| Let Me Upgrade You | 6:18 PM |
I purposely stopped blogging here because I thought I was going to start a couple of new blogging projects. Except I just kept thinking about them and didn't end up starting either one.
So I'm back here now and contemplating upgrades. This blog software is ancient and needs a lot of hand holding to do simple things like updating the side nav. I can never remember which side nav file to edit. And I have to manually run the perl script everytime I add a new entry (I could set up a cron job but that might take me 30 seconds). I have to touch a file if I edit it to maintain the original timestamp. I can't turn on commenting or any of the other bells and whistles up to date, modern blogs have without installing and configuring additional software. I feel like I'm a decade behind.
I've always been a do-it-myself kind of girl. Use the software I have the most control over, write my own apps. But these days, I find it's foolish to try to do everything yourself. What you want is to be able to pull data from all your multiple sources and get it in one place. The other thing that I'm slowly starting to enjoy is the social aspect of sites like flickr.com and goodreads.com -- you can share books with your friends and browse other people's neat photos, make comments on, make new friends, join communities of like minded folks.
I know, I know, online communities were all the new thing like 10 years ago or more, and I have a bunch of profiles that prove I was aware of this long ago, but I clung to the old notion that my data, my content, had to be hosted only on a server I owned for a very long time. It took me forever to get on flickr because I was torn about this -- my files on someone else's server? It used to make me uncomfortable. Now, I appreciate and understand the value of these services. The only thing I'm concerned about now is migrating content over from one app to another. I moved all of my book reviews to goodreads, but that was easy because I only had 5 or 6 of them here. What about all my photo albums that aren't in flickr? Or all these blog entries when I move to blogger? I haven't quite figured that one out yet.
| E-Gold | 1:35 AM |
Damn...E-Gold charged with money laundering. They've been investigating it for some time now, but the indictment is in with a nice doomsday quote from the FBI. I wonder what this means for the future of anonymous money, though I'm fairly certain that at some point, there will be no such thing as anonymous money. Every financial transaction will leave some sort of trace back to you.
| I Google; You Google | 2:03 AM |
My blog is a funny thing to me. I've been working on/thinking about this anonymity post for over two weeks now for my blog and still haven't completed it. I've been thinking about giving up this blog cause it's so damn personal. And so tied to my real name. Online forum profiles are an interesting phenomena because you can know so much about someone by his/her posts, and never know his/her real name, or anything else about that person he/she doesn't want you to know.
Someone I don't know very well told me today that he'd googled me and found out way more about me than he would've guessed. Whether he meant guessed he could've found out, or guessed about me, I'm not really sure. This always makes me feel embarassed. Which is ironic because I put all out here for the world to see, so can I really be surprised people find it? And can I be so public and embarassed at the same time? Yes.
Don't get me wrong, I'm totally flattered whenever anyone googles me. I, myself, google everyone. Anyone I have the teeniest, tiniest interest in. People who give interesting talks, people I meet randomly, people at work, friends, family, people I used to know, people with interesting profiles -- anyone and everyone. Though I've been wondering lately, is that normal? I got the feeling once that someone thought it was weird, and I remember thinking it was weird that person thought it was weird. Doesn't everyone use google in this way?
| miniPod | 1:11 AM |
i had to pick up a nano tonight so i could return the ex's loaner ipod (mine needs a new harddrive) so i was on the apple website and saw the iphone. i've been wrapped up in my own little head the last couple of days thinking girly thoughts so i've missed most of the buzz on it. i whipped around to my cubemate and asked in a flurry, do you want to go to the apple store with me tonight to look at the iphone?! he gave me a quizzical look and said, is it going to be there? they don't come out until june. d'oh!
if you haven't seen it, where've you been these last couple of days?! perhaps like me, you were wistfully thinking of something else :) but oh my god, it is so freakin' beautiful.
| myspace | 12:28 AM |
myspace came up in conversation last night, which was funny because i'd been meaning to blog about it after my weekend love affair with it. it's fascinating how 1990s a lot of the profiles are -- giant images, gaudy backgrounds, blinking multi-colored text, music playing in the background, text you can't read over the loud background images/colors, and endless profiles that match this description. i thought we'd left the 90s. i thought that web sites had grown up and matured. but i'm thinking now that this is most peoples' sense of aesthetics. they think this looks good. or they're so excited about what they can do, that they don't care it doesn't look good -- it flashes and is colorful and pretty cause i made it, yay!
