ibenez wrote:
] The more secure a system, the less usable it is.

That is not necessarily a direct relationship.

Closer, and what your example was talking about:

The more secure a system, the less accessable it is.

I have a great secured machine -- poured concrete blocks it from
even being plugged in. Worthless as a computer. I have a fairly
secure machine -- a laptop in a safe deposit box. Value of its
data doesn't change day to day; might as well be one of the stock
certificates stored with it. I have a desktop with a firewall and
a net connection -- every day it becomes just a little bit more
important to me. Straightforward relationship and trade off.

However, researchers have tried to demonstrate that usability is
critical for security -- see "Why Johnny Can't Encrypt" as an
example. Security at the consumer level, at least, which is what
we're talking about in the context of Longhorn. The
value of a consumer-focused system is that which is created
by the user. If the user can't use it for value creation,
the security becomes less significant.

But if the security isn't usable, it won't be used. Why does
everybody use public key cryptography when talking to Amazon, but
not in their email to their family? Usability.

RE: Hack In The Box - Keeping Knowledge Free - www.hackinthebox.org

] Brunch is the perfect collision of luxury and necessity.
] You must eat. Why not eat a meal of creative courses
] comfortably, among friends and family, at a time of day
] when we feel most relaxed?

Brunch Hour: Settling in for a celebration of ease

] When Hunter Thompson's first book, Hell's Angels, was
] published in 1967, I assigned him to write about his
] promotional tour for The Realist. Because he was having
] financial problems, I paid him $200 in advance. Later, I
] extended his deadline and offered to send him some LSD if
] it would help.
]
]
] "Good," he wrote back. "I've blown every deadline I've
] had for the past few months and it's good to find
] somebody with a schedule as fucked up as mine. The action
] here for the past two months has been unbelievable. All
] at once I got evicted, my wife went into a lingering
] two-month miscarriage and my lawyer came out from San
] Francisco and flipped out so badly that the two sheriff's
] deputies took him one Saturday night 200 miles across
] mountains to the state loony bin... As for acid, thanks
] but I'm suddenly OK."

New York's Premier Alternative Newspaper. Arts, Music, Food, Movies and Opinion

] MCI embraced a $9.75 billion takeover bid from Qwest on
] Saturday, finally succumbing to pressure to scrap its
] lower-priced deal with Verizon.

Succumbing to pressure: got the number they couldn't walk from.

] Verizon Communications Inc. now has five business days to
] respond with an improved proposal or walk away the loser
] after a nearly three-month bidding war.

loser: $200M breakup fee

] MCI Inc. said its board of directors, after shunning
] three prior bids from Qwest Communications Inc., had
] determined that the latest offer was superior to the
] long-distance phone company's $7.5 billion agreement with
] Verizon.

$9.75B > $7.5B? Really? Every day?

] Alternatively, the New York-based phone company could
] call for an immediate vote on its deal by MCI
] shareholders, hoping that enough are fearful of Qwest's
] shaky finances and strategic outlook.

fearful of Qwest's...: are owners not investors

] Verizon, one of the nation's two biggest local and
] wireless phone companies, said in a statement Saturday it
] would consider all its options. It questioned whether
] Qwest's higher offer would be "sufficient compensation
] for the increased risks associated with completing the
] transaction and executing the business plan."

"sufficient compensation": as if the short-term owners care
more about the long-term prospects versus a $2.25B premium.
What a concept.

] However, Denver-based Qwest also sounded a note of
] distrust after being treated as a second-class suitor for
] so long, its prior offers used chiefly a lever for
] extracting more money from Verizon.
]
] "We expect MCI to build upon its declaration of
] superiority with specific acts of support, including
] expeditiously seeking regulatory approvals of a
] transaction that it considers superior and in the best
] interests of its shareowners," the statement said.

Translation: "You thought your jobs were at risk. Ha.
What jobs? Wait... If you want $$, we can bring it, but
you have to be Good Little Executives. Stall, and no
Carrot!"

Update 4: MCI Embraces Qwest's $9.75B Takeover Bid - Forbes.com

] Two traveling penguins from Seaworld in San Diego went
] through regular airport screening at Denver International
] Airport recently.

Yes. Because the penguins might be harboring...

No, wait, the Seaworld staff might slip something through in the
penguin crate. Yes. Like a bomb. In the penguin carrying crate.

TheDenverChannel.com - Slideshow

flynn23 wrote:
] I do think that there are new tools all the time. But the bulk
] of what the industry delivers is just repackaged from 1988.

I agree with what you wrote. But there is a subtlety missing to
the original essay -- I memed it without time to talk about it.
Some more thoughts.

User Experience
If you look at the hot developments of the last year, they really
boil down to user interface. Obvious examples of this include the
stuff that Google has put out. Maps.Google -- especially the super
hot "satellite images" -- this is not new. Remember Terraserver?
Satellite images are not new, but the interface is so simple and
responsive that people are experimenting. And the assistant next
door wanted to show me some cool pictures. Same with gmail. Same
with flickr. Photo sharing is not new, group photosharing is not
new, database tagging of images, even, not new. I remember when I
went to the Galapagos in 2000 I tried to tag all of my pictures.
Failed. Now I could do it easily.

That's what you'd miss if we had seen OS X in 1988. The subtle
user experience tips that make it easier, better.

