Hippo, birdie, two ewes...

...to blaurentnv and xthelonegunmanx!! Have a great one!

Learning

There was a gentle rain early this morning; when I went outside the air was washed clean and sunlight was sparkling on the lingering raindrops. It felt remarkably appropriate.

I have learned many things over the last, oh, 36 hours. Here, in no particular order, are some of them:

• "Never let the sun set on your anger" is good advice. So is "never go to bed with your anger." I'll settle for "never go to sleep with your anger" -- that works, too. I know damned well who I'd rather sleep with.
• Some things are better than sex. Long, close cuddles and deep, loving conversation are in that set. Especially when combined.
• I can still cry from missing my Dad.
• There are many things to value in a relationship, and peoples' ranking of them can differ. Love, loyalty, passion, honesty... Friendship, understanding, and working through problems are high on my list. Anyone have a good single word for that last one? It may be the most important for me.
• You get higher social security payments if you keep working until you're 70. Not that I have much choice.
• A long-term intense relationship, whether physical or platonic, is time-consuming. I need to manage my time and my priorities better.

More lessons learned

More things I've learned over the last few days:

• I can get through the morning and afternoon on five hours' sleep, five cups of coffee, and a late breakfast consisting of half a block of tofu. Just barely. Probably not twice in a row. I was feeling a little weak and dizzy by the time we started dinner around 5:45; Another 15 minutes and I'd probably have been on the floor. Thank goodness for tortilla chips and salsa!
• I don't need to keep my physical cancelled checks, do I? How many times have I looked at one? Maybe twice in 40 years? I can just download images from the bank and I'll be fine.
• I don't need to keep detailed records of closed-out accounts, either. Maybe a year-end statement and the 1099's which get filed separately, with the tax records, anyway.
• If I have a close friend whose relationship to me is best described as "sister", that makes her and my wife "sisters-in-law". Good place to start from. Works for all gender permutations, obviously. Wish I'd known that three months ago, but if wishes were horses I'd have been buried in horse exhaust several decades ago.
• My time machine is stuck in "play".

Death of security industry predicted...

... encrypted PDFs at 11.

Bruce Schneier's Security Matters: Prediction -- RSA Conference Will Shrink Like a Punctured Balloon

For a while now I have predicted the death of the security industry. Not the death of information security as a vital requirement, of course, but the death of the end-user security industry that gathers at the RSA Conference. When something becomes infrastructure -- power, water, cleaning service, tax preparation -- customers care less about details and more about results. Technological innovations become something the infrastructure providers pay attention to, and they package it for their customers.

No one wants to buy security. They want to buy something truly useful -- database management systems, Web 2.0 collaboration tools, a company-wide network -- and they want it to be secure. They don't want to have to become IT security experts. They don't want to have to go to the RSA Conference. This is the future of IT security.

You can see it in the large IT outsourcing contracts that companies are signing -- not security outsourcing contracts, but more general IT contracts that include security. You can see it in the current wave of industry consolidation: not large security companies buying small security companies, but non-security companies buying security companies. And you can see it in the new popularity of software as a service: Customers want solutions; who cares about the details?

... unless they're Microsoft customers, of course. (from techdirt)

Thank you, Micro$oft!

Techdirt: Microsoft's Final 'Up Yours' To Those Who Bought Into Its DRM Story

Remember a few years back when Microsoft launched a new type of DRM under the name "PlaysForSure"? The idea was to create a standard DRM that a bunch of different online music download stores could use, and which makers of digital music devices could build for. Except... like any DRM, it had its problems. And, like any DRM, its real purpose was to take away features, not add them, making all of the content hindered by it less valuable. Yet, because Microsoft was behind it, many people assumed that at least Microsoft would keep supporting it. Well, you've now learned your lesson. Playsforsure was so bad that Microsoft didn't even use it for its own Zune digital media device. Along with that, Microsoft shut down its failed online music store, and now for the kicker, it's telling anyone who was suckered into buying that DRM'd content that it's about to nuke the DRM approval servers that let you transfer the music to new machines.

Anyone out there on my flist dumb or careless enough to have fallen for PlaysForSure music? Sorry about that.