Silicon Shecky

Years ago I use to think McAfee was a good Anti-Virus program. Then they got bloated. Now McAfee is becoming chicken little.

You can see the reports regularly. New exploit in this, new trojan here, new zero-day exploit, and on. The world of securing your information and your identity, either individual or corporate, is a complex and never ending battle. Nothing is going to be 100% secure. you know it, I know it and the bad guys know it. Its a matter of mitigation. The smaller area of attack we give the bad guys, the more chance that they will pass us up for an easier target.

It becomes more complex every year. New devices come out, connectivity becomes better, people become more greedy. In fact the more complex things get, the easier it is to break into them with simplicity. You may ask how is that the case. Simply put you just showed how. We tend to gloss over the simple items for the more complex ones, including bugs and holes. That is a discussion to have another time though.

Right now, in the security field, McAfee has been making a lot of headlines lately. From a RAT Report that other companies are calling “shady” to the latest report from them about cars becoming the next hacking target, McAfee keeps getting their name out there. The problems with these reports is their are either obvious or disputed. That McAfee look more like an attention hound than anything else.

This grab for attention comes on the heels of a decade of McAfee putting out worse and worse products. Suites that are so bloated that you machine drags to a crawl during start up. Anti-Malware products that let too much Malware through. Software that is difficult to remove from a system should you prefer to go with one of their competitors. How the mighty have fallen.

Most companies in the consumer security field, especially those that make Anti-Malware software, can run into these same pitfalls as the become more popular. Norton has, although they are slowly turning things around, they still have a long way to go. Kaspersky is doing its best not to fall down that path, but it does seem to be getting more resource intensive. AVG, well they put out a decent product but we are about due for another bad patch that messes machines up. None of them are perfect, but some are better than others, and McAfee has been considered part of the bottom of the heap for a while now.

So McAfee throws up a smokescreen. Instead of improving their product, they try to show that they know more. Sorry but knowledge of what is happening, and the ability to translate that into a decent working product do not have to be equal. In fact, McAfee has shown me that you can have the knowledge without the product. Then again, McAfee lately has been more like Chicken Little. Just remember, the sky isn’t falling, things are just progressing. We as the ones in the field need to keep our wits about us and it will all be fine.

Apple, a company you either love or hate. Its about as black and white as one can get. Now they really have a chance to make some good changes to their culture, but they won’t.

When Apple was founded, the computer world was a simpler place. Young people just wanted to be able to play, to work on these new machines. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak created a company that fed into those dreams, helping define an era. Having an Apple II machine was hip, it was cool, and it was around $1000-$1500 to get one. Most of its competitors cost around the same, so it wasn’t too big of a deal. You could purchase or write your own programs, and do what you wanted to with the system.

Somewhere along the way, after Woz left, Apple’s vision started changing. They came out with the Macintosh which was an amazing little machine. A machine that started to really open the world of computers to more people. A machine that would redefine Apple. Who can forget the Orwellian Ad that they came up with for the Mac. Funny how prophetic that would be.

Steve Jobs always had a great mind for marketing and a brilliant mind for ideas. Some over the years would stick, some wouldn’t. He got removed for Apple, sold all but one of his shares, and eventually through the means of  mergers and acquisitions wound up back in charge of the company he had founded. He brought them back from the brink with a savvy set of ideas that pushed the envelope not in computing, but in consumer electronics.

Jobs also took the paranoia he got from his original ouster to an extreme. While Mac is a good, and solid system, and pretty easy to use, the helped create fallacies around it, from the level of its security to the ease of its use. He also locked the system down tighter than Fort Knox. Same with the iPhone and iPad. Locking down these systems not only gives Apple more control over the device and the data but creates a problem for consumers from a pricing standpoint. The lack of competition helped Apple become the 2nd largest company in the United States, only behind Exxon Mobile. It also gave Apple another item at its disposal, the lawsuit.

Apple is as much a company now that is anti-competitive as Microsoft was back in the 90′s. Its biggest rival is Google, who is just as closed minded and stupid about things as Apple is. Both companies claim to have the consumers best interests at heart. Apple looks at any competing product and immediately tries to find what it can sue over. This is not in the best interests of the consumer.

With Steve Jobs stepping away from the CEO position to Chairman of the Board, he still has a great influence over Apple, its products, its direction. Tim Cook could try to open things up, but won’t. The consumer friendly company that was the little engine that could is gone. They are a company that wants, like Google, to tell you how to do things. They don’t care about what you think. This is why they have been referred to as a cult over the years. Just like Scientology, Jonestown, the KKK and many others over the years, the ultimate goal is to control you and make you bend to their will.

Steve, thank you for all you have done to forward technology, but your controlling and paranoid thoughts, I won’t miss.

Google Plus, the honeymoon is over. Is social Media any good when you have no one to talk to?

So there we go. Google is really bringing the hammer down on people who use Pseudonyms. Not only for Plus, but also for Buzz, and other Googley apps. What good is it though? People get pissed and leave those services. That means less ad money for Google. It gives people a bad taste in their mouth, so they stop purchasing things that Google supports. It can be a nightmare, especially in this day and age of Twitter and Facebook also.

A friend of mine who just left google plus wrote the following as their last post:

Dear +Bradley Horowitz

I really thought you guys had figured it out, but its pretty clear from the Google Name Policy that Google has once again failed at recognizing the basic tenant of social networking, namely that relationships made and maintained online are just as real as those made in real life if not more so because of the greater pool of finding like minded individuals. Clearly those at the top have never been part of a forum community, an MMO, or been to a spontaneous community event whether it be out in the desert at Burning Man, inside the track at the Indy 500, or just waiting in a line for a concert. Those who have understand that a chosen name is just as real as one printed, stamped and filed by someone’s parents.

Everyone else has already mentioned the safety and legal concerns of denying the protection of a pseudonym to a wide array of people who would be in significant danger should they use their legal names on a public, datamining, service, so I won’t belabor the point.

For Google, I only ask you to watch the numbers as people begin to walk away and try to understand the significance of having a network where no one is, because none of their friends can participate safely.

For everyone else, please repost on your own accounts, you can give me a mention, if you like, but don’t just share it, you never know when I won’t be considered ‘real’ enough for Google.

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