O'Reilly Digital Media

Knowledge is extremely transient unless steps are taken to preserve it. Do you remember Jessica Hahn? If the name rings a bell, but you can’t quite remember who she was, you’re not alone. (She claimed that Jim Bakker, of the PTL, raped and abused her. She later got a boob job and was in some music videos.) Twenty years from now, anyone under 30 years old won’t remember Monica Lewinsky either.

Often a piece of data loses some of its relevance unless more is known about its source, its level of importance, the date it was created, etc. For example, I was recently clearing out boxes of old stuff in my basement. I came across a piece of a party streamer. On it was written “New Year’s 1984,” but I have no idea why it was worth saving. Metadata can and should be added to existing data to address the limitations of data itself.

For example, everyone knows that tonight is New Year’s Eve and that tomorrow is New Year’s Day. Everyone knows that Christmas (December 25th) celebrates the birth of Jesus, and everyone knows that the upcoming year is 2002, counting from Jesus’ birth. So why does the New Year begin on the eighth day following Christmas? Because New Year’s commemorates Jesus’ circumcision (a Jewish bris), which takes place on the eighth day of life.

Happy New Year to everyone, even to Jews who consider it 5762.

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Tell me your favorite “betcha didn’t know” story.

An old lottery advertisement chimed, “You’ve got to be in it to win it.” Whereas that never inspired me to donate to the cause, a similar adage applies to software, news, publishing, biotech and other fast-moving industries.

For example, the last two years have seen an unrelenting deluge of huge news stories, from the Clinton impeachment trial, to the 2000 presidential election dispute, to the Sept 11th terrorist attacks. News organizations exist because someone is betting that there will be some big (and usually bad) news tomorrow, six months from now, etc. To be in a position to cover these stories, the infrastructure had to be in place ahead of time.

Likewise, in the software industry, the plans for the NBT (Next Big Thang) are laid years in advance. How many times have you heard about a technology in its nascent stage only to realize its importance two or three years later when it is a household word? Although I despise Microsoft as much as your average ubergeek, they’ve both anticipated and driven the next NBT. Their Web Services initiative, however flawed technically or socially, is pretty much right on the money. Even they wouldn’t have the market power to pull it off if it weren’t the right thing at the right time. They’ve been planning (some say plotting) it for years, but it is not too late to learn .Net and position yourself as an early adopter and eventual expert.

On a personal and professional level, you’ll have to keep feelers out for what might be the NBT and whether it is worth learning. Subscribe to a magazine or two in your area of interest; skim the technology news from the New York Times (available in a free daily email); attend a few trade shows or conferences each year; monitor various NASDAQ stocks (which often correlate with the importance of certain technologies). I’m not suggesting being on the bleeding edge, as you can waste a lot of time on things that never gain traction. But participate in newsgroups and mailing lists, try to get in on beta programs, or publish a blog on your favorite topic. By positioning yourself as a knowledgeable industry insider, you might find people (such as acquisition editors from publishers) contacting you about the NBT.

There’s a saying in real estate that the best time to buy a house is five years ago. Position yourself now to be in on the next Next Big Thang.

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Is Web Services the Next Big Thang?

I guess we’re supposed to scoff at Afghanis’ lack of moral center as the US media describes their rapidly shifting alliances. But, of course, Americans are no different. Many who adopt a new technology are ready to join the groups they previously shunned.

I used to hate people who drove while using a cell phone. Last month I got a cell phone, and it didn’t take long to start using it while driving. Last night, when “A Beautiful Mind” was sold out at the local theatre, I drove up the highway shouting “Next!” into my cell phone as the “Tell Me” movie listing service tried haplessly to keep up. Never mind that my wife was in the passenger seat. She doesn’t understand voice-driven interfaces!

Here’s a story from my childhood. They used to run public service announcements with hemophiliacs asking you to donate blood so that they could collect the platelets they needed to live (plus a kicker about it being very expensive). As an indignant eight-year-old (with a dirty mouth) I was outraged. I thought, “Why don’t the bastards with the platelets simply give them to the poor hemophiliacs!?” Then I found out that my dad was a director at a blood bank and was, therefore, one of the bastards. Knowing which side my bread was buttered on, I changed my mantra to, “Why don’t the nice people with the platelets settle for a reasonable economic return selling them to the poor hemophiliacs.”

Of course Microsoft is the master of the co-opt and corrupt strategy. When Microsoft was threatened with breakup, they took to lobbying the American public. Microsoft is one of the most widely held stocks and you better believe that stockholders thought the Justice Dept. was being overzealous. And if they happened to call their local congress(wo)man, isn’t that what grass roots activism is all about?

The same phenomena will hold true for P2P networks and e-books. The best way to fight overreaching by interests in favor of stronger (i.e. one-sided) copyright laws is to make sure all your relatives have downloaded an MP3 for their personal use. Massive public support can quickly change a politician’s mind about what is a reasonable balance between copyrights and fair use.

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Tell me your own tale of joining the dark side.

Physics and paleontology are vastly different sciences. In physics, the phrase “if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all” often applies. Physics is about finding the rules that allow you to predict things you haven’t seen. Once you’ve determined Kepler’s laws of motion, you’ll find they apply to all planets. Physics enjoys rich data sets. There is no end to the physical phenomena that one can observe.

