Rattle wrote:
Wired just posted the best article so far.. Here are some of the highlights:

The Wired News article seems hastily reported and not fact-checked.

Zetter refers to "Internet Security Solutions". A single visit to www.iss.net would have indicated otherwise. This is basic.

Zetter also refers to IOS as "infrastructure operating system". A visit to cisco.com would show that IOS actually stands for Internetworking Operating System.

The "subtle" attacks postulated in the article, such as "reading email" on a router, would dramatically reduce the forwarding capacity of the router. Besides, a router is not responsible for end-to-end data integrity and confidentiality. If your email traffic is properly protected by an application-layer or network-layer tunnel, none of these "subtle" attacks are applicable.

Of course, the present fact of the matter is that a lot of Internet email passes through the core in the clear. But this situation is not Cisco's fault, and their direct responsibility for an implementation flaw in IOS is distorted when it is conflated with the collective inaction of the majority who neglect to implement end-to-end security for mission critical applications.

The SecurityFocus article has less of this hype, but the editor still missed an error at the end of the article, where "Rather then" should be "Rather than". The SearchSecurity article makes the same error. It must be contagious.

I don't know where ComputerWire got the idea that IOS is "supposedly unhackable." Several of their quotes are missing words. (The CRN article is more specific; it reports that IOS was "perceived as impervious to remote execution of arbitrary code from stack and heap overflows." The ComputerWire editors must have decided that description was too complicated for their readers.)

There are also discrepancies in the reporting regarding the size of the presentation. One report calls it a 10-page presentation while another says it was 30 pages long. Perhaps it was 30 slides, printed in 3-up handout mode with room for notes?

RE: Wired News: Cisco Security Hole a Whopper

I have to tell you, things are good.

What's been going on? HAHA! I'm so in love with this bitch! HAHAHA! I can't ... I'm so ... I can’t restrain myself. HAHAHAHAHAHA!

It's a tasty dish of literary mockery, served up just for you. Enjoy.

My Dog Is Tom Cruise

k wrote:

Enter Peerflix, which can be described on a basic level as eBay meets Netflix.

[ Decent idea. -k]

It's interesting that engadget acts as if they're doing original reporting on this topic, even though CNET also has an article on Peerflix today.

When you read the CNET article, they make it clear right up front that the 'news' angle is Peerflix CEO Billy McNair's prominent presence at this week's AlwaysOn conference.

Some weeks ago, I read a review of this service, which I can't locate at the moment. The reviewer found that Peerflix isn't really a market, it's a swap meet. So if you're making eBay comparisons, it's only applicable to the consumer-to-consumer side of eBay. In practice, if you "take a chance" on a film with low liquidity, there's a high probability you're going to get stuck with it, whether you wanted to keep it or not.

The value proposition for this service is flawed. In order to make it work, Peerflix needs to operate more like a used bookstore, where the store agrees in advance to buy back (at an advertised discounted rate) anything you purchased at the store. If you can find another customer, you can make a direct sale. But if you can't find a buyer for a DVD you want to unload, Peerflix should be willing to buy it back. The discount rate would be a function of the liquidity for that particular disc.

The Peerflix challenge

This might be of interest to our resident energy experts.

Hydrogen as an energy carrier has generated much attention due to its potential large-scale use in producing electrical energy through fuel-cell technologies and in replacing gasoline for use in transportation. On December 9, 2004, the RAND Corporation hosted a forum that drew 40 experts in various fields to discuss what needs to be done to better inform decisionmakers in the public and private sectors of the benefits and risks of various hydrogen-related programs and policies. The document summarizes the proceedings of that forum.

Forum participants identified the following potential benefits of hydrogen, which warrant further examination and assessment:
• Introducing hydrogen as an alternative energy source could add diversity to the supply of transportation fuels, thereby making the United States less dependent on petroleum and making fuel costs more stable and predictable.
• If hydrogen-based fuel cells were put to use generating electricity on a small scale close to areas where electricity is needed, the burden on the current electric grid—the system that generates and distributes electricity—could be eased.
• If renewable energy is used to make hydrogen, fuel cells could provide a means of storing renewable electricity—something that cannot be done today.
• If communities and companies had the ability to generate their own electricity via small fuel cells using renewable energy to make hydrogen, they could fulfill their energy needs locally and would not have to depend as much on imported energy.
• Private companies that develop innovative technologies for using hydrogen as an alternative energy source have the potential to become highly profitable, world-class technology leaders.
• Developing nations that put hydrogen to work right away could leapfrog over the environmentally
destructive practices that have occurred in other countries.
• Reducing the use of petroleum could also reduce the environmental impacts of exploring for, producing, transporting, and refining petroleum, including the potential contamination of groundwater and surface water.

