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...

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...

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...

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...

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:...