Hat tip to Cliff Lynch at CNI:

Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2006 12:00:00 -0500
From: Clifford Lynch
Subject: 2020 Science — Microsoft Report and Nature Issue

Microsoft Research has issued a report on the practice of science in 2020 that emphasizes the growing role of information technology, e-science and related developments. You can find information about the report here

http://research.microsoft.com/ towards2020science/ background_overview.htm

and the report itself is available for downloading here

http://research.microsoft.com/ towards2020science/ downloads.htm

In conjunction with this, the journal Nature has done a special issue on computing and science in 2020; all the articles in this appear to be open access, and the table of contents can be found here:

http://www.nature.com/ nature/ focus/ futurecomputing/index.html

Much good reading here. Don’t miss the Nature piece by Alex Szalay and Jim Gray.

Interesting story about a guy who really did not want to show his receipt at Best Buy.

For anyone who writes about tech, especially Macs: Apple has published their official style guide.

Mr. David Hughes
Acting President and CEO, Amtrak

Dear Mr. Hughes,

As a fellow frequent traveler on the Northeast Corridor, I have a few questions about how you might respond to certain hypothetical experiences during your trips.

1) You are running late for a train which is boarding from Gate B at Union Station. You enter the platform from the Metro entrance at Gate A, carrying your ticket out in your left hand. You are within five feet of the platform when you are stopped by two armed police. They direct you to reenter through Gate A, walk around the 200 MARC travelers waiting for their train, and come back in through Gate B. How do you reward your officers for preventing such an obvious threat to safety?

2) Onboard the train, the conductor is approaching and you know you have to sign your ticket. You know from past experience, when your ticket was stolen, that your signature is solely for the convenience and security of Amtrak. You ask the conductor, “Do you have a pen?” He replies, “Yes,” and makes no motion to give one to you. According to your training manual, should he have replied, “Yes, sir?”

3) You move from one seat to another to get out of the sunlight glare, and neglect to take your seat check. A conductor asks you for your ticket again, and you tell her that your seat check is nine inches from her right shoulder. Should she: a) move the seat check for you, or b) tell you to get it yourself? Presume for this hypothetical that you are in the window seat with a laptop in your lap, with luggage in the aisle seat, and the aisle tray table is down with your work spread out on it.

4) You are trapped in an elevator for four hours with the Pepsi-Cola delivery guy. You are thirsty. He proposes to sell you a can of soda for $1.75, which you know to be a profit markup of at least 2,088%. Do you feel warm and amiable towards him afterwards?

My one-way travel today cost $71.25. There is a bus I can take for $15. I take the train because it is a more pleasant experience. Or at least, it used to be.

Best,
Jeff Porten

This is an email I’m circulating on a few mailing lists, tracking down a weird problem I ran into today. If anyone knows more, please comment.

I’m doing some routine maintenance on our mail server and tracking back IP addresses with a database that queries various WHOIS servers. To my surprise, the .mil whois server at whois.nic.mil is offline — the domain itself doesn’t resolve any longer.

I spoke to the very nice customer support representative at the phone number I found on the web, who told me the following:

1) he wasn’t sure if this service was *ever* public. Which I find interesting, as it’s a coded flag in the whois man page.

2) he said I should refer all IPs I need to review directly to DoD CERT.

3) he said that he received many calls like this, and it’s “always” people spoofing the IP addresses of .mil computers. I mentioned that since I’m tracking spam flow, it’s likely to be someone with a legitimate .mil address and a compromised computer. He referred me again to CERT.

Anyway, this struck me as *very* odd, and I feel like I’m showing up in the middle of the story. Anyone know more about this?

My favorite search phrase that led someone here in month one of JeffPorten 5.0: “cell phone carcass walmart”. For which I am currently the second result on Google.

Just a big bowl of bad.

Porten in South Park courtesy of Create-A-Character. Adorable mini laptop and lattes courtesy of Brian with too much time on his hands.

(With apologies to Keith Knight.)

1. Squirting the bar of soap out of your hand in the shower and catching it in midair.

2. Coming up with the piped Unix commands that gets the job done 10x faster than the equivalent GUI tools.

3. Running late for a meeting and getting to the Metro platform just as the train is arriving. Bonus points if it happens again at the transfer station.

4. Ditto, taxi on Connecticut Avenue.

5. Getting coffee at Starbucks right before the movie breaks and the line goes out the door.

6. Seeing the large clump of people in line at the ATM machine evaporate when the one shlemiel they’re waiting for gets his cash.

