One good move

In a move welcomed by educated people the world-over, Google plans on eliminating the capslock from their keyboards. I, for one, welcome this wholeheartedly. While I like having the option of having a capslock on my keyboard, I know that most people out there aren't ready for the awesome power that the capslock brings. I've lost count of the number of office emails I have got that SHOUT AT EVERYONE THROUGHTOUT THE MESSAGE BECAUSE SOMEONE DOESN'T REALIZE THAT TYPING IN ALL CAPS IS NOT COOL.

Next up, we need to invent a keyboard that forces people to use punctuation and capitalization. im really tired of all lowercase emails that dont have any punctuation people seem to think you can tell where sentences begin and end well theyre right but i have better things to do with my time why they think its appropriate is beyond me

The other thing I'd like to see go (mentioned in the article) is getting rid of excessive punctuation. I'm really????????? tired of all of this!!!!!!! Yes, I get you're excited, but is there really a need for 15 of these ??????????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm not claiming my grammar is perfect. But it seems like some people don't even make an effort.

Good oppertunity for the sciency people!

I'm on a few professional mailing lists, which are good for various questions, finding out about conferences, new journals, and so forth. One of which is Evol-Dir, one of the oldest biology mailing lists on the internet. This morning, I got a very interesting announcement from Evol-Dir. While I can't take advantage of it myself, perhaps someone of you can. The prize is a free trip to North Carolina! In the middle of Jan, a trip to the tropics-that-are-the-states would be niiiiice. I'll reproduce the email here:

Win a travel award for best evolution-themed blog
Application deadline: December 1, 2010

Are you a blogger who is interested in evolution? The National
Evolutionary Synthesis Center is offering two travel awards to attend
ScienceOnline2011, a science communication conference to be held January
13-15, 2011, in North Carolina¢s Research Triangle Park.

The awards offer the opportunity to travel to North Carolina to meet with
several hundred researchers, writers, editors and educators to explore how
online tools are changing the way science is done and communicated to the
public. Each winner will receive $750 to cover travel and lodging expenses
to attend the conference. For more information about ScienceOnline2011,
visit http://scienceonline2011.com/.

To apply for an award, writers should submit a blog post that highlights
current or emerging evolutionary research. In order to be valid, posts
must deal with research appearing in the peer-reviewed literature within
the last five years.  Posts should be 500-1000 words, and should mention
the NESCent contest. Two recipients will be chosen by a panel of judges
from both NESCent and the science blogging community.  Please send your
name, contact information, the title and date of your blog post, and a
URL to travel.award@nescent.org.

Winners will be notified by December 15th, 2010.

For the results of last year's contest, visit http://bit.ly/a5wtbt

For more information contact Craig McClain at cmcclain@nescent.org,
or Robin Smith at rsmith@nescent.org.

Coming to theatres soon

I just read that there's serious talk about there being a Myst movie. For those of you who haven't wasted as much time on computers as me, Myst is a puzzle solving game where you wander around an island pulling levers, getting inside a tree, and trying to unsink a ship. It's actually far less boring than you think, and is a great, non-violent puzzely game for getting the kids to think. But it's the absolutely worst material to make into a movie.

What's next? "Tetris 2: Revenge of the Z Shaped Block." Of course, everyone will agree that Tetris 2 was no where as good as Tetris 1: Crazy Blocks Falling From the Sky.

Don't worry people! I've got a biology post ruminating in my brain. I just need to plot it out on paper.

Little Bobby Tables strikes again And Intertidal Neatness

For you code geeks out there, this is too funny to pass up. Amid all the stupid that happened in the Swedish Elections viz. nazis (sorry Sweden. :( ), some more anarchical voters subbmited votes for... well, they did a write in vote for an SQL injection attack. :P They were counting on people compiling their vote and entering it as written, so when the vote 'software' hit it, it would think it was a code and treat it as such. Sweden clearly has an educational system that works. ;)

For you non-code geeks, here's some intertidal neatness. :)

Computer blahs

I'd love to hammer out a few more posts, but my computer is developing new broken parts all the time. The latest one is the power supply - I shouldn't be shocked, I suppose. This is a 4 year old computer! Here's two things to keep your attention for a few

Kangaroos fighting!



Apparently, I write like this guy:

I write like
David Foster Wallace

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

More on Border Hassles

Perhaps I was a bit hasty in speaking about how easy it would be to smuggle much of the data past border security. Here's why: The DHS retains the right to mirror all your data. To me, this means they aren't just rooting around like an incompetent baggage handler, but instead running programs to search through your data for various patterns. Thus, any solutions dependant on retaining the data in some encrypted format would be poorly advised, because they would encounter this data, and either crack it themselves, or request the key from you. Request the key with a court. That's the kind of request you can't really say no to.

This doesn't prevent people from merely hiding microSD cards - that'd be damn hard to find, since they're smaller than a fingernail. Or just don't physically transport the data at all, and email it to yourself (or a trusted party) encrypted with a one time pad, and waltz across the border without carrying anything illicit. One Time Pads, it should be noted, can provide perfect protection if implemented correctly.

And again, it only effects people physically carrying data into the country. On their persons. Through customs. Anyone involved in data smuggling would know how to easily evade it, unless they've completely failed to do their homework.

The problem is that data is just too easily transformed, and too easily transmitted electronically. This only accomplishes making the border crossing security experience more elaborate, while returning a minimum of additional security. The most this policy will accomplish is annoying the hell out of legit citizens.

