Hossein Derakhshan was recently released from jail in Iran. He’s written a long and thoughtful article “The Web We Have to Save.” It’s worth reading in full, but here’s an excerpt: Some of it is visual. Yes, it is true that all my posts on Twitter and Facebook look something similar to a personal blog: […]
At BruCon 0x06, I was awoken from a nap to the sound of canons, and looked out my window to see soldiers marching through the streets. It turns out they were celebrating the 200th anniversary of the Treaty of Ghent. As I’m sure you’ll recall from history class Wikipedia, the Treaty of Ghent ended the […]
This is a lovely little story about pay phones on Whidbey Island. Warning: those who spent too much time with phone systems in their youth may feel inexplicable nostalgia.
So there’s a working set of plans for the “Liberator.” It’s a working firearm you can print on a 3d printer. You can no longer get the files from the authors, whose site states: “DEFCAD files are being removed from public access at the request of the US Department of Defense Trade Controls. Until further […]
In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776 The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which […]
Fifteen years ago, I posted a copy of “Source Code Review Guidelines” to the web. I’d created them for a large bank, because at the time, there was no single document on writing or reviewing for security that was broadly available. (This was a about four years before Michael Howard and Dave LeBlanc published Writing […]
Emergent Chaos has a long tradition of posting the American Declaration of Independence here to celebrate the holiday. It’s a good document in many ways. It’s still moving, more than two centuries after it was written. It’s clearly written, and many people can learn from its structured approach to presenting a case. And last but […]
There’s an excellent column in the old liberal tradition of celebrating liberty in this week’s New Yorker. It’s Memorials by Adam Goptnick, and includes a quote from John Stuart Mill at his rhetorical peak.
The people of Tunisia have long been living under an oppressive dictator who’s an ally of the US in our ‘war on terror.’ Yesterday, after substantial loss of life, street protests drove the dictator to abdicate. There’s lots of silly technologists claiming it was twitter. A slightly more nuanced comment is in “Sans URL” Others, […]
It’s MLK Day. Here’s a pdf of the speech. Or watch it online:
Paul Kedrosky writes: Most of us have heard the story of armoring British bombers, as it’s too good not to share, not to mention being straight from the David Brent school of management motivation. Here is the Wikipedia version: Bomber Command’s Operational Research Section (BC-ORS), analysed a report of a survey carried out by RAF […]
Rachel Tayse over at Hounds In The Kitchen, has an awesome Repeal Day Rant on why repeal day isn’t as good as it sounds. Yet again I feel a lot less free.
There’s been a lot of discussion about the paper written by mathematician Vinay Deolalikar on this interesting problem. The P!=NP problem is so interesting that there’s a million-dollar prize for solving it. It might even be interesting because there’s a million-dollar prize for solving it. It might also have some applicability to computer science and […]
Twenty years ago today, Nelson Mandela was released from prison on Robben Island, where he was imprisoned for 27 years for considering violence after his rights to free speech and free association were revoked by the government. I learned a lot about the stories when I visited South Africa, and then more when my mom […]
On January 30th, 1649, Charles I was beheaded for treason. He refused to enter a defense, asserting that as monarch, he was the law, and no court could try him. That same defense is raised today by Milošević, Hussien and other tyrants. The story of how John Cooke built his arguments against that claim is […]
Asked about the timing, the unbriefed propaganda minister mumbled: “As far as I know, effective immediately.” When that was reported on television, the Berliners were off. Baffled border guards who would have shot their “comrades” a week earlier let the crowd through—and a barrier that had divided the world was soon being gleefully dismantled. West […]
Bruce Schneier points in his blog to an article in The Telegraph in which Steve Ballmer blames the failure of Vista on security. Every security person around should clear their throat loudly. Security is not what made Vista unpalatable. Many people liked Vista. My tech reporter friends not only adored it, but flat couldn’t understand […]
That on the first day of January in the year of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any state, or designated part of a state, the people whereof thenceforward, and forever free; and the executive government of the United States [including the military and naval authority thereof] […]
South African runner Caster Semenya won the womens 800-meter, and the attention raised questions about her gender. Most of us tend to think of gender as pretty simple. You’re male or you’re female, and that’s all there is to it. The issue is black and white, if you’ll excuse the irony. There are reports that: […]
Once apon a time, I was uunet!harvard!bwnmr4!adam. Oh, harvard was probably enough, it was a pretty well known host in the uucp network which carried our email before snmp. I was also harvard!bwnmr4!postmaster which meant that at the end of an era, I moved the lab from copied hosts files to dns, when I became […]
Demonstrating that no one’s data is safe, the names, pay records, and other personal information of 90,000 English soldiers was placed on the Internet. These soldiers, who served with king Henry V at Agincourt now have their information listed at www.medievalsoldier.org, exposing them to the chance of identity theft after nearly 500 years. They soldiers […]
It’s hard not to like a holiday which celebrates the storming of a prison and the end of a monarchy. Photo: Vytenis Benetis .
