With new techniques being used to shore up weaknesses of passwords, online criminals will be forced to focus more on the quality of their targets instead of quantity.

For example, some techniques protects against logins from unauthorized locations which forces the hacker to either find ways around fool the system or relocate near their victims. Since such systems are designed to make workarounds expensive if not impossible, net result is the same: online criminials will have to expend more time and resources per target.

Hardware tokens? Criminals know where they can get it from, don't they? Yup. You. It's the same for biometrics. You are the key and very few of us have bodyguards.

What all this means is that I think we'll see more personalized and/or physical attacks in the future. And we'll see more attention paid to physical security like alarms, stronger door locks and mailboxes.

Nathan Myhrvold's Intellectual Ventures could be an interesting outlet for excessive creativity although I can see how frustrating it could also be if my idea stayed on the shelf gathering dust like an unadoptable child at an orphanage. But then I am neglecting them anyway. Good ideas deserve proper attention and nurturing.

Woo. Desktop fusion is here, minus the vision of portable fusion power generator. Instead of generating power, that is create more power than the amount put into it, it generates neutrons. Neutron guns? I'll buy one of those.

I recently revisited the AdSearch idea and had these thoughts to add.

Users search for ads for products and services using related categories, names, brands, or phrases.  Results can be ranked in several ways, click-through normalized over time for example.

Ads are mostly crawled in the beginning but increasing number of ads are submitted directly by advertisers.  This means more metadata can be collected from advertisers and noise can be reduced by rating advertisers.  One of the obvious uses of rich metadata is price comparison.

Advertiser rating is also reflected on result ranking so ads submitted by a well-behaved advertiser will rank higher than abusers or recently joined advertiser.  This will create a new market for advertising service companies leveraging their rating level.

A new market can be created by connecting product reviewers with merchants.  This service works liket this:

1. Product reviewer creates a reviewer account and submits a review.
2. Appropriate merchants are notified of the review and signs up as a provider of the reviewed product.
3. The reviewer buys ads on AdSearch to attract potential buyers with their reviews.
4. When the buyer gets to the review page through ads or review panels, they will see a list of merchants carrying the reviewed product and prices they are available at.
5. Clicking on the buy button leads to either the merchant's checkout page or the AdSearch purchase service.
6. Reviewer is rewarded with either a cut of the sales or a listing fee from merchants.

Reviewers and merchants are also rated to prevent abuse.

That's it for now.  I particularly like the way reviewers become advertisers and the way more metadata can be collected over time.

My perspective on this latest hot topic is that I think companies should act only in interest of itself, the Microsoft shareholders in this case, and not anyone else, including its employees. So I think the discussion should have been about whether leaders of Microsoft made the right decision in the interest of its shareholders.

I think Microsoft's initial support of the bill was not wise. It's subsequent decision to retract support was even worse. Net result is that, instead of being a bystander, Microsoft is caught in the crossfire between smug conservatives, getting comfortable with their influence over companies like Microsoft, and liberals screaming of betrayal.

Simply stupid is what I think.

I am enjoying Michael Buble's songs just now.  While I like most of his songs, I particularly like Feeling Good and Moondance. As crazy as it sounds, the way I enjoy music is listening to the same song over and over until my wife kicks me. That's about ten times or so depending on her mood.

Why do I listen to a same song over and over? Because I see a movie of my own making when I do that. With Feeling Good, I saw a movie about an autistic middle-aged man who spent most of his entire like listening to jazz music in his room. One day, he finds himself in a jazz club and starts mumbling to songs. His uncle asks the band to play his favorite song, Feeling Good. He starts singing, meekly at first with his face down but when the turn comes, the Feel Good part, he looks up, smiles, and then let's all go.

Too bad there aren't many movies with such uplifting moments. With vivid imagination, books are better than movies but music is even better.

Oh, yeah.  The best part of that song is:

Dragonfly out in the sun
  you know what I mean, don't you know
Butterflies all havin' fun
  you know what I mean

Looks like Ben Hammersley's rebel nature attracted him to UtiliKilt and then threw him overboard (via Dave). Ummm.

On the other hand, I think classic kilts look pretty good and the original great kilts are very practical. Why carry a blanket separately when you can wear it? Just wrap the blanket around you and secure it with a leather belt. Brilliant!

I don't think hanging a heavy metal (I forget what it's called) in front of the crotch makes much sense though, particularly when you don't have any underwear on. Speaking of underwear, I think I would go without any underwear if I wore a kilt. I mean what is the point of wearing a skirt if you are going to wear underwear?