Vapid Evaporation

My New 4-H

2009-08-14T18:42:00.007-04:00

I was driving home from work today and decided to diverge from my normal route and see where a different road, would take me. "Different road" is not what I expected, nor what I thought was happening based on my Google Maps recon before I left work. Short story, Google Maps does not appear to deal well with certain types of roads in rural areas, especially when they are 50' sections of dirt road. Oh well.

Anyway, as I was enjoying my unexpected diversion, I noticed a sign for the 247th Hardwick Community Fair next weekend. We go each year to support the community, dig on the tractors and livestock competitions and the boys like the hay bale maze and frog hopping contest. I'm personally drawn to the blacksmith doing his thing and the timber frame folks, carving and cutting post and beams. Me and Mother Earth News - a man and his farm porn.

Before I ramble any further, the whole point of this is, not my affiliation nor participation but possible association and maybe only fascination, with 4-H and an idea I contrived a few months ago for my family. 4-H, if you don't know about it, was originally a grassroots effort to bring a hands-on approach to public education and rural life. Enough with the book smarts - you need to learn to milk a cow. At the same time, it seems that you couldn't teach an old farmer new tricks in the past but if you got to them at an early enough age, they'll be open to new ideas, technology, etc. I've always liked the 4-H concept but didn't grow-up in an ag community and never participated. Until now!

The traditional 4-H is based upon four simple, idealistic principles, as stated in the pledge:

"I Pledge my Head to clearer thinking,
my Heart to greater loyalty,
my Hands to larger service,
and my Health to better living,
for my club, my community, my country, and my world."

Earlier in the day I stumbled upon Maira Kalman's fun NY Times blog postings. The Benjamin Franklin bit two weeks ago was great as it synced with my backwoods, 4-H thinking. Franklin had a daily routines he followed as well as charts and goals in order to perform some amount of daily good through personal goals.

So, finally bringing this long-winded and convoluted post around to completion, the idea I had previously and now plan to formally adopt and document is my own, personal 4-H pledge.

Every day I will do and document at least one thing from each of my four H's:

For my head, in the form of improving intelligence, pursuing insight, sharing knowledge or reducing stress
For my health, so I may live as long as possible with and for the ones I love
For my home, inside or out, my home is more than a house although both need to be maintained
For my heart, loving and appreciating my family and ensuring I am actively participating as a family member instead of just running through the motions

There it is. I'm going to start tracking on paper as I don't have a good, clear Ben Franklin-ish way of charting these goals yet. Yet.

More to follow as I progress. Maybe a new blog as no one actually read this one ;)

Two Perfectly Juxtaposed Articles Regarding Self-Control

2009-05-11T19:51:00.000-04:00

Random meanderings through RSS feeds tonight:

Don’t! The Secret of Self-Control

The Liberating Effects of Losing Control

Good stuff.

Gmail Autopilot

2009-04-01T10:02:00.001-04:00

Yeah, they had me for a bit. Haven't seen the traditional 1 April RFC yet though.

Beer And Self-Doubt

2009-03-24T10:50:00.002-04:00

"There was a big city businessman who once went on holiday to a faraway beach. One day he walked past a local fisherman who was lazing around, with his fishing rod in the water, enjoying the sun and a beer.
The city man’s mind went to work immediately. The fishing spot was a gold mine, and a serious fishing business would thrive in the area. 'Why are you so stupid?' he asked the fisherman. 'Get some boats, hire some extra hands, and in a few years you will turn your little shop into a million-dollar business!'

The local man asked him. 'And what would you do once you have a million dollars?'

The city man stared back blankly. 'Why, I would have so much free time I could sit around in the sun all day and drink beer!'”

There It Is...Plain English

2009-03-21T21:16:00.002-04:00

C'mon...gimme fiddy cent....

"But banks holding those mortgages, not wanting to book huge losses on their holdings, have often refused to sell for less than 60 cents on the dollar.
The result has been a paralyzing impasse. Banks, unwilling to sell their loans at fire-sale prices, have had less capital available to make new loans. Mortgage investors, unable to leverage their investments with borrowed money, have been unwilling to pay more than fire-sale prices.
To break that impasse, the government’s crucial subsidy is meant to provide investors with the kind of low-cost financing that has been utterly unavailable in today’s credit markets."

No User Serviceable Parts Inside

2009-03-21T19:28:00.003-04:00

This post is great. The circumstances are slightly different but it completely summarizes my youth getting thrown across the room by an ungrounded grocery store conveyor belt system I was using/playing with, my undergrad experiences wiring and rewiring (and failing at) liquid air generators and a low-MeV particle accelerator (yeah, the author - he knows it, you can smell the ozone created by a wicked electron discharge) and finally the disdain one faces when you either can't or don't care enough to fix a relative's obnoxious printer/CD-ROM drive/wireless keyboard/USB drive/etc.

Patent Idea

2009-03-13T12:47:00.001-04:00

Great quote on Groklaw:

"Could someone please patent what Wall Street just did to the economy, and then refuse to license the "invention", so as to prevent those dudes from ever doing it again? Or just patent flaming greed, will you, somebody? Do the rest of us a favor and get it off the table or at least constrained."

PV=nRT...

2009-01-11T18:11:00.004-05:00

...unless you're H2O and then the otherwise loose molecules bind more strongly into a hexagonal lattice and temperature drops actually cause expansion:

Bootstraping Problem

2008-11-30T16:48:00.002-05:00

Heh...my darling spouse just noticed this advertised in a magazine to assist with holiday unwrapping chores: the Zibra Open It!

I'd say it presents a bit of a bootstrapping problem, depending on how it is packaged or how it is presented to you.

So Many Failed Banks, So Little Time

2008-11-14T23:18:00.003-05:00

While US-based banks continue to fail at a staggering rate (compared to the decade prior to 2007), I've been updating the box scores but have slipped a bit. If you care of such things, you can review all of my back-fill postings here.

Charter Communications Stupidity

2008-11-14T22:52:00.006-05:00

Sigh...I just tried an online chat session with a Charter rep in order to find a better service deal. Unfortunately, Charter has a long history with taking both the "customer" and "service" out of "customer service" with my family. Tonight was no exception:

Thank you for choosing Charter Chat Live! A Customer Care representative
from Cable TV Order Inquiries will be with you shortly.
You have been connected to CVH Robert S .
Christopher Arnold: Hello?
CVH Robert S : My name is Robert. Thank you for contacting Charter Communications On-line Sales. How may I assist you?
Christopher Arnold: Hello. How are you?
CVH Robert S : ok
CVH Robert S : How may I assist you?
Christopher Arnold: Very good. I was hoping to determine if a better pricing plan exists for the services we currently have. Cable "Big Value" + Internet.
CVH Robert S : To get into a new promo you would need to upgrade your services.
Christopher Arnold: How exactly? I'm not sure what would be upgraded.
Christopher Arnold: I'm open to suggestions.
CVH Robert S : May I please have your full name, service address (street address, city, state, and zip code), and telephone number? This is so that I may pull up information for you in your local area.
Christopher Arnold: Heh, wonder why I had to do that before I signed into a chat session with you?
Christopher Arnold: Christopher Arnold/**** Arnold
Christopher Arnold: 257 ****** Road
Christopher Arnold: ******, **
Christopher Arnold: *****
Christopher Arnold: ***.***.****
CVH Robert S : hold please
CVH Robert S : The lowest house # in our system is 299
Christopher Arnold: That's a nice house down the street. I'd be happy to move there.
CVH Robert S : I would have to fill out a serviceability form to have a tech go out and check to see if the address is serviceable or not, this process takes about 3 to 5 business days.
Christopher Arnold: Uh...OK. I guess I'll just continue watching my existing Charter cable TV and using Charter network services until then.
Christopher Arnold: If it would help for me to move down the street, it really is a nice house. I don't think they would mind too much.
Christopher Arnold: Wow...1-298 ***** must be pretty pissed right now. Glad I'm not them. Wait...I am one of them.
Christopher Arnold: Hello?
CVH Robert S : I can not find your address in our system, can I have your account#?
Christopher Arnold: **** ** *** *******
CVH Robert S : found it
Christopher Arnold: Can I still move to 299 ***** Road? They have an in-law apartment.
CVH Robert S : Can you verify the last 4 of the SS# that is on your account please?
Christopher Arnold: ****
CVH Robert S : That is not the last 4 on the account.
Christopher Arnold: **** my spouse. **** me, if that helps.
CVH Robert S : The account is not in your name Christopher
CVH Robert S : You are not listed as an authorized user.
Christopher Arnold: ****, my spouse.
Christopher Arnold: I'm not listed as an authorized user? Like, I can't watch TV or play around on the computer?
CVH Robert S : No, I can not discuss the account with you.
Christopher Arnold: So you need to chat with my spouse?
CVH Robert S : She will need to chat in her self.
Christopher Arnold: OK, let me get her.
CVH Robert S : Thank you for choosing Charter Communications Chat Support. For general self-help, please visit http://support.charter.com. Also, check out our "Live it with Charter" customer rewards program. It is absolutely free, and you are eligible simply by being a Charter customer! You receive points based on your monthly service rate! For more information and to sign up, you can check out the Live it with Charter website here: http:// www.liveitwithcharter.com Thank you once again, and have a wonderful day!
If you require further assistance, go to www.charter.com/contact
Your session has ended. You may now close this window.

This painful ordeal took approximately 25 minutes and the f*%$er disconnected.

It's not: "We out-source this function to XYZ and you may experience slight lingual, cultural, temporal issues as we adapt to and utilize a global labor market.

It's: "We farm this kind of work out to barnacles scraped from boat hulls that somehow manage to attach themselves to keyboards and THIS is now your perception of our firm, regardless of how many intelligent, considerate or well-spoken individuals we employ or out-source to."

I wonder if those plan changes I made six months ago are actually valid? I should ask....

2008 Failed Bank Box Scores: #16

2008-10-24T23:11:00.000-04:00

Alpha Bank & Trust, Alpharetta, GA

2008 Failed Bank Box Scores: #15

2008-10-15T19:49:00.001-04:00

Meridian Bank, Eldred, IL

2008 Failed Bank Box Scores: #14

2008-10-15T19:47:00.002-04:00

Main Street Bank, Northville, MI

Another Convicted Criminal, Cracker-Turned-"Security Consultant" Profit Story

2008-10-15T19:34:00.004-04:00

Disgusting. Between this tool and Mitnick I sometimes wonder why I bother getting up in the mornings.

Anathem - Oh Snap!!!

2008-10-03T21:03:00.003-04:00

XKCD fun:

Shall we consult the flowchart?

Yes, I believe we have an answer...OH SNAP!!!

Wonderful Stop Motion Animation

2008-09-29T20:25:00.001-04:00

A SHORT LOVE STORY IN STOP MOTION from Carlos Lascano on Vimeo.

2008 Failed Bank Box Scores: #13

2008-09-26T10:44:00.002-04:00

Washington Mutual

2008 Failed Bank Box Scores: #12

2008-09-20T09:52:00.001-04:00

Ameribank, Inc., Northfork, WV

Peer-To-Patent

2008-09-16T18:51:00.004-04:00

"The concept behind the program, called Peer-to-Patent, is straightforward: Publish patent applications on the Web for all to see and let anyone with relevant expertise -- academics, colleagues, even potential rivals -- offer input to be passed along to the Patent Office.
By using the power of the Internet to tap the wisdom of the masses, Peer-to-Patent aims to dig up hard-to-find "prior art" -- evidence that an invention already exists or is obvious and therefore doesn't deserve a patent.
The goal is to locate prior art that Patent Office examiners might not find on their own -- and to produce better patents by reducing ones granted on applications that aren't novel. The hope is that this will drive innovation by improving the patent process and reducing the patent infringement lawsuits clogging the courts."

Using the mob to search for prior art and inform the USPTO doesn't seem like a terribly bad idea, so long as it's verifiable through multiple, independent channels or vetting pools (think peer-reviewed academic journals). I'm extremely concerned regarding overly zealous enthusiasm however.

I want to explore this idea but time prohibits me from doing so. To dumb it down, how would a process like the proposed be insulated from a Digg phenomenon as well as an inadvertant data leak that would let a competitor interject itself in the process and, say, stall for time to market?

