inside the man

Wednesday, February 23, 2005

5 by 5 computer go news is not news

Last night, following a brief conversation with Martin Müller, I learned that the breaking of 5 by 5 go is a 3-year old story that slashdot (and I) fell for.

Update: It looks like the American Go Association has fallen for this as well in their electronic newsletter.

Monday, February 21, 2005

Canadian privacy law and email harvesting

Two interesting slashdot posts this evening. One (the link above) discusses a ruling by the Canadian Privacy Commissioner that harvesting email addresses for spam violates PIPEDA. The second post reports that a Dutch computer scientist has written software that has solved 5 by 5 go, which is a serious leap forward for computer go.

Friday, February 18, 2005

Endangered gizmos!

The EFF has published an endangered gizmos list, highlighting technologies that have been rendered extinct or are threatened by the entertainment industry. There is even a section for technologies that have survived legal attacks, including betamax.
Data visualization applied to baby names

I have often remarked at dinner parties that current information technology research has forgotten the important knowledge domain of baby naming statistics. No longer will this critique stand - Grok your name now!
MS helps parents with l33tsp33k

This is the funniest thing that I have read in a long time. This is a primer on leetspeek to help parents more effectively spy on their children's online activities. If your children use the following words in IM or email messages, you should organize an intervention or phone 911: "w4r3z", "h4x", "0\/\/n3d", or "pwn". Thanks for this one, Jess.

Wednesday, February 16, 2005

Schneier on Security: SHA-1 Broken

Bruce Schneier's blog reports that SHA-1 has been broken. Schneier sites a Chinese team's informally circulating paper describing work that builds on past work against SHA-0 and SHA-1. MD5 is on pretty shaky ground. So what digest function should we all be using to secure our passwords?

Wednesday, February 09, 2005

Fijian Methodists struggle with kava use by clergy

Cries for kava use moderation among the clergy dominated a recent meeting of Fijian Methodists. Newly elected church president Jione Langi addressed concern that kava overuse by his church leaders was driving the flock to seek spiritual fulfillment elsewhere. Yet another psychopharmaceutical faces the test of modernity. Western culture once resisted the taking of caffiene and now, while a minority still fights on for a caffeine ban, we freely give it to children on a daily basis. As Fiji contunies to modernize and integrate with the global economy, how will kava fare?

Tuesday, February 08, 2005

Art or blasphemy?

You do not hear of people being found guilty of blasphemy in European countries that often any more. However, an Austrian comic book artist has done just that in Greece. Following complaints from the Greek Orthodox Church, Gerhard Haderer, whose book portrays Jesus Christ as a pot smoking party animal, was sentanced to six months in jail. Haderer faces imprisonment if he enters Greece.

About Me

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Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Returned to working as a Management Consultant, specializing in risk, security, and regulatory compliance, with Fujitsu Canada after running the IT shop in the largest library in the South Pacific.

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