Internet matters – Page 45 – a sibilant intake of breath

Hacking Nintendo hardware

If you want proof that allowing people to tinker around with commercial hardware can produce cool results, take a look at this video. It shows a Wiimote mod done by Johnny Chung Lee that allows head tracking for the simulation of a three dimensional environment on a flat screen.

I wonder when we will see the first game that uses this approach. It could probably have some more serious applications, as well.

The sheer hackability of Ninendo hardware is making me seriously consider getting a DS. My brother has a card that lets you store dozens of games on a micro-SD card, as well as run homebrew applications.

[Update: 5 January 2008] I finally managed to track down a DS. I have put in an order for a device that will allow it to play ROMs from a micro-SD card, as well as run a web browser and other goodies.

[Update: 9 January 2008] For a very long time, I thought no Zelda game could top A Link to the Past. While it is too soon to know for sure, I can say that The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass is in the running. Playing with just the touch screen works surprisingly well. The DS is the most entertaining system I have used since the original Playstation.

[Update: 11 January 2009] I received an M3 DS Real Nintendo DS storage device in the mail today from EchoStore.com. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to have been properly manufactured and only functions intermittently. A number of web forums discuss making them a bit thicker by taping on pieces of paper. While this does seem to improve the success rate, it isn’t perfect and I would prefer one that works properly. As such, it seems destined to be returned to the manufacturer for exchange.

Impressions of Leopard

When I upgraded by Mac to Tiger (Mac OS 10.4), I wrote a bit about it. Now, it is Leopard‘s (10.5) turn.

The big new features are Time Machine (backup utility) and Spaces (multiple desktops). There are also incremental improvements to lots of prior features: Dasboard, the Finder (Coverflow added), Mail, Preview, Quick Look, Safari, and Spotlight. Time Machine is a good idea and seems to work well. The graphics strike me as a bit overdone. A simpler interface would use fewer system resources and might well be easier to use. That said, making backups a lot easier is a very welcome move. Startlingly few people have even a single comprehensive backup of all their data, much less the kind of rolling, iterated backup Time Machine produces. It also manages to do so in a far quicker and less obtrusive way than free options like Carbon Copy Cloner. Spaces is too clumsy to be of any use on my iBook. The F1-F12 keys already have too many demands made of them by screen and volume controls, Expose, and Dashboard. As such, I only briefly enabled this feature before rejecting it as essentially unusable. The new firewall also seems more confusing and troublesome than the old one.

Is Leopard worth the $100? Some of the little improvements are certainly nice. I like the Stacks feature that has been added, as well as the way the wireless network icon in the menu bar now shows which networks require passwords. That said, the improvements are relatively minor. I would not run out to buy this upgrade again. That will situation will probably change when common pieces of software begin to require it and developers begin to make better use of the new under-the-hood features.

One of the best things about a new operating system release is that it gives you the chance to prune things down. With Tiger, I used the option that simply replaced the operating system, leaving applications and data intact. That worked brilliantly but couldn’t be done this time, since it was a complete operating system failure that provided the immediate impetus for the upgrade. Backing up data, erasing everything, and starting over has left the computer running noticeably quicker. That is especially welcome on a system that is getting on in years and having increasing difficulty running applications smoothly.

I have taken this opportunity to abandon some more Microsoft software. Previously, I used Entourage (the Mac version of Outlook) because it was compatible with all the emails from my old PC. On the PC, I chose it originally because it would sync easily with my Palm Pilot (which has spent about four years collecting dust in a box in Vancouver). Switching to Mail and iCal was pretty straightforward, since I decided not to transfer over my old emails and to simply synchronize iCal with my Google Calendar. I don’t really like the Mail interface very much, but it does integrate better into the OS than Entourage did, as well as using fewer system resources.

All told, the Mac does feel as though it got a new lease on life. It will need to endure until I can justify redirecting sufficient funds from student loan repayment to buy a shiny MacBook.

Defending bike lanes over the web

MyBikeLane is an interesting concept in distributed social law enforcement. The idea is that people take photos of cars parked in bike lanes and then upload those to the site along with details on when and where the incident occurred. Since they can be sorted by license plate, the worst offenders can be easily identified. New York has by far the most active community, followed by Toronto.

