The Welcome Page

The Welcome Page

  September 06, 2024    Stephen Cobb

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This post used to be pinned to the top of the blog but I decided to let it move down the stack. It's purpose was, and still is, to explain that I am Stephen Cobb and this is my personal blog. 

The blog was set up in 2005 but I didn't start regular blogging on it until 2006. That's because I had another blog, also started in 2005, where I covered my main interest back then: information security.

Over time, this blog became a place to talk about things other than cybersecurity. Things like dealing with several medical conditions: my primary aldosteronism, basal cell carcinoma, and very low grade prostate cancer; also my partner's hemochromatosis and Giant Cell Arteritis (UK readers can just add an 'a' after the 'e' in the hemo words).

Brief notes on 70+ years of life

I was born in a house in the medieval city of Coventry, in the middle of England, in the middle of the last century, to parents who survived heavy aerial bombardment in the global conflict known as World War Two, which ended seven years before my life began. 

After going to university—first in Leeds and then in Canada — I travelled the world for several decades before moving back to the city of my birth with my partner and our adopted cat, Lola (seen above).

My partner of 39 years, the phenomenal Chey Cobb, is a US citizen, legally resident in the UK. I am a citizen of both the UK and the US. We have both spent, and continue to spend, a lot of time researching how humans create and confront technology risks and health challenges. I write about my research for a variety of websites and publications, like:

• Cobbs on Security: cybersecurity articles, some written with Chey
• Medium: articles on technology, policy, cannabis, and more 
• LinkedIn: check my "Featured" articles
• ResearchGate: curated publications
• YouTube: narrated articles, personal views
• IEEE Technology & Society: perspective on technology

This blog is where I write about more personal stuff such as: the fact that I'm retired, although I'm still open to interesting projects; my plans to publish another book, but I'm not sure when; my attempts to raise awareness of the medical problems which disabled my partner; the role of registered carers and how it can be supported; my hopes for radical reform of the patriarchal medical establishment that continues to fail women so badly. 

On a lighter note, Chey thinks I should have a hobby to take my mind off things, so I'm been trying "classic glass" photography: using lenses from old 35mm film cameras to take pictures with modern digital cameras (for example, the Minolta lens on my Olympus camera shown here).

On a more serious note, I feel the need to use some of my "free" time to contribute to society. So in addition to sharing my knowledge about thwarting digital criminals, I serve on the board of a charity, Carers Trust Heart of England. 

I also do driving jobs for our local hospital as one of the hundreds of UHCW Volunteers. As I travel around Warwickshire collecting and delivering patients I engage in another hobby: sampling independent coffee shops and their menus.

Fortunately, I still find some time to continue my research at the nexus of ethics and technology. I am currently exploring the harm caused by abuse of technology, which I have written about here. and talked about here, on YouTube.

If you want to contact me, you can use the form on this page or find me on Facebook or LinkedIn. 

Note: I am aware of some formatting issues and missing images in the older articles on this site—a side-effect of moving this blog from WordPress to Blogger—I'm fixing them as and when I can.

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Will "repeal and replace" hurt genomic medicine and victims of genetic conditions?

Will "repeal and replace" hurt genomic medicine and victims of genetic conditions?

  July 04, 2017    Stephen Cobb

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Let me give you the short version of my answer up front: Yes. If the current privacy protection for genetic medicine in the US, in which Obamacare/ACA has played a key role, is diminished by the "repeal and replace" efforts of the current US administration, then America's hopes for genomic medicine will also be diminished. Victims of some genetic conditions will be particularly hard hit, as will all forms of research that involve the human genome.

The even shorter version goes like this: Why would I give anyone my genetic information if that might lead to myself and my family being denied insurance or paying higher premiums, for medical, life, or longterm care policies?

Fans of genomic medicine are apt to respond by saying there's no need to worry because there are laws to prevent that type of discrimination. To which I have heard many people say: I don't trust the insurance companies and/or the government to abide by those laws. And besides, laws can be repealed, and databases can be hacked.

In short, when it comes to enjoying the benefits of medical science, Americans face a bleaker future than the residents of other wealthy countries due to the absence of two rights: the right to health care and the right to privacy.

Background

Who am I to present these arguments? For more than 25 years I've been studying information security, data privacy, and risk. I've been a Certified Information System Security Professional for more than two decades and I have a Master of Science degree in Security and Risk Management. I have also put in more than a decade as primary caregiver for someone with a genetic illness (variously known as hereditary hemochromatosis, genetic haemochromatosis, Celtic Curse, Bronze Diabetes, Iron Overload). In that role I have spent many years interacting with the families of hemochromatosis patients and the main support group for this condition, the Iron Disorders Institute.

What is the problem? The House recently passed legislation called the American Health Care Act of 2017 (H.R. 1628). There is a Senate version known as the Better Care Reconciliation Act of 2017. As far as I know, both of these pieces of legislation remove a gene-related provision of the current law, ACA (a.k.a. Obamacare). Here's the problem:

1. The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 a.k.a. GINA says employers and health insurers can't use your genetic data in hiring decisions and health insurance coverage; but, as Maryam Zaringhalam at Slate points out: life, disability, and long-term care insurance are not covered under GINA’s provisions, and those insurers "already use genetic testing results to deny coverage to otherwise healthy individuals".
2. Furthermore, GINA only protects people who are genetically predisposed to a disease as long as they are asymptomatic. In other words: "once a person begins showing symptoms, GINA no longer matters" (Zaringhalam- see link in References below). For example, my wife was born with the HFE mutation that can produce a potentially fatal condition known as iron overload but she was asymptomatic for the first few decades of her life. Then, in her forties, due a phenomenon dubbed hemopause, she became increasingly symptomatic. She is now eminently "declinable" under pre-Obamacare rules.
3. This GINA "loophole" as Zaringhalam calls it, was closed by Obamacare. That's because the ACA outlawed discrimination in health care insurance pricing or coverage based on preexisting conditions.
4. Now the current administration looks set to return America to the days when preexisting conditions were considered grounds for charging higher insurance premiums.
5. That would mean returning health insurance to the list of things you pay more for if your insurer has knowledge of your genes. Remember, that list already includes life, disability, and long-term care insurance.

I would be the first to admit that the above is a simplified account of the problem, but I stand by its accuracy and will go into more detail below. A complicating, and possibly offsetting factor in this story is the plethora of state laws on genetic data, medical privacy, and health insurance. Those might give you hope, but then you have to factor in the rampant hacking of supposedly private databases of personal and medical information that we have witnessed over the past few years. Bottom line? It is not hard to understand a response of "No way!" when you suggest to someone that they should get their genes tested, even when that test could potentially save their life, or those of their relatives.

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How to fix your Google Chrome bookmarks if you can't stand the new "enhanced design"

How to fix your Google Chrome bookmarks if you can't stand the new "enhanced design"

  April 26, 2015    Stephen Cobb

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Has Google messed up your Chrome bookmarks with its "new, improved" bookmark system? Don't panic! You can fix it and go back to the way things were, where your bookmarks are organized the way YOU want.

