Uh, Do You Think They’ll Suspect Something If We Call It “Big Brother”?

The Pentagon’s TIA (Total Information Awareness) super-secret spy-on-Americans program headed by John Poindexter of Iran-Contra infamy was a big deal a few years ago – until Congress killed it. Turned out Americans didn’t like the idea of their own government spying on them without cause, and even 9/11 didn’t change their minds.

Robert O’Harrow Jr of the Washington Post has written an interesting book postulating that TIA would have probably succeeded if they hadn’t chosen such lousy names like “Total Information Awareness” and a “creepy all-seeing eye for a logo”.

One of the things O’Harrow illustrates is the set of shadowy business alliances TIA formed with personal data reporting companies such as Acxiom, ChoicePoint and Seisint. While O’Harrow focusses on how this information could be misused, his implicit assumption is that this information is correct but private.

But the likelihood of the information being accurate and hence actionable is not very high – certainly not high enough to deny someone a home or a job without the right of appeal and seeing the evidence. These reporting agencies do not verify information submitted, as anyone who has had bad data on their credit report can attest. However, there is no penalty for these companies supplying inaccurate information, even if such false information results in a loss of a job, rejection for credit, or even false arrest!

Americans are extremely ignorant of how the nexus of information is woven throughout their lives and caps how far they can go (where you can live, where you can work, what school your kids can atttend, …), but one thing I hear consistently from people is how astonished they are when they discover they are a victim of false information supplied by a company that “appears” of veracity. Even correcting an error on a simple credit report is the responsibility of the consumer – even if they have had no notice that such information exists, because these companies are under no obligation to provide it (except in certain states where yearly “free credit reports” are mandatory, and even then the consumer must request one). Also, credit reports are only one piece of the puzzle – employers, colleges and universities, government agencies, and financial agencies increasingly rely on these companies to make / break decisions.

I hope more people will start to educate themselves on this subject. It’s a lot harder to do so after you are blackballed.

Fun Friday – Huygens Probe Has Landed Successfully!

The Huygens probe has landed successfully on Saturn’s moon Titan. Congratulations are in order to the European Space Agency (ESA) who built Huygens and to NASA who launched, and delivered Huygens via the Cassini orbiter. Huygens is now in communication with Cassini orbiter for later transmission to Earth.

Huygens landed and is transmitting telemetry! So it didn’t land hard, fortunately. But what do you think it landed on? Mud? Liquid? Rock? Or an unfortunate Titanian?

TCO, Firefox, Open Source, and the Release Engineering Blues

Getting Dan Kusnetzky, Program Vice President, System Software, Enterprise Computing Group, at IDC to sit a minute and talk isn’t easy. He’s usually putting on the frequent flyer miles for corporate executives all over the country. But sometimes you just need to grab a cup of coffee between the Apple confab and exec fests (I keep thinking Mini Mac like MiniMe in Austin Powers, or like a small Big Mac- not Mac Mini like the marketing folk want. Do you think anyone noticed how easy it was to swap the name before they decided on it?)

We continued a discussion begun with a Boston Globe quote of Dan’s on firefox and open source software – “‘A number of things are causing people to give open source a look. One is the security problems that are almost a daily concern in Windows. . . . There’s also the cachet. Some people think it’s cool to tell their friends, ‘I’m using Linux.” On this both Dan and I agree. He’s right homing in on security as an issue (I’m using firefox myself), and I guess it’s cool, even though we first launched an open source BSD OS years ago (remember – was the first), so firefox is just a good tool to me – not a religion.

Spotlight on Hidden Physicists

One of the pleasures of keeping up with your alumni obligations is that you can find out what other people are doing. Sigma Pi Sigma, the National Physics Honor Society, publishes Radiations Magazine, a bi-yearly discussion of issue relevent to the physics community. And one of their nicest features is their Spotlight on “Hidden Physicsts”. You see, not everyone who has a physics degree goes into research, so it’s nice to make a connection. For example, I didn’t know that Sun’s Assistant General Council Marilyn Glaubensklee had a physics degree, but there she is right next to a writeup on me. Small world, isn’t it.

The Forces of Nature – “Paradise and Hell”.

