In short, you’re paying for the trust, not the actual encryption. Anyone with the appropriate software, which is widely available for free, can create their own certificate that provides encryption. However, using such a certificate will generate a browser warning when a user tries to create a secure connection. The warning will say something to the effect that “the connection is not trusted.” If you want to avoid the warning it costs something between $50 and $500. But there’s a justification.

Today Apple is supposed to make a big announcement. I don’t know yet what that will be but many people think it’s related to a Tablet PC. Apple’s success in the iPhone and App Store business has reminded me of one of the web’s biggest mistakes and we seem on track to repeat it. I’m stunned because it really hasn’t been that long. How can we be doing it again so soon?

(as a follow-up to “How data affects wifi range“)

It’s also important to realize that if a country consumes more media on the Internet than it produces, the electrons will get shifted from the creating country to the consuming country.

Because electrons have a negative charge this will leave the creating country with a positive charge and the consuming country with a negative charge. In effect, “polarizing the nations.” This was actually discussed in ancient biblical prophecy and is a sign that the battle of Armageddon and the end of the world is near.

On Thu, Jan 14, 2010 at 11:53 AM, David McLaughlin wrote:
> I’ve had much better luck with range by placing the router as high as
> possible within the house.

That’s because the newer wifi signals are actually slightly heavier than air so they fall down gradually after they’re broadcast. Kind of like the branches of a willow tree.

Among the elite hacker community it is sometimes considered cool to have an unstyled website. I’m not certain what makes this cool, but I respect it none-the-less. However a few absolutely minimal styles can make your site easier to read. Here they are:

body {
font-family: sans-serif;
line-height: 130%;
font-size: 91%;
}

The latest craze is to write an iPhone app. I’ve been preaching for a while that mobile apps are the way of the future but I don’t like the idea of iPhone apps and here’s why.

First, I have to give credit to Apple. They’re brilliant, though I’m convinced the place they’re at now is exactly what they intended a few years back. If you work on the premise that any good capitalist company is bent on total market domination (not all companies are but it seems to fit Apple) then what they’re doing is right on track to achieving this goal.

I’ve been using my new computer for a little over a week now. I bought the Mac Book Pro 13. One of its features that may not jump off the page to you when looking at the tech specs is how great the screen is. To my horror I’ve gone to some websites and realized I’ve made some serious errors in optimizing my images. Things that look fine on a typical computer screen but look retarded on a really good quality monitor.

If you do image optimization or web work you should seriously consider investing in a very good monitor. Who knows who will see your work and laugh at you because of the mistakes you don’t even know you made? Oh I am so embarrassed.

I’m getting ready to replace my Dell Latitude D420 laptop. I love it. It’s very light, very portable, has an extended battery that gets 3-5 hours of life. If I could change only two things it would be a slightly larger screen (or more specifically, a slightly lower DPI) and a standard dual core cpu rather than the ultra-low voltage (ULV) dual core cpu. Dell and Apple both offer a computer that meets my requirements but to my surprise, the Apple is cheaper almost identical (corrected, see below) .

In Dell’s line of computers the natural upgrade path is to the Latitude E4300. Base model with 2GB RAM, 160GB Hard drive and a 3 year warranty + additional 802.11n, webcam and bluetooth is $1,409.

These add-ons to the dell give it near feature parity to the new Mac Book Pro 13 inch which sells for $1,199.

Do you get anything for the additional $210? Well, the Dell is 1.2lbs lighter, or 26%, which is nice. You also have the availability of a docking port and accidental damage warranty. The Apple has a backlit keyboard, a better video chipset and a multi-touch trackpad. The Apple also gives you the ability to develop iPhone and iTouch applications. I’ve heard it will be unlikely to see this capability ported to Windows, so that may be a big selling point.

The good news? Ubuntu works well on both computers.

Correction – the Dell has a 3 year warranty, the Mac has only 1 year. You have to add AppleCare which makes the Mac about $40 more expensive to bring it to 3 years. But that also gives you technical support which is an add on for Dell, which brings up the cost of the Dell a bit too, I think giving the Mac about a $50 advantage. All of this is a moot point because it used to be that there was a 30% price premium for the Mac and now they’re too close to call.

