Wednesday, April 27, 2005

(the other) Bruce S: Blowfish on "24". Two nights ago, my encryption algorithm Blowfish was mentioned on the Fox show "24." An alleged computer expert from the fictional anti-terror agency CTU was trying to retrieve some files from a terrorist's laptop. This is the exchange between the agent and the terrorist's girlfriend: They used Blowfish algorithm. How can you tell? By the tab on the file headers. Can you decrypt it? CTU has a proprietary algorithm. It shouldn't take that long. We'll start by trying to hack the password. Let's start with the basics. Write down nicknames, birthdays, pets -- anything you think he might have used. [Schneier on Security] 7:01:41 PM    comment []

This Data Just Wants to be Public (Alan Wexelblat). In the "better late than never" category, Celera Genomics Group - the for-profit arm of the race to sequence the human genome - has agreed to stop selling genetic information and put its data into the public domain. Without much fanfare (in fact the announcement was made in a regular quarterly earnings concall with investors and analysts) Celera announced that after July 1 it would contribute much of its DNA sequence data to public domain through the National Center for Biotechnology Information, a division of the National Institutes of Health. The uses and abuses of genetic information are clearly shaping up to be one of the biggest legal and ethical battles of this century. It would be nice to mark this down as a moral victory for forces of free information, but the simple fact is that Celera couldn't make a profitable business of this. That may be due to the nature of the information or the immaturity of the marketplace. I believe we'll have to fight this battle several more times in the years to come. [Copyfight] 4:38:33 PM    comment []

Lessons of Vietnam linger for US. Three decades after the last US troops left Vietnam, the conflict remains at once a lesson, a caution, and for some, a specter. [Christian Science Monitor | Top Stories] 4:36:15 PM    comment []

Levy: Tiger's Out This Week. No Bull.. On Newsweek [NewsIsFree: Popular Items] 7:21:04 AM    comment []

This pieced interested me for its take on something that so much interactive art has in common. When will it be otherwise? Art That Puts You in the Picture, Like It or Not. All the annoyances of interactive art (prurience, ritual, ungraciousness and moral superiority) are on display at the 2005 Boston Cyberarts Festival. By SARAH BOXER. [NYT > Technology] 7:20:58 AM    comment []

Survey Finds Many Have Poor Grasp of Basic Economics. With Washington considering whether to strengthen Social Security by giving Americans more responsibility for their own retirements, a survey released yesterday suggested that the typical American does not know enough about economics to prosper in such a system. By MARY WILLIAMS WALSH. [NYT > Business] 7:20:04 AM    comment []

Podcasting Killed the Radio Star. The popular audio distribution method is about to take to the airwaves. A failing talk-radio station in San Francisco is about to be converted to an all-podcast format. By Xeni Jardin. [Wired News] 7:16:15 AM    comment []

FreeCiv. Jamais Cascio Open source software games are not altogether common. Good game design, like good graphical user interface design, is a lot harder than it may appear;... [WorldChanging: Another World Is Here] 7:16:04 AM    comment []

Group of Scientists Drafts Rules on Ethics for Stem Cell Research. The National Academy of Sciences cited a lack of leadership by the federal government in proposing the guidelines. By NICHOLAS WADE. [NYT > Science] 7:15:40 AM    comment []

How Star Wars Changed the World. An interactive map of the people, companies and technologies spawned by the Force (requires Flash). By Michelle Devereaux from Wired magazine. [Wired News] 7:15:13 AM    comment []

Where Popular Science Is Called Women's Work. A private all-female institution for Grades 7 through 12 in Los Angeles is a forceful rejoinder to conventional assumptions about women and science. By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN. [NYT > Education] 7:15:03 AM    comment []

Put a Tiger in Your Mac. The new version of Apple's operating system, Tiger, is due out Friday. Wired News' Daniel Terdiman got an unofficial sneak preview. [Wired News] 7:12:35 AM    comment []

New Fellows of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences Announced. I'm on the run, but here, briefly, are the results: Newly elected philosophers are Robert Fogelin (emeritus, Dartmouth), Gilbert Harman (Princeton), Charles Larmore (Chicago), Keith Lehrer (emeritus [though still teaching], Arizona), and Peter van Inwagen (Notre Dame).  In addition, philosopher Rebecca Goldstein (Trinity College) was elected in recognition of her literary works. [Leiter Reports] If you are an academic philosopher, or aspire to be one, and have not read Goldstein's novel, The Mind-Body Problem, you ought to remedy that soon. 7:09:04 AM    comment []

Jeremy: Ten Laws of the Modern World. Forbes has a nice little piece on what they call "ten laws for the modern world": vectors of change consistent enough to bet on for the last twenty years or more, and that you'd be a fool to bet against in the coming twenty. Some of them you've already known forever, like Moore's Law and Metcalfe's Law, but a couple give new insight: for instance, Gilder's Law: "The best business models...waste the era's cheapest resources in order to conserve the era's most expensive resources." That's good news for the environment, because information is becoming cheaper than matter every day, and it's the thing we need most to conserve resources. [WorldChanging: Another World Is Here] 7:01:05 AM    comment []