But if you are a paleontologist, the data can be quite sparse. What conclusions can you draw from skeletal fragments from a few specimens? If you find some teeth, you might be able to figure out what the animal ate, but you might not know if it is male of female, an adult or adolescent, typical or atypical. Imagine someone dicovering the skeletons of Hulk Hogan and Tom Thumb. Both are men, but neither are typical. And yet, for lack of better data points, we assume that limited observations are representative of larger data sets. The statistical margin of error can be huge when the data is sparse.

To draw conclusions about sparse data, we need metadata that somehow relates the data to a larger data set. For example, suppose you read a movie review by me. Absent other reviews from other viewers, you might have to rely on whether people who know me find me credible. For example, reading this blog entry on the O’Reilly Network, you assume I have a certain minimum credibility. Although evaluating the credibility of the source can help establish the reliability of a datum, additional data points are needed to establish whether the datum is typical. I’ll revisit the issue of metadata in future blog entries.

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We’ve all heard the word “flawless” used in connection with diamonds, but there is no such thing as flawlessness. The definition of a “flawless” diamond is one in which a gemologist can not detect visual flaws (”inclusions”) with a 10X jeweler’s loupe. But if using a 100X microscope, one would likely see flaws. Conversely, a diamond that has no visible inclusions to the naked eye is not necessarily flawess. Based on the flaws visible at 10X, a non-flawless diamond would be rated between SI2 (small inclusions) and VVS1 (very, very small inclusions).

So what then is the appropriate level of magnification and training required for judging a user interface? Is it good enough if there are no flaws noticed by the casual observer? Need it be flawless on close inspection by a trained eye? The “flawlessness” of a diamond only refers to its so-called “clarity.” A diamond’s color, cut, and carat weight also factor into its value. Likewise, there are multiple metrics by which to measure a user interface that all contribute to it feeling right or wrong.

To determine the right balance, let’s consider how humans have evolved and the signals sent by visual input. A cluttered interface overwhelms a user because there are too many possible pitfalls. If there are more than 4 or 5 elements, a user can’t process them all unless he can group some elements together. For example, visual elements that are clearly part of the background communicate to the user, “It is all right to ignore me.” Buttons should be clearly labelled so that a user knows where they lead before clicking the button. This lets a user discard a button from their mental checklist (if they are not interested) or helps them to promote a button in their mind for later pursuit (if it sounds interesting).

What kinds of flaws can distract a user? Humans observe the symmetry, consistency, alignment, and proportion of other people’s features to judge their overall health. If a face is full of blemishes, that person may have a disease or simply might not have strong genetics. Likewise, in an interface, if the text is blurry, or if buttons are misaligned (or worse yet, move over time), it distracts the user. It prevents the interface from being transparent. As with a diamond, the ideal interface is one the concentrates and reflects back the ambient light.

Be sure to test your interface on users who are unfamiliar with it. Are there any icons that don’t immediately convey their purpose to the user? How can you group, rearrange, or eliminate icons to make their functionality clearer? Does your interface help your user prioritize information. Is the most important item the largest or otherwise most prominent? Is the interface clean without being sterile?

Flawlessness, therefore, is the absence of distractions, not the pursuit of perfection. By remedying the obvious flaws, you’ll enhance the user experience (even if subconsciously) in a cost-effective manner.

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My new basement office has small windows at ground level. They were overgrown with plants, which blocked some of the light, so I played gardener today. I always wondered why people like gardening, and I always assumed that gardeners love plants. Nothing could be further from the truth. The fun of gardening is playing God. I smote so many plants that I lost count.

The ivy clinging to the side of the house? Gone. The hideous bushes that blocked the path from the driveway to the door? Decimated. The plants foolish enough to block my windows? Obliterated. By the time the carnage was done, I’d overflowed three large garbage cans with the carcasses of former flora.

I finally understand gardening. Like a programmer creating a virtual world, you get to make life and death decisions. Better yet, you get to rip out stuff with your hands, tools, and teeth. Apart from the one episode where a surly bush fought back and whacked me in the ear, it was a very enjoyable afternoon. I highly recommend it for those glued to a chair as often as myself.

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What is your favorite diversion from computers?

Once upon a time, the text displayed on-screen in a word processor didn’t match the printed output. So if WYSIWYG word processors are so dominant, why do many people still hand-code HTML? The first reason is that HTML output is not consistent, so visual HTML editors are WYSIWYMGISB (What you see is what you might get in some browsers). More importantly, HTML is much more nuanced than plain text. The ability to directly manipulate the exact HTML code affords coders the precision they want.

But there is a more fundamental psychological reason why some people prefer direct manipulation. Direct manipulation is hard-wired into our brains at a more primitive level than abstract representations. Although higher intelligence is often measured by the abililty to perform abstract tasks (using maps, language, and other symbols), humans favor direct manipulation when it is available.

The famous architect Antonin Gaudi spent hours molding clay as a child. By mastering direct manipulation of his physical reality, he enhanced his ability to work with abstract designs. (Gaudi designed several famous buildings in and around Barcelona, including a church named “La Sagrada Familia.” His architecture is very surreal, almost molten, and he influenced surrealist painters such as Dali.)

My 4-year old daughter has a marionette. Instead of manipulating it via its strings, she grabs the puppet’s body directly. It isn’t simply that indirect manipulation (in this case using the “handle” to control the strings) is physically more difficult. It is a layer of mental abstraction that isn’t necessary, because she isn’t trying to maintain the illusion that there is no puppeteer. Hence, she has no incentive to use the marionette’s strings.

