timeimmortal

Google released their new browser, Google Chrome, this week. It’s still in beta, but they’re touting it as a radical rethinking of the concept of an internet browser. And I suppose, in some ways, it is that.

I’ve been testing it for a few days, using it almost exclusively to browse the Web, and to blog. And there’s a lot I like about it. It is certainly speedy, and I find it does very well when asked to render pages with a high amount of media content. The interface took a day or so to get used to, but was fairly straightforward once I got used to it. I like that it treats each tab as a unique process (although it’s still possible to kill Chrome from the Windows Task Manager by targeting only one ‘chrome.exe’ process).

But I think, for now, that I’ll stick with Firefox, at least for my workaday browsing needs. At home, I’ve switched over to Chrome, and will probably a bit more frequently at that end. But for my needs at work, Firefox 3 is just a bit better-suited to the job at hand. Maybe it’s just the IT guy in me, but I frankly don’t trust Chrome yet; I’m not sure it’s as secure as Google claims it is. Also, I trust Firefox’s SSL support a little more at present.

Once it’s out of beta, though, I get the feeling that Chrome is going to be a force. It’s only been out for a week, and already about 2% of my traffic is from people using it. That doesn’t sound like much…until you consider the fact that three days ago, nobody was using Chrome at all.

Update: Of course, not all is roses. Edward Champion points out that writers should pause before switching to Chrome, as Chrome’s EULA gave Google the right to excerpt, modify, and/or re-print (for their own purposes) any content submitted through the use of the Chrome browser…without the original author generating any royalties from it.

So I won’t be using Chrome for blogging purposes any time soon. And yes, I realize that Google has modified the EULA to remove the offending clause. Still, the IT guy in me thinks that “safe” is better than “sorry” under most experimental conditions.

This made for a pretty funny read this morning.

The regular reader will know that I am a user of Microsoft Windows, and that I do find some merit in the OS. At the same time, I can admit that it is hardly a perfect operating system, that it does have more than a few flaws about it, and that its security (especially!) leaves much to be desired. Hardening Windows is something that troubles me continually in my current profession as an IT specialist, because for as many protective layers as I might put in place on any installation of the OS, there is always something which seems able to slip through.

Windows is fine for many applications, but not as the control system behind critical services and monitoring equipment. Having a Windows-based SCADA application is in several ways questionable, and using Windows as the OS for banking hardware is flagrant stupidity. And don’t we all love it when the various digital advertisment boards in our cities display blue screens or Windows error messages, instead of their usual stream of ads?

Update: Welcome, WebElf readers!

Count Roland follows up on an observation he had previously made concerning the fact that Time Immortal is blocked at the Catholic high school in Lloydminster, Alberta. Apparently, I’m classified as an “advocacy organization” by the IT personnel there.

But it appears that the rabbit hole goes even deeper than that. Roland has done quite a lot of investigative work, and his conclusions are…surprising, on one hand, and yet unsurprising as well.

O Writer,

I did a more extensive perusal of a small sample of organizations that have websites.

You are still blocked as an advocay organization; FreeMarkSteyn is blocked as a message/discussion board.

I was allowed to go to Planned Parenthood, CHRC, COLF, CCCB, CCRL, and Lifesite.

Given the Catholic position on abortion, I was surprised that PP was allowed, but as a defender of free speech it must be allowed - dynamic tension that is better than simple dichotomies, no?

CHRC and CCRL are opposing legal organizations. Lifesite was to test if the Catholic organizations were only allowed because the developers were told to allow Catholic sites — it was allowed as a non-Catholic life issues site, which is good.

But I am stil surprised that they, in general, were allowed considering they are as advocative as you are, if not more.

Right away, I confess myself surprised by the level and scope of the site categorization that is in play here, not all of it accurate. Lifesite is more or less correctly categorized: it is a life issues site, though not one that takes a specifically Catholic perspective.

On the other hand, Time Immortal is very incorrectly categorized: I am just one guy, not an organization, and though I do have a couple of guest bloggers (e.g. my wife) there is no explicit advocacy done through the site, certainly not in the sense of “one cause/raison d’etre” that my being categoriezed as an advocacy organization would imply. Contrast this with the allowance of Planned Parenthood’s website, despite the fact that PP openly admits that (pro-abortion) advocacy is part of its mission.

(Note that I’m not suggesting that the Planned Parenthood website should be banned — unless the ban on advocacy groups is to remain in place: consistency is important!)

And then there’s the issue of Binks’ FreeMarkSteyn aggregator, which is not really a discussion board (not more than any other blog that allows comments is, at any rate), nor a message board (according to the normative definition of the term). It is more properly termed an aggregator; that is: a collection or compliation of links to various stories from around the internet, which may or may not revolve around a common theme.

