The Compulsive Explainer

I Try Twitter

I keep hearing about how fantastic this service is. So I got an account, and every once in awhile I get an email saying "So-and-so is now following you on Twitter." These persons always have women's names, so I suspect their objectives are commercial.

Since I am always sending out emails about my latest postings, it I occurred to me that Twitter might be a better way to do this. So I tried copying my last email into Twitter. It said it had 254 too many characters - 140 characters is the limit. Huh?

You can't say much in 140 characters; real communications is impossible. But that is probably the main idea: to end literacy forever.

The Pirate Party

I have heard of this, off and on, but not really looked into it. The party, a Swedish organization, has three objectives:

• Reform of copyright law
• An abolished patent system
• Respect for the right to privacy

All of which I support fully. Based on the feedback I have received so far, I doubt if most of you agree - if you have even thought about it.

Wikipedia says more:

The Pirate Party (Swedish: Piratpartiet) is a political party in Sweden. Founded in 2006, it is now the third largest party in Sweden in terms of membership. Its sudden popularity has given rise to parties with the same name and similar goals in Europe and worldwide, forming the international Pirate Party movement.

The Party has intentionally chosen to be block independent on the traditional left-right scale^[2] to pursue their political agenda with all mainstream parties.

Google has recently acquired EtherPad, and online collaborative editing service, which it intends to use in its Wave service. But it has released the EtherPad code as Open Source, which was promptly used by the Pirate Party to host its own PiratePad service. It also has its Tor Network, to which I (and my computer) belong.

Here is a Google translation of these announcements.

Privacy on the Internet

Eric Schmidt is the CEO of Google. On a talk show he said:

If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place. If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines -- including Google -- do retain this information for some time and it's important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities.

Bruce Schneier, who is a security guru with his own company, responded:
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Privacy protects us from abuses by those in power, even if we're doing nothing wrong at the time of surveillance.

We do nothing wrong when we make love or go to the bathroom. We are not deliberately hiding anything when we seek out private places for reflection or conversation. We keep private journals, sing in the privacy of the shower, and write letters to secret lovers and then burn them. Privacy is a basic human need.

For if we are observed in all matters, we are constantly under threat of correction, judgment, criticism, even plagiarism of our own uniqueness. We become children, fettered under watchful eyes, constantly fearful that -- either now or in the uncertain future -- patterns we leave behind will be brought back to implicate us, by whatever authority has now become focused upon our once-private and innocent acts. We lose our individuality, because everything we do is observable and recordable.

This is the loss of freedom we face when our privacy is taken from us. This is life in former East Germany, or life in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. And it's our future as we allow an ever-intrusive eye into our personal, private lives.

Too many wrongly characterize the debate as "security versus privacy." The real choice is liberty versus control. Tyranny, whether it arises under threat of foreign physical attack or under constant domestic authoritative scrutiny, is still tyranny. Liberty requires security without intrusion, security plus privacy. Widespread police surveillance is the very definition of a police state. And that's why we should champion privacy even when we have nothing to hide.
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I can't put it any better than that.

However, I suspect that most care little about protecting their individuality, or that of others - and would rather live without it.

Products that Sell Themselves Automatically

What are the hottest new products? Facebook and Twitter. You may object that they aren't products, but some kind of strange new service - but that is making an artificial distinction. They are getting all kinds of people to join them - and in the process are making all kinds of money.

All those precious eye-balls looking at their site can be easily diverted into looking at advertisers - which is really where it's at. It's no different than looking at a newspaper - except it is free - the main gotcha. People can easily be suckered into a freebie - not realizing that they are giving away themselves - for free.

These services have one objective: to take over your life - and they are succeeding admirably.

You may simply reply that they are only providing what people want - so what can be wrong with that? The same could be said for drug dealers - they are giving people what they want - very badly. In either case, the results are not good - and the results are what count: they teach people to be helpless consumers: slurping up the latest stuff. 

Not all are this way, it is true. There are some sharp people out there, also using the latest stuff. But they know what is going on, and use it - instead of letting it use them. But they are an exception.

Myself, I am scared of them and give them a wide berth. I get frequent notices that so-and-so is now following me on Twitter, but I ignore them. That is another world, one I do not want to inhabit.

I am not a twit.