The obscure but simple fix is described below (this works as of April 27, 2015). If you want to know more about the "Enhanced Bookmark" changes that Google has been forcing onto users, scroll down below these steps or click here.

(Note: I am certainly not the first person to describe this fix. That's because Google has been rolling out the new "enhanced" bookmark to Chrome users over time, for several months. Indeed, you might not have seen the new bookmark interface yet, but now you know what the fuss is about.)

Steps to return your Chrome bookmarks to the normal folder arrangement

1. Go to chrome://flags > by typing chrome://flags in the URL bar and tapping Enter. You should see something like this, with one of the worst warning messages you will ever read in any software ever (don't those self-important "user interface enhancement" nerds at Google realize browsers are no joking matter!):



2. Find the "enhanced bookmarks" setting by using Find (Control/Command + F) and typing enhanced bookmark as seen here (the auto-fill will find it as you type):



3. Use the blue drop down box control to Change the setting to Disabled, as seen above.

Note: You should not make changes to any other settings on this page unless you are sure of what the effects will be. That part of the warning is appropriate.

4. Make sure there is no unsaved work in any of the pages you have open in Chrome and then click the Relaunch button at the bottom of the page:



That should make sure your Chrome bookmarks look the way they always have, so when you look at a bookmark it looks like this:



If you haven't yet seen the new "enhanced" Google Chrome bookmark it looks like this:



Now you know how to make it go away, I will explain why I think this new system is bad, and why forcing it onto Chrome users was a really dumb move by Google, not to mention arrogant.

What the flip did Google do to my bookmarks in Chrome?

Apart from gobbling up screen real estate, the new user interface for bookmarks in Chrome severely limits your organizational options. For example, it appears to offer no way to choose the folder for the bookmark other than the choices it suggests.

For example, there is a very specific folder on my system for pages related to something called HIMSS, but that folder does not appear as a choice, and I can't get to it from this box.

Google says I have to put the bookmark in the Bookmarks Bar or the Sysadmin folder (seriously, WTF has Sysadmin got to do with HIMSS).

But Stephen, what about the "VIEW ALL BOOKMARKED ITEMS" option, you ask. Oh no, you don't want to go there, because "there" is where you see just how badly Google has messed up your carefully curated bookmarks, about 15 years' worth of bookmarks in my case, maybe even more for you.

I mean there I was, cheerfully bookmarking pages in Chrome, gathering material for a research project in the third module of my Criminology degree course, saving the pages in: Mobile Bookmarks > MSc > Module 3. Then boom! Some arrogant, "I understand users better than you" expert at Google, says "Stephen, your system sucks, try this!" And here is a glimpse of what you see when you view all bookmarks in the new in-your-face interface:



Believe me when I tell you that no amount of scrolling down the list on the left takes me to "Mobile Bookmarks > MSc > Module 3". That structure is just not there. And I will add more thoughts about that on this page when I have calmed down. For now, I want to put this "fix" out there. If you want to come back for more, please bookmark this page (he said with no trace of irony at all, honest).

 

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Free professional security advice for Palestinian hackers

Free professional security advice for Palestinian hackers

  October 12, 2013    Stephen Cobb

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First of all, welcome. I am glad you found this page. Please don't hack it.

Who am I? I am one of many people in the computer security world who have great sympathy for the Palestinian people. We agree with you that the Palestinian people deserve to live in peace. We let our politicians know what we think. We use social media to spread news and awareness of the injustices suffered by the Palestinian people at the hands of Western governments and their allies in the region.

As computer security professionals, we also work hard to protect the privacy and cybersecurity of hundreds millions of individuals around the world. Some of those people are Palestinians. For example, I work at ESET, a company which protects the computers and smartphones of many millions of people in more than 180 different countries. I'm guessing some of them are Palestinian sympathizers.

Recently, some of you have been busy redirecting website traffic AWAY from sites that many people, including some Palestinian sympathizers, rely on for help in protecting their privacy and their data, and TO a page that calls for Palestinian rights. I have to say, I don't think this strategy is helping you, or the Palestinian cause; it hurts law-abiding human beings who use computers and smartphones to make an honest living, to connect with their families, and in some cases, to campaign for peace and justice.

[Note: When I say sympathy with the plight of the Palestinian people, or sympathy with the Palestinian cause, I mean that I think the people of Palestine have been, and are being, treated inhumanely, and that they deserve a secure homeland in which they are free to enjoy the rights and liberties that Americans take for granted. I do not mean that violence against civilians in pursuit of political aspirations is justified: it is not, ever, no matter what side you are on. Yet complacency and apathy in the face of inhumanity and injustice are equally objectionable.]

So, what is my professional advice? Use your computer skills to advance the cause in ways that don't impact innocent digital bystanders. Let me give you an example. This website you are reading right now is hosted on a web server that was hacked a few months ago in the name of freedom for Palestinians. The same web server hosts information about a potentially fatal genetic condition that doctors often fail to diagnose. That website helps a lot of people but it went down because someone thought hacking it would help the Palestinian cause. Did it help? I don't see any evidence that it did. Several kind and generous people had to give up their time to fix the website. Some innocent people in need of helpful information could not get to that information for days.

Did the hack provide any benefit to anyone? Not really. Security experts already know that websites can be hacked, and it is well known that the DNS servers which direct traffic to websites can be messed with. But the more protection that is applied to protect sites and infrastructure, the more expensive and cumbersome the Internet becomes. And I'm guessing you use the Internet for more things than hacking. How about use of the Internet to organize humanitarian aid for Palestine? How about use of the Internet to raise awareness of, and sympathy for, the Palestinian cause? Why not apply your skills and energy to those efforts? Help the people who are trying, or may be persuaded to try, to help you.

No quest for peace and freedom can prosper without a critical mass of support that comes from many quarters. Annoying people who might otherwise be persuaded to support you just seems counter-productive.

Respectfully...Stephen Cobb, CISSP

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Robot or not? Robotic surgery and risk, part one

Robot or not? Robotic surgery and risk, part one

  July 13, 2013    Stephen Cobb

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A security geek goes to see a surgeon about having an operation. The surgeon says, "We may use the robot."

The geek thinks: "Robot! Cool. What OS does it use? Is it on the network? Has anyone hacked this type of robot yet?"

I am that geek and I will get to those questions in a moment, but here's a question you need to be thinking about: Is it okay for a machine to slice into people and perform surgery, such as removing organs they no longer need? I'm thinking about this for several reasons, including my upcoming adrenalectomy and my job as a security researcher at ESET. But why do you need to think about this? Because robotic surgery is no longer science fiction: nearly half a million surgical procedures were performed robotically in North America in 2012.