Must...Have....Volvo ReCharge Concept Car

2008-09-06T15:33:00.001-04:00

"Picture a gasoline-electric hybrid that's more electric than gasoline. The Volvo ReCharge Concept is just that. Unlike traditional parallel hybrids, which primarily employ internal-combustion engines and electric motors working in tandem, the ReCharge (derived from the sharp new C30 coupe). Is a plug-in serial hybrid — that is to say, there is no mechanical connection between the electric motor drive system and the 1.6-liter four-cylinder gasoline engine. Four in-wheel motors will carry the car up to 100 km (62 miles) on a single charge of the trunk-mounted lithium-polymer batteries (charged from a standard household outlet and boasting, Volvo claims, a life expectancy longer than the car itself). Only when the batteries are fully drained does the engine fire up, spinning a generator which provides juice to the electric motors and recharges the battery. Brilliant."

American Political Conventions - Terribly Frustrating (Lack Of) Of Use Of Technology

2008-09-01T21:28:00.003-04:00

This is so obtusely ridiculous. It started with NBC, most recently, at the Olympics, and continues through the bi-party conventions. Technology/political lock-in are completely dumb ideas...are you in capable of learning?

NPR...this is why I no longer listen to you nor sponsor you financially and am close to giving up on PBS.

Irritated. Grrr.....

Has anyone surveyed their constituents and determined how many of them can support HD broadcasts?

Really? Honestly???

Field Strip And Reassemble An AR-15 In 53 Seconds

2008-08-31T20:40:00.000-04:00

The title doesn't include the fact that the task was performed by an 11 year old young lady. Wonder how well she shoots?

Reading List #8

2008-08-26T23:40:00.003-04:00

So far the Reading Lists have always been focused on printed media as well as being a thematic triptych. Slight change this time as it's been a slow summer and I'm procrastinating. I've been a long time admirer of good data visualization methods so when you're able to accomplish that through blog feeds and a healthy dash of humor, you've won my heart and mind.

In no particular order:

There you have it. Data geek humor and reading habits. Now, it's time to change into my scatter plot jammers and get to bed.

My Fun Weekend

2008-08-24T23:37:00.000-04:00

The intersection of food and drink geekery and the abandonment of real life and responsibilities for a weekend.

Apoptosis In Botnets

2008-08-15T12:14:00.000-04:00

Police nab Shadow creators, force botnet to commit suicide:

"The Dutch High Tech Crime Unit has arrested two brothers behind the creation of the Shadow botnet, and now intends to use the malware distribution engine for a good cause—Shadow will now distribute the means to eradicate its own existence."

Interesting Electrical Synchronicities Today

2008-08-01T23:27:00.006-04:00

In the spirit of my reading lists with three suggestions, today was odd in that I have three completely unrelated events today but are tied to electricity as a common theme. Perhaps that means they're not really unrelated. Whatever the case, here was my electrical day:

Our well pump died during the night. I started the dishwasher last night and my darling spouse told me this morning that we had no water. Cliff Cummings Water Service (major plug for him...he's been great to us since we bought this house) in Rutland, MA rescheduled his day and provided water from deep in the ground today. A bunch of money and replacing a pump 300 or so feet down in the ground and we have running, rusty, dirty water again.
I watched "Car of the Future" on NOVA tonight. Love those Car Talk guys and the show was actually pretty good, given what I expected for Detroit fluff. The Tesla Roadster was very nice indeed.
Midday, iPod on shuffle, Schoolhouse Rocks! Rocks!"Electricity, Electricity" by Goodness come up. No connection until now. Fun tune and a great re-recording of the great Schoolhouse Rocks! series on PBS.

Original Schoolhouse Rocks! version:

Goodness version:

There it is...another day in the life.

Randy Pausch

2008-07-25T16:41:00.003-04:00

Randy Pausch died today. I haven't felt this insignificant in a long while.

WEIS 2008 - Day 3

2008-06-28T13:35:00.001-04:00

Wrap-up day for the WEIS 2008 conference. Good overview of the activities and security research at Institute for Information Infrastructure Protection (The I3P) and the Institute for Security Technology Studies (ISTS). Conversations and social events to follow.

A good few days all around.

WEIS 2008 - Day 2

2008-06-27T21:52:00.001-04:00

Another day of interesting presentations. Here are some highlights:

Studying Malicious Websites and the Underground Economy on the Chinese Web
Botnet Economics: Uncertainty Matters
Investigating and Prosecuting Cybercrime (Personal Favorite)
The Impact of Information Disclosure on Stock Market Returns: The Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the Role of Media as an Information Intermediary
Cyber Insurance as an Incentive for IT Security

Good stuff all around.

WEIS 2008 - Day 1

2008-06-26T22:44:00.002-04:00

Interesting program and presentations. Here are some highlights:

Nonbanks and Risk in Retail Payments
Do Data Breach Disclosure Laws Reduce Identity Theft?
Communicating Security – The Role of Media: A Journalistic Perspective
CISO Perspective – Evaluating and Communicating Information Risk (Personal Favorite)
Communicating the Economic Value of Security Investments; Value at Security Risk
Information Governance: Flexibility and Control through Escalation and Incentives

WEIS 2008 - Day 0

2008-06-25T22:17:00.001-04:00

After many years observing the output from the conference at a distance, I'm finally attending the WEIS conference.

Information security requires not only technology, but a clear understanding of risks, decision-making behaviors and metrics for evaluating business and policy options. How much should we spend on security? What incentives really drive privacy decisions? What are the trade-offs that individuals, firms, and governments face when allocating resources to protect data assets? Are there good ways to distribute risks and align goals when securing information systems?

The 2008 Workshop on the Economics of Information Security, the seventh workshop, will build on a strong and growing interdisciplinary tradition, bringing together information technology academics and practitioners with social scientists and business and legal scholars to better understand security and privacy threats. Until recently, research in security and dependability focused almost exclusively on technical factors, rather than incentives. However, we know that economic, behavioral, and legal factors often contribute as much as technology to the dependability of information and information systems. The application of economic analysis to these problems has proven to be an exciting and fruitful area of research.

This year, WEIS is being hosted by the Center for Digital Strategies at the Tuck School of Business on the beautiful Dartmouth College campus in Hanover, NH.

Dymaxion Man: The Visions Of Buckminster Fuller

2008-06-23T21:10:00.003-04:00

This is a great article by Elizabeth Kolbert and a positively great statement regarding an incredible mind:

"Fuller’s schemes often had the hallucinatory quality associated with science fiction (or mental hospitals). It concerned him not in the least that things had always been done a certain way in the past. In addition to flying cars, he imagined mass-produced bathrooms that could be installed like refrigerators; underwater settlements that would be restocked by submarine; and floating communities that, along with all their inhabitants, would hover among the clouds. Most famously, he dreamed up the geodesic dome."

Will The Big Mac Follow Moore's Law?

2008-06-23T20:51:00.004-04:00

This isn't new but is sort of funny in a "does this milk smell funny to you" sort of way. From The Calorie Lab, "From Big Mac to Chici Mac: The future of fast food":

"In January 2002, years before the Mega Mac introduction, Takeshi Fukuda and his friends presciently speculated on what MacDonald’s Japan may have up its sleeves for the future. As they added beef patties they eventually ran out of mathematical prefixes and began to resort to Marx Brothers references."

Original blog post by Takeshi Fukuda in Japanese.

So the question is, does the evolution of the Big Mac to Mega Mac to Tera Mac to Yotta Mac follow an 18-month time period for each burger doubling?

Challenges and Directions for Monitoring P2P File Sharing Networks –or– Why My Printer Received a DMCA Takedown Notice

2008-06-16T13:45:00.002-04:00

This is brilliant:

Q: The title of your paper indicates that you received DMCA complaints for a printer, but printers can't even run P2P software. How is that possible?
Surprisingly, it is possible. We have received DMCA complaints for several printers and even a wireless access point! (Please note that these are printers directly connected to the Internet and have their own IP addresses.) This is possible because some monitoring agencies don't verify that a user reported to be sharing a file actually is sharing that file. This allows a malicious person to frame any device connected to the Internet: whether a printer, a wireless access point, or an innocent user's computer.

I wonder how long it's going to be before some clever people figure out the RIAA, MPAA, MediaSentry, MediaDefender, etc. IP address blocks and "frames" all of them for illegal file sharing?

It May Be Cliché, But This Post Is About Prof. Randy Pausch

2008-06-15T19:44:00.003-04:00

Most of the Internet-speaking world, as well as some of the primarily television-speaking world (thanks to Oprah) are now familiar with Prof. Randy Pausch and his struggle with pancreatic cancer. If for some reason you are not familiar with his story, set aside 90 minutes to view his "Last Lecture" on YouTube (includes personal crying time but allow for more if detailed, introspective analysis and personal priority realignment are things you tend toward):

The Last Lecture Compendium print edition:

and finally his commencement address at CMU last month:

I've never attended CMU, met Pausch or personally dealt with any life-altering situation such as terminal pancreatic cancer. I'm very fortunate, with regard to the last item. I am, however, completely in awe of the way in which he has continued living his life and remaining fully engaged with his family; I can only hope that I would be strong enough to do the same. I feel his love for his three young children everyday with my own kids of similar ages. I hope he is stronger than myself and does not become overcome with grief when imagining life without them - life for the children without a father who so clearly loves them and his spouse.

Randy Pausch may have achieved his childhood dreams but there are so many of us out here who have not done so. Most of us still have the time to do so. Do you remember your dreams? Do they still matter to you? Will you help your children achieve their dreams, knowing that every moment could potentially be your last?

I will.

Space Station Could Beam Secret Quantum Codes by 2014

2008-06-15T13:14:00.000-04:00

I've always wanted to open a socket and read from /dev/random on the ISS.

Delhi (Day 0)

2008-06-01T01:04:00.001-04:00

We flew from Newark, NJ to the Indian capital of Delhi. With delays the flight was approximately 16 hours. While the flight was long, the Business/First class seating on Continental Airlines certainly made it bearable.

The New Delhi airport was...interesting. Local temperature was fair at 27° C. Clearing customs was efficient and easy. We were meeting a driver who was to bring us to our hotel in Noida and this is where things got interesting. We found the driver easily enough but then an ever-growing entourage (not the Jeremy Pivin type of Entourage) began "escorting" us and "helping" with out luggage. As the trek to the car attracts more and more helpers and we finally get to the car, everyone suddenly wants to be paid $20 US for their "assistance." This caught us off-guard a bit but we managed to hang onto most of our money (I only had $6 US with me!) and an hour or so later were at our hotel in Noida enjoying a few Kingfisher lagers and unwinding.

Tomorrow is a new day.

I'm Leaving On A Jet Plane....

2008-05-30T10:03:00.001-04:00

Well, it's off to India for ten days or so on a work-related trip. Exciting times ahead! More to follow....

Boston University Researchers Developing Sign Language Video Dictionary

2008-05-26T01:00:00.002-04:00

This is pretty cool (by way of the ACM TechNews):

Boston University doctoral student Joan Nash, who has used American Sign Language (ASL) for most of her life, is part of a team working on an interactive video project that would create a virtual sign language dictionary, allowing someone to demonstrate a sign in front of a camera and have a computer program interpret and explain its meaning. The researchers are working with a three-year, $900,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, and are currently in the early stages of the project, which involves capturing thousands of ASL signs on video. As Nash goes through the hundreds of words in English, Elizabeth Cassidy, a native ASL speaker, signs them in front of four different cameras, three in front of her and one to her right. Two of the cameras in front of her capture close-ups from different angles and one is a wider shot. The goal is to develop a database of more than 3,000 signs, with the meaning of each sign being determined by the shape of the hands, the movement of the hands and arms, and even facial expressions. Eventually, the researchers hope the technology will be used to develop a multimedia ASL dictionary to help hearing parents better communicate with deaf children and to help sign language students.

I've often wondered if groups of people who sign, say from a particular community or geographic location, have an "accent" when they sign? Can a person signing have a "twang" or a "drawl" or something akin to a Boston accent? For instance, German telegraph operators during WWII were sometimes known to have a certain "hand" or touch to their transmission that those intercepting the transmission in Bletchley Park could identify as belonging to a certain operator. Does the same stylization or accent occur in signing?

