Fixing Error 412 and Precondition failures in WordPress

Apparently mod_security is really aggressive around certain words (like in my previous post). To get around this, add SecFilterEngine off to your .htaccess file. You might not want to leave that snippet in there long, since it disables the security check, but if you find WordPress denying you the ability to post, it’s worth a shot.

Technology for the future: MacFUSE

Introduction: I can’t say for certain, but with concerns about BitTorrent making the rounds (P2P as a concept and technology should be fine long-term) I’m curious about two new technologies with a lot of future-shaping potential — one that I was already aware of and a new one that I just found out about yesterday…

I previously covered Adobe’s Apollo and now I’d like to discuss Amit Singh of Google’s MacFUSE.

FUSE

SSHFS iconLet me first state that this topic is going to sound downright dorky, but it’s actually really cool (as any geek would agree). Second, it took me a bit of research, some code digesting and a couple app installs to actually grok this, but now that I do, I think it’s an amazingly powerful demonstration of future web technology. Anyway, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

First, FUSE is a Linux fanboy’s dream — it allows you to hook up your file manager to just about any “collection of stuff”. A germane example might be connecting your Linux computer with a Windows machine in order to read, write and delete files. A less obvious example might be hooking up the Mac Finder up to an RSS feed and treating it like a hard drive where each post represents individual files that you can copy, move and delete.

Not that you would, but you could.

And in fact, Amit Singh, who built MacFUSE, demonstrates that use case in this excellent video. If that doesn’t give you goose-pimples, well… what if you could create “true smart folders, where the folders’ contents are dynamically generated by querying Spotlight.” No? Hmm. Ok.

Well, I’ll leave with you with two examples that might start to shed some light on what’s so interesting about this technology and then follow up with another post that extrapolates on an idea I’ve mentioned before and where I see kind of technology heading (perhaps not in its current form but in a more polished state).

SSHFS

So, let’s say that you want convenient access to SSH storage on your Mac. Ok, no problem. Just install MacFUSE Core, restart, then install sshfs (both files are available here). Load up sshfs, connect to your remote host (for example, on TextDrive, you’d used something like nelson.textdrive.com), enter your password and sshfs’ll mount the remote drive on your desktop, which you can then browse as though it were a local drive — moving, copying, drag and dropping files. In fact, I used this trick to upload the photo in this post.

GmailFS

The second example is definitely not for the faint of heart (and honestly, I couldn’t really get it to work though it compiled and connected just fine). The goal is to enable you to mount your Gmail account on your desktop — which might start to reveal Google’s interest in developing FUSE (more on that later). (Oh, and for the record, gDisk already serves this purpose very well, FYI). So, take a look at the detailed instructions laid out by Jean-Matthieu and then crack open that command line. You’ll need some knowledge of compiling apps (and you’ll need Apple’s developer tools) but it’s still pretty cool to be able to type mount -ovolname=bla -t gmailfs /usr/local/bin/gmailfs.py ~/gmailfs and have your Gmail account pop up on your desktop. Sort of.

Finally, as a bonus, you can mount a number of other services, including RubyForge and soon Blogger.

Given this advance (and Amit’s demonstration of hooking into Picasa, an RSS feed, Gmail, Google Docs and Spotlight) it’s just a matter of time before we’re able to connect natively to remote web services, as we do today over FTP, AFS and Bonjour. I’ll elaborate on just what that might mean in my next post.

Technology for the future: Apollo

Introduction:I can’t say for certain, but with concerns about BitTorrent making the rounds (P2P as a concept and technology should be fine long-term) I’m curious about two new technologies with a lot of future-shaping potential — one that I was already aware of and a new one that I just found out about yesterday…

The first is Adobe’s Apollo, and I’ll cover that in this post. The second is a more obtuse technology called MacFUSE, which I’ll cover in a second post.

Apollo

Apollo LogoThe first is Adobe’s forthcoming platform. In a recent interview with Mike Downey, Apollo’s senior product manager, he made some interesting comments. First, about the relationship between Firefox and XUL and Apollo:

With Apollo you can take advantage of OS-level services like system notifications, drag and drop from the desktop and complex local data storage and manipulation. Browsers are great for browsing content and Apollo doesn’t aim to replace that.

And second, about monetizing Apollo:

Adobe is also looking to build applications on top of Apollo. I can’t give you any specific examples right now, but we have several teams within Adobe that are building software on top of Apollo as we’re developing it. They give us some great feedback and will also give us some great examples to showcase at Apollo’s launch later this year.

So to me what this sounds like is web-enabled versions of flagship Adobe apps — and others that we’ve not heard of yet. Their Bridge product is already something of a browser of sorts, and I think we’re going to see that functionality woven more directly into each app — so instead of opening your color palettes from your local drive, you might import them from an Apollo-backed web service like Kuler.

Additionally, the relationship between Apollo and as a distribution platform is fundamental. As Ted Patrick points out, Flex is being built as a long term development and deployment platform, meaning subsequent generations of tools will be able to code against generations of Flash players beyond the current Version 9. As Ted says, can rest easy investing in Flex today and tomorrow. In choosing Flash Player 9 for the deployment target of Flex 3.0, Adobe is making a larger commitment to supporting a longer application life-cycle.

All this suggests that, from the standpoint of developing Rich Internet Applications (RIA), Apollo and Flex will be a serious platform pairing to watch.

Another reason to reconsider your password approach

According to Finjan Inc., Google’s anti-phishing blacklist (used, for example, in their Firefox extension) apparently contained various phished usernames and passwords, suggesting that you really should not use the same username and password combination across the web.

Interestingly, OpenID would have, to some degree, mitigated this breach by moving the username and password combo off by one step, so at worst, the only credentials compromised would have been the publicly known identity provider URL.