Since I carry a digital camera at all times anyhow, I will keep my eyes peeled for possible contributions once I resume biking. For now, my small hybrid tires and the recollection of my nasty Halloween fall are keeping my bike in the basement.

I learned about the site from this interesting blog.

Rejecting Canada’s new copyright act

As a student, I was constantly being called upon to support various causes, through means ranging from making donations to attending rallies. Usually, such activities have a very indirect effect; sometimes, they cannot be reasonably expected to have any effect at all. Not so, recent protest activities around Canada’s new copyright act: a draconian piece of legislation that would have criminalized all sorts of things that people have legitimate rights to do, such as copying a CD they own onto an iPod they own.

Defending the fair use of intellectual property has become a rallying point for those who don’t want to see the best fruits of the information revolution destroyed by corporate greed or ham-fisted lawmaking in the vein of the much-derided American Digital Millennium Copyright Act. At their most controversial, such acts criminalize even talking about ways to circumvent copyright-enforcement technology, even when such technology is being mistakenly applied to non-copyrighted sources: such as those covered by the excellent Creative Commons initiative or those where fair use is permissive for consumers. Watching a DVD you own using a non-approved operating system (like Linux) could become a criminal offence.

For now, the protests seem to have been successful. Of course, the temptation for anyone trying to pass a controversial law is to hold off until attention dissipates, then pass it when relatively few people are watching. Hopefully, that will not prove the ultimate consequence of this welcome tactical victory for consumer rights.

Problems with government databases

By now, everyone has probably heard about the data loss debacle in the United Kingdom. The British government lost the child benefit records for 25 million people. These records include addresses, dates of birth, bank account information, and national insurance numbers. In total, 40% of the British population has been exposed to the risk of identity theft.

Obviously, this should never have happened. One government agency requested some anonymized data for statistical purposes. Instead, a different department sent them the whole dataset in an unencrypted format. Encrypting the discs would have made it nearly impossible for thieves to access the data; anonymizing the data would have made such theft unprofitable. The failure to do either is the height of idiocy, but it is probably what we need to expect from the civilian parts of government when it comes to data security. Security is hard; it requires clever people with good training, and it requires oversight to ensure that insiders are competent and not cheating. People who are naive and naturally helpful can always be exploited by attackers.

In response to this situation, two sets of things need to be done. The first is to correct the specific failures that cause this kind of problem: require encryption of sensitive documents in transit, limit who has access to such sensitive databases, and tighten the procedures surrounding their use. The second is to limit the amount of such data that is available to steal in the first place. That could involve using paper records instead of digital ones – making mass theft dramatically harder to accomplish. It may also involve not creating these kinds of huge databases, as useful as they may seem when working properly.

It is fair to say that there will always be people out there able to break into any information that a large number of civil servants have access to. This would be true even if all civil servants were capable and virtuous people, because a lot of the best computer talent is applied to breaking flawed security systems. Given that bureaucrats are human, and thus subject to greed and manipulation, the prospects for keeping a lid on government data are even worse. Acknowledging the realities of the world, as well as the principle of defence in depth, suggests that limiting the volume of data collected and held by all governments is an appropriate response to the general security risks highlighted by this specific incident.

Major climate change issues

After many years of writing on whatever came to mind, I am now trying to be more systematic in some areas. In particular, I am trying to come up with a comprehensive collection of blog posts covering all important aspects of climate change. This serves a number of purposes: it helps me to synthesize information, it should be informative to others, and it should foster discussion that helps increase the sophistication of positions and arguments. The posts are organized here:

The index page isn’t the most gorgeous looking thing on the web, but it is resilient and can be updated easily. Do people see this as a useful undertaking? What would make it more helpful or worthwhile? This initiative was mentioned before, but received little attention.

Here is the code for the link above:

_{<a href="http://www.sindark.com/wiki/index.php?title=Major_climate_change_issues"><img src="http://www.sindark.com/photo/CCmedium.png" alt="Climate change posts" /></a>}

Feel free to link it on other sites, if desired.

