Journal #9, October 26

http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=732745

So basically to give you a summary of the article, a boy "hacks" or walks through his school's "excellent" security system, and then e-mails the principal telling him that the security system was terrible. His principal then got the police to arrest the kid for "trespassing” unlawful possession of personal identification information and identity theft, all felonies. 

What is going on here? The kid might as well have taken all of the information and sold it online. Both would end him up facing felonies in court. There is excellent teaching going on at this school. If a 15 year old kid breaks down your horrible security system, wouldn't you want to know? Don't shoot the messenger. It sounds like to me that the principal of that school is a hot head and it boggles my mind how someone could get in position to teach people when they are so ignorant themselves. The kid deserves a reward, not a jail sentence. I thought honesty was the best policy? Well that's thrown out the window.

The only way this would be different is if the kid sent an e-mail saying "Hey, I can hack into all your goodies, how much money are you going to give me for me not to say anything?" The story doesn’t say what his e-mail said. I'm sure it wasn't something harsh. If you’re smart enough to hack into a computer security system, you’re smart enough not to send an e-mail (from your e-mail address, or home ip, saying you want money). "The student charged has a history of computer mischief but likely was not interested in stealing personal information" 

http://www.shenet.org/ is the website of the school and says "Posted 10/23/08

About 1:00 p.m. on Tuesday an e-mail was received by our high school principal informing him that the sender had access to a file that had demographic data about bus drivers. It was signed “A student.” The N.Y.S. Police were immediately called and began their investigation into who sent the e-mail. 
In the meantime, the district's Information Services Department (IMS) began to investigate and discovered that two high school students had accessed the file from an internal computer using their student password. Due to a configuration error, this file was not completely secured from student password access after being moved to a new server.  IMS was able to determine that this was the only district "data” file that was impacted from this configuration error and accessed by these individuals. 
The district takes great measures to secure our data and this breach is extremely troublesome. Once the investigation is complete those responsible will be punished according to our code of conduct and subject to possible criminal charges. 
We will have reviewed our procedures and IMS has written an application that proactively reviews folder security permissions on all system folders. This will be run as part of the current IMS protocols for the routine system security and integrity process." This doesn’t even inform the website readers how the kid e-mailed the principal instead of proceeding to steal the information. This is horrible.

http://i300.photobucket.com/albums/nn15/thetruthtellerwithdangeleyes/HONESTY/honesty-3.jpg

Journal #8, October 19

http://www.engadget.com/2008/10/14/apples-all-new-macbook-pro-packs-new-nvidia-gpu-glass-trackpad/

So Apple comes out with new laptops. Well not really, they came out with the exact same thing and said it was new. Well what I was expecting was for Apple to make an 800 dollar Mac and at least try to compete with the PC price range. They are not going to keep up with the economy with new 1,999 dollar laptops. You can get a very good computer off eBay for way less. I got my desktop that runs at lightning speeds for 600 dollars. It has better specs than apples best laptop starting at 2,700 dollars! I assure you that you will not be taking that portable sun with you everywhere you go either so it's not that great. Basically right now it’s the same Mac with better stuff inside. They always do that. I guess I had my hopes up.

What did they really do on this update? They got rid of the touch pad button. They took away half the I/O ports (note there is no more IEEE1394A). Then finally they "upgraded" to glossy look only. Seriously? Not a good choice in my book. First, I need the touch pad button. That button is the only thing from making me destroy every laptop ever made. I hate just wanting to scroll or move my mouse when as soon as i touch the touch pad it automatically clicks whatever the pointer is on. I always disable the touch pad internal click so it never does this. No fire wire (IEEE1394A) means no hookup for DV cameras and other software. The whole update boils down into they took the old laptop, put a better graphics card in it, cleaned it up, and shipped it out. Doesn't every other company do this? By the way, every tried playing a game with a touch pad?

http://www.apple.com/macbook/
http://www.macworld.com/article/133150/2008/05/macbuying.html

Journal #7, October 12

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/youtube-adds-read-comment-aloud-feature-from-xkcd/

I think this is a very neat, innovative idea. This proves that google is always one step ahead of the game. YouTube was already great and now I can ready my comments directly from the posting section? Amazing! This article is true though. I immediately went and looked at YouTube and pretty much one of the first comments I saw was "Some one can give me the name of the song? =/" Does posting a YouTube comment give you the ability to speak like Yoda? People just ignore grammar totally when writing YouTube comments for some reason. Also people say the dumbest things. I think that it will actually lead to better, meaningful discussion http://blag.xkcd.com/2008/10/08/youtube-audio-preview Now it won't help a lot, but it will help every now and then when someone does click on the audio preview. At first people will click it just to see what it sounds like, and then realize that what they are saying is not as good as what it could be. People who have things to input maybe won't say comments like "awesome" or "terrible" and now give reasons and facts backing up their claim. All in all I like the idea.

Google does a great job with everything. They are the number one search engine. People use their website as a verb in common language. They basically have a monopoly, but better for the consumer. This is how a company should run. They come up with innovative new technology all the time, and always comes at little or no cost. Look how innovative google, YouTube, and Apple have worked recently together. The Ipod touch, which I got recently based on a previous article I wrote, is just amazing. It's worth every penny. 

This is a funny comic too. Xkcd always does some good technology articles. They did one recently on google maps it was hilarious. Definitely read that, you will get a kick. http://xkcd.com/461/

Journal #6, October 5

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/39594/140/

So they are extending windows XP again.  I know why, because Vista is horrible. It has huge problems with it. It uses way too much RAM just to run idling. This is why when you buy a new computer it's still just as slow as the one you bought in 1995. Even though the speed of the processors has exponentially grown and memory size and speed has skyrocketed, so has the operating system requirements of Microsoft’s "upgraded" operating systems. This is why my XP computer will run faster than someone’s better computer with Vista. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Windows_Vista  has many reasons why Vista is just outright terrible. Well I shouldn't be too hard on them. They are getting better. They are upgrading Vista more and more every day, but as it stands, vista is just added weight to a computer. Now windows 7 should be coming out in 2009. I have not seen a beta of this yet, mostly because I guess I'm assuming the worst and am sticking with XP. I'll try to look at it one of these days. I hope its an upgraded XP, but what I hear is it's an upgraded Vista. Too me this is like the guy who built his house on the sand. 

Has anyone seen these new ads that Microsoft has put out? They are so bad. Now, I am a Seinfeld lover but this is just ridiculous. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiVMPgCf6YY I almost feel bad giving you that link. It’s like now you’re going to be like what in the world does this have to do with ANYTHING!? Except for maybe a hint that Microsoft has cheaper products, the only thing I got out of that was a couple bad jokes and our computer are going too be made into cake.

By the way I think it’s hilarious that Microsoft calls it a “downgrade” from Vista to XP.