Backspin

By Mark Gibbs

Irrational rights

07/02/09

Mark Gibbs discusses the award of $1.92 million damages to the RIAA in the case of a single mother accused of pirating songs.

Great balls of customer service

06/19/09

Gibbs replays the experience of an unhappy cell phone customer and scans the news.

The Twitpocalypse Tragedy

06/12/09

Twitter could fail, this time big time, for technical reasons. Mark Gibbs has written a play, to be exact, a tragedy, about this. He probably won't win a Tony.

Cell phones! $#!&!

06/05/09

Gibbs continues his rant about cell phone service providers and customer disservice and wonders how we can afford to let what are critical communications be run by what is effectively a cartel that just wants to squeeze us for every last cent it can while providing, at best, mediocre service? Altogether now: "I'm mad as hell …"

Cellular customer disservice (can you say "argggh!?)

05/29/09

Mark Gibbs is trying to save money and so he looked for a less expensive cell phone service plan. He got his new phones but dealing with customer service … it's not a pretty story.

Willful technological ignorance

05/15/09

Mark Gibbs is irked by a GE marketing program that willfully uses the wrong name for a technology it uses. He sees this as symptomatic of a trend of needless inaccuracy about technology that just keeps us slightly dumber than we ought to be.

Cyberbullying? No, it's just bullying.

05/08/09

Gibbs discusses proposed legislation concerning "cyber-bullying" and points out that the laws would be a really, really bad idea and that that conflating "cyber" with almost anything is simply bogus. Dude.

Looking for swine and the data society

05/01/09

Mark Gibbs started by looking for swine flu data and wound up pondering the downsides of being an "information society" Could he be running a fever? Could he have "swine"?

Security: The ugly business

04/24/09

Security problems usually don't have elegant solutions. A report from Commonwealth Bank concerning serious ATM vulnerabilities illustrates the issues perfectly.

Less freedom in the new digital world?

04/16/09

Following up on last week's Internet Kill Switch column Mark Gibbs discusses some reader feedback and wonders whether we're being softened up for a brave new digital world.

The Internet Kill Switch

04/13/09

There are some ideas about technology that are simply bad thinking. Sen. Rockefeller's proposal to give the president an Internet Kill Switch is monumentally wrong headed.

Owning your own data

04/02/09

There's a lot of data out there about you, but you hardly "own" most of it. What would it mean if you did own it and why does no one care yet?

Becoming green or just greenish?

03/23/09

Becoming an environmentally responsible organization isn't easy particularly in IT. It requires seeing the bigger picture and treating effort of becoming green as a comprehensive, strategic issue. So far, not many organizations are doing anything like that.

Keeping IT honest

03/13/09

Forrester thinks paid-for blogging is OK, but Gibbs disagrees because - well, you’ll have to read it to find out. He also wonders about what you might do if you discover malfeasance in your company.

To Tweet or not to Tweet, that's not an option

03/09/09

Gibbs hopes that now he’s written this column about Twitter he’ll never have to explain what the service is or does again. Of course he'll have to carry a stack of Network World magazines around but that will be a small price to pay.

Computers and five kinds of insanity

02/26/09

here seems to be a great number of cases of crazy behavior in and around the computer business. Mark Gibbs provides a few examples.

New Zealand gets insane copyright law

02/20/09

A law has just been passed in New Zealand that allows for alleged online copyright infringers to have their Internet access cut off before being proved guilty.

IT's glass – full, empty or too big?

02/12/09

The economy is down the tubes and so is your budget. If you keep thinking you have to do more with less, you're wrong. In these tough times the goals should be doing less with less.

Fixing the privacy joke

02/05/09

Privacy has become a joke because the companies you deal with can pretty much do with your private data whatever they please. Mark Gibbs has some thought on what is needed to fix this problem.

Mr. Gibbs, let me introduce myself

01/29/09

And now a word from our hacker ...

Place your bets against malware

01/22/09

The response to my recent Gearhead and Backspin columns on malware has been amazing! And the range of suggestions has ranged from admit defeat, wipe the system, and start again to fight the good fight and don't give in.

Giving in to malware

01/14/09

Gibbs thought he'd fixed his problem with malware on a Windows XP system, but as it turns out, he just made the malware work better. Here's the sad tale.

COBOL and governmental efficiencies

01/09/09

The new U.S. administration has a new post, chief performance officer. Mark Gibbs thinks that the incumbent has his work cut out for him and that government computing is a key area to tackle. It's a dirty job but someone has to do it.

Merry Christmas, Ms. Amero

12/18/08

Gibbs recounts the case of Julie Amero, the Connecticut teacher who was unjustly accused of child endangerment for porno popups on a classroom computer.

The G1 and Google's Evil Quotient

12/11/08

Now that he's lived with the T-Mobile G1 'superphone' for a few more weeks and learned of a few hidden issues, Mark Gibbs has rethought the enthusiasm he felt in his Gearhead review.

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