The power of today’s more complex WYSIWYG tools, such as page layout programs, is that they simulate direct manipulation during composition, not just during output. Therefore, complex interfaces would be better thought of as SPRTDM (Simulating physical reality through direct manipulation) than WYSIWG. Interface designers should remove those abstractions that hinder direct manipulation by the user. Because there is no real-world physical manipulation in some applications (such as sound editing) some software will always require human-engineered abstractions.

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What applications are most in need of an interface overhaul?

Okay, I admit I hate Christmas. I’m Jewish, and I could really do without the holiday traffic. Okay, I’m lying. I work at home and the traffic doesn’t affect me much. The thing I really hate about Christmas, especially this year, is that businesses shut down around noon on December 21st. Verizon told me they couldn’t change my phone service until January 2nd. No one needs that much egg nog do they?

This blog entry is my little protest against all this family time. But there’s nothing like the holidays to inspire fellowship with our brethren and sistren (and I don’t mean “The Fellowship of the Ring”). Can’t something good come out of this horrific holiday? I’m here today to call for a new standards committee where people of all races, colors, and creeds can come together to agree on one thing. We need to standardize holiday chocolates!

I propose that the Chocolate Confectioners Consortium Wonkabus (C3W) come up with a standard format for boxed chocolates. No more wondering if the round ones are full of caramel nougat, chewy coconut, or that bad raspberry cream feared by chocophiles everywhere. No more wondering if the hump-shaped rectangles hold chocolate mousse or cherry liquer. Sure, some chocolatiers include a diagram on the box to help guide you to the hidden treasures, but no one reads documentation!

You might ask why vendors don’t simply make all the chocolates delicious. Think fool. The landmines are the only thing preventing us from inhaling the entire box in one sitting. Furthermore, picking the good ones gives us the chance to feel superior over those sots who choose wrongly. Think of it as a high-calorie version of Russian roulette.

I know some among us would ban everything that is not pure chocolate. I say we need to make a place at the table for chocolate covered pretzels, raisinettes, and even goobers. But for god’s sake, let’s stop the insanity. Standardize boxed chocolates now, for Valentine’s Day is right around the corner!

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Which chocolate fillings would you like to see banned?

I grew up believing that the Wright Bros. invented the airplane almost by dumb luck. Nothing could be further from the truth. When I’d heard that they were bicylcists, I pictured the singing speed boat racer played by Elvis in a bad 60’s movie. But the Wright Bros. were able to invent the airplane in part because they were bicylcists, not despite it. Truth is, they didn’t even invent the airplane, but rather refined earlier designs. They understood aerodynamics and they invented the first wind tunnel. (The wind tunnel was smaller than a breadbox, but a modern version at M.I.T. still bears their name.)

So what the hell does this have to do with realtime responsiveness and P2P networks? The wind tunnel revolutionized airfoil development because it shortened the design cycle. It allowed them to test models of airfoils much more quickly and cheaply than their competitors.

Anything that shortens development cycles can adapt quickly to changing needs. This phenomemon drives biological evolution, and it drove the rise of the PC over the mainframe, the popularity of the electronic spreadsheet, and the growth of the Web itself. But the immediate feedback enabled by a wind tunnel or an electronic spreadsheet is of little use unless errors are corrected in future iterations.

Whereas the Wright Bros. optimized their wing design to generate lift, they had to fly into a stiff headwind to generate enough relative airspeed (which is why they chose Kitty Hawk). Gusts of wind would quickly tip the plane, causing it to crash. Their real innovation was error correction! They added wires and pulleys that could make the wings flex–the forerunner of modern flaps and ailerons–allowing them to control the plane’s attitude.

There are three markers in a field at Kitty Hawk that demarcate the lengths of the first three successful flights. The first flight was less than a hundred feet, the second nearly twice as far, and the third one nearly twice as far again. There is no fourth marker because the fourth flight was 15 miles long. Realtime feedback and error correction enabled improvements of several orders of magnitude. As the park ranger said, the markers at Kitty Hawk don’t show the evolution of the airplane, they show man learning to fly.

I claim that P2P networks are valuable in part because they are relatively responsive. You can request an asset at the network’s edge without waiting for a central server. P2P networks have decent error correction insofar as the network reconfigures itself to deliver assets efficiently.

But we’re still not taking full advantage of realtime feedback and error correction. In another blog entry, I’ll discuss how the Web can take better advantage of these to enhance its value and effectiveness.

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Get Real!

Related link: http://www.eeye.com/html/Research/Advisories/AD20011220.html

UPnP xploits and attacks. Make sure you’re up to date. (courtesy of eEye Digital Security)

On Wednesday night, I spoke with Dmitry Skylarov at a small event to celebrate his homegoing, hosted by the EFF.

Dmitry told me that he was upset with the U.S. Attorney’s misrepresentation of his agreement with them.

Specifically, Dmitry says that:

• He still works for Elcomsoft and has no intention of leaving anytime soon.

  (The announcement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office described Elcomsoft as Dmitry’s “former employer.”)

• There was no plea bargain made between Dmitry and the U.S. Attorney’s Office

  (As the same announcement would lead you to believe: “…(Sklyarov) admitted his conduct in a hearing before U.S. District Judge Whyte in San Jose Federal Court. Under the agreement, Mr. Sklyarov agreed to cooperate with the United States in its ongoing prosecution of Mr. Sklyarov’s former employer…”)

• Dmitry’s story has not changed: he still maintains that both he and his employer are not guilty of any misconduct.