it's really cute.
so i was trying to explain how i was forced into a myspace account. i've got a friendster account, an orkut account, i think even a tribe account. i'm linkedin, on classmates.com, and i yelp and i barf -- not to mention i'm on match.com and personals.yahoo.com (both with hidden profiles because i keep telling myself i'm not quite ready to date yet :) how many profiles can one person maintain?
so someone signed up with my email address, i started getting her myspace emails, got tired of it, deleted her account. she or someone else signed up immediately with my email address again, and this time i just updated the password and took over the account. filled out a minimal profile, no pic. then added a lame pic, then recently some decent pics, and voila! i have a myspace account! and last weekend i started really poking around on the site -- looking at profiles, reading all my old email and responding to people, researching groups, etc. for a second i thought to myself, josh has a myspace account, am i supposed to ask him to be my friend?, then immediately wiped that thought from my mind -- what 13, soon to be 14 year old boy would want to have his mom listed as a friend?! that is so gross.
so anyway -- i got a nice date out of it and met some interesting people. you can't fight the tide of popularity. but fuck, you can laugh at it.
| Pink! | 1:36 AM |
I've been dying to do a pink layout and here it is. I started playing with it on Saturday, hammered out this layout last night, and got it up today (yay me!). The album layout hasn't been updated yet, but I am glad to be rid of that drab grey at least here for now.
I'm starting to get excited about development again. Ed was telling me about the Google Web Toolkit last night and I was genuinely interested in it. Not only interested, but had an intense desire to go find out more about it and to play with it.
At work, I've got an interesting new project to start on, and I didn't think I'd be excited at work again, but I am. I'm looking forward to sitting down and designing a new app and writing some code.
That said, I have to admit how stupid I am with CSS. I know I'm not supposed to use tables anymore, but I've used them for so long I can't live without them. Setting up CSS to use two or three columns? Forget it. All that relative and absolute positioning fucks me up. Nothing ever ends up quite where I want it. I'm a sucky designer, too. I have to look at about 50 sites to gather enough ideas and tidbits in my head to try to make my own thing. And when I do, I'm not sure if it's actually well designed -- I just like the way it looks or the colors I've picked. For example, I know my new header is rather large and for no good reason other than I originally wanted to put three photographs at the top. But you can only make photographs so tiny. I put that other stuff in there just because it fit -- not because it made especial sense to put it there. At least big headers seem to be all the rage now so I'm not too ashamed of it.
I swear I'm much better at coding than I am at CSS. Really.
| My Photo Album is a Star! | 7:36 AM |
Someone blogged about my album application! Someone completely random -- and by that I mean someone I don't know (as in not a friend giving me a plug). I only found out about it because someone else emailed me asking if they could download it. Which made me feel both really good and semi-guilty. This was always one of those projects I wanted to complete and make open source so other people could use it, but of course, I just started using in when it was done enough and never did get around to finishing it. Ah well...it's nice that someone still liked it :)
| micropod | 12:34 AM |
i picked up one of those ipod shuffles this weekend for the gym. and i think i hate it. i haven't even taken it to the gym yet, but i hate it. it's slow as molasses in updating (i'm pretty sure i'm using a usb 2.0 port, but i'm going to check the hardware specs tomorrow). and the switch on the back to toggle power/no shuffle/shuffle feels like it's made of rice paper. i guess i'll need to fuck around with it, but as a consumer product it's pretty hard to recover from immediate and intense dislike only minutes after you've been unpackaged.
| RFIDs in Passports | 1:11 PM |
Good god...the State Department is planning on putting RFIDs in passports. Note to self: must get valid passport before spring...
| Predicting Your Fast Food Order | 10:19 PM |
I love this! A bunch of CMU guys got together and formed a company called HyperActive Technologies (their crappy flash site doesn't work in FireFox on the Mac) and they've created a product called HyperActive Bob that predicts fast food orders based on the cars driving into the lot. Bigger cars, more food and a tendency towards kids meals, chicken nuggets and french fries; smaller cars means more hamburgers. The initial trial was at a McDonald's in Chippewa, Pennsylvania, but they've got them in 7 McDonald's and a Burger King and a Taco Bell in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida now.
