Power User

After reading these many blogs reference to theft of millions Veteran?s records, I firmly believe that no one really knows how the government works. Having served in the Armed Forces for 24 years and as a Civil Servant for 15 years. Just in the last 11 years when the government started moving into the realm of internet connectivity and the FULL aspect of data sharing across networks. The general information (example these records) would not be encrypted because they in themselves would have to be available for the manipulation to a massive amount of users. Also there seems to be question of the exact type of media that these records were stored on, my experience leads me to believe this was not just a CD.

Lets face facts just about everyone would not take a CD with no label or even with a label unless it is an original copy of a favorite product of Windows, Office, or something with a price worthy of the theft, but raw data I do not think so. The government employs unique applications for data collections, which are not off the shelf products sold at your favorite best buy store.

 This theft was more and likely an Uncle Sugar machine (possibly a tricked out DELL workstation with at least a 80 Gb hard drive).  This he/she person if a longtime worker bee for the government whom I suspect to be a dedicated and caring professional, doing the job 24/7 with years of Ole School ?Attention to Detail?, but falling short on the new technology and it?s ramifications, took his/her workstation home and could not connect it without help invited in the wolves and now the result.

Working as a government IT professional and systems data administrator I try to catch and publicly castrate in a loud, ugly and proficient manner anyone I catch taking the Uncle Sugar property home.

When I used to perform PC repair house calls it was noticed that on average PC owner had a lesser of a stature equivalent than their work office counterpart, so bringing work home not always had a successful outcome.

Being a Veteran I just hope my name is not one of the million. Now knowing from my own example, the keeping of my Vet data - up to date and accurate is not on my priority listings of things to do, by the teachings of experience. It is better to remain invisible as a simple dust particle in a mountain of dust, thus being hidden.

Now there is and has been a remedy in place for some time, that know one seems to want to grab the bull by the horns ? we license every dangerous vehicle we use, but why not a ?computer? average users can buy them ? use them ? exploit them ? and cause harm with them.

The result after the fact, we want to punish whom ever when something goes wrong. On their face value organizations ask as a part of employment that an individual has computer experience or skills but offer ?No Training Requirements or Standards for Proper Use and Management?. How many would lie if asked this question to get a JOB?  This theft result shows the continuing lack of good judgment and common sense and starts at the very top.

As a punishment, if we employed the falling dominos theory (knocking down the one gets them all).  Perform this method enough times and there would be NO MORE lapses of judgment or attention to detail. 

Toche' Tech Locksmith - I'm right with you on your comments! But I believe you do have one misconception in your article, or maybe I simply misunderstood it?

"Or, you could stick to what you made your money on, secure windows and IE"

First off, I don't belive MS has a "secure" windows or IE for that matter, secondly it is my opinion the only reason MS had made any money is because they just happened to be one of the first OS companies and were adapted as the 'defact-o standard' when there wasn't a lot to choose from, nothing more!

I have had the reverse experience. My yahoo account gets
countless spam?s every day, I don't even bother trying to do anything about it.
But that?s because I had the hotmail spam blocking experience of not been able
to block my junk mail no matter what. So my Yahoo account gets more spam then
my hotmail account.

I like hotmail?s ?tell
MS that this is spam? feature, although it appears nothing gets done about it,
I like to feel that I am sharing my spam with M$ (or just spamming them with
spam sent to me) even if this is not the case, I can create the illusion that
my problem is Microsoft?s problem.

I remember when they first introduced there ?report spam to
M$? feature I got a message back from them telling me that because the spammer
did not have a hotmail account they where powerless to do anything about it.
Don?t see that message anymore.

Try a Live Hotmail account maybe your problems wil go away...at least mine did

BTW, OneCare went on sale this week as I mention in my next
Locksmith newsletter here on techrepublic.com.

The reason I mention it here is because you can?t access the
site to purchase it if you try to use Firefox. Sort of cutting off your nose to
spite your face if you are so adamant in refusing to recognize Firefox that you
aren?t even willing to take money from users.

