For those of you who, like me, enjoy seeing a little tail in windows, click here.

Not safe for work if you work for a big corporation that totally bogarts Admin rights on your PC, werd.

From the Financial Times story describing the coming yawn search engine conflict:

Yahoo on Wednesday raised the stakes in the internet search wars as it abandoned Google in favour of using an in-house search engine on its own web sites.

With Microsoft waiting in the wings to launch a rival technology of its own, the move sets up a three-way struggle that will challenge Google’s recent dominance of internet searching.

The coming battle reflects the emergence of search as the internet’s “killer application” since the rise of Google. With more people using a search engine as the starting point whenever they go online, whether to find information or products to buy, control of search has become central to the ambitions of all three companies.

Spare me. When was the last time you used the search feature in Windows? Come on, you know how to do it. Select Start > Search…. or press the Windows key and F. What, don’t use it much, if at all? Searching the Internet is a supplemental technology at best. I don’t know of many people who have Google as their starting point, nor any search engine. Personally, I don’t use a toolbar for searches and I ignore whenever Internet Explorer wants to search for me.

As people become more mature and Internet-aware, search engines will fall by the wayside. When I’m on the Internet, I tend to know where I want to go, and if I use a search engine, I use it to find content, not its paid advertisers.

Sorry, Uncas Ray, John, and Vinod.

(Link seen on Outside the Beltway.)

In a post on Electric Venom, Jim of Snooze Button Dreams comes out of the closet:

And no, this is not an “I have a friend with a problem” thing, it really was my cousin. I’m in QA – I don’t have to deal with people outside of the company.

Shout it loudly, shout it proudly:

Note: This is not a dig at everyone else in IT; it’s okay to be a developer, too. There’s nothing of which to be ashamed. Some of my best friends are developers. Or were, anyway, until they read this note.

How short are the memories of technology writers, or how short do they think their audiences’ memories are?

Every new threat reminds them of the last threat.

When will we see another Melissa? Another Morris Worm? Never, because those damn kids don’t remember Melissa, and they won’t remember Code Red, Nimba, Bugbear, or Beagle/Bagle by this summer.

Otherwise, we would see this in the defect tracker:

Thank goodness we keep these madmen in ill-lit cubicle cells where they can only harm information and not real people.

Ahhhhh…… Information-systems-industry-venom sacs emptied…..

Fark led me to a set of helpful tips about how to handle giving your old computer to someone else. Here’s a summary of what Kim Komando, noted radio computer “expert,” suggests as steps or protocols for what you can do to safeguard personal information you might have on the P.C.:

1. Don’t want a big hassle? Give the computer to a trusted employee, friend or family member.
2. Reformat the hard drive and re-install the operating system.
3. Buy software and overwrite the disk, again and again and again.
4. You’re totally paranoid, so get out the acetylene torch.

That’s it, Komando? That’s all you have? What about step 5?

If you don’t know what Protocol 5 is, you’re not totally paranoid.

I guess not everyone can afford an atom-smasher in the basement.

The META Group, a bunch of people marketing themselves as people you can pay to think for you, alerts us to this great danger – Camera-Enabled Phones Pose Significant Liability for Most Enterprises, Warns META Group:

STAMFORD, Conn. (December 9, 2003) — With the cost of adding cameras to mobile phones becoming marginal ($2-$5 per phone), META Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: METG), expects the majority of phones to include this capability within two to three years. However, for many organizations, cameras represent a significant liability or security risk — such as inappropriate candid shots of employees, pictures of production lines.

While the quality of most cameras in current phones is poor, it nonetheless represents a potential channel for leaks of sensitive data or other images that can produce unintended consequences. META Group recommends setting up a clear policy of no camera-enabled phones.

While META Group invites any of you with change in your pockets to visit its Web site for a vigorous upturning and shaking called its “high-value” approach to generating quotable blather, META Group does not address the similar dangers of disposable cameras, regular cameras, or human memory that can also capture and transmit proprietary information to your world-class, best-in-class, best-of-breed enterprise caliber solution’s competition. But none of these buzzwords would yield hits in a current search for “relevant” news. Which is what META Group’s really trying to do, to get you, a key decision maker in your organization, to look at them like a precocious child who can recite poetry it doesn’t understand.

Look in wonder, friends. I wonder who pays these guys, and if I can get in on the grift.

(Link seen on Hans’s site.)

Applied Digital has announced a new service to allow consumers to pay for merchandise using microchips implanted under their skins. Shidoshi, you might ask, should I worry about the implications of this for my own personal paranoia?

No, student, this is a false alarm. Applied Digital is a corporation in its last throes of death, but it yet retains a marketing department or a piece of software that generates press releases on a regular basis. Because the company features a chip that goes under the skin, its press releases receive a lot of play in the trades when they want to shock or titilate the public.

Implanting payment methods or identification will never become prevalent.

You should worry, instead, about the reasons why the powers that want to be won’t need you to undergo elective surgery to track you.

Meditate on’t, child.

1. Using Internet Explorer, open and read this story, “The end is near for pop-up ads“.
2. Close the browser window.
3. Examine the CNN Money pop under ad that displays when you close the window.

The last line of this story, about a principal at a charter school who uses RFID in the student IDs to keep track of the children, really sums it up properly. To address the concerns of the critics who think this might be problematic and invade the privacy of the students, he says:

“It’s as private as anything else can be when your information is stored on a server,” he said.

Anyone here who would accept that as a valid answer, please send me an e-mail with the reasons why that’s okay. Be sure to add your social security number and mother’s maiden name for validation purposes. Thank you.

(Link seen on /..)

So it’s only taken me some what, two years, to notice this, but now that I have, it’s under there. Every day when I reboot, bam! It’s in my face:

Based on NT Technology. Windows NT Technology. Windows New Technology Technology.

Sure, it’s not as egregious as PIN Number on an ATM Machine, but come couldn’t you buy better with billions of dollars? I’m only fifty an hour, werd.