Mozilla Takes a Dig at Google

Mozilla is the open-source company that gave us the Firefox browser, the one that I use and recommend. Mozilla has a long history, which I just brushed up on using Wikepedia, being curious myself. But for our purposes here, just consider it the Firefox company. Even after reading about it on Wikipedia, I have no idea how it makes its money or stays in business. Suffice it to say that it exists, and it is influential in the software world, where prestige means a lot.

The relationship between Mozilla and Google has never been clear. Google is a strong supporter of open source software, has some of the best brains in the business, but also has keen business instincts. Initially, they were in bed together, let's put it that way. But lately, as in many love affairs, the relationship has soured. Especially when Google introduced its own browser, Chrome. Evidently, Google no longer includes Mozilla in its business plans - which are, briefly, to take the software market away from Microsoft. 

Recently, the head of Mozilla, Asa Doltzler, fired a shot over Google's bow, urging their users to use the Microsoft's Bing search engine - because it has better privacy provisions. This is a sticky issue, but I suspect he is right. 

Will I switch? No. Using Google is too easy for me, even tho I do not like their privacy policies. Mozilla is doing us a favor by helping to keep Google in line - and we do need protection from the newest bully on the block.

The cloud has become your cloud

HOT Hardware

This is about Google Chrome, Google's new Internet operating system. I have gotten all worked up about this before, but no one got excited with me. I suspect my readers don't know what an operating system is, so I will give it to you straight: it's the thing that operates your computer. Without one of these, you computer is just some expensive, useless hardware. It's the soul in your machine. 

Google's big new idea is to be the organizer behind a new soul for your machine. Note that I did not say it was planning on owning this new soul, like Microsoft owns Windows - it is going to be the soul behind the soul - a very nice place to be. A kind of modern Godfather or Pied Piper that everybody respects and follows.

This is going to be done with open source software development, where everybody gets involved - with some kind of conductor making everybody plays the same music. Google, as you guessed, plans on being that conductor. Check out the clever You Tube video explaining Google's philosophy behind this. The browser is going to be your window to the world - which it is now, but it is going to be faster and livelier - maybe even sexier. 

It is also going to put you and all your stuff in the cloud - whether you like it or not. So it's fair to ask: what the heck is the cloud? It's the hottest thing to come along for some time. Technically, it's a humongous lot of computers out there somewhere all linked together with a huge amount of storage space.  The result is tremendous amounts of computer power for almost free. Enough to make any company drool at the mouth - and enough to scare the pants off any sensible person.

Like any technological breakthrough, the end results are impossible to predict, but everyone is getting on board anyway - they don't want to miss the train as it leaves the station. The conductor is waving his flag, you gotta get on board now!

So what does this mean, in practical terms? It means in one year from now personal computers will be entirely different, for one thing. And Microsoft will be history - no small matter either. But most importantly - it means a new era of collaboration will be dawning in the computer/software world. It's about time, so far it has been busy shooting itself in the foot.

Hopefully, it will mean companies will have to compete to provide the best services - not just compete to see much they can stomp on everybody else. And smaller players should have better chances of success, without getting their butts bit off.

Will this happen? Probably not. The Powers That Be will figure out some way to stay in control, but it will be harder for them now. If the public comes out of its deep sleep, stops watching television, and realizes what is going on, it could kick their ass - but I don't expect this to happen.

Keepass

Keepass is a free, open-source program for managing your passwords. You can also use it for other things: for example I use it to store my passport info and my Costa Rican residence info.

You should have a separate password for every site you visit on the Net. And these passwords should be secure: which means it would be nearly impossible for you to remember all of them.

Fortunately, most browsers will remember your sign-in information for you and enter this information for you whenever you enter a site that asks for it. Also, many sites, such as Amazon, keep this information in a cookie, and automatically log you in. Firefox does a good job of remembering passwords, but some sites will not let Firefox enter the password for you. When I go to my commercial mailing service, Aerocasillas, for example, I have to enter my password myself - I have to go to Keepass, put my password in the clipboard and paste it into Aerocasillas.

I change the password to my online banking account every month, according to a schedule I set up on Google Calendar. I tried to be clever about this, and made it using every character on the keyboard such as: (.SI!n+>. And I stored them on Just1Key, a neat service on the Web, that encrypts your sign-in info, so you only have to remember one password to access your other user names and passwords.

