Today I finish my first week of my new job at One Laptop Per Child. It's true, you can get paid for writing free software (and saving the world) -- who'd have thunk?

At the moment, I'm working on IPv6 networking and Linux kernel support for autoconfiguration.

Helpful Wikipedia articles to explain some of the above: OLPC, IPv6.

Well, the "Google NDA" post has been at the top of this page for a while, and it looks like it's not exactly going to be tomorrow that I get to post about (a) the fact that I've gotten my thesis receipt and am totally done with this PhD (that will be next week), or (b) what exciting thing I'm going to do next (that's waiting on the results of the previously mentioned Google interview, among other things). When media talk about "balance" it usually just means that they've punted on the idea of discovering "truth" and are about to give falsehoods equal time. But that's not what we mean here, dear Reader! Notwithstanding my real gripes with their aggressive (and not obviously-enough optional) pre-employment NDA, here are some more Googly bits for "balance":

• Google Apps for your Domain is really great. If you've got a domain name sitting around underutilized, you can make the bits point to google, and google will then host page creation tools, email, and even calendaring for you. In my case I've let Google loose on ananian.com, to manage email for the domain behind the scenes. Addresses at ananian.com can get forwarded elsewhere or else my family members can use gmail on the ananian.com domain. I haven't really played around with the web page creation tools, yet, but it's gotta be better than what I'm putting up on that site at the moment (ie, nothing much!). It handles domain aliases (ananian.org, ananian.net), catch-all addresses, and SPF anti-spam measures, too. Groovy.
• The mobile version of Google maps is really nice, at least on my Treo. The other mobile Google services are more of a mixed bag: I'm still waiting for a nice mobile version of Google Calendar (the SMS gateway is better than nothing, but I get charged for SMS), and mobile Gmail 1.1.0 worked great on my Treo, before the latest 1.1.1 release crashed and burned, making it obvious that Google isn't actually reading their support forum. (Or is there some other place I'm supposed to report that "your 1.1.1 JAR file is corrupt"? A newsgroup is not a bug tracker!)
• OK, this isn't Google, but I just stumbled across Project Honeypot, which has some simple steps you can take to help nab email harvesters for spam.

Tomorrow I am going to interview over at Google. Before I do so, I need to sign an NDA which states, among other things, that I'm not allowed to tell anyone I'm interviewing over there, or indeed, to mention the name of Google at all. So I'm going to do all that now and get it out of my system, so I'm not tempted to violate the agreement after I've signed it. Since linking the entire NDA would likely violate Google's copyright on the document, I'll just quote sections of it below:

• The biggest flaw, to my mind, is the lack of any expiration date. Clause 8, "This Agreement shall remain in effect until such time as all Confidential Information of Google disclosed hereunder becomes publicly known and made generally available through no action or inaction of Participant." Since some of the information "disclosed hereunder" will only ever be known to me and Google (see next bullet), this means that the NDA lasts forever. Technology moves fast — certainly it must be possible to put some time limit on the information I might (inadvertently) receive. 3 years? 5 years? 10? 20?
• The definition of "Confidential Information" in section 2 includes, "the terms of any agreement and the discussions, negotiations, or proposals related to any agreement." So, according to the NDA, I can't even tell my mother (not an "employee, director, agent, or third party contractor", even if she signs a Google NDA herself) what salary or options are in any Google offer. I'd like to ask my friends at Google, say, what ballpark compensation I might expect, but under the terms of their NDAs they couldn't tell me either. Further, since it's highly unlikely that the terms of my offer become "publicly known ... through no action or inaction of Participant" this bullet combined with the previous makes the agreement eternal.
• I can never mention Google again in any public statement after I sign this NDA:

  4. Participant agrees not to do the following, except with the advanced review and written approval of Google: (a) issue or release any articles, advertising, publicity, or other matter relating to this Agreement (including the fact that a meeting or discussion has taken place between the parties) or mentioning or implying the name of Google."