Advanced Interfaces, also of Pennsylvania, has a similar, but more advanced technology. It records images of people entering a restaurant and makes inferences based on gender and age. Women like salads, men like meat. You get the idea.
All this, of course, immediately makes me think about the privacy implications of all these cameras on rooftops and doorways. My guess is that they're not storing these recorded images indefinitely, just long enough to make the calculations and update cook orders. But what's to say they won't? Advanced Interfaces has a video mining service for customers to send in hours and hours of recorded video tape for analysis. So, hypothetically, you could be recorded on videotape entering your favorite retail shop or restaurant, and then that footage could get sent to AI. A human being isn't watching all that video. A human might not ever see any of that video footage, but eventually widely available imaging technology could be sophisticated enough to be able to make out who you are. In any given geographical area, someone somewhere -- human or computer, could piece together your entire daily, weekly, monthly schedule. It's a hypothetical, but certainly not a far fetched one.
A part of me finds this creepy, and a part of me is fascinated by the marketing aspect of all this information. And how easily you can predict behavior and influence it.
| Burn Your Own Green Day CDs | 12:19 PM |
Now this is clever: blank CDs with Green Day album covers. So you can burn Green Day CDs on appropriately labeled CDs. 7.99 for 4. This is something I would totally buy into. I've got a huge stack of CDs with no labels except what I've penned in -- I burn everything I purchase on iTunes. And I miss the artwork of buying CDs in person (and the cases). I like that they're doing something especially for file-sharing fans. And they get to make a little extra money to boot.
| Carnivorous Robots! | 12:52 AM |
I was just reading about EcoBot II, the fly eating robot. It's got 8 microbial fuel cells that flies get sucked into. The chitin exoskeleton gets broken down into glucose, the bacteria break up the glucose and generate electrons to power EcoBot II with electricity. On a full stomach (8 flies -- one in each fuel cell), it can go for 5 full days. But it takes 12 minutes to generate enough electricity for it to walk one 2cm step. That's 5 steps and hour, 120 steps a day, 600 steps in 5 days. It's probably not getting too far on a full stomach. But imagine if you could go for 5 days on a single meal..
The predecessor to EcoBot II was SlugBot, which hunted for slugs using its imaging systems. But its methane-based system took too long to power up. And EcoBot II draws its food to itself by reaking of sewage. Saves itself all that hunting and gathering time.
| Don't Forget Your RFID | 1:34 AM |
I was reading an article in the hardcopy version of New Scientist (couldn't find the article online to link to) about a new application of RFID -- a watch that you could program with important items that you couldn't leave the home or office without. You'd tag your keys, pager, cell phone, etc with small RFID stickers. The actual reader is too large to fit into a watch so you would have to install an RFID reader in the doorway of your house, or take advantage of RFID readers we already come in contact with out in the wild -- like the card reader at work that lets you in the door. The readers would ping the tags, the watch would decode that data and buzz an alarm if you tried to leave your house without your house keys or tried to leave work without your pager.
Just imagine the wonderful uses of the forgetfulness watch -- your wife could tag your wedding ring, the grocery list, your small child. Your boss could tag your laptop, the technical documents he wants you to read, the resumes you're supposed to sift through, your pager, cellphone, and blackberry. Every time you'd tried to exit a building, your watch would go off in a beeping frenzy alerting everyone to the fact that yes, you are leaving some important piece of yourself behind. No, you cannot be trusted to take responsibility for your own things; yes, you are shirking some duty or another. You'd really be better off forgetting the damn watch.
I can't wait to get an RFID reader. Imagine the fun things you'd find out about the people around you.
| Score One for P2P! | 9:19 AM |
EFF scores a win for P2P. The Ninth Circuit declares that distributors of peer-to-peer software can't be held liable for what their users do. Don't forget to read Fred's comments on the ruling.
| Robots in the News | 1:05 AM |
Robotic surgery: telerobotic laparoscopic operations performed on 22 people in the last six months in Canada. Looks like Dr. Anvari, who performed the world's first telerobotic assisted surgery about a year and a half ago in February 2003, continues his mission to prove the safety and feasibility of these procedures in the hopes of widespread adoption. It sounds like he's succeeding at it, too.