I’ll be posting more about the topic soon, but I think that, in this particular case, the OpenID model would have been slightly more secure in concealing the high value information (namely your username and password credentials), and, better still, in the case of a breach, if you still had access to your account, you’d be able to change your password once and reduce the vulnerability of the remote sites that you use your OpenID to login to.

And, note that I’m not talking about the serious matter of spoofing your OpenID provider… in which case OpenID is no better than any other phishable site.

Doing something

I wonder how much of accomplishment should be determined by intention and self-compulsion rather than just “doing things”.

I feel like we’re part of a trend towards living differently, more openly, but more sporadically. We are noticeably distracted by distractions, self-made and otherwise, yet our capacity to create and connect, and connect while doing seems amplified.

So I don’t know what it’s all about or if it’s better, nor if my accomplishments are intentional, accidental or byproducts of just doing stuff

Netizen beware

I think the modern plight of IP is fascinating from a cultural development standpoint. Clearly it was believed when the laws were written that they’d be enforceable. Indeed they were, first at the local community level (think of old Wild West towns with their fool’s gold and cure-alls) and then on a larger scale, during the course of industrial development, when companies like Coke could extend their brand dominion the world over.

Now, owing much to the advancement of self-publishing tools and, of course, the Internet, it’s no longer conceivable to prevent every instance of misuse — in fact, as the RIAA and MPAA may someday learn, protecting your mark at the expense of your those who you want to respect your mark is a losing, and extremely costly, battle.

But for all the railing I do against modern IP, I do understand the purpose it serves, even if I don’t agree with the mechanisms or costs of enforcement. And, the cost of not finding a citizen-driven plan of enforcement could be exceptionally disruptive to the economy and to the establishment of new businesses.

While disruption on the one hand can be good as it destableizes the incumbants and shakes old soil from the roots of the system, it can also lead to fear and paralysis, as uncertainty takes over. If you consider that registering your trademark used to be simply a matter of course, and that enforcement against infringers would lead to a nice monetary settlement, that is no longer the standard. Rather, as has been said recently, to own a mark worthy of enforcement will surely lead to a death from a thousand cuts the moment you decide to try to wrest what you think is yours from the millions of fingers of the world at large.

And this is where the conflict lies: in these new economic circumstances, individuals and small businesses cannot afford the cost, in terms of their attention or their dollars, in pursuing infringement, yet, all the same, there is value in the credibility and reputation of the mark they built, which should be theirs to enjoy the benefits thereof. On the flipside, there is the citizen-consumer, who may wish to publish or publicize their love of said brand, but may do so in an otherwise “infringing” way (see Firefox). Now, at the same time, there is a perceived need to protect the hapless consumer from his or herself by way of preventing false actors from imitating or acting in the stead of someone else (think of the Tylenol scare). This is the flipside to trademark in that it attempts to provision economic rewards for playing nice, doing good and putting the onus of protecting your name on the individual who’s name is in question. Therefore if someone does wrong under the guise of your brand, it’s up to you to stop the infringement since it’s your livelihood at stake.

So originally that was a good plan, but as I’ve been discussing, that enforcement now comes at the risk of your business!

So, what are we to do?

Well, a number of us, including Citizen Agency, will file for and receive trademarks. Another portion of us will try to enforce the mark through various means — those who are offline will have the smallest exposure and will probably be able to enforce their mark against a smaller market. Those who go online, which seems to be as necessary as being in the phone book these days, will find the legal environment frustrating, confusing and to start, disempowering.

The way forward then, or at least a choice that should be considered available, is the one we’ve made for BarCamp and Microformats, and for which I advocated for with Mozilla, Creative Commons and OpenID. The choice is to embrace community enforcement — not in preventing bad actors from behaving badly, but in creating more positive examples of good, representative behavior; of creating good documentation and information flows so you know how to judge a phish (notice I didn’t say ‘rat’); an understanding with the community that the centralized body doesn’t have the resources to police its name and is therefore willing to rely on its community in a non-binding way (that is, protection should be afforded so long as the company is doing good things for the community, earning enforcement and their trust) and that in return, the company will “embrace the chaos” and turn over a good deal of “ownership” of its name to the collective.

Now, this won’t work for everyone and indeed causes confusion, dilusion of consistency and an ocassionally unrepresentive act, but on the whole, the notion of a community mark might at least form the foundation for thinking on a non-legal code of conduct-slash-ethics ready and reflective of the 21st century.

You’re all growing old with me

It just dawned on me, but it’s fairly obvious, but you’re all growing up at the same rate that I am. Some will last longer than others, some will appear to live on forever. But, by in large, we’re not getting any younger, so, while I am as young as am (never to be younger) I just wanted to say that I appreciate those of you I’m growing up around, now, in this time period.

Trademark in its final throes?

No, not really, but it does sound pretty bleak:

Limited Brands SVP and Associate General Counsel Carol Matorin, who represents Victoria’s Secret among other brands, summed up the Sisyphean challenge of policing trademark violations in the midst of what she called “a great ocean of infringing materials.”

“It’s like trying to empty the ocean with a pail,” she said on a panel discussing the topic. “Can you even identify the perpetrator or whoever you’re trying to go after? There’s always been too much to go after in its entirety.” And each day brings more infringement than the last.

I dunno, I’d really like to see that Community Mark idea given some legal scrutiny, from the standpoint of creating doctrine that reflects the current social or economic needs of a society.

We’ve got trademark, which is economically unenforceable, patents, which are the DRM of genius, and copyright which are the modern shackles of the scamp-as-artist.

Hell, why don’t we just throw out the baby with the bathwater and come up with something unpatently original?