  So, after I sign this NDA, I can't tell you that I've done so. (Luckily, I haven't signed it yet.) I have crossed out "mentioning or implying the name of Google" in my copy, as I simply cannot in good conscience promise never to "mention or imply the name of Google" in public (say, on this blog) ever again. What lawyer wrote this crap?
• The third clause of item 4, whose first clause is above, is:

  [4] (c) reverse engineer, disassemble, decompile, translate, or attempt to discover any prototypes, software, algorithms, or underlying ideas which embody Google's Confidential Information.

  As the NDA is very loosey-goosey about what, exactly, Google considers Confidential Information — nowhere in the NDA does is say that Confidential Information will be marked or identified in any way — this may effectively forbid me ever to take apart any of Google's software. US law allows me to (for example) reverse engineer for compatibility (what Ed Felten calls the Freedom to Tinker), and as a practicing computer scientist I'd rather not forfeit those rights for all time for all Google code. Time-limiting the NDA or clearly marking Confidential Information may have made this term less objectionable. One may also attempt to argue that "Confidential Information" is limited to stuff I directly observe or is presented to me — for example, if I'm told that there's some secret at the heart of Google Mail, I can't ever "view source" in my browser to try to discover what it is, but that I'm still free to view the source of (say) Google Calendar. I'd prefer that to be the case, but the language used in the NDA is:

  2. Google may disclose certain information under this Agreement it considers confidential and/or proprietary concerning Google's business and/or technology ("Confidential Information") including, but not limited to...

  Is the Confidential Information only that information which Google discloses, or is there a broad swath of Confidential Information owned by Google, some of which it may disclose, but all of which I'm forbidden to "attempt to discover"?
• Finally, item 5 provides that "If Confidential Information is required to be produced by law, court order, or other governmental demand... Participant must immediately notify Google of that obligation," regardless of the fact that disclosure of a National Security Letter is illegal. Not that this possibility is likely, but it is just one more term with which it could be impossible to comply.

I have signed NDAs with other companies which seemed entirely reasonable. The Google NDA, however, seems to fly directly in the face of Google's reported "Do No Evil" motto. What's more, after tomorrow I may be entirely unable to complain about it — and I expect that current Google employees are similarly contractually bound not to comment. But while I can, let me say: this stinks!

UPDATE: A quick google for "Google NDA" turned up several more complaints about the Google NDA, such as this one from Colin Percival. Valleywag reproduces the entire Google NDA, so you can read it in its entirety yourself. Further, I've written an amendment to the NDA which remedies its faults as I see them. If I can get Google to agree to at least term 2 of this amendment, then you'll hear about my experiences here tomorrow.

UPDATE x2: I crossed out some terms before I signed the NDA this morning. At the end of the interview (4 or so hours later) my recruiter returned to tell me that he'd talked to his supervisor and it turns out that I could have not signed it at all. (Thanks for checking, Jeff!) They'll still talk to you if you decline. In fact, when you arrive at Google they ask you to sign a different NDA (a much less evil one) in order to get a visitor's badge, and it turns out that you can decline that as well: your badge will have a big red "No NDA" label or some such on it, but no harm done. So, my advice to future interviewees: be brave! Just decline the NDAs, and ask your recruiter to check with their boss if that makes them nervous. It would probably be a good idea to warn your recruiter first if you plan to do this, so that the boss-checking won't throw off the schedule. It will be all right.

Although I've defended my thesis, I've still got a couple of weeks of work left on the paper document. That said, I'm officially looking for work now. I've had some very promising interviews already, but if you've got an exciting job (preferably in the Boston area), let me know. I'd like to keep working on compilers & hardware, but movies, space, and saving the world are also passions of mine...

Also, I thought I'd let me Princeton classmates know that I'll be at my 10th reunion this summer: hope to see you all there!

