent article by Courtney Love at salon.com, the record company doesn't donate recording and touring expenses out of their own pocket. They recoup all those expenses from CD sales and from tour revenues (tickets, T-shirts, etc.) By her figures, the band is lucky if they make much money at all. Robert Fripp of King Crimson also has some choice words to say about record companies at Discipline Global Mobile.
That said, I agree wholeheartedly that labels spend a lot of time screening in order to find what's most likely to sell. It's a process that's guaranteed to generate mediocrity, really.
So how come Microsoft is the first company that's worried about losing the "freedom" to "innovate"? I've never seen Sun, Oracle, IBM, or even Intel worried about losing their freedoms. It sure doesn't look like the open source community is worried about losing the freedom to innovate, either. Come to think of it, the open source community will still be innovating even if Microsoft gets broken into a dozen companies.
This is a big smokescreen and it's laughable that Microsoft thinks people will believe it. It's even more scary that some people seem to believe it.
Somehow, I don't think this lawsuit could have covered every single popup ad from everyone's web site. IIRC, AOL had its own popup ads that would appear whenever you logged on. They'd typically say something like, "Hi! We noticed you haven't bought your copy of America Online For Dummies yet. Would you like to buy your copy now? [] Yes [] No Thanks" Personally, I think there should have been a couple more check boxes there: "[] No, because I already paid for AOL this month [] No, and don't bother me with anything similar [] Who else is AOL for?"
I haven't used AOL since 1996, when I got a real ISP, but their popup ads were one of the main reasons I left them. (The spam was another.) If they can't afford to provide the service I've requested at the price they agreed to charge me, and they have to put annoying popup ads in to try and get more money out of my pocket, then their business model is flawed. I should go after my credit card company for annoying me with credit card insurance plans, travel clubs, shopping clubs, and car insurance. But that's a whole other topic.
Slashdot Mirror
With Web Wear all you need to do is log into your clothes and with a few simple changes to the underlying HTML code, voila!
That worries me. I can already imagine perverts in the park taking advantage of the Flash plugin. Worse yet, what happens if you try to start a download and get a 404 Not Found, or 500 Internal Server Error?
- Macro viruses in Word and Excel. You can embed Visual Basic code in a Word document that does things you wouldn't want to do in a word processor.
- Javascript and VBScript attachments in E-mail messages. There have been lots of well-publicized exploits here, and even a couple worms that start up by previewing a message.
- Any other sort of E-mail attachment deceptively packaged to look like it's not an executable, when it really is.
Basically, any component-based system should include enough security so the user knows what's going on. Don't make the system so "well-integrated" that it's possible to write destructive executables that run without the user's knowledge or consent.Since I work for a commercial developer, it's unlikely that management will be willing to distribute source code for the application. After all, we'd be giving away some very valuable secrets to our competitors, to say the least. And we can't ignore the Linux market any more. (I'll make the disclaimer here that I'm a developer, not a manager. I don't know if we've already covered these issues as a company.)
I'm hoping someone will have some thoughts or insights into this matter, so we don't end up violating the GPL and getting into legal hot water.
As much as I hate to recommend anything by Microsoft here at Slashdot, check out their Terraserver site at http://terraserver.microsoft.com. They explain the technical story behind how they store their images on their SQL Server database. I was a bit skeptical that you can do anything like that with a Microsoft product, but it seems to run well -- and they boast about their low downtime, too.
Of course, our marketing frenzies occasionally produce antitrust violations, and we have to live with more advertising per square inch than any other industrialized nation, but who cares? It's the all-important Digital Age! Go, USA! Whoo!
Now, where's that flag for the back of my pickup truck?
"Hi! It looks like you're trying to get some work done! Want some help?"
or:
"Hi! It looks like you're using an Oracle database! Did you know that SQL Server is used in 90% of Fortune 500 companies?"
or, worse yet:
"Hi! It looks like you're surfing Slashdot again! Would you like some help trolling?"
I guess I'm going to have to update my theory to include every kind of recorded sound as well. (Which is already happening, actually -- the last time I called someone and got a busy signal, it came with an ad by US West saying that for 75 cents, I could have the phone company call me back when they hung up.)
It wasn't much of a surprise when, several months later, I got a call at 1:30 AM reporting that a different customer was having problems with our product (now released). I dialed into their system and looked around for an hour and a half before finally figuring out that it was a network problem. During these incidents, and many more I don't have room to mention, I was told that I needed to put in a lot of extra effort because it would insure the success of the company. (Or, as my boss put it late one afternoon, "The whole company's falling apart and no one's here.")
The complete surprise came later, when the company (still doing poorly) decided to lay off almost all of its developers and to hire a new staff in another state. The new manager of the development group wrote a document castigating the current developers and managers. His proposal document said, "Our development has been done in an academic manner. We don't have any seasoned commercially qualified developers."
My point: Companies can always ask for a lot from their employees, but they have the power to turn around and kick you in the pants afterward. I hope this was an unusual case, but it could be more common than I think. Life's too short to be a workaholic and to stay chained to a desk, a cell phone, or an E-mail address 24 hours a day. I've changed jobs and I'm feeling much better now.
As an example, I'm pretty sure that Amazon.com knows the following about me:
- My name, billing address, and shipping address(es) I've used. That's pretty obvious.
- My E-mail address.
- My credit card number. Obviously, I want to protect this. However, even though Amazon knows my credit card number, I'm reasonably sure they're not going to submit bogus charges against it. If that ever happened, I'd call my credit card company.
- My ordering history. Yeah, this is personal, but it's not like they can use this against me. Of course, if I ordered Slashdot Trolling for Dummies, I might think differently. (Besides, their history doesn't reflect the fact that I bought some books as gifts, so they seem to think I'm interested in the book Measured Drawings of Eighteenth-Century American Furniture.)
- They could have a list of books and other items I browsed, but never ordered. That doesn't necessarily reflect my interests, though, as I'm reasonably sure I won't be ordering Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
So, does Amazon.com know anything about me that I haven't told them? Or any other online retailer, for that matter? I can see that they could use my ordering history to get an idea of what my interests are, but that doesn't mean that they'll sucker me into buying every single book about Linux.If Amazon, or any other online retailer I've done business with, ever goes bankrupt and resells my customer information, I'm not entirely sure what the threat is. Sure, it's personal information and I'd really rather not have it resold, but I'd like to at least know how much of a threat this is.
"Have you ever been on the beach, yet still working at your office? You will."
"Have you ever gotten lost in a deep dark forest and been rescued from hungry black bears, courtesy of AT&T? You will."
I'm still waiting (although my memory is clearly fuzzy on what AT&T was promising.)
Of course computing is going to change ten, twenty, and thirty years from now. That said, I don't think it's going to change in the ways mentioned in this article -- not until people completely abandon the paradigms of files, directories (or "folders"), desktops, and every other concept we've been learning for the past ten years.
That said, I agree wholeheartedly that labels spend a lot of time screening in order to find what's most likely to sell. It's a process that's guaranteed to generate mediocrity, really.
This is a big smokescreen and it's laughable that Microsoft thinks people will believe it. It's even more scary that some people seem to believe it.
I haven't used AOL since 1996, when I got a real ISP, but their popup ads were one of the main reasons I left them. (The spam was another.) If they can't afford to provide the service I've requested at the price they agreed to charge me, and they have to put annoying popup ads in to try and get more money out of my pocket, then their business model is flawed. I should go after my credit card company for annoying me with credit card insurance plans, travel clubs, shopping clubs, and car insurance. But that's a whole other topic.