Joe Burton’s Statement 12_19_01

I want to state, for the record, that we, the defense, feel that there has been an injustice done to Dmitry Sklyarov and ElcomSoft. The U. S. Attorney’s December 13th Press Release is a cleverly crafted statement that promotes the notion that Dmitry admits wrongful conduct and has entered into a Plea Agreement with the U.S. Government. I categorically reject the notion that there is any admission of wrongful conduct on the part of Dmitry Sklyarov, he has simply agreed to tell his story, which I might add is the identical story he has consistently told since day one of his arrest. In addition there is, quite simply, NO Plea Agreement. He has agreed to testify for the U. S. Government, if called and he will testify for ElcomSoft, if called.

I also want to set the record straight on the issue of Dmitry’s employment with ElcomSoft. Dmitry has been employed since April 2000 and he remains employed by ElcomSoft and will continue his employment with ElcomSoft.

It is not unexpected that the U.S. Attorneys would look for a way to “save face” in this case, however to do so, at the expense of Dmitry is completely unacceptable to me.

Dmitry Sklyarov’s Statement 12/19/01

I would like to express my heartfelt appreciation to each person who has supported and contributed to me during my detention, these past 5 months.

Naturally, I am very happy about returning to Russia and at the prospect of getting back to my family and friends. I am excited about spending the holidays in my homeland.

There are two points I wish to address, today. The first point is this: I am extremely disappointed with any implication that I am, in any way, cooperating with the government. My perspective is simply this: I am a man of integrity and as such am doing nothing more that telling the truth… I am not for or against anyone.

Secondly, there seems to have been some confusion as to my employment status with ElcomSoft. I would like to clear up this confusion… I have been employed by ElcomSoft since April 2000 and will continue to be employed in the future. As a matter of fact, I have remained ElcomSoft’s long distance “virtual” employee throughout these past 5 months while detained, here in the United States.

ElcomSoft Founder/CEO Alex Katalov’s Statement 12/19/01

First, let me say that the Diversion Agreement, reached between Dmitry Sklyarov and the US Attorney’s office last Thursday (December 13, 2001) was reached with ElcomSoft’s complete knowledge, cooperation and our unfailing support for our employee, Dmitry Sklyarov.

Neither ElcomSoft nor our legal team sees this agreement in any way counterproductive to our ongoing case, nor do we feel that Dmitry’s testimony will be anything but supportive to our case. All that Dmitry has to do is to tell the truth; we, of course, welcome that; the truth will never change regardless of who calls Dmitry as a witness: the prosecution or the defense, or both.

From the company’s standpoint, Dmitry’s agreement serves ElcomSoft well. It provides us with the freedom and flexibility to pursue our best legal strategy without worrying about the possibility that Dmitry could face jail.

What do you think?

Today must be my lucky day. My inbox runneth over with wonderful news from abroad. I am soon to be fabulously wealthy, as I’ve won all sorts of contests. But who needs money? I’m flush with free trips, free advice, and free software. Soon I’ll be having sex with barely legal teens while my skin clears up and my hair grows back. And the sex will last for days thanks to my pharmaceutically enhanced staying power. And everything I could possibly want to buy is 10%, 20%, 50%, or even 90% off, if I act now.

True story: My orange has an advertisement on it. (I kid you not.) No longer satisfied to wax my apples and stamp “Sunkist” on my oranges, my oranges now come with small advertisements (read “spam” in the virtual world). According to the sticker on my orange, I can own the Grinch on Video and DVD on November 20th (only 335 more days!).

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Sometimes the bleeding-heart liberal in me can’t help itself. Today’s New York Times has an article entitled “U.S. Expands Investigation Into Piracy of Software” (you’ll need a free NYT account to view the full text of the article). It seems that the gov’t is busy raiding universities as part of “Operation Buccaneer.” Maybe they should call it “Operation Butt-in-ear” because they really have their head up their proverbial ass on this one.

Now, even though it is probably political revenge, I understand the gov’t going after Arkansas-based Tyson foods (a heavy Clinton contributor) for alleged employment of illegal aliens. And I understand that software piracy is a horrible crime for which everyone but Richard Stallman should be manacled (RMS has diplomatic immunity after all, being an ambassador from another planet). But sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.

They’re threatening kiddies with jail time and that just doesn’t seem American. Seems to me, if you are going to get slammed in the slammer, you might as well commit a real crime and that is just what these pirates are going to do. They’re going to be more careful about the silly crap and do some real damage to potentially important web sites, both governmental and corporate.

Now, I have a three-year-old, so I know of what I speak. If my three-year-old won’t share his toys and insists on fighting, I do what any sane parent does. I take his toy away and fight with him myself. Of course it doesn’t work, and in fact, it exacerbates the problem. And that’s exactly what is going to happen here. Take away their toys, and pirates are going to find something more annoying to do with their time. Consider yourself warned.

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Unintended consequences, anyone?

Segway, Smegway. An overpriced scooter if you ask me. Why haven’t we heard anything about the Airboard, distributed just up the street from our O’Reilly Sebastopol office at Zap! Basically its a mini-hovercraft that floats three or four inches above the ground and speeds along at around 15 mph. Got some money to burn? You can buy one right now(!) for $9,500. Where it’s not the hovering skateboard I drooled over in Back to the Future II (bad movie, cool hoverboard made it memorable though), at least it does more then reinvent the wheel.

