Blog Posts

May 2010

• 2010-05-06

  Sinking in a sea of documents

  Lately because of one of my projects I am having to work my way through a bunch of long, semi structured documents containing things such as requests for proposals, government program reports, threat models and all kinds of things like that. They are in techno-legalese as I would call them: highly structured, with section numbering and 3, 4 and 5 levels of nesting. All in English, they look like the writers were getting paid by the word if you know what I mean. I need a more efficient way to locate those paragraphs of nuggets that matter to me. So what I’d like is kind of a local document index/repository, that would allow me to have some standing queries and easily locate sections in docume...

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  #technology
• 2010-05-05

  Spy vs. Spy

  Here’s a great article by Malcolm Gladwell in The New Yorker about espionage. Most of the content comes from a couple of books that he essentially is summarizing, but in his inimical style make more fun and fascinating: He tells the U.S. Ambassador that the Soviets have broken the Americans’ secret code. “We know they know our code,” the Ambassador, Moulsworth, replies, beaming. “We only give them things we want them to know.” The general pauses, during which, the play’s stage directions say, “he tries to make head or tail of this intelligence.” Then he crosses the street to the Russian Embassy, where he ...

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• 2010-05-02

  The funny thing about iPhone apps

  So a friend of mine told me of his iPhone app, called Etude. He sung the praises, it sounds really cool to me. So I whipped out my iPhone and went to download the app. Wouldn’t you know it costs $4.99. I turned to him and I said, hey, “it’s not free!”. Yeah silly reaction, given how I’ve ranted myself about free and not-free. And here’s the funnier part still. He said, Oh, yes, it’s $3.00. I said, “No it’s more like $5.00”. He said, “Oh yes, we just raised the price.” I gave him a blank look.

  Here’s the kicker. He said, “What if I give you $5.00 right now?”.

  I still didn’t want to buy it… How does that make any sense?

  #apple

April 2010

• 2010-04-30

  The “T Word” – Trust

  I am not sure exactly what this article about Trust means exactly, but it’s thought provoking, don’t you think? “Trust is present or it is absent. Grab a nerd and he’ll tell you that even the absence of trust is a measure of trust and that particular measure is zero. When trust is non-zero (which is better, believe me) it is based on one of two methodologies — empiricism or transparency (the other T-word).” (from I, Cringely)

• 2010-04-28

  Bring me different rocks

  Scott Kirsner summarizes a new book “Mastering the VC game” and re-tells a funny VC scenario: “He also talks about an exercise called the “rock fetch,” when VCs ask an entrepreneur to spend time finding other investors willing to join them on the investment (bringing them “rocks”), but then decline to collaborate on a deal with those investors (“bring us a different rock.”)” (from Scott Kirsner)

  Ok, not really funny. More sad depressing poignant familiar…

  #business
• 2010-04-27

  Two fun (to me) articles about arcane mathematical topics

  Ok, probably to a mathematician these are not arcane, but to normal people (oops, sorry, I love mathematicians) I think they might be. Anyway, read and enjoy without any further commentary:

  Needle-in-a-haystack Problems: “[snip…]A needle-in-a-haystack problem is a problem where the right answer is very difficult to determine in advance, but it’s easy to recognize the right answer if someone points it out to you. Faced with a big haystack, it’s hard to find the needle; but if someone tells you where the needle is, it’s easy to verify that they’re right[snip…]”

  ...

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  #mathematics
• 2010-04-27

  Sequoia Voting System Witch Hunt, err… Study Project

  Check this post Sequoia Voting System Witch Hunt, err… Study Project from Coder’s Revolution: Matt Woodward pointed out this Slash Dot article today about the accidental release of code from the Sequoia Voting Systems and a web site dedicated to st...

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• 2010-04-26

  CAPTCHA’s cracked

  CAPTCHA is the nickname of the venerable (ok only a few years of veneration) technique of verifying if the person on the other side of the screen is actually a person not a computer. We’ve all seen them a million times: a very hard to read bit of text in a small box, with a request that you decipher it and type in the text into another box. Well it seems that spammers have figured out a way to defeat them: yes, you guessed it, “Captcha Farms.” I first thought they were some exaggerated fear mongering but I suppose their commonplace enough that it’s being reported even in, the, g-u-l-p, New York Times:

  ...

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• 2010-04-23

  Security by obscurity and other slogans

  If you’ve been in computing for any time you may have been hit over the head by the slogan “Security by Obscurity is No Security”. As I have understood the argument it has a few components:

  If your security relies on secret tricks, trap doors, and a hope that no one will be able to find out or guess the work around, then you’re fooling yourself. Sooner or later someone will be able to guess the trick, see the code, quit your company and take the secret with them. Allowing your code and methods to be inspected and analyzed by the public (bad guys included) is the only way to learn about weaknesses that you would be blind to and give you a chance to close them. The other slogan which I will t...

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• 2010-04-19

  [GEEKY] iPhone earphones revisited

  The earphone/microphone that came with my iPhone is acting odd. First I thought it was a problem with my ear, then with my iPhone, but it seems to be a problem with the earphones, which I never thought of as something that could actually fail, except if I broke it physically. The sound quality is just fine, but it only gets 1/2 as loud as it should. How do I know? If I plug in a pair of brand-x earphones, I get the right sound level. Is this a plausible failure mode for the earphones?

