:: Constraints thrice ::
This is a bit old, but there was a confluence of constraint talk, some moons ago. Like Todd, I want to see it in everyday tools.
- Laszlo/LXZ is an interesting XML for building interfaces and clients tools, compiling out to Flash. (LL2 webcast -- skip to 3:06:45)
- Todd Proebsting discusses practical features he'd like to see in languages, in a talk he's been traveling, and again gave at LL2. (LL2 webcast)
- Guy Steele's thesis, The Definition and Implementation of a Computer Programming Language Based on Constraints. You will weep at the clarity of the man and his large language, and his little language. (via Lambda)
:: DJB @ Stanford ::
Dan Bernstein will be talking about the evils of DNS to Stanford's CS Security Seminar, 11 Feb. Let me know if you're attending.
The Domain Name System publishes records such as ``www.stanford.edu has IP address 171.64.14.239.'' An attacker can easily forge these records, stealing your incoming and outgoing mail, web connections, etc.
Stopping DNS forgeries is a straightforward application of public-key cryptographic signatures. Or is it? After ten years of effort, the DNSSEC implementors are making comments like ``We're still doing basic research on what kind of data model will work for dns security ... wonder if THIS'll work? ... We're starting from scratch.''
Why is it so hard to protect DNS against forgery? Is DNS security going to remain an abject failure for another ten years? This talk is a case study of the integration of cryptography into the real world.
:: Stuff ::
- I set up a mirror for one of Kim's Peephole Displays videos -- while he's being Slashdotted. peepdemo-200.avi - 15MB
- John Graham-Cumming catalogues dastardly tricks to beat a text classifier (skip 52 minutes; sound gets better). From the recent Spam Conference.
- Marissa Mayer talks about Google UI testing.
- I'll be at CodeCon.
:: Segway Torpidity ::
segway and social harmony: And in the past few days, I?ve noticed a certain aimlessness about myself. Usually when I close my eyes and introspect, I feel an urge to move on to the next thing, to do something new, to finish all the work I have begun. But now I feel nothing. Just a large emptyness inside, no particular desire to do anything. So I ride the Segway, and fight over riding the Segway.
For some reason, I love this notion that balance -- something only absent during a forgettable and brief portion of life -- is core to all other layered senses, such that leaving it by (even temporarily) makes the brain question motivation, incentive, curiosity, intellectual inertia.
That this ultimate amenity will work below the level of banal, psychological sloth, convenience-bred -- it will disrupt basic feedback loops to human operation.
:: Googlicious rights propagation ::
Web Voice: "There's a fun web service built on top of a combination of Google [Images] and PayPal waiting to be created there. A big distributed clearinghouse of original photos might mean the death of canned stock pictures. Who will miss them?"
I don't see Google among the collaborators, but let's hope they start picking up nearby CC marks, letting users prune away the uncooperative via search options.
