I am fascinated by the search for extrasolar planets and therefore the ultimate prize the discovery of second Earths and with them life. It has been an interesting journey. It has only been since the late nineties that people have stopped questioning if any other planets outside the solar system existed, and early examples seemed to force doubt to if any Earth like planets existed.
The race is now on to find them as the technology gets better. A couple of days ago Cosmic Log posted an article about it. One my favorite aspects of that blog is the many hundreds of comments that some articles receive. This one goes with the above linked article.
"Three or more years? So the chances of us finding an alien civilization willing to buy mortgage backed securities in time to stave off financial disaster is pretty slim I take it." Dan - Vancouver WA (Sent Tuesday, February 17, 2009 8:50 PM)
There are so many ways to take this comment, it is funny and biting and could be interpreted from many perspectives.
Mathematically they are out there, and it is only a matter of time before we find one. What changes when we do?
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Has it been that long really?
"L0pht Heavy Industries, the renowned Boston-area hacker think-tank, will reunite for a panel discussion to discuss the last decade of the security industry and how it has evolved." Youtube video
So watching this reminded me of an event, I guess it was over ten years ago at M.I.T. with Mudge and the gang, (pre-corporate days) in panel form to 'discuss' computer security with the FBI.
What I remember of the event was very sad at the time and amusing now is that many of the FBI agents on the FBI team (3 or 4 of the 5 if memory serves) had yet to go through computer training.
So here on the small stage was an apex of hackerdom and a group of Federal novices, the disparity was so great, that I don't recall anything very relevant being debated or discussed.
The discussion quickly degenerated into questions from the small audience (Directed to the FBI) of "So do you guys get to carry guns?" and the like. It's hard to believe its been that long. I wonder if those agents are still in the industry?
So watching this reminded me of an event, I guess it was over ten years ago at M.I.T. with Mudge and the gang, (pre-corporate days) in panel form to 'discuss' computer security with the FBI.
What I remember of the event was very sad at the time and amusing now is that many of the FBI agents on the FBI team (3 or 4 of the 5 if memory serves) had yet to go through computer training.
So here on the small stage was an apex of hackerdom and a group of Federal novices, the disparity was so great, that I don't recall anything very relevant being debated or discussed.
The discussion quickly degenerated into questions from the small audience (Directed to the FBI) of "So do you guys get to carry guns?" and the like. It's hard to believe its been that long. I wonder if those agents are still in the industry?
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Eh, I need to write right?
For the lack of anything interesting to write, I recently started to use Twitter and I have been thinking about the service. (Apparently, as was @botchagalupe with a post about about being a 'twidiot'.
You have got to love the Internet for it's influence in making up words. For instance, my oldest son recently coined the term "traumacational" during a discussion about biology (birds-n-bees ya know) he says "Dad, thanks, really, that was both traumatizing and educational at the same time, it was traumacational, now can we talk about something else please?"
But I digress, I have mixed feelings about the service ('Twitter', if I've lost you), it is both a serious time-sink, informative, and addictive. I am both fascinated with it, and embarrassed by it.
A co-worker sent me a link about WOZ jumping ship to fusionio and I jokingly replied with "bah I saw that on twitter days ago!" his reply which mildly stung, ""Twitter" sounds like a place 13-year old girls go to chat about Pokemon and boy bands." I have to admit though that through the marketing and PR stuff, I have managed to find some very cool sites. Which then reminded me of an Andy Rooney quote: "Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it easier to do don't need to be done."
But, many of the links are fantastic, and the conversations while often one sided are interesting. That is IF you connect with the right people, and I have saved so many links that I haven't been able to spend any meaningful amount of time looking at them.
So my twittering (there it is again, modifying made up words) was scratching at something in the back of my noggin, and it finally dawned on me what it was. It's MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) chat without the game. I played EQ for years, and there would be a certain amount of people that only seemed to chat in the game, which is likely why Second Life is popular (I imagine, never tried it), well Twitter seems to mimic the many open windows, multiple conversations, direct tells, and secret replies that gamers become prolific at while gaming a MMO.
Interestingly enough, I have found a significant population of computer security people, which fascinates me because here they are updating to everyone with all kinds of information, most of it meaningless, but there are patterns of behavior, sites, and locations, which made an important distinction for me that security is not necessarily privacy. As a friend said earlier when I pointed this out (and I badly paraphrase), "While one facilitates the other, there are not mutually exclusive or dependent." Maybe this is an old subject, but I don't remember reading anything that specifically calls the subject out in this way.
Its definitely not a new concern by any means, one of the responses to @botachagalupes post is that the commenter's twitter posts are private so someone won't go rob his house in Cali when he's boarding an airplane to London, etc. But there is a very large group of people that link everything, linkedin profiles, blogs, jobs, GPS locations, etc. it's amazing.
Well, just another nugget to swish around in my brain for awhile, I guess.
You have got to love the Internet for it's influence in making up words. For instance, my oldest son recently coined the term "traumacational" during a discussion about biology (birds-n-bees ya know) he says "Dad, thanks, really, that was both traumatizing and educational at the same time, it was traumacational, now can we talk about something else please?"
But I digress, I have mixed feelings about the service ('Twitter', if I've lost you), it is both a serious time-sink, informative, and addictive. I am both fascinated with it, and embarrassed by it.
A co-worker sent me a link about WOZ jumping ship to fusionio and I jokingly replied with "bah I saw that on twitter days ago!" his reply which mildly stung, ""Twitter" sounds like a place 13-year old girls go to chat about Pokemon and boy bands." I have to admit though that through the marketing and PR stuff, I have managed to find some very cool sites. Which then reminded me of an Andy Rooney quote: "Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it easier to do don't need to be done."
But, many of the links are fantastic, and the conversations while often one sided are interesting. That is IF you connect with the right people, and I have saved so many links that I haven't been able to spend any meaningful amount of time looking at them.
So my twittering (there it is again, modifying made up words) was scratching at something in the back of my noggin, and it finally dawned on me what it was. It's MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) chat without the game. I played EQ for years, and there would be a certain amount of people that only seemed to chat in the game, which is likely why Second Life is popular (I imagine, never tried it), well Twitter seems to mimic the many open windows, multiple conversations, direct tells, and secret replies that gamers become prolific at while gaming a MMO.
Interestingly enough, I have found a significant population of computer security people, which fascinates me because here they are updating to everyone with all kinds of information, most of it meaningless, but there are patterns of behavior, sites, and locations, which made an important distinction for me that security is not necessarily privacy. As a friend said earlier when I pointed this out (and I badly paraphrase), "While one facilitates the other, there are not mutually exclusive or dependent." Maybe this is an old subject, but I don't remember reading anything that specifically calls the subject out in this way.
Its definitely not a new concern by any means, one of the responses to @botachagalupes post is that the commenter's twitter posts are private so someone won't go rob his house in Cali when he's boarding an airplane to London, etc. But there is a very large group of people that link everything, linkedin profiles, blogs, jobs, GPS locations, etc. it's amazing.
Well, just another nugget to swish around in my brain for awhile, I guess.
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