It's fair to say I'm not a big fan of Diebold -- even before they sent me a cease-and-desist letter over my small part in exposing some of their illegal practices (for example, using uncertified voting machines for an election). Anyway here's their latest lunacy: Massachusetts (ie, Sec. State William Galvin) wisely decided to avoid Diebold when purchasing new machines to comply with the accessibility requirements in the Help America Vote Act (HAVA)... and in response Diebold sued the state. Here's some coverage:

• Voting device pact at issue (Boston Globe)
• Firm sues Mass. over contract for voting machines for disabled (AP, by way of the Boston Herald)
• And even that paragon of journalism, Slashdot: Diebold Sues Massachusetts for "Wrongful Purchase"

The best bit of the articles, to my mind, is this:

Galvin called the lawsuit "frivolous" and "sour grapes on the part of Diebold."

"We've gone through an exhaustive process consulting with the disabled community to find out what's best for them," Galvin told The Associated Press. "We certainly don't feel like we have an obligation to help (Diebold) market their equipment."

I'd have said "a company guilty of breaking election laws" instead of "Diebold", and "insecure and buggy equipment which threatens the bedrock of our democracy" instead of plain "equipment", but I think Sec. Galvin and I are on the same page here.

Incidentally, the AP article massacres the reasons why the AutoMARK was chosen, but it's a very good choice from a technical standpoint: it's a disabled-voter-friendly touchscreen machine that emits a bog-standard optical-scan ballot, so the standard election procedures and auditability of optical scan technology are uncompromised. Further, it integrates well with existing systems, so it's cost-effective to boot. In the past I've felt that Sec. State Galvin was not doing all he could to safeguard Massachusetts elections, but good decisions like these are slowly winning me over.

For any of you who've been following the flight tests of SpaceX's Falcon rocket, you may be interested to hear that:

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has noted that the preliminary assessment of the Falcon I flight shows that the second stage shut down only a minute before schedule - and still managed to deploy its satellite mass simulator ring.

The shutdown appears to have been caused by the sloshing of propellant in the LOX tank, increasing observed oscillation, which would normally have been successfully dampened out by the second stage Thrust Vector Control (TVC) system. However, the impact on the second stage nozzle during separation caused a 'hard slew' correction, over-compensating previously simulated scenarios.

This analysis is preliminary, and SpaceX hasn't posted it in its official updates page yet. But, if confirmed, this buttresses the case that their recent test was largely successful.

One of the architects of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act acknowledged that "our Clinton administration policies didn't work out very well" and "our attempts at copyright control have not been successful" in a conference in Montreal. Michael Geist attended the conference and reported the news. The conference's topic was on music and copyright reform in Canada; the US is pressuring our northern neighbors to enforce draconian restrictions on fair use similar to our DMCA. Hopefully the Canadians will heed the message and resist the pressure.

In other news, Slashdot brings some stories of ignored referendums. It's easy to claim that voters "don't know what they're voting for" when the politicans don't like what the voters have asked for, apparently... read the high-moderated comments on the article for more examples. Sigh.

But at least you can use genetic engineering to add additional color receptors to expand the number of "colors" we can see. I'd love to know what the world looks like with 4 color receptors, instead of my plebian 3.

Today's Washington Post contains a sobering article detailing the experiences of a recipient of a National Security Letter. According to the Justice Department's inspector general, 140,000 of these letters have been sent between between 2003 and 2005. They demand information, bypassing the judicial system, and forbid the recipient to discuss the receipt of the letter or its contents with anyone. As the article's author notes:

Living under the gag order has been stressful and surreal. Under the threat of criminal prosecution, I must hide all aspects of my involvement in the case -- including the mere fact that I received an NSL -- from my colleagues, my family and my friends. When I meet with my attorneys I cannot tell my girlfriend where I am going or where I have been. I hide any papers related to the case in a place where she will not look. When clients and friends ask me whether I am the one challenging the constitutionality of the NSL statute, I have no choice but to look them in the eye and lie.

I resent being conscripted as a secret informer for the government and being made to mislead those who are close to me, especially because I have doubts about the legitimacy of the underlying investigation.

