New Redbook on MQ Security: Secure Messaging Scenarios with WebSphere MQ

As the focus on security continues to sharpen, a new comprehensive look at MQ Security:

http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/sg248069.html?Open

Jones Day Lawsuit

I had never heard of Jones Day until I read about them in relation to this law suit. Filing a law suit like this reflects pretty bad on them. I read the Amicus Brief written by the EFF and I was stunned that such basic ideas should have to be filed in response to a law suit initiated by a “respected” law firm. It makes it clear to me that this law firm has very little in the way of ethics or respect for the law. This firm seems to want to use the legal system to bully and extort: a gangster-type organization. If this is the low level they can sink to for such an insignificant event as posting pictures of the condominiums they buy, I shudder to imagine the skeletons in their closets. If they don’t want people linking to their web site they should just simply remove it from the web. And if they want to avoid further brand dilution they should probably just stop practicing law.

FORTUNE: Techland Neil Young takes on the iPod «

I posted a comment expressing my ongoing, continuous and permanent disrespect for the RIAA and everything it stands for and everything it does. It's the only thing on this planet as bad as Microsoft.

FORTUNE: Techland Neil Young takes on the iPod «

Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations (Event Video/Audio) | Berkman Center

An interesting video that talks about the social effects of the internet. Clay Shirky talks about his new book in which he describes some of the social effects of ridiculously easy communication. We go from sharing to collective action.

A central idea here is the group: humans like to form groups, are good at forming groups. The internet is something which facilitates that. The internet makes the formation, management and understanding of groups easier.


Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations (Event Video/Audio) | Berkman Center

Ask E.T.: Interface design and the iPhone

This is an awesome discussion of the iPhone by one of my all time favorite authors: Edward Tufte.

Clutter is not information. To reduce confusion add detail. But if the information is confusing, don't remove information, rework the design. Confusing presentation is a design problem.

Ask E.T.: Interface design and the iPhone

Destroy All Androids!

What we all need: an open system. That says it all. Humanity needs to have an open system of communication that will allow all the people to communicate with each other. I think of it like the post office. Anyone could put a letter in any mail box and the letter would go to any destination (even extremely rural ones). People who are making a lot of money from controlling the market will always talk about the virtues of the free market, proprietary technology, patents, etc. At the end of the day, it's about making sure that any person can connect with any other person as cheaply and as efficiently as possible. We should remind ourselves always that the rules we have in place are not there to make people rich and powerful, they are there to spur growth and development. And the rules need to be consistenly reviewed and optimized with that goal in mind.

Social networking | Face off | Economist.com

Social networking has vast potential. I think everyone gets that. Everyone is trying to figure out the rules of the game. By making it open and, perhaps, peer-to-peer, we would eliminate that controlling element. The thing that Microsoft wants so bad.

Social networking Face off Economist.com

Utopian City

Living in Moscow, where it can take hours and hours to travel a very short distance by car, I've been wondering about alternatives. There has to be a better solution to urban mobility. The answer has to be something which leverages mass transit systems such as subways and buses by augmenting them with a more flexible, personal mobility solution. Here is an example of one idea from MIT: The City Car (http://cities.media.mit.edu/projects/citycar.html).

India, China and BitTorrent

I have been thinking about the interview with the CEO of WiPro Azim Premji. This is the reason that globalization is so interesting. Azim understands that the United States is making all the wrong investments. We are not investing for the future. We are not investing in education. We are not getting to work on a coherent energy policy. Instead, Bush wants to push conservative judges, wage war in Iraq, etc.

I have a feeling about India. I think India stands poised to be the next great economic Super Power. They have the ultimate resource: educated human brains.
Out of years of weakness and decrepitude India has begun an ascent. It's hard to imagine if this will continue. But the pieces are all in place.

BitTorrent is Free Speech Tool

I'm excited by this one. I'm just now beginning to look into this one. But so far it seems like something worth delving into. The biggest question I have about something like this is how does the Chinese government feel about it?

What I like about BitTorrent is something that should be at the heart of every economic endeavor:

Cooperative distribution can grow almost without limit, because each new participant brings not only demand, but also supply

With that, you see, it is not a zero sum game. It is more like perpetual motion machine.

Peer to Peer networking is, and always has been, very exciting to me.

Microsoft bought Groove Networks. I wonder what they are doing with it. Is there some technology that they are going to use at the OS level or the Office level.

Google Me Google

Google has become something of smash hit. It is due, in fact, to the success of google that I am writing this blog. When I started seeing so much news about Google, I decided that I had to explore Google. I had to understand what they were doing and why.

I got a gmail account, I got a blog on blogger.com, I downloaded Picasa2. With all of these I'm impressed. The gmail account was interesting. I really like the fact that Google get's the fact that information should not be destroyed. It should be searched. IBM thinks keeping data around is a big waste. So emails disappear from your inbox after three months. I hate that. IBM get's angry when my email file gets close to 300MB. Google gives me 2GB of space for free. Hmmmm....

So I am corresponding with my friend and we are trying to decide on a restaurant in Boulder. And as the back forth emails and replys gets going I begin to notice advertisements in the right hand side of my email for, you guessed it, resaurants in Boulder.

So I read the T&C's and, with certainty, Google's robots read my email and dish up advertisements based on who they think I am. Interesting.

So then, I have an idea. You can set up your blog to send your postings to an email address. So I set it up to send each posting I make to my google email address. And then I look at the advertisements generated by the google in response to my posting. That turned out to be great fun. One of them had psychologists, suicide prevention and loneliness counsling advertisements. Ha Ha! I wonder what advertisments this post will generate?

Podcasting

I just watch Steve Jobs announce to the world the next great shift in the Macintosh, the shift to intel. Well done, Steve! I admire Steve Jobs. He is clearly capable of sustained genious.

Podcasting is one of the technologies that really excites me. That changes things and makes things so much more democratic. What I love about podcasting is that it truly threatens (I hope) organizations like Clear Channel and Sinclair. Certainly, from an American perspective that is important. But think about it from a Russian (or Chinese) perspective. I think of Berezovsky and Gusinsky. Those media empires (although, they have since crumbled) are far more the victims of such technology.

I remember, back at that school in Vermont, pouring over volumes of Samizdat. Samizdat to Podcasting. Wow.