RAND Forum on Hydrogen Technology and Policy

I must admit to being unaware that population growth had leveled off..

Make sure you read that closely:

In the 1990s, the U.N. started taking a closer look at fertility patterns, and in 2002, it adopted a new theory that shocked many demographers: human population is leveling off rapidly, even precipitously, in developed countries, with the rest of the world soon to follow.

The site to visit is the United Nations Population Division Home Page. Africa is at 4.8, Asia is at 2.5, Latin America is at 2.8, and Oceania is at 2.4. Only Europe and North America are at or below replacement rate, at 1.5 and 2.1, respectively.

Of course, the fertility rate is not the same as the replacment rate, so a proper mapping requires additional data.

RE: Environmental Heresies

Now a PBS series which start airing tonight...

Guns Germs, & Steel: Home | PBS

Culture is a unique and fascinating aspect of the human species. How did it emerge and how does it develop?

Richard Dawkins suggested culture evolves and that memes are cultural replicators, subject to variation and selection in the same way as genes are in the biological world. Thus human culture is the product of a mindless evolutionary algorithm. Does this imply, as some have argued, that we are mere meme machines and that the conscious self is an illusion?

This highly readable and accessible book extends Dawkins's theory, presenting for the first time a fully developed concept of cultural DNA. Distin argues that culture's development can be seen as the result of memetic evolution and as the product of human creativity. Memetic evolution is perfectly compatible with the view of humans as conscious and intelligent.

This book should find a wide readership amongst philosophers, psychologists, sociologists and non-academic readers.

I also found a discussion thread which begins with a review of the book and includes replies from the author.

The Selfish Meme

The schedule speaks for itself. Tune in tomorrow.

Wednesday, July 6, 2005

"Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist
Explores the Hidden Side of Everything"
Co-authors STEVEN LEVITT & STEPHEN DUBNER

FRANCIS FUKUYAMA, Historian & Author

Freakonomics and Fukuyama to appear on Charlie Rose

About Cory Doctorow's latest novel, Kirkus says:

This chimera of a novel takes a plot with the geek appeal of a Neal Stephenson story and combines it with a touching family tale built out of absurdist elements that could have come from Italo Calvino or Kurt Vonnegut.

Sci Fi Magazine summarized it like this:

The latest novel by this Nebula-award nominee is every bit as strange as it sounds, but considerably more powerful than you might guess. The tone swings wildly from farce to technological exposition to horror. There are even two touching love stories, one of which Alan experiences as a child, and one as an adult. The surprises arrive at the rate of one every couple of pages.

Publishers Weekly gave it a Starred Review:

It's only natural that Alan, the broadminded hero of Doctorow's fresh, unconventional SF novel, is willing to help everybody he meets. After all, he's the product of a mixed marriage (his father is a mountain and his mother is a washing machine), so he knows how much being an outcast can hurt. Alan tries desperately to behave like a human being -- or at least like his idealized version of one. He joins a cyber-anarchist's plot to spread a free wireless Internet through Toronto at the same time he agrees to protect his youngest brothers (members of a set of Russian nesting dolls) from their dead brother who's now resurrected and bent on revenge. Life gets even more chaotic after he becomes the lover and protector of the girl next door, whom he tries to restrain from periodically cutting off her wings. Doctorow (Eastern Standard Tribe) treats these and other bizarre images and themes with deadpan wit. In this inventive parable about tolerance and acceptance, he demonstrates how memorably the outrageous and the everyday can coexist.

Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town

Gnod is my experiment in the field of artificial intelligence. It's a self-adapting system, living on this server and 'talking' to everyone who comes along. Gnod's intention is to learn about the outer world and to learn 'understanding' its visitors. This enables gnod to share all its wisdom with you in an intuitive and efficient way. You might call it a search-engine to find things you don't know about.

Gnod Music: Discover new bands and artists. Let gnod find out what music you like and what you don't like.

Gnod Books: Get to know new authors and find out what other people like you like to read.

Gnod Movies: Discover new movies, travel the world of film and discuss it all in the forums.

The music map is cool, but it works best in Internet Explorer.

Gnod - The global network of dreams