Hoverboards not your style? How about the Millennium SoloTrek, a personal air transport machine which looks like a lawsuit waiting to happen. Maybe SoloTrek is a little too James Bond for your style, and the Hoverboard is a little slow. I’ve found just the thing for you… the Moller SkyCar, “the first and only feasible, personally affordable, personal vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) vehicle the world has ever seen.” Heck, they claim this thing will cruise at 350mph comfortably at 15 mpg. So you’ll be cruising along just fine, except you’ll have to stop for gas a lot.

Related link: http://www.siliconvalley.com/docs/news/svfront/cd121701.htm

Universal Music ramps up their anti-piracy efforts, saying that all of its CDs will be copy-protected by mid-2002. The problem is the copy-protection technology will also render the disc unplayable on Macintosh computers, DVD players and game consoles, such as Sony’s PlayStation 2. It might not even play in some CD players.

At the O’Reilly P2P conference, the question was asked to Rosen if she truly understood the physical impossibility of effective Digital Copyright Protection. She replied “I get it, it’s going to be very hard.” Impossible and hard are two different things (ask the board for SDMI).

Here’s my favorite quote of the article, another by Hillary Rosen. “Copy protection is certainly not new to the entertainment industry. Most movies and video games sold today have some form of protection — musicians are an exception to the case and do not enjoy the same protection. It is not surprising, therefore, that the recording industry is taking steps to get in tune with the rest of the entertainment field.” Here’s my interpretation…

“Copy protection is not new to the entertainment industry, but while trying to figure out how to make money off this internet thing, that Shawn Fanning kid showed the general public how easy it should be to access digital music, an area where we have been continually slow to market while we try to figure out how to make a profit from it. The movie and video game industry have the protections, and we want the same type of protection, even though we’re late catching the bus. So we’re asking consumers to pay the same amount of money for a CD as they did before, but we’re also saying that you get to listen to that CD according to our rules even though you’ve just bought an MP3 player or planned on playing back music from your PS2. The warning sticker on the CD will give you a number to call and a website to visit when you find problems with your CD.”

A related article brings up familiar points in the “it’s useless to try and control digital media” argument, and brings up something that the music industry needs to realize. “Just as HBO doesn’t try to stop you from taping its movies, so music sellers need to let go and trust their customers. Remove the incentives for people to steal, rather than imposing more technology that treats customers as would-be shoplifters.”

Here’s the scary thing. Copy-protection CD’s may not work, but a requirement for copy-protection controls in nearly all consumer electronic devices and PCs just might. Read this article for more on the Security Systems Standards and Certification Act (SSSCA).

Has my soapbox reached a new level? Is Universal just shooting themselves in the foot, or do you think copy-protection will work?

As the UPS commercial says, when you’re the shipping manager, you can’t think outside the box. Your job is to think about the box. Barely emerging from the throes of a move, I’ve been looking at a lot of boxes lately. I’m struck by the importance of physical geometry in our daily lives.

It is the geometry of triangles that stabilizes bridges. It is geometry that transforms a flat piece of cardboard into a box (and corrugated cardboard uses triangles for stability too). Geometry figures prevalently in our perception of beauty (the proportions of the golden rectangle being but one example). In fact, beauty is largely judged by proportion, symmetry, and alignment, which are all derived from geometry.

A cardboard box derives its strength from the arrangement of vertices in physical space. Several patents on box designs embody ways to fold/configure the geometry over time (for storage and use). Geometry affects our lives at the microscopic level as well (with macroscopic implications), whether in the DNA double helix, protein folding, or the atomic lattice of semiconductor substrates.

So why is geometry the poor step sister of sexier sciences? (The Hoberman Sphere shows how sexy geometry can be.) Perhaps our inability to visualize physical geometries beyond three dimensions causes us to abandon this useful science when tackling n-dimensional problems. I recall a story called “The Blind Geometer” from Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine over 20 years ago. Some bad guys wanted to kidnap a blind scientist for his ability to perceive multi-dimensional spaces.

My admittedly limited knowledge of network design tells me that engineers focus on network topology, not geometry per se. Let’s consider the eight vertices of a cube as nodes in a network. From a network standpoint, you’d be concerned with the interconnections between the nodes, their proximity, latency, capacity, content, etc. But can any network metric be constructed or analyzed based on the “geometry” of the nodes? What does “geometry” even mean in a virtual space where the rules of physical geometry don’t apply? Network geometry surely has little to do with the physical location of the nodes themselves.Instead, a network’s “geometry” might derive from some other attribute of its nodes, or even from a network attribute unrelated to the nodes themselves. And that is really my point. The “box-ness” of a box does not derive solely from its vertices’ locations in physical space. A box’s usefulness derives from the overall configuration of all its vertices and the planes between them, plus the physical laws that prevent my housewares from passing through carboard and the ability of physical matter to transmit forces and distribute stresses. Even though we can’t easily visualize 4-, 5-,…n-dimensional spaces, we can choose a subset of three dimensions and plot them on XYZ axes to aid in analysis.

What is the relationship between physical geometry and network topologies? Is there one? If not, should there be one? Can visualization in geometric space assist in network optimization? Can geometry engender a hitherto undiscovered property of a network? It will take someone more knowledgeable than me to properly formulate, explore, and answer these questions.

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What is the relationship between physical geometry and network topologies?