But this is also not as deep as the rabbit hole goes, O Reader. Roland notes, in a follow-up message, that a rather peculiar, though perhaps predictable, trend has begun to emerge.

Here is a list of more sites I tried.

Blocked:
Real Women of Canada - advocacy
National Rifle Association - weapons
Stormfront - hate
Black Panther - advocacy

Allowed:
PETA
National Organization of Women
Jack Chick
Coalition for Gun Control
Canadian Islamic Congress
Jihad Watch
SteynOnline
Reverend Wright on wiki -> tucc.org
Christianity Today

From my observations so far, the blocked sites all seem to be from the “conservative” side of the spectrum. Many allowed sites, from PP to now to PETA to Gun control, are largely advocacy groups but are on the “progressives’” approved list, although it also has a fair number of ‘conservative’ sites. How, though, realwomen/nra is blocked while now/gun control is not is beyond me.

Also, how is Jack Chick or TUCC not a hate site, or at least problematic on advocacy grounds for black liberation / anti-Catholic Theology?

I am somewhat confused (although I guess the web-block company likely has a liberal bias) and dismayed. I would hope that any censorship be in favour of groups closer to Church teaching and that Censorship be minimized, or if more widespread, to be at least not in favour of non-Church teaching sites.

This is a confusing trend, to be sure. For all intents and purposes, the person or persons responsible for policing the Internet access at the Catholic high school in Lloydminster — Holy Rosary High School — seems to be operating under something of a liberal bias in terms of how he or she applies the school’s presumably extant web access policy.

To wit: if advocacy groups are banned, why can the websites of organizations like PETA, Planned Parenthood, NOW, and the CIC still be accessed? If weapons-related sites are banned, why can the websites of gun control groups still be accessed? Roland points out other dichotomies which would appear to exist as well.

The extent of the bias is not great, but in general this situation doesn’t pass the old “sniff test” — there does seem to be some effort that has gone in to reducing access to conservative opinion on the Internet at Holy Rosary. And since censorship in any form is unacceptable…

Holy Rosary High School

Principals
Principal: Mr. T. Brochu
Vice Principal: Mr. Vince Orieux
Vice Principal: Mr. C. Musyj

Contact Information
Address: 6611A-39 Street
Lloydminster, AB T9V 2Z4
Phone: (780) 875-3600
Fax: (780) 875-9516
Email: hrhs@lcsd.ca

Do drop them a line, O Reader. There’s quite enough censorship — especially censorship of conservative opinion — going on in this country of late as it is, without some tin-pot IT dictator adding to the list of problems. That this sort of thing is happening at a Catholic hich school, especially one which states that its mission is to “nurture spiritual, academic, emotional, social and physical growth in every individual.”

Update: Welcome, readers from Sleepy Old Bear, Walker, and BCF! And welcome, Steynians!

That’s in the U.S., mind you…but really, can it be any more secure in Canada? The level of access gained was sufficiently high as to enable, should the attack have been by malicious persons rather than security consultants, a power distribution shutdown.

You know, at the end of the day, the IT business comes down to this: yes, there are brilliant and malicious people out there trying to cause all manner of harm and chaos. That they do not is a testament only to the fact that on this side, there are people who are slightly more brilliant.

So true.

“…younger workers will use your corporate network to run most any device, technology or social networking software they can get their hands on. Dubbed “Millenials,” these workers born after 1980 are nearly twice as likely to use cell phones and PDAs at work, and half admit to installing unauthorized software on their employer’s computers. On the upside, the Millenials are more security aware than their older co-workers.”

When they’re not causing security risks by updating their MySpace profiles during lunch breaks and downloading music, chat applications, and a host of other bits of media content that have traditionally served as vectors for malware and viruses, that is.

That’s what makes IT such a challenging field — you have to be smarter than the other users, and stay one step ahead of the craftiest cube-dweller. People will use proxies to get around firewalls, so you have to be able to identify and block proxies. People will try and use chat programs, reach Facebook, download games, watch videos, update their iPods, and so forth. To say nothing of the hosts of malicious programs that can get in by any number of means, even email.

It’s a challenge, to say the least.

1389 sends in the following remark:

I’m in IT - with 31 years’ experience. I saw your tagline that says, “any project is easy when the instructions are ‘make it suck less…’”

I told my husband, and he said, “Except when it’s a vacuum cleaner!”

I would have to agree — vacuum cleaners are definitely something which can only be improved by increasing the amount of suck in them.

Glad to be able to provide a laugh!