The inspector general's report makes clear that NSL gag orders have had even more pernicious effects. Without the gag orders issued on recipients of the letters, it is doubtful that the FBI would have been able to abuse the NSL power the way that it did. Some recipients would have spoken out about perceived abuses, and the FBI's actions would have been subject to some degree of public scrutiny. To be sure, not all recipients would have spoken out; the inspector general's report suggests that large telecom companies have been all too willing to share sensitive data with the agency -- in at least one case, a telecom company gave the FBI even more information than it asked for. But some recipients would have called attention to abuses, and some abuse would have been deterred.

The author concludes (and I concur):

I believe more strongly than ever that the secrecy surrounding the government's use of the national security letters power is unwarranted and dangerous. I hope that Congress will at last recognize the same thing.

Courtesy of Bruce Schneier:

Boston Police blow up Traffic Counter

It's not just the Mooninite blinkies. In 2004, the Boston police harrassed a protester by pretending he might be standing on a bomb.

I'm beginning to think that something is seriously wrong with the police chain of command in Boston.

In other news, New Mexico police blew up two CD players which were duct-taped to the bottom church pews and rigged to play rude messages during Mass, and the Dutch police mistook one of their own transmitters for a bomb. Back to Bruce:

Okay, everyone. We need some ideas, here. If we're going to think everything weird is a bomb, then the false alarms are going to kill any hope of security.

If you're having trouble identifying bombs, this quiz should help:
http://www.bombornot.com/
And here's a relevant cartoon.

The owners of the Diesel Cafe are opening a new space at 11 Bow St in Union Square. They hosted a community meeting yesterday (Feb 6) to discuss their plans. Here are my notes from that meeting, with a little commentary. (The Boston Globe ran an article on the project recently, with a bit of misinformation; where they differ the notes below are correct.)

The new cafe will not be named Diesel, but will have much the same menu/style as in Davis Square "although we [the owners] are treating it as a creative opportunity". No stoves/hoods, so the menu will be much the same as the Sherman. Hours of operation are likely to be mostly the same as the Sherman as well, at least at first, because the # of customers drops off precipitously at night. The idea is that getting more cafes in Union Square will make it more of a "destination location" like Davis Square currently is, which will allow them to expand hours, etc. Karyn Coughlin, one of the owners of the Sherman, was at the meeting (the red haired woman who is often behind the counter), and she was supportive of the Diesel as well: making Union into a cafe Destination will benefit everyone. The Diesel owners shared how they were initially afraid when the Starbucks opened right across the street from them in Davis, but it turned out to improve the fortunes of both, with a lot of crossover traffic.

Projected opening is May/June, although this depends on the permitting process. They've finished demolition in the space, and are waiting for permits to begin construction. The facade will be improved, using the city's facade improvement funds, but the shape of the building will remain essentially the same: it's a historic building.

The grassy space to the left of the building will initially just be landscaped, but they want eventually to add outdoor seating there. Someone asked whether it would be dog-friendly. The owners replied "we love dogs, we'll see if the city will allow it." (As far as I know, the US Food Code prohibits animals in areas where food is prepared or consumed, but if the seating area is "public space", the food code may not apply. Perhaps som|dog will someday take on the food code as was done in Florida.)

A representative for the owner of the condo building to the left of 11 Bow St was present, and grilled the owners on noise, delivery truck schedules, trash, etc. It seemed that the owners gave acceptable answers. Somerville Alderman Tom Taylor was present; he stressed that the city could give conditional permits for operation if there were any concerns. The condo representative was disappointed that the Zeitgeist owner wasn't present: apparently they are really opposed to Zeitgeist moving in upstairs, because "we've heard rumors that there were multiple noise complaints against them". Again, conditional permits were mentioned; Tom Taylor volunteered that the Zeitgeist was far from having their funding together for the site, and that the same community meeting process would be held for whoever the top floor tenant turned out to be.

The landlord for the 11 Bow St property (Ifeanyi Menkiti) showed up at the end, who was a very nice man who said he was initially approached by a money transfer firm (do we need another one?!) for the site, but he was "approaching retirement, and so we get to take on projects that are nearer to our hearts". The idea of a "literary cafe" in his building was one of those projects. He apparently dabbles in poetry. I get the idea that he'd like the top floor to be some sort of cultural thingy, whether its a gallery or an educational center or something else.