And, in another example of poor understanding of customers,
I was unable to locate any pricing for OneCare ? of course I didn?t go through
the entire registration process because I had no intention of buying it, but I
prefer sales sites which are up front with pricing so they don?t waste my time.

According to Rick Maze of The Air Force Times, "Secretary of
Veterans Affairs James Nicholson should resign for not being upfront
about the theft of private information for 26.5 million veterans, says
Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif."

Latest on VA Veteran Data Loss

Well, VA Secretary Nicholson is ?mad as
hell? according to some reports and has made his big political move to deal
with the problem ? he appointed a new advisor on information security!

Who is this paragon of
computer security?

Does he have a degree in
computer science?

Did he invent a new kind of
firewall or a new encryption scheme?

Did he used to work for
Symantec or another security firm?

Does he have a certificate
from SANS?

Well, to tell the truth, I
didn?t really check any of those things after I learned that Richard Romley is
an attorney with big political ambitions.

The only qualifications I have
seen mentioned for him focus on the fact that he is the former Maricopa County
Attorney.

I did locate a published report
http://www.bachelorsbeat.com/ calling
for a grand jury audit and investigation of the Maricopy County Justice System
during Richard Romley?s tenure, one focusing on ?on-going financial and ethical?
problems. Now I have no idea how accurate that is, but the charges are
something I thought you might be interested in.

Then there is the book ?The
Rogue Federal Judge,? which claims:

?If one happened to
be a Hispanic or an African American, Richard M. Romley as the Maricopa County
Attorney made sure the person was taken off the streets and targeted for law
enforcement activities, claims author Anant Kumar Tripati. When Tripati
obtained in excess of 150,000 pieces of evidence to challenge the numerous
corrupt practices, Romley allegedly had Tripati arrested so as to make sure the
challenges against Maricopa County did not advance or
succeed.?

I don?t personally know about that either - I'm a technology reporter, not a court reporter - but when Tripati sued in Federal Court (Los
Angeles), Mr. Romley requested that the case be moved to Phoenix, Arizona and
this was done with some interesting consequences.

 "The Rogue Federal Judge" (ISBN: 141845141X ebook, or ISBN:
1418451401 paperback, published by AuthorHouse. See www.corruptarizonacourts.com
for more information.

Now, as I say, I really don?t know anything about Mr. Romley that I didn?t
read and he may be a wonderful person. He might even be a real expert in IT security.

My real problem with appointing him to fix
security problems at the VA is that I haven?t been able to find a single scrap
of evidence that he is qualified in any way to analyze or fix data security
problems.

But I'm certain that all the veterans affected by the horrendous loss of personal information will get a warm fuzzy feeling of confidence in the VA when they learn that a big time political lawyer from Arizona has been appointed to make certain that nothing similar happens again.

I didn't have a problem with hotmail.  I'm very particular about my mail accounts anyway.  But then I signed up to the hotmail beta program and stopped using it altogether. 

It's pretty much OWA for hotmail.  I'm not sure if its the ads or the client  itself, but it takes so long to load they've crippled it.

Nathank, not
certain exactly what you mean, you should have your boss on a special filter
which doesn?t put him in your junk box. Even hotmail can be used that way.

Anyway, the point of using
something like a hotmail or a yahoo email account as a spam bucket is that you
always give that account to everyone except business contacts and a few reliable
friends/family. If you did that then you wouldn't get enough junk mail or spam in your business inbox to worry about.

That way most spam goes to an
entirely different email address (e.g. I just checked three spam boxes I have
on Yahoo and they have a total of 6,500+ unread emails.)

If you're really active on the net the way I have been for decades, you need defense in depth. Even my gmail addresses have filters which sort incomming mail before forwarding it to yet another gmail address that I actually have open all day. 

That way about 95% of the email I see each day is real, actual, meaningful information I actually wanted to get. About half I delete without opening on the average day, but it isn't the same half all the time, some days I want some of the messages, reports, etc. and other days I want or need others. That, of course, doesn't make them either spam or junk, it's just email call screening. 