So, there's a good chance that, if you need any one of a number of types of surgery in America today, your healthcare provider will want to use a robot. Are you okay with that? Clearly, most people will want to ask themselves:  Does the surgeon's use of a robot increase or decrease the risks to me, the patient? In this post and others that I am planning to write, I hope to shed light on this question.

Note that I am not a doctor, nor am I a medical researcher, but I have some experience with risks related to digital technology. I work for a company that works to improve the safety of digital technology. A surgical robot is digital technology. Here's a simplified diagram of a robotic surgery setup:

The surgeon guides the robot tools from a 3D imaging console using hand and foot controls communicating over wires to the device. Note that the surgeon's console can be some distance from the patient (in telesurgery it could be miles away).

Slicing and dicing with da Vinci

If your healthcare provider does want to deploy a robot as part of your surgery there are a couple of data points we know already. First, the procedure is likely to take a bit longer. Second, the procedure will cost more. Third, the robot they will use is most likely to be the da Vinci Robotic Surgical System. The da Vinci is made by Intuitive Surgical, a company that went public 13 years ago at $9 a share [ISRG]. This was the same year the FDA approved the system for general laparoscopic surgery. Intuitive has since traded as high as $585.67, which might lead you to think that things are going well in robo-surgery land.

Unfortunately, and I mean this sincerely as a fan of technology and a believer in the potential of robotics to improve our world, some things have not gone well. For example, according to one law firm:

there are now more than 4,500 complaints about the da Vinci surgical robot in the FDA’s MAUDE (“Manufacturer and User Facility Device Experience”) Database—50 or so of them involving the death of the patient—and 30 lawsuits against the manufacturer, Intuitive Surgical, Inc.

You don't have to take a lawyer's word for this because MAUDE is on the Internet. and you can look up reports yourself (I count 500 reports involving Intuitive surgical so far this year). Bear in mind that reporting medical device problems to MAUDE is not mandatory, so there is no way to tell the actual number of problems with the da Vinci system.

Then came a bunch of studies examining the cost and efficacy of these million dollar marvels (yes, a da Vinci robot can cost over $1.5 million). Together with the lawsuits and media scrutiny, these have depressed share prices for ISRG, which is now trading around $430 with some analysts predicting values of $300 within the year.

Somewhat ironically, given my initial security geek reaction to the idea of a robot slicing into my flesh--fear of hacking--none of the problems with this particular technology cited so far have anything to do with malware, coding errors, comms failures, or hacking. The greatest risk factor right now, in my opinion? The impact of market forces on safety.

Sales pressure and medical devices

Intuitive is under tremendous pressure from shareholders to sell more robots and get more robotic surgeries performed. This leads to marketing tactics that oversell benefits and downplay risks. For example, Johns Hopkins research shows hospital websites making excessive use of industry-provided content to sell robotic surgery and overstate claims of robotic success. A CNBC investigation quoted Suraj Kalia, a Northland Capital analyst, in a recent report on the company:

Our extensive field checks highlighted a story where aggressive marketing drives the message and true clinical utility seems secondary in nature.

There is a lot of pressure on Intuitive to market the heck out of their product because a lot of doctors are now expressing doubts about the value of robotic surgery. Consider the blistering Statement on Robotic Surgery by James T. Breeden, MD, president of ACOG, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (with 56,000 members, ACOG is the nation’s leading group of physicians providing health care for women). Here's the short version: "there is no good data proving that robotic hysterectomy is even as good as—let alone better—than existing, and far less costly, minimally invasive alternatives."

Here are some of the figures that ACOG quotes:

At a price of more than $1.7 million per robot, $125,000 in annual maintenance costs, and up to $2,000 per surgery for the cost of single-use instruments, robotic surgery is the most expensive approach. A recent Journal of the American Medical Association study found that the percentage of hysterectomies performed robotically has jumped from less than 0.5% to nearly 10% over the past three years. A study of over 264,000 hysterectomy patients in 441 hospitals also found that robotics added an average of $2,000 per procedure without any demonstrable benefit...an estimated $960 million to $1.9 billion will be added to the health care system if robotic surgery is used for all hysterectomies each year.

Between the medical questions and the growing number of lawsuits, Intuitive is under pressure, the kind of pressure that should, I believe, influence the way you interpret what people say about robotic surgery. Is the hospital pushing it on you? Is the hospital pushing it on the surgeon? Is the hospital skimping on robotic training, given the manufacturer's claim that surgeons are ready after two or three operations? Is the motive to achieve the best healthcare for you or is the motive a need to pay back the huge investment in hardware and supplies and maintenance contracts? Are doctors and hospital administrators being plied with luxury vacations and other perks to encourage them to use the robot more often in a wider range of procedures, including yours?

Those questions are currently more pressing than the need to analyze the da Vinci system's coding and connectivity. So far, I have found no indications that the system has been hacked and it does not appear to be connected to any networks. But that may change as the pressure to perform remote robotic surgery grows, powered by the perception that this can expand healthcare delivery at lower costs than training more surgeons. Already we see FDA approval for passive telemedicine robots. The term telesurgery has been coined and tests of procedures performed over the Internet are under way.

What's next for robotic risks?

In my next post I will break down the technical risk factors in more detail. These include analog issues, like build quality (here is a self-reported problem with da Vinci hardware that can cause burns), and also logical issues, like the security of device programming.

I leave you now with a link to the AJOG report "The commercialization of robotic surgery: unsubstantiated marketing of gynecologic surgery by hospitals," and a link to a report that really rips into Intuitive. The author quotes a lot of sources that appear to check out. After reading it you are likely to question whether or not robotic surgery is right for you. As of now, I am going to ask my surgeon to take a more hands on approach.

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The Google-SOPA-PIPA-DNS-Copyright-Oil-and-Gas Link

The Google-SOPA-PIPA-DNS-Copyright-Oil-and-Gas Link

  December 04, 2011    Stephen Cobb

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What does copyright infringement have to do with scraping oil from the bottom of a barrel and an acronym soup like SOPA, PIPA, DNS and DNSSEC? The answer lies with Google, not the search engine but the company.

More specifically, the answer lies with Google's Executive Chairman, Eric Schmidt, who said the following at the University of Minnesota last week when asked about legislation (SOPA/PIPA) which would--in the name of protection against copyright infirngement--give the U.S. government the power to mess with the Domain Name System (DNS) that forms the backbone of the Internet:

“There are a whole bunch of issues involved with [SOPA] breaking the Internet and the way it works. The correct solution, which we’ve repeatedly said, is to follow the money...Making it more explicitly illegal to make money from that type of content [pirated movies, software, or other counterfeit goods] is what we recommend.”

Mr. Schmidt is entirely correct, and I love the expression "making it more explicitly illegal to make money from..." because it covers a range of actions that governments and law enforcement agencies can take without interfering with the way the Internet works.

For example, the act of distributing pirated movies would be more explicitly illegal if the pirates were identified, arrested, extradited or extracted, imprisoned, tried, convicted, and given 20-year sentences in maximum security facilities without the possibility of parole. The same goes for the makers of malicious software. Let's put a bunch of them in jail with long sentences and see if that reduces the malware problem.

