We Didn't Start the Firewall...

The average number of stories on Microsoft Vista daily exceeds two dozen or so...but this one...

I had to check the calendar to make sure it wasn't April 1st again...this surely isn't true. Microsoft is intentionally crippling what passes for a firewall in their next version, state of the art operating system? In these days of malicious invasion by anything and everyone looking for kicks, this is being put down to "strong feedback from our customers". I don't buy that. The first thing I see when I go into a client are the holes in their technology...it's second nature to me now, since we deal with security consulting...and to introduce anything into a corporation that has holes would normally lose someone a job.

If this sort of statement is meant to scare us, it has. If it was meant to put us on alert for how to deploy this version, it did. If it was meant to caution us as to the negligence on their part, SSDD. About the only positive thing that came from this was an attempt at honesty as to the usability of a yet unreleased product. Mac OS X, Linux, and just about every other OS in commercial and enterprise use comes with firewalls ON and fully configured to keep things nice and clean. Color me confused as to why Microsoft wants to keep the outbound traffic lanes totally open...anything can come in through 80 these days, which is open if you want web browsing, so to let any invasion to spead outward...

Hopefully, before the actual Vista-leaden PC is out on the streets, they reconsider this...or at least from the home user's standpoint.

Quest for Small

As an anthropologist, I am often appalled at the way other perceptions of our craft are misinterpreted. I suppose it's similar to how Hollywood slices and dices the psychiatric profession - we laugh at the Freudian image that is overused of stolid and Victorian-era dressed misanthrope sits and listens without producing meaningful results. In truth, today's psychiatrist or psychologist (the two genres are confused so often, but they are unique and independent approaches to analysis) are nowhere near that viewpoint...but that is the image that worked its way into the Western cultural matrix and so is used to convey the role without going into hideous amounts of backstory.

With respect to anthropology, we are seen as Indiana Jones...the adventurous individual that fights snakes, evil doers, etc. to find the Holy Grail. The image also associated with us, once we find the results, is of selling them to the highest bidder. Nothing could be further from the truth, of course. The modern anthropologist (and the mythos-associated paleo- or archaeologist...clad together in folks' minds like the Freudian Siamese twin) is more like the lab technician on the CSI shows. We search for the smallest of findings and extrapolate backwards from the trivia to its place in the whole of the culture we seek to model. And a model it is, as most ancient cultures did not have a fully digital matrix of cultural symbology as Western civilization does today for future of my kind to not have to guess at.

Mark and I were haggling at this idea the other day, and it was amazingly similar to his client's perception of what the concept of an IT "geek" is today...and I told him so. My perception of our culture's defined model of an IT geek is a pale-skinned, bespectacled youthful male with geek-speak t-shirt, dirty and unwashed hair and pants, eyes glued to the raw glow of the tube placed mentally in front of him. Again, the reality of this is far from the truth.

Now, I don't work for these folks...but I study them absent-mindedly as it is my chosen profession. I am not a sociologist, per se, but as a whole, an anthropologist frames the Way of Man as an artwork of evolution, and in this timeslice, the IT geek typifies the same role as the peak technologist of this era. In previous eras, we have shipbuilders, artisans, and hunters take that title.

As with most of my prodigious mental hypertexts, this rationale led me to flash upon what is perhaps the best cultural exposition of Man's early years at the dawn of true culture, brought to film, which is the last century's cultural recording media - a small and under-rated movie called "Quest for Fire". Hideously panned by the normal reviewers, thought of as "too aesthetic" by most, it paints a decided realistic timeslice of the timeframe at which humans began to work with altering its environment. The main character in fact learns how to use a small technological tool from a culture that has already mastered it, and in doing so, changes his tribe's way forever. While not histrionically or anthropologically 100% correct, it comes much closer than anything else about another mythologically-cast socio-image...the cave man. Hence the link.

All of these "typecast" roles in history...the psychologist, the anthropologist, the geek, and the cave man...can all be symbolized by the concept of an individual searching for the small. Not, as they are often plastered into imagery, the large. By looking at the small, we examine everything it is built upon, like looking at a single Lego brick and inferring the complete build. Unless you get it right, the whole concept goes wrong...and such is the danger of the observer changing the observed through just the simple process of observing.

So when you next look at the geek or the trench-digger or the shrink, stop and ask yourself why these non-appealing and deprecatory terms came to be, instead of honorable ones like "consultant", "technician", or "healer". Why force yourself into accepting the media-framed images of our kind, when you can simply look again and understand these folks' role in changing our culture by studying and working with the minutiae?

[Insert your "it will never happen" allegory here]

Yes, all of them have been used in the past couple of days. Pigs are seeking ground clearance at SFO. Mr. Sympathy himself has added showshoes to his closet. All this because Apple has done something that changed a fundamental computing methodology -- that you aren't supposed to be ambidextrous. It has officially sanctioned the use of Windows XP on Apple hardware. Called Boot Camp, it lets you run WinXP and MacOS X on the same piece of hardware. So you no longer have an excuse to "why not buy a Mac". It runs native Windows software...faster than any other similar stalwart. Without emulation. Without damage.

Steve is smart. You never say something is impossible...everyone will work out a way to make it so. Instead, you do it right and then let the proverbial chips fall into appropriate locations. They aren't supporting Windows. They aren't writing Windows stuff (yet). They just made a good call on the availability of decent, fast processors and as a side-effect, gained the ability to boost hardware sales...and make loads of new friends in the process. I foresee the next step...the ability to run any application as a process under X...Mac apps, Java apps, UNIX apps, Windows apps. Install that copy of WinXP legally on the machine, and X will legally load the right DLLs and spawn the native Windows program as a process under X. Don't think that can happen? Remember Classic?

So what's going to happen is this: Apple makes significantly smooth products. Microsoft and other Windows vendors just got a whole new set of customers...Mac users who still needed a Windows-specific program that hadn't been ported. Dig the IT support geeks who stop a Mac from walking in now. The geek opens the latch and voila! Windows! So you get to sneak it in to work with.

Microsoft can't yell...each Mac will have to own a copy of WinXP. Microsoft should actually love it...it gets the Justice Department off its back. End users should love it...run Oblivion on a Mac, at the same time of getting mail via Entourage. Cool thing is that, as a separate process, if a Windows app crashes, no blue screen of death. Just a "the application -- has unexpectedly ended".

What's the long term result? Unknown. One can guess. From our perspective, we've been lugging a single laptop around for ages...I run Virtual PC and start any version of Windows to test things with. It will be nicer to have native speed, but it wasn't a major option for me.

Steve and the Cupertino Clan will continue to make insanely great stuff. Ever imagined Final Cut running native under windows? How about iLife? It may now happen, as they just released both to run under the Intel Macs. Windows users want the speed? Hey, how about putting the Intel version of X on your Dell? Still need to run Outlook...well...no problem!

By giving up the legacy of "classic" and the shackles of PPC, Apple is now poised to release software, operating systems, and hardware for everyone. Expect more soon, and hope your investment guy bought you apple when it was $25.