7. An AppleScript based on GUI Scripting works on the first try. (This never happens.)

8. Just when you really need it, you discover you’re standing in an open wifi hotspot.

9. The cell phone battery lasts just long enough to upload that huge file on deadline.

10. The local diner actually remembers the meaning of the words “medium rare” when applied to a cheeseburger.

GAO tally of federal government money spent on advertising agencies in two years: $1.6 billion. I’m sure that’s a number that all of my conservative small-government friends will be comfortable with. Via TPM and AmericaBlog.

From my Unix fortune cookie just now:

Top scientists agree that with the present rate of consumption, the earth’s supply of gravity will be exhausted before the 24th century. As man struggles to discover cheaper alternatives, we need your help. Please…

CONSERVE GRAVITY

Follow these simple suggestions:

(1) Walk with a light step. Carry helium balloons if possible.
(2) Use tape, magnets, or glue instead of paperweights.
(3) Give up skiing and skydiving for more horizontal sports like curling.
(4) Avoid showers… take baths instead.
(5) Don’t hang all your clothes in the closet… keep them in one big pile.
(6) Stop flipping pancakes.

I’ll be at the Supreme Court next Wednesday.

This requires a bit of introduction. I was inspired to write this in May, 2004, by an email from an old friend apologizing for having to blow off all of us because he was spending the weekend researching the Groh v. Ramirez case, as some sort of oddball requirement for getting a law degree.

I was inspired to post this after reading another friend’s novelization of what really went down in Texas last week.

Therefore, without further ado, Groh v. Ramirez: The One-Act.

[SOUND EFFECT: knocking on battered wooden door]

Homeowner: Yes?

ATF Agent Groh: Hello, I’m ATF Agent Groh, and I’m here to help you.

Homeowner: Do you happen to have any alcohol, tobacco, or firearms?
I’m clear out.

Groh: No, sir, I’m sorry, we’re not allowed to carry those on us. We
keep it all in huge warehouses, and three times a year we hold a huge
fucking party.

Homeowner: Oh, well. Never mind. Didn’t really expect anything.

Groh: I need some assistance. I’m searching for a two-story blue house.

Homeowner: [snorting] A what?

Groh: A two-story blue house.

Homeowner: [looks around theatrically] Mr. Groh. Have you noticed
that this is Montana?

Groh: Er, no. We accidentally incinerated our map somewhere west of
Denver.

Homeowner: Well, here you are. And you might have noticed one or two
features about Montana. For instance, do you see that house over
there?

Groh: You mean that tiny blue dot on the horizon?

Homeowner: Yes. He’s my next door neighbor. Now do you see those
other blue dots?

Groh: Um… sort of.

Homeowner: Well, from left to right, that’s my Uncle Charlie, Joe’s
Bait-and-Tackle Shop, the Big Sky Sufism Research Center and
Chiropractic Clinic, the Wal-Mart, and Helena.

Groh: Er….

Homeowner: Helena’s a mite bigger than Uncle Charlie’s. It’s what we
call here an optical illusion.

Groh: Yes, we have that back in Washington, too. Nonwhites look like
terrorists.

Homeowner: Okay, well, you can discern color, so that will help. But
did you notice that all of those dots happen to be blue?

Groh: Yes. Is that another optical illusion?

Homeowner: No, every house in Montana is blue and two stories tall.
Because we’re the Big Sky Country. And we have more fucking square
miles than we know what to do with, so building a three-story house
makes as much sense as opening a kosher deli. So your search warrant
is going to be a bit of a problem.

Groh: Why does Uncle’s Charlie’s look as large as Wal-Mart?

Homeowner: That’s also an optical illusion. Wal-Mart is a tad
smaller. Lots of square miles, remember? And lots of trees. Well,
until we built the houses, anyway.

Groh: Oh, SHIT. I’m supposed to SEIZE the house, too.

Homeowner: You’re supposed to seize the house?

Groh: [dejected] Yeah.

Homeowner: [looks over Groh’s shoulder] You’re driving a Ford Taurus.

Groh: All of our 18-wheelers and Humvees have been sent to Iraq.

Homeowner: Damn, that really sucks.

Groh: So not only won’t I be able to seize the house, but you’re saying
I won’t be able to *find* the house?

Homeowner: Well, maybe I can help you. ATF, right? I think I know who you’re looking for. Say, are you sure you don’t have a smoke?

Groh: Oh, sure. I was just shitting you before. [lights two Cuban
cigars, hands him one]

Homeowner: [deep drag] Okay, here’s the guy you want to check out.
He’s right down the street, shouldn’t take you more than 3, 4 hours to
get there.

