work page 15 - Dave's Blog

Business & Technology | Jobs with real authority: working on Microsoft's spell-checker | Seattle Times Newspaper

2008 Sep 30, 11:05Article on the team that owns the Office spell-checker: 'But, the team asked itself, should "calender" be flagged, or squiggled - have the red squiggly underline that indicates a misspelling? Yes, because letting it go through as correct "more often masks the really common spelling error that people make for calendar."' I didn't even realize they had written calender rather than calendar in the article

Knitt

2008 Sep 30, 10:46A rogue group of knitters 'tag' public objects and places with knit pieces. See thier gallery. "tag crew of knitters, bombing the inner city with vibrant, stitched works of art, wrapped around everything from beer bottles on easy nights to public monuments and utility poles on more ambitious outings."

humor art graffiti streetart knit cultural-disobediance

YouTube - HTML 5: Features you want desperately but still can't use

2008 Sep 29, 1:39Demos some of the working HTML5 features now available in recent builds of FireFox, IE8, Safari, and Opera. "Speaker: Ian Hickson. As the HTML5 effort reaches its first big milestone -- feature completeness -- browsers are starting to implement it. It will be years before you can rely on HTML5 support when writing Web pages and applications, but you can start to experiment today to get a feel of what the new standard offers. This talk will explore some of the most recent implementations of HTML5 features."

html5 ian-hickson html google video browser ie8

Anecdotes from Work

2008 Sep 23, 2:15

The names in the following anecdote have been changed. Except for my name (I'm Dave).

I got a new laptop a while back. I had it in my office and Tim came in to ask me something but paused when he saw my laptop. "Oh, is this one of those new touch screen laptops?" he asked, the whole time moving his hand towards my laptop and punctuating his sentence by pressing his finger to the screen. "No" I responded.

Walking down a hallway I heard Winston, one of our managers, say, "Hey Tim!" Winston catches up to me and asks, "Are you almost done with the XYZ bug?" I realized Winston was talking to me and got my name wrong but I figured I'll ignore it and perhaps he'll realize his mistake. Winston continued "I just talked with some people who say they're blocked and waiting for Tim to finish the XYZ bug." "Dave" I said helpfully attempting to diplomatically correct Winston since he apparently hadn't realized his error. "No, it was Jeremy and Bill." Winston said naming the people he had talked to who were waiting for me to fix the XYZ bug. At this point I decided it would be easier to just answer his question and end the conversation than to get into this whole thing. As far as I know, Winston has not gotten my name wrong at any other time.

work nontechnical

Hijacking the Outdoor Digital Billboard Network, DefCon (Tottenkoph, Rev and Philosopher)

2008 Sep 22, 1:47Tottenkoph, Rev and Philosopher, "Hijacking the Outdoor Digital Billboard Network". DefCon talk presentation notes on hacking digital billboards.

hack defcon security billboard

de-Tor-iorate Anonymity, DefCon, (Nathan Evans and Christian Grothoff)

2008 Sep 22, 1:21Nathan Evans and Christian Grothoff, de-Tor-iorate Anonymity. The presentation notes for a DefCon talk about an attack on Tor in which the attacker may discover Tor nodes used in a session.

tor anonymity privacy security network defcon

Big data: Welcome to the petacentre : Nature News

2008 Sep 9, 8:29Article on the data centers that backup the Internet Archive and handle CERN's LHC's data. "CERN embodies borderlessness. The Swiss-French border is a drainage ditch running to one side of the cafeteria; it was shifted a few metres to allow that excellent establishment to trade the finicky French health codes for the more laissez-fair Swiss jurisdiction. And in the data sphere it is utterly global."

lhc history internet cory-doctorow nature physics network hardware library science cern internet-archive

INTOURIST Soviet Union Russia Labels - a set on Flickr

2008 Aug 29, 10:44Cool 30's Soviet Union tourist brochure logos and designs. "Intourist was renowned as the official state travel agency of the Soviet Union. It was founded in 1929 by Joseph Stalin and was responsible for managing the great majority of foreigners' access to, and travel within, the Soviet Union. It grew into one of the largest tourism organizations in the world, with a network embracing banks, hotels, and money exchanges. Some of the best Intourist labels and brochures produced during the 1930's were designed by A. Selensky. Some of the labels in this set are signed by him, including a rare constructivist style travel brochure I have included as well."

flickr photo propaganda graphic russia history design

Revealed: The Internet's Biggest Security Hole | Threat Level from Wired.com

2008 Aug 29, 8:37"Two security researchers have demonstrated a new technique to stealthily intercept internet traffic on a scale previously presumed to be unavailable to anyone outside of intelligence agencies like the National Security Agency." Described fixes all require significant changes to the software and probably hardware doing the routing. Ugh

wired article security internet bgp hack networking defcon

Network notary system thwarts man-in-the-middle attacks

2008 Aug 26, 10:03"A new system devised by Carnegie Mellon University researchers aims to thwart man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks by providing a way to verify the authenticity of self-signed certificates. The system, which is called Perspectives, uses a distributed network of "notary" servers to evaluate the public key of a target destination so that its validity can be ascertained."

security ssl pki certificate man-in-the-middle

Tag Metadata in Feeds

2008 Aug 25, 10:13

As noted previously, my page consists of the aggregation of my various feeds and in working on that code recently it was again brought to my attention that everyone has different ways of representing tag metadata in feeds. I made up a list of how my various feed sources represent tags and list that data here so that it might help others in the future.

