Six degrees of seperation

We have known that the connection to each other is just a six degree of separation. To put this to the test, we could go make use of our MSN contacts and view our friend's contacts list and start tracing down. If it is possible to make a software using MSN Contacts web service APIs to automate this function of mapping the "friends-of-friends", we would be able to some how see a huge portion of the world linked to each other.

For agencies who love to peek at our private lives, they could use this technique and have already been using this technique to map our relations with others.

This also expose a fundamental social security problem which is to allow people to freely access your friends and contacts list without the proper security measures to restrict views. Even if you restrict the view on your own list, people could use the concept of "six degrees of separation" to find others who have YOU and make a map about who have YOU in their contacts list, making it difficult for you to hide yourself.

So what's this all about. This is the prove that our social privacy, is faulty and weak even with access restrictions, are we able to fully hide our private life from others and protect it ? Yes to a certain degree as long as others do not have any "pointers" pointing at you.

Does it mean that we should just stop all privacy controls and just open up our life for all to see... making ourselves "naked" in front of the world ?

No. It means we need a far better measure to protect our private life and anonymity then what we have currently.

Another Mac vs Win OS ?

Take a look at Mircrosoft's new Mac OS X vs Win 7 homepage: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/compare/pc-vs-mac.aspx


Isn't this another silly debate about "oh my things are better than yours" which always gets nowhere ?


How silly of them to do so...


I doubt you are convinced and itching for some debate so below we would review through six points the MS team prides Win 7 against Mac.


Simplicity


Hmmm... I wonder how simple and intuitive it claims to be. I had a hard time navigating and finding my Downloads folder or my personal folder. I still think Win XP is far simpler than 7. For Mac, it is as esoteric as 7. I had tried my hands on Mac. At first, I didn't know that the Mac close button would simply close the window of the application but not 'destroy' the application as Windows does but it took my sometime to figure that out. Is that intuitive ?


Compatibility


Some a proprietary software now wants to claim it's power is in compatibility ? It is compatible because most of the OS in the market is Windows so what is it going to be compatible with ? Mac ? Linux ? Solaris ? or maybe Main Frames ?


If Windows were ever following compatibility, why is Windows not writing WMP for Linux and why does Novell need to develop Mono to spread .NET rather than MS doing it ? Mac is no good either. Both are selfish idiots doing things for their own goods and wishing others to fail in the silent (I guess... yes I am paranoid :P ).


Choice


Well... you can have choices if you can modify the software codes and many have done so. If it's about the choices of games and softwares, MS have more because as we all know, the market share is still on MS's side and this has nothing to be surprised about.


Having Fun


Yes, it is fun because it has a huge market share and many people have to develop for it since it has the biggest market share and most people are using MS.


Working Hard


Oh... it is hard working because it crashes all so often. Yes... MS loves to be hard working in crashing itself. Mac don't crash so often so it's not so hard working. Now things are done on the web. Heard of Web 2.0 or Cloud ? Google Doc ? That is the real hard working one.


Sharing


Sharing is easy if you use a universal standard to share things. You can get Samba on Mac, Linux or Win. You can use a website, ftp protocol, a web storage  and many other ways to share. Sharing is not exclusive. It's people.... who try to jealously guard their successes and not share the fruits of success with others and make life easier for all the other people in the world.


What joke is MS up to so shamelessly creating this shameful site. (IMHO)


Below is the screenshots taken from MS site comparing PC vs Mac... what a bad idea...

What MSN and other chats really need

Here's a list of what I thought IMs (Instant Messenger e.g. MSN, Google Talk, Yahoo Messenger...) could add into their protocols.

1. Make their protocols modular like XMPP

Most protocols can be said to be modular to a small degree but the XMPP protocol (Google Talk is XMPP) is by far the most modular protocol I have seen.

2. Security.

I have done testing of chat security and as like many people who have used Wireshark / Ethereal to capture chat conversations, I could see my conversations and logins in full plain view. The amount of eavesdropping on conversation and breach of privacy is escalating and it's time we need to protect ourselves. Pidgin IM have an RSA encryption plugin but you need another Pidgin IM with RSA plugin installed and enabled. Why not a universal standard cross - chat , OS and programming language platform security protocol to protect us using IMs ?

3. Proper file transfer

Most IMs file transfer sucks big time. Slow and prone to dropping... especially MSN's. There's a need for a proper file transfer. Maybe MSN might want to build in a proper FTP function that supports the standard FTP... not MSN's own file transfer. Use the standards. Don't try to reinvent the wheel and fail horribly. Current chat file transfers are can be summarized in one word: UGLY !

4. Universal emoticon symbols

Some messengers support certain symbols for certain emoticons. I think there is a need for a universal standardized emoticon and symbol set. Maybe someone could propose that to some world standards body like ISO ?

5. OPENNESS of APIs.

Most messengers are trying to open up their APIs and that's good but I noticed that more work and effort is needed.

for now, this is a list of what most IMs need to look into.