F1 in Schools

2008-05-11T09:27:00.004-04:00

This is pretty cool. All I had growing up was the Cub Scout's annual Pinewood Derby.

From the US site:

What is F1 in Schools?
It's a competition for teams of three to six school children to design and manufacture miniature CO₂-powered racing cars and then race them at regional, national, and international levels. Sounds simple? Not when you consider that these 11- to 18-year old kids use state-of-the-art software programs that enable them to play around with CAD (computer aided design) and CFD (computational fluid dynamics), just like real F1 designers.

Or that they have to manage the whole project from scratch, from drawing up a business plan and raising the sponsorship, to financing it through the design and manufacturing stages, to a presentation in front of a panel of preeminent judges.

Information Security And User Education

2008-05-10T21:43:00.006-04:00

I guess after a nice day walking around the Roger Williams Zoo with friends and family, I'm feeling sort of middle of the road and moderate in opinion tonight (or perhaps just lazy). I say this because I just read a post to the recently launched ISC² blog, in particular, this post by Gary Hinson, titled "Security awareness: a 'How not to do it' guide":

I spent a few hours at the weekend viewing/listening to a series of presentations to accompany the launch of the Information Security Awareness Forum (ISAF) in London. I won't bore you with all the details right now but one item in particular caught my eye/ear. One of the presenters essentially said that security awareness doesn't work, a somewhat curious point to make in support of a security awareness initiative. Anyway, it's not the first time I've heard the argument and I've been mulling it over ever since. My blood having dropped just below boiling point, it's time to respond.
Today I took one of those "online security awareness" things, and came away with a whole case study on How NOT To Do security awareness. I shan't name the organization concerned because my aim is not to embarrass them in any way, and it really doesn't matter - I'm sure these lessons are equally valid for many other security awareness programs.
. . .

(I cut all of the meat out for the sake of space but it's all pithy observation in support of the title of the post)
. . .
OK OK I'm ranting I know, but the reason is to point out that:
(a) with little investment and even less thought, security awareness can be done really badly;
(b) bad security awareness is unlikely to be effective, and in fact could be counterproductive;
(c) the ineffectiveness of badly designed, constructed and delivered awareness programs says nothing about the potential for well designed, well constructed and effectively delivered programs; and
(d) it really doesn't take a genuis to figure out how to improve security awareness, especially when starting from such a low base. A 20 minute team seminar about information security would have achieved so much more than this hour or two of extreme tedium. Almost ANYTHING else would have been better!
I cannot understand why security awareness seems to be stuck in the mold of once-a-year inform-and-test (I used to call it the "sheep dip" approach to awareness, but subsequently found out that sheep are dipped more often than most employees are made to jump through the awareness hoops!). It's high time for a new approach and some fresh ideas.

OK, that doesn't sound unreasonable, right? He seems certainly in favor of "proper" education and a continuous cycle of verification, yes? Why would I be commenting at all? Well, I'm commenting because years ago, Marcus Ranum noted in a rather pithy commentary titled, "The Six Dumbest Ideas in Computer Security", that (#5 - Educating Users):

"Penetrate and Patch" can be applied to human beings, as well as software, in the form of user education. On the surface of things, the idea of "Educating Users" seems less than dumb: education is always good. On the other hand, like "Penetrate and Patch" if it was going to work, it would have worked by now. There have been numerous interesting studies that indicate that a significant percentage of users will trade their password for a candy bar, and the Anna Kournikova worm showed us that nearly 1/2 of humanity will click on anything purporting to contain nude pictures of semi-famous females. If "Educating Users" is the strategy you plan to embark upon, you should expect to have to "patch" your users every week. That's dumb.

The real question to ask is not "can we educate our users to be better at security?" it is "why do we need to educate our users at all?" In a sense, this is another special case of "Default Permit" - why are users getting executable attachments at all? Why are users expecting to get E-mails from banks where they don't have accounts? Most of the problems that are addressable through user education are self-correcting over time. As a younger generation of workers moves into the workforce, they will come pre-installed with a healthy skepticism about phishing and social engineering.

Dealing with things like attachments and phishing is another case of "Default Permit" - our favorite dumb idea. After all, if you're letting all of your users get attachments in their E-mail you're "Default Permit"ing anything that gets sent to them. A better idea might be to simply quarantine all attachments as they come into the enterprise, delete all the executables outright, and store the few file types you decide are acceptable on a staging server where users can log in with an SSL-enabled browser (requiring a password will quash a lot of worm propagation mechanisms right away) and pull them down. There are freeware tools like MIMEDefang that can be easily harnessed to strip attachments from incoming E-mails, write them to a per-user directory, and replace the attachment in the E-mail message with a URL to the stripped attachment. Why educate your users how to cope with a problem if you can just drive a stake through the problem's heart?

When I was CEO of a small computer security start-up we didn't have a Windows system administrator. All of the employees who wanted to run Windows had to know how to install it and manage it themselves, or they didn't get hired in the first place. My prediction is that in 10 years users that need education will be out of the high-tech workforce entirely, or will be self-training at home in order to stay competitive in the job market. My guess is that this will extend to knowing not to open weird attachments from strangers.

Heh. So there it is. In a previous post, I commented on my previous role as an internal InfoSec consultant to a higher education institution. The way I tried to bridge the gap of parochial or specialized knowledge was this:

A few years ago, I led a team of network security staff at a private New England university. One thing I stressed was collaboration with peer groups, visibility to higher decision-makers and a decidedly NON-jackboot thug approach toward requests and assistance; we were to be in the business of analysis of needs (perceived and actual) and distilling them to appropriate security controls that could best support them. I doubt I was successful in this approach as my group largely functioned without mandate but I still to this day try to keep in mind a message I pushed to my staff and to the groups I met with:

I may not know much about medical imaging or financial aid records or your particular area of expertise in computer science, biology, music, etc. What I do know a bit about is data protection and security. We meet and there is a disconnect between us. What is important to you as a researcher or faculty member? What is important to me as a staff member charged with protecting you and your data?

DNA sequencing, firewalls, intellectual property...all of this reduces to knowing and working with your constituents, addressing their needs, listening to their concerns and presenting a common, organizationally based (re: consistent) to risk management and data protection that the groups you ultimately serve can do so in a consistent manner while (hopefully) taking a risk-based approach to assessment, mitigation and remediation.

Is there any middle ground on the topic of user education, with regard to information security concerns? Is it black or white like Hinson or Ranum argue or is there some middle, moderate ground that could work?

We Bought A Firewall. Isn't That Good Enough?

2008-04-27T13:54:00.003-04:00

I've been reading Jon Udell's print and blog pieces for as long as I can remember. I may not always have a personal interest (this is not the same as having a differing opinion) in some of his topics but when I am interested, I typically find myself in 90+% agreement. He's been blogging about the lack of availability to public - specifically at the local or community level - data in an normalized (or reasonably transformable/convertible) format through standard, programmatic "pulls and pushes" (RSS, SOA, etc.).

While the topic is generally interesting to me, three paragraphs of his post are particularly interesting and germane to the information security and data protection world I play in:

"As I meet with intelligent and well-educated professionals in my community, and talk with them about how to synchronize calendar information from a variety of sources, I realize that they simply have no intuition about the difference between a PDF file and an ICS file that contain the same calendar information. Both are computer files, right? Both can be posted to the web, right? Both can be searched, right? Problem solved.

. . .

These are ways of computational thinking unknown to most people. As a school administrator, librarian, city planner, social worker, or retail store owner, nobody expects you to understand and apply these principles.

And yet almost everybody needs to harmonize personal and organizational calendars. And many individuals and organizations need to flow their calendar data into other contexts to promote and coordinate their activities. "

If you substitute file formats for security controls and calendars for security-related procedures, I feel that the same three paragraphs capture the essence of the reason we still have phishing and spam problems, botnets, etc.: people not involved in "the trade" simply do not have the proper background nor the mindset to think properly about data protection.

Sure, some people and organizations may buy themselves a firewall and antivirus software and may ask, "We just bought a firewall. Isn't that good enough?" The answer, clearly, is "more than likely not." And this should never be presented or perceived as simply a push or a bait-and-switch attempt to push more security products or controls - the need for those elements comes from stated organizational objectives and/or policies and detailed risk analysis where the spend on security and protection controls is aligned with the value of assets being protected.

Who is qualified to make these assessments? How many people or groups are qualified (identification and selection, implementation, on-going maintenance, etc.) to handle major electrical, plumbing or construction work in their home or offices? Bad choices could easily lead to bad happenings, to put it rather simply. Viewed through a similar prism we can ask how many people or groups are qualified to properly assess risk to whatever they're trying to protect or hide or what have you? Same general answer: bad choices easily could lead to bad happenings.

Now, my comments emphasis a specialization or expertise necessary to make intelligent data security and protections decisions. We're all interested in protecting our data or at least assuming the firms we interact with do the same but largely, both cases are not true. On the individual side, a majority or people are willing to share their user IDs and passwords with strangers for a chocolate bar and at the company level, those firms who don't see a drop in stock price (consumer confidence and willingness to spend) often do very little.

This has been a bit of a long-winded way of getting back to Jon Udell's three interesting paragraphs. A few years ago, I led a team of network security staff at a private New England university. One thing I stressed was collaboration with peer groups, visibility to higher decision-makers and a decidedly NON-jackboot thug approach toward requests and assistance; we were to be in the business of analysis of needs (perceived and actual) and distilling them to appropriate security controls that could best support them. I doubt I was successful in this approach as my group largely functioned without mandate but I still to this day try to keep in mind a message I pushed to my staff and to the groups I met with:

I may not know much about medical imaging or financial aid records or your particular area of expertise in computer science, biology, music, etc. What I do know a bit about is data protection and security. We meet and there is a disconnect between us. What is important to you as a researcher or faculty member? What is important to me as a staff member charged with protecting you and your data?

DNA sequencing, firewalls, intellectual property...all of this reduces to knowing and working with your constituents, addressing their needs, listening to their concerns and presenting a common, organizationally based (re: consistent) to risk management and data protection that the groups you ultimately serve can do so in a consistent manner while (hopefully) taking a risk-based approach to assessment, mitigation and remediation.

Google Gears, Part 1

2008-04-01T10:21:00.005-04:00

I didn't quite get Google Gears at first. Do I REALLY need to read my blog feeds offline? As it turns out, Google Docs is getting offline support now.

Do I care? Sort of.

When you consider some other Google properties - Blogger, YouTube, News, Book Search, Picasa - you can see how Gears starts to fit into the Google experience. Working on a blog posting? Do it on the train during your commute, it's stored in the Gears database and automatically posts to Blogger when you get an active net connection. Just capture something newsworthy, Mr. Citizen Photojournalist? Dump it from your camera to your laptop running YouTube offline and the video will be stored in the Gears database until it can sync your content with your YouTube account online. Picasa already has a thick client but there's no reason Picasa web albums could not be connected to Gears for offline work.

Interestingly, these ideas aren't what I care about. It's certainly interesting from a usability point of view and allows for greater permeance of Google in your life (if you think that's a good thing) as well as allowing one to publish their virtual lives out to the Googlesphere from anywhere, connected or not.

What I'm truly in is the security controls that are utilized to protect the Gears database and the general security architecture of Gears and all of the Google properties and tools that are becoming offline-enabled. More to follow after I do some research into this.

Reading List #7

2008-03-22T13:14:00.012-04:00

A recipe for success:

a spoonful of J.K. Rowling
two large dollops of Madeline L'Engle
one jigger of C.S. Lewis
a liberal dusting of John Milton

Mix thoroughly in a steampunk bowl with a biblical spoon until "His Dark Materials" forms.

After my previous foray into and completion of Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle trilogy, I was thrilled that this trilogy - a virtual trifecta of literary quality - found its way to me.

Enjoy!

Another Use for Second Life

2008-03-04T11:56:00.005-05:00

Historical Maps in Second Life

This is great. I've previously posted about some unexpected consequences SL but I think this one - a San Francisco map collector who set-up his own SL island to display his collection - is a great use of SL that (to me at least) was completely unexpected. From the MIT Technology Review:

"A new installation inside Second Life is bringing alive one of the world's largest collections of antique maps. Called the David Rumsey Maps Island (registration required), the Second Life site is San Francisco map collector David Rumsey's latest high-technology plan to share his collection with as large an audience as possible."

