WhackArnolds – Technology, Politics, Pop Culture, Life commentary delivered hot and fresh!

What operating system (OS) you use is much like a religion to people these days. Mac people remind me of Catholics. The most glaring similarity is that they believe in getting told what to do in every way and tend to look down on all other religions. Windows people remind me of Baptists or Episcopalians. Those folks tend to examine their faith, but still don’t see any problems with some of the teachings, even when they are right there in front of them. Then you have the Linux types, and these people are atheist/agnostic. The truth is, in the computer world there is no better OS.

Don’t get me wrong here, I am a fan of each platform for different reasons. Macs have great usability tools that are just perfect to have, and example would be the magnification using CTRL + Scroll or the screen capture that is baked in perfectly into the OS. Windows gives you games and a ton of programs that make life easier. Windows 7 finally brings some of the Mac-style sugar to the OS and increased stability and ease of use. Linux brings open free software and a more stable environment. But, let’s face it, all of these platforms have their bugs and their security holes. They are computers!

The biggest thing that Macs and Linux distros have going for them is that they don’t have enough units out in the world to be a viable option for hackers. That’s it! There are plenty of Mac security flaws, but Apple markets to people based on the notion that they are more secure. The problem with that is that they are probably more insecure because they refuse to talk about security issues they might have. Instead they release these gigantic security updates and announce it with vague language much like iPhone application updates. If you don’t go around clicking nonsense, you are safer on Windows. At least you know what’s out there, on the Mac side a hacker group could have a hack and no one would know about. Linux on the other hand is probably the most secure, especially since most hackers are using Linux. On top of that, Linux developers are crazy about their programming and are always making needed tweaks.

Bottom line is, no one is truly safe on any platform. Knowledge is really the power here, and since Apple tries to sell to the less savvy clientele, they are probably the most vulnerable. Windows after that and finally Linux. Also, why do hackers attack Windows anyway? Most Windows owners have less money. Mac people clearly have more cash on hand! Can you imagine a Mac virus or root kit? All those rich folks out there buying Macs, that’s a goldmine. This phenomenon of people hacking Windows is either because of lazy hackers going for low hanging fruit or stupid hackers who don’t know where the money is. It is very similar to the way middle and lower class people fight each other when it comes to politics and end up voting against their own interests. Why bother going after the big fish when the small weak fish are right here next to me.

There is a huge thirst for technology news and product announcements/reviews online. People jump from Google results to get every little drop of information about their products. This of course will lead to shady reporting and lame attempts to game the system to make some extra cash. With that in mind, enter the Gizmodo boys.

If you don’t know about Gizmodo or the story that took over the internet, Gizmodo recently got their hands on a prototype of the next Apple iPhone. All the speculation was proven when Apple contacted Gizmodo to get their device back. If you need to know the back story, Google is your friend. The find was advertising gold for GizModo as they milked the news and features to continue to get people to visit their website. Once on their website, the problems for GizModo became apparent.

The first problem was that they purchased arguably stolen goods. The phone was “found” in a bar and the person who found the device “waited” for the owner to return. The problem there is how long did this guy wait? Is there video evidence that he sat at the bar waiting for the owner to return? Waiting around is not considered a “good effort to return the device”, which is in the California law books. How about this, turn the phone on and find the number for the owner in the address book and returning it. Another idea would be to post something on the owner’s Facebook account telling him that the phone was found. I mean, you did go to the person’s facebook page to find out who he was right? Finally, the could’ve the person who found the phone should have just given the phone to the bartender and said it was left behind. All of these options would’ve been better.

Secondly, the guy shopped the phone to two competing blogs trying to get the best deal and Gizmodo was the only blog to announce a price for the goods. This is where both the person selling the phone and Gizmodo got stupid. If you are going to sell the phone, why wouldn’t you sell it anonymously? On the Gizmodo’s side, why would you buy stolen merchandise? There is no way that you can deny knowing that this was a stolen phone. Purchasing stolen goods is also a problem, a problem for you! What did you think this was, you are flaunting to the world that you bought a stolen phone! Being a journalist doesn’t mean you can do whatever you want and flash the press badge to get out of trouble.

What else did they do wrong? Well, how about dragging the whole story out over days and days to get the maximum amount of exposure out of the story? I envision the conversation going something like this:

Gizmodo Dude #1: “Hey, we have the phone, let’s see how many views we can get out of this thing!”
Gizmodo Dude #2: “Yea, let’s put out little pieces every day and drain this story dry.”
Gizmodo Dude #1: “Genius! We’re in the money, we’re in the money!”
Both guys do the Toyota jump from the old commercials.

