General – Page 41 – The Wacky World of Chris Knight

2007/01/04

Using Macs to sell Winblows-Only software

I can’t speak for you, but I think that Apple makes the damn sexiest laptops around. Obviously, it works for Apple. They are 60% awesome computer and 40% fashion accessory. Style sells a lot of computers for Apple. Other companies recognize this. What is amusing is when a windows-only software company recognizes this, and uses an image of a Apple Powerbook G4 laptop to promote themselves; despite the fact that the software they sell will not run on a Mac.

In this particular case I am speaking about Main Street Software, Inc. They sell a Mary Kay specific accounting system, which my mother happens to use. I’m planning on buying a new computer for my mother, and I would like it to be a Mac; so I went to their site to see if they are offering a Mac OS X version of their software. When I saw the home page image my hopes soared, since the plainly visible Mac laptop would seem to indicate to me Mac support. Alas, their product requirements indicate otherwise. They just like the style.

What, you suggest that this is a MacBook Pro booted into Windows? Nope. A close inspection of the image shows a ‘discolored’ area on the side of the screen near the top. In the PowerBook G4 series this was rubber cover over the AirPort and Blue Tooth antennas. Also, the MacBook Pro has a built in iSight camera and would not need the external iSight that is shown in the picture.

I know, it’s probably just some stock photo they bought from Corbis. Still, you would think that someone at the company would actually look at their website and notice the oddity. They are a software company after all, so you expect them to be somewhat aware of the misleading nature of their home page.

Chris Knight

2007/01/042007/01/04

The Seattle Times: Nation & World: Bush says feds can open mail without warrant

The Seattle Times: Nation & World: Bush says feds can open mail without warrant
Bush says feds can open mail without warrant

By James Gordon Meek

New York Daily News

WASHINGTON â€” President Bush quietly has claimed sweeping new powers to open Americans’ mail without a judge’s warrant.

Bush asserted the new authority Dec. 20 after signing legislation that overhauls some postal regulations. He then issued a “signing statement” that declared his right to open mail under emergency conditions, contrary to existing law and contradicting the bill he had just signed, according to experts who have reviewed it.

In the early days of PGP encryption, advocates used to use comparison of regular email to a postcard, and encrypted email to a sealed letter. The government was trying to restrict PGP and its use, frequently with the illogical argument that someone would only encrypt their email if they had something to hide. Advocates would point out that if that were the case, everyone would use postcards instead of letters in envelopes. A postcard, or regular email, can be read by any of the systems that is passes through. Letters offer greater privacy, and do not mean that the sender has something to hide.

Well, that argument is effectively moot now. If Grand Marshall Bush Supreme Arbi-Traitor of Democracy can claim “exigent circumstances” as a ‘war president’ than I can easily foresee secret rooms installed at the Post Office much as they were at SBC in San Francisco. In these rooms, and without benefit of the protections provided by the Fourth Amendment, people without conscience will violate your privacy for The Good of the Homeland. They will pre-screen your credit offers, make copies of the sexy photos from your long distance relationships, giggle at the itemized pay-per-view bill listing your late night viewing habits, and steal the junk-mail offers for penis enlargement pills in the hopes of someday developing a social life. They will do this for God and Country, and because they enjoy Power; Power from which our Constitution was designed to protect us.

This is particularly unsettling considering it follows so closely upon the heels of news that the government believes a warrant is not required to read your email if it is on someone else’s server.

Thank you Mr. Bush. I feel safer already.

-Chris

2006/12/282007/03/01

Government may not need warrant to search your e-mail

First off, I hate snake-oil salesmen. Whether they are dubious Search Engine Optimizer specialists, or greedy buggers selling bogus penis growth pills on late night television. That said, I also don’t like seeing the freedoms of the majority eroded in the pursuit of the few bad apples.

Government may not need warrant to search your e-mail
At issue is the Stored Communications Act, a law that gives the government easier access to material held by third parties than to first-party documents. In this case, the government claimed that Warshaks e-mail was stored on servers belonging to Yahoo and other companies, and that this meant it should be easier for them to access than if the e-mail was stored only on Warshaks personal computer. According to court documents seen by Ars Technica, Warshak argues that the act is unconstitutional and that users should have the same expectations of privacy regardless of who is storing their e-mail.

No decision has yet been made on the email issue. Once it is, Warshaks case will proceed in a lower federal court.

The crux of the matter is that the government feels your email is ‘more accessible’ because it is stored on someone else’s server. That should send a chill down your spine, because there are only a couple of people I know who own and run their own email servers, and I don’t think they read my weblog. I’m betting you, the reader, have at least one Yahoo or Gmail account; and the government wants the court to rule they can read it without a search warrant. (As a side note, if they win this one how long will it be until they argue mail at a non-USPS mailbox service is not protected under the 4th Amendment either?)

Should the government win this round, law enforcement will be allowed greater freedom in regards to access to email on third party servers in order to fish for reasons to get a real search warrant.

Should this happen, I see a perfect business model for defeating their lame ‘material held by third parties’ justification: co-op mail servers. Set up a mail service business under the co-op model, where every user is in fact part owner of the service and servers. Charge a buy-in fee when they join the co-op and a monthly membership fee for upkeep. The upside is that the users do own the server, and would be exempt from this new loophole the feds are trying to use to get around the 4th Amendment. The downside is that they will eventually find a way around it and perhaps put at risk all the members if one is a bad apple. It might not be a perfect solution, but I would prefer to have my mail on a server I own, or at least trust, than on a random Yahoo or Google/Gmail server.

-Chris