My usual celebration of Independence day is to post, in its entirety, the Declaration of Independence. It’s very much worth reading, but this year, there’s a little twist, from a delightful story starring Lawren Smithline and Robert Patterson, with a cameo by Thomas Jefferson. Patterson sent Jefferson a letter which read, in part: “I shall […]
Happy 200th Birthday, Charles Darwin.
Following on my post on Parliaments, Dukes and Queens, I’d like to talk about other checks on the power of government, besides throwing tea into the harbor. In Britian, “a jury has failed to clear police in the death of Jean Charles de Menezes.” The jury is the first group who, frankly, has not whitewashed […]
It was 235 years ago today that the Sons of Liberty threw tea into Boston harbor, and they still haven’t been able to clean the place up. Please join me in celebrating this most American response to taxation.
Four interesting stories recently, all having to do with the ancient relationship between a sovereign and a parliament, or the relationship of hereditary rulership to democracy. I secretly admire the emergent forms of government which have proven stable despite their chaotic origins. I’m fascinated by these imperfectly republican nations like Canada and the United Kingdom, […]
People often make the claim that something is “as intuitive as dialing the phone.” As I was listening to “Dave Birch interviewing Ben Laurie,” I was reminded of this 1927 silent film: Ben commented on people having difficulty with the CardSpace user interface, and it not being as intuitive as having your email address being […]
Yesterday, Nov 17, was the sesquicentenary of the zero-date of the American Ephemeris. I meant to write, but got distracted. Astronomical ephemeris counts forward from this date. That particular date was picked because it was (approximately) Julian Day 1,000,000, but given calendar shifts and all, one could argue for other zero dates as well. The […]
Some time ago, was on an extended stay in Tokyo for work. When one is living there, there are things one must do, like make an effort to live up to being a henna gaijin. I must disagree with those who translate that as “strange foreigner.” The proper translation is “crazy foreigner.” I’d never heard […]
And the reason it doesn’t work is that just because you’re allowed to own something doesn’t mean you’re allowed to export it. The use, ownership, production, etc. of crypto was never restricted, only its export. In an Intenet-enabled world, export control brings lots of hair with it, which is why it was important to fight […]
One of my long-term interests in security is the ongoing cost of secrecy. My current favorite example is the stack smashing buffer overflow. These were known and understood no later than 1972, and clearly documented in James P. Anderson’s Computer Security Technology Planning Study: The code performing this function does not check the source and […]
Bletchley Park, the site in the UK where WWII code-breaking was done, has a computing museum. The showpiece of that museum is Colossus, one of world’s first computers. (If you pick the right set of adjectives, you can say “first.” Those adjectives are apparently, “electronic” and “programmable.”) It has been rebuilt over the last fourteen […]
The Paper of Record has a hilarious article, “Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?” which asks important questions about what Those Darn Kids are doing — spending their time using a mixture of hot media and cold media delivered to them over the internets. I’ll get right to the point before I start ridiculing […]
There’s a fascinating article at The Long Now Foundation, “Richard Feynman and The Connection Machine,” by Danny Hillis. It’s a fun look into the interactions of two of the most interesting scientist/engineers of the last 40 years.
I’d like to review two recent books on the war on terror: “Bush’s Law: The Remaking of American Justice” by by Eric Lichtblau, and “Less Safe, Less Free: Why America Is Losing the War on Terror” by David Cole and Jules Lobel. Both are well written assaults on the way in which the Bush administration […]
There’s an article in the Washington Post, “In the Course of Human Events, Still Unpublished.” It’s about how the papers of the founding fathers of the United States are still not available except in physical form, and the scholarly practice that keeps them there. Many of the founding fathers’ letters have been transcribed and made […]
A salami attack is when you take a very small amount of money from an awful lot of accounts. The canonical example is a bank programmer depositing sub-cent amounts of interest in a special account. These rounding errors add up. I’m trying to find the first actual documented theft or attempted theft using this attack. […]
Last week, the CIA released a document they called ‘The Family Jewels.’ This compendium of shameful acts has gotten a lot of press, and I have not a lot to add. I did like this bit, mentioned in the Washington Post, “Trying to Kill Fidel Castro:” Maheu made the pitch on Sept. 14, 1960, at […]
Today, in 1969, Neil Armstrong walked on the moon.
Reading Arthur’s “What Me Data Share?” and Chris’ “CSI/FBI Survey considered harmful,” I realized that what they’re discussing may not be common knowledge. I also realized that my posts about how valuable disclosure laws are assumed that everyone knows what Chris and Arthur said, and that ain’t so. The lack of information sharing that plagues […]