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April 28, 2012

My book that is: http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/ios-5-in-the-enterprise/id483421245?mt=11

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April 24, 2012

The friggin' InDesign team are about to become my new special adobe friend, with their fuckwittery about OMG, YOU MUST USE SPECIAL FILE FORMAT TO SAVE SO THAT USERS OF INDESIGN 5.0 CAN READ INDESIGN 5.5 FILES!

Seriously? Photoshop, Illustrator, even Acrobat handles this better. You may have heard of those applications. I understand they're rather well-known at Adobe.

How the fuck is cocking up workflow better than a warning of "Hey, you're using ID <new version>-only features. If someone with an older version of ID tries to open this file, it may not work right!"?

Especially since the warning you get when you try this isn't "Hey, this file was created in a newer version of ID, and is using features that your version can't handle. I'm not even going to TRY to open this, bad things will happen!". No, what you get is "Dude, your plugins are fucked. Are you sure you're using the right version?"

Note: this shit has been going on since InDesign 2, and it's not gotten a fucking BIT better. Maybe that's a sign that YOU'RE DOING IT THE WRONG WAY.

just maybe. consider the possibility that your stupid intermediate format shit isn't solving more problems than it creates. For example, how does it solve the feature not existing in older versions problem? Does it strip that shit out?

Even a casual bit of thought about this shows the large numbers of problems with this, yet the ID team insists that it's a good thing. Idiots.

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April 18, 2012

For all the people eagerly fellating Twitter over their "Inventor's Patent Agreement", including Gruber, I ask:

Did you actually read the fucking thing?

Because to me, a non-lawyer person, that thing basically says "we can sue everyone and it's "defensive"." No, really:

Company, on behalf of itself and its successors, transferees, and assignees (collectively “Assignee”), agrees not to assert any claims of any Patents which may be granted on any of the above applications unless asserted for a Defensive Purpose. An assertion of claims of the Patents shall be considered for a “Defensive Purpose” if the claims are asserted:

(a) against an Entity that has filed, maintained, threatened, or voluntarily participated in an intellectual property lawsuit against Assignee or any of Assignee’s users, affiliates, customers, suppliers, or distributors;

So now, if in the case of Twitter being the Assignee, who falls into fair game under this?

well, any of Twitter's users, affiliates, customers, suppliers, or distributors. How do they define "user" or "customer"? Well, they don't. So let's play a game. Company A sues company B over intellectual property. Oh wait, they don't have to actually sue, because "threatened" is on the list. So Company A threatens to sue Company B over an issue that has fuck all to do with Twitter directly. Or has done so in the past. (ParticpatED. Past Tense. That actually matters.)

If Company B has employees that are Twitter users, Twitter can drop patent lawsuits on them like shell casings off an A-10's main gun, and it would be "defensive" by these terms, even if said lawsuit had nothing to do with Twitter. Or with Patents.

How far in the past could this lawsuit have been filed and still count?

(b) against an Entity that has filed, maintained, or voluntarily participated in a patent infringement lawsuit against another in the past ten years, so long as the Entity has not instituted the patent infringement lawsuit defensively in response to a patent litigation threat against the Entity; or

Again, this is not someone suing Twitter, this is someone suing anyone who is a Twitter user. That's what, everyone?

Which means this:

If Assignee needs to assert any of the Patent claims against any entity for other than a Defensive Purpose, Assignees must obtain prior written permission from all of the Inventors without additional consideration or threat. An “Entity” includes any related entities, where the entities are related by either ownership, control, financial interest, or common purpose.

is complete bullshit. Because the chances of two companies having zero twitter users is effectively zero anymore.

This is not some high-fallutin' moral stance against patent abuse. It is a threat. A very, very clear threat:

If you bring any form of IP lawsuit against anyone even *vaguely* linked to Twitter, we will sue the fuck out of you every way possible. If you *say* you're going to bring an IP lawsuit against anyone even *vaguely* linked to Twitter, we will sue the fuck out of you every way possible. If we find you filed an IP lawsuit in the last ten years against anyone even *vaguely* linked to Twitter, we will sue the fuck out of you every way possible. If you didn't file, but were a *part* of an IP lawsuit against anyone even *vaguely* linked to Twitter, we will sue the fuck out of you every way possible.

That's what this is. A threat. Note, it doesn't specify the level of company. So, technically, if my wife, an independent artist were to file a copyright infringement lawsuit against someone who stole her artwork, and that person was connected in any way to Twitter, Twitter would be justified in calling down nine levels of legal hell against her according to this Agreement.

This is not about "defense" in any way shape or form. As written, it is a threat to well, anyone with a copyright, trademark, or patent. Of any kind.

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April 17, 2012

About a future where he can't control the internet.

Check this shit out:

In an interview with the Guardian, Brin warned there were "very powerful forces that have lined up against the open internet on all sides and around the world". "I am more worried than I have been in the past," he said. "It's scary."