Building a terminal server

The following is probably only of interest to technically inclined readers:

Continue reading “Building a terminal server”

One Laptop Per Child

People who do not spend half their lives on the internet may not have heard about the One Laptop Per Child Program. This non-profit initiative has produced an inexpensive laptop meant to be used as an educational tool by children in the developing world. The device has been reviewed by the New York Times and, while it is limited in some ways, it seems to serve its intended purpose very well. Furthermore, it does some things that no other available laptop can, such as on-the-fly mesh networking: where computers close together automatically link up, allowing internet connections to be shared and collaboration within applications. It uses a $10 battery that is good for four times more charges than a normal laptop battery, while also providing six hours of power with the screen’s backlight engaged or 24 hours without. The machines also have built-in video cameras and microphones.

Through the ongoing Give One, Get One promotion, people can spend $400, receive one laptop for themselves, and donate one to a child in the developing world. Needless to say, one of these would make an amazing Christmas gift for a young person (the keyboard is apparently too small to be used comfortably by adults). Dust-proof and spill-proof, these things seem to be safe in the hands of the average child. Not only do they come with some very neat software, they really embrace the philosophy of letting children learn how it all works. One button reveals the code behind any website or program being used on the machine: potentially breeding a new generation of skilled programmers.

That last part is important. Some people have argued that laptops are hardly a priority in a world where people lack access to the basic requirements of life. In many places, that is certainly true. At the same time, having access to technology of this kind can help both individuals and societies push themselves along the path to development. It is more rewarding and sustainable, in the long run, to do that through the accumulation of expertise and skill than by continuing to rely upon what can be caught in nets, cut down, or dug out of the ground.

How trustworthy is Wikipedia?

Every page on Wikipedia has an accompanying ‘Talk’ page, where people discuss the main article and propose changes to it. Having a look at some of the talk pages is informative because it really shows off the lack of expertise among the people who are working on these articles. Much as I enjoy and admire Wikipedia as an effort, seeing things like the discussion on ‘tar sands’ makes me wonder how trustworthy the site is as a source of information. Often, the arguments on talk pages seem to be superficial and unsupported by evidence or strong argumentation.

As with everything else, we need to try to retain healthy skepticism about new information without becoming dogmatic about what we already believe. That is a tough thing to accomplish – especially given the scope and complexity of issues affecting us all.

Banning photography reduces our security

Yet another story has surfaced about the authorities being overly heavy handed in response to photography. This time, it a Japanese man threatened and detained because he was taking photos from the window of a moving train. There are two important responses to this trend. The first is to stress that it is useless for security purposes. If there is a situation in which taking a photo would help a terrorist to achieve their objectives, no enforceable anti-photo policy will deter them. Anyone willing to plan or undertake a terrorist attack will be able to tolerate any punishment that could conceivably be imposed for taking photos. They are also likely to be able to take photos in a way that will not be noticed: either with sneaky hidden cameras or with a simple camera phone or by developing an awareness of when the authorities are watching. Banning photography in places like vehicles and bridges punishes photography enthusiasts and serves no security purpose.

Secondly, the ability to take photographs is an important check against the abuse of authority. Without the infamous videotape, it is likely that the Rodney King beating would never have received public attention and that the officers involved would have been able to lie their way out of the situation. Similar abuses, such as the inappropriate use of tasers, have been appropriately documented because people present had the capability and initiative to make a recording. Photos, videos, and other recordings can provide a vital record of interactions with authority: both allowing people whose rights are abused to provide evidence and allowing frivolous claims to be dismissed. A security force that is serious about good conduct and oversight has nothing to fear and much to gain from a bit of public surveillance.

More generally, banning photography is symptomatic of the demise of open society. While there are legitimate security risks that exist and reasonable steps that should be taken to protect against them, reducing oversight and individual liberty both undermines the very things we are trying to protect and creates new risks of abuse at the hands of modern society’s burly new enforcers.

[Update: 15 November 2007] This post on Classical Bookworm, about a recent incident at the Vancouver airport, highlights how important it is for private citizens to be able to record the actions of police and other security officials.