I expressed to the Union Square Main Street representative that I'd like there to be more entertainment activities in the square that are not alcohol-oriented. The current Tír na nÓg location will become a sports bar, and Tír na nÓg is looking for a new place (near Jerry's Liquors, from what I hear). I opined that the number of late-night coffee drinkers in Union Square will probably not be aided by opening more bars in the square, but a movie theater or a performing arts center probably would provide that boost. The response was that that's what the new arts overlay zoning for the square is supposed to encourage. Later, I mentioned to Tom Taylor that the Walnut Street Center would be a perfect place for a movie theater because of the high roof; he's not aware of anyone yet interested in the building.

There was also some discussion of parking availability for the cafe; the Diesel cafe owners have apparently talked to the nearby Goodyear and the bank about using their parking lots after hours, but haven't agreed on anything yet. They hope that most traffic is by foot or bike.

This led into a discussion of traffic and double-parking problems on Bow Street, and the idea of restoring Somerville Ave to two-way traffic to alleviate these. Tom Taylor's response was that traffic plans were largely out of the hands of the Aldermen, although the Somerville Ave improvement plans are considering these issues.

There seemed to be a large number of pro-Diesel partisans present, many of them apparently current or former regulars at Diesel in Davis Square. The only voice potentially opposing the project was the representative from the abutting condo.

Perry Park in Somerville is being renovated; there were plans to include an off-leash recreational area for dogs in the renovation.  The abutting residents objected, and at a recent meeting a counter-proposal was made: remove the dog park from Perry Park and create an off-leash area on South Street instead.  It should be noted that South Street is far from Perry Park.

I wasn't able to make this meeting; for the record here are my thoughts:

My first concern is a general one: I'm worried about building parks which don't/won't have regular users.  Since this will be only the second dog park in the city (after Nunziato), I'd like to make sure it works.

The Perry Park area has a lot of dog traffic already (if I recall correctly), and I'm afraid that removing the dog park from the plans is just going to cause dog owners in the area to break the law by letting their dogs run off-leash, potentially causing more problems.  As long as the space formerly allocated for the dog park isn't taken over by something else, perhaps a dog park can be added later to mitigate problems residents may find they have with illegal off-leashing.  However, the current plans call for a large stone plinth in the middle of the former dog park area.

I don't think the South Street property is a direct replacement for Perry Park, because I don't think it's close enough that dog owners who would otherwise go to Perry Park will go to South Street instead.  It should be treated as a completely separate dog park project.

My first reaction was, "South Street is a terrible place for a dog park: there's no one living there."  On a recent visit I looked more closely and saw that there were indeed a number of row houses tucked away on side streets (Tremont and Norfolk), as well as the obvious Big Condo Project on Webster Ave. There also seems to be a big apartment building on Evereteze Way which I never noticed before.  I think those areas should be canvassed, and if they want a dog park, then we should accept the city's gift of the property.  Someone from Union Square Main Streets was at the Diesel meeting yesterday (more on that in the next post), and they mentioned that the "junkyard area south of Union Square" was one of their targets for development as well.  So perhaps the South Street area might become more useful.  It may also be very close to the T in 2012 or so, depending on where the station is located.  The size of the park is pretty immaterial, I think: Nunziato seems plenty large even for our greyhound who likes to run and run.  Lots of small dog parks scattered about the city will do much more good than a few huge ones in remote locations.

So the bottom line is I am cautiously enthusiatic about the South Street location, pending evaluation of the community around that location, but I don't believe it addresses the needs of the Perry Park community.