I just don't see a downside to this hardline approach to making something like software piracy or handbag counterfeiting "more explicitly illegal" except that some people will say it costs too much money. Au contraire, if you do this right it will actually make a lot more money than it costs. Consider the numbers put out by supporters* of the Stop Online Piracy Act: "IP theft costs the U.S. economy more than $100 billion annually and results in the loss of thousands of American jobs" (The Austin Statesman).

If you gave me a budget of one percent of that amount ($1 billion), I would most assuredly, and within a period of 12 months, reduce the cost of that theft by at least 15 percent ($15 billion). In other words, backing the effort to crack down on piracy to the tune of $1 billion in fresh money would pay huge dividends, save thousands of U.S. jobs, and actually create jobs (without messing with DNS).

Why am I so sure of this? My answer is not a lot of hot air, but it is a bit oily, as in petroleum production taxes. Thirty years ago I was criss-crossing America auditing the state oil and gas taxes paid by petroleum companies, firms with names like Koch, Hess, Ashland, Texaco, and Hunt. During that time I learned a lot about the ways in which we humans try to cheat each other.

Consider the sludge that forms at the bottom of a crude oil holding tank such as you see next to wells in oil fields where the wells are not connected to a pipeline. Some of that sludge is recoverable oil and, from time to time, someone goes into the tank to suck it out. How much of the sludge is oil? How much gets pumped out? Where is it taken? How much of it gets there? These are all points in the oil production process where numbers and readings and measurements can be fudged, to the advantage of one party and the disadvantage of another.

Not that every case of missing petroleum tax dollars was a case of cheating. Oil companies were sometimes being cheated by employees and contractors. And every time the production output of a well is understated that also cheats the royalty owner, the person who owns the mineral rights to the land from under which the oil and gas is being extracted.

Operating on a shoe string budget my auditing team raked in millions of previously unpaid taxes within the first 12 months of operation. We used no new laws or fancy gimmicks. We just followed the money, which is what Eric Schmidt is saying when it comes to cracking down on copyright infringement. In oil production areas you don't close down the roads in and out of every county where production is apparently going missing. You go to the top of the organization, the people getting the money, and you figure out how they came by it. You examine the paperwork. You audit the heck out of the operation. If the organization is shady, you shed light. If it is in another country then you remind that country of our mutual interests.

We have already seen positive results when private dollars are used to help enforce public laws, as in the Microsoft and Pfizer funded action against the Rustock botnet. (If you're wondering why a drug company got involved, read the story, it really is a big deal.) So why not an anti-infringement posse formed and funded by the likes of Google, eBay Facebook, and Yahoo! The backers of Protect Innovation could really make a lot of friends in high places, and on the High Street, if they were seen to spearhead a new effort to put cyber-criminals behind bars.

* Note: Here are some of the fine companies and trade groups that back SOPA (I respect and admire many of them, I just think they are wrong about SOPA): National Cable and Telecommunications Association, National Association of Manufacturers, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), Business Software Alliance, Screen Actors Guild (SAG), the U.S Chamber of Commerce, Independent Film & Television Alliance (IFTA), National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO), Motion Picture Association of America, Inc. (MPAA), American Federation of Musicians (AFM), American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA), Directors Guild of America (DGA), International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, (IATSE), International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), Comcast/NBCUniversal, National Songwriters Association, the United States Conference of Mayors, National Sheriffs' Association, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, International Trademark Association.

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Security and Privacy Links: Marketing cybersecurity

Security and Privacy Links: Marketing cybersecurity

  December 04, 2011    Stephen Cobb

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As some of you know, I hit the ground running when I landed in San Diego at the beginning of September, happy to be back in California, wrestling with my first love, information security.

Okay, so that prose was a trifle purple--not to be confused with a delicious purple trifle--and information security is not, strictly speaking, my first love.

But hopefully you get the point: I was ready to up my game in the fight against digital malfeasance after three fun years focused on the marketing of marketing software to marketers (three highly successful years, I might add, because the marketing software, Monetate, was clearly headed for best of breed from day one and can now be found on major websites from PETCO to QVC).

There were a number of happy congruencies in this latest development. My marketing skills had been honed, my marketing experience broadened, just in time to sell a fresh message of cybersecurity awareness to a deeply digital world. That message goes like this: "The bad guys are badder than ever, better funded, more organized, but there are simple steps we can all take to make cyberspace a lot safer tomorrow than it is today."

For me, this was just the right time to run into ESET, a Slovakian company with a growing presence in North America and a strong commitment to the public good, as evidenced by a pioneering community initiative called Securing Our eCity. I spend part of my time working on this initiative and the rest on research and publication, in all its forms, including blogging, tweeting, and speaking. Here are just a few of my efforts so far:

On TV:

• On Digital Pros Fight Cyberspace Predators on NBC


• On What to Bring When Buying Online on NBC

Speaking:

• On Cybersecurity in the Workplace for Excelsior College


• On Information Security Policies for SMBs and several more webcasts


• On Becoming a Security Detective by Dark Reading and InformationWeek

Quoted:

• On Cyber Monday threats in SC Magazine


• On Attackers Gearing Up for Cyber Monday With Scams, Deals by eWeek


• On Online anonymity hard to achieve but not impossible by ZDNet Asia


• On Apple Shoots the Messenger by PC World

Published:

• Video blog on Search Poisoning of McCartney and Gaddafi


• Blog post on Malware Delivery via Canada Post


• Cybercrime column on Freezing assets and turning up the heat


• Many more security blog posts


• Various articles ESET Global Threat Report

Bonus Security Video: Malware Delivery Scam:

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The Apartment With Everything, Now Available Everywhere (Irony Included)

The Apartment With Everything, Now Available Everywhere (Irony Included)

  August 18, 2011    Stephen Cobb

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So here's something way more ironic than anything in the Alanis Morissette song of the same name. My wife found a gorgeous apartment to rent in San Diego, for only $1,000 a month (I will explain why she was looking in a moment). The place looked great in the photos and it sounded great in the description on Craigslist:

"2 Bedroom, 2 Bath, fully furnished, modern kitchen and bath, cable TV, Internet wi-fi, electricity, water, local phone included. Nestled in a quiet, almost suburban-like setting, you're just a few minutes away from world-class dining, shopping and the verve of theaters, clubs and nightlife. Great location, great features. All at a location that's exactly right, exactly where you want to be."

All that for $1,000 in San Diego, California? Sounds fantastic, but hardly ironic. So let me add the most interesting thing about this place, something not immediately apparent: it is also for rent in Boston, San Francisco, Seattle, Washington, and many other cities in America. But even that's not ironic, that's just another sick cyber-scam.

