iPhone 4 Encryption Remains Uncracked, but Password Keys Easy to Obtain - Security - News & Reviews - eWeek.com

iPhone 4 Encryption Remains Uncracked, but Password Keys Easy to Obtain - Security - News & Reviews - eWeek.com: "Simply put, ElcomSoft researchers didn’t break the complicated lock on the door; they figured out how to get the key hidden under the flowerpot.

ElcomSoft researchers did not crack AES-256, Luther Martin, a senior security architect at Voltage Security, wrote on the Superconductor blog on May 26. Digging deeper into Katalov’s post reveals that ElcomSoft researchers didn’t actually figure out a way to brute-force its way through the encryption, but circumvented the security measures altogether by obtaining the encryption keys stored on the device to unlock the data."

The plain and simple fact is, Apple just doesn't get it. I'd love to see the memo they send to their employees this time. Macs don't get malware. Iphone data is secure because it's encrypted. So, Smith, W., 2+2 is 5, because the state (Steve J.) says so.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/iPhone-4-Encryption-Remains-Uncracked-But-Password-Keys-Easy-to-Obtain-686228/?kc=EWKNLSTE06022011STR1

Stop blaming public servants for results they can't control

“”‘’
linkholder

Cisco Screws Up Big Time

The Tragic Death of the Flip - NYTimes.com

I thought that maybe, just maybe, they'd learned something from mishandling Linksys.

“Cisco is killing the Flip camcorder.

Let’s see if I can get this straight. Only two years ago, Cisco bought Pure Digital, the company that made the Flip, for $590 million. Then, on Tuesday, Cisco announced that it’s shutting down the whole division and laying off 550 people.

We humans are a rational species. Our instinct is to find reasons, to seek patterns where none may exist. In this case, everybody’s first reaction is: “Oh, it’s because of smartphones. Everybody’s shooting video with iPhones nowadays—nobody’s buying Flip camcorders.”

Or, as Gizmodo puts it, “Cisco just axed Flip, yeah, but the blame should be aimed squarely at the smartphone in your pocket.”

Which sounds logical—until you realize there is a far more satisfying explanation.

First, app phones like the iPhone represent only a few percent of cellphone sales. You know who buys app phones? Affluent, East Coast/West Coast, educated, New York Times-reading, Gizmodo-writing Americans.

But most of the world doesn’t buy iPhones. Of the 1 billion cellphones sold annually, a few million are iPhones. The masses still have regular cellphones that don’t capture video, let alone hi-def video. They’re the people who buy Flip camcorders. It’s wayyyyyy too soon for app phones to have killed off the camcorder.

Second, it isn’t true at all that nobody’s buying Flip camcorders. So far, 7 million people have bought them. Only a month ago, I was briefed by a Flip product manager on the newest model, which was to hit the market yesterday. He showed me a graph of the Flip’s sales; Flips now represent an astonishing 35 percent of the camcorder market. They’re the No. 1 bestselling camcorder on Amazon. They’re still selling fast.

Look at it this way: There are plenty of Flip copycats, from Kodak and other companies. They have only a fraction of the Flip’s popularity, but you don’t see them shutting down.
So why did Cisco kill off the flip?

I’ve spoken to a bunch of people in the industry, trying, in my human way, to figure out the logic here. It seems clear that Cisco, whose primary focus is making networking equipment for businesses, was all excited about getting into the consumer electronics game; that’s why it spent $590 million on Flip. But then, as John Chambers, Cisco’s chief executive, put it, the company decided to make “key, targeted moves as we align operations in support of our network-centric platform strategy.”

Which, in English, means, “We had no clue what we were doing.””

So, on the verge of a truly amazing launch of a market shattering new product, simple live streaming, they killed any chance of being consumer oriented.

God knows why, but I bet, despite any and all explanations they may give, Cisco doesn't.

http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/14/the-tragic-death-of-the-flip/?nl=technology&emc=cta2

Republican('t)'s New Clothes

Nicholas D. Kristof

Our Cowardly Congress - NYTimes.com:

"Unfortunately, the new Republican initiative would worsen government debt problems, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The C.B.O. (whose numbers Republicans regularly use to attack Democrats) estimates that with current trends, debt will reach 67 percent of gross domestic product in 2022. But it finds that under the Republican plan, because of increased tax cuts, debt would reach 70 percent of G.D.P.