Of course you always
have some idiot relative or juvenile friend (often in their 50?s) who puts you
on their CC list and eventually ruins your ?clean? email box by filling it with
stupid internet jokes and chain letters they and all their idiot friends get because none of them understand BCC either. I even got a job application from someone bragging how they were such a top technical writer and HE CC's two dozen editors - what an idiot! Probably thinks he is tech savvy too!

Just what is the definition of treason?

I started thinking about that when I learned that not only has the other shoe dropped, an entire closet full of shoes may be cascading onto the floor in the VA data scandal.

You see, it turns out that the information given out by the VA
Secretary during Congressional hearings may just possibly been ?slightly?
misleading; at least it seems to have left out something of importance.

In addition to all the veterans? personal data on that
stolen computer, he forgot to mention that there were also details about MOST
active duty personnel also!

Yep, National Guard, active duty
military, reserves, in fact,  personal information about NEARLY EVERYONE in the military in the past 20+ years was on that stolen computer.

Of course all of this is just coming out in drips and drabs,
a kind of inside the beltway Chinese water torture for anyone who ever set foot
in the Pentagon or even had a relative take the oath.

At first is was only (ONLY!) veterans, then, last week someone
?discovered? that there may have been records of 50,000 active-duty personnel
on that computer.

Now, Veterans Affairs is admitting that perhaps
as many 1.1 million active duty, 430,000 National Guard, and 645,000 members of
the Reserves may have had their personal data stolen in the same theft.

The theft took place on May 3 but it took
more than a month for us to learn that active duty personnel records were
probably also on that computer.

There is a lot of talk, but is anyone in Washington really taking this seriously? What will it take? Will heads finally roll if it is discovered that the home address and phone number of all Supreme Court Judges and staff, all White House staff, and perhaps VA Secretary Nicholson were also on that computer? Is that the sort of thing it will take?

Has anyone bothered to check to see how many copies of this data are sitting in other VA employee's homes?

I seem to recall that POTUS has declared war on terrorism. Now, if
exposing millions of reserve and active duty personnel and their families to potential
terrorist retaliation isn?t giving Aid and Comfort to the enemy, I don?t know
what is.

No wonder the VA database clerk is reportedly in hiding.

For those who, like many in Washington these days, seem to have been on spring break during the part of their poly sci course which dealt with The Constitution of the United States (you know, the one they all swore to protect or support and defend), see U.S.Constitution, Article III, Section 3.

?Treason
against the United States ,
shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their
Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless
on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in
open Court.? 

Or, am I just a nut?

Gmail needs a way to enable users to shuffle the contents of the inbox.

For example, you may wish to "promote" a message, that you cannot take the time to read right now, so you need to be able to not only add a yellow star (!?) to it, but to also move it up in the list of messages.

There are many other content manipulation and keyword tracking issues that remain to be resolved in Gmail and other email clients.

For example, I may want to drag up an old email message *about Bob Snafu* but *not* with Bob Snafu just in the list of contacts that messages are mailed to, as in bulk emailings. Gmail needs to present users with a variety of ways to deep search for specific messages, using various algors.

I was unable to access my Yahoo email client one day. For some reason my password was not accepted. A different browser? Cookie dysfunction? Who knows? I just abandoned it, like I did my Lycos and Go accounts.

I think it's time to remind others that a disposable email account, set up just to have an email addy for site registrations, blog comments, and other situations, an email account you don't use for communication, so you don't care how much spam hits it, is a good idea.

Gmail conversation bundling is indeed good. So are their spam filters. I rarely get a spam message in my Gmail inbox. They go to a spam file that I always click on "All" then scan it quickly, and hit "Delete Forever".

The real reason is so that Microsoft can charge an enterprise for the new "Windows Defender" to supposedly prevent malicious code! It's more economical sense to charge everybody to fix the symptom rather than prevent the problem in the first place.

On another note, Symantec is getting just as bad. I find it interesting that it will allow harmful code to infect the OS, then detect it, then tell me that it can't remove it.

Remember those REALLY dumb commercials for ING? You know,
a few years ago the company introduced its new identity using commercials where it looked like part of the name was hidden?