Let me add some more data points. My wife and I have spent many years working in the field of information security--where uncovering online scams and other cyber-crime was part of the job--and we are planning to move to San Diego next month, for my new job as Security Evangelist for ESET, a software company dedicated to fighting cyber-crime. We don't need a furnished apartment, but this place looked inviting (and it could lead one to think rent in downtown San Diego is very affordable).

So here's the irony: The apartment that I wanted to rent in order to facilitate my move to a new job fighting cyber-crime turned out to be a cyber-scam!

I was going to provide links to the scam pages (they were mainly on Craigslist) so you could check them out--they were quite professional with fewer typos than your average scam --but after my wife sent Craigslist a description of the scam they pulled it from all the cities mentioned above.

Of course, there may have been other complaints but my wife actually got the scammer to send her an email, which provided further details of the scam that she passed along to Craigslist. Apparently the scammer claims to be out of the country and seeks to get the prospective renter to send her a deposit, presumably before they find out that the whole thing is a fraud.

Notes: I say "her" only because the name most often associated with these fake apartment listings is Amanda Dawson (although I'm pretty sure that is not the scammer's real name). Also note that I think Alanis Morissette is a very good actor and singer, I just don't like the song  "Ironic" because most of it isn't. I don't know why I have a problem with errors in works of art, but I do. For example, the great big hole in Lord of the Flies--you can't use a short-sighted person's glasses to make fire--spoils that book for me (maybe it's because I've been myopic since I was 11 and tried using my glasses to burn paper on several occasions until my father sat me down and told me the facts of light).

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Cobb's Satellite Internet Whitepaper Published by Rural Mobile & Broadband Alliance

Cobb's Satellite Internet Whitepaper Published by Rural Mobile & Broadband Alliance

  May 03, 2011    Stephen Cobb

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Update, December 18, 2019: A recent decision by the FCC has put the spotlight on satellite internet service for rural communities in America (see Viasat gets $87.1M for rural broadband). I researched this topic - from a rural home that depended on satellite service for its internet connection - back in 2011. This article describes, and links to, the whitepaper in which I wrote up my research (PDF, 2 megabytes).

Original article:

I'm happy to announce that a document I've been working on for some time now has been published by RuMBA: the Rural Mobile & Broadband Alliance. Here's the full title:

Satellite Internet Connection for Rural Broadband: Is it a viable alternative to wired and wireless connectivity for America's rural communities?

You can download the whitepaper here (this a 22-page PDF document just under 2 Megabytes in size).

For those who haven't heard of RuMBA, it's a non-profit organization that was launched in February 2009 by Luisa Handem Piette as an advocacy group "seeking to ensure that rural communities are offered the same access to affordable mobile and broadband services available to urban and suburban areas."

I admit that I first got involved with RuMBA for purely selfish reasons: I live in a rural community that has no access to broadband and I like broadband.

Okay, it's more than that. I need broadband to earn a living. Sure, I could go through some sort of retraining program and earn a living as a farmer or lumberjack or trucker, but to keep doing what I've been doing for the last 25 years, researching, writing and publishing, I need broadband.

(I actually think broadband can help you be a more successful farmer, lumberjack, or trucker, so it's not like those careers wouldn't benefit from better access to broadband as well.)

When I found out about RuMBA, a group of people looking to expand rural access to broadband, I signed up. One of the things I like about RuMBA is that it's not just an organization for consumers of broadband. And it's not just a meeting place for suppliers of broadband. RuMBA is a good mix of consumers and suppliers and experts, and a great place to research this field. I have already learned a great deal from RuMBA members about the possibilities and challenges of bringing broadband to un-served or under-served areas.

Which brings me back to satellite Internet. Attentive readers of this blog will know that I've had a lot of experience using satellite Internet over the last 5 years. Until recently it was the only way to connect to the Internet from the cabin in Upstate New York where I live and work IF you wanted speeds above those of an old-fashioned dialup modem.

In fact, the claim "faster than dialup" has been at the heart of marketing efforts by HughesNet and Wildblue, the two largest satellite Internet providers, for many years. What you don't see when you look into signing up for these services on the web is the phrase "satellite broadband." And there is a good reason for that [spoiler alert--the next sentence reveals the primary conclusion of the above-mentioned whitepaper].

Basically, satellite Internet is not broadband. It is not sold to consumers and small businesses as broadband. But it is getting promoted to government agencies and regulators as broadband. Which raises two questions:

1. Why did I write a 22 page document to make that point?


2. What's the problem?

Let me state the problem first: The traditional terrestrial Internet providers, the purveyors of DSL, cable, and fiber, do not want the government to require them to serve rural areas in the way that America requires telephone companies to serve rural areas.

Have you ever wondered how it is that your relatives on the farm way in the middle of nowhere North Dakota have a phone line? The answer lies in federal legislation dating back to the 1930s. That's when America decided "to make available, so far as possible, to all the people of the United States a rapid, efficient, nationwide and worldwide wire and radio communication service with adequate facilities at reasonable charges."

One of the principles established back then can be stated like this: If a company wants to run cable or beam waves across this great land of ours, everyone living on this land should get a slice of the service those cables and waves deliver. For example, a great big rope of fiber runs right through my village here in rural New York. My neighbors have to exercise care with their farm equipment so that they don't damage said cable or the power injectors and related fiber-phernalia. It seems only fair, at least in that old-fashioned 1930s way of American thinking, that a slice of said fiber should serve the community through which it passes. Right now it does not.

And one of the arguments that fiber/cable/DSL companies in America make against a universal broadband service requirement is that the country does not need it because: rural folks can always get broadband via satellite. And of course the satellite companies love that; they even got federal broadband money to build out their subscriber base. The telecommunications industry can say: "See, there's no need for universal service requirement because everyone has access to broadband."

Except they don't. That's because Satellite Internet is not broadband. And just so there could be no doubt about that statement I decided to make available an argument-ending document full of facts and references that anyone can print out and hand out and email, something that substantiates that statement in language anyone can understand. (And that answers question 2 above.)

If you would like a copy, it is free, and I encourage to download it now then please, spread it around.

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Doctors, Genes, Family Trees, Quora and Hemochromatosis

Doctors, Genes, Family Trees, Quora and Hemochromatosis

  April 05, 2011    Stephen Cobb

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Have you visited Quora yet? It's a increasingly popular website that bills itself as "a continually improving collection of questions and answers created, edited, and organized by everyone who uses it." On a recent visit to Quora I saw this question:

Q. What are reasons that I should not submit my DNA to a firm like 23andMe?

You can read the question and answers here. This question caught my eye because, as regular readers will know, I did submit my DNA to 23andMe. Personally, I could not think of any reason not to do so. Apparently, not everyone shares my attitude, which is fine, but one person provided an answer that was, IMHO, wide of the mark. Here is what I submitted to Quora in response to Person X:

Me: I see no reason not to submit your DNA to 23andMe. And I have to warn you that the following assertions are, in my experience, somewhere between naïve and dangerously wrong:

"First of all, your doctor is going to notice in your family history if said disease is wreaking havoc on your family tree." - -Person X


Me: My wife's family was decimated by hereditary hemochromatosis over a period of 40 years and scores of doctors failed to notice it. My wife presented classic hemochromatosis symptoms to at least a dozen doctors herself, over a period of 15 years, before one of them connected the dots.

