Posts

My new company’s website uses SSL. I ordered an “extended validation” certificate from GoDaddy, instead of my usual CA, RapidSSL/GeoTrust, because GoDaddy’s EV certificates were cheap. EV certificates are security theater more than anything else, I probably should not have bothered.

Immediately after switching from my earlier “snake oil” self-signed test certificate to the production certificate, I saw SSL errors on Google Chrome for Mac and Safari for Mac, i.e. the two browsers that use OS X’s built-in crypto and certificate store. I suppose I should have tested the certificate on another server before going live, but I trusted GoDaddy (they are my DNS registrars, and competent, if garish).

Big mistake.

I called their tech support hotline, which is incredibly grating because of the verbose phone tree that keeps trying to push add-ons (I guess it is consistent with the monstrosity that is their home page).

After a while, I got a first-level tech. He asked whether I saw the certificate error on Google Chrome for Windows. At that point, I was irate enough to use a four-letter word. Our customers are Android mobile app developers. A significant chunk of them use Macs, and almost none (less than 5%) use IE, so know-nothing “All the world is IE” demographics are not exactly applicable.

After about half an hour of getting the run-around and escalating to level 2, with my business partner Michael getting progressively more anxious in the background, the level 1 CSR tells me the level 2 one can’t reproduce the problem (I reproduced it on three different Macs in two different locations). I gave them an ultimatum: fix it within 10 minutes or I would switch. At this point, the L1 CSR told me he had exhausted all his options, but I could call their “RA” department, and offered to switch me. Inevitably, the call transfer failed.

I dialed their SSL number, and in parallel started the certificate application process on RapidSSL. They offered a free competitive upgrade, I tried it, and within 3 minutes I had my fresh new, and functional certificate, valid for 3 years, all for free and in less time than it takes to listen to GoDaddy’s obnoxious phone tree (all about “we pride ourselves in customer service” and other Orwellian corporate babble).

I then called GoDaddy’s billing department to get a refund. Surprisingly, the process was very fast and smooth. I guess it is well-trod.

The moral of the story: GoDaddy—bad. RapidSSL—good.

Update (2012-08-26)

I switched my DNS business from GoDaddy to Gandi.net in December 2011 after Bob Parsons’ despicable elephant-hunting stunt.

The hard drive in my October 2006 vintage 80GB iPod 5.5G died a few weeks ago.  I wasn’t keen on upgrading to the iPod Classic as:

1. With a maximum capacity of 160GB, it is still too small to house my entire 220GB music collection
2. Apple introduced encrypted audio outputs on the dock connector, to force accessory makers to pay royalties, thus making it incompatible with many accessories and forcing you to buy new ones.

I use my iPod mostly in my car. The classic hard drive iPods have one key capability iPhones and iPod Touches lack—the ability to shuffle by album, which is essential when you listen mostly to classical music and where an opus maps to an album.

While investigating repair options, I found out Toshiba now makes a two-platter 240GB (224 GiB) hard drive. The iPod Classic won’t recognize the second platter (a third strike against it) but the 5.5G will. I sent mine to RapidRepair for repair/upgrade and received it back yesterday. The flip side of such an enormous drive is that the sync takes forever: I started it around 10PM yesterday and it is till running, over 9 hours later. They handled the repair very professionally, there are no marks on the casing, and I now have a fully functional 224GB iPod for less than the price of buying a new 160GB iPod Classic. The only feature it is missing is the ability to play 24-bit/96kHz ALAC files like those I made out FLACs purchased from Linn or the B&W Society of Sound.

I can’t understand why Apple does not make this new high-capacity drive available in iPods or the MacBook Air.

French economist Frédéric Bastiat (1801–1850) wrote a pamphlet titled Ce qu’on voit et ce qu’on ne voit pas (What is Seen and What is Not Seen) where he demolishes the make-work fallacy in economics. When Jacques Bonhomme’s child breaks his window, paying for a replacement will circulate money in the economy, and stimulate the glassmakers’ trade. This is the visible effect. Bastiat urges us to consider what is not seen, i.e. opportunity costs, such as other, more productive uses for the money that are forgone due to the unexpected expense. This lesson is still relevant. The cost of repairing New Orleans after Katrina, or cleaning the Gulf after Deepwater Horizon, will cause a temporary boost in GDP statistics, but this is illusory and undesirable, another example of how poorly conceived metrics can distort thinking.

