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Archive for November, 2011

Enter the Data Huggers…

November 27th, 2011 6 comments
VM (operating system)

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A tale of yore:

And from whence the light of the heavens did shimmer upon them from the clouds above, yea the Server Huggers did at first protest.

Yet, as the virtual supplanted the corporeal — these shells of the buzzing contrivance —  they did wilt wearily as the compression of the rings unyieldingly did set upon them.

And strangely, once shod of their vestigial confines, they learned once again to rejoice and verily did they, of their own accord, assume the mantle of the make-believe server clan, and march forward lofting their standards high  to readily bear their mark of the VM.

But as the once earth-bound, now ethereal, ascended their offers to the heavens and their clouds, the vessels of their capital dissolved their curtailment once more.

The VMs became vapor, their service, the yield.  This tribe, once coupled to the shrines of their wanton packaging, became unencumbered once more.

Yet when these offers were set free upon the land, their services — compliant, supple and malleable — were embraced as a newfound purse, and the Clan of the App guarded them jealously once again, hoarding their prize from the undeserving.

Their reign, alas, did not last; their bastions eroded as the platforms that once gained them allegiance crumbled with the surfeit of consumption — their dispersion widespread and resources taxed.

Thus became the rule of the Data Clan whose merit lay in wait as the pretenders of the Cloud were forced to kneel in subservience.

For their data was big and they clutched it to their bosom as they once did their apps, VMs and carnal heat pumps…

It’s interesting to see how in such a short time we’ve seen the following progression:

Server Huggers > VM Huggers > App Huggers > Data Huggers

I wonder what’s next in the lineage of hugs?

/Hoff

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802.bah – Beware the SiriSheep Attack!

November 21st, 2011 1 comment

On the heels of a French group reverse-engineering the Siri protocol by intercepting requests to the Internet-based server that Apple sends Siri requests to, Pete Lamonica, a first-time Ruby developer has produced another innovative hack.

Lamonica has created an extensible proxy server to enable not only interception of Siri requests, but provide connectivity/interfacing to other devices, such as his Wifi-enabled thermostat.

Check it out here:

What I think might be an interesting is if, in the future, we see Siri modified/deployed in the same way as Microsoft’s Kinect is today used to control all sorts of originally-unintended devices and software.

Can you imagine if $evil_person deployed (via Proxy) the Siri version of the once famed Starbucks pwnership tool, FireSheep?  SiriSheep.  I call it…

Your house, your car, your stock trades, emails, etc…all Siri-enabled.  All Siri-pwned.

I have to go spend some time with the original code — it’s unclear to me if the commands to Siri are sent via SSL and if they are, how gracefully (or ungracefully) errors are thrown/dealt with should one MITM the connection.  It seems like it doesn’t give a crap…

Thanks to @JDeLuccia, here’s the github link to the original code.

/Hoff

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Cloud: The Turducken Of Computing? [Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving]

November 20th, 2011 3 comments

In these here United States Of ‘Merica, we’re closing in on our National Day of Gluttony, Thanksgiving.

As we approach #OccupyStuffedGullet, I again find myself quizzically introspective, however frightening the prospect of navel gazing combined with fatal doses of Tryptophan leaves me.

Reviewing the annual list of consumables for said celebration in conjunction with yet another interminable series of blog posts on “What Cloud *really* means for [insert target market here,]” I am compelled to suggest that what Cloud *really* means and *really* represents is…

A Turducken.

According to the Oracle of Mr. Wales, a Turducken is as follows:

turducken is a dish consisting of a de-boned chicken stuffed into a de-boned duck, which itself is stuffed into a de-boned turkey. The word turducken is a portmanteau of turkey, duck, and chicken or hen.

The thoracic cavity of the chicken/game hen and the rest of the gaps are stuffed, sometimes with a highly seasoned breadcrumb mixture or sausage meat, although some versions have a different stuffing for each bird.

I’ll leave it to you to map the visual to the…Oh, who am I kidding?

What does this *really* have to do with Cloud? Nothing, really, but I’m rather bloated with the resurgence of metaphors and analogs which seek to clarify new computing recipes in order to justify more gut-busting consumption, warranted or not, diets-be-damned.  But really…sometimes a dish is delicious in its simplicity and doesn’t need any garnish. 😉

In fact, this comparison isn’t really at all that accurate or interesting, but I found it funny nonetheless…

Frankly, it’s *really* just an excuse to wish you all a very merry ClouDucken Day 🙂

May your IT be stuffed and your waistline elastic.

/Hoff

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