Google Sites

2008-02-29T11:05:00.002-05:00

Google Sites looks to be a SharePoint alternative of sorts.

I'm still trying to figure out where Gears fits into it all.

Google Central (part 1)

2008-02-24T12:45:00.012-05:00

Update: Grand Central has become Google Voice

-----

I feel that I'm turning into some sort of Google-watcher these days or have been a Google junkie without realizing it.

A couple of days ago I found an entertaining video on YouTube (how apropos) of interesting sites and places to visit in Google Earth. I recently posted about new Google search functionality and presentation options. Before that it was a brief look at Google's Android mobile phone platform. Last year I was - and will soon be again - looking at Google Trends as a potential prediction tool for the American Idol contest winner.

This is sort of interesting as it brings a set of old school (Groups - Usenet, Scholar - refereed journals, and Glossary - reference sources) content together with new school (YouTube, Blogger, Google News commentary) together in a jumble of seemingly disparate audiences through Google-branded channels. It clearly extends new school functionality (Web 2.0) into old school mediums (proto-web and Web 1.0) while trying to preserve or normalize the presentation, experience and general consumption of content and services. Through this normalization process, Google is able to preserve/build brand recognition (Google TM) Grand Central, "a production of Google." Their info page asks and answers: "What is GrandCentral? Get all the same calls, but in a whole new way." That's all fine and dandy; it's nothing you can't get from existing, consumer VoIP providers. Their feature set is pretty comprehensive which conceptually place it as a virtual voice communication firewall in some regards.

That's kind of cool but it doesn't seem like a Googlesque sort of venture. Until you add other Google services. Now you have an interesting stack supplying different, but converging on, fully integrated services:

Unified messaging and search through Gmail, Gtalk, Google SMS, GOOG-411, Grand Central and Android-powered phones - interactive communication anytime, anywhere.
Location-specific and/or context-relative search through traditional Google search, Google Local/Maps, geo-tagged Picasa pictures, Google's Ride Finder and Transit - find anything and find a way to get to it.
Topical information via Google Trends, Google Finance, Google SMS and storage through Google Notes and Google Docs/Spreadsheets - search for time-sensitive information through a comparative search funnel, world markets and your own content and have results presented in next-to-real-time via SMS or your personalized iGoogle hompage or Google Desktop.
Organization and sharing/presentation through Google Personalized Search, Google Docs/Calendar, Google Notes, Google Bookmarks, various Alerts (news, SMS, calendar alerts, Blogger post alerts, etc.)

This is only a partial analysis (and none too in-depth, by any means) and doesn't take into account relevant issues, such as Google's wireless 700 MHz spectrum bid, which help with the convergence understanding and visualization. I'll post again as it's sort of fun to be an armchair Google strategist.

Google Earth Fun

2008-02-22T10:37:00.004-05:00

Ten minutes of mostly entertaining Google Earth fun.

Secrets Of Google Earth

The PC World staff have some still shots of some of the highlights as well as a Google Earth placemark file you can download and import to explore on your own.

My Coffee Maker...Seg Faulted???

2008-02-22T09:21:00.003-05:00

So it's snowing today and I'm working from home for other reasons. Isn't it nice to enjoy a cup of hot, freshly brewed coffee in the morning. It sure is...until your coffee maker decides to dump core.

Crazy.

I haven't tried it again but if I need a new unit it damned well better be able to receive SNMP traps so I can set it to brew while I'm away.

Useful Kibble

2008-02-17T07:05:00.001-05:00

I've been catching-up on some reading and thought I would simply share three sites/feeds that I find to be truly useful. In no particular order:

Lifehacker, "an award-winning, daily blog that features tips, shortcuts, and downloads that help you get things done smarter and more efficiently."
Wise Bread "is a community of bloggers here to help you live large on a small budget."
Parent Hacks "is a collaborative website that collects and publishes parents’ tips, recommendations, workarounds, and bits of wisdom – their hacks – in a single pot so we can all partake."
Geekdad, "tech toys, science projects and other nerdy things to do with your kids."

They may not have ground-breaking news, cutting edge technology reviews or deep, theoretical insights but I always manage to extract some useful kibble from them to apply to my daily existence.

Great Analysis of the World's Under-Sea Fiber Network

2008-02-03T09:41:00.000-05:00

"A flotilla of ships may have been dispatched to reinstate the broken submarine cable that has left the Middle East and India struggling to communicate with the rest of the world, but it took just one vessel to inflict the damage that brought down the internet for millions."

New Google Search Features

2008-02-02T13:54:00.000-05:00

Google has introduced some new search features as experimental through Google Labs. They've added

right- and left-handed search navigation
keyboard shortcuts for search results
keyword suggestions
alternate views for search results

XMLHttpRequest object

javascript onmouseover() event

A Brave, New Semester

2008-01-14T13:26:00.002-05:00

2nd semester, 2 more classes:

I'm hoping for a less strenuous semester than last.

Hiatus

2007-12-31T08:45:00.000-05:00

Not that anyone reads this blog but I've been on hiatus for the past month or so. Gobs and gobs of work, class, family and holiday commitments. Back for a month or so until classes resume.

Google's Android Platform

2007-11-19T12:17:00.000-05:00

I'm excited about the Android mobile phone platform and SDK coming out of Google. Here's the "official" overview:

PDF Desktop Clutter - Things I've Been Meaning To Read

2007-10-30T12:20:00.000-04:00

Intellectual Property as Property: Delineating Entitlements in Information by Henry E. Smith

A Capabilities-Based Strategy for Army Security Cooperation by Jennifer D. P. Moroney, Adam Grissom, Jefferson P. Marquis

A Framework for Classifying and Comparing Models of Cyber Security Investment to Support Policy and Decision-Making by Rachel Rue, Shari Lawrence Pfleeger and David Ortiz

FOREVER MINUS A DAY? SOME THEORY AND EMPIRICS OF OPTIMAL COPYRIGHT by RUFUS POLLOCK

"When was the last time you were truly energized by ideas?"

2007-10-30T12:06:00.000-04:00

The Cato University Home Study Course.

Not cheap but certainly valuable.

First Sign of the Apocalypse?

2007-09-13T12:48:00.000-04:00

"Sun Microsystems Inc., once one of the most vociferous opponents of Microsoft Corp. and Windows, now plans to resell the operating system."

A Game-theoretic Framework for Creating Optimal SLA/Contract

2007-08-28T16:21:00.000-04:00

Intriguing paper. Game theory is certainly a key tools of negotiations, conflict resolution, optimal cooperation problems, etc. Very interesting to see it applied in a practical manner to IT-related contracts.

Abstract: An SLA/Contract is an agreement between a client and a service provider. It specifies desired levels of service and penalties in case of default. It is of interest from the Service Providers point of view, to determine the optimal contract, that will maximize its utility. In this work we model the situation based on the notion of Moral Hazard: providing a good service is costly and results are affected by the resources involved. As a consequence, a credible contract must fulfill the incentive compatibility constraint. We extend the above model to take into account the possibility that there might different types of clients, and that the Service Provider will offer a menu of contracts intended for each of these clients, as a means of maximizing utility. From the Service Providers point of view, finding an optimal contract will consist of solving a nonlinear optimization problem subject to constraints. We derive conditions under which these constraints will take a simple form and we analyze a scenario, in which, the randomness comes from the Response Time of a given IT Service, and the input is the number of servers that will be dedicated to each client.

Reading List #6

2007-08-25T20:33:00.001-04:00

I'm winding down from vacation so here's another Reading List comprised of three selections obtained from Sherman's Books & Stationary in Freeport, Maine:

Enjoy!

Reading List #5

2007-08-25T19:53:00.000-04:00

During a lovely week relaxing in York Beach, Maine, the following books were either started or finished:

Enjoy!

'Sunk costs' and the war

2007-08-16T12:51:00.000-04:00

University of San Francisco economics professor Bruce Wydick has an exceptionally clear op-ed piece in the 15 August 2007 issue of USA Today regarding America's involvement in the Iraq war.

It's Wikilicious!

2007-08-14T21:01:00.000-04:00

The hype du jour is that a clever analysis tool for wikipedia entries and interesting/entertaining sources that edit/massacre/delete entries that pertain to themselves now exists.

* (I don't recall where I read this first today but to keep things on the up-and-up it was either Slashdot or Wired through my feed reader).

It seems that one can data-mine *.wikipedia.org via online search or download of a snapshot image with all previous edits, a la a useful audit trail. OK, that doesn't seem too interesting. Until...one looks at the sources of the edits and the effects and affects of these edits.

This is a perfect example, without drawing attention to myself, of the difference between data and information and the relation between the two. Data is available...it's up to individuals or processes to transform, and hopefully protect, it into information.

The New Age of Ignorance

2007-08-13T12:56:00.000-04:00

As a follow-up to my last post concerning the systemic and intentional attempts to dissuade students from studying mathematics, I thought I would just offer a pointer to this, by way of the Edge, article from The Guardian:

The New Age of Ignorance

We take our young children to science museums, then as they get older we stop. In spite of threats like global warming and avian flu, most adults have very little understanding of how the world works.

Mathematics: Seriously, Just Say "No!"

2007-08-13T12:15:00.000-04:00

In a previous post, I commented on a trend in the UK where students were being discouraged from taking "unnecessary," higher level mathematics classes. By way of Slashdot, it seems that is is an issue in Australia as well. The poster states and asks:

"The claim is that Australian schools are actively discouraging students from taking upper level math courses to boost their academic results on school league tables. How widespread is this phenomenon? Are schools taking similar measures in the US and Canada?"

I ask again: Will science education in the classroom be dead by the time my kids go to school?

Data v. Information

2007-08-02T12:20:00.000-04:00

I had fun with a previous post regarding a data visualization tool called many eyes, from IBM alphaWorks Services. There are some nice graphing templates available but pretty graphs simply do not the wonderful experience make. OpenOffice CALC and Microsoft Excel can produce a multitude of graphs in a variety of canned formats but do they really assist in helping one understand the data being presented to them.

Are they capable though, as tools, to transform data into information? The distinction may or may not be a subtle but the implications are huge. We're generally over-run with data and consider so much of it to be throw-away. Information, however - information being data with some sort of context applied to it - one holds onto as long as possible because the context applied to the data, the transform or function applied to some data set, increases the data's value and elevates it to that of information.

Consider a couple of simple examples:

What does this string of data mean, if anything: 011903124555555

Well, it could be a random string of 16 digits and not very interesting (highly likely).
Out-of-country phone dialing number? (yes, US Embassy in Turkey)
Credit card number? (same format for Visa/MasterCard but not a valid number)
USPS/FedEx/UPS/DHL tracking number? (UPS if you drop their "1Z" prefix)
US social security number? (Massachusetts SSN with some cruft appended to the end).
Product SKU (I seem to recall that there are standardized SKU formats)

We just don't know, without any context applied to it. Now, what if we thought about another string of digits in the context of identity theft:

034011234,Last,First,Acct#

Huh...that looks important and maybe should be protected. Maybe it's a person with an account # and MA SSN on-record. The problem though, is that if the suspect data were changed to be:

Acct#,034011234,Last,First

It could become meaningless because the transformation changed through simple re-ordering of data elements and the context may no longer be identifiable therefore leaving the data as data. There's a good chance, however, in this specific case that the context could be inferred. What happens if we eliminate the comma delimiters and just spew a line of text in the hope that it will be properly caught and processed?

Acct#034011234LastFirst

Here we have an example where Acct# and SSN have been concatenated and probably lose meaning outside of the process that knows to stop reading the Acct# field after X characters and read the next nine characters as the SSN. First and last names can be extremely difficult to distinguish without capitalization and/or localized knowledge of standard names. Michael Smith may mean nothing to a non-English speaker.

So what does this mean from a practical point of view? Without waxing philosophical, from an information security and protection standpoint, it is an extremely compelling reason to give serious consideration to Translucent Databases, which I will post about at a future point in time.

Finally...A Use For Twitter

2007-07-25T07:48:00.000-04:00

Until recently, I've found Twitter to be the single most annoying and useless fad since NeoPets and Tamagotchi toys. I still have absolutely no interest in, nor do I understand the fascination with virtual pets. I may be coming around to Twitter however.