Well nothing, it seems, is hidden at ING, including customer
data.

Last week a laptop containing personal data, including
social security numbers, for 13,000 District of Columbia
retirees and workers was stolen. ING is responsible for overseeing the security of D.C.
government workers? retirement plans so this is probably all or mostly government workers who have had their identities compromised. (Does that give all you terrorists out there any ideas about who you might have some leverage on?)

Ironically enough, last year California U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein
introduced a reasonably decent privacy and identity theft bill into Congress.

The ironic part is that, on June 7, 2005, ING joined E-Loan as the first major
companies to endorse the bill.

AHH smoke and mirrors, what would companies and politicians do without it?

BTW, if you are interested in protecting your privacy
(certainly government agencies, schools, banks, and most companies aren?t), you
might want to check out PrivacyRights.org which lists the record for the past
two years ? not a good record, the site specifies the theft of personal
information for 88,347,279 people. Of course some of those may be the same
people on multiple lists if that provides any slight comfort.

In speaking of Windows security, Windows Live OneCare is available not oly online, but also from your favorite brick and morter store.  My question, though, is, "Why should I pay extra for security?"  It goes to show that M$ doesn't get it.  And I doubt that they ever will!!

Mother of mercy, is this the end of Microsoft?

No, of course not, but Vista could be the first major crack in the company's business plan, the one which shows that the emperor may not have any clothes on.

Did I mention in an earlier blog entry that Microsoft might be in trouble? Well, I may be wrong, but I'm certainly not the only one who sees evidence that there is big trouble in paradise.

The company is widely believed to be looking to Vista to keep the money flowing for the next several years and recently-denounced delays have shaken investors and insiders alike.

Now Jupiter research says that the software giant?s new Vista OS,
won?t be the big financial boost the company has been projecting, not even when it does eventually ship.

Why? Simple, about half of companies surveyed by the
consulting firm say they will wait at least a full year after Vista hits the
market before taking the leap.

Even worse for Microsoft is the 13 percent of surveyed companies
which never even heard of the new operating system!

It seems that many businesses (19% still use NT and more
than half still run W2K) agree with me that there simply isn?t much need for a
new and improved OS.

More MS problems?

In yesterday?s demo before financial analysts the company?s voice
recognition failed miserably.

I just don?t get the way people treat Microsoft as if it were a
permanent force of nature.

Sure, Windows is in wide-spread use, but this is a tech company and
Windows has personally made me a LOT of money (writing about it, not investing in the company's stock), but technology is notorious for being fast moving. Lots of big flyers have come and gone. Anybody besides me remember Lotus?

Just because it is big now doesn't mean MS will be around forever. After all, Windows 95 was the
first really useful version of Windows and we are ONLY coming up on the 11th birthday of that earth-shaking GUI OS.

And Microsoft probably knows it is in trouble, at least if they listen to the newly appointed chief software architect who was quoted in last weekend's Financial Times as seeing the (financial) death of the PC. Ray Ozzie, Mr. Gate's replacement as chief company sooth sayer, says that the Internet and game consoles, along with other portable devices such as music players, are the wave of the future and where the big money is to be made.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/e381965a-1dbe-11db-bf06-0000779e2340.html

Do I really need to point out how MS is loosing money on the Xbox, doesn't compete with the iPOD, and can't seem to get a handle on the Internet?

Hello, this is the d?j? vu police, is anyone home at the VA?

Yep, just when the FBI catches the two teens responsible for
that massive scare over 20+ million VA records being out there ready and
waiting for identity thieves, yet another set of records disappear.

This
time it involves 38,000 veterans? personel records but it isn?t due to a lost
laptop carelessly left laying around by a VA employee, no, this time it is a
subcontractor, Unisys, which screwed up and, being a large, old computer company, they outdid the VA
employee by loosing not a laptop, but a desktop computer.

My bet is that someone will find it at the local GoodWill, having been mistakenly donated.

Remember, "We're from the government, and we're here to help you."

