Future Compliant May 3 2008

I'm computing in the clouds right now. I've written about this new buzz-word trend before - the idea that all your computing needs will live in the data clouds of the internet, available to you anywhere where you have some bandwidth at your disposal. I'm on record as loving the idea. As much as I like my various computers, I hate being tied down to any single one of them. I've got three different machines that I use for different purposes (although really that could be 2, maybe), and I've had to either move files back and forth between them or just limit one kind of work to one particular machine. For some annoying software (looking at you itunes and audible.com), I'm mostly stuck on one device, but the more I can free my data up, the happier I am.

This week I dived full on in to Google Docs. Indeed I'm using it right now in the coffee shop with my EeePC running linux and using downtown Sarasota's free wi-fi. I'll finish it up later on my other, bigger Ubuntu laptop when I get home. Google Docs made the crucial leap for me recently when they added an off-line component to the software. Up until that point hated the idea that I'd have to be online in order to get work done. That would be pretty worthless on a plane or in an airport that doesn't have free wi-fi or, well, sometimes this coffee shop. That free internet is less than 100% reliable. I didn't even consider using the software before Google remedied that oversight.

Now I've been using it for a week solid, writing not only these blog posts, but also working hard on starting my new novel, the third in my Geek Mafia series. I intend to write the whole first draft of the new book on Google Docs, although I'm saving off a copy in Open Office to my local hard drive every day, just to be safe. Google Docs doesn't have nearly the functionality of a full-on word processor, but it turns out it has all the functions I actually use on a regular basis. I can seamlessly edit the book from each of my computers and not have to worry about synching up different versions. I do have to be a little careful when I work offline that I make sure I upload the latest version from my offline computer before I edit it with another one, but so far that hasn't been a problem.

I'm also interested to see how well the sharing tools work. You can open the documents to other google docs users to either just read or also edit. Since I rely a great deal on the kind and helpful input of friends ad family on my early drafts, it will be interesting to see how many of them I can suck in to using Google Docs' collaborative tools and how useful I will actually find them. I have a couple of other, smaller projects (and one far off, much larger one) that I plan to work with co-authors on, where we would both have access to the document and would build it up together. Google Docs then tracks who made what changes so you can keep on eye on each other's progress and additions. I think that's how it's supposed to work anyway. I'll let you know how it goes.

There are down sides of course. The first one that springs to my mind is privacy. The fact that all my documents and data are sitting on Google's servers somewhere, subject to internal or federal inspection (with or without a warrant?) cannot be ignored. I can say that I would never put anything up on Google Docs that I didn't intend to some day be public. I consider the early drafts of a novel to be private of course, but there's not going to be anything in there that I really want to be forever private. Although in this day in age, if it's something I really want to keep private, then I just never commit it to digital form at all - it's the only way to be safe.

Since I've spent all this space and time recommending a privacy smashing but useful Google app, I want to assuage my paranoid guilt and point you in the direction of a cool tool from the Chaos Computer Club that you can use to help actually preserve your privacy some. It's called anonbox, and it's a private server that lets you set up totally anonymous, one time e-mail programs that you can use to sign up for Web sites and other services that require a real, working e-mail address to use. For example, some government archive sites, many newspaper archive sites, and a wide variety of others all require an e-mail address to set up a "free account." Maybe you have no interest in living forever in their databases, on record as having downloaded a specific file. I can certainly understand that. Anonbox offers a great, free work around for those situations - another fine service from the kings of future compliance, the Chaos Computer Club.

Future Compliant, April 25, 2008

by Rick Dakan

Continuing the trend I started last week, I'm going to once again rant (although not as much) about another prime example of future non-compliance: Astrology. Now there's not a thing in the world that I've ever seen, read, or heard that makes me think there's a lick of sense or truth in astrology. The fact that it's so widely accepted makes me cringe in embarrassment for people. There's nothing sillier than a sentence that begins with something like, "I'm such a Libra, I always..." Man oh man oh man. But I've had several good friends who believe in it whole heartedly and have assured me that there's lots of good evidence for it and a long tradition of scholarship and science behind it. I agree there's a lot (a LOT) written about the so-called "science" of astrology, but it's one of those cases where I don't think that word means what they think it means. Astrology is not science. But science has taken a good, hard look at astrology, and recently published their findings. The result - looking at 2000 people born within minutes of each other (time-twins as they're sometimes referred to), researchers found no correlation at all between their astrological birth circumstances and their real, actual lives. No surprises there, although I'm glad they did the research.