The Lifehacker folks are atwitter for Twitter and using it as a productivity-boosting tool as opposed to a sort of micro-blogging platform:

Twitter is for staying in touch and keeping up with friends no matter where you are or what you’re doing. For some friends you might want instant mobile updates—for others, you can just check the web. Invite your friends to Twitter and decide how connected you want you to be.

I personally don't have much interest in what my friends or family are doing every second of the day or where they are at any arbitrary time when I am not in direct contact with them. Maybe I'm just stubborn and still prefer email, a telephone call, maybe some Blackberry love, or - heaven forbid - face-to-face interactions.

However, following two previous posts concerning access to interesting data sets and an interesting data visualization tool, I noticed My Mile Marker.

Being a bit of a data wonk, I immediately jumped onto the Twitter bandwagon so I could send SMS messages to M3 from the gas pump and fulfill my need for immediate gratification (which may seem like a strange thing when you're generating and collecting data for future analysis). M3 account creation was easier than easy.

M3 has a nice interface and provides some tracking and reporting tools.

I like this idea because I usually compute my fuel consumption when I fill my gas tank but it's nothing I track beyond each fill. I notice trends such as getting 50 fewer miles range per tank or averaging 2 MPG more than usual. I like the idea of viewing fuel consumption trends and identifying when, for example, I added air to the car's tires, changed the engine oil or the gas station began adding more ETOH as it gets colder in New England.

We'll see how this goes.

On Virtualization

2007-07-24T18:39:00.000-04:00

Now, I don't know how far it has been considered in academia or industry but, excuse me if I am naive or simply unaware, virtualization, specifically paravirtualization, could be immensely useful to systems requiring a 1) minimal OS footprint with the ability to swap images in near-real-time, 2) an "online OS" or 3) an OS running on a virtual machine.

Set-top boxes such as (my favorite) the Moxi box or a TiVo could run multiple virtualized guest images, for the sake of a manufacturer upgrading feature sets or remediating flaws, over a consistent, hardened host image that only provides a bootstrapping facility the guest images. Through paravirtualization, presumably, hardware sharing and optimization functions, such as video capture and display/replay, could also be virtualized and provide for a transparent user experience as the various operating images are propagated to customers (presumably over multicast...I mean cable pay-per-view). Additionally, it could also offer rapid roll-back in the event of an image push and a call center flooded with complaints about set-top boxes that no longer work.

Ah, the "online OS." Everything Google does has an entire industry wondering if they are preparing for a browser-based, online OS. Browser-based with bootstrapping through a browser's existing JVM (or something similar)? Others are obviously thinking about this more topically than myself:

"a bunch of startups like YouOS , Goowy, DesktopTwo, Xin and open source eyeOS are already tackling this exact problem"

Maybe In a way, Sun is already doing it with their Sun Secure Global Desktop Software (wicked demo, BTW). Sun licensed Microsoft's Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) technology in order to do some of this and the result is as smooth as a MS Terminal Services/RDP session but with dedicated, thin client hardware and a java-based smart card that allows a user to disconnect and later reconnect, at an arbitrary location, and have their last session in-place.

In a way, an arbitrary OS running on a virtual machine is sort of cool but mostly, "this is what virtualization is all about, slow to the table commentator." The Sun solution mentioned above can be considered in this light. Microsoft Terminal Services can use a thick client or browser-based end-user environment and still provide seamless connectivity.

So, I'm probably well behind the curve on this one as far as experimenting with the technologies but at least, to the uninitiated, there seem to be some useful implementation possibilities.

So You Say It's Your Birthday?

2007-07-18T13:17:00.000-04:00

Today I am at the age where I:

may not experience another birthday defined by the product of twin primes
will not experience another birthday defined by the product of twin Mersenne primes
will hopefully experience another birthday defined by the product of cousin primes
probably will not experience the first three digit palindromic prime
may not experience another birthday defined by the sum of n^th and n^th+1 primes

I'm not sure this trivia makes me any happier :(

Remember OpenDoc?

2007-07-18T11:25:00.000-04:00

I stumbled on this hysterical spoof of the "I'm a Mac and I'm a PC" ads a while ago and nearly wet myself laughing. Almost everyone has an obligatory Newton reference when recalling great Apple ideas that were a bit too far ahead of their times. I'll skip the Newton reference and just start in with OpenDoc.

First off, Apple even seems a wee bit bitter when referencing their ideas and tech that never went anywhere. This is the best you can get from them on OpenDoc:

Reference Library

Legacy Technologies

Legacy documents consist of guides, references, sample code, and other resources that have become irrelevant for current product development. Some of these documents describe features, functions, classes, or methods that are no longer supported. Other legacy documents describe currently supported technologies, but the approaches and development techniques described in these documents are no longer recommended.

. . .

OpenDoc is a cross-platform technology that replaces conventional applications with user-assembled groups of software components. OpenDoc allows users to create virtually any kind of custom software solution. OpenDoc is not supported in Carbon.

OpenDoc met its end in a stand-off with Java that never really was a stand-off; they were complementary in the sense that you could develop OpenDoc objects in Java or what every language you preferred (Think C/C++ anyone?). Apple was having a bad day (OK, a series of years) financially, Java was the sweetheart of the internet du jour (second only to Helen) and Microsoft was first to market with OLE (object linking and embedding).

The true beauty of OpenDoc, IMO, was the ability to embed arbitrary objects into arbitrary "containers" as well as extending the container objects. Abstraction, encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism; traditional object-oriented topics, implemented well ahead of their time, as far as data formats are concerned.

The Palm Pilot (and its derivatives) was to the Newton as XML (and its extenstions) was to OpenDoc.

Microsoft Goes All Wishy-Washy?

2007-07-17T13:13:00.000-04:00

Microsoft has historically been considered a rough-and-tumble company who chews up and spits out others firms like a lumberjack with a mouth full of tobacco. Three fairly recent instances however have me a bit confused about their image.

Microsoft claims Linux infringes on hundreds of its patents. The FOSS community goes bonkers. Microsoft refuses to state which patents have been infringed upon. Still no group hug to make up.

So...Microsoft is emulating SCO but with a substantially larger legal war chest?

Via BetaNews, "In a policy document specifically timed for release this afternoon, Microsoft's general managers for interoperability, Tom Robertson and Jean Paoli, make a play for ownership of the standards issue facing users of competing document formats, by saying the company would support ratification of its own Open XML format along with OpenDocument Format (ODF) as ISO standards, if and only if doing so would promote choice among the world's consumers."

"Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of media experiences and rich interactive applications (RIAs) for the Web. The Silverlight 1.0 Beta has a go-live license that implies it can be used for commercial purposes."

It implies it can be used for commercial purposes??? I was happy, however, to see the following on the installation page:

"For Mozilla Firefox users:
Save Silverlight.1.0beta.exe to your hard disk. Once the download is finished, click Open. The installation starts."

Fun With Data Visualization

2007-07-13T13:28:00.000-04:00

My last post noted Data360.org and the impressive number of data sets they have available. I just stumbled on a new data visualization tool from IBM called many eyes so....

I grabbed an oil reserve data set from the US Energy Information Administration, by way of Data360.org, massaged it a bit in OpenOffice and fed it into many eyes. Click, click, click and you're provided with a pretty slick visualization.

Go. Go and play.

Fun Site for Data Wonks

2007-07-12T11:37:00.000-04:00

Loads of fun. It's like Wikipedia for data and analysis.

Is 740 the new 520?

2007-06-17T15:50:00.000-04:00

Recently, sub-prime mortgage lending has made the news amid fears that there may be as many as 2.2 million new forclosures in the US in the coming year. In the Boston Globe a while back, Thomas Callahan summarize:

"NOW THAT everyone is paying attention, let's review how we got here: Subprime loans became the mortgage flavor of the day several years ago. The worst kind of lenders preyed on the universal yearning for the American Dream -- homeownership -- and too often targeted African-Americans and Latinos with alluring, affordable, and ultimately deceptive sales pitches.

. . .

These are not just run-of-the-mill high cost loans. Subprime lenders keep coming up with new products and new gimmicks. That is why there has been a proliferation of 'stated income' loans and interest-only loans. These products have been around awhile but they had a limited use until brokers and mortgage companies started selling them to average consumers who didn't have a realistic chance of paying the mortgage."

In a way, sub-prime lending in the mortgage market is a bit like...like what? Let's construct a shady example that unfortunately, I've been told happens more often than it should.

A mortgage broker woos potential borrowers with wonderful terms and immediately flips the loan after closing it. OK, perhaps the broker over-sold to an under-qualified borrower but that's not their problem any longer. Nor is it their problem really when they out and out misrepresent a potential borrower. The result is a lender that now has an at greater risk borrower that it would have accepted otherwise. What to do? Flip the loan. This cycle can continue, based on other criteria as well, until the loan is paid-off or the borrower defaults. Musical chairs or hot potato with a large loan.

Excluding the boring case where the borrower pays the loan off in-full, without incident, the end result is a loan in default because a borrower was misrepresented to a lender. Most people still need to borrow in order to finance large purchases, such as houses. Sub-prime mortgage lending will continue to persist in some manner because of this; people need houses. Less than ideal borrowers will need to, in some way, boost their all-important credit scores since, no matter what anyone says, you are just a score.

There are positive financial incentives to every party involved except the unfortunate lender holding the note when the risk-deflated borrower defaults. Not knowing when or if that event will occur is the risk. If there was no risk involved, there would be no sub-prime lending markets; all borrowers would be identical. Since this is not the case, borrowers need to be differentiated in some manner and this will continue to be the credit score, for better or for worse.

The potential problem at hand then is the renormalization of misrepresented credit scores and how that could affect better borrowers and risk-adverse lenders. Borrowers that previously would not qualify for certain lending options would have their scores inflated in order to qualify. Typical borrowers would remain the same or possibly be a bit inflated as well. In other words, the typical ranges of credit scores would begin to contract while the upper bound would remain the same.

520 would be scaled to 720.

Recapitulation Theory and Second Life

2007-06-10T10:53:00.000-04:00

Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny

Internet Timeline: everything pre-Mosaic can be considered to be proto-web...extremely necessary from an evolutionary perspective but just not that sexy (like a caveman in a Speedo).

Second Life Timeline: in the beginning there was Real Life and it was fine but we got bored and started creating MUDs and MUSHes and the like but our kids thought we were weird until we installed SimCity for them so they would stay off our backs but it backfired and we ourselves became obsessed with Godzilla laying waste to our hard work for a few years until there was no reason to limit ourselves to simulating a city or life or an ant colony, no, we could simulate ourselves and everything we hoped and aspired to be and those around us in The Sims which taught us all how comfortable we could feel in drag or engaged in virtual infidelity or strafing a city block while trying to steal the helicopter...wait, wrong game, back up...all of this kept us satiated until we discovered (drum roll followed by hush)...Second Life.

Breathe...deeply...slowly...repeat....

So we have First Life (to those of us who think that art imitates life) and Second Life (to those of us who think that life imitates art). The internet as we know it slowly evolved until it reached a tipping point, i.e. the creation and release of the Mosaic web browser. After that, to many, it all went spiraling down the toilet, what with the massively increasing onslaught of spam, porn, commercialization of something that was pure, etc, etc, etc.

I don't completely agree nor disagree with the idea that the Internet has devolved into something crass and no longer meaningful. What I find terribly interesting, however, is the way in which SL is to a large extent, mimicking the evolution of the Internet as a whole.

Porn, rampant capitalism, porn, spam glorious spam, porn, activism and/or terrorism, porn....

So, is SL ontogeny to the Internet's phylogeny?

Why Is Gas So Freakin' Expensive?

2007-06-01T11:46:00.000-04:00

Excellent essay describing the various forces at play regarding gasoline pricing (by way of the Freakonomics Blog).

Google Trends - Part 2 - American Idol

2007-05-23T23:19:00.000-04:00

OK, I've been tangentially aware of American Idol for the past few years and have seen it a few times so I'm not interested in getting on a soapbox and critique "reality TV" or offer commentary on the competitors. What I am interested in, however, is how the recent rise in popularity in Google's Trends tracking, could act as a predictive analysis tool, aimed at larger...things....

So...American Idol has already aired (presumably concluded) for the night here on the east coast of the US so I'll fill-in a bit of background for the uninitiated (like myself, really): after some recurring period of group talent contests, two contestants are left in competition, after some number have been voted off of the show by popular opinion, one week at a time. The winner of the contest will be decided by popular opinion as well.

And...the winner is...huh, nothing posted to the official American Idol site. I guess I'll post more about Google Trends and predictive analysis as soon as I have some sort of official results to go with for verification.

Shame...I was getting interested but now tired as the night progresses. Sigh....

Update!

OK, Blake Lewis and Jordin Sparks were the final two contestants on the show and Ms. Sparks won by popular vote. What happens if we plug both of their names into Google Trends? Well, currently, the results are disappointing as Google Trends is still a beta/lab product and there isn't any current, searchable trend data for yesterday. Let's see if there is anything to be gleaned from the 100 hottest searches for 23 May 2007.

OK, a search for "jordin sparks" was the 12th most popular search on the day of the show's season finale with search activity peaking around 2100 EDT. "blake lewis" is nowhere to be found in the top 100. Does this mean anything as far as being a potentially useful prediction tool? Is it more or less significant that guest performers on the show - Smokey Robinson (#1), Gladys Knight (#5), Tony Bennett (#6), Bette Midler (#7) and Joe Perry (#10) - were more popular searches, between 2000-2100 EDT, than Jordin Sparks?

Perhaps Ms. Sparks became the clear popular favorite during the day. Let's see what the previous day had for searches related to Ms. Sparks and Mr. Lewis.

Nothing.

The closest search was for "american idol winner" (#9 on 22 May and #2 on 23 May). So, maybe search trends aren't terribly useful for predictive analysis. Maybe there isn't enough data available at the moment. Let's see who the finalists were last season and plug them into Google Trends...

Taylor Hicks won the season 5 contest and Katherine McPhee was runner-up on the 24 May 2006 season finale. The Google Trends results appear to clearly support Mr. Hicks the days leading into the competition:

"taylor hicks" "katherine mcphee"

Let's look at season 4 for the fun of it. Carrie Underwood won the season 4 contest and Bo Bice was runner-up on the 25 May 2005 season finale. Shaking the Google Magic 8 Ball shows...nothing useful:

"carrie underwood" "bo bice"

They're tied until the next day when everyone is trying to find out more about the winner. Having access to the vote tallies could describe this if the popular count goes nearly 50%-50% for the contestants.

Might as well look at the 2004 season since Google has the data to play with. On the 26 May 2005 season finale, Fantasia Barrino won over Diana DeGarmo. Reading the Google tea leaves shows...more nothing.

"fantasia barrino" "diana degarmo"

If anything, Ms. DeGarmo may have had a slight popular lead entering the vote.

Have we learned anything? No, probably not; at least not from a predictive analysis point of view. If I think of it in the coming months I'll come back and see if Google has search/trend data available to cover this most recent season.

Google Trends - Part 1

2007-05-23T13:20:00.002-04:00

Huh...loads of news regarding Google Trends' new functionality: regularly updated info listing the most popular search trends/terms. In one manner, this is obvious - Google has the search data available to them at any given point in time through, presumably, numerous search entry points or via a search funnel. It also makes perfect sense that this functionality, the ability to see what your peers or organization or group is searching for, would be pushed down to the Google Search Appliance at some point.

That's really the interesting addition in my opinion: by localizing search trends, through the GSA or adding a new search primitive, such as fromDomain:, fromIpAddress: or fromNetBlock: (in the same way that the site: or url: search primitives are available now), search/trend consumers would have the ability, from a social networking perspective, to learn what is being searched for, relative to themselves in their own localized search bubble.

Let's consider an example:

Say you're a faculty member at a university and you're vaguely aware of a new collective bargaining vote that's upcoming and you want to know more. You search Google and find press releases and maybe a few local area newspaper items that have been indexed. This is the way in which we normally search or engage in absolute searches, modulo intentional deletions or censoring of search results, etc. Say you're a Google Master and break-out your Google-fu and attempt a more granular search through the selective use of one or two Google search primitives, for example, site:GoogleU.edu. Great! You weren't interested in what was being reported through channels on the other side of the country anyway.

Is this enough? Are the results sufficient in order for a search consumer to best utilize the data provided? Maybe, but it could more than likely be better by taking into account the context of the search results.

Now, say that advanced, localized trending were available to the faculty member. S/he would be able to search, relative to the university community or a specific department or a specific demographic, and determine what his/her peers are searching for, in the hope of learning about key issues being addressed at the collective bargaining vote. Add in the capabilities for search trends and results to be presented in such a way that they can be ordered or grouped and the faculty member may find him/herself better in the know and ready to cast an educated vote.

So...search, trends and localization step up as the latest social networking platform.

I wonder what I spend most of my time searching for and if anyone else cares?

BSO - Boston Pops!

2007-05-23T12:35:00.000-04:00

Last night was the opening night of the latest Film Night series with John Williams returning to the Pops to conduct.

"This year’s 'Film Night' concerts also feature the iconic music of musicals that have become movies, tunes that resonate on stage as well as the silver screen. The program will be performed at 8 p.m., May 22-26, at Symphony Hall. The program opens with a tribute to Academy Award-winning composer Bernard Herrmann and his music from such legendary films as Citizen Kane, Vertigo, and North by Northwest. Mr. Williams also leads 'America’s Orchestra' in the timeless music that has made the leap from Broadway to Hollywood, including 'All That Jazz' from Chicago and highlights from Fiddler on the Roof with Boston Pops concertmaster Tamara Smirnova.
Mr. Williams, a favorite at Symphony Hall for more than a quarter-century, closes the Boston Pops’ 'Film Night' programs leading his own music from such blockbusters as Superman and the Harry Potter series. In a special Pops tribute to George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, Mr. Williams also conducts music from Jaws, Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and E.T., accompanied by film clips from these memorable movies."

It was a wonderful evening with wonderful music and a wonderful meal at Brasserie JO in the Boston Colonnade Hotel.

Where Does Your Paycheck Go? - Update

2007-05-23T12:23:00.000-04:00

I previously blogged about the allocation of my personal income as well as the US government's revenues. The Simple Dollar explores the same idea in a 20 May 2007 post, Figuring Out Exactly How Much Your Time Is Worth.

They started the year with an interesting series: 31 Days To Fix Your Finances. The Simple Dollar comes to us by way of the always useful and entertaining Lifehacker.

Language Skills

2007-05-21T11:37:00.000-04:00

A friend lamented yesterday that he didn't know a language other than his native tongue and that he had never really left his home country. Up until a few years ago, I was in the same boat. While I can't do much for sending someone to foreign locales, here are a few options for acquiring new language skills:

Foreign Language Lesson Podcast Collection at Open Culture
BBC Languages
BBC's Muzzy language courses for kids
Foreign Languages and Literatures through MIT's OpenCourseWare
Rosetta Stone language software
Living Language audio and text collections

If anyone else has suggestions, I'd love to know them.

Mathematics: Just Say No!

2007-04-26T12:56:00.000-04:00

I previously wondered what the state of science education would be like when my children go to school. Now I know: "Pupils are being discouraged from taking A-level maths as schools in England chase higher places in the league tables."

"The Royal Society of Chemistry said that as maths was a difficult subject, schools feared examination failures which would threaten their standings. Chief executive Richard Pike also said universities were increasingly having to run remedial classes in maths.

. . .

Dr Pike said: 'Schools and students are reluctant to consider A-level mathematics to age 18, because the subject is regarded as difficult, and with league tables and university entrance governed by A-level points, easier subjects are taken.'"

I don't have a background in mathematical education but was an applied mathematics undergrad at UConn where there were a surprising number of "math-ed" students.

A quick search through the AMS archives found this collection of articles on mathematics education in NOTICES of the American Mathematical Society.

House Resolution To Impeach Cheney?

2007-04-26T12:11:00.000-04:00

WTF??? Did Rep. Dennis Kucinich just crib the entire GQ piece, The People v. Richard Cheney, and submit it as an original proposal?

http://kucinich.house.gov/SpotlightIssues/documents.htm

Supporting Documents for H Res 333

Synopsis of Resolution

Text of Resolution as Introduced in the House of Representatives

Letter to Vice President Cheney

Brief summary of impeachment procedure

Supporting Documents for Article I

Article I (1)(A): Transcripts of March 17, 2002 Press Conference by Vice President Dick Cheney and His Highness Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, Crown Prince of Bahrain at Shaikh Hamad Palace.

Article I (1)(B): Transcripts of March 19, 2002 Press Briefing by Vice President Dick Cheney and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in Jerusalem.

Article I (1)(C): Transcripts of March 24, 2002 Wolf Blitzer interview of Vice President Cheney on CNN’s Late Edition.

Article I (1)(D): Transcripts of May 19, 2002 Tim Russert interview with Vice President Cheney on NBC’s Meet the Press.

Article I (1)(E): Speech of Vice President Cheney at VFW 103rd National Convention on August 26, 2002.

Article I (1)(F & G): Transcripts of September 8, 2002 Tim Russert interview with Vice President Cheney on NBC’s Meet the Press.

Article I (1)(H): Transcripts of March 16, 2003 Tim Russert interview with Vice President Cheney on NBC’s Meet the Press.

Article I (2)(A): Pincus, Walter and Priest, Dana. “Some Iraq Analysts Felt Pressure From Cheney Visits.” Washington Post 5 June 2003: A01.

Article I (2)(B): Hersh, Seymour M. “The Stovepipe.” The New Yorker 27 October 2003.

Article I (3)(A): National Intelligence Estimate, October 1, 2002. pg. 9

Article I (3)(B): National Intelligence Estimate, October 1, 2002. pg. 84

Article I (3)(C): National Intelligence Estimate, October 1, 2002. pg. 9

United States service member deaths: Department of Defense Casualty Report

Iraqi civilian deaths: Lancet Report

Cost of the war: CRS report RL33110

Loss of military readiness: Korb, Lawrence. “A troop readiness crisis.” Boston Globe 11 April 2007.

Supporting Documents for Article II

Article II (1)(A): Speech of Vice President Cheney at the Air National Guard Senior Leadership Conference on December 2, 2002.

Article II (1)(B): Speech of Vice President Cheney to 30th Political Action Conference in Arlington, Virginia on January 30, 2003.

Article II (1)(C): Transcripts of March 16, 2003 Tim Russert interview with Vice President Cheney on NBC’s Meet the Press.

Article II (1)(D): Transcripts of September 14, 2003 Tim Russert interview with Vice President Cheney on NBC’s Meet the Press.

Article II (1)(E): Speech of Vice President Cheney at Bush-Cheney '04 Fundraiser in Iowa on October 3, 2003.

Article II (1)(F): Speech of Vice President Cheney to the Heritage Foundation on October 10, 2003.

Article II (1)(G): Hayes, Stephen. “Cheney v. Powell.” The Weekly Standard 13 January 2004.

Article II (1)(H): Transcripts of January 22, 2004 Juan Williams interview with Vice President Cheney on NPR’s Morning Edition.

Article II (1)(I): Transcripts of June 17, 2004 Gloria Borger interview with Vice President Cheney on CNBC’s Capital Report.

Article II (2)(A): Waas, Murray. “Key Bush Intelligence Briefing Kept From Hill Panel.” National Journal 22 November 2005.

Article II (2)(B): Jehl, Douglas. “Report Warned Bush Team About Intelligence Doubts.” New York Times 6 November 2005.

Article II (2)(C): “Leaked Report Rejects Iraqi al-Qaeda link.” BBC News 5 February 2003.

United States service member deaths: Department of Defense Casualty Report

Iraqi civilian deaths: Lancet Report

Cost of the war: CRS report RL33110

Loss of military readiness: Korb, Lawrence. “A troop readiness crisis.” Boston Globe 11 April 2007.

Supporting Documents for Article III

Article III (1)(A): Speech of Vice President Cheney to American Israel Public Affairs Committee 2006 Policy Conference on March 7, 2006.

Article III (1)(B): Transcripts of January 24, 2007 Wolf Blitzer interview with Vice President Cheney on CNN’s Situation Room.

Article III (1)(C): Transcripts of January 28, 2007 Richard Wolffe interview with Vice President Cheney for Newsweek Magazine.

Article III (1)(D): Transcripts of February 24, 2007 Press Briefing with Vice President Cheney and Australian Prime Minister in Sydney, Australia.

Article III (2)(A): Transcripts of February 19, 2007 Daniel Dombey interview with Director General Mohamed ElBaradei for the Financial Times.

Article III (2)(B): International Atomic Energy Agency Board of Governors Report, February 22, 2007.

Article III (2)(C): Transcripts of February 19, 2007 Daniel Dombey interview with Director General Mohamed ElBaradei for the Financial Times.

Article III (3)(A): Hirsh, Michael. “Hirsh: A Failed Shot at Peace with Iran?” Newsweek 8 February 2007.

Article III (3)(B): Abramowitz, Michael. “Cheney Says U.S. Is Sending ‘Strong Signal’ to Iran.” Washington Post 29 January 2007: A02.

Article III (3)(C): Hersh, Seymour M. “The Iran Plans.” The New Yorker 17 April 2006.

Article III (3)(D): Londono, Ernest and al-Izzi, Saad. “Iraq Intensifies Efforts to Expel Iranian Group.” Washington Post 14 March 2007: A10.

Article III (3)(E): Hersh, Seymour M. “The Iran Plans.” The New Yorker 17 April 2006.

Article III (4)(A): Article VI of Constitution of the United States of America.

Article III (4)(B): Chapter I, Article 2 of Charter of the United Nations

Article III (4)(C): Chapter VII, Article 51 of Charter of the United Nations

Where Does Your Paycheck Go? - revisited

2007-04-19T14:32:00.000-04:00

A previous post regarding how my personal paycheck is allocated each week left me thinking that I need to start devoting some of my available income to the tax for people who are bad at math or find a long, lost, wealthy relative. As it turns out, the kind public servants at the US Government Printing Office care about how its paycheck, US tax revenues, is allocated as well. Originally, John W. Schoen at MSNBC responds to the question, "Where do my income tax dollars go?" The answers are later distilled by the Consumerist (with hourly tallies included by yours truly):

Health Care: $219.40 - 8.78 hours
Social Security: $206.60 - 8.26 hours
Military: $196.50 - 7.86 hours
Income Security (Unemployment insurance, food and housing, retirement for federal workers, etc): $132.70 - 5.31 hours
Interest on Debt (The US Government's Version of Credit Card Payments): $85.30 - 3.41 hours
Transportation: $26.50 - 1.06 hours
Colleges: $19.00 - 0.76 hours
Federal disaster relief and insurance spending: $17.40 - 0.70 hours
Administration of justice: $15.40 - 0.62 hours
Public Schools (K-12): $15.00 - 0.60 hours
The Environment: $12.40 - 0.50 hours
Agriculture: $9.80 - 0.39 hours
General government costs: $6.90 - 0.28 hours
International development and humanitarian assistance: $6.30 - 0.25 hours
Social services related to education and training: $6.20 - 0.25 hours
Space Program: $5.50 - 0.22 hours
General science and basic research: $3.40 - 0.14 hours
Community and regional development: $3.20 - 0.13 hours
Workers training programs: $2.70 - 0.11 hours

Totals: $990.20 - 39.61 hours

Perhaps the unlisted $9.80 - .39 hours goes to some slushfund?

If I ignore the Federal progressive tax rates and assume that the $1000/week earner and myself are taxed at the same rate, let's see what happens when I cram the figures above into my previously claimed allocations (5.325 hours each week to fund Federal and State taxes, 2.950 hours each week to fund Medicare and Social Security and 2.254 hours each week to fund personal health, dental and vision insurance).

Coming soon! Until then...

Interesting:

The sum of the top three categories are a full 70% more than the sum of all other categories combined
More is spent on arresting and detaining criminals than is spent on educating a nation of K-12 graders
4.5 times more money is spent on the government's interest payments than on college contributions (where the majority of students take loans to pay interest back to the government and multi-national financial services firms)
More than 5 times the amount of potential preventive and proactive local and community development funding is spent/squandered on disaster relief after the fact

Sigh....

Leading a Balanced Online Life

2007-04-16T14:56:00.000-04:00

As more and more of a person's life leeches into social networking sites, personal blogs, online special interest communities, etc., one is faced with two extremes: too much of an online presence and not enough of an online presence.

Facebook and MySpace Used by Employers, Schools, and Police

"If you're like most college and even high school students, you have posted your profile to Facebook, MySpace, or another social networking site. But did you realize that your profile can easily be accessed by potential employers, schools, law enforcement agencies, and others? As much as that revelation may be a shock for students, it also came as a shock to those who set up the sites because they never intended outsiders to use the information for purposes other than benign social networking."

Likewise:

Web Anonymity Can Sink Your Job Search

"Having a presence on the Web is a critical factor in the job search, especially given the fact that a growing number of recruiters and hiring managers are using search engines when gathering data about potential employees. According to a 2006 survey, 77% of recruiters said they use search engines to check out job candidates. In another survey conducted by CareerBuilder.com, 25% of hiring managers said they use Internet search engines to research potential employees, while another 10% said they also use social networking sites to screen candidates. All things being equal, most companies would rather hire a candidate who has demonstrated the ability to participate on the Web. With that in mind, the article provides five tips to develop a more visible presence on the Web."

What to do, what to do?

More cowbell!

Reading List #4

2007-04-15T16:34:00.000-04:00

In commemoration of the recent death of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., I offer the following as the three most influential of his writings, relative to my life. They are:

Enjoy!

The Cost of Commuting

2007-04-14T22:31:00.000-04:00

I've been a long-time reader of Mother Jones magazine and have recently taken-in their RSS feed(s). This caught my eye: a sort piece (blog blob?) aimed at outlining the environmental costs of commuting, with numerous references to a New Yorker piece by Nick Paumgarten, as well as the non-fiscal costs associated with commuting long, or in my personal case repulsive, distances. Here are some of the highlights:

"Roughly one out of every six American workers commutes more than forty-five minutes, each way. People travel between counties the way they used to travel between neighborhoods. The number of commuters who travel ninety minutes or more each way—known to the Census Bureau as “extreme commuters”—has reached 3.5 million, almost double the number in 1990. They’re the fastest-growing category, the vanguard in a land of stagnant wages, low interest rates, and ever-radiating sprawl. They’re the talk-radio listeners, billboard glimpsers, gas guzzlers, and swing voters, and they don’t—can’t—watch the evening news. Some take on long commutes by choice, and some out of necessity, although the difference between one and the other can be hard to discern. A commute is a distillation of a life’s main ingredients, a product of fundamental values and choices. And time is the vital currency: how much of it you spend—and how you spend it—reveals a great deal about how much you think it is worth.

. . .

Americans, for all their bellyaching, are not the world’s most afflicted commuters. They average fifty-one minutes a day, to and from work. Pity the Romanians, who average fifty-four. Or the citizens of Bangkok, who average—average!—two hours. A business trip to Bangkok will buck up the glummest Van Wyck Expressway rubbernecker; the traffic there, as in so many automobile-plagued Asian mega-capitals, is apocalyptic. In Japan, land of the bullet train, workers spend almost ninety minutes a day.

. . .

Nationwide, the automobile took over from the train long ago. Nine out of ten people travel to work by car, and, of those, eighty-eight per cent drive alone. The car, and the sprawl that comes with it (each—familiar story—having helped to engender and entrench the other), ushers in another kind of experience. The gray-suited armies of Cheever’s 5:48 have given way to the business-casual soloists, whose loneliness is no longer merely existential. They hardly even have the opportunity to feel estranged at home, their time there is so brief.

. . .

Commuting makes people unhappy, or so many studies have shown. Recently, the Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman and the economist Alan Krueger asked nine hundred working women in Texas to rate their daily activities, according to how much they enjoyed them. Commuting came in last. (Sex came in first.) The source of the unhappiness is not so much the commute itself as what it deprives you of. When you are commuting by car, you are not hanging out with the kids, sleeping with your spouse (or anyone else), playing soccer, watching soccer, coaching soccer, arguing about politics, praying in a church, or drinking in a bar. In short, you are not spending time with other people. The two hours or more of leisure time granted by the introduction, in the early twentieth century, of the eight-hour workday are now passed in solitude. You have cup holders for company.

. . .

Three years ago, two economists at the University of Zurich, Bruno Frey and Alois Stutzer, released a study called “Stress That Doesn’t Pay: The Commuting Paradox.” They found that, if your trip is an hour each way, you’d have to make forty per cent more in salary to be as “satisfied” with life as a noncommuter is. (Their data come from Germany, where you’d think speedy Autobahns and punctual trains would bring a little Freude to the proceedings, and their methodology is elaborate and thorough, if impenetrable to the layman, relying on equations like U=α+ß₁D+ß₂D²+γX+δ₁w+δ₂w²+δ₃log y.) The commuting paradox reflects the notion that many people, who are supposedly rational (according to classical economic theory, at least), commute even though it makes them miserable. They are not, in the final accounting, adequately compensated."

The Washington Post has a piece by Eric M. Weiss that addresses the health problems of commuters:

"Besides being a daily grind that takes time away from family, a long commute can be harmful to your health. Researchers have found that hours spent behind the wheel raise blood pressure and cause workers to get sick and stay home more often. Commuters have lower thresholds for frustration at work, suffer more headaches and chest pains, and more often display negative moods at home in the evenings. It's not just the drivers who suffer. Carpool passengers have to deal with what they call 'Mustang neck' or 'Beetle neck' -- the contortions they must make to wedge themselves into the back seats of certain cars.

. . .

As a consequence, more drivers will probably suffer the health effects of a commuter lifestyle, researchers and doctors said. 'You tell someone they need to exercise or go to physical therapy, but how can they? They leave at 5 a.m. and get home at 7 or 8 p.m. at night,' said Robert G. Squillante, an orthopedic surgeon in Fredericksburg who has treated patients for back pain and other commuting-related issues.

He said constant road vibrations and sitting in the same position for a long time is bad for the neck and spine and puts special pressure on the bottom disc in the lower back, the one most likely to deteriorate over the years.

There are other long-term concerns. Raymond W. Novaco, a professor at the University of California at Irvine's Institute of Transportation Studies who has researched commuting for three decades, found a correlation between traffic congestion and negative health effects such as higher blood pressure and stress.

Novaco's research team measures the blood pressure and heart rate of commuters shortly after they arrive at work and again two hours later. Commuters also fill out detailed questionnaires on their home and work lives. 'The longer the commute, the more illness' and more illness-related work absences occur, he said.

. . .

Spending hours sitting in your car can also cause back and other muscle problems and takes time away from more active, healthier pursuits such as walking or going to the gym. The ill effects of commuting are increasingly showing up in local doctors' offices. Squillante, the Fredericksburg orthopedic surgeon, said he has had surgery patients say that the best thing about a back operation was the forced hiatus from their daily commute during recovery."

There is a single take-away from all of this: commuting is both a personal as well as a public health issue. The opportunity costs associated with commuting are often extremely disproportionate. There is a real, measurable drain on those suffering through long commutes. Long commutes break people down.

On a slightly more up-beat note, I read a great piece this past weekend in Wired by Douglas McGray regarding a "pop-up city" initiative in China that looks extremely promising.

Life Is No Way To Treat An Animal

2007-04-12T16:25:00.000-04:00

Kurt Vonnegut died last night. The NYT has an emotionless retrospective. Mother Jones was too lazy to write anything so they linked to the NYT piece. The Nation posted a piece that is appearing in the 23 April 2007 issue. It's almost alarming when you realize how many people wrote or posted pieces in the past with the title, "God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut."

When the tupelo
Goes poop-a-lo
come back to youp-a-lo

--Kilgore Trout's last poem

(blog post title by way of Wikipedia reference for the epitaph on Kilgore Trout's tombstone)

Where Does Your Paycheck Go?

2007-04-10T15:24:00.000-04:00

I was recently reviewing my benefit information at work and adding a new family member, etc. when it occurred to me that I could spend a few minutes computing how my income is allocated each week.

