Nathan's Occasional Blog

Woman Calls 911 With Pizza Complaint – Yahoo! News:

An 86-year-old woman was jailed after police said she called 911 dispatchers 20 times in a little more than a half-hour – all to complain that a pizza parlor wouldn’t deliver.

DAMN I miss living in Charlotte. This lady calls 911 20 times about a pizza, but when my dad called 911 to report bullets wizzing through the tree outside our apartment right after we moved to town 12 years ago they didn’t answer the phone…. Glad to see they’ve got their act together to assist with Domino’s customer service. Bastards.

Anyway, I’d hate to be the arresting officer. You KNOW he got crap for this at the station house the next day. 🙂

When slang changes, bad things happen to good comix:

Xeni Jardin:
As "BoingBoing’s queen of all matters related to rumpy-pumpy," it is my obligation to alert you to this breaking news.

Link (via Joey "Accordion Guy" deVilla!)

Previously on Boing Boing: Old comic book panels taken out of context = lotsa laffs

Heh – had to post this. 🙂

Microsoft security guru: Jot down your passwords | CNET News.com:

Companies should not ban employees from writing down their passwords because such bans force people to use the same weak term on many systems, according to a Microsoft security guru.

Speaking on the opening day of a conference hosted by Australia’s national Computer Emergency Response Team, or AusCERT, Microsoft’s Jesper Johansson said that the security industry has been giving out the wrong advice to users by telling them not to write down their passwords. Johansson is senior program manager for security policy at Microsoft.

‘How many have (a) password policy that says under penalty of death you shall not write down your password?’ asked Johansson, to which the majority of attendees raised their hands in agreement. ‘I claim that is absolutely wrong. I claim that password policy should say you should write down your password. I have 68 different passwords. If I am not allowed to write any of them down, guess what I am going to do? I am going to use the same password on every one of them.’

I don’t visit Slashdot anymore (and I’m not going to link there) because I’ve found them to be extremely negative on just about everything, especially MS technologies. It’s just not a balanced discussion. And for that reason I’m guessing that this statement from a MS person, while actually good advice if you think it through, is going to be slammed. What we have here, in the case of passwords, is a MAJOR problem. I’m guilty of doing exactly what this guy talks about – using the same relatively weak password in many places.

I disagree with his solution, though. Writing down your passwords, or storing them in an encrypted format on your Blackberry or Scoblephone, isn’t going to solve the issue (and creates new ones). We need some sort of federated, independent seciurity model that uses some form of two-factor authentication. RSA tokens, smart cards, biometric readers, etc. are all in play. The kicker is that we need a system that is (relatively) universally accepted and used, and not one organization (corporate or government) out there has the reputation to be trusted by all of us. Plus I don’t think we can get away with just one way of doing the two-factor authentication.

For example if I’m here at my house I can use a smart card in my laptop (my Dell Latitude D610 already has a reader in it) but I can’t use that same card in my home desktop PC because when I take the card out of my laptop it would lock the system. So I’d use a biometric reader on the desktop. Then if I want to do a transaction online how does that biometric info get passed along to, say, Amazon? That’s where a token makes sense – a device that gives you a personalized password every 60 seconds. But a token still requires a personal memorized PIN code to add to the digits it gives you … plus right now the technology is 1 token per service. RSA is moving in the right direction with their mobile device soft-tokens (I can put up to 10 tokens on my Blackberry) but I’d still have to remember which one is for which service … plus it would take “forever” to get the key. And then we have to make all of this so easy and fool proof that my 90+ year old grandma can use it to authenticate herself with her bank at the ATM and so we don’t have 500,000 people get a letter in the mail saying “sorry we let a hacker have your identity.”

And all of these methods of authentication should be linked to one master identity, just like real life. I have a unique fingerprint; I have a smartcard with a memorized PIN code; I have a token generator with a memorized PIN code. ME. The single ME needs to be recognized to be a single ME across all the entities I come in contact with, as opposed to today where I am a completely different customer on Amazon from MSN from CDW from my office from my voicemail…. Get the picture?

So, Robert Scoble, master of the blogging universe and marketing (just kidding), how does this conversation get discussed in the open in an UNbiased and thoughtful manner without getting blown up into a hissy fight between “pro-MS” and “anti-MS” people. I wonder, was the speaker’s original intention to really have folks write down all their passwords on a piece of paper, or was he trying to jump-start the discussion?

An (almost) happy ending to my Apple story:

Based on some excellent advice from Jan in a comment to my post last night about the horrific experience I had trying to buy an iPod for one of my customers in Norway, I contacted Apple Customer Relations and spoke with a representative named Dan. I explained the situation to him and he immediately opened my order which is being processed by the Apple Norway store. He was prepared to correct the quantity (I ordered one, they made the order for two) and resolve the situation for me. Bad news: The order has already shipped. [continues…]

Now it’s great that Apple was ablel to, in the end, solve the issue. But wouldn’t have been even better if they’d handled thie issue right in the first place? Wouldn’t have been better if they’d never drawn the ire of their community?

Microsoft to offer checkout software for retailers:

Microsoft Corp., the world’s largest software maker, said on Wednesday it would launch new software for small retail stores that allows owners to replace cash registers and automate sales and inventory management. Microsoft Point of Sale, which will be offered from June, is part of Microsoft’s push to sell more software to small- and mid-sized businesses. Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft has long offered a version of its Windows operating system for retail store computers.

