Hacking the papal election
I have to admit to being fascinated with the Vatican, and the ancient , elaborate traditions and rules that surround the papacy. Bruce Schneier, in his (excellent) monthly newsletter had a really interesting discussion about the rules and procedures that have been set down (and fairly recently updated) for the papal election:
"As the College of Cardinals prepares to elect a new pope, people like me wonder about the election process. How does it work, and just how hard is it to hack the vote?" (from Crypto-Gram)
Did you realize that the Vatican publishes the complete election rules online? It is quite interesting, if nothing else, to see how detailed they are, and that they are in (the Pope's) first person:
"After careful reflection I have therefore decided that the only form by which the electors can manifest their vote in the election of the Roman Pontiff is by secret ballot, in accordance with the rules set forth below. This form offers the greatest guarantee of clarity, straightforwardness, simplicity, openness and, above all, an effective and fruitful participation on the part of the Cardinals who, individually and as a group, are called to make up the assembly which elects the Successor of Peter." (from UNIVERSI DOMINICI GREGIS)
Who thought of it first? Who cares?
Microsoft and Apple are arguing about who came up first with the idea of having a pervasive search capability built into the OS Apple is shipping it imminently in Tiger, and Microsoft, eventually , in Longhorn. Well let's see: Windows had a broken Find command in the start menu forever. Apple has had find in the finder forever. Microsoft was talking about this kind of pervasive Find capability since Cairo.
"As described by Nash, the Cairo directory will maintain separate stores for files and the directory, but the file system will be extensible so users can add attributes, such as who created it, to a file identifier. The directory will be able to search for objects using those attributes, according to Nash." (from a Network World article of 4/8/96 - 9 Years ago!)****
I say, who cares? It is mind boggling that it's taken them this long to actually make it into the OS. Both Apple and Microsoft are way late. I also say, the only thing that matters is shipping the functionality to customers, and looking at it that way, clearly Apple gets props over Microsoft.
Losing a finger over biometrics
"They stripped Mr Kumaran naked and left him by the side of the road - but not before cutting off the end of his index finger with a machete. (from the BBC)"
There, I got your attention , didn't I? That's from the always fascinating monthly mailing on security, Crypto- Gram, from Bruce Schneier. He has a very interesting piece on "New Risks of Biometrics", where you can see the law of unintended consequences in full bloom:
"It's certainly possible to design fingerprint readers that test for "liveness": pulse, body temperature, etc. But these new security countermeasures will result in new criminal tactics, and the cycle will continue."
A similar scenario was used in the movie "Minority Report" which at the time might have seem outlandish, but now, I guess not so much. By the way, here's another bit of Minority report futurism is now creeping into reality:
"In the futuristic movie "Minority Report," Tom Cruise gestures with his gloved hands to sift through crime-clue data that are displayed on giant screens. With the twist of a wrist he can move information from one column to another or delete items." (from the Wall Street Journal)
Technorati Tags: biometrics
American Idol Existentialism
For you closet viewers of American Idol (the TV Show), I thought you'd be amused by this new TV blog, and it's discussion of some of the latest developments on that show. If you don't know the show, let me briefly tell you about one aspect, the voting model , which has raised some interesting questions. Here 's how the voting works. Every week a set of contestants perform some song, and at the end "America" gets to vote on which one they liked best. Whoever wins the fewest votes that week is booted off and the following week the remaining contestants do it all over again. It has happened more than once that a contestant is booted off, who everyone agrees is among the best. And there's an outcry and wringing of hands about this - how could it happen? Is it racism? The votes are stacked! Here's what I think may be an explanation for oddball results on the polls. When asked to vote for our favorite, my tendency would be NOT to vote for someone that I think is THE BEST, on the theory that they will get lots of votes from others and hence be SAFE anyway. No , I would vote for the one that I think is at risk of being booted even though I think they are great, the underdog , in other words. If everyone did that, then it's possible that the one that everyone thought was the BEST would actually get booted! American Idol Existentialism!
Beg the question? Beg your pardon?
This is amusing. Ever since I learned from glenn , many years ago, that everyone uses "beg the question" incorrectly, I can't help noticing it whenever it's done. Now I see we're not the only one!