You mean like how google drives around filiming the world, mapping your home wifi network, and when you complain tells you "Set up your network better"? That's scary, but of course, that's not what he's scared of. Because that would be evil and google's not evil.

Brin said he and co-founder Larry Page would not have been able to create Google if the internet was dominated by Facebook. "You have to play by their rules, which are really restrictive," he said. "The kind of environment that we developed Google in, the reason that we were able to develop a search engine, is the web was so open. Once you get too many rules, that will stifle innovation."

How about the environment where Google can kill your adwords account at any time, keep your money, and not even have to tell you why. Or the clause wherein if they think you knew about a "violation" of the Adwords ToS, which of course, they never tell you what that violation actually is, because it would reveal "proprietary" data. Funny how Google is open only when it's convenient. So a company well-known for arbitrary application of rules, and heavy-handed handling of violations of those rules that are never actually revealed to the people who violated said rules is "worried that facebook's rules are restrictive.". Clearly Sergey is an atheist. No one actually afraid of a hell would be that much of a hypcritical twonk.

He said he was most concerned by the efforts of countries such as China, Saudi Arabia and Iran to censor and restrict use of the internet, but warned that the rise of Facebook and Apple, which have their own proprietary platforms and control access to their users, risked stifling innovation and balkanising the web.

"There's a lot to be lost," he said. "For example, all the information in apps – that data is not crawlable by web crawlers. You can't search it."

"How dare you create something we can't control access to?"

He criticised Facebook for not making it easy for users to switch their data to other services. "Facebook has been sucking down Gmail contacts for many years," he said.

Do I even need to point out how amazed I am that anyone from Google would criticize *anyone* for one-sided data collection?

He said: "We push back a lot; we are able to turn down a lot of these requests. We do everything possible to protect the data. If we could wave a magic wand and not be subject to US law, that would be great. If we could be in some magical jurisdiction that everyone in the world trusted, that would be great … We're doing it as well as can be done."

I actually trust the DHS more than I trust Google.

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April 6, 2012

Thanks to the folks at Mashable for getting me off my duff to write this.

Note, this is a very simple script. If your home directory path isn't /Users/<shortusername>/ you'll get false positives. But if you're astute enough to have network homes and homes on random volumes, etc., you're astute enough to run the F-Secure check without my help.

The script application is available at: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/23632593/Find%20Flashback.zip

The code's in the script, you should be able to open it in script editor and validate that it doesn't do anything bad yourself. (Or laugh at it.) If you don't want to have to do that, here's the code:

property thefirsttest : ""


property theUser : ""


property theFirstResultTest : ""


property theError : ""


property thesecondtest : ""


property theSecondResultTest : ""


property firsttestgood : true


property secondtestgood : true





tell application "System Events"


     set theUser to (name of current user)


end tell





set theFirstResultTest to "The domain/default pair of (/Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Info, LSEnvironment) does not exist"





set theSecondResultTest to "The domain/default pair of (/Users/" & theUser & "/.MacOSX/environment, DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES) does not exist"





try


     set thefirsttest to (do shell script "defaults read /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Info LSEnvironment")

on error theError

     if theError contains theFirstResultTest then

          try

               display dialog "You passed the first test! So far so good!"

               set firsttestgood to true

          end try

     else

          try

               set firsttestgood to false

          end try

     end if

end try



try

     set thesecondtest to (do shell script "defaults read ~/.MacOSX/environment DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES")

on error theError

     if theError contains theSecondResultTest then

          try

               display dialog "You passed the second test! Awesome!"

               set secondtestgood to true

          end try

     else

          set secondtestgood to false

     end if

end try



if firsttestgood and secondtestgood then

     display dialog "you appear to be clean!



if you haven't already done so,

run software update!"

else if (not firsttestgood) or (not secondtestgood) then

     display dialog "you failed one or both tests!



Please go to:



https://www.f-secure.com/v-descs/trojan-downloader_osx_flashback_i.shtml

and follow the directions!"

end if

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April 2, 2012

If the fact you have 60,000 emails in gmail is making you all freaked out and worried, maybe you should consider finding a nice ice floe to drift the fuck out to sea on and stop wasting resources that the non-terminally-weak need. Seriously. OMG, I ARCHIVED ALL MY EMAIL! I. Can. Breathe. Again.

Fuck, dude, wake up during a bad asthma attack unable to LITERALLY breathe for a good half minute with no prep time. Then tell me how bad your email freaks you out.

God I hate New Media Douchebags especially McMurdo Mango. What the fuck will these little idiots do if ever confronted with an actual problem?

I mean besides cry and wet themselves.

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Well, not really for food.

But, if you have a group, user or otherwise that would like to have me talk to them via Skype about iOS device management, BYOD, and of course, my AWESOME BOOK, by all means, email me, jwelch@bynkii.com, or ping me on twitter, @bynkii.

(If you want to fly me somewhere, I won't say no, not even slightly. Although if it's overseas, I need some advance warning, my passport expired last year.)

I'll even keep it G-rated, just for you, because you're special to me.

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