Tag markup from various sources
Source	Feed Type	Tag Markup Scheme	One Tag Per Element	Tag Scheme URI	Human / Machine Names	Example Markup
LiveJournal	Atom	atom:category	yes	no	no	, (source)
LiveJournal	RSS 2.0	rss2:category	yes	no	no	`technical` (soure)
WordPress	RSS 2.0	rss2:category	yes	no	no	, (source)
Delicious	RSS 1.0	dc:subject	no	no	no	`photosynth photos 3d tool` (source)
Delicious	RSS 2.0	rss2:category	yes	yes	no	`domain="http://delicious.com/SequelGuy/"> hulu` (source)
Flickr	Atom	atom:category	yes	yes	no	`term="seattle" scheme="http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/" />` (source)
Flickr	RSS 2.0	media:category	no	yes	no	`scheme="urn:flickr:tags"> seattle washington baseball mariners` (source)
YouTube	RSS 2.0	media:category	no	no	no	`label="Tags"> bunny rabbit yawn cadbury` (source)
LibraryThing	RSS 2.0	No explicit tag metadata.	no	no	no	n/a, (source)

Tag markup scheme
Tag Markup Scheme	Notes	Example
Atom Category atom:category `xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"`	category/@term Required category name. category/@scheme Optional IRI id'ing the categorization scheme. category/@label Optional human readable category name.	`term="catName" scheme="tag:deletethis.net,2008:tagscheme" label="category name in human readable format"/>`
RSS 2.0 category rss2:category empty namespace	category/@domain Optional string id'ing the categorization scheme. category/text() Required category name. The value of the element is a forward-slash-separated string that identifies a hierarchic location in the indicated taxonomy. Processors may establish conventions for the interpretation of categories.	`domain="tag:deletethis.net,2008:tagscheme"> MSFT`
Yahoo Media RSS Module category media:category `xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/"`	category/text() Required category name. category/@domain Optional string id'ing the categorization scheme.	`scheme="http://dmoz.org" label="Ace Ventura - Pet Detective"> Arts/Movies/Titles/A/Ace_Ventura_Series/Ace_Ventura_-_Pet_Detective`
Dublin Core subject dc:subject `xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"`	subject/text() Required category name. Typically, the subject will be represented using keywords, key phrases, or classification codes. Recommended best practice is to use a controlled vocabulary.	`humor`

Update 2009-9-14: Added WordPress to the Tag Markup table and namespaces to the Tag Markup Scheme table.

feed media delicious technical atom youtube yahoo rss tag

Deriving a Non-Recursive Fibonacci Function Using Linear Algebra

2008 Aug 20, 10:51

In my Intro to Algorithms course in college the Fibonacci sequence was used as the example algorithm to which various types of algorithm creation methods were applied. As the course went on we made better and better performing algorithms to find the nth Fibonacci number. In another course we were told about a matrix that when multiplied successively produced Fibonacci numbers. In my linear algebra courses I realized I could diagonalize the matrix to find a non-recursive Fibonacci function. To my surprise this worked and I found a function.
$The Nth Fibonacci value is (1 + sqrt(5))^N - (1 - sqrt(5))^N all over sqrt(5) * 2^N$
Looking online I found that of course this same function was already well known. Mostly I was irritated that after all the algorithms we created for faster and faster Fibonacci functions we were never told about a constant time function like this.

I recently found my paper depicting this and thought it would be a good thing to use to try out MathML, a markup language for displaying math. I went to the MathML implementations page and installed a plugin for IE to display MathML and then began writing up my paper in MathML. I wrote the MathML by hand and must say that's not how its intended to be created. The language is very verbose and it took me a long time to get the page of equations transcribed.

