A Shot Across Google’s Bow?

Wherein one Internet titan shows a thing or two to another Internet titan’s competing browser:

Users report Microsoft Security Essentials removes Google Chrome

On September 30th, 2011, an incorrect detection for PWS:Win32/Zbot was identified and as a result, Google Chrome was inadvertently blocked and in some cases removed. Within a few hours, Microsoft released an update that addresses the issue. Signature versions 1.113.672.0 and higher include this update. Affected customers should manually update Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) with the latest signatures. After updating the definitions, reinstall Google Chrome. We apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused our customers.

An inadvertent inconvenience — yup. Sure. You betcha. 😆

But, hey, they apologized.

I can believe that.

Question is, does Google? :mrgreen:

Next thing you know, we’re going to hear about some strange search (non)rankings and (non)results for Microsoft products.

Maybe when you do a search for “word processor suite,” the results will show WordPerfect back its rightful kingly place. And Microsoft Word(no-perfect-there) will show up once at the bottom of the first page of results…with an ominous warning about it being a potential attack site.

Stand by, folks. This could get exciting.

We may be entering a new phase of the browser wars. 😯

Meanwhile, maybe you’d better play it safe. Use Yahoo! for search, Firefox for browsing, and WordPerfect for documenting. (And maybe Linux for an operating system.)

This PSA has been brought to you by Mark Roth, Ain’t Complicated, and your local browser. You’re welcome.

PS: Coming tomorrow — His Name Is Obama. If current plans don’t hold, well, that post won’t be coming tomorrow. Keep your browser tuned to this…ah…station.

Why Not Be Cruel?

Philosopher Richard Rorty allegedly admits that the secular liberal has no answer for that.

But now I’m ahead of myself.

David Brooks titled his September 12 New York Times column thus: If It Feels Right…

And here you have the first and third sentences of his piece:

During the summer of 2008, the eminent Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith led a research team that conducted in-depth interviews with 230 young adults from across America. […] Smith and company asked about the young people’s moral lives, and the results are depressing.

OK. So it’s only 230 young folks out of million? But even that few people in the 18-23 age range ought to know better. (Surely they didn’t pull a Kinsey and survey Gutter Dwellers.) Read it all

Facebook: Its Face in Your Book

If your life is an open book, Facebook has had its face deep into it.

And if you thought your life was a closed book, Facebook has had its face deep into it, you poor deluded soul.

Facebook privacy issues: Social network is watching you even when you’re logged out

Facebook has admitted that it has been watching the web pages its members visit – even when they have logged out.

In its latest privacy blunder, the social networking site was forced to confirm that it has been constantly tracking its 750million users, even when they are using other sites.

The social networking giant says the huge privacy breach was simply a mistake – that software automatically downloaded to users’ computers when they logged in to Facebook ‘inadvertently’ sent information to the company, whether or not they were logged in at the time.

Before this, it was OnStar.

What next?

My cellphone listening in, even when it’s not on a call? Or when it’s allegedly turned off?

And what about Google?

Or my answering machine?

Or my toaster? 😯

OK. I lost interest in fleshing out this post. Sorry. That’s just the way it is. I have a real life to live…and that means I have to earn a living. Or rather, try. 🙁

PS to Facebook: The “blunder” and “mistake” and “inadvertently” and “bug” concepts all require the willing suspension of disbelief.

My Computer’s Still Personal

One Facebook friend told another (out of my presence, I suppose he thought) that I’m paranoid about The Cloud. Here. Read the exact quote for yourself:

image of Facebook comments about me being paranoid about the cloud
IDs blurred to protect the…ah…insolent. 😉

His opinion versus my opinion — I’ll take mine any day! 😀

And I’ll even throw in this next piece for free:

The Cloud’s My-Mom-Cleaned-My-Room Problem

This is not a short reflection on my childhood neither of my parents was the room-cleaning type but a metaphor for the set of web services we call the cloud. We all know the feeling of logging into Facebook/Tumblr/Twitter/Netflix/Pandora/Gmail and realizing that the interface has changed.

[…you really ought to read the missing guts…]

The personal computing era rose at a time when bandwidth was very constrained. Software ran locally and most individuals’ computers were not hooked up to networks. Your computer *was* personal. And when you got a new one, the first thing most people did was to customize the desktop background. BBS, AOL, and the web began to change all that, but we still thought of our computers as objects distinct from the Internet. You ran software (games, word processors, organizing tools, music players) inside your box without reference to the wider web.

Now, more and more of the computing power we use comes from a CPU across the Internet. We no longer own our digital homes. Instead, we live rent-free with our parents. There are some serious upsides to living with your parents, particularly in today’s economy. You save money. You don’t have to worry about figuring as many things out on your own. Someone else fixes all the messes. And it’s harder to make a a mess when you’re being constantly monitored.

But the freedom of usage that defined personal computing does not extend to the world of parental computing. This isn’t a bug in the way that cloud services work. It is a feature. What we lose in freedom we gain in convenience. Maybe the tradeoff is worth it. Or maybe it’s something that just happened to us, which we’ll regret when we realize the privacy, security, and autonomy we’ve given up to sync our documents and correspondence across computers.

So, no, I don’t Carbonite or Sync or Mozy or GoogleDocs or DropBox or Office 360.

I still believe in privacy and security.

I still believe in personal computers and personal local-box software.

I’m old school. 😯

I don’t live with my parents.

Go ahead. Call me paranoid for that too! 🙄

Someday a tornado is going to come out of that cloud and remind you of me.

PS: I have some Facebook “privacy” news in the hopper for my next post.

Missionary Plane Down

This happened on September 22:

YAJASI Plane Crashes; Three Killed | JAARS

A Pilatus PC-6 crashed today in Indonesia; pilot Paul Westlund and the two Indonesian passengers died in the accident. The plane—flown by our partner YAJASI—was traveling in a remote, mountainous area. The cause is still unknown, and an investigation is pending.

Paul had flown in Indonesia for nearly 25 years; he’s survived by his wife and two children. Please pray along with us for the families, YAJASI, and everyone else involved.

May God bless and comfort the families and colleagues of these three. (My Web searching so far has failed to yield the names of the two Indonesians.)

Here are three other posts I came across:

Above all, love God!

since November 9, 2005