In other words, the Republican position is that America faces such a desperate debt crisis that we must throw millions under the bus — yet the result is more debt than if we do nothing."

When the lies are naked, you never have to worry about pants on fire.

Meanwhile, people who wouldn't vote on anything until after last November's election, even though they controlled both House and Senate, think the President shouldn't compromise so much.

So, one side pretended the numbers they didn't like would go away if they just waited. The other side just makes the numbers up.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/10/opinion/10kristof.html

Will Eisner’s New York: From The Spirit to the Modern Graphic Novel

Will Eisner’s New York: From The Spirit to the Modern Graphic Novel

“Will Eisner (1917-2005) in a new exhibition at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (MoCCA) in New York. Opening Tuesday, March 1, "Will Eisner’s New York: From the Spirit to the Modern Graphic Novel" will showcase work inspired by and featuring the legendary artist's hometown. From his trailblazing comic superhero, The Spirit, to his autobiographical novels, Eisner portrayed New York as only a native of the city could know it, according to curators Denis Kitchen and Danny Fingeroth. Adding context to original comic art and paintings by Eisner will be works by creators who were influenced by him, including Art Spiegelman and Harvey Kurtzman.” from the Liquid Treat newsletter

I just happened to be reading Will Eisner  Comics And Sequential Art when the news showed up in my inbox. It's one of the best books on telling stories through images that I've ever read. It's a shame I won't get to New York for the exhibit.

Al Ingram‘’

http://www.moccany.org/content/current-exhibits

Quick Read! Mark Bittman On Oatmeal at Micky D

How to Make Oatmeal . . . Wrong - NYTimes.com: "A more accurate description than “100% natural whole-grain oats,” “plump raisins,” “sweet cranberries” and “crisp fresh apples” would be “oats, sugar, sweetened dried fruit, cream and 11 weird ingredients you would never keep in your kitchen.”"

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/22/how-to-make-oatmeal-wrong/?nl=opinion&emc=tya2

The Lie Is Told Again and Again, and Again - NYTimes.com

The South Rises Again and Again, and Again - NYTimes.com: "“I may safely say, however, that nothing will satisfy them, or bring them back, short of a full and explicit recognition of the guarantee of the safety of their institution of domestic slavery and the protection of the constitutional rights for which in the Union they have so long been contending, and a denial of which, by their Northern confederates, has forcetried to them into their present attitude of separate independence.”"

I used to laugh when anyone claimed that the Civil War wasn't about slavery. Now, I realize that it was the beginning of what is now commonplace, people with their own private sets of facts.

There is no arguing with them. Debate is impossible. They will revise reality whenever it gets in their way.

They are true believers in any ideology that tells them they're entitled, that lets them be comfortable with whatever they have, however they got it.

Their comfort, and others discomfort, is ordained by God, Karma, or the inevitable forces of history. Depending, of course, on whether they were born in America, India, or late Soviet Russia.

Republican('t)s, Brahmans, Oligarchs, brothers and sisters in entitlement and private facts.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/27/the-south-rises-again-and-again-and-again/?nl=opinion&emc=tya2

Republican(t)s Unanimously Vote to Repeal Lifesaving Healthcare Bill

Health Care Law Repeal Voted in House - NYTimes.com

“ Even as four House committees begin drafting legislation, Republicans said they would seek other ways to stop the overhaul, by choking off money needed to carry it out and by pursuing legislation to undo specific provisions, like a requirement for most Americans to carry health insuranceor face penalties. The law is also under challenge in the federal courts, with the individual coverage requirements fueling a constitutional battle likely to be decided by theSupreme Court.
The House vote was the first stage of a Republican plan to use the party’s momentum coming out of the midterm elections to keep the White House on the defensive, and will be followed by a push to scale back federal spending. In response, the administration struck a more aggressive posture than it had during the campaign to sell the health care law to the public. With many House Democrats from swing districts having lost their seats in November, the remaining Democrats held overwhelmingly together in opposition to the repeal.”

Looking at places under Republican(t) control like Arizona, their idea of saving healthcare seems to hinge on denying it to desperate people who might otherwise live.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/20/health/policy/20cong.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2

Mr. Kurtz He Brain Dead

Why Is Stanley Kurtz Calling Obama a Socialist? - Ta-Nehisi Coates - Politics - The Atlantic:

'Why does Stanley Kurtz believe Barack Obama is a socialist, despite all evidence to the contrary?'

