LookIt

Hoping

Fifty years ago, many of the coloreds in the US started to demand loudly that the rest of the country start giving them more rights. One of the rights that the nigras demanded was that they be allowed to marry whomever they please, regardless of whether the other person was another darkie or was a White.

It took more than fifteen years after they started agitating for them to get that marriage right. At the same time, other changes came, and the good people of this country started actually using terms for them that did not indicate inferiority. Some of us even were proud to say that some of them were our "friends".

I sincerely hope that it doesn't take fifteen years this time.

Update: Bret Fausett, who rarely posts about non-technical politics, takes the analogy further.

Dell doesn't give themselves enough credit

Dell ships faster than they think. This is nice, but it also shows how lame big companies can be when the left hand can't tell the right hand what is going on. My new server arrived about four hours ago. But the order status page still says:

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It's not that FedEx went faster than expected: Dell shipped it 2nd Day Air (even though I got free shipping on the order based on a special offer).

Love is grand

...but sometimes it takes over 50 years for people to let you say so.

LaCie makes me not want to buy a Porche

Got a LaCie DVD+-RW drive the other day. LaCie makes a big deal how it was designed by F.A. Porche. Very nice, but the design of the drive is way below average. It has a sliding on-off switch that is poorly marked. The flip-down front panel feel cheesy. Both the AC and USB plugs are upside-down. The case is metal, but the front panel and edge is fake chrome. The power supply is a two-part nightmare of cords. And so on. None of this matters, of course, because the drive seems to work fine. But if they're going to make a big deal out of who designed it, they should at least have a functional design. Then again, I've never owned a Porche, so maybe they feel the same...

Relying on Microsoft

Just got around to putting in the latest Windows security patches on my systems. Well, attempting to put in the latest security patches on my systems. Windows Update gives a nice big "Server too busy" error when I do. Fortunately, these are not critical systems.

VeriSign wants to help your kids: run away

So now VeriSign wants to keep our children safe. Uh huh, yeah sure. They're going to issue a bunch of kids USB tokens for signing messages "so they can interact with anyone safely on the Internet, no matter where they are". Well, as long as they are talking to someone else who VeriSign has given a certificate to. And as long as they are at a computer that has the software for using the USB token for signing. And as long as you really think that just because VeriSign gave someone else a certificate, they're "safe". And and and.

It gets funnier. The tokens are going to hold certificates that are issued by the kids' schools. Given the huge success we have had with training corporate IT folks how to be CAs, I'm sure that the elementary school staff will do a fine job.

What a great way to teach kids the reality of how botched up the PKI is, often due to VeriSign.

The last word on Janet Jackson

...before she slips into the obscurity she richly deserves. Janet Jackson's Boob Turned Down Apple Ad.

New posting tool

Experimenting with Ecto for adding blog entries. Seems like maybe overkill for someone like me who posts less than once a day, but it sure beats losing stuff that is being entered in a web form...

I want my GoogleOS

After Google has a few billion dollars in the bank (or even just a few hundred million!), what should they do with it? Their business involves four things:
  - knowing about everything interesting on the web
  - knowing a lot about people who look at text ads
  - intelligently putting text ads in front of people
  - being friendly and easy to use
The second item is pretty interesting. Right now, they glean most of that from the search you just made as well as previous searches that you have made.

How could they know much more about you? One way would be to run your computer for you and look at the contents of your hard drive and your habits. Many folks would find that scary, but many would be fine with it as long as they didn't mess anything up. But adding spyware to Windows is messy, error-prone, and likely to cause the Windows to become even less stable than it already is. That's where the fourth item comes in.

The folks at Google know FreeBSD inside out. They could create a FreeBSD distribution to replace Windows. It would consist of the kernel, one of the window managers, and a small number of the obvious applications (web, email, word processing, presentations, music). They might choose a GUI that resembles the Windows look-and-feel to make it more learnable by current Windows users, they might choose one that is actually easier to use for low-end users (who will be the ones who will most likely want this).

The cost of putting the first version of the distribution together could be under a million dollars. The benefit to Google will be huge. They might not even use it for probing your interests unless you said it was OK. Maybe you can only get free tech support if you let it probe. People love Google, and would trust them with the information as long as Google continues not to do anything evil or hard-to-use.

Dell and HP might balk at pre-loading GoogleOS, but a zillion lower-end manufacturers would probably love to. Google could easily under-price Lindows simply by giving it away for free. Google could even get manufacturers to pre-load GoogleOS in a separate partition on Windows machines to let buyers choose which OS they want.

The information Google could glean just from registrations, much less from continuing use, could pay for the project. The good will they could sow would be huge. It would help the world by putting a simpler and more stable OS in the hands of users. The world would be a better place, and Google would have their name on it.