Michael Boyle — Page 404

I’m in the midst of some

February 26, 2001 by Michael Boyle

pretty big decisions – one involving starting up a consulting company with some colleagues, one involving moving to the other side of the table, figuratively speaking.

The latter brings up lots of questions though. People (designers, web developers) always complain about how clueless clients are. What if the client isn’t clueless? What if your client knows exactly what can and can’t be done, what the best approach would be, how much it should cost? What if you client has a long background in web design, web coding, content development for the web, and the like? What if I suggest that the code be done to (say) W3C standards – or at least pay attention to the current developments on that side of things?

Does that still look like a client you want to work for? Or is that still a nightmare client? I’d let you do your thing – but cut a corner, and I’ll see it. I’ll look at the code and expect it to be professionally done. Still a good client?

A fear I have is that although clueless clients are a horror, so might clued-in clients be to many web designers and web developers. Can you deal with someone who knows his stuff?

I think many

February 26, 2001 by Michael Boyle

people will be annoyed by the New Yorker’s article debunking the idea that Ada Lovelace was the first computer programmer. It seems well enough researched though, and the Ada story always had a whiff of the fanciful around it.

Yet another site

February 23, 2001 by Michael Boyle

in which you answer a bunch of witty questions and then it tells you what you are: the TotL Belief Assistant. The questions are particularly witty and the results quite funny. I’m evidently a “non-practicing militant atheist”. Har har har.

I’ve been harping on this

February 23, 2001 by Michael Boyle

a lot, but in Declan McCullagh’s article on the Hanssen, the alleged double-agent for the Russians, he includes a quote which calls the whole accusation into question. On page two, he writes, “Freeh, who once lobbied for a permanent ban on the distribution of encryption software without a backdoor for his agency, could use this case as justification for restrictions that Congress would have to approve. In a statement, Freeh stressed that Hanssen used a ‘variety of sophisticated means of communication (and) encryption.'”

The problem for me is that these guys have shown for years that they’re not trustworthy. How do we know that Hanssen wasn’t a plant from the get-go who has been brought out now to further the anti-crypto agenda?

Update: The Times has posted an excerpt of the FBI affadavit about Hanssen. It doesn’t clarify much, but it’s fascinating reading.

Julian Dibbell

February 22, 2001 by Michael Boyle

has written a great article on stego, crypto, and the wonders of the net circa 1992 in Feed. His background with this stuff is almost exactly the same as mine, though I never actually called Tim May on the phone to talk about crypto. I did, however, cut my usenet teeth in alt.security.pgp; I was steeped in the literature of the time from people like Hakim Bey, Arthur and Marilouse Kroker (who I had the privilege of working with for 4 years), the CAE, and others; and I still dream, occasionally, about the promise of stego even if its most marketable use is for digital copyright tagging.