I’ve invested a non-trivial amount of thought and research into the optimal way to cut a pizza for a small family and have come to the firm conclusion that in most cases cutting asymmetrically is the best.

By this I mean that I now deliberately try to cut the pieces so that they are not the same size. There are some instances where this is not the best route but for a typical family dinner it works out ideally.

Imagine a family like this, a husband, a wife and two kids that are not the same age. We’ll use some stereotypes here which of course are not valid some times but it will work to make my point.

In such a family you could imagine that the father would have a slightly bigger appetite than the mother, who would have a bigger appetite than the older child who would have a bigger appetite than the younger child.

If you cut the pizza symmetrically then the youngest child may not be satisfied with a single piece of pizza but would be unable to eat a full second piece, causing waste. Likewise, the older child may be able to eat a little more than two but not three. You can see where this is leading. There’s nothing a hungry dad likes less than seeing partial pieces of pizza go into the trash.

So take a look at this picture:

The father, who in our example has the biggest appetite, would take pieces “a” and “b.” The mother would take pieces “c” and “h.” The older child would take pieces “d” and “g” while the younger child would take pieces “e” and “f.” Everyone gets two pieces yet everyone gets a portion that is satisfying to them.

Brilliant, yet simple, eh? Well, there are two things that can go wrong that I should warn you about. First, if you’re feeding a group of kids it is important to not use this technique – instead go for perfect symmetry. If you don’t know why this is important then you probably aren’t a parent. Trust me, symmetry is ideal.

Second, you may have several people with similar appetites. For this group I’ll suggest an alternate solution, the “restaurant cut.” This cuts a piece into more, but smaller pieces. See the image below:

This is a bit unconventional compared to common pizza delivery methods but it has numerous benefits:

• Some people don’t like crust, they get an interior piece
• Some people love crust, they get an outside piece
• Pieces are smaller so people eat more pieces
• Smaller pieces decrease the chance of waste
• Works great if you have a variety of pizzas and people want to try a little of each

It is scary to consider but I’ve actually been working on this for years. Despite this I’m sure that there are people with other experiences who can contribute, please leave comments to share your insight.

OK, the previous blog post was on [site credibility](http://www.bearfruit.org/blog/2009/01/16/at-a-glance-credibility-link-to-content-ratio), lets continue on that theme for another post. This may seem off-key but follow with me. If you see a woman join a group of attractive women you will formulate an opinion of her. If you see a man join a group of other men who look like they are of ill repute you will probably hold him in a similar low regard.

We have a tendency to make assumptions based on association. I’m no psychologist but I’ve seen enough sitcoms to know that it’s true. The saying is that birds of a feather flock together, right? But how does this relate to your website and what does it have to do with ads? I’m glad you asked.

First, let me clarify that there are several kinds of ads. Anyone in the world can get Google Ads. Showing them on your website is kind of like hanging out with a woman who is wearing a sign that says, “you too can date me for only $20.” Again, I apologize profusely for the off-key illustrations, I can’t think of a better way to describe it though. The point is that you’re not going to boost your credibility by showing these kind of ads. If all you want is money then go for it, I know numerous people who make good income from Google. We’re not talking about income though, we’re talking about credibility. Same goes for your run of the mill random, untargeted banner ad service which is pretty much extinct now days.

Another kind of ad is contextual affiliate ads. For example, [Get Rich Slowly](http://getrichslowly.org/) uses these. They recommend products that they actually like and they get affiliate commission for them. These, in my opinion, are my favourite kind of ad. However they too are not going to boost your credibility in large part because they don’t look like an ad.

That last kind of major ad I want to talk about is, for lack of a better description, “elite ads.” These are ads that are high quality attractive ads and feature high end services. They typically avoid animations and other annoyances and often look hand picked to fit the site and the site’s content and the site’s typical visitors. They probably don’t advertise in-house products. And most importantly, they’re not going to be run-of-the-mill ads that you see just anywhere.

I’m going to postulate that well placed, well designed and well targeted ads can possibly boost your site’s credibility. Just like you might associate a person’s reputation or attractiveness with the company they keep you might also associate a site’s credibility by whose ads they show. Here is an example:

(I may replace the above image after some more searching, for now a web design site is shown)

Thoughts? Examples to either support or disprove this?