This was fine until I found out that HushMail was giving the Feds its user's passwords - and Just1Key uses Hushmail's technology. All of a sudden, my security wasn't so secure. So I went to sourceforge to find out what free open source programs they have for storing passwords. They have two: Password Safe and Keepass. I downloaded both and tried them both. I like Keepass the best - although Password Safe is a fine program too.

Keepass has two ways you can access it: a password you remember or a password file - or both. I opted for both, I'm the kind of person who wears both a belt and suspenders: if one fails, you always have a backup. Keepass generated a password file for my USB pen drive, and I came up with a clever phrase that I could remember: not one word, but many.

Also Keepass supports TANs:

These are passwords that can be used only once. These special passwords are used by some banks. This provides additional security, as a spy cannot perform transactions, even if he knows the password of your banking account.

By bank doesn't use TANs yet, but if it does, I am ready for it.

Keepass will generate passwords for you - which are more secure than anything you can dream up for yourself. The next time I change the password for my bank, I am going to let keepass do the job for me. 

Any complaints? Yes, the user documentation on open source projects is not always that helpful. They could really use a good technical writer on their projects, but since they are usually programmers, they overlook this.

Google Docs

This is a neat service, and I have decided to use it instead of Open Office. Back in the Nineties, Microsoft Word was the standard word-processing application. Then Sun came out with Open Office, an open source replacement for Microsoft Office. Sun had been having a long feud with Microsoft and this was one way for them to get even with it. However, Microsoft eventually wore Sun down and now it is owned by Oracle. Google is now the new face in town, and it seems to be doing better.

Part of its strategy is convincing the world that its way is better. Recently they even introduced a new programming language, Go. One of its main advantages is its speed of compilation, something that always slows down programmers as they wait for their programs to compile, to see if they work (they usually don't, so they have to fix them and wait for another compile to see if they have fixed it.) Since they are always in a hurry, speed is essential.

Speed is also essential for everybody else, no one likes to wait for his computer to finish whatever it is doing and come back to paying attention to them again. Open Office Write is a big application and takes awhile to come up. Googe docs, by contrast, is almost instantaneous. 

Also, a Google Docs document is much more compatible with HTML programs, such as TypePad, which I use for my blog. I can do a direct copy and paste from Google into TypePad, and all my formatting, included Internet links, comes across seamlessly. If you use Blogger, which is owned by Google, it is even easier. In addition, you can share your documents with others, which would be very handy in an organizational environment.

What is the drawback? Your documents are stored on Google's servers, not on yours. This means that the National Security Agency has no doubt figured out a way to copy them to their computers too. This is not a problem for me because nearly all my writing is on the Net already; and I want the world to look at them. Those less trusting of the government may need to give some thought to this.

Make Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars a Day

Interested? Then read this article on TechCrunch.

How about those advertisers who were making over $100,000 a day selling Acai Berry and other weight loss products – they are friends of mine, pioneers of new advertising channels. You see those ads saying “Inbox (5). Nick, someone in San Francisco has a crush on you!” (with your name, profile picture, and city in the ad). I generated millions of dollars from these offers on Facebook – I am not proud of it, but it was very lucrative.

I will walk you through how these online scams work on Facebook and other social networks – the mechanics of how the money is made, some of the people involved, and who is actually clicking on ads.

The bottom line is this: Facebook is ripping off their users - and so is every other social networking site. They are legal criminals, a type that is becoming more and more common. They figure out clever ways to rob the public - the same thing the financial industry is doing. 

You will not be able to understand this article (I certainly couldn't) but you can be sure some types will make it their business to understand it - and get filthy rich. 

This is the New America - based on deceit, using the latest technologies.

A Smart Phone Makes you Smarter

Not only that, it also makes you more socially desirable, more attractive to other people. People's hand-held electronic possessions have now become part of themselves, just like their clothing, home and car.

A cell phone is nice, but it is not something you can show off to anyone. When they first came out, everybody wanted to have one of the new tiny ones, but this fad has passed. Now they have so many new things they are boring - except for thieves, of course (a real problem in Central America, where people will kill to get the latest pair of sneakers). 

A smart phone has a decent-sized display and a speaker, and can perform all kinds of tricks to impress your friends.

However, if you are not into impressing people what good are they?