Wise Guys on WHO Radio - March 21, 2015

Brian Gongol

The WHO Radio Wise Guys airs on WHO Radio in Des Moines, Iowa on 1040 AM or streaming online at WHORadio.com. The show airs from 1 to 2 pm Central Time on Saturday afternoons. A podcast of show highlights is also available. Leave comments and questions on the Wise Guys Facebook page or e-mail them to wiseguys@whoradio.com.

Please note: These show notes may be in various stages of completion -- ranging from brainstormed notes through to well-polished monologues. Please excuse anything that may seem rough around the edges, as it may only be a first draft of a thought and not be fully representative of what was said on the air.

The end of Microsoft Internet Explorer

It was reported by The Verge on Tuesday that Microsoft is killing off the "Microsoft Internet Explorer" brand, coinciding with the pending introduction of Windows 10
Windows 10 will integrate a new browser, currently being developed under the codename "Project Spartan"
Internet Explorer won't go away entirely -- it'll stick around as a legacy feature for things like websites that don't render well with the new browser -- but for all intents and purposes, it's being relegated to the dustbin of history
The "Project Spartan" name is undoubtedly a nod to the reputation that has bugged MSIE for a long time -- namely, that it is slow to render pages
The very need to keep a legacy version of MSIE around is an echo of the days when websites were "optimized" for one browser or another. We are fortunate that the web-development community pushed hard and consistently for standards that make sites generally compatible from one browser to another.
The real issue today is compatibility not from one browser to another, but from one screen type to another. What works on a 17" laptop doesn't look right on most smartphone screens. There are plenty of devices in between, not to mention giant TVs and tiny smartwatches on the outlying extremes. Fortunately, a standards-driven mentality has made it easier to accommodate.
MSIE outlived its original rival, Netscape Navigator, but today it is squeezed by top-tier competition from Firefox, Chrome, and Safari (on Mac platforms), and a host of native and downloadable browsers on devices smaller than laptops.
Rumor has it that Firefox is in bad competitive shape, though it's terribly hard to get good data on the subject. Meanwhile, the built-in browser that comes with Android is a security hazard, so anyone with a phone running on Android should use the Chrome browser instead.
This whole story comes out of the pending arrival of Windows 10. It's coming this summer, and it's worth noting that they're offering a "free upgrade" to Windows 7, Windows 8.1, and Windows Phone 8.1 users who request it in the first year.

In the news this week

China stock markets have an average P/E ratio of 220
Clinically insane

Computers and the Internet

Apple's entry into Internet TV service

Computers and the Internet

Multi-billion-dollar tech startups aren't "valued", they're speculated-upon

Threats and Hazards

How an Omaha company lost millions to social engineering

Smartwatch insanity

Take a breather on buying an outrageously-priced new smartwatch. They have value, to be sure...but not in the hundreds of dollars.

Street-smart social media

There's been an outbreak of fake Facebook accounts pinging people with friend requests, if my own feed is any indication. When you get a friend request, ask yourself:

Do I recognize this name?
Do I recognize the picture?
Do I have any friends in common with this person?
Is there a good reason why this person might be reaching out to me right now?

If you don't have a good answer to at least two of the above, then you should probably ignore the request for a while. It's a natural instinct to accept friend requests -- even from marginal acquaintances -- because we as Americans don't like to be perceived as snobbish or standoffish. But the problem is that about 1 in every 100 people has some kind of antisocial personality disorder. (In other words, they're some flavor of sociopath...maybe mild, maybe severe, but one way or another, they're no good for us.) And since we haven't yet found ways of keeping those people off of social networks like Facebook, the rest of us are susceptible to social-engineering hacks. "Social engineering", in this sense, is the use of human vulnerabilities to break into computer systems without the need for sophisticated technological skills. Social engineering attacks are a serious malice, and they're probably going to grow in quantity and sophistication as the crooks behind them get better at their jobs. (That, by the way, is my simplest pitch for the rest of us to be lifelong learners in the most real sense: It doesn't matter whether or not we want to improve for the sake of improvement. Kaizen principles notwithstanding, our enemies have every incentive to get smarter, faster, better, and stronger at what they do, so we have to do the same just to maintain our grip on civilization.) Massive floods of "friend" requests are a very simple example of a social-engineering attack, and I don't have any reason to believe I was being personally targeted -- it most likely was happening to others as well. Don't fall for it. And even be careful when accepting requests from accounts belonging to people you do know: It's always possible that accounts belonging to people you know have been compromised or spoofed (and I have first- and second-hand knowledge of this occurring). Better to leave an old acquaintance hanging for a little while than to open yourself up to letting crooks in on the private information you share on the semi-open networks that are so ingrained in daily life.

A personal note