An MS product actually called PoS … can they at least TRY not to make easy fodder for the pundants? Scoble, which marketing genious decieded to call this thing “PoS”? I mean how about something like “Retail Suite” or “Register.” Nope, they chose PoS. That’s CRAP! 😉

Coming Soon to a Phone Near You: XM Radio:

That’s right folks!

QUOTE

NEW YORK (Reuters) – XM Satellite Radio is holding active discussions with wireless carriers about offering some form of its radio service on mobile phones, XM chief executive Hugh Panero said on Monday.

What does this mean for the cellphone industry? Imagine this: a cellular phone that is also a complete PIM (Personal Information Manager), Web client for email, IM, browsing, etc, MP3/WMA/Other format player AND XM radio. How cool will that be? Read more… From Mobile Tracker

That would be cool … except for the fact that battery life would run about 15 minutes. Wonder what the SAR rating of that device would be? 🙂

It takes tons of work to get and keep a customer, even more an evangelist. It takes one idiot for your company to blow all of that and unleash the wrath of the web.

A complete failure to care about the customer – The Office Weblog:
“I am not a happy camper at the moment and the source of my frustration is Apple Computer and their online store. Today I got a first-hand taste at just how badly the company can be at taking care of a customer. And it’s pretty much soured me on ever doing business directly with the company again.”

I read something a couple months back on Gaping Void that all of these stories keep reminding me of: Apple has gone from a “we” company to a “they” company.

Anyway, “We” companies are built by and for a community of users. Everything (including profits) flows from this core value of serving the users. We companies and their profitability are incredibly sustainable.

“They” companies are traditional companies that seek to optimize profitability at the expense of everything else. These businsses are not sustainable and they tend to overreach and ultimately end up in a long and steady decline.

Microsoft is the poster child for a “they” company.

Craigs List is the poster child for a “we” company.

Apple used to be a “we” company.

Tablet PC Buzz.com – Forum:

“Motion Computing has officially announced their LE1600 Tablet PC… You can officially count me as wanting one of these really bad!”

Amen to that! I’ve been itching to get a Tablet PC forever … and Scoble keeps giving me another reason to look at them even closer. For now I’m on a Dell D610 that my employer supplies and they’re not going to spring for a Tablet for me as a replacement … unless I can get my boss one too. As Kaj always says, “show me the love!” Anyway, I’ve always said I want a convertable Tablet instead of a slate, but it looks like they’ve got some sweet wireless keyboard options for this puppy. That and they’ve got a second battery that hooks onto the bottom of the unit to give you “all day runtime.” Oh, and for reliability of the manufacturer? The guys who started Motion are ex-Dell folks who left on good terms to start making tablets (Dell isn’t interested in making them … yet). Dell even resells Motion’s devices. Check out Motion’s site for the specs on the LE1600.

Kiss your old SSN goodbye | Perspectives | CNET News.com:

“Politicians are starting to realize that permitting data brokers like Acxiom and ChoicePoint to buy and sell your Social Security number like a raffle ticket may not be that wise after all.”

Finally someone is starting to realize that the purvasive use of the SSN is a BAD thing. “They” keep telling us to protect our social security number, but then we have to give up our SSN just to sign up for cable TV? I’ve already stopped giving out my phone number to local merchants who say “we just try to track where our sales are from.” Fine, I say as I rattle off my zip code. Heck, my phone number is through Vonage and is on a Bellevue, WA exchange that’s 30 minutes (and a few microclimates) away from my residence so it’s pretty pointless for them as a location tool anyway. Why do they want your phone number? Revenue stream: they sell it to telemarketers. Bastards.

Another tip from one of our friends who was the object of credit card fraud a year or so ago … don’t pass along full credit card numbers to local merchants. She had someone take her full credit card and expiration date off of a restaurant sales slip she had signed and left on the table (how often have you done this). Unfortunately someone got ahold of that slip and purchased over a $1000 of stuff in Texas (while she was here in Seattle). Most merchants “x-out” the majority of your card number, leaving just the last 4 numbers. If you see a receipt with all the numbers printed black all but the last 4 out with your pen.

Maybe we should just build a bomb shelter under our back yard and live in there for the next 20 years with no contact with the outside world… nah, I’d miss Grey’s Anatomy. 🙂

Bink.nu | Microsoft about to debut antivirus tools?:

“Researchers at Gartner estimate that only 13 percent of consumer-operated desktop computers connected to the Internet have third-party antivirus tools.”

You have got to be kidding me! 13%!?! That’s just appalling. No wonder so many hackers write viruses – it’s so easy for them to exploit these idiots. I wonder how many keep their operating systems and other software up to date … a precious few I’d imagine. Plus there are a ton of people who just plug their cable modem right into their computer without a firewall in place (hardware or software). Yikes!

My dad, for example, doesn’t trust Windows Updates and I have to beg him to install them. On top of that he’s still running Windows 98, then he wonders why it crashes (most of the time the system runs out of memory). He’s going to join the ranks of the modern in a few months though … he’s contemplating getting an Athon 64 machine with some serious hard drives, etc. He does digital artwork on his computer and has hundreds of CD-R and DVD-R’s filled with archived pictures, etc. (that’s how he runs out of memory – huge files). Check out davidnovak.com for his work.