Interestingly, in his fascinating book Quirkology, Richard Wiseman has a good section on astrology and shows that there is some research to suggest that there are circumstances when your astrological sign might influence your life. Among people who really believe that they're born under a "lucky" sign, some data suggests that they live slightly more successful lives, while those who firmly believe they're unlucky live slightly less successful lives. Those who don't believe remain unaffected. This is in line with Wiseman's wider research into luck, which shows that we really do make our own luck - people who think they're lucky being more likely to take advantage of opportunities as they present themselves, while those who think they're unlucky tend to be more pessimistic and thus risk averse. All of which supports my general point that believing in astrology if decidedly future non-compliant. It means buying into a false belief system that short circuits your relationship with reality and can impair your dealings with the actual world around you. Yes, there can also be an upside - there could be false hope driving you to greater things, but that is a Faustian bargain to be sure. Why not take the world on as it really is - on balance it will probably improve your chances a great deal.

Speaking of living under twisted unrealistic and counterproductive paradigms, there's this fascinating multi-part interview with actor Jason Beghe who, after many years and a bunch of money, has recently left the cult of Scientology. I submit it here without further comment, except to say that it's a fascinating insight into that world and all the strange, strange beliefs and practices they hold dear. Check it out.

And then there's this recent article, pointing to recent research that suggests that the human population almost went extinct 70,000 years ago, getting down to as few as just 2000 individuals before bouncing back. One good plague or one more drought and that could have been it for humanity. It's a powerful testament to all kinds of important facts about our existence. One it shows just how potent the combination of geometric population growth and our evolved intelligence are that we can go from 2000 to over 6 billion. It also shows how fragile our place in history really is. There could easily be no intelligent life on Earth right now. Makes you wonder just how rare intelligent life is in the rest of the universe. One would hope people will take this discovery as a warning - humans are not "destined" or "pre-ordained" to survive, and we still have plenty of time (and even more capacity) to screw up everything for us. That being said, I think it unlikely that all humanity will disappear from the Earth, although if we continue being stupid and selfish and wasteful, I wouldn't be at all surprised if at some future date we went back down to thousands not billions.

Well, this hasn't been my cheeriest post ever has it? Astrological inanities, cult brain washing, and mass extinction are not cheery thoughts to take with you into the weekend. So let's end on a more positive note. Do you wanna give personal future compliance a try and try this whole Linux/Open source thing out for yourself? Well now's the time! The newest version of Ubuntu Linux was released this week. It's free for the taking - a complete, fully functional, awesome operating system that does everything you'll ever need. Well probably. It's certainly been great for me. I've been Using Ubuntu as my main OS for nearly a year now, and I love it. Plus you can try it without committing by getting a Live CD that lets you run Ubuntu from your CD drive without installing it on your computer. So try it out! Join the future of software freedom with the rest of us cool kids.

Future Compliant April 19, 2008

Yesterday marked the official release of a movie that is the antithesis of future compliance an anti-science, ignorant, biased piece of propaganda called Expelled. The film claims to be about academic freedom and open discussion of scientific controversies, but that's all just a smoke screen that thinly veils its real purpose: to promote the religion based, utterly unscientific proposition known as Intelligent Design. Intelligent Design is merely warmed over, watered down creationism and i not a scientific theory, much less a hypothesis. It's the latest gambit from religious radicals trying to sneak their god into classrooms, a desperate, hopefully futile attempt to block true science (and real facts) from impinging on their superstitions and un-founded beliefs. It's been debunked and destroyed time and again, but it keeps rearing its ugly head, and this time that head is Ben Stein.

Ben Stein has never held much of my esteem, although I did used to watch his game show and enjoyed it. But here he's either shown he's an idiot or a total sell out. I don't think he's an idiot, although he might well be, so I'm inclined to believe he's just a sell out, willing to hitch his wagon to the creationist gravy train for a while. Either way, he should be ashamed of himself for his role in this film. The fact that the film explicitly states that there would not have been a holocaust if not for Nazi's getting inspiration from Charles Darwin is not only stupid, wrong, and ignorant, but also hateful, arrogant, and dismissive of the real causes of one of history's worst tragedies. Plus here's the worst part - even if it were true (and it isn't) the idea that Hitler might have been wrongly inspired by Darwin DOES NOT MEAN DARWIN WAS WRONG. This is a pure propaganda move on the film makers' part, a huge logical fallacy that's utterly embarrassing, or would be if the film's creators were capable of embarrassment.

But you don't even have to watch the movie to get a sense of Expelled's wrong-headedness and bad faith dealing. The commercial that plagued Comedy Central for much of this past week (and no doubt other places as well), features Stein in the back of a classroom where a scraggly haired, confused looking old professor type is droning on about evolution. Stein raises his hand and asks the supposedly tough and meaningful question: "But where did life come from?" There are good hypotheses and evidence that answer that question without resorting to supernatural or "Intelligent Design," but that's not the problem. The problem is, that is not a question evolutionary theory even asks! Evolutionary theory is not about the origin of life, it's about the descent of life with modifcation from common ancestry. It does not address or care where that life started. And there is no way that Stein and the creators of Expelled have not had this basic fact explained to them over and over again either in print or, I suspect, in person. But no, they decide to pander to their audience with what they think are the hard questions. It's just ridiculous and insulting.

