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Thursday, December 23, 2004 |
Physical Access Control.
In Los Angeles, the "HOLLYWOOD" sign is protected by a fence and a locked gate. Because several different agencies need access to the sign for various purposes, the chain locking the gate is formed by several locks linked together. Each of the agencies has the key to its own lock, and not the key to any of the others. Of course, anyone who can open one of the locks can open the gate.
This is a nice example of a multiple-user access-control system. It's simple, and it works. You can also make it as complicated as you want, with different locks in parallel and in series. [Schneier on Security]
8:20:09 PM 
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Texting 'is no bar to literacy.
It's gr8 news 4 skools. Claims that the explosion in text messaging among children is eroding youngsters' literacy skills appear to be unfounded, according to research, reports The Guardian.
"A study comparing the punctuation and spelling of 11- and 12-year-olds who use mobile phone text messaging with another group of non-texters conducting the same written tests found no significant differences between the two.
Both groups made some grammatical and spelling errors, and "text-speak" abbreviations and symbols did not find their way into the written English of youngsters used to texting.
According to the author of the research, the speech and language therapist Veenal Raval, the findings reflect children's ability to "code switch", or move between modes of communication - a trend familiar to parents whose offspring slip effortlessly between playground slang and visit-the-grandparents politeness.
But the study did find that the pupils familiar with text messaging wrote significantly less when asked to describe a picture or an event than those who did not use mobiles, potentially fuelling concerns that the quality and expressiveness of children's writing could be at risk even if their spelling is not.
The study was conducted at the the department of communication and science at City University in London.
[Smart Mobs]
8:27:15 AM
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Pro-choice jujitsu.
Several Planned Parenthood locations across the country have hit upon a clever way to profit from the throngs of protesters who picket abortion clinics -- a fundraising drive in which the clinic receives a donation for each picketer who shows up. Under the Pledge-a-Picket program, as described in a recent article in the Planned Parenthood newsletter, supporters pledge small amounts -- a quarter to a dollar -- per anti-choice protester. "It's like sponsoring a runner in a charity marathon," the newsletter says. Despite the small pledges, the money adds up for the clinics because "the picketers never go away."
[Salon.com]
8:25:04 AM
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Cyber Salon. If 2003 was the year blogs burst onto the scene, 2004 was the year they became respectable. Today, the scribes behind Wonkette, Pressthink, and Powerline (Time magazines first-ever blog of the year) share their thoughts on journalisms most untamed frontier. [WNYC New York Public Radio]
5:50:17 AM
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Who opens e-mail spam?.
Phillip Jeffrey points to this article in Globetechnology sharing his amazement that 1 in 3 Canadian Yahoo respondents open email because of interesting subject lines.
The annual Internet review by Yahoo Canada reports that about one out of three Yahoo e-mail users said they opened spam messages because they had interesting subject lines. Forty-eight per cent of users respond to spam messages by unsubscribing. Others say they respond to the junk messages to give spammers a "piece of their mind." Two out of five users opened spam messages because they looked like they came from a trusted source.
Phillip adds: "Once bitten, twice shy".
Thank you Phillip ! [Smart Mobs]
5:49:42 AM
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MPAA Whack a Mole.
The general consensus concering the MPAA's recent Bit Torrent assault (regardless of your thoughts on piracy) is that they'll simply create something less centralized and more difficult to stop. Mark Pesce, the man behind VRML, chimes in: "Today's suppression of the leading BitTorrent sites bears an uncanny resemblance to an event which took place in July of 2000" (the clamp down on Napster). The suppression of which, he suggests, simply resulted in Gnutella, Kazaa, and BitTorrent.
[unmediated]
5:45:23 AM
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Bowl Championship Series Flawed if Perfect Isn't Good Enough. Once again a large contingent of disgruntled college football fans will rightfully feel their team has been robbed by a deeply flawed B.C.S. process. By WILLIAM C. RHODEN. [NYT > Sports]
I set down in HTML my thoughts on the intractability of college football championship selection earlier this month.
Something I don't think I said there: there may be too few games in a college season -- and the competition varies too much -- to be confident about the validity of a season-end ranking. Perhaps a college football championship should be multi-year affair, like the World Cup in the rest of the world's football (soccer). Year one, teams compete using their existing schedules, say. Year two or years two and three, teams that qualify compete half their regular schedule and half in special College Football National Championship Qualification Games. Those would be against better calibrated competition, yadda, yadda. In the Championship Year, teams that played in would compete in a round robin schedule in groups, maybe with a weekend or two for traditional rivals on the side, followed by single-elimination playoffs for a few rounds. Voila! A Champion.
After the first iteration started, teams left out could begin again, so if desired there could be Champions crowned using the process every two years, or even annually. But no team would be able to succeed itself as Champion if they were chosen every year.
My modest proposal.
5:44:47 AM
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