Blog Posts

December 2006

• 2006-12-14

  A good bit by Bruce Schneier about “Real-World Passwords”

  Check out this post from Schneier on Security:

  How good are the passwords people are choosing to protect their computers and online accounts?

  It’s a hard question to answer because data is scarce. But recently, a colleague sent me some spoils from a MySpace phishing attack: 34,000 actual user names and passwords.

  (read the whole thing here: Real-World Passwords)

  My password philosophy goes like this. I have a standard one that I use for the majority of sites where I don’t care at all if someone gets into it. Then I have a series of 4, progressively more obscure ones that I use on how important access control is, with the most impossible to guess one on my financial accounts.

  Reading this makes me wonder if I am not taking this far enough…

• 2006-12-13

  Chess and Violent Meditation

  Check out this post from empire state blues.:

  "[snip…]Everything else is blotted out by the deafening sound of my own consciousness, the ascendant primate mind, churning on all of its terrifying and unknown cylinders. And playing chess is in some ways a taking of communion with this austere machine-mind; this family tree of decisions; this full blooming of abstract thought.[snip…]

  (from: Chess and Violent Meditation)

• 2006-12-12

  Today only: 40% off at Borders

  This is a public service to my readers. Here’s the coupon.

• 2006-12-12

  JRuby 0.9.2

  I was discussing with a friend yesterday, really, what’s the difference between a scripting language and a ‘real’ language? Is Java a ‘real’ language? After all it does run on top of an interpreter (the JVM.) But what’s an interpreter anyway? Is the only ‘real’ language C++? Even C# is questionable?

  Ah I think that’s all old think. I do think there’s a qualitative difference between a Ruby and a Java, but it’s not about scripting versus real. It’s about something else…. and by the way, what happens when Ruby is run on top of the JVM?

  Check out this post from Artima Java Buzz:

  The JRuby development team have released version 0.9.2. "This release has some great improvements: extensions openssl and readline now working, code for a new graphical irb console, partial support fo…

  (from: JRuby 0.9.2)

  #programming
• 2006-12-12

  [GEEKY] An interesting bit on an XML security vulnerability

  Ok, this is definitely geeky, but I thought it was interesting: “There’s a 4+ year old security hole in many XML parsers called XXE, the Xml eXternal Entity attack.” (from Some Bits: Nelson’s blog)

  Read the whole thing here.

• 2006-12-11

  Capital of Kazakhstan to be Covered in Gigantic Tent; Gizmodo HQ Moving to Kazakhstan

  Check out this post from Gizmodo:

  Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, will soon become one of the coolest cities in the world. Why, you ask? Because they’re planning to build a 500-foot-high "tent" over the entire metropolis to keep it…

  (from: Capital of Kazakhstan to be Covered in Gigantic Tent; Gizmodo HQ Moving to Kazakhstan)

  That’s pretty cool, check out the whole post. And isn’t Borat (supposedly) from there? 🙂

• 2006-12-09

  fire at one broadway

  My buddies at wis.dm had a real scare today as our offices and the rest of the building was evacuated in a big rush due to a terrible and terrifying explosion in the basement. I was in California at the time and got word of this when Brian called my cell phone while I was in a meeting. All the wis.dm folks are back home and ok now, but some actually had to go to the hospital for some treatment. Scary stuff… Here is the post from Brian Del Vecchio’s blog:

  Today at about 11:00am the alarm went off in our building at One Broadway in Kendall Square. This was followed by a panicky PA announcement from the security desk that there was an emergency in the building and everyone must evacuate. As we made our way down through the crowded stairwells, thick smoke filled the tight space with that acrid smell of burning electronics.

  (from: fire at one broadway)

• 2006-12-09

  Free book on “Algorithms” highly recommended

  Check out this post from dzone.com: latest front page:

  I just finished a fantastic book called "Algorithms", by Sanjoy Dasgupta, Christos Papadimitriou and Umesh Vazirani. Even better: this book is free and can be downloaded in PDF form from the authors’ web site.

  (from: Free book on "Algorithms" highly recommended)

  #science #culture
• 2006-12-08

  Good article about idiomatic Ruby

  I’ve been learning Ruby and Rails in my copious spare time. I found this post instructive on how to write idiomatic Ruby instread of Ruby as C: Idiomatic Ruby.