I?ve just finished reading the best computer book since I
last re-read one of mine and I wanted to pass along the good word.

?Why Software Sucks, by David S. Platt, is still in beta,
that is, I have a draft manuscript so it won?t be available until September but
put this one on your must have list if you have software, love software, hate
programmers, or even ARE a programmer, because Mr. Platt (who teaches
programming) has set out to puncture the bloated egos of all those who think
that just because they can write a program, they can make it easy to use.
 

I can best sum up the essence of this funny and thought
provoking book by quoting a short piece explaining why programmers should never
design the interface.
 

?The programmer knows too much about the program and can?t
conceive of anyone who doesn?t.? (quote continued below)
 

Does that ring a bell? It certainly explains why error
messages are mostly meaningless, why defaults are so hard to change, and why
dialog boxes often convey little but confusion.
 

A prime example given is what you see when you try to close
notepad: ?The text in the XXXX file has changed. Do you want to save the
changes? YES, NO, CANCEL?
 

Just what the heck does that mean to your grandmother?
Cancel what? What file, I wrote a note?
 

The author goes on to explain, ?Because they?re laboring
under the misconception that their users are like them, programmers make two
main mistakes when they design user interfaces. They value control more than
ease of use [DUH!], concentrating on making complex things possible instead of
making simple things simple. And they expect users to learn and understand the
internal workings of their programs, instead of the other way around. I?ve done
them both and I now repent the error of my foolish younger ways.?
 

This book is funny, but it is also an important wake up call
for software companies which want to reduce the size of their customer support
bills.
 

If you were ever stuck for an answer to the question, ?Why to
good programmers make such awful software?? this book holds the answer.
 

?Why software Sucks?and What You Can Do About It,? by David S.
Platt, Addison-Wesley Professional, ISBN:0321466756, Publication date Sep. 29, 2006. 272 pages, List price:
$19.99.
 

This book strikes a personal note with me as I am certain it
will with everyone who reads it.
 

Every day I have to fight with MS Word to do the same task
over and over for my eBay store. All I want to do is block copy addresses to
print labels.
 

But every single time I have to change the font size and
make it BOLD, either in the envelope routine or on the Word document. I ALWAYS want both Bold and 16 point but the only
way I don?t have to do this every time for myself is if I set a new default in the envelope routine which screws up
other things.
 

I?ve tried a dozen ways around this, including building a
macro but none of them work correctly. Back in the MS-DOS days I had software which would
easily let me do this and customize to my heart?s content with just one command
but I can?t do it in Office or XP Pro. Of course that old MS-DOS program didn?t
offer me a choice of 25 hundred, thousand, million fonts, but I seemed to run
my publishing company pretty well without them.
 

I?m also sick and tired of having to decline the offer to
set a new default return address EVERY SINGLE F**K*** TIME.

It happens that I need to print a small code above the return
address so I know what to put in the package. It is different every time and it
isn?t a default return address but I can?t convince Word of this.

Why did some idiot programmer spend a week creating a way to
undock and ?float? a toolbar but not a day to let me set a permanent default
for the font I want to use in printing envelopes without altering the way my
other documents are formatted?

Oh, and for those of you who always write and tell me to get
a Mac ? Get a life! I?ve had Macs. They don?t eliminate problems. They just cost
more and offer a whole exciting new set of bad software to deal with.

In case you haven?t noticed, even Apple has given up on the
Mac and moved on to the music business.

OH Yea, another thing, why does XP ALWAYS have to remind me
EVERY SINGLE time I turn on the computer that I would experience improved
performance if I connected to a 2.0 USB port? I KNOW that. If I know what a USB
port is, I would know that! I also know that I don?t have a 2.0 USB port on
this computer and can?t add one because all the expansion slots are full. Why
couldn?t the moron at Microsoft who wrote that code have written another line
or two so the software could see that I don?t HAVE a faster USB port, or, at an
absolute minimum, provide a simple way to shut off that stupid reminder which
comes up about six times in a row because of all the USB ports and devices I
have.

