Great analogies for wireless security

From a Lifehacker.com article

• WEP is like a home bathroom lock, the one you can open just using a bent paperclip. Everyone knows how to unlock it, but when it's locked everyone who walks by understands they should stay out.
• WPA is like a standard door lock; it's a lot more secure, but it is still possible to get by for someone with the right tools, knowledge, and circumstances.
• WPA2 is like a bank safe. It may be possible to defeat, depending on how it's been set up, but it's not realistically possible for anybody to actually do so... yet.
• Not broadcasting your SSID is like taking the numbers off of your house - The house is still there and everyone can see it, it's just a bit harder to find for people that don't know what they are looking for already.
• Filtering by MAC address is like having a guard at the door that checks everyone's name against a list to see if they can enter. The only problem is, he doesn't ask for ID or remember what people look like, so anybody can and can listen in to see what names are allowed and then claim to be anybody else.

Facebook vs Google - Social vs Objective

Wired.com article titled Great Wall of Facebook: The Social Network's Plan to Dominate the Internet

For the last decade or so, the Web has been defined by Google's algorithms—rigorous and efficient equations that parse practically every byte of online activity to build a dispassionate atlas of the online world. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg envisions a more personalized, humanized Web, where our network of friends, colleagues, peers, and family is our primary source of information, just as it is offline. In Zuckerberg's vision, users will query this "social graph" to find a doctor, the best camera, or someone to hire—rather than tapping the cold mathematics of a Google search. It is a complete rethinking of how we navigate the online world, one that places Facebook right at the center. In other words, right where Google is now.

How would you rather get information? An objectively defined "best"? Or a recommendation from a trusted friend? Are they truly mutually exclusive?

"Up until now all the advancements in technology have said information and data are the most important thing," says Dave Morin, Facebook's senior platform manager. "The most important thing to us is that there is a person sitting behind that keyboard. We think the Internet is about people."

Interior Design Websites

I'm removing these from my Google Reader, but wanted to keep the links for when we move to our next place:

Design Sponge
Apartment Therapy LA

Board Game Reference

Board Game Geek - Extremely detailed reviews, many ways to sort/filter

Recommended Board Game Stores
Funagain Games
Fair Play Games

Collaborative Editing

Link to EtherPad

It’s comparable to Google Docs or a wiki, but it’s far more useful. You start off by creating a new workspace. You type basic text on numbered lines at will. Then invite someone else in and have them type as well. Each user’s edits are highlighted a different color. Changes are made in absolute real time, something even Google hasn’t been able to do (Google docs update every fifteen seconds).

Users can also chat in the sidebar, save versions and make a few tweaks to the settings like removing line numbers. One great feature optionally highlights Javascript syntax (making this a great way to write code collaboratively) And that’s it for now. There is very little bling to the site at this point.

Is the Internet making us stupid?

Link to Article

The article says "Google", but the more accurate word is "Internet". The massive amount of information available via search, and the way that information on the web is broken into small chunks, is changing the way that we read, and therefore think.

Wolf worries that the style of reading promoted by the Net, a style that puts “efficiency” and “immediacy” above all else, may be weakening our capacity for the kind of deep reading that emerged when an earlier technology, the printing press, made long and complex works of prose commonplace. When we read online, she says, we tend to become “mere decoders of information.” Our ability to interpret text, to make the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction, remains largely disengaged.

The idea that our minds should operate as high-speed data-processing machines is not only built into the workings of the Internet, it is the network’s reigning business model as well. The faster we surf across the Web—the more links we click and pages we view—the more opportunities Google and other companies gain to collect information about us and to feed us advertisements. Most of the proprietors of the commercial Internet have a financial stake in collecting the crumbs of data we leave behind as we flit from link to link—the more crumbs, the better. The last thing these companies want is to encourage leisurely reading or slow, concentrated thought. It’s in their economic interest to drive us to distraction.

That’s the essence of Kubrick’s dark prophecy: as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence.