Wonderful Stop Motion Animation

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

2008 Failed Bank Box Scores: #13

Washington Mutual

2008 Failed Bank Box Scores: #12

Ameribank, Inc., Northfork, WV

Peer-To-Patent

"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?

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

This alone (OK, and the Lotus badging) is enough to sell me one:

"The Omnivore is a direct injection two-stroke engine with a variable compression ratio system, which means it won't waste fuel and it'll run on just about everything but puppy smiles and children's dreams."

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

"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

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

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

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:

• Anything graph-related at xkcd.com
• GraphJam
• INDEXED

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

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

Apoptosis In Botnets

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

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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

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

WEIS 2008 - Day 3

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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?