MathML has presentation elements and content elements that can be used separately or together. I stuck to content elements and while it looked great in IE with my extension when I tried it in FireFox which has builtin MathML support it didn't render. As it turns out FireFox doesn't support MathML content elements. I had already finished creating this page by hand and wasn't about to switch to content elements. Also, in order to get IE to render a MathML document, the document needs directives at the top for specific IE extensions which is a pain. Thankfully, the W3C has a MathML cross platform stylesheet. You just include this XSL at the top of your XHTML page and it turns content elements into appropriate presentation elements, and inserts all the known IE extension goo required for you. So now my page can look lovely and all the ickiness to get it to render is contained in the W3C's XSL.

technical mathml fibonacci math

Security Assessment of the Internet Protocol

2008 Aug 20, 4:29A description of IP with implementation guidance to avoid historical security issues.

reference ietf ip tcp network protocol security internet

[whatwg] Web Applications 1.0 Draft

2008 Aug 20, 9:48Apple will or will not license the canvas tag? 'Apple Computer, Inc. ("Apple") believes it has intellectual property rights ("IP Rights") relative to WHATWG's Web Applications 1.0 Working Draft, dated March 24, 2005, Section 10.1, entitled "Graphics: The bitmap canvas". At this time, Apple reserves all rights in its IP Rights and makes no representations as to Apple's willingness or unwillingness to license these IP Rights. However, in the event that the Web Applications 1.0 Working Draft, dated March 24, 2005, becomes part of a formalized draft standard at W3C or IETF, for example, Apple is prepared to address the disclosure/licensing rules of such organizations.'

apple patent html ip html5 canvas whatwg browser browser-war

Brad Abrams : .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 Allows managed code to be launched from a network share!

2008 Aug 19, 4:45Finally, .NET executables from a share! =)

dotnet development microsoft blog article

How renters work the system to live for free in one of America's most expensive cities - News - SF Weeklypage 4 - SF Weekly

2008 Aug 18, 3:46Legal corner case bugs exploited for free rent in SF. "Getzow is getting pretty well known along the Polk Street corridor. Unlike other serial evictees, who move among different neighborhoods, all of his eight evictions in San Francisco have occurred in a 20-block area known as Lower Nob Hill."

article legal rent house eviction san-francisco

Dr. Horrible Link Roundup

2008 Aug 10, 3:33

Doctor Horrible's Sing Along Blog is an Internet only show you may have already watched and heard everything about. If you missed this somehow, its a musical by Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly) staring Neil Patrick Harris as an aspiring super villian who can't get up the courage to talk to his laundromat crush. Its very funny, fairly geeky, and on the Internet so of course I've enjoyed it thoroughly and have some links to share. It surprised me how many blogs that I don't usually see posting the same things telling me about it: first on Eric's blog, then The Old New Thing, and even Penny-Arcade.

Dr. Horrible's again available online via Hulu with commercial interruption.

Check out the official fan site. They link to such things as the owner of Dr. Horrible's house. He had appeared on Monster House, a reality show about remaking people's homes like Monster Car or Pimp My Ride is about remaking folk's cars, and had his house turned into a evil scientist's lab. Consequently its a perfect fit for Dr. Horrible and in return the owner appears in one of the final scenes and in the credits as the 'Purple Pimp'. Apparently the purple suit is his. Also on his blog you can find out what's happened on that big chair that appears in the show. All I'll say about that is, good thing Neil Patrick Harris wears a lab coat while sitting on it.

At the recent Comic Con some attendees took video of the Dr. Horrible Comic Con panel (video clips contain spoilers) some of which I've grouped together. Besides the videos containing the creators and stars of the musical who are all hilarious (see Felicia Day's comment on twittering) there's also some excellent bits about a possible second installment and information on the impending DVD. To finish off this series of Dr. Horrible links check out this Venn Diagram of Felicia Day's work.

dr. horrible doctor horrible humor link roundup

Dark Knight and Mariners Baseball

2008 Aug 4, 8:39

The weekend before last I saw Dark Knight with some friends from work and then we all ate at Z'Tejas after. Like everyone has said and as the name implies Dark Knight is... dark. Dark Knight was a little over the top at times as compared to Batman Begins but I really enjoyed it. Two times during the movie I thought it had ended but I was wrong. The Joker is both frightening (Cringe inducing line "Wanna know how I got these scars?") and humorous ("Where is Harvey Dent? ... You know where Harvey is? You know who he is?", as well as the pencil magic trick). I can certainly recommend it to anyone who enjoyed Batman Begins. The previews included Burn After Reading a new Coen Brother's comedy that I look forward to, and Quantum of Solace which hopefully does the same thing Dark Knight has, keep up the new direction on the refreshed franchise.

This past weekend Sarah and I went to a Mariners baseball game. I think this is the first MLB baseball game I've seen in person. Sarah's company gave out tickets for the game and the use of a suite. Its a room half way up the stadium with comfortable chairs, a mini-fridge built-in to the marble counter-topped center table, and a big flat screen television with the game on it. I suppose that's in case you don't want to turn to the right and sit at the window, or walk out onto the balcony which features three rows of comfy chairs overlooking the field. Anyway there was free food and drinks and I met some of the people Sarah works with.