  #programming
• 2006-12-08

  2006 Fall Leadership Forum

  I am at the 2006 Fall Leadership Forum in Sonoma, CA. Wine is everywhere, even a free bottle in the hotel room. And all that wine and wine information is kind of squandered on me. So I won’t talk about wine, but here are some tidbits from the conference…

  Check out PicLens, a Safari-only (so far) plug-in. It adds a very cool photo browsing experience to sites like Flickr. Check out Mashery, a service that front ends other services that offer web APIs. It adds functionality for registering users, issueing API keys, etc. It is a service that would be offered to other companies that want t...

  Read more →

  #business
• 2006-12-07

  53% of People Prefer Pie Charts [The World’s Fair]

  Check out this post from ScienceBlogs : Combined Feed: 53% of People Prefer Pie Charts [The World’s Fair] Not sure if this is serious or not 🙂 Reminds me of the old joke "94% of all statistics cited are invented ON THE SPOT!

  #blogging
• 2006-12-07

  My Middle-Sized Problems

  Check out this post from The Dilbert Blog: My Middle-Sized Problems Funny as usual! You should really follow this blog!

• 2006-12-07

  Ask Lifehacker: The gift of a pre-loaded iPod

  Check out this post from Lifehacker:

  Ask Lifehacker: The gift of a pre-loaded iPod

  This is a really good idea! I will use it this holiday season!

  #computing
• 2006-12-07

  Hacking Reputation in MySpace and Facebook

  Check out this post from Schneier on Security: "I’ll be the first to admit it: I know next to nothing about MySpace or Facebook. I do know that they’re social networking sites, and that — at least to some extent — your reputation is based on who are your "friends" and what they say about you.

  Which means that this follows, like day follows night. "Fake Your Space" is a site where you can "hire" fake friends to leave their pictures and personalized comments on your page." (from: Hacking Reputation in MySpace and Facebook)

  Read the whole thing: Hacking Reputation in MySpace and Facebook

November 2006

• 2006-11-29

  What’s a meme and how fast does it travel?

  Some clever scientists are trying to measure how fast meme’s travel on the web. My contribution to the experiment is to add a link to their article to my article. What’s a meme, anyway? Think of ideas as little organisms that live in a person’s mind (metaphorically.) And think of how good, meaningful ideas will tend to infect other minds, almost in a biological sense. And how some ideas are so powerful that they travel incredibly fast until everyone understands and thinks in those terms.

  In this kind of scenario, the idea that travels is said to be a meme. (Self referentially, the idea of a meme as I described it here ...

  Read more →
• 2006-11-28

  Embed Maps – now even easier!

  I wrote about this a little while back, but now it’s even easier! Do you want to embed a map of something or other on your site or your blog? Take a look at this site, fmatlas.com. It makes it sooooo easy! For exampe, here’s a map that I added here, in about 30 seconds, of my favorite lake:

  http://fmatlas.com/view/pitosalas/20061127_lakewinnepesaukee

  #computing
• 2006-11-23

  Does a network enabled USB hub exist?

  Ok, assembled masses: I’ve rearranged my office and now my USB connected printers are farther away from the computer and closer to an ethernet connection. So, what I need is a USB hub which connects with an RJ45 rather than to a computer. I guess that would make it a Netwrok Enabled USB hub.

  Can’t find it on the web, but maybe it has a different name. Anyone know what I need?

  Technorati Tags: networking, USB

• 2006-11-23

  AllofMp3 Getting nervous

  I’ve written about AllOfMp3.com before. I can’t say other than it’s a pirated music site. You can buy mp3’s of music of all kinds, from a nice catalog, at ridiculously low prices (like $3 or less for a complete album.)

  Some wags have suggested that AllofMp3 proves that people are totally willing to pay for downloaded music as long as the price is right. Yeah, like people are totally willing to pay for a BMW as long as the price is right. Other rumors have been that AllOfMp3 is always one step away from being shut down because the WTO has made closing down of ...

  Read more →

  #culture
• 2006-11-22

  Who comes to your thanksgiving dinner?

  Kottke points to anamusing set of logic questions posted by “3 Quarks Daily” with the (silly – you’ll see why) suggestion that it might make good dinner table conversation this Thanksgiving (in the US , of course 🙂 I won’t repeat Kottke’s quote of the Rope Burning Question, but you should check it out. The scenario is about two ropes which burn at different rates, but take always take exactly an hour, and you have a lighter. It ends with: “Now you are asked to measure a period of 45 minutes. How will you do it?”

  I thought about it for about 60 seconds. Clearly the answer is: “I use a stopwatch.”

  I don’t think that’s the answer that Kottke or Abbas Raza had in mind, but that’s the kind of crowd that sits around my table… You?

  #science
• 2006-11-21

  Glickr Makes It Easy to Make Cheap Animations