The sky is falling! Trip Chowdhry, the analyst with Global Equities Research who claimed Red Hat was ‘rubbish and the entire LAMP stack is potty, too’ published some eye-opening predictions, predominantly negative, about tech business in Silicon Valley. Now Chowdhry claims that “almost every VC funded open-source company is struggling and will run out of money within the next six months.” (Probably not the most unbiased guy about open source) Matt Asay argues that organizations in general are struggling, but open-source companies are not that high on the list. (But are they high on the VC “axe” list??) He notes Alfresco, Pentaho and JasperSoft are some of the players with ‘millions in the bank and growing revenue.’ Asay also says Chowdhry has a responsibility to do real due diligence and not create myths. Take that, Chicken Little! (img from Disney-Clipart)

We’re not as far behind as we thought we were. Google presented the results of a study they conducted about how IPv6- capable “ordinary users” are at the RIPE meeting in Dubai a few weeks ago. Turns out Apple Macs drive IPv6 penetration in the US. Fifty-two percent of all IPv6 users in the U.S. own a Mac and use 6to4 (creating IPv6 addresses from an IPv4 address and tunneling packets) – making the US fifth in the list of countries using IPv6. Russia and France took first and second place with .76 and .65 percent IPv6-enabled traffic . The US is at .45 percent. Worldwide, 0.238 percent of Google users’ systems are IPv6-enabled and prefer to use IPv6 over IPv4.

Obama’s win = Google’s win? Apparently Google CEO Eric Schmidt and President-Elect Obama are very good buddies and “this terrifies Microsoft”. Now competitors are more on guard against Google’s growing empire and popularity. Although Schmidt was mentioned as a possible candidate for the country’s new national CTO position, he said he would not accept the post if asked. I guess that’s one less thing Microsoft has to worry about.

I will be up in Orlando Monday and Tuesday for SANS 2008 in Disney World.  Next week I am in Vegas for the big Interop show. If you are attending either one of these and would like to chat, please drop me a line and let me know.  You can stop by the StillSecure booth as well with a good shot of finding me somewhere near there.

I will be up in Orlando Monday and Tuesday for SANS 2008 in Disney World.  Next week I am in Vegas for the big Interop show. If you are attending either one of these and would like to chat, please drop me a line and let me know.  You can stop by the StillSecure booth as well with a good shot of finding me somewhere near there.

Up in Orlando today and yesterday at the InfoSec World conference put on by the MIS Institute.  StillSecure has a booth but I have spent most of my time talking to old friends in the security world.  Some of the folks I have seen are Ian Poynter, Jeremiah Grossman, Jordan Wiens, Bobby Dominguez, etc, etc.  Another person I had a chance to catch up with and get to know much better is Ofir Arkin from Insightix.  Ofir always has something interesting to say and we spent some time with the SC Magazine folks talking shop.  Speaking of SC Magazine, they are in full swing getting ready for their awards show at RSA this year.  That is always one party I look forward to.  But it sure would be nice to win this year. I think we are finalists in 3 or 4 categories.

Anyway, enough of the page 6 social news.  The conference seems to be very well attended this year by the usual mix of folks trying to learn more about security.  I hear rumors that next year the show is moving back to Coronado Springs at Disney World.  I hope not as the Shingle Creek Resort is very nice and offers many less distractions than the Disney venue.

Anyway, this show has me thinking that with many of the security shows having fallen by the wayside over the last year or two, we could use a good Security event in the Northeast.  Maybe some one will pick up on that.

Also, in case any of you want to know, the only booth babes I saw at this show were from Fortify Software inviting people into their party after the exhibit hall closed.  Shame on you Fortify!

Up in Orlando today and yesterday at the InfoSec World conference put on by the MIS Institute.  StillSecure has a booth but I have spent most of my time talking to old friends in the security world.  Some of the folks I have seen are Ian Poynter, Jeremiah Grossman, Jordan Wiens, Bobby Dominguez, etc, etc.  Another person I had a chance to catch up with and get to know much better is Ofir Arkin from Insightix.  Ofir always has something interesting to say and we spent some time with the SC Magazine folks talking shop.  Speaking of SC Magazine, they are in full swing getting ready for their awards show at RSA this year.  That is always one party I look forward to.  But it sure would be nice to win this year. I think we are finalists in 3 or 4 categories.

Anyway, enough of the page 6 social news.  The conference seems to be very well attended this year by the usual mix of folks trying to learn more about security.  I hear rumors that next year the show is moving back to Coronado Springs at Disney World.  I hope not as the Shingle Creek Resort is very nice and offers many less distractions than the Disney venue.

Anyway, this show has me thinking that with many of the security shows having fallen by the wayside over the last year or two, we could use a good Security event in the Northeast.  Maybe some one will pick up on that.

Also, in case any of you want to know, the only booth babes I saw at this show were from Fortify Software inviting people into their party after the exhibit hall closed.  Shame on you Fortify!

This all goes back to the simple fact that all DRM is based on encryption, and that it’s illogical to give someone the decryption key that is required to enable what the media industry views as authorized behavior (media playback) without expecting someone else to utilize that decryption key for other behavior, such as making Fair Use backups or sharing it on a P2P network. 

Encryption is defined as the science and study of secret writing.  What is it that the media industry is trying to keep secret?  While we may want I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry and Who’s Your Caddy to be some sort of secret internal referendum on the crap the entertainment industry regularly produces, we have to assume from their actions (theater release inevitably followed by mass DVD production) that they are proud of their works and wish to share them with the entire world.

They worried about piracy with VHS, and it turns out that may have in fact saved Disney and launched an entire consumer market for home video.  They worried about it with DVD’s, which have brought in billions of dollars to the media industry despite the fact that CSS was broken in 1999.  Their fear and illogical behavior impedes and irritates their consumers while having absolutely no effect on the spread of piracy (which they could easily defeat should they ever focus on the simple economics and technology of the pirating industry).

I would be happier if the media industry and the TSA were sadistic rather than incompetent.  It would be comical to see these two groups meeting for the first time over drinks trying to one up each other:

“We made a list comprised of thousands of names.  If you fly and your name is even remotely similar to one on the list, we do extra searches…every time you fly….over and over again.  The kicker is we let anyone with Photoshop and a printer board under any name they want.”

“Oh yeah, well we sell malleable $.05 pieces of plastic for $20 and when it gets scratched or stolen, we force them to buy a new one because we don’t allow them to make backups.  Even though anyone with technical skillz can download the same thing for free.”

“Oh yeah, well we found a way to make people who can’t even change at the gym without flip flops walk around barefoot in public.  We tell them we’re screening for bombs and they just go with it.  The terrorist can still strap whatever they need to their leg, just not their shoes.”

“We installed rootkits on people’s PC without their knowledge.”

 “We banned water and baby food.”

 “We sue the people who love our products the most.”

“We detain babies.”

“We…damn you!  Stop playing the baby card, that’s not fair!”