Monday, March 06, 2006

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Software firewalls will monitor applications/processes trying to access in the internet, and will prompt the user, case by case, to approve or deny access. Setting aside the fact that many home users have no clue about what to approve or not, I have been wondering what is to keep the authors of malicious spyware to give those processes innocuous and valid-sounding names. Like if I got prompted to let Win32DLL.EXE access the internet, would I think twice about it? 5:25:05 PM    comment []

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I've been using first NetFlix, then Blockbuster, for almost 3 years, to have DVDs delivered straight to my mailbox. For a fixed price, I get to have 3 movies out at a time. I typically try to balance this: 1 kids movie, 1 family movie, 1 grown-up movie. So as any remotely geeky reader will undoubtedly have already inferred, I am thinking that the "queue" functionality they provide could be improved to support this kind of requirement. As things stand now, you get only 1 queue. You can re-arrange the priority of items within it, which directly translates to the order you receive them. So, if you are returning your family movie, but the next item in the queue is a grown-up movie, you can set a new order that makes a family movie the new #1, so that that will be the replacement you receive, thus keeping your "inventory" balanced. I know they want/need to keep things simple, but wouldn't it be nice if they offered an advanced option for multiple queues, a number corresponding to the number of movies your plan lets you have out at one time (3 in my case)? That would automatically keep your inventory in balance. UPDATE: My friend Gim says that NetFlix does have this feature. 10:24:05 AM    comment []