IBM Patent Benevolence?
Doc comments with grudging admiration that IBM has decided to give away __ some parts of their much vaunted patent portfolio. One interesting tidbit is that in addition to being responsible for the most patents granted annually, IBM is also the leader in the most patents allowed to expire annually. Why? Because keeping all those patents current is very costly , and if there is no economic benefit to having those patents, that's a lot of money down the shute. So maybe some clever strategist/marketer (difference?) probably realized that the PR value of open sourcing these worthless patents might actually be the most valuable of all!
No women tigers?
No
I am not talking about Tiger Woods
(who also is not a woman) but
about the "Engineers Who Created Tiger", according to a recent bit of Apple
Marketing. (Tiger is the name
of the new release of the Mac OS X operating system.) A odd image to portray,
IMHO.
Is Google setting the hook?
Recently, GMail raised the free storage available to all subscribers to 2 Gig! Amazing isn't it? I don't know how they do it - they must have a monstrous number of subscribers all over the world. And they are getting hooked , really hooked. Take me for example - I was getting worried when I had about 600 Meg of archival emails, in about 4 months! What would I do when it filled up? And then they raised the limit. Talk about lock-in! GMail is essential different from all other Google services, in that they are storing personal and private information. It cannot have escaped Google that they could decide from one day to the next to start charging for this. It could be very modest. $1 per month? $5.95 per month? Yes there would be the usual self-righteous outcry from the entitlement crowd, but I bet perhaps in 6 or 12 months the number of defections wouldn't be proportionally, that high. And the amount of revenue would be incredible!
Switcher’s log, Part 8: In conclusion…
I love the fact that I switched to Mac. A lot of the fun is that it's new and different. Also I like the idea that there's UNIX beneath the skin because I wanted to get more familiar with it. Also all the applications are 'prettier ' to look at and that's fun. Of course the machine is blindingly fast but that's just because its so much newer than the pc it replaced. It is clearly more stable than Windows XP. But, it's not all perfect : It does crash sometimes, in mysterious ways. On Windows, I'd be impressed (and nervous) after about 3 days of uptime. On Mac that figure is more like 10 days. But stories about it staying up 6 months at a time don 't seem true. Also I don't understand the internals nearly as well so when some app misbehaves it's more mysterious to me. No cranking up of regedit and so on. I am gradually picking up how this works, but I am a long way behind where I was on Windows. The menu stuck to the top of the primary monitor is still ridiculous. The fact that there are so many keyboard shortcuts that you need to know to be efficient is silly. And that you have this tiny resize corner control instead of being able to use all edges to resize is also primitive. Net net - its a lot of fun, and I am glad I did it. If I was doing different kind of work I might think different 🙂 But I am not in the camp that says that OS X is simply superior to Windows XP. I would say it's different, in a good way.
Switcher’s Log, Part 7: How can Apple be so brain dead about usability?
Everyone says that the reason they like the Mac and OS X is that it 's so easy to use! I am not so sure that it's any easier to use than Windows XP. Yes OS X has some snazzy user interface frills and it's quite easy to use. But notwithstanding that some of these brain-dead UI decisions bely the reputation of unsurpassed usability :
Where is the menu? Even with two large screens attached to an OS X system, the menu bar is always glued to the top edge of the main screen. So I am looking at a little app running in the corner of my second display, and it's menu is at the top of the other screen. Huh?
What app is running? How about this one: I can close all the windows of an application, and it is still running, in fact it is the current application. The only way I can tell is by looking at the menu bar at the top of the main screen. Huh?
Resizing windows: The only way to resize most windows is by dragging around the right bottom corner, which can be off the screen or hidden. Oh and there is a kind of window that looks different (so called "brushed metal") where are the edges are resize handles - like windows - but there is no visual indication. Huh?
Keyboard Shortcuts everywhere Surprisingly there's a greater reliance on keyboard shortcuts on OS X than I ever saw on Windows. There are launchers to allow you to launch an app without looking for it on disk. Lots of useful functionality is only exposed with Shift-this or control-that or alt-the other thing. And then those wonderful little F-keys - a total of 16! But there are no keys to go to the start of a line (Control-A) or the end (Control-E). And no play, pause, etc. keys. Huh?