This is one of those key issues that just gets me going. I'm sorry to disappoint the evolutionary theory denialists out there, but evolution from common descent is a fact. The theory of evolution is an attempt to explain that fact, and is still the subject of intense and interesting debate among scientists. But evolution is an observed, provable fact. Creationism is delusional and Intelligent Design Creationism is an attempt to shoe-horn God into the gaps of our current understanding. ID makes no predictions, provides no evidence, and is so wrong it's not even a theory.

Returning to my larger themes for these Future Compliant posts, I want to reiterate that this kind of denialist, dishonest thinking that underlies Expelled and other creationist propaganda pieces is the exact opposite of future compliance. In order to get ready for the future you've got to do your best to understand the present, and any attempt to teach utter, unproven nonsense in schools (or out of schools for that matter) is going to harm students and stunt their understanding of the world.

I think the a world view unclouded by superstitions and baseless biases is vital for moving forward individually or collectively in the world. I'm not saying this just because a scientific, reason based outlook is better than a superstition based one (although I think it is) but because it's also more fun! Understanding how the world works is incredibly interesting. Even better is the ability to explore the world, be it nature or technology or software or books or ideas, with a mind that's sharp and well-tuned to uncovering truth. This is key to the hacker ethic - the ability to see things as they really are and then explore/use/create with them in new and innovative ways. By ignoring reality in favor of dogma, Stein and his fellow film makers are doing themselves and the rest of us a profound disservice.

Check out the Web site Expelled Exposed for a rundown on all the problems with this atrocious film. Be sure to watch the very funny video on the front page, which also happens to make a great point.

So lets talk threats to your security. The last few posts have all been cool new gadgets and robots and weird web sites. A loyal reader might somehow forget that we're all in fact doomed! Well, maybe not 100% for sure doomed all the way, but at least doomed to be forced to endure misguided, wrong headed government policies passed without proper thinking in the name of our security from terrorists or some other boogey man. All of which brings me to the subject of biometric security.

Biometrics mean using some measurement of your body, like your fingerprint, as the security key to unlock a door or a computer or whatever else. Since each fingerprint is unique, then only you could ever open the lock, right? Right? Well, no. If you've seen any cop show ever you know we leave fingerprints all over the place, fingerprints which can be copied and cast to make duplicates of your fingerprints which have proven time and again capable of fooling the biometric locks currently on the market. So when the German government announced a plan to try and incorporate fingerprints into passport security, the fine folks at the Chaos Computer Club got a hold of the official in charge's fingerprints and published them in their magazine. Brilliant!

Here's the thing. Even if it wasn't possible right now to copy someone's fingerprint and use it to unlock a biometric seal, someday it probably will be. From what I've read, it's much harder to fake a retinal scan. But we've seen time and again that technology out innovates security and what seemed insuperable in the past is now easy as pie to overcome. The problem with biometrics is that, unlike a password or a particular kind of lock, you can't ever change your fingerprints. Or your retina. Or your DNA. Once those things get copied and cracked, they're not useful to you anymore as a security function. Moreover, unlike a password or even a key that you can hide somewhere, you're always carrying your biometrics around with you, offering thousands of opportunities each day for someone to swipe your information. It may seem all cool and James Bond and whatever, but really, in my opinion, it's sheer idiocy. OK, maybe not sheer, but certainly idiocy.

Disney World uses biometric fingerprint readers to control access to their parks. They claim that they only measure the length of the fingers and don't actually take fingerprints, but I'm not sure I believe it. But let's assume it is true. I'd love to see someone hack that system. How would you go about faking fingerlengths? I'm not sure, but it seems like there should be a way. Getting a hold of one of the Disney readers might be more difficult, but I don't imagine it's beyond the capabilities of some inventive hackers out there. Anyone want to give it a try?

Then there's this story, which I can't vouch for in any way but seems like it might be legit, about the NSA having backdoors into all the major label personal firewalls out there. I've seen enough demos at hacker cons to be less than trustworthy of these things in the first place, although I'm probably just being paranoid. Still, it wouldn't surprise me at all to find out that this story is true and that the firewalls do have back doors in them. That's why I tend to prefer open source applications for security (and most everything else) since they're theoretically not beholden to any corporate overlords who are in turn subject to government sanction. Plus the code's all out there in the open right, which theoretically would mean that you couldn't really hide a backdoor in it. That's assuming people are actually diligent about looking through such open source code for backdoors. I for one don't have any of he skills needed to do that and are just as much at the mercy of the open source community as I am to Symantec or Zone Alarm or Microsoft - except I trust the open source community a lot more. But it's still trust, and mostly blind trust at that. Which leads back to my original point that we are all in fact probably doomed.

