Miami Vice

Hey buddy - have you heard the one about the Mac clone?

There are times when it seems like every day is April Fool's Day in the technology news; times when some of the stories are strange enough to make you wonder whether or not somebody isn't having a big laugh at our expense.

Take, for example, the story of the Mac clone maker Psystar. At least, they say they're making Mac clones; so far, nobody has actually seen one despite what the Miami-based company claims is the “incredible response” to the offering of its Open Computer, pre-loaded with Apple's OS X. Shortly after announcing its product line early last week, Psystar's web site went down. In the days that followed, the web site went back up, but the company's business address changed repeatedly (“four times in the matter of a few hours” according to Adrian Kingsley-Hughes' Hardware 2.0 blog at ZDNet).

Then their credit card payment processer, Powerpay, dropped them. According to News.com's Tom Krazit, “Louisa Deluca, vice president of loss prevention for Powerpay, said on Thursday [April 17th, 2008] that her company dropped Psystar because it violated the terms of its agreement with Powerpay”. Psystar switched to Paypal, only to be given the virtual axe by them less than 48 hours later.

The punch line, however, is to be found in a Forbes piece by Brian Caulfield, wherein we learn that Psystar's founder “won't go on the record about his educational background, detail his professional history or name any previous ventures” (THAT'S certainly not suspicious) and acknowledges that the Open Computer “is based on a machine put together by his brother (whom he won't name). Nor will he say how the new computer works.”

“I'm not making this up, you know!” as Anna Russell used to say.

To be fair, it's always possible that Psystar, despite making every possible mistake a start-up can make, might actually cough up a product. They claim it takes around two weeks to turn one out, so by early May we should know whether or not the folks who managed to give them their credit card numbers before everything crashed have been taken to the cleaners. So far the only evidence we have that the machines even exist is some images from Psystar collected by ZDNet.

And that's assuming that Apple doesn't let loose the dogs of law. There's still the inconvenient truth, after all, that Apple's EULA prohibits the installation of OS X on non-Apple hardware. Psystar said they'll challenge that in court, but then Psystar is saying lots of things that raise one's virtual eyebrows.

Given that Open Computer prices start at $399, I'm skeptical. As Larry Dignan noted in his Between the Lines blog, "I’d rather let you trusting souls be the guinea pigs before I pay up for a Mac clone. If it sounds too good to be true it probably is". If I had to make a bet, I'd lay heavy odds that its lawyers who will have the last laugh here.

Safety Last

The title of the April 9th Computerworld article was interesting: "DHS chief says feds need help to defend Internet against cyberattacks". Given this administration's track record when it come to power grabs, I expected this to be a sales job for Chertoff to claim even more authority.

Looks like I was wrong. Chertoff acknowledges that "[t]here is no question that one of the threats that continues to materialize again and again is the threat to our virtual world of cyberspace," and that a successful attack could have a world-wide "cascading effect". He just doesn't think government can do much about it. Check out this quote:

But defending cyberspace is different from protecting buildings and other physical targets, Chertoff said. The federal government doesn't own the Internet or much of the technical infrastructure on which it runs, he noted. As a result, he declared, it's the shared responsibility of the government and the private sector to guard against cyberattacks.

"We're operating in a domain where traditional military power or the power of government is insufficient to address the full nature of the threat," Chertoff said. "We need to have a networked response to deal with a networked attack."

Translation: "I need to make it look like I'm doing something but I don't want to force the administration's corporate cronies to do anything that would cost them money, so regulation is right out of the question."

Note that this is the same Michael Chertoff who, according to the April 8th New York Times, declares that he has the power to unilaterally invalidate dozens of laws in order to build a fence at the Mexican border (a boondoggle if ever there was one, but that’s another rant). Why not use this same constitutionally suspect dictatorial power to force corporations to secure their network? After all, declaring itself above the law is SOP for this lot.

The answer, of course, is that doing so would annoy the corporations that call the shots in this administration.  They're perfectly happy to have Chertoff sweep away environmental laws that get in the way of the holy pursuit of a fast buck.  Telling them to spend money on security, on the other hand, would be a quick way to an early retirement so he could "spend more time with his family".

Meanwhile, as reported on the very same day at news.com, security experts have demonstrated that gaining control of the systems at a power station via social engineering and malware is a no brainer.  Don't hold your breath waiting for Chertoff to force the power industry to clean up its act. See above.