Masks, masks, masks

Normally, when I read “Jakob Nielsen,” I turn the other way and start running and screaming. Normally, his ideas about a usable web are nothing more than stripping each and every website down to one and only one function, wrapped in bold, solid colors (no more than 2!). Normally, he’s an overpaid horse’s ass.

But he actually has a point, I think, with his recent article, “Stop Password Masking.” As I’m a relatively recent convert to the world of phone web browsing, I hadn’t any idea how absolutely annoying the phone’s general treatment of “see one letter at a time, but mask them once you’re past them” with regards to type=”password” input fields.

Really, it is a non-issue. Those fields are not encrypted more or less than any other field in a form. Those fields only protect against people standing directly behind you. So, ATMs, sure, don’t show the results (for further measure, you’re encouraged to cover the number pad when entering your PIN, which is easier to do with a ten-button keyboard than it is with a standard full size keyboard). For library computers, maybe you just need to be more aware of your surroundings.

For every other application… who are you hiding from? No one.

My parents (okay, who are we kidding, it’s just my mother, since my father deftly refuses to use any online applications) use the same four-digit password everywhere they can. Perhaps she chose this password because she can instinctively enter it, rather than having to think about it–I’m not one to posit on that. But I do know that if she could see the password as it was being typed, she just might be encouraged to use something longer and more complex.

Now, I have some pretty crazy-long passwords that I use (I typically use different passwords for each and every application, and none of them are less than 10 characters), but on some of them, the sites and services I use on a daily basis, my fingers can get tripped up. It happens. And rather than be able to stop, find the offensive characters I’ve tapped out, and replace them, I’m forced to remove the whole thing, and start again.

Me. Alone. In my office. I don’t think that level of security is helping me any.

Fantastical Update(s)

May wasn’t that interesting of a month.

We’ll Always Have Paris

15 years ago (thereabouts) I published my first website. It was only meant to give away art packs for a local group of ANSI artists (if you don’t know what ANSI artists are/were, it’s not really going to impress you for me to tell you what it’s all about) called Maiten1 (I like chess, mate-in-one, get it, ha ha ha). It was hosted on what was then a thriving community of people eager to share information, and not at all concerned with page hits. It was conveniently split up, this giant web server, into a variety of “neighborhoods.” Mine was in Paris. It was 1994.

This was GeoCities.

Of course, Yahoo purchased them quite a long time ago, shuffled their existing business model based on advertisement revenue into their own, and wrapped the whole shebang in Y! styles. Something was lost then, but the free web hosting was still available to everyone who wanted to put some words up on the World Wide Web. At that time, it was a shocking proposition, a confusing new world, this Internet. I knew maybe 5 people who had email addresses. Maybe one other person who had a website.

But without GeoCities, I wouldn’t be doing what I am doing today. I would have never thought that the Web was worth my time. But in the spirit of GeoCities, where people put up “homepages” with all their embedded MIDI sounds, their animated GIFs, bad writing, dark red text on black backgrounds… Well, that introduced me to a community that might–just might!–be worth being a part of.

We’ve come a long way since those days. I’m sure “Web 3.0″ is a phrase clinking around in some marketing department’s grab bag of buzzwords. But back then, it was an undiscovered country.

Tea Bagging

I got into an argument via Twitter last evening regarding the “Tea Party” that went on yesterday in Denver (and, of course, across this great nation of ours). My debate opponent started with this: “The first Denver Tea Party had NO coverage and today we had 7000 people! Keep up the good work.”

Okay. That’s fine. Apparently bad coverage is better than no coverage. I can dig that. But when I pressed as to why she, in particular, was protesting, I got this gem: “All of the stimuli, none of which have had a positive impact on the economy, yet have indebted our children!”

See, this is where things start getting a little weird. The TARP funds were passed in October of last year, under the previous administration, a conservative voice, a Republican in name and deed. The stimulus package was passed after weeks of debate, and capitulation came from only one side of the debate (that is to say, the Democrats capitulated to the Republicans, taking them at their word that if a compromise was created, some of them might be willing to support it). In the end, as we know, all House Republicans voted against it, and all but a tiny handful of Senate Republicans did as well.

What we were left with was a triumph of mediocrity. Nobel laureate Paul Krugman (he got that medallion through his economic studies) said it wasn’t big enough. Republican non-Nobel laureates said it was all pork pork pork. These Republicans (I repeat: none of them have Nobel prizes, in economics or otherwise–though I cannot verify it presently, I doubt any of them have even won High School economics prizes) claimed that they knew better, and the government’s position, sanctioned by the Constitution, did not cover lowering taxes and funding public works projects.

And so they organized, within scarce few weeks, these “Tea Parties.”

Let us hearken back to 1773, shall we?

Continued reading >

I Give Up.

Dear Conservative Amera,

You’ve won. You simply have too much passion, too much drive, too much will for me to stop it anymore. Yours is the correct direction for America. Absolutely. Go ahead, take the reins again, we liberals have obviously sauced it all up.

Frankly, I prefered it when we were in the minority, when every Tom, Dick, and Harry was running around, shooting anyone with slightly beige skin, yelling at the TV when some overpaid heroin addict on this-team or that-team dropped his sports ball, everyone ate red meat and torture was a means to an end.

I liked being on the outside. When we slipped into the mainstream, with Obama, my initial joy has somewhat melted. Obama, my President, the man charged with taking us out of the darkness of the past 8 years and thrusting us back into a world wherein America is *NOT* the center (there is no center).

But… I don’t even have time anymore to discuss things he screws up (telecom immunity for warrantless wiretapping, support of bombings across the globe, sabre-rattling at N. Korea, etc) because you conservatives attack absolutely everything he does.

So, enough is enough. Conservatives are absolutely right. Obama wants to take away your guns, abort your children, and transform America into a Communist country. Whatever the fuck floats your crazy, batshit insane boats. He’s a Muslim, a Manchurian candidate, and maybe an alien. Fuck if I know. I can’t keep up with all this crap. Just keep making shit up. FOX News will doubtless pick it up, broadcast it, and call it fact. Take another sip of your HATE-EVERYTHING-LIBERAL Kool-Aid and accuse us of trying to ruin “your” country (as though I gave up rights on it because I want things to change).

Go on, continue your blood-thirst. Scream that liberals will ruin this country, as they have so many times before (read: Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt, et al). Go on. I’ll wait in the corner.