“Kurtz, if you're not familiar with his work, is a loyal soldier of the conservative movement. And for the last few years, he has devoted himself to exposing Obama's socialism and radical beliefs. As you can imagine, this is shoddy work. To wit: his definition of socialist is impossibly broad--encompassing everything from European social democrats to Rubinite neo-liberals--and his scant evidence comes from tenuous links and huge generalizations about Obama's motivations and drive. In Kurtz's narrative, Obama joined Jeremiah Wright's church out of Marxist solidarity and not the stated combination of professional obligation and spiritual need.

Ultimately, the bearers of false witness come to believe their own lies. They come to be trapped in their own fantasy world, no longer willing or able to separate reality from unreality. Once the bearers of false witness are that far gone it may be too late to set them free from their self-constructed prisons.

The truth, as we all know, is that Obama is a conventional American liberal, and like most conventional American liberals, Obama wants to account and compensate for the market's failures. The Affordable Care Act, financial reform--these aren't nefarious plots for socialist domination, they are attempts at reforming capitalism to save it.”


http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/01/why-is-stanley-kurtz-calling-obama-a-socialist/68798/

S*!t Republican('t)s Say

The Humbug Express - NYTimes.com

Have you heard the one about how there’s been an explosion in the number of federal regulators? Mike Konczal of the Roosevelt Institute looked into the numbers behind that claim, and it turns out that almost all of those additional “regulators” work for the Department of Homeland Security, protecting us against terrorists.

“ If you listen to the recent speeches of Republican presidential hopefuls, you’ll find several of them talking at length about the harm done by unionized government workers, who have, they say, multiplied under the Obama administration. A recent example was an op-ed article by the outgoing Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, who declared that “thanks to President Obama,” government is the only booming sector in our economy: “Since January 2008” — silly me, I thought Mr. Obama wasn’t inaugurated until 2009 — “the private sector has lost nearly eight million jobs, while local, state and federal governments added 590,000.”

Horrors! Except that according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, government employment has fallen, not risen, since January 2008. And since January 2009, when Mr. Obama actually did take office, government employment has fallen by more than 300,000 as hard-pressed state and local governments have been forced to lay off teachers, police officers, firefighters and other workers.

So how did the notion of a surge in government payrolls under Mr. Obama take hold?

It turns out that last spring there was, in fact, a bulge in government employment. And both politicians and researchers at humbug factories — I mean, conservative think tanks — quickly seized on this bulge as evidence of an exploding public sector. Over the summer, articles and speeches began to appear highlighting the rise in government employment and issuing dire warnings about what it portended for America’s future.

But anyone paying attention knew why public employment had risen — and it had nothing to do with Big Government. It was, instead, the fact that the federal government had to hire a lot of temporary workers to carry out the 2010 Census — workers who have almost all left the payroll now that the Census is done.”

You ain't seen nothing yet!

Next year the Burning Pants Party will run the House of Representatives. Keep those shovels handy, they're going to pile it higher and deeper.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/24/opinion/24krugman.html?ref=opinion

Skype Suffers Massive, Multi-hour Network Outage - VOIP and Telephony - News & Reviews - eWeek.com

Skype Suffers Massive, Multi-hour Network Outage - VOIP and Telephony - News & Reviews - eWeek.com:

"Skype went down for several hours Dec. 22, the result of server crashes linked by peer-to-peer technology. Millions of VOIP users were affected by this worst outage since 2007."

Honestly …

I never noticed.

I've been managing my calls with Google Voice since before it was Goole Voice. (It was Grand Central.) Incoming calls ring my landline, my SkypeIn number and lately, ring in Gmail which is always open on my always on laptop.

I don't miss calls. The only thing I noticed during the outage was the sudden death of the icon in the system tray. I restarted Skype and kept on rolling.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/VOIP-and-Telephony/Skype-Suffers-Massive-Multihour-Network-Outage-676950/?kc=EWKNLNAV12242010STR2

Problem? Opportunity?

Small business and startup issues: paperwork galore « crowdSPRING Blog

“ 1099s will now have to be issued for goods as well as services, and second 1099s will now have to be issued to corporations as well as individuals. This means that small businesses will now be sending out literally millions of 1099 forms and will be responsible for keeping track of every one of these throughout the tax year. Beginning in 2012, businesses will be required to issue 1099 tax forms not just to freelancers and contract employees, but to ANY individual or corporation from which a business buys more than $600 in goods or services.

