Congratulations to PROSA on
their re-opening. I didn't notice when they re-opened on
my birthday last year, but I just saw a
diary entry
which made me take a look.
Various things are always being said around copyrights:
"I'm not saying the public domain is bad," Mr. Valenti said. "But how
does it benefit the consumer? If a film is in the public domain, who
takes care of it? Who refurbishes it if the print goes bad? What
incentive does anyone have to keep the movie alive and vibrant?"
(The New York Times, February 25, 2002)
Then again:
I could well go on, but you don't want to hear this story from me. You
want to hear this from Lawrence Lessig [...] Lawrence Lessig is a
Stanford law professor and Lessig is one heavy cyber-dude, he is
heavier than depleted uranium. He despises copyright abuse, and he
also knows who, how, and why they stole our broadband. I love that
Lessig guy. Just knowing the truth is out there, it cheers me all up.
(Bruce Sterling)
On Tuesday, I learned how an Okito box works, and how to use one. I'm
tempted to put that into my Forward and Back (a weekly update on
what I've been doing at work): "~ researching Okito box technology"
but, although the Okito box is the second-cleverest piece of
technology I've seen so far this week, it's somewhere around 80 years
old and has no obvious civil liberties implications. ("The Okito Box:
A Civil Liberties Perspective"?)
Amazon settled its lawsuit against
Barnes and Noble over the one-click patent. There's no word on the
terms of the settlement, or whether Amazon might sue someone else in the
future. The FSF
Amazon boycott page doesn't have any advice for all of us who've been
boycotting them since the lawsuit was filed. Amazon itself has
taken
down the page about patent issues formerly posted on its site.
How to Explain Zero-Knowledge Protocols to Your Children.
Ali Baba searched all the way
from the fork to the dead end, but he did not find the thief. Ali Baba
said to himself that the thief was perhaps in the other passage. So he
searched the right-hand passage, which also came to a dead end. But
again he did not find the thief. ``This cave is pretty strange,'' said
Ali Baba to himself, ``Where has my thief gone?''
(This story is also alluded to in an Ivars Peterson math journalism
book somewhere.)
Cool collectible item: a brightly colored brochure titled
"How Do I get a new Dosimeter?".
The cryptography list and subsequently
Cryptome are reporting on a remarkable
new pair of papers about recent work on compromising optical emanations.
The idea here is that you can watch (with a very high-speed detector) the
slight fluctuations in intensity of a modem LED, and find out what data
is going through the modem (it's a power analysis thing -- the LED power
available is correlated with the value of the bit which is being
transmitted). So just by watching a device's status indicator lights,
you might be able to find out its internal state, along the lines of
some of the power analysis attacks on smartcards I saw at the RSA
conference. But not only do you not have to touch the device, the
device doesn't even have to be meant to communicate at all, and you
might be able to observe it from some difference.
The other paper applies the same sort of idea to the light emitted by
a computer monitor, assuming that you can't see the monitor itself,
but can just see the total amount of light it's emitting. For example,
you might be behind the monitor, facing toward a wall, and the light
coming out of the monitor could be illuminating the wall. By watching
the fluctuations in intensity of the light reaching the wall,
you can potentially reconstruct exactly what is displayed on the
monitor! (Again, you don't have to be able to see any kind of image
on the wall; you're just watching the pattern of brightness and
darkness over time.)
The papers are
Information Leakage from Optical
Emanations and
Optical
Time-Domain Eavesdropping Risks of CRT Displays.
I met Tim Pozar
and Larry Reid, two people who know more about radio than I could imagine
hoping to.
I taught a Python class. I'm having my students practice loops by working
on a number of geometric figures problems (given a number n, print out a
figure of the following type...).
I went to Rachel's house and did some out-of-character things and had a
very nice time in the philosophy discussion there.
Soon I hope to be able to ask my Python students to write a program
equivalent to mine, which generates Sierpinski gaskets:
o
o o
o o
o o o o
o o
o o o o
o o o o
o o o o o o o o
o o
o o o o
o o o o
o o o o o o o o
o o o o
o o o o o o o o
o o o o o o o o
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
o o
o o o o
o o o o
o o o o o o o o
o o o o
o o o o o o o o
o o o o o o o o
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
o o o o
o o o o o o o o
o o o o o o o o
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
o o o o o o o o
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
That beautiful fractal is generated from about 15 lines of Python. I
should really ask my class to play around with cellular automata, too!