On a lighter note, here's a link to what I think is the greatest Rickroll I've seen yet. With muppets.

Future Compliant, March 28, 2008
by Rick Dakan

If I were to name one area where the future and the present have clashed in really interesting and unpredictable ways, well, I couldn't name just one. That's sort of the thing about the future, it's always surprising us - or at least me. But one area I pay a lot of attention to and which has a big impact on all of us is politics. There's the bad stuff, like hackable voting machines that leave no paper trail that piss me off. There's the other bad side, where politicians bow to industry pressure to mess with things like Net Neutrality or try to censor the internet. And then there's the good stuff, first and foremost being (in my opinion) how much easier it has become to organize and communicate your political message. Nothing new there, lots of people have been saying that for years, but I wanted to point out one site in particular that came on line recently because I think it's worth checking out. The widely recognized problem with everyone having a voice is that it can sometimes be hard to figure out which voices are worth listening to. I actually don't think that's much of a problem compared to the enormous benefits, especially since it means people get judged by their individual merits and reputation rather than being fed to us by some large media conglomerate. Word of mouth becomes vital.

So here's the word of my mouth: Go check out Change Congress, a site started by Lawrence Lessig and Joe Trippi. Trippi was Howard Dean's campaign manager/internet guru back in 2004, and while I have some minor issues with him, he's been thinking about politics and the future for a long time. Not nearly as long as the other guy though. Lawrence Lessig is why I'm recommending the site and the cause. He's been on the forefront of the open intellectual property movement and copy right reform cause for years, and has now shifted his prodigious brain's focus to trying to help improve politics in the US by opening up the system and working against lobbyist money's stranglehold on the system. This is just a start of course, but it's a good start, and I encourage you to go check it out.

I've just gotten back from my first long trip where I used my Asus EeePC as my only computer, and I loved it. The fact that it's so light and small makes a world of difference when it comes both to lugging around my laptop bag and getting the thing out and actually using it within the small confines of a plane. I'm a big guy, and unless I'm in a seat with extra leg room for some reason, it's almost impossible for me to use a normal laptop in-flight, especially once the person in front of me reclines their seat. But none of that was a problem with the EeePC, so I'm now officially on board with the whole ultra-portable laptop movement. Now though, now I just want them smaller. And smaller! I want a display that's on glasses and a keyboard that rolls out or responds to my thoughts. We're not there yet, but there is MIU's HDPC, which looks pretty cool. Quoting the Engadget story, "All that tech allows the HDPC to function as a portable SatNav device, handheld gaming rig, cellphone, UMPC, PMP, eBook reader, digital camera, etc. Did we already tell you that it will cost less than $500?" With a purported 7 hour battery life (battery life being my only problem with my EeePC), and GPS options, this thing does almost everything. It would need some kind of larger keyboard attachment for me to do any real writing on it, but I imagine that's easy enough to find, or will be. I've seen prototypes of little roll-up keyboards. This is the next step towards my dream machine - one device for all my communication and computing needs. Plus it runs Linux. Who knows if this particular model will be the breakthrough product in this category. Probably not. But it's what's coming, and five years from now they'll be half the price and twice as useful and as common as cell phones are today. That, I'm looking forward to.

MIU's device seems like something Batman might have, and so does the other piece of tech that caught my eye recently - Nihon Uni's slash-proof shirt, woven from a material that's flexible like normal cloth but much stronger than the average piece of clothing. Now unfortunately the shirt is not actually stab proof, as original stories that floated around the Web made me believe, and there's a big difference between stab and slash proof. But it got me thinking about weapon resistant clothing. Would that catch on? If I could wear something that was just as comfortable and flexible as my normal clothing, but could also save me from knife attacks, would I pay the extra money? I think I would, at least once or twice. Now, I've never even been mugged or robbed at all and certainly haven't been in any knife fights. There's not a moment in my life that I can look back upon and say, "Wow, if only I'd had a knife-proof shirt, that would have gone different..." But still I kind of want one now. I'm not even sure why. Maybe it is the Batman factor - that personal armor goes with all the cool gadgets I'm also lusting after. I would hope it wouldn't make me more reckless, but I can also see some idiots deciding to test their new slash-proof shirt to the limit and see if it really does protect them. Have you seen that youtube video of the kid setting his own shirt on fire? People can be pretty stupid.

Finally here's a link that you can lose a few minutes or hours or days to. It's called flickrvision.com and it has a world map that pops up pictures in real time as they are added to people's Flickr accounts all over the planet. I find it really hypnotic to get these strange slices of random people's lives. Go ahead and check it out, and remember, that could be you up there sometime.