And Seiko Epson creates the world's lightest flying mircoboot. 12.6 grams with the battery installed -- that's less than half an ounce -- and less than 1/32 of a pound. And it takes photos! It doesn't seem to work that well yet, but it'll get there. Here's another article with a picture.
| Implanting RFID | 8:24 AM |
Short little article about a pilot project in a New York hospital tagging patients with RFIDs. The RFID tag holds name, date of birth, sex and a medical record number. Doctors and staff carry around RFID readers, tablet PCs and have wifi access to the medical network. Seems like a lot of shit to be carrying around. And what about the privacy and security issues with wifi access to medical records?
The funny bit is at the end where they make mention of other RFID tagging projects including a Mexico City one where they implant people with RFIDs, just like they do with dogs and cats! And the related article about Mexicans afraid of being kidnapped getting chipped is hilarious.
| Inking Metallic Patterns; Cheaper RFID Tags | 11:19 AM |
Interesting article about an ink produced by QinetiQ and Sun Chemical that allows you to draw patterns and "grow" metal. Useful, of course, for RFID tags. It's supposed to be cheaper, faster, and more environment friendly. RFID Journal article; QinetiQ press release.
| RSA Security Chief Scientist on RFID | 12:37 PM |
QA with Burt Kaliski. He makes good, rational points. He doesn't say much that's new in the RFID conversation, however he makes mention of something that I haven't heard any discussion about yet -- that deactivating the RFID tag also disables benefits of the tag. Currently privacy advocates believe that having the ability to disable the tag at will is a good thing. And while it may be a good thing now for privacy, I agree with Kaliski that there has to be another way to safeguard privacy and still be able to take advantage of the technology. If killing the tags is the only way to ensure my privacy, then my dreams of a smart fridge are never going to be realized.
| RFID re-emerges | 1:41 AM |
It seems like RFID news has been quiet until recently. So far there hasn't been any talk of federal regulation of RFIDs, but now the U.S. Federal Trade Commission has scheduled a June 21st workshop to discuss RFID and the effect on consumers. Written comments about the uses of RFID will be accepted until July 9th.
I'm not a huge fan of government regulation, but think it's a good sign that the debate about RFIDs continues to grow. Other recent news includes the RFID News "Ask the Experts" about RFID which interviews five different people from CASPIAN, HP, EPCglobal, EPIC, and Verisign. I love Katherine Albrecht's quote (which was also posted on slashdot):
"In most cases, asking how a company exploring item-level RFID tagging can protect their customers' privacy is like asking a fox how he can best ensure the safety of your chickens."
Though I disagree with her that "unless they have a financial or professional stake in RFID's success", people aren't going to like the technology. I think the technology is interesting and could be very useful. In the tech ubiquitous home, RFIDs would be a great addition -- I think the refrigerator example exemplifies this -- a computer in your refrigerator door that tells you when your milk is low and displays recipes based on the contents of your fridge. We're quite a ways from that, and a lot of standards and policies need to be figured out in order to both safeguard privacy and allow us this convenience, but I personally would love a smart fridge.
The links off of Albrecht's interview are a great way to introduce yourself to the reasons why we need these discussions if you aren't already familiar with them.
On the other hand, Jack Grasso of the EPCglobal (a non-profit organization; EPC = Electronic Product Code), claims that consumers "overwhelmingly support the use of RFID for the benefits they expect to recieve from the technology". But of course if you ask people if they want safer prescriptions or fresher produce, people are going to say yes. If they don't understand more than that about RFID technology, they're not fair questions to ask. And the group that did that study also just launched a joint RFID venture with Sun. They're not unbiased. The study (which is incorporated in a pamphlet informing and encouraging businesses to better market RFID) by Capgemini (formerly Cap Gemini Ernst and Young) contains quotes like "consumer buy-in is essential given the current public debate", "This finding indicates that many consumers have not yet formed an opinion about RFID, providing an opportunity for businesses to position RFID in a favorable light", and "If the industry fails to educate consumers, that role will default to consumer advocacy groups".