This means that in addition to the 1099s that you already prepare, you will also be preparing a flood of these for your office supply provider, office cleaner, caterer, accountant, computer hardware supplier, office furniture vendor, and on and on and on. The bill will drastically alter tax reporting by highlighting payments that have typically gone unreported – the idea is to increase government revenues by helping the IRS to account for millions of these payments.”

Come on coders. Whether we're talking Office or QuickBooks, PCs or the cloud, this is an opportunity to use the APIs to automate this reporting in the applications businesses already use to monitor their cash flow. There's room for proprietary and open source solutions as well as cloud based sevices both free and fee.

But all I hear is whining. Con't make lemonade, make a lemon daiquiri.

http://blog.crowdspring.com/2010/11/small-business-and-startup-issues-paperwork-galore/?utm_source=cS+News&utm_campaign=b0b3fb000f-01DEC10_newsletter&utm_medium=email

Promoting Your Company on LinkedIn Just Got Easy (Kind of) - Portent Interactive, Seattle, WA

Promoting Your Company on LinkedIn Just Got Easy (Kind of) - Portent Interactive, Seattle, WA

“ LinkedIn’s latest addition isn’t just important because it looks hi tech and it’s easy to use - it transcends the ability of this social media to service both people and businesses.

"We are glad to provide companies a place on LinkedIn to showcase their products, services and associated recommendations," says Director of Product Management Ryan Roslansky on the LinkedIn blog. "Company Pages will enable companies to build their brand through network-aware recommendations, giving members rich, credible insights into how any given product (or service) is perceived by their fellow professionals." ”

This site has the most complete description of LinkedIn's new features for promoting and marketing your business and services. If you're not on LinkerIn, this should convince youto give it a good look.

http://blogs.portentinteractive.com/mt-tb.cgi/5631

http://www.portentinteractive.com/blog/promoting-your-company-on-link.htm

College Costs, the Sequel - NYTimes.com

College Costs, the Sequel - NYTimes.com:

"Between the late 1940s and today, the inflation-adjusted prices of dental services and of higher education have behaved in a strikingly similar way. A wide variety of other personal services (ranging from the services of lawyers and physicians to bank service charges and life insurance) also display this same basic pattern of price change. These similarities could be coincidences. Perhaps each industry requires its own separate explanation. We don’t think so. We think one explanation fits them all.

College cost, and cost in the other similar industries, is rising for three broad reasons. First, over time we have found ways to reduce the number of labor hours and kilowatts of power needed to produce most manufactured goods and agricultural products. By contrast, many services remain artisan-like. The time of the service provider is the service itself, and labor-saving productivity gains are very hard to achieve. As a result, the cost of a year of college or an hour of a lawyer’s time must rise compared to the price of a ton of steel or a bushel of wheat.

This is “cost disease,” which is sometimes called Baumol’s disease, and a comment by Al zeroed in on it quite accurately. Rising productivity elsewhere in the economy generates this “disease,” while creating the growth that pays the costs for these more artisan-like services. The college-centric view of the world does not accord this argument the central place the data say it deserves

Second, the upward trend of college cost has been accelerated by changes in income distribution over the last 30 years. People with high levels of education have seen big income gains. Universities rely on highly educated people, as do hospitals, law offices and dental practices, to name a few. Rising income inequality is a force for rising cost in any industry like higher education. And rising income inequality also drives affordability problems. We will have more to say on affordability later.

Third, technology is a double-edged sword in many industries. For the most part, technological changes in how we teach, how we do research and how we equip our facilities have come at a cost. Some new technologies do make us more efficient. We no longer employ typing pools. But other new techniques, like computer-aided design in architecture classes or pulsed lasers in physics labs, have increased cost."

read the rest at
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/22/college-costs-the-sequel/?ref=opinion

Web Designers vs. Web Developers (Infographic)

Web Designers vs. Web Developers (Infographic)

Web Designers vs Web Developers is brought to you by Wix.com
Use creative design to make a Free Website
You are most welcome to share this infographic with your audience.

http://sixrevisions.com/infographs/web-designers-vs-web-developers/

Axis of Weasels

Axis of Depression - NYTimes.com:

"So what’s really motivating the G.O.P. attack on the Fed? Mr. Bernanke and his colleagues were clearly caught by surprise, but the budget expert Stan Collender predicted it all. Back in August, he warned Mr. Bernanke that “with Republican policy makers seeing economic hardship as the path to election glory,” they would be “opposed to any actions taken by the Federal Reserve that would make the economy better.” In short, their real fear is not that Fed actions will be harmful, it is that they might succeed.