I really enjoyed this year's Mystery Hunt. Kudos to the Mad Bombers for a nicely-paced, well-constructed hunt. ACME was smallish, and slept often, so we weren't competitive in the race for the coin, but everyone I've talked to seemed to really enjoy the solving atmosphere this year. I really appreciated that Bomber HQ stayed open until 3pm Sunday, giving us a chance to finally solve those last pesky puzzles plaguing us, and to experience and enjoy some of the puzzles in the later rounds. Of course, some people went home to go to sleep late Saturday evening — and they missed all the fun. =)

I was asked about my favorite puzzles from this year. This was my response:

I really enjoyed "Logical Digits", a electronics & circuits puzzle in the very last round that emerged late. "Blather" is another programming puzzle with a clever construction. "Embezzler's Quest" is a lot of fun if you're familiar with the conventions of old text-adventure games. "Unscrambled Cable Porn" is fun to show other people, especially if you know the aha. "IAP Mystery Hunt" is a good example of a "classic" one-page mystery hunt. See for example:

• http://www.mit.edu/~puzzle/80/MH1980-1.gif
• http://www.mit.edu/~puzzle/80/MH1980-2.gif

from the first hunt in 1980.

The "Hell Runaround" might be fun if you've got a bit of time to kill and want to explore some of the more obscure corners of MIT — it takes you on a large loop around main campus, but doesn't require any MIT-specific knowledge. I still prefer ACME's runaround from 2003, though:

http://www.mit.edu/~puzzle/03/www.acme-corp.com/solutions/endgame.html

which can be run in both the "real" MIT and the "virtual" puzzle-matrix of that hunt. The monopoly hunt had a good run-around, too; I'll have to check to see if it can still be followed as written.

Puzzles we didn't try to solve, but which look fun: "Choose Your Own Misadventure", "War Dances" (for PC gaming addicts), "Manual Transmission", and the Hell puzzles in general (since we never put our two parts of these together).

"Squad Car" was reputed to be very enjoyable "for those who enjoy that sort of thing" (cryptograms). "Negative Ad Campaign" was reputed to be hilarious. "Hang 'Em High" has a number of interesting bits to it, despite being fairly straightforward. "The Central Science" isn't too hard, and is nice and science-geeky. "Friends You Can Count On" might be nice for those with small children.

Other puzzles I helped work on/solve: "The Continental DiViDe", "Team Dynamics", "Clash of the Titans", "Encore! Encore!", "Scoring Points" (didn't work on, just witnessed the first aha), "Choose Your Weapon" (same deal; teaching Anna about gang guns was a hoot), "Episodic Disorder", "D4: Ducks Playing Poker" (wouldn't it be fun to combine a duck puzzle, a "locate-places-at-MIT" puzzle, and a runaround? but instead we got a slightly tedious vanilla duck puzzle), "Celebrity Scrabble" (there is, perhaps, still a bug in my scrabble-solving program—which I wrote for Rack Your Brain in the 2000 hunt—as I'm told that the puzzle itself is blameless), "Now That's High Finance", "Flip Flop Ya Don't Stop" [I just stopped by and read the answer after others had done the real work =)], and the round 1, 2, 3, and 6 metas. If you want to tackle one of these, I might be able to give reasonable hints.

Notably, I personally worked on many many more puzzles this year than last. And this despite being the team leader! Not exactly sure of the reason for this. Perhaps because most people went home late at night to sleep, allowing me and the die-hard puzzlers to get some quality early-morning solving time. Maybe because the hunt really was much more self-organizing this year, and so I wasn't responsible for "doing stuff" for people as much. Lots of people took their turns updating the bot/wiki (Nick, especially!), there was a dedicated printing machine so I didn't have to pull print duty, Richard took care of the namebadges, and people fixed their own food (with the exception of Friday/Saturday dinner). I certainly enjoyed myself!

George Orwell's essay, "Revenge Is Sour" seems especially relevant this week, although I'm always saddened when Orwell's writing is relevant (as it always seems to be):

[T]he whole idea of revenge and punishment is a childish daydream. Properly speaking, there is no such thing as revenge. Revenge is an act which you want to commit when you are powerless and because you are powerless: as soon as the sense of impotence is removed, the desire evaporates also.