Where are my flying cars?
Speech recognition is a good case of where the development realities
have lagged expections. And part of that is because they must. Our
expectations of speech recognition continue to increase every time
we get close. Dragon Dictate, for example, was phenominal for
dictation -- if you trained it, and spoke in clipped words. When
speech recognition was first proposed, that would have been amazing;
by the time it became possible, expections were raised toward no
training, multiple users, multiple languages, continuous talk.
Flying cars aren't coming not because of technology issues, but
regulatory and infrastructure problems, and raised expectations;
I want a flying car without having to have a private pilot's license
and training and upkeep requirements.

Moore's Law of Users
The real issue is the users. We don't want the thing that beats
spreadsheets, because we're comfortable with them. What people
expect from their excel experience is drastically different from
their visicalc experience, but its all still on a metaphor from
actual ledgers we've used for hundreds of years. There are really
few things that we expect to do on a computer that wasn't
obvious to the superwellconnected in 1988: graphics, communication,
etc. The surprises are all in the things that weren't being
speculated about. The software innovations that were unexpected
are in places like cell phones.

I am writing applications for my blackberry. Imagine if someone
in 1988 had walked up to you with a smartphone connected to a
time-shifted GPRS network: here, this box that's about the size of
your mouse -- I can send instant messages around the world, look
up information anywhere I want, and run programs far more sophisticated than your mac can handle. In a box that's the size
of your mouse, and anywhere in the world. That would have blown
anyone's mind.

Remember how exciting the Mac Portable was?
(late 1989, http://www.lowendmac.com/pb/portable.shtml)

RE: The New Paradigm of Tools

] I'm not particularly concerned about the computer. But
] the thief, who thought he was only stealing an exam, is
] presently - we think - is probably still in possession of
] three kinds of data, any one of which can send this man,
] this young boy, actually, to federal prison. Not a good
] place for a young boy to be.
]
] You are in possession of data from a hundred million
] dollar trial, sponsored by the NIH, for which I'm a
] consultant. This involves some of the largest companies
] on the planet, the NIH investigates these things through
] the FBI, they have been notified about this problem.
]
] You are in possession of trade secrets from a Fortune
] 1000 biotech company, the largest one in the country,
] which I consult for. The Federal Trade Communication is
] very interested in this. Federal Marshals are the people
] who handle that.
]
] You are in possession of proprietary data from a
] pre-public company planning an IPO. The Securities and
] Exchange Commission is very interested in this and I
] don't even know what branch of law enforcement they use.
]
] Your academic career is about to come to an end. You are
] facing very serious charges, with a probability of very
] serious time. At this point, there's very little that
] anybody can do for you. One thing that you can do for
] yourself is to somehow prove that the integrity of the
] data which you possess has not been corrupted or copied.
]
] Ironically, I am the only person on the planet that can
] come to your aid, because I am the only person that can
] tell whether the data that was on that computer are still
] on that computer. You will have to find a way of hoping
] that if you've copied anything that you can prove you
] only have one copy of whatever was made.

Blast Radius: A World of Pain

] Well, Dont know the future of blogging, but the nature of
] it surely resembles something like what Rent-boy Renton
] describes : "I don't feel the sickness yet, but it's in
] the post. That's for sure. I'm in the junkie limbo at the
] moment. Too ill to sleep. Too tired to stay awake, but
] the sickness is on its way. Sweat, chills, nausea. Pain
] and craving. A need like nothing else I've ever known
] will soon take hold of me. It's on its way." and KABOOM!
] You start blogging!

Slashdot | BusinessWeek Rolls Out Blogspotting.net

] Though de Amicis was describing his feelings about
] Moroccan cuisine, this is precisely how I felt about
] desserts in Indian restaurants until 1989, the year that
] I, formerly a lawyer, was appointed food critic of Vogue
] magazine. As I contemplated the heavy responsibilities of
] my new post, I realized how inadequate I was to the
] honor, for I, like everybody I knew, suffered from a set
] of strong and arbitrary likes and dislikes regarding
] food. I feared that I was no better than an art critic
] who becomes nauseated by the color yellow, or suffers
] from red-green color blindness. At the time, I was
] friendly with a respected and powerful editor of
] cookbooks who so detested the flavor of cilantro that she
] brought a pair of tweezers to Mexican and Indian
] restaurants and pinched out every last scrap of this herb
] before she would take a bite. Imagine the dozens of
] potential Julia Childs and M.F.K. Fishers whose books she
] pettishly rejected, whose careers she snuffed in their
] infancy! I vowed not to follow in her footsteps.
]
] It went even deeper than that. Humans were designed to be
] omnivores. Blessed with all-purpose dentition and
] digestive systems, we are ready for anything. Unlike
] those of most other animals, our genes do not tell us
] what foods we should find tasty or repulsive.

It is a nice article about learning to eat food. And while
I respect his thesis -- he's wrong. And it is interesting that
he mentions cilantro as a example.

I am a very adventurous eater. There are things (cooked seafood)
that I don't like, but I occasionally will eat; and I will try
anything (guinea pig? yum!) at least once. But I try to avoid
cilantro. Because the taste is awful for me. It literally tastes
like soap, texture and all.

But I like his lactose point. Everyone I know is starting to claim
lactose intolerance.

The Omnivore - Learning to eat everything. By Jeffrey Steingarten

] Did you ever wish you could display a Google Maps map
] view%u2014with custom data%u2014on your own web page? No?
] Well, maybe you should go take up geocaching or
] something. On the other hand, if it sounds like something
] you'd like to do, read on...

Google Maps Standalone Mode