My son got the coolest gift of for Channukkah, the kind of toy all young boys wish for, thanks to my dear sister-in-law.
It is some kind of post-apocalyptic cheetah robot transformer. His favorite thing about it might be that it scares his older sister (”Great! Now I’m going to have dreams about a cheetah chasing me!” she complains.)

The toy is so ferocious that it took 18 (!) twisty ties to keep it in the box. The mutant transformer genes also cause the cheetah to sport grasshopper legs that help it to become a robot in 12 easy steps. The box advises that this is an intermediate-difficulty transformer. I guess the advanced mutants have two-dozen steps. To transform from a cheetah to a robot, you must pivot the inner stomach around to the animal’s back where it becomes the robot’s rear armor (who knew that cheetah’s were both ruminants and contortionists).

The packaging and configuration are actually a convenient litmus test; you know it will be a lifelong favorite if the child is still interested by the time you unpack and assemble it. The Dad in me objected to the plastic projectiles that shoot from the mutant’s wrists, but secretly, I thought it was cool. My son thought the projectiles were icicles and wanted to cut the cheetah’s head off with them. The cheetah’s tail becomes the robot’s actual sword, and by then the cheetah’s head is already inside the body cavity of the robot.

Nostalgia warning: when we were kids, my parents would get one big Channukah present for the entire family. One year it was a ping-pong table, another year an Atari pong video game, and in 1979, it was a black Apple II (co-branded with Bell & Howell). I still have the black Apple II. In the long run, I’m glad they got us the computer, but the cheetah would have seemed much cooler at the time.

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What is the best toy someone else ever got for your kid?

This may have been said in many ways before; the edge/distributed/p2p discussion has spoken extensively about the transition of services to the edge of the network

There is another way to look at this, however: specifically, there are two factors:

1. The transition of HARDWARE services into software services at the edge
2. The transition of MANUALLY CONFIGURED services into automatic services

Let’s see how P2P stacks up against this: Name service is traditionally handled by DNS. DNS could be considered a HARDWARE service, MANUALLY configured. It’s a bunch of servers somewhere; you have to buy a name, wait several days, then manually enter the IP of your machine into the DNS service and manually enter the name into the host machine, etc. This lengthy exercise, in many P2P apps has been replaced with an automatic system (the names and thus addressability are registered with little or no human intervention). Note that the name registration is still client/server in Napster’s case, but has been fully distributed in the newest filesharing apps.

Thus, Clay Shirky’s assertion of “DNS alternative” as a criterion for P2P systems does not, inherently, require a decentralized implementation. I am arguing that a key part of the “new” phenomenon that is occuring is the automation of traditionally manual tasks.

Certainly, the motion of services to the edge is the most major part of this technology evolution. But even there, the automation of centralized services is another phenonmena at work. There was much excitement (and still is) about “software agents”- sort of AI for services, pieces of software that ‘learn’ or at least, know how to do some complex data recombination to perform more sophisticated data handling for humans. Many people have begun to make software agents synonymous with the edge networking theme, but once again, agents can be completely centralized. And at the user interface level, it is not necessary for the user to know “where” their agent is executing (local host or on yahoo’s server farms?).

Concretely, agents might comprehensively search web based data stores for particular information, or coordinate synchronization between address books or schedules, etc, or track down a user and forward important information to them in the real world (on their cell phone, pager, office phone, etc.) The point is, this is certainly an “edgy” phenomenon- the process is going to various machines on the edge of the network to search, or it is coordinating between two edge computers with different, overlapping views of a person’s data, or it is reaching outside of the internet to edge resources such as pagers or cellphones to get ahold of a human. BUT, it is doing it from a central server…

Another example is web caching: this is a mature, proven technology, used over and over. The basic theory behind various caching techniques resonates throughout computer science, from chips up to networks. What, then, is novel about caching in an emerging technology sense? The automated deployment of edge caches is what is new. With edge caching (or “outer edge” or “far edge” “over the edge” caching, when it includes end user machines), we have potentially tens of thousands to millions of machines participating in the caching for their networks, instead of the mere thousands on a CDN. Or for instance, you have the automated deployment of server farms in distributed computation. In order to make this work, you need automation, because you can manually configure 100’s of machines in an in-house server farm, but you can’t expect to manually (using IT labor) configure tens of thousands of remote computing resources.

Another further example is firewalls- you see increased automation in both hardware NAT’s (linksys et al., mostly automatic) at the edge of the network, and fully automated firewall systems like ZoneAlarm that run on the host and pretty much configure themselves.

There are many areas where traditional centralized servers are doing the job, and often these centralized servers are bound to the hardware platform they were deployed on.

Remember, many central, hub-and-spoke systems actually suffer a tremendous efficiency reduction when they are decentralized. There are some systems that would never work in a pure decentralized setup without fundamentally changing what they do; And, decentralizing these systems is far more complicated and error-prone than the straightforward central implementation ever was.

Part of what enables us to now look at decentralizing these servers is the automation. The user doesn’t have to tinker with settings, they system just goes when it is executed. And the automation allows the network effect, because the system starts working without configuration roadblocks (’configure your IP address’) that would stop it from going up instantly.

Look over some traditionally succesful technologies, and imagine a world where this technology was 1) implemented in software 2) available on every single machine in the network. You see many technologies that could work this way, and do not already.

Note that in order to achive total penetration in the network, the technology has to be auto-configuring- most of the users on today’s Internet can’t cope with ‘too many screwdrivers’, configuration complexity. This is, in my opinion, a key enabler of distributed systems, and a way of analyzing old systems to see if they can be distributed on today’s commercial Internet.

