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1. 
   Review - Wireless Snif

   1.2 (Jun 4, 2003)

   Finally a program that may make people aware of just how insecure their so called private communications are. Good job. I hope this gets put to broad use so we get some encryption on our mainstream messengers.

2. Comment - Jobs Demos Panther, Power Mac G5

   1.2 (Jun 30, 2003 - 2:18 PM)

   Seeing what they did in the benchmarks I'm not sure I put much faith in their other demonstations either. Smoke and mirrors indeed.

3. Comment - Apple Backtracks on iTunes Music Sharing

   1.2 (Jun 4, 2003 - 9:03 AM)

   If it was only intended to allow streaming across a local network then why was any broader streaming power included in the first place? If it were truly the case that only local streaming was intended then it wouldn't have been released otherwise and there wouldn't be a fuss now.
   
   I ask you where the problem in copying lies as opposed to just streaming? If you know that a source will always be online and you can just stream whatever song you want from them, whenever you want it, well, where's the difference from actually having a local copy? You won't pay for the music if you have a reliable stream source any more than you'd pay for it if you had it local; the difference in availability would not differ. If you'd pay for it based on your frequency of streaming it then you're probably the type that would pay for it based on having downloaded it for free.
   
   Where's the difference I see? I see bandwidth usage. Reliable streams were probably generating a good deal of traffic. Why should perfectly good bandwidth go to waste restreaming a few songs to the same people who were just listening to somebody else's shares over and over again? Why would it be worse to move the file once instead of many times? Either way somebody's freeloading. Give the people who actually copied the music credit for not sucking up people's bandwidth all the time. Those who just restream any time they want to listen to a song they haven't legally downloaded are making no more money for the RIAA than actual pirates, are no more likely to legally download the song given a good stream compared to having it local, and are eating away at any number of providers' bandwidth at the same time.
   
   All this update does is drive people to other sources and clean up the problem of bandwidth abuse by people who didn't want to illegally download music to their drive but had no problems listening to that music on demand from another source for free.

4. Comment - Review: Apple's Jaguar is One Cool Cat

   1.2 (Aug 30, 2002 - 7:36 PM)

   Umm, 60k was the number given, but a whole slew of these were things like under a certain configuration with 3 specific pieces of software running, a couple pixels were the wrong color. Big deal. The number of actual bugs that a person is going to care about is far, far fewer than all 60k. With 60k glaring errors the software would be utterly unusable, yet is one of MS's most stable and robust OSes to date.

5. Comment - Review: Apple's Jaguar is One Cool Cat

   1.2 (Aug 30, 2002 - 7:25 PM)

   By the protocol no FTP is secure. FTP transfers passwords in plain text. If somebody is listening to the packets running across your network and you log in to your FTP server your password is easily comprimised. This goes for linux as well as windows, BSD, and any other system. The protocol itself is to blame.
   
   Something like SCP is a much better alternative to FTP since it uses an encrypted session to transfer data, even passwords. It's pretty much to FTP what SSH is to telnet.
   
   This may be of less importance when you have a couple machines on a small lan in your residence. However as wireless networks become more common this may become an increasing problem. The number of wireless lans which are not configured properly is pretty high and allows easy access to snoops. Using a secure protocol is a better policy to follow in general.
   
   That said I don't know if your detractor was laughing at IIS or FTP. If it was about FTP then right on, there's no real reason we should continue to use FTP, just like there's no real reason to use telnet. My university has banned their use and with good reason. If they were laughing at IIS, well IIS has had its issues though I've not really seen anything on the FTP portion. I can't say I've looked very hard though. The only thing I've seen is a potential DoS, nothing too threatening.

6. Comment - Review: Apple's Jaguar is One Cool Cat

   1.2 (Aug 30, 2002 - 7:10 PM)

   Nah, you can actually not install netscape and all that other stuff with most linux distros. Or install lynx and go get all your software after a clean install if you want. Try installing windows without IE. Or getting rid of it from the system.
   
   You may be able to get a small footprint out of XP embedded, but you're going to have to go though hoops to get a copy of it for your home PC. It seems to be more pointed towards people making devices that need at least some amount of OS. Not your typical home PC.