Another example is that of electric cars. Advocates for the blind have raised a ruckus about the dangers to blind people from quiet electric cars they cannot hear or dodge. Nissan just announced that their Leaf electric car will include a speaker and deliberately generate noise, in part to comply with the Japanese Transport Ministry’s requirements. To add injury to insult, the sound selected is apparently a sweeping sine wave, a type of sound that is incredibly grating compared to more natural sounds, including that of machinery.

Unfortunately, this is illustrates the fallacy Bastiat pointed out. Authorities are focusing on the visible (well, inaudible) first-order effect, but what is not seen matters as much. Most urban noise stems from transportation, and that noise pollution has major adverse impact on stress levels, sleep hygiene, and causes high blood pressure and cardiac problems from children to adults to the elderly. According to the WHO, for 2006 in the UK alone, an estimated 3,000+ deaths due to heart attacks can be attributed to noise pollution (out of 100,000+).

These figures are mind-boggling. For a country the size of the US, that probably comes around to five  or six 9/11 death tolls per year. Quiet electric cars should be hailed as a blessing, not a danger. There are other ways to address the legitimate concerns of the blind, e.g. by mandating transponders on cars and providing receivers for the blind.

There are streets in Paris commemorating Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy.

There are no corresponding streets in Washington D.C., for all that it was designed by a French urbanist, apart from Lafayette Square (it really should be de la Fayette Square). Rochambeau is ignored. Not remembered at all is the man who did the most for the American revolution, and arguably paid for it with his life, Louis XVI.

Since I got my iPad six weeks ago, I have only used my MacBook Air once.

I am not going to repeat the extensive reviews posted elsewhere, but after over a month of extensive use, give some perspective for those who don’t get the point of the iPad, or other similar devices.

First of all, commentators have focused on entirely the wrong thing: feeds and speeds, missing features like multitasking or Flash, Apple’s iron fist over app developers. The iPad begins and ends with the user experience, and that means multi-touch and the incredibly long battery life. That’s why comparisons to stylus-driven devices like the unsuccessful Microsoft Tablet PC miss the point. The amazing battery life, specially on standby (I have never managed to go under 60%, even after three days without charging), means you can use it as a real mobile device and not subconsciously watch the battery meter.

Is it a perfect device? Of course not. Mobile Safari has a hard time with complex and heavy pages like those from my Temboz RSS/Atom feed reader, the screen is too prone to reflections and fingerprints, and Apple’s use of high-quality materials like aluminium and glass instead of plastic and acrylic makes it heavier to hold than necessary.

As to whether it is a replacement for a laptop, the answer is yes and no. The iPad is the first in an entirely new class of devices, and I think it has the potential to replace desktop and laptop computers as the dominant form of consumer computing. The touch user interface makes for a very engaging user experience, far more than using a mouse and keyboard ever did. To be sure, the input limitations do not make it a very efficient content creation device, but that’s where opinions diverge.

I use desktop computers for real work (an eight-core Mac Pro with 12G of RAM and a 30″ display at home, a quad-core iMac with a 27″ display at work). A laptop just feels too constricting for extended use. I have the luxury of using proper desktops because I do not travel much for work, and the extent of my mobile use is reading books or browsing the web while commuting by bus. The improvements that most benefit me are in synchronizing my iPad with multiple computers, and offline capability (I got the WiFi model since there is no way I will pay AT&T for their garbage excuse of a network).

Road warriors need a more featured device, even if cramped, and will not be so impressed. I think genuine mobile users are a minority, however. Surveys in the past showed that most laptops are tethered, i.e. users would unplug them from home, take them to work and plug them there, and back. That is why Windows laptop makers introduced monstrosities like Pentium 4 powered laptops with battery lives that barely exceeded the hour. Laptop sales exceeded those of desktops because many people wanted the option of mobility, even if they seldom, if ever, availed themselves of it, and a less obtrusive presence in their homes than the typical beige box with its rat’s warren of cables. Those people would be better served by a well-designed desktop like the iMac and an iPad for the occasional mobile use.