Her case is not just an isolated example. A landmark CDC study showed that hemochromatosis sufferers had symptoms for an average of 9.5 years and saw more than 3 doctors before being correctly diagnosed.

"Secondly, many diseases with a clear genetic linkage present themselves early in life, often when patients are still quite young." -- Person X


Me: This is not entirely untrue, but it is terribly vague. For example, women often do not get the symptoms of hereditary hemochromatosis until menopause, at which point they can have suffered serious organ damage. Indeed, it is unusual for hereditary hemochromatosis to cause symptoms before adulthood.

"You're probably not going to find a big nasty surprise buried in your genes. And even if you do find said nasty surprise, most doctors are not going to start treating you until your body actually starts showing symptoms." -- Person X


Me: There are two serious problems with this statement. First, knowing that you are a genetic carrier can help your doctor catch the symptoms sooner. For example, if you are homozygous for hemochromatosis then a simple blood iron test administered as part of a regular physical can detect elevated iron levels before they do long term damage. Since iron tests were dropped from standard blood panels in the US in 1996 [due to several cases of billing fraud by unenthical labs], many insurance companies won't cover these tests without cause, and a positive gene test is a better cause than waiting for someone to be sick.

Secondly, there are numerous nasty surprises you can find in your genetic data. I count myself lucky that I am not a carrier of Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deficiency, Bloom's Syndrome, Canavan Disease, Cystic Fibrosis, Familial Dysautonomia, Factor XI Deficiency, Fanconi Anemia (FANCC-related), Familial Hypercholesterolemia Type B, Familial Mediterranean Fever, Gaucher Disease, Glycogen Storage Disease Type 1a, Hemochromatosis, Limb-girdle Muscular Dystrophy, Maple Syrup Urine Disease Type 1B, Mucolipidosis IV, Niemann-Pick Disease Type A, Connexin 26-Related Sensorineural Hearing Loss, Phenylketonuria, Rhizomelic Chondrodysplasia Punctata Type 1 (RCDP1), Sickle Cell Anemia, Tay-Sachs Disease, or Torsion Dystonia.

I am also thankful that, because of 23andMe and my own interest in my health, I know that I am not a carrier. Ignorance is seldom bliss. I don't plan on fathering any children, but if I was a younger man I would want to know about my genetic carrier status before I did. A gene test that reveals you are a carrier of something like hemochromatosis or Gaucher could make a big difference to your decisions about partners and parenthood.

END.

Quora is an interesting website and potentially a very useful resource. I will keep visiting and answering questions when I feel I have something to offer. However, if you go to Quora you need to be careful when evaluating answers. Person X describes herself as a third year medical student, which suggests that medical schools are still teaching the AMA line on direct-to-consumer genetic tests, namely that a. they are pointless, b. consumers can't handle them. That is why the AMA is lobbying the FDA to ban them. I disagree. That's why I am asking people to sign this petition to the FDA.

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Mark Zuckerberg Faces the Privacy Meter: Facebook trends open book

Mark Zuckerberg Faces the Privacy Meter: Facebook trends open book

  May 02, 2010    Stephen Cobb

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Face it folks, it's time to dust off the Privacy Meter for a quick check of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. According to an internal source, Mr. Zuckerberg has placed himself in the camp made (in)famous in 1999 by Scott McNealy, the CEO of Sun Microsystems, who was reported to have said: “You already have zero privacy anyway, so get over it.”

Mr. Zuckerberg's position was recently described by a Facebook insider in response to this question: "How does Zuck feel about privacy?" Response: “He doesn’t believe in it.”

The details of this revelation can be read here and I'd have to say it hardly amounts to a public statement by "Zuck" himself (for the record, Scott McNealy's declaration was not a public statement either, and should be placed in context, something I tried to do in my 2002 book on privacy).

I doubt that either Mr. Zuckerberg or Mr. McNealy would say, on the record, that they don't believe in privacy. What both men seem to share is a frustration with privacy concerns as they relate to digital systems. Human beings can be annoyingly inconsistent and hard to predict when it comes to matters of personal information. That makes it inherently difficult to design online communications and online communities that satisfy every shade of sentiment with respect to the sharing of personal information. And that's why I created the Privacy Meter:

Not exactly a high tech device, it nevertheless serves its purpose: to help people assess their own attitude to their personal information. I developed the privacy meter as a teaching tool, specifically to teach Chief Privacy Officers and other C-level execs that:

a. Everyone has a different place on the privacy scale, there is no "correct" score;

b. Entities like companies and agencies cannot handle privacy issues according to one person's views about privacy.

In other words, the fact that you're an open book kind of person does not make it okay to impose an open book approach on people who are more closed book. If you are closed book you can't impose that view either because it could limit your organization's ability to serve its customers. Most importantly, the way you handle other people's private data has to be in accordance with their view, not yours. That principle was established, in the context of computer data, back in 1974, and remains one of the pillars of privacy best practices in the realm of data protection (see Chapter 3 of Privacy for Business, available as a free .pdf file here).

Several years ago I put together a short set of slides on the privacy meter and the potential benefits and problems arising from getting privacy positioning right or wrong. You can click here to download the slides as a .pdf file which I recently updated to include Facebook's current privacy perception problem. That slide is pretty easy to understand:

Just a few hours after Wired puts out the story that your CEO doesn't believe in privacy, PC World publishes a story about the latest privacy invading scam that your system is enabling. Not good. Just the sort thing that can hurt your share price and tarnish your brand. Which is why your personal feelings about privacy should probably remain private when you are running a company.

[BTW, you can now download the full 240 page text of Privacy for Business (2002) as an Adobe Acrobat document from this web site; there's no charge and no registration required.]

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My "Satellite is Not Broadband" Letter to the Editor, FCC Test Data, and More

My "Satellite is Not Broadband" Letter to the Editor, FCC Test Data, and More

  March 15, 2010    Stephen Cobb

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I just noticed that my letter to the editor of the Daily Star about rural broadband was published (back on February 15). I have pasted the letter at the bottom of this post.

The letter is part of my ongoing campaign to evangelize the need for affordable broadband connectivity in rural areas. I truly believe that if affordable broadband is not made available to what are currently "dialup-only" areas, once-thriving villages will eventually become ghost towns. On the other hand, if such connectivity is made available, then many rural areas can be transformed through better jobs, better education, and a variety of digital community-building initiatives that are currently impractical.

Sometimes you will hear people say "rural households can get satellite Internet, so they have broadband available to them."

As I have described at length before, my opinion is that satellite Internet service is NOT broadband and never can be. In my letter I try to explain that in plain English in the context of recent efforts by Otsego County to get federal funding for improved broadband access.

