Dan's New Blog

They’re falling like dominoes at the annual Pwn2own event this year in Vancouver. Some really smart scary guys have managed to hijack Windows 7 PCs via Firefox and IE8 (snort) and a MacBook using Safari. Two of ‘em even hacked an iPhone and downloaded its database of SMS messages. (Yoikes!)

Google Chrome is the last browser standing. It’s not perfect, but has proved once again much harder to exploit. Having said that, I do agree with PC World’s article, Security Lessons Learned from Pwn2Own Contest:

“… the browser is the new Achilles heel of security regardless of the hardware or software platform.”

UPDATE, March 26: Nobody even tried to hack Chrome on day 2 of Pwn2own.

Web Domains

Today’s the 25th anniversary of the first .com registration. And no, the registrant wasn’t IBM (March 19, 1986), Apple (February 19, 1987) or even Microsoft (May 2, 1991). It was Boston-area AI firm Symbolics.

According to Wired, only 5 domains were registered in 1985. Once the Web was invented, domain registrations skyrocketed. And a mere 22 years later icanhascheezburger.com was born.

Fandango Mobile Tickets

Airlines have been testing cellphone-based paperless tickets for a couple of years now. Now Fandango’s testing mobile movie tickets in 8 U.S. markets — all of ‘em *not* Philly, btw. (What’s so special about Houston? They were the first city in which mobile airline boarding passes were tested. Now they’re in the first Fandango test group. Sheesh.)

Google vs. Apple

The NY Times gives us a good overview of the deteriorating relationship between Apple and Google. The following quote …

“It’s World War III. Amazing animosity is motivating two of the most powerful people in the industry. This is emotional. This is the biggest ego battle in history. It’s incendiary.”

… pretty much sums up the tone of the piece. (So does the URL for the story: 14brawl.html.) Anyway, it’s all about the mobile market.

Google vs. China

Not content with merely taking on a company that qualifies as a small country, the Big G has also decided to take on #3 on the world list. I refer to China. After calling them out on spying charges back in January, Google is real close to deciding to pull the plug on Google.cn. That means Chinese users who manage to circumvent the Great Firewall will get unfiltered content. And that makes the Chinese authorities real twitchy.

ReadWriteWeb reports on a recent head-to-head test of Flash vs. HTML5 video. The results? “Flash isn’t always a CPU hog, sometimes that honor goes to HTML5.”

Flash works best when it can take advantage of hardware acceleration. This is generally not a problem under Windows, so in many cases Flash actually runs more efficiently than HTML5. This is one of the benefits of living in the Windows world, which is run by a Putin-esque dictator who sees the big picture and wants to work with other countries in order to enhance his own power.

Linux and Mac OS X are another story, however. Due to the Balkanization of Linux, it doesn’t have a standard API for Adobe to use for video hardware acceleration. Thus, Flash is going to hog CPUs for the forseeable future. (Which is why I have to use Flashblock on the linux laptop on which I am now typing. Otherwise it slows to a crawl and I have to fight the urge to fling it against the wall.)

The Dear Leader of Mac OS isn’t interested in anyone else’s economy. He wants to control every aspect of his own, which (he’s convinced) will lead to world domination. So he treats hardware acceleration as a state secret:

“Apple isn’t allowing Flash to become more efficient on their Mac OS X/Safari platform (or their iPod/iPhone/iPad one, either) by not providing the access to the hardware it needs to reduce its CPU load … In blocking Flash on Apple devices, the company can easily claim that it’s simply not an efficient technology … and that’s true for now, considering how it’s set up. But if the company wanted to allow it and make it work, it seems reasonable to believe that they could. This is what leads some insiders to believe that the decision to block Flash is less of a technological one and more of a business-minded one. After all, if you could easily visit Hulu.com to stream TV shows and movies, then why would you need to buy them from the iTunes Store?”

That’s for the wifi model. The 3G version will hit the street by the end of April. You don’t actually have to camp out at the Apple store — you can preorder online staring March 12.

As I said when the Kindle launched, the iPad doesn’t make economic sense to me. That said, I’d never refuse one if it were offered to me.

Link via NYT.

Last August Mr. Macy (Eric Schmidt of Google) and Mr. Gimbel (Apple’s Steve Jobs) had to part ways. It was ostensibly for antitrust reasons — the 2 competing companies had common board members, including Schmidt himself. Today we found out another reason: Apple has filed suit against mobile handset maker HTC (JC Penny?), who just happens to make many of the Android-based phones that Google’s so fond of.

I’m not thinking Macy’s is gonna want to send customers to Gimbels the way they did before.

It’s hard for us mere mortals to get into the mind of Steve Jobs. Until now we’ve had to settle for unauthorized bios such as iCon or The Second Coming of Steve Jobs, or even The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs. Stuff he goes ballistic over.

But according to the NY Times, that’s gonna change. Steve has anointed Walter Isaacson to become his official biographer. Presumably Isaacson’s bios of Franklin, Einstein, Kissinger and post-WWII American statesmen have properly prepared him for the ultimate task of chronicling the Great Man himself.

Just in case you’re one of the 13 people on the planet who didn’t notice, yesterday Apple introduced a tablet computer called the iPad. It wasn’t exactly a secret beforehand, and as you may imagine it generated quite a lot of buzz in the media. I could link to a bunch of articles, but I’ll limit myself to one — imho the best and most concise — the NY Times’ live-blogging post. That was a surprise to me, because I thought Engadget’s would have been much better. (Oops, I lied. That’s 2 links.)

My takeaways:

• My first thought was, how many of them will get stolen?

• I don’t think the iPad will eliminate netbooks. If I want a cheap, small computer, I’d rather pay under $300 for a netbook — yes, I know it’s running Windows XP — than $500-$700 for an iPad. Brad Stone, in the Times live-blog, says that the iPad is “the perfect breakfast table companion.” I agree, but I’ll stick with my Acer for now.

• I *do* think the Kindle might be in trouble, especially if Amazon cannot compete with Apple on the price of eBooks. And if I was gonna spend bucks on an eReader, I’d go with the iPad. The Times’ Stone says “Apple and Amazon are on a collision course.” I’d like to take that further: Microsoft is on a collision course with Google, who is colliding with Apple, who is bearing down on Amazon. Four of the biggest tech firms have to invade each other’s backyards in order to grow their businesses.

• Will the iPad be the savior of print media like the NY Times? That remains to be seen. I’m not optimistic.

• 3G through AT&T — boy, Apple sure is tight with AT&T. Verizon is verboten. And while we’re speaking German, here’s the obligatory Hitler iPad parody. (He hates AT&T, too.)

• Is it *that* difficult for Apple to get Flash to run on their devices? Apparently so. Geeze.