I seriously believe that no one thought for a second that this would backfire on them, or that the totalitarian Apple would not come down on them like Zeus himself. You didn’t think that Steve Jobs would be pissed and end you? They have done it before!

After realizing that the Apple pwn-job was on it’s way, they started posting little “cover my butt” comments into their posts about how they didn’t know the phone was stolen, etc. Everyone knew it was stolen at this point, this was a soft-batch way of covering your bases after the bases had been stolen! So what happens, Jason Chen gets his house raided and now has a world of hurt on his hand. Also, a nice little side note was that Apple was on the steering committee for the task force that eventually karate chopped Chen’s door down. The convenience of having your own task force is awesome, and not knowing that Apple had their own task force is even sweeter.

Finally, they completely dragged the employee, who lost the phone, through the mud and then threw him in the wood chipper. Everyone knows this guy’s name and even Steve Wozniak has been found wearing a shirt making fun of the guy. His Facebook page has been exposed and one can only know what has happened to him in the dungeons of the Apple compound. All who have been exposed to the whole story feels bad for the guy because his reputation has been crushed. When he eventually gets canned, after his punishment has been delivered, he will probably have problems finding a position like that again.

So, here’s a good job and well done to Gizmodo for messing up not only your reputation but also the reputation of everyone involved. I would like to extend a congratulation for the excellent job of protecting the alleged thief and not the employee. I can’t wait to see what happens here as the civil suit will be amazing. I also can’t wait to see how many Apple lawyers will descend on Gizmodo and what kind of damages Apple will seek. My bet is that Gizmodo goes bye bye.

Politics

1. “Off to War we go!” – 300,000 more troops sent to Afghanistan.
2. Joe Lieberman now opposes Medicare/Medicaid buy-in because . . . .liberals support it! (Nevermind that he actually proposed the idea.)
3. Is Obama too soft?
4. Olbermann’s Worst Person in the World Repub activists demand Va Freshman congressman move his office to make it easier for the teabaggers to protest him.
5. Tea parties were protesting on Martin Luther King, Jr’s birthday. As if you needed any more evidence. . .
6. Harry Reid says Obama

I was planning on starting this post off nicely and without vitriol, but I don’t think that is going to be possible.  I currently own a Linksys WRT54GS2 router and thought I was going to be happy with it, but now I am disgusted with Linksys altogether.  Here is the story behind my new boycott for Linksys and all of their products.

Since I started working with home networking, I have used Linksys for my routers.  The main reason for this was because of brand recognition and some reviews I have read about their products.  I had a Linksys WRT54 for a very long time, but I had to get rid of it when WEP got hacked.  I have told countless friends to purchase Linksys products as well, and I never had a problem with doing so either.  That was, of course, until I purchased the WRT54GS2 router.

I came home and installed the router like any other and thought I was fine.  I got on my PC and Mac, which are wired, and everything was super fast as expected.  Then I decided to try setting up a WPA AES wireless environment.  That was when I realized that my connection speeds were ridiculously slow.  Not only were my wireless speeds slow, I was also having problems on the desktop machines.  They were now running slow and at first I thought it was because of my ISP throttling me.

After tons of investigation and speed tests, including DNS speed comparisons, trojan checks, and checks for network compromises I realized that the speeds were fine if the laptops were not actively sending outside data packets.  That was when I thought it was a bug in the implementation of WPA2 on the router.  I reset the router to a factory clean shine and still had the same problems.  My final conclusion is that Linksys has hosed the wireless interface for this router version.

I have been online for days now and I have seen countless people baffled as to why their speeds were so slow.  I had no other option but to write a blog post and hope that others find and read it.  I have vowed to never again purchase a Linksys router, or any other Linksys product.  I am going to go out tomorrow and purchase a Netgear router and say farewell to Linksys for good.  Additionally, I will be informing everyone that I come in contact with, and who asks me for advice, to never buy Linksys products.

I have installed firmware updates, disabled IPv6, shut down IP Helper services, turned off windows tuning protocols, and tested packets using wireshark.  After all this I have to say that the Linksys WRT54GS2 is crap and I can’t trust any other Linksys routers.   Buy Linksys products at your own risk.