On a brighter note, one positive step the federal government is taking in this field showed up recently on the special FCC site called broadband.gov. The agency has posted a test that anyone can use (rural or sub/urban) to check their connection's speed. This test evolved out of growing suspicion that most broadband providers claim to provide higher performance than they actually deliver. (For example, I pay for a download speed of over 1,000kbps but as you can see from my test result, I get nothing like that.)

I urge you to test your own connection. In the meantime, here is my letter titled "Satellite Internet not same as broadband."

Dear Editor,

Your coverage of Otsego County's struggle to provide affordable broadband to rural residents is much appreciated by those of us whose property prices are being hit by the lack of broadband access. ("County's request for Web funding denied," Feb. 4.) I have seen neighbors move already, putting property up for sale because of the lack of broadband.

With all due respect to Rep. Betty Anne Schwerd, whom you quoted, satellite Internet service is not broadband.

A broadband Internet connection should support real-time trading, Voice over IP (like Vonage), video streaming (like YouTube and NetFlix), and Virtual Private Networking (VPN is required for many telecommuting jobs).

Satellite does not support these core broadband functions, as stated on the website of HughesNet, one of Otsego County's two main satellite providers. The other provider, Wild Blue, is not accepting new customers in parts of Otsego County due to capacity issues. These can cause a big drop in performance. As a HughesNet customer, my median download speed is 258kbps, much slower than the "headline rate" of 1.6mbps for which I pay $70 per month.

Cheap dial-up delivers 56kbps plus better latency than satellite (which will always be weak in this regard because every bit travels 45,000 miles into space and back).

Sadly, lobbyists for cable and phone companies, fighting requirements that they serve rural customers, have tricked politicians into thinking that "everyone in rural areas can get broadband thanks to satellite." This is deceptive at best. Satellite Internet is not broadband and, if there's no broadband where you live, you cannot participate in all the opportunities that the Internet affords. As a result, the value of your property, like mine, will continue to decline relative to areas that have broadband.

Stephen Cobb
Cherry Valley

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Where Does The Time Go? Is all this time-saving technology to blame?

Where Does The Time Go? Is all this time-saving technology to blame?

  January 10, 2010    Stephen Cobb

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My good intentions to research the CFS/ME/XMRV/CDC thing have fallen prey to all kinds of technology. There's the technology I work on marketing at my day job, which requires a part of every day. Then there's the technology that distracts me, like Kindle for the iPhone, whereon I am reading the last book in the Axis of Time trilogy (in which the technology of 2012 collides with 1942). And then there are the "time-saving" gizmos that can be pretty darned time-consuming, like computers.

An embarrassing number of months ago I offered to repair my daughter's Dell notebook. That did not work out so well. So I got her a replacement, an IBM Thinkpad, a lease-return purchased without an operating system. I installed a copy of Windows XP I had purchased on eBay. That did not work out so well. The darned thing was "all used" up, which is the technical term for exceeding the number of installs for an individual Windows OS license.

Then I remembered the many copies of Windows XP that I had purchased while working as a Microsoft vendor. On Saturday, I finally managed to excavate one of those from the barn (my personal homage to the closing scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark, a place beloved of nobody but my cats, who love to leap from pile to pile of crated "stuff" and feast upon any mice that try to make their home among our stored belongings).

That worked out well. The license number unlocked the XP install. But then I was buried under a digital landslide of accumulated OS updates, application updates, driver updates, and mandatory reboots. However, by late Sunday afternoon, the Thinkpad was as stable as a rock and as up-to-date as an iPhone app.

Speaking of which, there were some positive side effects and salutary sideshows to this techno-marathon. First, I found my Griffin PowerMate, the spacey looking thing pictured, via iPhone, at the top of the page. This is a great gizmo that I have plugged into my Mac Mini to control the volume (and do other cool stuff when editing documents and video). That inspired me to add even more controls to the Mini.

First I tried the Apple app for the iPhone called Remote. This is supposed to provide remote control from an iPhone to a Mac. It may do that for some people, but not for me, not in any meaningful way (and like so many Apple-derived software it suffers from that really aggravating techno-snob, minimalist-style documentation).

So then I tried the Air Mouse app. Much better. That's what you're looking at on the left, a screen on the iPhone that allows you to mouse around your Mac and even type on it, at considerable distance. Great for doing your big screen web surfing from across the room.

I'm still learning all of the things Air Mouse can do, but it should be good for controlling iTunes when I get the multi-room speaker feed installed. Of course, that's got to wait for another tech weekend. Other techno-bits I worked on while updating the Thinkpad include installing Woopra to monitor a couple of web sites in real-time (it's pretty cool to watch someone land on your blog from New Zealand and then start flipping pages).

I also upgraded Paintshop Pro on my Sony Vaio to the latest version. I also did a bunch of writing in OpenOffice.org Writer, which I now prefer over Word by a considerable margin (not that I was ever a fan of Word--indeed, I was quite happy writing with Ami Pro until Microsoft killed it off).

And I started laying the groundwork to move this blog to my own [virtual] server. I noticed the blog was down for a while this morning [for which, my apologies] and I think the move will be good for reliability as well as saving me some money. Whether it will save me any time is hard to say. I'm going to try and turn things off for the rest of the day.

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Opera to the Rescue? Definitely worth a listen

Opera to the Rescue? Definitely worth a listen

  December 17, 2009    Stephen Cobb

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I just spent my evening at the Opera. Not the fat lady sings kind of opera, more of a browser with wings kind of thing that just happens to go by the name Opera. And I am really impressed (even though I'm tone deaf and can't tell a libretti from a Lambretta).

I have checked out the Opera browser several times in the past and each time was impressed at the way successive versions added new features, often ahead of IE (not hard to do) and Firefox (quite a bit harder but Opera has been doing it). However, I did not feel compelled to make it my default browser. When Google Chrome came along, seemingly faster than Firefox and with good stability, I made it my default browser. The recent emergence of the Mac version of Chrome into beta meant I could run it on both of my work boxes (one a PC, the other a Mac--yes, when it comes to tech--I go both ways).

But the latest Opera, version 10.10, has really impressed me and may become my new default. I was particularly interested in a combination of three capabilities that might be unique to me, but could make a difference to many other users.

First capability: An integrated email application that can read Eudora files. (For the younger generation, Eudora was a very popular email application last century and I still use it today because it's reliable and easily searchable. Unfortunately, the makers of Eudora abandoned it many years ago and it's starting to show its age.) I've been looking for a Eudora replacement and Opera might be it. I had been reluctant to give up Eudora's trusty filter/folder system of message management but Opera replicates it while using a more flexible system of "views."

Second, there is a Turbo feature that speeds up browsing on slow connections. Regular readers of this blog will know that my home office connection to the Internet is via satellite, specifically HughesNet, which can be very slow at times. Tada! Opera Turbo helps me cope with that.