Hence the axis of depression. No doubt some of Mr. Bernanke’s critics are motivated by sincere intellectual conviction, but the core reason for the attack on the Fed is self-interest, pure and simple. China and Germany want America to stay uncompetitive; Republicans want the economy to stay weak as long as there’s a Democrat in the White House.

And if Mr. Bernanke gives in to their bullying, they may all get their wish."

I apologize to any mustelid I've unfairly compared to Republican'ts.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/19/opinion/19krugman.html?ref=opinion

Rachel Maddow: Publicizing GOP statements ignores shortcomings of GOP policy

Rachel Maddow: Publicizing GOP statements ignores shortcomings of GOP policy

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/vp/40225485#40225485

The Hijacked Commission - NYTimes.com

The Hijacked Commission - NYTimes.com:

“So the Bowles-Simpson proposal is basically saying that janitors should be forced to work longer because these days corporate lawyers live to a ripe old age.”

"Matters become clearer once you reach the section on tax reform. The goals of reform, as Mr. Bowles and Mr. Simpson see them, are presented in the form of seven bullet points. “Lower Rates” is the first point; “Reduce the Deficit” is the seventh.

“So how, exactly, did a deficit-cutting commission become a commission whose first priority is cutting tax rates, with deficit reduction literally at the bottom of the list?”

Actually, though, what the co-chairmen are proposing is a mixture of tax cuts and tax increases — tax cuts for the wealthy, tax increases for the middle class.

They suggest eliminating tax breaks that, whatever you think of them, matter a lot to middle-class Americans — the deductibility of health benefits and mortgage interest — and using much of the revenue gained thereby, not to reduce the deficit, but to allow sharp reductions in both the top marginal tax rate and in the corporate tax rate.

It will take time to crunch the numbers here, but this proposal clearly represents a major transfer of income upward, from the middle class to a small minority of wealthy Americans. And what does any of this have to do with deficit reduction?

Let’s turn next to Social Security. There were rumors beforehand that the commission would recommend a rise in the retirement age, and sure enough, that’s what Mr. Bowles and Mr. Simpson do. They want the age at which Social Security becomes available to rise along with average life expectancy. Is that reasonable?

The answer is no, for a number of reasons — including the point that working until you’re 69, which may sound doable for people with desk jobs, is a lot harder for the many Americans who still do physical labor.

But beyond that, the proposal seemingly ignores a crucial point: while average life expectancy is indeed rising, it’s doing so mainly for high earners, precisely the people who need Social Security least. Life expectancy in the bottom half of the income distribution has barely inched up over the past three decades. So the Bowles-Simpson proposal is basically saying that janitors should be forced to work longer because these days corporate lawyers live to a ripe old age."

Mr Krugman thinks the problem is the commission. I think the problem is the co-chairs. I suspect the final report won't look much like their PowerPoint presentation or they wouldn't have been in such a hurry to preempt it.

Still, there are people praising them. People who haven't paid attention to what the job actually is. The problem is that they sound like they're working on our problem. When in fact they're working us through our prejudices and fears. But hey, they're politicians who've been out of the limelight and are back with s vengeance. Al Ingram

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/12/opinion/12krugman.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

Proposed Internet Guidelines Unlikely to Fill Content

Proposed Internet Guidelines Unlikely to Fill Content

Poynter Online - Feedback:

"Success is not an option.

Posted by Alfred Ingram 11/11/2010 4:38:31 PM

The reason we seldom make sense of the News is simple. What's sensible seldom makes the News and almost never makes the headlines. .

The sensational lie gets repeated. The sensible truth often fails to get a footnote. Volume trumps verity. The public drowns in data while starving for meaning. The simply wrong gets covered while complex,nuanced reality is ignored like a family values politician's illegitimate child."

http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=193748

Supremely Bad Judgment - NYTimes.com

Supremely Bad Judgment - NYTimes.com:

"Christine O’Donnell may not believe in the separation of church and state, but the Supreme Court does not believe in the separation of powers."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/24/opinion/24dowd.html?th&emc=th