Sen. Klobuchar believes that the bill would bring much-needed change to the cellular industry. "The rules governing our wireless industry are a relic of the 1980s, when cell phones were a luxury item that fit in a briefcase instead of a pocket," Sen. Klobuchar said in a statement. "Early termination fees are a family budget-buster; families should be able to terminate service without outrageous fees; know if their cell phone will work on their drives and in their home and office; and understand what to expect in their monthly bills once you pile on charges and fees. It's a simple matter of fairness."

I was just discussing with a friend last week how locking cell phones should be illegal. Hopefully some changes are put in place soon.

Cellular freedom: bill would cut early termination fees, hidden charges

Automated email-based password reestablishment (EBPR)
is an efficient, cost-effective means to deal with forgotten
passwords. In this technique, email providers authenticate
users on behalf of web sites. This method works because
web sites trust email providers to deliver messages to their
intended recipients. Simple Authentication for the Web
(SAW) improves upon this basic approach to user authentication
to create an alternative to password-based logins.
SAW: 1) Removes the setup and management costs of passwords
at sites that accept the risks of EBPR; 2) Provides
single sign-on without a specialized identity provider; 3)
Thwarts all passive attacks.

Interesting idea for web app authentication.

Simple Authentication for the Web (SAW)

Bandwidth could become a form of "currency" with users paying for downloaded files by uploading more data themselves, researchers say.

The goal is to ensure that future content, particularly video, is distributed as fairly and efficiently as possible.

Computer scientists have have used the idea to develop peer-to-peer file-sharing software, which they are asking computer users to try out. They hope eventually to create a "global marketplace in bandwidth", where people can trade it as a commodity.

The researchers' free software, called Tribler, uses a modified version of the popular BitTorrent file-trading algorithm.

P2P is a legitimate model for data transfer. It wasn't so long ago that it had a bad connotation. However now, more and more companies are embracing it all the time. Ala system.net.peertopeer.

Bandwidth could be a new global 'currency'

Vaughan Pratt presented "Top Down Operator Precedence" at the first annual Principles of Programming Languages Symposium in Boston in 1973. In the paper Pratt described a parsing technique that combines the best properties of Recursive Descent and Floyd's Operator Precedence. It is easy to use. It feels a lot like Recursive Descent, but with the need for less code and with significantly better performance. He claimed the technique is simple to understand, trivial to implement, easy to use, extremely efficient, and very flexible. It is dynamic, providing support for truly extensible languages.

Oddly enough, such an obviously utopian approach to compiler construction is completely neglected today. Why is this? Pratt suggested in the paper that a preoccupation with BNF grammars and their various offspring, along with their related automata and theorems, has precluded development in directions that are not visibly in the domain of automata theory.

Simplified JavaScript parser that is written in Simplified Javascript
http://javascript.crockford.com/tdop/index.html

I came across this while reading Chapter 9 of Beautiful Code. This paper is the same as the chapter in the book apart from some irrelevant edits.

Top Down Operator Precedence

We're reaching the final stage!.

Now we get to AjaxWorld West 2007 and there are 5 presentations about security and all of them look great. Brian Chess from Fortify, Joe Stagner from Microsoft, Byran and I from SPI/HP, Danny Allen from Watchfire/IBM, and Pothiraj Selvaraj from CGE. I am absolutely floored by the turn out. And its not just more security speakers at Ajax conferences. There are other indications thats people are accepting Ajax Security. We are seeing a number of books on Ajax Security come out. Ajax frameworks are starting implement security features natively. In some cases framework developers are reaching out directly to the web security companies that seem to get it. For example SPI has been to Redmond multiple times this year working with the ASP.NET and Atlas teams. We see security vendors and consultants who were in denial about Ajax have toned down the rhetoric. Now vendors from the scanner and source code analysis spaces are joining SPI on stage this year on AjaxWorld. We've gone from a 20 something with long hair talking about Ajax security to CTOs and CEOs, and VPs spreading the message. And that is extremely satisfying.

I suppose if anything, AjaxWorld 2007 is a nice breath of fresh air. A cause SPI has been championing for nearly 2 years now is becoming more mainstream and finding acceptance in the Security and Development communities. I welcome my friendly competitors to the party, even if they were a little late and got lost along the way. :-) Because at the end of the day, more smart people working on tough problems helps everyone.

Keep fighting the good fight.

Ajax Security Acceptance: The Last Stage

Vista Multimedia Playback and Network Throughput

In short, they throttled it.

Technical Explaination of Why Vista's Network Throughput Sucks

This is right after they got in on in the middle of the lobby. But seriously Summercon was and absolute blast. Best con about man on man action I have ever attended :)

Summercon: The shame will never go away.

Summercon 2007

Bing bang bing bong bing!

YouTube - Korki Buchek - Bing Bang Song

I know this is a bullshit post, but do you think cases like this could be used as legal precedent for others to escape conviction of DUI, drug possession, etc?

LINDSAY WILL NOT BE CHARGED - What Would Tyler Durden Do

Wikipedia Scanner -- the brainchild of CalTech computation and neural-systems graduate student Virgil Griffith -- offers users a searchable database that ties millions of anonymous Wikipedia edits to organizations where those edits apparently originated, by cross-referencing the edits with data on who owns the associated block of internet IP addresses.

Virgil's on Wired. :)

(Update: Slashdotted)

See Who's Editing Wikipedia - Diebold, the CIA, a Campaign