Who would not have jumped for joy, in 1940, at the thought of seeing S.S. officers kicked and humiliated? But when the thing becomes possible, it is merely pathetic and disgusting. It is said that when Mussolini's corpse was exhibited in public, an old woman drew a revolver and fired five shots into it, exclaiming, 'Those are for my five sons!' It is the kind of story that the newspapers make up, but it might be true. I wonder how much satisfaction she got out of those five shots, which, doubtless, she had dreamed years earlier of firing. The condition of her being able to get close enough to Mussolini to shoot at him was that he should be a corpse.

The rest of the essay is worth reading. It ends with,

...[H]e would probably have been scandalized at the idea of giving coffee to a 'Boche' [German]. But his feelings, he told me, had undergone a change at the sight of ce pauvre mort beside the bridge: it had suddenly brought home to him the meaning of war. And yet, if we had happened to enter the town by another route, he might have been spared the experience of seeing one corpse out of the--perhaps--twenty million that the war has produced.

In particular, anyone reading this journal who I haven't seen for a long while should join my team so I get an excuse to spend a whole weekend with you! Well, with you and a roomfull of other people clamoring for my attention. You know. But we'll be in the same room!

The team is provisionally called ACME, because the people I know for sure will be present are all former ACME-ites. There may be a good number of Pturnips, too -- and Pturnips were ACME once (well, Iliaphay; whatever -- before my time). Anyhow, if you're a recovering ACMEite, I particularly want you to rediscover the addiction. Maybe then we'll even keep the name ACME! Otherwise it's at risk of being renamed "Evil Dr. Lotte", and teams named after a dog are just lame.

I worked on degrading high-level nuclear waste using neutron products from fusion reactions: basically one of the only ways to remove weapons-grade nuclear products from the world. We'd call this "keeping stray nukes from terrorists" now, I suppose. This was partly a political hack to get funding for sub-breakeven fusion reactors, but it works just as well as a rationale for investing in a reactor technology which could actually break even and produce power. So let's do it! Let's break down that high-level nuclear waste!

One of my favorite puzzles this year was Blue Steel, although the puzzle's solution meant that many (most) teams took an easy and obvious shortcut to the answer. I also spent some enjoyable time on Pentris, although it was really a one-aha puzzle with a completely straightforward programming solution. I tend to prefer puzzles where the existence of a good program is not so obvious, or where multiple programming strategies might be employed. Square Mess is a reasonable example from last year, although its constructor neglected to consider that people would be using dictionaries different from his own. Too Precious For Words from the 2004 hunt is the puzzle I am most proud of programming to solve.

Quick list of puzzles I worked on: Ask Ye Silly Question (wrote solving program), Blue Steel, Disarray (didn't manage to solve; I don't think A=1 was clued well enough), Louder Than Words (didn't manage to solve; clueing was obscure), Long Division (didn't manage to solve; probably should have looked for outlines, but xor admits multiple ways to get the target letters out), Pentris (wrote solving program), All for One and One for All (solved after hunt).

Puzzles I didn't work on which looked like fun: Badness 10000 (adventure and bugs), Do Sa Do (square dancing!), Some Trolleys Named Lust (packet assembly, etc), Surely You're Hexing (feynmen jigsaw), American Championship (automated scrabble search?), Head of Sales (mit puzzle).

The US Army announced that it killed 37 suspected insurgents in its latest operation...

• Richard Stallman explains the dangers of software patents via an (excellent) application to Les Misérables.
• Donald Whiteside (vice-president of Intel) explains the evils of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (and DRM schemes in general) using Rudy and Pop Warner football (via Ernest Miller and J. D. Lasica).
• Clifford is made an honorary member of Somerville Dog. (OK, one dog-related link snuck in there.)

So after reading her bio (which of course, I wrote) and a few days of soul-searching, there was just no way to conceive of letting her leave. I'm happy to report that Reb has agreed to stay. Thanks to Andrea for putting the idea in my head.. [...]

Since we CAN NOT keep calling her Reb and stay sane (Rebekah will agree), new name suggestions will be considered. The winner will be rewarded with an endless supply of personal satisfaction. [...]

