Editorials

Unless you have been under a rock you have probably heard all about the Doom 4 teaser that was shown off at E3 2014. We saw it a couple of days ago, but at the time really did not think it was all that news worthy (ducks as people throw things). However, this morning as I watched it again I noted a couple of things that must have slipped by me during my first viewing.

When Edward Snowden revealed the extent of US Government surveillance and just how much corporations cooperated with them to accomplish their goals everyone was shocked. Many could not believe that the companies we trust would betray us in the ways that Snowden showed. Even as the clarifications and denials were being typed up by Microsoft, Google and others the consumer backlash was starting and not just in the US. Consumers here and overseas were pulling their data out and cancelling accounts. This change has (and will continue to) seriously hurt technology companies financially. As we all know, the only way to motivate big business is to hit them in the bank account.

When the Xbox One was released Microsoft pushed it as the center of an new ecosystem that started in the living room. The message was clear, start with the One and build out from there using Microsoft products from the Surface Tablet, to Windows 8.x to Windows Phones. The whole world would fall to the domination of Microsoft… Well the problem with that is no one truly rules the living room. It is the one place where the one-size-fits-all concept does not work. Apple, Google, and others have tried and failed to dominate this space without success.

A couple of days ago Google started pushing encryption for e-mail. No, we are not talking about the typical https connection required for Gmail. We are talking about actually encryption of email as it moves from server to server using TLS (Transport Layer Security). In simplest terms this method creates connections between servers using a secure tunnel to each other for the purposes of transmitting the message. Once the message has been passed to the destination server the tunnel closes. However, despite the length of time TLS has been around not many companies use.