Also, note to Word, I KNOW I will loose some formatting and
macro features if I save my documents in RTF instead of DOC. THAT?S WHY I SET
RTF AS MY DEFAULT IN THE FIRST PLACE!

Nevertheless, Word still reminds me of this a dozen times
each day instead of just saving my damn file to my default setting.

This sort of thing certainly isn?t limited to Microsoft and I don't intend to imply that it is,
they are just the most obvious offender because they sell the most software. I can recall far worse examples from back in the ways when I worked for Wang Labs but many of my readers wouldn't be familiar with them.

Yes, this book is needed! Get a copy! It doesn?t even have a
five page User Agreement you commit to by merely opening the package it comes
in.

By
way of disclaimer, I should note that, only after writing my above review I
discovered in looking up his bio that the author happens to teach Computer
Science at the Harvard University Extension School. I need to mention that
because I have actually advised the school?s Dean Queen (I?m not kidding) on
their Web site?s design a few years ago. However, back when I took courses
there they didn?t even have a computer science curriculum so I never met Mr.
Platt and have no affiliation with the school other than as a satisfied
customer.

Gather thee marshmallows while ye may, Sony/Dell batteries
are being recalled!

Ahh, isn?t it delightful, sitting around the old
laptop on a mid-summer eve, toasting marshmallows over the open flames from
your Dell laptop?

Online shopping experience ?
NAPA, doing it all wrong

I?ve been working with cars
and other vehicles as a hobby or business since the early ?60?s and a few years
ago when NAPAonline.com went up, I found it was a terrific way to get parts.

One big advantage was that I
could find parts for rare vehicles (such as my old Maserati Bi-Turbo) just by
entering the actual Bosh or other manufacturer part number.

Last week I tried them again
and everything that was right about NAPAonline.com is now broken.

I wonder why companies do
this. Is it incompetence? Or is it a deliberate way to drive customers to the
stores (which are little better, the last three visits to the local NAPA store
turned up nothing useful, and the one before that only had half the wheel
bolt/studs I wanted).

Am I exaggerating? You
decide.

I ordered a pump for a 1987
Jeep ? lots of them are still on the road, even though ours is just used on the
ranch.

Needing to actually use Jeep,
I selected the rebuilt water pump which was listed as in stock and shipping in
one day.

That was Sunday, by the next
Sunday the NAPAonline site was still marking my order ?picking parts? which,
allowing even for incredible incompetence among human workers at the warehouse
translated to me as ?out of stock.?

No emails about this
problem, no nothing.

So I checked the advanceauto.com
Web site.

In five minutes I not only
located the part I needed, the site confirmed that the local Advance Auto store
in Punxsutawney, PA, had it in stock.

Not being all that trusting,
I phoned to confirm, but it was TRUE.

I then returned to
NAPAonline.com to cancel the order.

This message was on my order
page: ?Contact NAPA Support
to cancel this order.?

Fine, but they didn?t publish the e-mail address there, OR
have a link embedded in that message.?

Totally bogus Web design!

I found Customer Support buried in various low-contrast colors
at the bottom of the page and tried that.

I found an e-mail address and sent a cancellation message on
Sunday, but also knew enough to phone them in person on Monday.

The contact screen (http://napaonline.com/MasterPages/NOLMaster.aspx?PageId=17)
says to e-mail OR phone from 8:00 a.m.
to 5:00 p.m.

Fine, at 8:05 I
called and the online message says to call after 9
a.m..

OK, so I call back at 9:05.

After about 60 seconds of nonsense message, the recording
says they are probably busy and I should e-mail instead, then hangs up.

Now I PREFER e-mail, but this national company doesn?t seem
to answer e-mail on Sundays, even though their stores are open, but the really
important sign of bad e-commerce design is that the Web site didn?t bother
warning me that no one would answer the phone number it TOLD ME to call!

So, what did NAPAonline.com do wrong?

>Their online inventory obviously wasn?t accurate.

>They didn?t bother informing me that there was a major
delay.

>They didn?t make it easy to cancel the order.

>They told me to phone, but the phone told me to e-mail.