The so-called “network effect” says that the value of a network varies exponentially with the number of members (and hence the number of connections). But what drives the network effect? Although the value of the network incents new members to join, I posit that peer pressure drives network membership. If all your friends use IM and you’re still leaving voicemails, you’ll be left out of the crowd.

We see this same phenomenon drive the popularity of movies, books, etc. It isn’t the intrinsic value of the information embodied in a network, but rather the access to its members that attracts new members.

I’ve never read the Harry Potter books and I’ve only seen the trailer for the film (why do they call it a trailer if it preceeds the movie?). I’m struck by the scene in which they show the vastness of the school hall. Instead of being a lone freak on the Group W bench, Harry is part of a huge brotherhood of wizards. We witness the same power in our daily lives, be it in church or the subway. If everyone else is doing it, it must be worthwhile.

I see this phenomena weekly in the Suzuki violin program. My daughters, 4 and 6 (those are their names), both play violin. The comraderie with the other youngsters in the program and the awe that the older students inspire keep my kids motivated. When they go to class, camp, or a concert, there are dozens and sometimes hundreds of kids just like them. At a holiday concert last night, there was a group of a half-dozen teenage boys. They could have easily been drag racing or drinking, but they have found fellowship in the violin. They still swagger and showboat, but their competition and motivation are uplifting.

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The odd thing about moving is that it requires a tremendous amount of work (packing, moving, unpacking) that often can’t be justified. We’re not talking a move necessitated by a job change. We moved 10 minutes from my old house just because we (read my wife) liked the new house, neighbors, and school system better. Of course, there’s dog shit on this lawn too (which is why the grass always looks greener from a distance).

To salvage some purpose from this senseless move, I started thinking about how people make decisions and realized we’re all insane. We don’t do formal cost/benefit analyses, we just go with our gut. Today was a case in point.

I really wanted to get my basement office in order after the move, so I wanted to get my bookshelves set up and boxes unpacked. I’ve been staring at a the moldy carpet for a week hoping the mold would move out, but it hasn’t. I decided I couldn’t live with the mold on the carpet. Of course, I could survive the non-toxic mold, I just couldn’t live with it. Thankfully, my wife took pity on me and called the carpet monger to de-moldify my cave (ironically enough carpet bombs have nothing to do with carpets).

So I spent a few hours moving all the stuff into the uncarpeted area of the basement only to wish I’d cleaned the carpets before I moved the stuff downstairs. Bob Brown of Brown’s Carpet Cleaning arrived at the appointed time (disqualifying him for a career with the phone company). The mold was but a momentary inconvenience to his light saber (okay, it was a 220-degree steam cleaner). But I forgot about the paint.

Here is where I wish I’d lost consciousness instead of merely losing any rational sense of worth-it-ness. I’d forgotten that one of my file cabinets was hiding a 2-foot diameter paint stain. A previous troglodyte had spilled about a gallon of latex paint and merely let it dry on the carpet. He must have been on deadline. I was prepared to ignore the paint spot, but Bob was a man on a mission. At his urging, I poured an entire gallon of paint thinner on the carpet and scrubbed it with a brush repeatedly over the course of an hour. For an extra $20 bucks and 60 minutes of elbow grease, we got the old paint out of the carpet. Was it worth it? Hell no, not by any rational standard. But now I can walk downstairs and be proud of my clean rug and I don’t have to position the furniture strategically to hide it.

It seems to me that we all make irrational decisions like this every day. We do what feels right at the moment for reasons that don’t make a lot of sense to others. I can’t blame it on the paint thinner. Maybe Bob pulled the Jedi mind trick on me, but what would a Jedi need with an extra $20?

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What is the most irrational thing you’ve ever done from a cost/benefit perspective?

Editor’s note: Please see the December 21, 2001 update to this story:
Dmitry Sets the Record Straight.

Big news in the U.S. vs. Dmitry Sklyarov case!

The U.S. Attorney’s Office announced today that Dmitry Sklyarov has agreed to testify in the civil case against his former employer, Elcomsoft Co., Inc., in exchange for a deferment in his own case “until the conclusion of the case against Elcomsoft or for one year, whichever is longer.”

Only time will tell whether Dmitry’s testimony will vindicate Elcomsoft or seal its fate with the U.S. Attorney.

Under the agreement, Mr. Sklyarov agreed to cooperate with the United States in its ongoing prosecution of Mr. Sklyarov’s former employer, Elcomsoft Co., Ltd. Mr. Skylarov will be required to appear at trial and testify truthfully, and he will be deposed in the matter. For its part, the United States agreed to defer prosecution of Mr. Sklyarov until the conclusion of the case against Elcomsoft or for one year, whichever is longer. Mr. Sklyarov will be permitted to return to Russia in the meantime, but will be subject to the Court’s supervision, including regularly reporting by telephone to the Pretrial Services Department. Mr. Sklyarov will be prohibited from violating any laws during the year, including copyright laws. The United States agreed that, if Mr. Sklyarov successfully completes the obligations in the agreement, it will dismiss the charges pending against him at the end of the year or when the case against Elcomsoft is complete.

