Impact of a certain class of work.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/10/the_psychologic_1.html

This links to an interesting video and article. And with the OPM breech... the story just gets worse.

Liars and Outliers - the book

A blog I have kept on my radar for many years is the one from Bruce Schneier.  Security, specifically for me around computers and networks, has always been an interest to me.  I've seen how exploits worked and studied them to better understand the underlying principles that make them work.  Mostly to better understand how to defend against them.  For example, one of the first exploits I worked on was understanding forging IP addresses in TCP/IP packets and HTTP headers back in the 90s.  And yet I'm still surprised by how many programmers continue to put information they use to establish "trust" into easily forged headers.  Fortunately I've been involved early enough on some projects to squash misguided efforts like that.

Bruce authored the book "Liars and Outliers" and it was one of the few books I purchased for my Kindle as a pre-order because I have not been disappointed by his previous works.  It is a well thought out and methodical book that builds and builds one block at a time.  I highly recommend it (as do several other reviewers).

Slingbox Solo.  Some successes and some failures.

Slingbox classic was having some problems lately.  For some reason the IR would quit working.  Though my wife was able to resolve the problem by unplugging the IR connector and reinserting it this solution was not a long term viable alternative.  The IR was failing more than once a day and I had to wait until my wife got home from work to fix the classic.

So I got the Slingbox Solo.  The box is a little smaller than the classic but bulkier.  The hardware installation was little different than the classic.  But the software installation was awful.  First off, I could not paste passwords into the fields.  Huh?  I use generated passwords from Password Safe and these are not easy to type.  So I had to revert to my own strong password which is not going to be as strong because it is not random enough.  They really should allow for the user to paste into a text field. 

The "setup for internet viewing" seemed to do nothing but set slingbox to a fixed IP and never updated any of my router settings.  So I finally figured out how to reset the Solo to use the IP address my classic used.  Once that was done things worked pretty straight away.  I was able to verify the iPhone Slingplayer was able to access the Solo from across the Internets.  So looks like I'm all set for my next upcoming business trips. 

Wish I knew why I can't post a subject line for my posts on this blog, sigh.

I just wanted to do a quick run down of my experience today with TomTom on iPhone 3G and their car dock. It rocks!

First off, the TomTom I had been carrying with me these past couple of years is not all that old. But the differences are like night and day.

The first thing I noticed is that the new software knows the speed limit on highways. This is a life saver for road warriors like me. I frequently pull into a new town in the evening and when I leave the airport I have no idea, zero, what the speed limit is on the highway I just got on. Sometimes it is 55, sometimes 65 and sometimes higher. But now TomTom tells me what my speed is and a slash and what the limit is. No more guessing.

The volume on the car dock was adequate for me. Granted, Hertz gave me a Prius this time so maybe it isn't a loud car to begin with. I haven't made a call so no idea how that sounds yet but I'm going to try later this week.

The charging while driving is nice but when I got to the hotel about 40 mins later I had about 76% charge. Granted I forgot to check what it was before I left. Still better than arriving at the hotel with only 20% charge left.

Lane assist on the beltways (i.e. I guess not major highways) was so-so. It did have white arrows for the lanes I should be in and black for the ones I should avoid so it was functional. But on the Interstate it was AWESOME. I've never had lane assist before. If you haven't and you travel weekly to strange places like I do then I highly recommend it.

Overall, considering the steep price between the TomTom iPhone 3G software and the cost of the additional car dock I still can not complain. It will serve me well and already has. I just wish I understood more about how IQ routing works and how they collect data and keep it updated in the software but perhaps I need to do more research. It did get me to the hotel today faster than the old TomTom did 2 weeks ago.

Dow needs to cross 7500

So looks like we bottomed around 6666.  Since then it has kept going up.  Lets see what happens here.

Dow, well, not good.

Back in Oct 2008 I said that if the Dow went below 7500 that we have the real possibility of seeing Dow 3000.  I'm now watching the Dow having a hard time staying at 6900.  This is not good.  I just don't see the Dow getting back over 7500 now until it hits bottom and that bottom is probably somewhere between 3000 & 4000.  Hopefully not below 3000. 

Why video blogs (i.e. vlogs) & posts should provide transcripts

I came across this web site and completely agree that all video blogs & posts should provide a transcript for their talk.  The reason for me is simple.  Text is more accessible than video.  I can read text anywhere especially when I'm waiting for an airplane or on one.  Video is more hassle.  I need to don headphones so I don't disturb others around me.  And I have to pay attention which is difficult if I'm trying to watch a little in the concourse then pause and get on a plane and watch the rest an hour later.  If I'm trying to follow a train of thought (unlike a movie) then this format doesn't work (for me). 

Micro Persuasion: Why Text Remains King of the Web

My friend Robert Scoble has a problem. He produces terrific videos on technology companies for Fast Company. They're a little long sometimes, but they're almost always interesting.
So what's Scoble's problem? Well a lot. The videos don't generate a lot of in-bound links from bloggers, conversations on Twitter or mentions on aggregators like Techmeme. "None of my 1,000+ videos has ever made it to Techmeme," Scoble said.