The nightmare every techie lives

Resolve Phishing Problems with .BANK TLD?

It amazes me how the tech press finds simple solutions for complex problems, and then decides that the beneficiaries are willing to pay big bucks for it. Consider this article on preventing Phishing.

Why do banks and other financial institutions operate under the public top-level domains, like .com? The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the body that creates new top-level domains, should create a new, secure domain just for this reason—something like “.bank,” for example.

Registering new domains under such a top-level domain could then be restricted to bona fide financial organizations. And the price for the domain wouldn’t be just a few dollars: It could be something like $50,000—making it prohibitively expensive to most copycats. Banks would love this. They would move their existing online banks under a more secure domain in no time.

"Banks would love this?" Has this guy ever worked for a bank? Banks understand that the best way to make money is to find ways to avoid spending money. This is why most banks are working on systems invented in the 1970s, and why the one I work for only retired their last Windows 98 computer last year. None of the banks I know would happily give up their $25 a year .COM address for a $50,000 .BANK address unless it were a regulatory requirments. And even then they'd be looking for a way out of it.

Note to the wise: When looking for solutions to problems, try to avoid solutions with costs you would not truly be willing to pay yourself.

A new file system for Apple?

This blogger seems to think so. This is perhaps one of the more geeky topics to be covered here on Mod-Blog, but it is interesting that this may be the wave of the future for Apple. Basically, this would provide a platform for multi-drive systems that will be coming with the growth of the digital video download economy. Most people don't think about *how* their computer stores files, they just accept that it does. The problem comes when the *how* becomes corrupted and then there is catastrophic data loss. This is why everybody needs a solid back up strategy for their computer and that strategy needs to be more solid the more stuff you have on your computer. Supposedly with this file system it'll keep your stuff from being corrupted better and it will make back ups easier. This is a good thing for everybody - except of course for the programmers that have to figure out how to put an Apple look and feel to an extremely technical mechanism.