Here's some documents from Customs and Border Protection relevant to the policy:
Here's the press release.
Here's the Factsheet for the policy. (40kb)
Here's the actual policy. (Warning, 6mb)

Here's pretty much all you need to defeat the policy.
So... we're assuming Al Quida doesn't know how to use google for anything other than learning how to dig holes?

Check your files at the border

In case you didn't think border security is silly enough, the DHS is now searching digital media. DHS claims they're keeping out terrorism information, and protecting us from information smugglers. They point to capturing a pedophile as proof positive their system works.

I'm calling moose nuggets on that.

All it's proven is they can catch really, really dumb criminals. Actually, all this could possibly protect us against is really dumb criminals. Anyone who has half a brain, and is trying to smuggle information could do any of the following

1. Put the information on a microSD card and hide it.
2. Embed the information using stenography.
3. Hide the information on a unmounted partition.
4. Email the information encrypted with a one time pad.
5. Deliberately corrupt the files in an easily repairable way.
6. Just make your terrorist information really, really confusing to read.

The list goes on. There's a lot of low hanging fruit out there, and I sincerely doubt that DHS has IT experts positioned along the Mexican border. At best they're just randomly flipping for your data looking for something blatantly egregious. I guess best part of security theatre is that there's always another act...

Another reason to stay in AK!

Edit to add: Someone pointed out to me that this only works one way. They're just preventing you from bringing information into the country, and not out of the country, with the regulations. I.e., this will only prevent people from smugging nuclear secrets into the US, as if there's a lack of bomb making information here on home soil. If you have terrorist information, like blueprints to the White House, and Joe Biden's favourite bathtime songs, you could dance your way over the border and DHS wouldn't screen you. After all, you're leaving, not entering.

Clippy joins the army

Just the other day, I was railing against Microsoft making my annoying while I try to do basic things on a computer. Well, one of Microsoft's worst ideas - that god forsaken paperclip that annoyed the heck out of everyone - is about to be implemented for the military. The idea is that it'll help military brass wade through the nightmare of paperwork that is working for the government. I personally imagine it will work something like this:

Computer Criminal

I'm writing this as I bang my head against a monitor, frustrated beyond words about how incredibly awkward transferring all my data from one work computer to a new work computer has been. I'm using Windows Easy Transfer, which has an incredibly deceptive name because there's nothing easy about it.

Among my many issues is that it won't transfer applications, which means I need to re-install hundreds of work applications one by one, ensuring I get nothing done for the next week.

I'm told the justification is that Microsoft thinks that transferring computer programs is incredibly suspect. The logic goes that if you legally own a program, you should be able to re-install it yourself.

I can take this a step further: if you legally own the data, you should be able to transfer all your documents itself. So why have Windows Easy Transfer move anything at all?

I'm tired of being treated like a criminal... It's bad enough that people treat me as suspect and dodgey in normal, day to day life. My computer should not be treating me like I'm out to break the law, too.

And to top that off, by treating customers as criminals, you've totally removed any incentive for your customers to follow the law. It wasn't until Microsoft decided to give me the giant electronic middle finger that I started thinking, gee, I want to pirate some software, just to spite Microsoft. I probably won't, but the thought is now definitely in my head.

Hey, Microsoft, Sony, Apple, and the rest of you computer jerks: Let me use my software. Or consumers will start using illegal versions of your software that get around your roadblocks, and your cash stream will dry up. And this isn't a threat, it's basic economics.


And this, of course, is on top of how badly Vista stinks to begin with. >:(

WIth the power of my MIND

I got sent this link in the mail, apparently from a friend who read it on a news site. It's a toy that reacts to how hard you mentally concentrate.

Wow. I mean, WOW. That is so cool. Sure, it doesn't do anything, but that doesn't make it any less awesome!

At the end of the article they talk about a drinking game they made up on the spot, and it reminded me about a fictional drinking game that Douglas Adams made up. Douglas Adams, a humourist, invented a drinking game where you use telekinesis to tip over a bottle of alcohol into someone's glass. And he remarked `once you start losing, you tend to keep losing.`

Technology is awesome.

Spam drain

Now here's a neat fact for the day: a report by the IFC international says that in total, spam - you know, junk email trying to sell you prescription drugs, or make your unmentionables larger, or trying to scam you out of your bank information - consumes 33 billion kilowatt hours of energy a year. That's equal to the electric consumption of 2.4 million homes in the US.

That's a lot of power for emails titled "Boost Stamina Today."

I wonder how much power people consume on producing late night TV ads for diet drugs...

Article via slashdot.

New Bloggage

The Whitehouse website is going from ca. 1950s to catch up with us somewhere in the 2000s. That's right, they've got a blog. I don't expect anything really interesting on there, but who knows!

They don't, regretfully (though understandably), allow comments.

Rotten bits of apple.

I've been having a problem where I go into `system preferences` on my mac, and click on network, only to have it tell me Your network settings have been changed by another application. in an infinite loop. Additionally, my internet at home is (yet again) down, so I couldn't tell what problem was responsible for what. Well, I think I have them disentangled, and if your Mac running 10.4 does what I got, here's the solution from someone else.

---

The aurora was burning brightly last night, so vividly that it seemed to illuminate things like the sun. I had... a bit to drink, and it was cold. Or cold if you're just wearing a fleece. Working a camera in those conditions was kinda tricky, so we'll see what turned out.