Category: Technology

On May 1st, 1964 the first Basic program ran. So I’m younger than basic. Barely…

As part of our constant effort to think through remote communications at work, we’ve been checking out ooVoo.

ooVoo is a free (so far) video web conference system. You can have up to six people on a video call. The video quality is decent, the voice quality is ok. Here’s Chris and me talking:

I’m not even going to comment on his shirt…

A cheap web cam seems to work fine. You need a halfway decent microphone or headset for the audio. We’ve banished Linus from these calls until he gets a better one…

This is the sort of thing that amuses my mathematical mind. The starting point is the classic Monty Hall problem. If you aren’t familiar with it, it goes like this.

You have three doors. Behind one is a car, behind the other two are goats. You have to choose which door you want. Before revealing what is behind your door, Monty Hall (if you are too young to recall “Let’s Make a Deal” on TV, just imagine a game show host) opens one of the doors you didn’t choose and there’s a goat. At this point Monty offers you the option to change your mind and take the other door.

Statistically speaking, what is the best choice? Stick with your original door or switch? As a hint I will tell you that one answer is much better than the other, which may be counterintuitive.

Today’s New York Times Science section has a follow up article that takes this even farther.

If you’d like the Monty Hall problem explained further and actually test it out online, go here.

This is a great posting. A lengthy, unbiased discussion of why web “standards” aren’t really working and the no-win decision that needs to be made by the IE8 team.

It’s a long read, but interesting…

This is a convention that I would love to attend but would so clearly be out-geeked at. If you aren’t familiar with it, it is a convention for serious hackers.

One amusing thing that happened was that they busted some Dateline producer who tried to attend without a press pass so that she could get some hidden footage of hackers talking with federal agents. It is a well known fact that feds attend the conference to learn tricks of the trade. DefCon apparently holds a “spot the Fed” contest, which is supposedly a good natured thing.

But this Dateline producer was not treated like a good natured thing. She was basically booted and filmed and they tried to turn the tables and make her answer questions the way Dateline would. Kind of amusing.

First of all, this is what she looks like:

Oh yeah, she looks a lot like a hacker. Please. One YouTube commentator joked:

“She was probably really easy to spot, since she was probably the only girl there.”

If you want to see the video, it’s here.

But what I found most amusing was the description of the DefCon network during the convention:

“It would be fair to describe the network as “hostile”. It has been described as ‘the worlds most hostile network,’ but such descriptions are just attempts at flattery. It is recommended that if you want to connect to the DEFCON network pretend that you are sharing out your entire hard drive to 5000 hackers. You may want to bring a ‘clean’ computer that you don’t mind being infected/hacked/etc. It is considered very poor form to attempt to DoS the network; while the DEFCON staff may not do anything about such attempts it is reasonable to assume that ‘peer justice’ may be meted out. If you’re unhappy about the possible risks associated with connecting to DEFCON networks there are a couple of options: refrain from computer use for a few days or connect using another network elsewhere in Vegas (another hotel or something)”.

lol.