As the casualties continue to mount after the great Indian Ocean tsunami, with entire families and villages swept away, I found the words of Lars Collmar, a Lutheran pastor at Stockholm’s Adolf Fredriks Church on Wednesday night instructive. “Slowly it is coming to us that we have been hit by a tremendous catastrophe. We live in a world which is at the same time paradise and hell.”

And nature, which gives us so much, also shows us how easily things can be taken away. I wish everyone saddened by this tragedy peace of mind, comfort and closure in the coming year.

I Think I Forgot to Duck

This little item just in from Space Daily. Seems a little 5 meter wide asteroid called 2004 YD5 zoomed “just under the orbits of geostationary satellites, which at 22,300 miles (36,000 kilometers) altitude are the highest manmade objects circling Earth” and no one noticed until after it had passed by. Turns out it approached sunward (right in our blind spot), flew over Antarctica, and continued merrily on its way. Astronomers spotted it after it had passed us by.

Did anyone remember to duck?

What’s All This Stuff About Linux?

Well, after all those rabid attacks on Ken Brown of the Alexis d’Toqueville Society by Linux and free software fanatics over his papers (see Fire in the Hole), I just had to meet him in person. So here I was today at Bucks in Woodside, chatting up the future of open source, , and the next wave of Internet video over french onion soup and burgers.

I must say, Ken is smart, charming and articulate – and very saavy politically. In fact, we spent more time talking about how Internet video is going to change the landscape of education. Ken has some great ideas on bringing in “innovators” to encourage young people to study math and science with monthly virtual forums in video. This is really where things must move according to the Council on Competitiveness, if we are to emphasize regionalism / diversity / education using the Internet.

There has been a lot of concern voiced about our declining engineering and science enrollment (see Momma, Don’t Let Your Kids Grow Up to Be Programmers and Tech Outsourcing and the Dwindling CS Major). But after teaching at Stanford Tech Trek (see Girls Just Want to Have Astro Fun), I know the young people are there. We just need the talent and the will right here in our own backyard to do it.

“Just Dial, Point, Shoot, Oh Drat, I’ve Got a Message”

There is this truly hilarious article on the BBC about sending pics and flics on those fancy cellphones. Any product manager should take notes…

Some precious outtakes:
“More than 167 million handsets were sold globally between July and September 2004, a period that, according to Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi is “seldom strong”. ..In fact, the numbers of people not taking and sending pictures, audio and video is growing.”
– The more they sell, the fewer are used. Since cellphone services underwrite the gadget, looks like they’re losing money, but making it up in volume.

Ah, Those Homebrew Computer Days

Alan Saracevic wrote an amusing piece about Mac Addicts and their antics. I laughed at their stories, but really isn’t it just a continuation of their roots? My husband and business partner of long-standing William Jolitz was a Homebrew Computer Club member in the 1970’s, and remembers how the “two Steve’s” looked then – Steve Wozniak was a “pocketprotector jeans wearing hippie engineer sweating bullets taking too much time off from an HP tech position”. Steve Jobs would have “his back against the wall with one knee cocked sizing up the marks watching Woz work the computer with a cheapo little TV plugged in”. Is it any wonder the crowd they attract nowadays?

Codecs, Codecs, Everywhere, and Nary a Lip to Synch…

Ever wonder what kind of codec the pros use when working with video. Well, first of all, they work with raw uncompressed video for all their production needs. Only when they’re finished do they convert, compress, and otherwise create the format required (and only then does it matter). So actually, the first thing a video pro does not think about is the codec. She thinks “what do I have to do to create a professional-looking video”. Codecs and formats are technical specifications for viewing using specific tools. They’re not the only thing or even the most important thing for an enjoyable viewing experience.

So what if a pro has to go back and fix up a problem, like a synch error in a sound effect? Well, if she needs to go back, she’ll go back to the raw video she’s carefully saved in state, and do her work rapidly and well.

But what if you’re not a video pro? Then this little sad saga of video woe from a Microsoft consultant and Cisco engineer is a good warning of what happens when you don’t do what the pros do…or pay a professional service like MinutePitch by Valux to handle it all for you.