Ivan Krstić, a security engineer and former OLPC security head, writes on security, finance, startups, and technology.
Commenters link his Porsche short squeeze post as a clear explanation of short selling, along with his brain-enhancement and OLPC writing.
Do you have a link? It sounds interesting, but I think you might be confusing the Porsche short-squeeze of Volkswagen stock [1]. I'm thinking that if Kraft bought 90% of the world's chocolate, Hershey would also be in trouble. Besides, I would assume that these companies have delivery contracts already in place for several years.
According to everything I found, what happened was that Kraft's price was too low and they did not want to be part of Kraft's low-growth conglomerate strategy. Once they discovered Kraft was actually planning on abandoning that strategy, they they polled shareholders about what price they would be willing to accept, and Kraft offered slightly more than that. [2]
[1] http://radian.org/notebook/porsche
[2] http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/1cb06d30-332f-11e1-a51e-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3JGM9Afip
Linux does have something like Bifrost - and better stuff. OLPC uses linux.
Newer versions of windows also have a very advanced security model.
OSX is the weakest current OS, and one of the easiest to exploit. There's a number of ways you can crash and exploit it... it's just too easy.
It's funny that Ivan was blasting apple for having a very weak OS. http://radian.org/notebook/nils2own Not his own work, but someone he has associated with found the various exploits.
Considering how much damage he did to OLPC by writing bad things about it, apple would do well to hire him... just to stop the bad publicity. I can't wait to he quits... it'll be very entertaining.
(A better link: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/103008-morris-worm.html )
When my friends and I got our hands on the source code of the worm it took us a while to understand it. It was ahead of anything else we had seen before and it sure pushed a few of us towards computer security. And it served as an early wake up call for sysops, something the Windows camp for example got too late.
Now virus and worm researchers have strong and careful methodology. Something particularly interesting today is mobile phone security research performed on Faraday cages:
http://radian.org/notebook/van-helsingfors (scroll close to bottom.)
All the proceeds are going to OLPC with the request that they stop shipping with Windows :)
On a more serious note and in case you're wondering, yes, I'm [feeling rather conflicted](http://breadpig.com/blog/?p=32) with all the recent charges against OLPC.
I'm chatting with [Ivan](http://radian.org/notebook/sic-transit-gloria-laptopi) about a potential alternative organization, but I also don't feel great about changing the recipient after folks had already started bidding... (thoughts?)
I'm glad this wasn't another PR stunt about mobile phone viruses -- we don't live in that particular William Gibson novel. Pics here: http://radian.org/notebook/van-helsingfors
I do wonder what the chain of hardware issues is that's causing their interference problem. Perhaps the phones all use SoC designs where the CPU, modems, and possibly RAM are all on one die -- would that allow extreme WiFi / cellular noise to flip bits?
Required reading:
(1) http://radian.org/notebook/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/brain-botox.pdf
(2) http://yarchive.net/med/nootropics.html
(3) http://yarchive.net/med/lifestyle_drugs.html
No. 3 is for understanding why most of the prominent naysayers in the field don't have your best interests in mind. No. 1 and 2 will educate you about what substances are available and what trade-offs their use entails.