Third, regular readers of this blog know that HughesNet makes it hard to access my own blog. (Something so weird I made a video about it.) But guess what, Opera sees my blog even when Firefox and Safari and Chrome and IE7/8 do not! Yes, it sounds crazy, but it is verifiable (a video of this phenomenon in action is coming). So there is no other way to put it: Opera works when the others don't. (And no prizes for figuring out with which browser I am writing this.)

There's a bunch more cool stuff in Opera 10.10 that I have not fully explored yet, including file and photo sharing and audio streaming (the audio thing was the source of the "worth a listen pun" in the blog post title). Even though Opera does not have a large share of the notebook and desktop browser market, the company is clearly pushing ahead with innovations and picking up enthusiastic users in the process. The company is also well established in the mobile and embedded browser market (check out the browser in your Nintendo Wii).

Over the next week or so I will be checking out more features and, if this whole HughesNet workaround capability pans out, I will be posting my impressions here.

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You Can't See My House From Here: And I'm okay with that

You Can't See My House From Here: And I'm okay with that

  October 25, 2009    Stephen Cobb

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Having written several posts in the past about Google Street View, including one featuring the house in which I was born, I thought I would post a Street View picture of where I live now:



As you can see--or rather, not see--the Google Street View camera vehicle did not get very close. In fact, it drove along the state highway near us, but that was it. Street View does not extend to the county road on which our 'official' address is located. And I'm okay with that.

I remain ambiguous about Street View in light of it's potential for abuse as a scouting tool by burglars and perverts. This has been widely discussed, particularly in the context of English cities where the narrowness of streets can put the Google camera very close to living room windows. But past discussions have focused on urban street views. Now Google is photographing rural roads, adding a new dimension to the potential for abuse.

It is no secret that farmers and ranchers don't always store their tractors and trailers in barns. In fact, putting all the equipment away at the end of every day, or every time you left the homestead to go to town, well that would be hugely unproductive, not to mention being a major pain in the butt. It's also common knowledge that some farms are located close to, sometimes bifurcated by, state and county highways, as seen here on Street View.



But common knowledge and specific knowledge are two different things; keeping them apart may keep some light-fingered city types from pillaging trusting country dwellers. Now Google Street View is bringing them together. Who knows who is surfing the hinterlands looking for easy targets?

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A Tale of Intrigue & DNS: See HughesNet “blocking” my blog, now on YouTube

A Tale of Intrigue & DNS: See HughesNet “blocking” my blog, now on YouTube

  October 03, 2009    Stephen Cobb

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I have just uploaded my "HughesNet DNS Fail" video to YouTube but you can watch it right here. To be honest it is not my most polished video work, but I think it gets the job done. I have another one in the works that might be more effective. The plot goes like this: At times when HughesNet refuses to show me my own blog--yes, this very blog that you are reading--I can reach it via my iPhone over the AT&T Edge network. One of these days I am going to get really calm and centered and call HughesNet support with iPhone in hand and try to explain the flaw in their DNS ways one more time before I call in the sharks.

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Cobbsblog on YouTube (via Stagecoach not Satellite)

Cobbsblog on YouTube (via Stagecoach not Satellite)

  September 01, 2009    Stephen Cobb

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This is a quick post to highlight the video I just uploaded to YouTube. Probably not my finest mixed media effort, it's a quick screencast to demonstrate the fact, oft-mentioned to friends and colleagues, that the $80-per-month HughesNet Satellite Internet service which I get at my house "blocks" access to my blog.

(10/2/2009: Video link updated. For the video, click here.)

In fact, even as I write this, I am being forced to eat a veggie pannini at Stagecoach Coffee in Cooperstown so I can use their free WiFi to get to my blog to post this on my lunch hour. As you can see in the video, accessing my blog via HughesNet  "normally" results in a DNS Lookup Error. However, there is nothing wrong with the blog, as can be demonstrated with DownForEveryone, which I demonstrate in the video.

I have reported this problem to HughesNet but they tell me it must be a problem with my web site or web hosting company. Obviously the problem is NOT with my web site or host. I am pretty sure the problem is HughesNet DNS. I even demonstrated this to HughesNet by running Anonymizer which, as shown in the video, intercepts the HughesNet DNS and makes my blog accessible over the very same HughesNet connection that said "DNS Error."

My speculation that this problem occurs because I am frequently critical of HughesNet, on this and other blogs, is indeed speculation. But you don't have to be ultra-paranoid to think it mighty strange that my HughesNet connection, which can reach Google.com but not Cobbsblog.com, is fishy. It certainly stinks.

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Sins of iMission: What Apple omitted from the iPhone

Sins of iMission: What Apple omitted from the iPhone

  May 24, 2009    Stephen Cobb

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If you've observed the outpouring of joy and wonder--and cash--with which adoring Apple fans have greeted each new iteration of the iPhone, and if you've formed the general impression that the iPhone is the "smartphone" that does everything, think again. Dig a little deeper into the online chatter and you find out, as buyers like me have done, that Apple omitted some serious "basic" features from all the iPhones so far produced.

Topping the "Sins of iMission" is a feature that's almost synonymous with Apple. That's right I'm talking about cut-and-paste. You heard right, there's no way to...

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On the Street Where I Was Born

On the Street Where I Was Born

  April 13, 2009    Stephen Cobb

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Recently, on my technology blog, I wrote about the mixed reception that Google Street View has received in England, land of my birth. I admit to having mixed feelings about this technology myself.

It is very easy to be seduced by technology that enables me to sit in a cottage on a hill in the wilds of Upstate New York and capture this image of the street in England where I was born. (Just to clarify, I was not born in the street, but in one of the houses on this street--home birth by midwife being the normal practice in England in the 1950s.)

The most obvious change in the last 50 years is the number of cars on the street. There were  practically none when I was born. You could easily play 20 minutes of football in the road without being disturbed. Now there are too many vehicles, which is why many front gardens have been replaced with parking spaces--compare the original gardens on the left with the parking pads on the right. And so it goes...

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And the Good News is? Apple's iPhone works in my house

And the Good News is? Apple's iPhone works in my house

  March 15, 2009    Stephen Cobb

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As some readers already know, I've had to abandon my faithful Treo 680 because it wouldn't always work in my house. Sad, because I've had a Treo since they first came out, operating on T-Mobile, then Cingular, now AT&T.

Although it was only GPRS, I was able to read the news on my Treo, do email, Twitter, and write notes pretty darn fast. But the fact is, you can't very well use a cell phone for business if it doesn't work reliably in your house.

I was going to hold out for a new Palm Pre but it looks like that device is anchored to Sprint at the moment (my choice of "anchor" being quite intentional). And current speculation is that the Pre won't be available on AT&T until next year (per the TreoCentral forum). Sprint coverage at my place is zero. Verizon is better and so a Pre on Verizon might be appealing at some point in the future.

But for now, the iPhone 3G is my phone, which means

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