Cédric Laurant, of EPIC, also makes mention of the probable publicity campaign that business interests will likely undertake to make item level RFID palatable and even desirable to the average consumer. He also has a detailed list of the ways in which item level RFID tagging can be deployed in a consumer friendly manner.
| File-sharing still goes on | 11:19 AM |
Who would've guessed: file-sharing continues unabated by the RIAA lawsuits and threats. What will they try next?
| mypod | 11:07 PM |
My iPod has completely changed the way I listen to music. I love music, but I've never been a huge consumer of it. I have a small collection of CDs and I listen to the radio a lot. Before I purchased the iPod, I would pick a CD or two and listen to it/them until I got tired of it and then would listen to another one -- CDs would sit in the CD player sometimes for days, weeks.
But now that I have my entire collection on mypod, I often listen to it on shuffle. If I'm running, I listen to one of my playlists with fast, loud music on it, and if I'm in a particular mood, I listen to a particular album, but usually it's on shuffle. At first I loved it -- hearing songs I'd forgotten about or didn't even know I had. But a few months of that and I was bored with my collection. Sometimes I purposely don't use the iPod so that I can still be able to listen to it again.
So I've begun to consume a lot more music. Used CDs (because new CDs are horrendously expensive) when I'm not sure what I want and need to browse, but mostly using iTunes -- where music is often cheaper than buying new CDs and you get it immediately (well, almost immediately -- you still have to wait for all of it to download).
But I've also been thinking about how tied I am to iTunes. Which, of course, is exactly what Apple wants, right? I can't create a new playlist without iTunes, I can't add new music without iTunes. What good is my iPod when I don't have my mac near me? My mac is no longer my work computer so I don't have it with me at work on a daily basis so I've really begun to notice how useless the iPod is if I want to customize my music without iTunes. I could use it as a harddrive and muck with the files on there, but I can't play any of the music that's on there that's not in my iTunes library without having mypod attached to a computer. Clever, those Apple folks. And selfish, too.
| Best Rump Session Talk | 12:44 AM |
...calls attention to security flaw of blotting words in sensitive docs. More here.
| Not So Moral After All... | 9:06 AM |
So, it's all fine and dandy for me not to 'steal' CDs and music, but the first time I want a piece of media that I can't legally download, I go and do it anyway. I didn't watch the superbowl and only saw the Pepsi commercial with Pink, Beyonce, and Britney somewhat recently. And I've been obsessed with it ever since. Last week, I searched online and got to see the video, but wasn't able to download. So I downloaded a little tool instead, that let me capture the media stream and saved it to my hard drive.
And I've been thinking about it ever since. If I could buy the commercial I would -- I want a quality copy of it, but no one seems to sell commercials -- at least not that one anyway. And I know this question gets asked repeatedly -- but where is the harm in what I am doing -- I as in me, not I in a general, all of us are Is, kind of way. Having this commercial in my posession so that I can watch it every day is going to encourage me to consume. I will go and buy Pink and Britney Spears albums. I've got Destiny's Child albums, but maybe I'll go buy the Beyonce album, too. I'm easily influenced by music. I'm a huge fan of commercials -- I was talking to a friend of mine about this -- but I'm of the first generation to have grown up with MTV during our formative years and I've been hugely influenced by music videos -- those short clips of amazing and interesting video and sound. My attention span is short, and if you can keep my interest before I zone out, then I'm sold on whatever it is you have to sell -- clothes, music, sex, car insurance. Pair your product with some hot pop stars, and I'm a drooling mess.
I admit I'm guilty of doing something I shouldn't have done, but I'll make up for it.
That three minute, gladiator commercial was produced by Abbot Mead Vickers, BBDO London. Go view the commercials at bbdo.com -- they're all awesome. You can watch the Pepsi commercial here.
| Robotic Orange Cones | 2:04 AM |
"Herds of robotic traffic cones" might eventually be closing down lanes on a freeway near you -- humans safely on the side of the road away from potential harm. These new road markers have a leader (called the shepard) who herds his little sheep into line to demarcate closed sections of road. The shepard is equipped with GPS, the human on the side of the road sits and tells the shepard where to go, the shepard watches over his little flock and goes and turns off any bad, straying sheep so it stays out of harm's way. Isn't that cute?
| Send Me Email | 4:13 PM |
I signed up for a new gmail account -- Ed and I have been sending each other email to see what kinds of ads we can generate. Gmail generates ads based on the content of your email message. So far in three messages to Ed about 1) sex, 2) cows, 3) bad teeth, I've only managed to have ads generated for the third email -- several dentist/teeth care ads. Care to make an effort by penning me some lovely prose?
| Piracy Doesn't Harm Sales | 10:42 AM |
A New Scientist article says that downloading music doesn't harm CD sales -- in fact, the more a song is downloaded, the better the album sells. Wow, who would've guessed that the RIAA might've been barking up the wrong tree.
| First Day at Google | 11:20 AM |
- Toilet seat warmers that made me giggle non-stop the first time I sat on them.