Resources

• US Attorney (N. Dist. CA) Press Release —
  On Dropping of Charges Against Dmitry Sklyarov (Dec. 13, 2001)

  December 13, 2001
  (http://www.eff.org/Cases/US_v_Sklyarov/20011213_usatty_pr.html)

• EFF Press Release: Government Agrees to Defer Prosecution of Dmitry Sklyarov — Russian Programmer Freed, Must Testify Against Employer
  
  December 13, 2001
  (http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/US_v_Sklyarov/20011213_eff_pr.html)

• The EFF’s Documents related to the US v. Sklyarov case
  (http://www.eff.org/Cases/US_v_Sklyarov)

• Posting on David Farber’s Interesting Person list
  December 13, 2001
  (http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200112/msg00175.html)

What do you think?

Related link: http://dc.internet.com/news/article/0,,2101_939421,00.html

CONTACT YOUR CONGRESSMAN, IF YOU THINK CHANGES SHOULD BE MADE!
When a House Judiciary subcommittee begins two days of hearings this morning on proposed changes in the Copyright Act, the Digital Media Association will have achieved a milestone in its long running legal and regulatory battle with the Recording Institute Association of America (RIAA).

The subcommittee on will be reviewing Copyright Office recommendations for changes to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that would enlarge Congress’ original 1996 legislative definition of “interactive” Web radio. If Congress ultimately approves the changes, Webcasters could gain parity with traditional radio broadcasters in the royalty rates that must be paid to copyright holders for the use of their songs.

I just moved to Princeton. (Any place within 15 miles of Princeton is called “Princeton” so that they can charge a premium.) You can tell how long it took me to move by noting that my last weblog entry was almost two weeks ago. I need high-speed access, so I called Verizon about getting DSL hooked up. I was told that the area is DSL-capable, but whether I can get DSL at my house depends on the actual phone lines running to it. I told Verizon that I wanted two more phone lines installed and to please make sure that they supported DSL.

Turns out that they don’t even pretend to honor such requests. You get what you get. They hook up the phone lines, you wait 10 days for their computers to update, and then they tell you whether you can get DSL. First they told me I’d have to wait to find out, then they told me my lines supported DSL, now they’re telling me they don’t, so I may be screwed. (Please don’t send me back to ISDN).

It is beyond my comprehension that someone who wants DSL and orders it in advance can’t get it. If anything could make phone company service worse it is getting them involved with computer technology. They can’t even get the “phone” part right.

True Story: When I ordered two new lines a few weeks ago, I dutifully waited for the phone man (I’ve never seen a phone chick) to show up at the appointed time. When I called to ask why no one showed up, Verizon said that they didn’t need to send someone out and that the lines should “just work,” but I should call them back if it didn’t. After wiring and testing and rewiring and retesting for several hours, I concluded that they didn’t install the second line.

When I called to complain that the second line wasn’t working, they cheerfully told me that it wasn’t installed. Yeah, I concluded that. Silly me for making an installation appointment or believing it would work without a phone man showing up. When I asked why they didn’t install it when they said they would, the customer disservice representative said, “We just tell people it is hooked up, and then we wait until they call to complain when it isn’t.”

A few days later they sent out super-phone-man, who not only did everything perfectly, but was punctual and courteous to boot. They apparently save him for people they’re screwing over with the DSL setup.

From his dial-up,

Bruce

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An interesting idea from a short paper titled “Caching Trust Rather Than Content” by M. Satyanarayanan of CMU:

Caching, one of the oldest ideas in computer science, often improves performance and sometimes improves availability. Previous uses of caching have focused on data content. It is the presence of a local copy of data that reduces access latency and masks server or network failures. This position paper puts forth the idea that it can sometimes be useful to merely cache knowledge sufficient to recognize valid data. In other words, we do not have a local copy of a data item, but possess a substitute that allows us to verify the content of that item if it is offered to us by an untrusted source. We refer to this concept as caching trust.

Prof. Satyanarayanan is the prime mover behind Coda, a distributed filesystem. Coda blurs the distinction between local and remote filesystems by caching remote files on the local filesystem, and doing it in a way that hides the details of whether a file is stored locally or remotely.

In the case of this paper, the purpose of caching trust rather than data is to allow Coda-like filesystems to run on devices that are even more resource constrained, relative to a full fileserver, than a PC. For example, to access remote shares on a Dick Tracy wristwatch.

I spoke more Spanish today than at any time since my honeymoon in Spain 7 years ago. It reminded me how badly I speak Spanish. At one point, trying to say “Let’s take one more trip (viaje),” I think I said “Let’s take one more old man (viejo).” Apparently I’m even funnier in Spanish than in English because mis compadres laughed at me frequently.

No matter, I spent all day asking them how to say things in Spanish, and then of course I’d forget immediately because I haven’t slept in two days. It seems I can’t commit one or two new verbs to long term memory, much less conjugate in the past or future tense.

The only thing worse than my Spanish speaking vocabulary is my Spanish comprehension. Let’s not even talk about the misunderstandings that I was party to. Okay, let’s talk about one. I wanted to say “side,” which came out as “sida.” Of course, “SIDA” is Spanish for AIDS. Bad choice of malapropisms. (The word I was looking for was “lado.”) I also spent all day trying to ask what was the opposite of a word I knew, but I didn’t know how to say “opposite” in Spanish. It took me 8 eight hours to remember that “rapido” is the opposite of “despacio.”

One thing I took away from the day was that many computer book readers must be totally lost. I’ve always understood that some were lost when reading books. I have new appreciation for how lost most of them are when trying to formulate a meaningful question. Anyway, I exercised my brain, mouth, and back more today than I have in some time. I’ll sleep well next time I get the chance.

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