If you're bored at work, watch the addictive webcam!

http://cscott.net/greycam.html

Jessica, Scott, and Reb (for now).

This is the necessary first step towards our effort to create off-leash dog parks in Somerville. Within two weeks, we hope to have accomplished the second step, which is the estabishment of a municipal revolving fund for these parks... and then we can start raising money for them in earnest. Step by step...

But today: victory!

If you are a Massachusetts resident, contact your state representatives and let them know that rescue groups are an important part of Massachusetts animal welfare. Email me if you'd like more details or pointers on who to write or what to do. Thanks!

I'll post some additional information in the comments to this entry, if you are interested.

Anyway, the wailing and gnashing of teeth is over. The Daily ACK pointed me to the direct link to the raw flash file (which is what I linked to, above). Now I'm reposting that link for you, dear reader. I'm sure some contract arcana underlies this mysterious now-you-see-it-now-you-don't---I hope all the lawyers involved write their contracts better next time.

(Need I mention I'm looking forward to this movie immensely?)

Sign the FFII's open letter or otherwise show your support. We've tried software patents here. They're bad news. Let's keep Europe from making the same mistake.

Since the publication of photographs of abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison in the spring the administration's whitewashers -- led by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld -- have contended that the crimes were carried out by a few low-ranking reservists, that they were limited to the night shift during a few chaotic months at Abu Ghraib in 2003, that they were unrelated to the interrogation of prisoners and that no torture occurred at the Guantanamo Bay prison where hundreds of terrorism suspects are held. The new documents establish beyond any doubt that every part of this cover story is false.

It should be noted, however, that "the use of language X" has in fact been frequently legislated against, usually in an attempt to banish ethnicity and enforce some goal of social uniformity. And such laws do tend to be strongly enforcible, even though they often don't succeed in totally eradicating the banned language, which may re-emerge when the ban is lifted. But forbidding use of a language in official business, schools, and in public or among strangers is very effective at suppressing it.

Similarly, one might make the devil's advocate argument that banning "traffic which looks like BitTorrent" is certainly possible, especially as it lowers the bar for prosecutions from "being certain infringing material is being exchanged" to simply "being certain the protocol is BitTorrent". And, like the "use of language X" case, this can effectively shut down "talk among strangers" and the use of the protocol "in public" (ie servers)—not to mention "official use" (ie for legitimate content). (Note that open peer-to-peer systems require "talking to strangers", who you can't be sure aren't going to rat you out for using a banned protocol—even if you wrap the connections in SSL or some such to prevent third-party snoops. It is possible to use anonymizing techniques to allow "talking to strangers" without revealing your identity—but then we can legislate against "wearing masks in public" as many places do; ie ban the "anonymity" protocol.)

One should note that a difference between BitTorrent and, say, Norwegian, is that language is fairly difficult to change, while software updates to change a protocol might be easier. The users would still be playing a risky cat-and-mouse game with the law, though: I'm fairly certain a judge would rule that "BitTorrent over port 80" was still a use of the (hypothetically banned) BitTorrent protocol. Likewise for most other 'trivial' changes; one might also consider banning whatever "update protocol" allowed a popular client to adapt to legislative fiat.

I agree with Prof. Felten's main hypothesis—going after the protocol is more like whack-a-mole than it is a sound legislative strategy—but I don't think the whack-a-mole alternative is so obviously impratical that it won't get legislative consideration.

Consider, for a moment, if legislation established a list of 'banned protocols', with an administrator in charge of adding to this list (ie not requiring an act of congress). It takes time for a user community to change protocols. Even if it took 6 months (say) for a "new" peer-to-peer protocol to be "discovered" and added to the ban, it might still prove very effective in limiting the community size (and thus use and usefulness) of peer-to-peer technologies. It would also strongly hurt legitimate uses of peer-to-peer technologies (since the protocol is banned regardless of content), which is something we might worry about but the legislators (and their MPAA/RIAA/etc lobbyists) might regard as a "necessary consequence of fighting crime".