Privacy has become a huge issue. We get free (or cheap) and useful services in return for information about us and the potential uses of this information are becoming more frightening over time. If you don’t have anything to hide you might think this is OK, but what if someday someone will make use of the information you shared to do something you don’t approve of? The problem is that you can’t take it back. You can’t have your information withdrawn to get your privacy again, not even if you give up on the services that you got in return.
So I’ve been wondering if there’s a way, without legal assistance, to create a software mechanism that would allow us to take back our privacy. For example, let’s say I decide to close my Google account. I would like then all the data Google has on me to become undecipherable to them or to anyone else.
Unfortunately my thoughts on this led me to realize that this is a lot like DRM, which has failed miserably so far as people find the keys required to decipher the information eventually. But I’m still wondering whether this could work somehow.
This is an old school web 1.0 idea I had over the weekend. It’s very simple: let’s say you want to leave a message for someone, anonymously or not. You go into the website, put in the person’s email address and the message. The person doesn’t receive any notification about this, and can only see his/her messages if they go to the website and enter their email address. That’s it.
What is it good for? With all the connectivity among people and now that every website has “social” features, there’s no way for a simple “message in a bottle” kind of a gesture in today’s Internet.
I’ve been a fan of The Mars Volta for quite some time now. While waiting for their upcoming (6th studio) album, I listen to one of Omar Rodriguez Lopez (The Mars Volta’s dictator) albums. Rodriguez Lopez has been releasing many (free to listen) albums lately, that are very different in style and sound. The latest one, which I really like, is a live recording called どういたしまして (“You’re Welcome” in Japanese).
(This post contains an embedded player. If you’re using an RSS reader you might not be able to see it)
After over a year of selling Dindy, without much success, I finally made it free. In that year 366 people downloaded Dindy, 105 (28%) kept it on their device, 74 cancelled their order (to get the refund) and 187 paid for it and later on uninstalled it without getting their money back.
Dindy’s rating in the market is 4.26/5, which is pretty good. I hope it will keep this rating now that it’s free. Well, first it has to be downloaded :) I want to see what will come out of it. If it will be popular, I’ll add the option to donate money.
I’ve decided to leave IBM. After 2 years in Diligent Technologies and over 2.5 years as an IBMer following Diligent’s acquisition, and considering I wasn’t pursuing an IBM career that will last many years to come, it was definitely time for me to go.
I’ll be an IBMer until January 31st, 2011. In Diligent-IBM I worked with many great and smart people. As part of my work on ProtecTIER, Diligent-IBM’s award winning Virtual Tape Library product, I learned a lot about high-performance, high-availability systems programming in Linux. My main contributions were to the cluster version of the product and most recently to ProtecTIER’s OpenStorage (OST) implementation. I believe ProtecTIER is a great product that can bring tremendous value to customers and I’m proud to have been part of its development.
My next step is a joint project with a good friend. A garage start-up of sorts. I can’t say much about it, only that while it’s not the greatest idea in the whole wide world, I think it can be a successful venture. I expect to be unemployed for about a year :)
Ever since I had a wireless router I’ve been sharing my WiFi network with anyone who could find it. It had a web-only restriction, but that’s just because I didn’t want anyone using file sharing and using up all the bandwidth. Yesterday, however, I password protected and encrypted my home WiFi network.
The reason is the latest unveiling of Firesheep, a tool for HTTP session hijacking that works over open WiFi networks. The only protection against Firesheep is using secure HTTP (https://) with every website, but I don’t think I’m that meticulous to remember this all the time. And yes, I know about the extensions that help with that.
On the other hand, it’s probably a better idea to start using https everywhere just to be on the safe side.
Posted
on November 14, 2010, 2:10 pm,
by Amit,
under English, Personal.
I’ve been in NYC for a couple of days now but didn’t have time to update. I’m basically hanging out with two good friends. Before I left Tucson, a colleague of ours took me and my boss bicycle riding in the desert among the cacti, which I really enjoyed. I also fell off my bicycle and left some skin in the desert :)
In NYC I went with one of my friends to a Broadway musical called American Idiot, which is based on Green Day’s music. The show was a lot of fun. Other than that we’re just walking around the more and the less toured streets of NYC (Times Square, East Village, Little Italy, …) The sun is shining this weekend (in November!) and it’s a great urban experience.
Today I’m going to Central Park to walk around and tonight we’ll go to a comedy club I visited on my trip last year, The Comedy Cellar. I’m looking forward to it… last year I enjoyed it a lot.
I don’t have many pictures and videos from this trip, so I’ll just post everything together at the end of it.