Groh: Uh huh.

Homeowner: Now, the guy’s not actually on the street, so the first
thing you’ll come to is a 30-mile swath of charred prairie grass, about
eight feet wide.

Groh: Charred grass, got it. Lightning?

Homeowner: No, some sort of rocket fuel. If you miss the strip, look
for a large RPG shell casing embedded in a redwood on your right, just
above about 1/8th of a moose carcass. Then double back about a
half-mile.

Groh: Gotcha.

Homeowner: Now, drive along the strip until you get to the first
ballistic crater. It’s, oh, about 20 feet deep, thirty feet wide, and
it’s about half full of this glowing green water. You’ll spot it
easiest by the cloud of blackflies swarming around it.

Groh: Uh huh.

Homeowner: Now, watch out for those blackflies, because there’s
something in the water and they sort of resemble cows. Ever seen
Twister?

Groh: That’s the tornado movie with that goyishe chick?

Homeowner: Yup. It’s like that. Except with mutant fly-cattle.

Groh: Gotcha. What’s next?

Homeowner: The next thing you look for are the desiccated remains of a
few groups of people who got a little too close to the house. If I
remember correctly, first you come on the Greenpeace group, then the
Jehovah’s Witnesses, then a large pyre of mutilated cattle, then the
space aliens who mutilated the cattle. Then you’ve got the Rotary, the
Lions, the Elks, the Oddfellows, Heaven’s Gate, the Flat Earthers,
Elvis, Judge Crater, Jimmy Hoffa, Madeline Murray-O’Hare, and Girl
Scout Troop 537.

Groh: Damn, that’s quite a body count. Do you know what killed them?

Homeowner: Some sort of weird-ass weather they get over there. It’s
like hail, only it’s made of lead and depleted uranium, hollow-point,
armor-piercing, and it travels horizontally at around three miles a
second.

Groh: Good thing it’s summertime!

Homeowner: At that point, you’ll start seeing the close-in craters.
Walk around those carefully, you want to be careful of the landmines
and the Bouncing Bettys. The house you’re looking for is more or less
in the center of the craters. It’s covered up with some brush, a few
artistically placed M1-Abrams, and a coupla hundred iridescent
Andromedan hides.

Groh: But it’s blue?

Homeowner: Was once.

Groh: [slaps notebook shut] Great! Say, how do you know all this?

Homeowner: A couple months ago, four kids showed up with this huge
mangy dog in the ugliest green hippie van you ever saw. The tall lanky
kid and I smoked a bowl, and he told me all about it.

Groh: We get some of our best leads that way. Word back home is that
the first solid evidence on Iraqi WMDs came from this big bear in a
green tie, and a little bear in a bow tie, when they were out looking
for a pic-i-nic.

Homeowner: Ain’t that something.

Groh: Yeah. He was sure smarter than the average bear. Tragically,
they were both killed and eaten by the 417th Army Reserve Unit, and
that’s why we’re still over there looking.

Homeowner: You sure you didn’t run into that tall, lanky kid yourself?

Groh: Pretty sure. Okay, thanks for all your help. Can I get your
name in case we have more questions?

Homeowner: Sure. That’s Hamish, but everyone calls me “Homes”, last
name Moner.

Groh: Homes Moner. Great. Thanks.

Homeowner: Say, what exactly are you looking for?

Groh: [reads warrant again] Er. Fuck me. All it says here is take the
house.

Homeowner: Well, check out the guy’s basement. I hear that he’s got
stuff down there where you can reduce the place to matchsticks and
sawdust in no time.

Groh: Sounds like a plan! Thanks. We’ll send you a little “special
something” at Christmas.

Homeowner: That’s mighty nice of you. Send me a Bushmaster, in case
those meddling kids come back.

Batman beats Superman.

Bill Clinton beats George W. Bush.

It’s all right there in quantitative black and white at the Wikipedia Showdown .

Security expert Bruce Schneier gives a preliminary thumbs up to IE7.

(Pig thumbnail © Image Zoo.)

Kevin Drum links to the list of terrorist plots foiled by GWB, and asks the interesting question:

If it’s now OK to reveal information like this, how about also releasing a list of the terrorist plots broken up in the four years prior to 9/11?

My followup question: how much should we discount these attacks by their credibility? Is the Faris attack here the same one I’ve heard about where they were going to try to use blowtorches on the Brooklyn Bridge?

Tip o’ the hat to Mike Weinmayr:

FCC: All Programming To Be Broadcast In ADHDTV By 2007