‘Microsoft We Don’t Feel So Good About’.

David Gelles and Richard Waters, in a piece titled “Google Ditches Win­dows on Secu­rity Con­cerns” in the Finan­cial Times:

New hires are now given the option of using Apple’s Mac
com­put­ers or PCs run­ning the Linux oper­at­ing sys­tem. “Linux is
open source and we feel good about it,” said one employee.
“Microsoft we don’t feel so good about.”

[Dar­ing Fire­ball]

I wish the “secu­rity” com­pany I worked for had that much sense. Unfor­tu­nately, they make it as hard to get Mac (or Linux) machines as Google has made it to get Win­dows. And since the Pow­ers That Be decided to “out­source” our entire IT depart­ment to a com­pany that man­u­fac­tures Win­dows PCs, I don’t expect that to change any time soon.

Browser add-on blocks Google Ana­lyt­ics. Google has released an add-on for Web browsers that blocks infor­ma­tion from being sent to its Ana­lyt­ics ser­vice. [Mac­Cen­tral]

This is rather point­less, as Tor blocks Google Ana­lyt­ics, and any other form of spy­ing on the Inter­net. Any­one who wants their brows­ing to be pri­vate is using it, which means that the peo­ple com­plain­ing about Google Ana­lyt­ics track­ing their activ­ity are only announc­ing their own igno­rance or stu­pid­ity (or both).

Brows­ing the web with­out Tor and com­plain­ing about pri­vacy is like stand­ing on a crowded side­walk and then com­plain­ing that peo­ple can see you.

Play­ing Online: Google Wave. Google Wave excites me because it is every­thing the other two medi­ums are. In my series, I said that there were two types of online role­play­ing medi­ums – real-time and cor­re­spon­dence. Real-Time (chat, VTT) requires a greater time com­mit­ment but it is imme­di­ate and requires no effort of patience. Cor­re­spon­dence medi­ums (forum, email) have prac­ti­cally zero time com­mit­ment, but are slower and require great patience, and are more alien to table­top gamers than real-time online medi­ums are.

Google Wave is a hybrid medium. It is both real-time and cor­re­spon­dence, when you choose for it to be. Google Wave is like a chat room with email-style archival, document-style acces­si­ble, imme­di­ate edit­ing, and even forum-style mul­ti­plic­ity of threads and fold­ers for orga­niz­ing your mate­r­ial, that every player can quickly access and orga­nize. Play-By-Posters and Play-By-Chatters will find in Google Wave every­thing their medi­ums used to do, and every­thing the other one did as well. [The Spir­its of Eden]