Disturbing. Based on a 40 hour US work week I've determined the following:

Pre-tax Allocations
Voluntary retirement contributions: 6.000 hours
Federal and State income tax: 5.325 hours
No local taxes so I'll lump Medicare and Social Security together: 2.950 hours
Health, dental and vision insurance contributions: 2.254 hours
Pre-tax total: 16.53 hours

OK, that leaves me with 23.47 hours of pay to fund the other necessities. Let's see where that goes:

Post-tax Allocations
Mortgage: 7.993 hours
Commuting costs: 2.909 hours
Property taxes: .892 hours
Property and vehicle insurance: .832 hours
Student loan repayment: .629 hours
Life insurance: .559 hours
Utilities: 1.234 hours
Post-tax Total: 15.048 hours

This leaves a remainder of 8.422 hours of pay to cover food, maintenance, savings, vacations, child care, education and discretionary spending.

I am very glad my spouse has income as well or we would be rather strapped otherwise. I'm not sure how so many people make substantially less money yet manage to live in MA. Three days ago, the Boston Globe posted this piece by Robert Kuttner:

"REPRESENTATIVE Barney Frank of Newton , chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, was in town this week to hold a hearing on the squeeze on household incomes and housing costs. In city after city, costs of both rentals and owner-occupied homes have been outstripping paychecks.

Northeastern University economist Barry Bluestone testified that median housing prices increased by about 50 percent in Greater Boston between 1999 and 2006, while real household incomes were basically flat. In 1998, Bluestone calculated, the median-income family could afford the median-priced home in 148 of 161 Greater Boston communities; by 2006, in just 12 communities.

The cost of rentals has been rising just as fast. All this, of course, represents a real hit to family incomes. If you have to spend half of your income to get a roof over your head, you are that much poorer. If you have to double up to get a decent place to live, that's a decline in your standard of living."

On the same day the Worcester T&G provides details from the Central Mass Housing Alliance's 2006 Out of Reach Report (part 1, part 2, part 3), focusing on the Central MA region.

Reading List #3

2007-04-09T21:11:00.000-04:00

Three books I read late last year came to mind while working on my recent post concerning arbitrage opportunities in Second Life. They are:

Enjoy!

Arbitrage Opportunities in Second Life?

2007-04-09T20:58:00.000-04:00

Second Life (SL) is gaining momentum in popular awareness as well as gaining mind- and wallet-share of first life emigrees. If you believe all/most/some of the hype, there are riches to be made in SL. Gold in dem th'ar hills, as it were. This begs the question: "Are there any arbitrage opportunities for clever investors as well?"

The Linden dollar (L$) value is indexed for the most part against the US dollar (USD), with some volatility based on supply and demand. Linden Lab has this official blurb regarding currency exchange:

"Several online resources allow residents to convert Linden Dollars into US Dollars and vice-versa. Rates fluctuate based on supply and demand, but over the last few years they have remained fairly stable at approximately 250 Linden Dollars (L$) to the US Dollar."

I was truly hoping to learn the Yahoo! Currency Converter would supply conversions, but alas, my hopes were dashed; SL economic statistics and market statistics for currency trading was the best I could hope for.

L$ exchange rates are determined by an in-life market (LindenX) where residents are able to buy and sell currency. There exist other markets, however, external to LindenX where L$ can be bought and sold against some other "real currency". What is needed then is, at minimum, two distinct markets where a pricing difference between L$ and another currency can be identified and taken advantage of in such a way where L$ are purchased at market price lower in one market than the price they can be sold for in another market.

If the fees could be compensated for and the timing issues resolved, at first consideration I would think this could be accomplished via numerous eBay auctions of L$, where each unique eBay auction is itself a distinct market. In fact, if creative individual figures out how to short sell L$ in one market while buying long in another, they will have just hedged L$ currency trades!

Reading List #2

2007-04-06T13:37:00.000-04:00

I certainly didn't read the next three recommendations since the last Reading List post...I'm tidying-up a bit and happened to find three I read last summer that fit the bill:

Enjoy!

Evolution? Phooey!

2007-04-04T15:58:00.000-04:00

By way of /., a Newsweek Poll summarized on MSNBC states 48% of Americans believe "God created humans pretty much in the present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so" while an additional 13% believe that "humans developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process."

That's 48% of the survey respondents being firmly against evolution and up to an additional 13% falling in-step behind.

I hardly know what to say to this. Will science education in the classroom be dead by the time my kids go to school? I need a healthy dose of Daniel Dennet and Richard Dawkins now.

It's a Boy!

2007-04-03T11:44:00.000-04:00

Eamon Campbell joined us yesterday morning @ 0456 EDT!

8 lbs., 3.5 oz., 19.75" long/tall.

Everyone is healthy and well.

Reading List #1

2007-04-01T10:41:00.000-04:00

In anticipation of Douglas Hofstadter's latest book, I Am a Strange Loop, I decided to re-read his first work, Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. That got me thinking that I tend to read in a Wikipedia-like fashion; I take notes of referenced works or concepts explored in the original book and start following them serially, reading whatever falls within my field of interest.

That being said, instead of traditional book reviews (of which there is no short supply), I decided to simply list a few loosely linked or tangentially related books that I have enjoyed with minimal commentary. Here is round 1:

Enjoy!

One Laptop Per Child - revisited

2007-03-31T13:07:00.000-04:00

On 28 March 2007, the Financial Times reported that the OLPC project's sole supplier of the XO laptop hardware, Quanta Computer of Taiwan, would be introducing a laptop to developed nations with a $200 price point.

"Quanta Computer, the world’s largest manufacturer of notebook computers, will start making ultra-low-cost computers that could be sold in developed markets for as little as $200 this year or the next, according to its president. The Taiwanese contract manufacturer is already producing a laptop developed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers that will be distributed to children in third-world countries – under a non-profit project called One Laptop Per Child – for as little as $150.

But Michael Wang, Quanta’s president, said on Tuesday that the concepts developed through the OLPC project could be applied to create commercially viable machines that are cheaper than anything on the market so far.

'We will definitely at the right time launch a commercialised product similar to the OLPC,' he said in an interview with the Financial Times, adding that several of Quanta’s customers were seeking to launch such a product.

. . .

But Mr Wang said the low-cost machines would not remain limited to developing markets. 'There are a lot of poor people in developed countries, too,' he said.

Quanta has now created a new business unit for 'emerging PCs' with the explicit aim of creating a new market for the low-cost machines.

He said the cheapest models were likely to be sold without hard disks, have small screens and run on open-source software, like the OLPC version."

Earlier in the week, I stated that Charles Kane, the CFO of the One Laptop Per Child project, will be coming to my current place of employment to speak about the OLPC project and the XO laptop device. I had two questions to ask but will now include a third:

Given the recent announcement by Quanta Computer regarding a commercial offering of low-cost laptop computers to developed nations, will the OLTP project continue to utilize their engineering and manufacturing abilities? Was the OLTP project consulted regarding Quanta's intentions? Does this move provide any friction between the OLTP project and Quanta that could put the future of the project at risk?

I hope the questions are addressed if I am unable to attend the session. If so, and I am able to secure permission, I'll post responses here.

Competition for TED

2007-03-30T21:37:00.000-04:00

I just noticed a single page spread in GQ advertising the New Yorker Conference/ 2012: stories from the near future. The site wouldn't render fully in Firefox so I didn't get a chance to explore fully but the print advertisement made it seem very TED-like.

The raw HTML meta content is somewhat interesting:

<meta name="keywords" content="New Yorker, Conde Nast, Conference, David Remnick, Malcolm Gladwell, Microsoft, Discover" />

<meta name="description" content="A rare opportunity to be a part of a brainstorm conceived by the writers and editors of The New Yorker. Join us for presentations, demonstrations, interviews, and discussions with experts across disciplines, both well-known and newly discovered, to explore what will impact our lives within the next five years, from board rooms and trading floors to music studios, design labs, art galleries, technology centers, think tanks and beyond." />

Microsoft is sponsoring the event. Condé Nast/CondéNet is the parent company of GQ and the New Yorker. The web server appears to be running an Akamaized version of IBM's web server over Linux. Wonder how MSFT feels about that?

One Laptop Per Child (OLPC)

2007-03-27T12:56:00.000-04:00

Charles Kane, the CFO of the One Laptop Per Child project, will be coming to my current place of employment to speak about the OLPC project and the XO laptop device. It seems like a great project and I certainly hope it is wildly successful. With any luck, I'll be able to bring-up the following issues for clarification:

By leaving the distribution of the laptops to the nations that purchase them, it seems that there is a tremendous amount of room for inappropriate behavior or even flagrant misuse on the part of the ordering nation. Aside from the various Memoranda of Understanding being issued, what mechanisms are in-place to encourage positive behaviors and follow-through on whatever agreed upon terms exist between the OLPC project and the host nation? What prevents a nation from accepting the laptops and then distributing them within the government as opposed to the intended children?

It seems that there is potentially an inherent bootstrapping problem: many of the nations purchasing laptops for their children simply do not have the necessary infrastructure in-place to support this program. Areas within the nations often lack completely or at least have inadequate access to electricity, education, health care, etc. I know that the devices can be recharged via a hand crank and that the UI and activities are designed to promote self-learning but doesn't the vision of the program seem a little myopic when one takes into account that there may not be much individual incentive to learn and to use the devices when one does not have access to clean drinking water or a reliable food supply but live under an oppressive government or with constant civil unrest?

Glad I read a bit more before asking about a possible 1-for-2 program with wealthier countries purchasing two XOs while donating one to a more needy country. Color me silly.

As a final note, Nicholas Negroponte, author of Being Digital, founder of the MIT Media Lab and the OLPC project gives a great talk at the always inspiring TED gatherings.

Vapid Evaporation

My New 4-H

Two Perfectly Juxtaposed Articles Regarding Self-Control

Gmail Autopilot

Beer And Self-Doubt

There It Is...Plain English

No User Serviceable Parts Inside

Patent Idea

PV=nRT...

Bootstraping Problem

So Many Failed Banks, So Little Time

Charter Communications Stupidity

2008 Failed Bank Box Scores: #16

2008 Failed Bank Box Scores: #15

2008 Failed Bank Box Scores: #14

Another Convicted Criminal, Cracker-Turned-"Security Consultant" Profit Story

Anathem - Oh Snap!!!

Wonderful Stop Motion Animation

2008 Failed Bank Box Scores: #13

2008 Failed Bank Box Scores: #12

Peer-To-Patent

More On The Topic Of Alt-Fuel Cool Cars: The Lotus Omnivore

Must...Have....Volvo ReCharge Concept Car

American Political Conventions - Terribly Frustrating (Lack Of) Of Use Of Technology

Field Strip And Reassemble An AR-15 In 53 Seconds

Reading List #8

My Fun Weekend

Apoptosis In Botnets

Interesting Electrical Synchronicities Today

Randy Pausch

WEIS 2008 - Day 3

WEIS 2008 - Day 2

WEIS 2008 - Day 1

WEIS 2008 - Day 0

Dymaxion Man: The Visions Of Buckminster Fuller

Will The Big Mac Follow Moore's Law?

Challenges and Directions for Monitoring P2P File Sharing Networks –or– Why My Printer Received a DMCA Takedown Notice

It May Be Cliché, But This Post Is About Prof. Randy Pausch

Space Station Could Beam Secret Quantum Codes by 2014

Delhi (Day 0)

I'm Leaving On A Jet Plane....

Boston University Researchers Developing Sign Language Video Dictionary

F1 in Schools

Information Security And User Education

We Bought A Firewall. Isn't That Good Enough?

Google Gears, Part 1

Reading List #7

Another Use for Second Life

Google Sites

Google Central (part 1)

Google Earth Fun

My Coffee Maker...Seg Faulted???

Useful Kibble

Great Analysis of the World's Under-Sea Fiber Network

New Google Search Features

A Brave, New Semester

Hiatus

Google's Android Platform

PDF Desktop Clutter - Things I've Been Meaning To Read

"When was the last time you were truly energized by ideas?"

First Sign of the Apocalypse?

A Game-theoretic Framework for Creating Optimal SLA/Contract

Reading List #6

Reading List #5

'Sunk costs' and the war

It's Wikilicious!

The New Age of Ignorance

Mathematics: Seriously, Just Say "No!"

Data v. Information

Finally...A Use For Twitter

On Virtualization

So You Say It's Your Birthday?

Remember OpenDoc?

Microsoft Goes All Wishy-Washy?

Fun With Data Visualization

Fun Site for Data Wonks

Is 740 the new 520?

Recapitulation Theory and Second Life

Why Is Gas So Freakin' Expensive?

Google Trends - Part 2 - American Idol