- All you can eat trail mix -- most new employees gain an average of 15 pounds after they start working at Google.
- Coffee, espresso, milk -- and engineers who explain how to make the perfect cup every time.
- A workstation named "bo-kitty" that I log into as "kat".
- Working next to my best friend -- and keeping him honest :)
| Grand Challenge Results | 5:40 PM |
So it looks like as of 11 this morning the farthest anyone got was 7 miles -- Red Team and SciAutonoics II both made it 7 miles along the 142 mile course. Two cars were withdrawn and the other 13 were disabled. Results here.
| The Grand Challenge | 11:45 AM |
I forgot to mention this before, but Darpa's Grand Challenge -- an unmanned ground vehicle race from Los Angeles to Vegas is this weekend. The first team to finish the course within the time limit will win $1 million. There was an article about the Red Team from CMU in the March 2004 issue of Scientific American which chronicled their successes and failures over the course of several months. It looks bleak for them finishing the race in the allotted time, but it does for all the other contestants, too. However, the race will be annually repeated until someone does win or funding runs out (in 2007 I think).
The Grand Challenge main event is on March 13, 2004.
| Upcoming | 11:52 AM |
I realize I've been writing about RFID like you all know what it is. And a lot of you probably do, but for those of you who don't (or those who want more information) I've been working on putting together some RFID commentary and resources so you can understand the technology better and the privacy concerns and make an informed judgment for yourself. I think it'll be done this weekend...
| RFID Forum | 9:21 AM |
The RFID forum was interesting. It was a mixed panel of librarians, privacy advocates, and a techie grad student from Berkeley. I've never been to a public meeting like this -- the San Francisco Library Commission was there listening to the panel. No action was taken this evening, and no action has been taken so far on the RFID issue except to move forward in considering it.
They have also already put away money for this project -- the first year's funding for the RFID implementation has already been put away. It's not in their operating budget, but if they decide to move forward with this they will move that money into their operating budget and ask for additional money.
The interesting thing for me was the human issue. I'm fascinated by this topic, but I have always looked at it from a technical and privacy issues stand point. I think, of course, about the impact it will have on people as a whole, but have never thought about individuals on a personal basis. The representatives of the libraries emphasized over and over again the costs -- both financial and emotional -- of the repetitive motion injuries their employees suffer. I did not write down the numbers of those affected, but it seemed a significant portion (of at least Berkeley's) library's funds went into workers' compensation and / or disability. You tell could from the way the library represenatives spoke, most notably Jackie Griffin, director of the Berkeley Public Library, how emotionally committed they were to their library and the people who worked there. They are also focused on improving the services they provide and are passionate about it.
They, as librarians, are also passionate about protecting our privacy. But being involved as deeply as they are in their respective libraries, they are emotionally vested to improve their services and make work easier and less risky for their employees. It's very easy to understand why using an RFID system would be advantageous for the SF Public Library -- library staff wouldn't have to scan every book for patrons when checking out. Patrons would check themselves out instead (actually increasing privacy by minimizing third party interaction and viewing of personal data). Managing inventory would be simpler -- they claim they can just take a wand (reader) to a stack of books lying on a table and easily find books that aren't on the shelves when other people want them.
While it all sounds great, I'm wondering how realistic it is that it will work as they think it will. One of the librarians mentioned that the wand reader worked less ideally than the vendor made it sound -- tagged books had to be read at a very close distance, and had to be oriented in the same direction in order to read multiple books. What about checking out stacks of books at one time when patrons leave? I bet we'll still have to scan the books one by one. Which is fine with me. But then, why not improve the current self check out machines? When asked about the self check out machine they currently had their complaints were that it was slow, you had to scan books one at a time, and video and other media had to be handled differently and could not be scanned. Improving those machines would free up librarians to service patrons, cut down on repetitive stress issues, and cost less than upgrading the entire system to use RFIDs.