  P.s. Have you noticed that all these earphone pairs, the apple ones, but other brands too, have an unexplained tiny little clip along the wire in which you can slide another part of the wire? Nowhere is the purpose of this thing explained, but yet they all have it. What is it for???

  

  #apple
• 2010-04-14

  A classic article that I finally read

  The article “Reflections on Trusting Trust” is often mentioned in conversation and cited. I finally tracked down and read this classic, and it is indeed a classic of computer science. And typically for classics, it’s short, clear, readable and impactful: “The moral is obvious. You can’t trust code that you did not totally create yourself. (Especially code from companies that employ peoplelike me.) No amount of source-level verification or scrutiny will protect you from using untrusted code. In demonstrating the possibility of this kind of attack, I picked on the C compiler. I could have picked on any program-handling program such as an assembler, a loader, or even hardware microcode. As the level of program gets lower, these bugs will be harder and harder to detect. A well installed microcode bug will be almost impossible to detect.” (from Reflections on Trusting Trust)

  #computer-science
• 2010-04-11

  What about that iFad?

  I am not going to spend bits talking about the iFad (other than deploying my snarky nickname for it) but if you are interested here’s a (very positive in fact) review it by uber-technology taste maker Walt Mossberg: Apple iPad Review: Laptop Killer? Pretty Close.

  #apple

March 2010

• 2010-03-25

  Huntington Theatre in Boston IS BACK!

  They may not like me to say this, but as a longtime subscriber, I’ve been very disappointed for the last several seasons at the Huntington Theater in Boston. A very hit or miss program with only a few memorable plays. Well I did stick with the Huntington and it’s time for me to say, like, Randy Jackson of American Idol: “The Huntington Theatre Is Back (man)”

  This year we’ve been treated to a series of memorable, interesting, well produced shows. It’s been a pleasure.

  Most recently, and still running are ...

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  #boston
• 2010-03-24

  How to write dramatically

  David Mamet (supposedly) wrote this compelling note to tv writers for the now-defunct tv show “The Unit” (which I thought was a really good tv show.) If you like TV you will enjoy reading this. Gems such as: “THE PROBLEM IS THIS: TO DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN DRAMA AND NON-DRAMA. LET ME BREAK-IT-DOWN-NOW.”

  “ANY TIME ANY CHARACTER IS SAYING TO ANOTHER “AS YOU KNOW”, THAT IS, TELLING ANOTHER CHARACTER WHAT YOU, THE WRITER, NEED THE AUDIENCE TO KNOW, THE SCENE IS A CROCK OF SHIT.”

  And much much more. See “Letter From David Mamet”.

  

• 2010-03-20

  Steve Jobs helps Organ Donors

  Steve Jobs says: “I almost died” in interesting article: Apple CEO Steve Jobs joins Schwarzenegger to push organ donor registry

  #apple
• 2010-03-16

  Health Care Letdown

  I stopped posting thoughts about the mess that all of congress has made of health care reform. There are daily articles in the news to confirm the dysfunction in government today. Here are key quotes two from today which again hit home. I recommend that you read both articles in full:Health Care Letdown in the New York Times and The Spirit of Sympathy in The New York Times ...

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  #politics #health

February 2010

• 2010-02-24

  The Semantic Web, RDF, Freebase and now, DBpedia

  I was talking with Noah Mendelsohn this morning and we got into a discussion about RDF and it’s role in the world. Noah mentioned something called DBPedia which I had not heard of. DBPedia but it turns out to be a platform that grabs and analyzes Wikipedia content and delivers all that it can as an RDF Service. This sounds a lot like Freebase, another service which I am a fan of too, which has it’s own representations and standards, but among many other things, grabs and analyzes Wikipedia content and opt...

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  #wikipedia
• 2010-02-23

  Everything is getting more complicated not simpler

  Following on on my post yesterday about “What we don’t understand.” As I was writing it, I was trying to use examples of simple things that just work without handholding, like an old dial telephone. Oh there’s an example. But did you notice how all the old examples are slowly falling away because they are also becoming too complex?

  Cellphone: Ok it just works, but look at how fat the manual is. What percentage of users know how to use what percentage of the features Television: Oops. Do you have the right remote? Wow the picture’s on but no sound! Oh wait, the sound is for Channel 5 but the picture is the DVD Camera: Again, just weigh the manual iPhone: Forget about it. Yes it’s easy for a ...

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  #technology
• 2010-02-23

  Computers are still so hard to understand…

  Dave Winer wrote a bit recently called “What we don’t understand” that lists all the ways in which computers are still so confusing, not only to our elders but also to many others who’s brains are not just wired that way. I (we) am not talking about when your computer breaks, fails to print, hangs or crashes. That’s a different problem, also pretty unacceptable.

  It’s just all the simple simple things. I agree with all his examples. Here’s one: how do you add a contact to the Address Book application on Mac? Oh click that tiny “+” icon. Oh not that tiny plus icon. This one over here. Or, how do you expla...

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  #technology
• 2010-02-21

  Handy site for Boston area techies

  I came across VentureFizz. It’s a broad resource for Boston area techies: “VentureFizz can help you see what’s buzzing in Boston’s tech community” Particularly useful is their Event’s calendar, which as far as I can see is one of the better ones. An analogous site is Greenhorn Connect, which is trying to achieve something similar but seems more focused on up and coming entrepreneurs.

  #boston #technology