>Customer service didn't operate Sunday (even though their stores are open.)

For now I won?t be doing any further business with
NAPAonline.

With the holidays coming up I will post other exceptionally
good or bad shopping sites I run across.

And, lest you think I am overly picky, I?ve not only been
involved in computer-based inventory management for more than 40 years, I have
a very successful online business which has never screwed up inventory, and always
contacts customers if there are any delays caused by weather or such.

I now how this works, NAPA
used to know how it worked ? they have just failed to maintain a good
e-commerce site which used to work fine.

I’d like to take a somewhat serious poll regarding what I’ve often referred to in the past as operating system chauvinism – that is, the way so many in a highly vocal minority latch onto a particular operating system (Mac, *nix, MS, doesn’t matter which) and acts really, really paranoid when anyone mentions some problems with one or another.

My questions are

>Just why does this happen?

and

>Is it still happening?

You know what I mean; if you dare to mention that Open Source may NOT be any more secure than MS, or that the Macintosh was always highly over-rated/priced, there was a time when it wasn’t even possible to have a calm, logical discussion based on facts.

To read the flaming posts you would think that the person who had the temerity to make some negative comment about *nix or a Mac OS had come out in favor of reducing the over breeding problem by substituting puppies and kittens instead of clay pidgins as skeet targets.

This mindset isn’t new to computers, but it does seem to be a particularly male perspective on the world.

Long before personal computers weren’t even a dream outside the wildest Sci-Fi, the car culture was the recipient of this sort of vehement fanaticism.

FORD (Fix Or Repair Daily) owners were often fanatic in their rejection of GM products or (SHUDDER!) Chrysler vehicles (and vice versa of course); despite the fact that all three U.S. brands were turning out cars and trucks which were nearly indistinguishable in terms of performance, price, or reliability.

I don’t hear much of that these days when I take one of my classics to a car show.

Of course I never did buy into any of that. I have Ford (actually Shelby), Datsun, GM (Trans AM), even European exotics in my collection.

The closest I ever came to preferring a particular brand on a universal basis was back when I had a garage in Cambridge, MA, near where Lotus later set up shop.

Back then I loved Jags and Rovers. It wasn’t that I thought they were so superior to U.S. makes, or that I didn’t like Triumphs or MGs (back then I drove an MGA and a Spitfire). No, my preferences were based on pure business concerns.

Jags broke A LOT and owners either put up with it if they were poor student-types, or reveled in it if they had bags of money. In either case, focusing on fixing Jaguar cars was a good business move.

The same was true in a way of Rovers, although they were generally much more reliable, the owners were almost universally well-off.

I remember one Harvard professor (we later became friends and he later became a Nobel Laureate) who I met because he came to me four times/year just to have his oil changed and the car detailed. The F-head three-liter Rover was so exotic most mechanics had never even heard of the engine configuration, but I had three of them in the back for spare parts and people were very willing to pay for my expertise when they would have tossed an old Plymouth with similar problems.

I bring all that up to emphasize that I approached the OS wars the same way. I resisted Windows for about a year after it first appeared but, once I saw the potential need for someone to keep it working, I jumped in with both feet.

As security became a real problem, again Microsoft won my undying affection both because of the vulnerabilities and the installed base.

But I’d drop it in a second if some other OS threatened to gain a 90% market penetration!

And that brings me back to OS fanaticism.

What are your thoughts about this cultural phenomenon?

Is it mostly restricted to men in the same way big boy toys are mostly for big boys, not big girls?

Is it genetic?

Or, as I suspect, is the preference for one brand of car or one OS mostly dependent on which one someone first really connected with and that had little to do with any particular merit?

Is this still a big problem?

Are people just so bored with their lives and the pablum served up by broadcast TV that they pour their energies and devotion into a fanatic loyalty for a particular OS (or car brand)?

Would you hire a fanatic? Or, would you feel that it might cloud what should be purely economic and business decisions?

And, given the fact that underlying Internet and WWW protocols are so weakly secured, is there REALLY any provable reason these days to prefer one OS over another based on security threats?