I understand that it's more complicated than simply upgrading and improving those machines, though -- there's still the repetitive stress from placing the anti-theft device in every single book, and the issue with shelving and finding books. But RFIDs, while innocuous now, have incredible potential to defrock us of our privacy. Cheerleaders for RFID technology say that our hypothetical concerns are unrealistic and overly paranoid, but there will easily come a time when technology is such that our concerns will not be hypothetical. And there may come a time when they are not overly paranoid either -- and if that time comes, I don't want to have in place the technologies that will make me a vulnerable citizen under an overly watchful eye.
| Another Retailer Backs Off RFIDs | 3:49 PM |
Metro AG (the fifth largest retailer in the world) has decided to drop the use of RFIDs (radio frequency identification tags) in their customer loyalty cards in one of its Germany stores where the group is testing several new retail technologies (they're still going to use them for tracking inventory). They're the third major retailer to do so -- Benetton and Wal-Mart caved to pressure last year and modified their RFID strategies.
I believe plans are still intact for plugging RFIDs into casino chips and EU and Austrailian banknotes. And while useful for managing theft, it's also useful for tracking gambling habits, figuring how much money you've got in your pocket (being a thief just got easier -- know exactly who to target and how much you'll get), and checking out your purchases (say goodbye to the anonymity of cash transactions). And while all this is hypothetical and technologically more difficult than it first appears, we don't want to let the technology outpace our debate so that when it does become a viable possibility we're still sitting on our hands wondering how we want to deal with it.
| Verisign At It Again | 11:59 PM |
Verisign is just evil. They want to help China restrict web access to its citizens by assigning them their own domain name server and letting them get involved in the management of global internet traffic. This would allow Chinese officials to control access to "undesirable" websites and seems a questionable move at best.
| Flash mob Supercomputer | 11:22 PM |
They're going to build the first flash mob supercomputer at USF on April 3rd! I spent a year there taking CS classes, and while not the most rigorously scientific program, they have a wonderful staff and great affiliations. I will most likely attend what is sure to be an interesting event.
| Functional Beauty | 11:22 AM |
Oooohhh...this speaker (NYTimes link - requires registration/login) is so beautiful!! Dark and sleek and smart. It adjusts itself to compensate for poor furniture layout that might prevent optimal sound.
More about it here, too.
| Orkut | 10:56 AM |
I noticed last night that orkut now lists the exact number of smileys, ice cubes, and hearts that you have. Which is interesting because now you can see the ratios of your ratings (it can't be an absolute value because I have more ice cubes than I have actual friends). So I'm roughly equal in smileys and hearts, but have a spike in cubes. It would be more interesting if they showed the exact number of votes you had - that way, you'd know exactly how many of the people on your friends list thought a, b, or c of you. And if you're really anal you could watch to see which votes increased when you added new friends.
There's something perversely intimate about orkut. Yet I do not withhold information from it, nor do I stop using it. In fact, sometimes I go and add information to it. These networking sites are strangely not unlike high school. How many friends do you have and just how popular are you? I never had many of the former, and was definitely not the latter. Doing better on orkut than I did as a teenager - and perhaps that's the whole point.
| Grokster | 11:59 PM |
So when I joined the EFF I was excited about becoming more aware of the causes they supported. I figured I'd get to educate myself by reading all the documents I got to post on the website. Little did I know that I'd barely have time to get stuff up, much less time to actually read the contents of what I posted.
Today, I got to enjoy a tasty, legal treat with a brief summary by our own Fred von Lohmann about the MGM v. Grokster oral argument yesterday. I've never had the pleasure of sitting in on any official court matter (other than jury selection as I'm legally bound to do), and was vastly amused by the personalities involved and the goings on in the courtroom. Perhaps you, too, will find this (MP3) amusing and educational.
What's it all about? It's about the right to innovate, to create new technology and not use the illegal uses it may be put to as a means to stifle or curb its development and growth. It's about our rights develop technology as far as we can take it without being held responsible for the actions of others. It's a modern day Betamax.
By the way, have you become an EFF member lately?
