Public Transport + Technology = Good

Why don’t public transportation providers outfit their vehicles with GPS trackers and update the position in real time? This would effectively eliminate the need for time tables: just check the website/phone application to see when a bus will be near you. Traffic? No problem! The map still shows exactly where the bus is. Even the bus-drivers could use the map to coordinate with other bus-drivers on their route.

Extending this system, the bus could text individuals whenever it is X minutes from a bus-stop (where the user sets the X and the bus-stop). I have a bus stop two minutes from my front door, so the morning bus would text me when it was five minutes away; similarly, at school I’m about 10 minutes from the bus stop so I would want a text about 15 minutes in advance. That’s better living through software! And the technology exists already.

From an economics standpoint, this innovation would be justified if ridership would increase enough to offset the cost of the project (hardware, software, installation. and maintenance). My hunch is that this system would pay itself off quickly because more people would ride the bus if it were easier to catch. Who wants to wait in the rain or the sweltering heat indefinitely? A system like this would also differentiate the transportation operator and raise the bar on service. I rode a bullet train, in part, because I wanted to experience the future. I can just imagine Austinintes on vacation bragging, “CapMetro back in Austin texts you whenever the bus is close! Why doesn’t this city do the same?”

So, how about it? Why doesn’t your city make public transportation easier? What other innovations and upgrades should we expect from public transportation?

The on-screen keyboard: A hint more security

Keyloggers are rampant! They are the most prolific trojan horse and they can easily transmit your passwords to bad guys. They’re simple and effective.

Keyloggers work by intercepting and transmitting keystrokes, so a simple countermeasure is to avoid keystrokes. While this is impractical as a general approach, you can add a hint more security to your workflow by inputting passwords (or even bits of a password) via an on-screen keyboard.

In Windows, it is very easy to turn on an on-screen keyboard:

Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> Accessibility -> On-Screen Keyboard

Once the keyboard is up, simply set focus on an application then use your mouse to press the keys on the on-screen keyboard.

Does anyone have evidence that on-screen keyboards are also vulnerable? Any other simple security tips?

Richard Stallman’s Mistaken Thinking on Copyright

Last Friday I had the honor of seeing Richard Stallman, or rms as he’s known in the computer underground, delivering a lecture about copyright in the digital age at UT.

First, a note on his appearance: I was near the back of a 300-person auditorium, but he looked fairly presentable. He has long hair and a ratty beard, but he was dressed in a clean, bright red shirt and slacks. He wore black Velcro shoes which he quickly slid out of. Another interesting visual was his perfectly spherical basketball-sized belly that stretched his shirt tight against his torso. It was truly amazing given his thin arms and legs!

And now onto the intellectual bits…

Stallman is a big believer in freedom, and he believes that software should be free (as in speech, not as in beer). Rather than referring to price, free software means the user is free to do what they please, namely modify and share. Here’s the definition from the horse’s mouth:

Free software is a matter of the users’ freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. More precisely, it refers to four kinds of freedom, for the users of the software:

• The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
• The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
• The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
• The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements (and modified versions in general) to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

His ideas are very extreme–likely galvanized by having to defend his position for 20+ years. I did not appreciate his call to “argue the moral high ground” which generally means “use emotion instead of logic.” To be sure, people make decisions based on emotion rather than logic, but his call-to-arms felt flimsy without proper reasoning to back the argument.

Along the emotional lines, he lividly proclaimed that ‘people who attack sharing are attacking society because sharing forms the bonds of society!’ “Sharing is good” he said in a moment that made me conjure kindergarten memories. He also evokes the positive nostalgia of browsing your friend’s library and borrowing a book. He mocked the idea of borrowing an e-book and, with the e-book, the entire e-reader that it is bound to. These ideas form the basis of his argument that sharing should continue with digital works.

After ruminating on the subject and discussing it with a few peers, I believe that Stallman had the right information but came to the wrong conclusion. The fundamental issue is sharing. Traditionally, sharing involves physical objects that cannot conform to his four freedoms; with physical objects there is only one copy of an item that cannot be easily replicated. He claims that a physical object is its own source code and the user is free to alter it and share the object. This is the first mistake: digital objects have recipes, blueprints, and materials that are the source code. Software today is a standalone product that you pay for–as with physical objects, the source will cost you.

Stallman’s second mistake comes when he equates the digital analog of sharing physical objects into modifying and distributing new copies. Physical objects can be modified and distributed, but the owner gives up the object (for some period of time) whenever they share. As time passes the item changes hands and wears (nicks, folds, scratches, pen marks, etc). If a user wants access to the physical object again, they have to get it back from the borrower or buy a new version. Stallman is not the only person to make this mistake. Currently, there are only two possibilities with digital work:

1. DRM style: one user per purchase — no possibility of sharing
2. Napster style: many users per purchase — sharing is common

We need a third method that truly mirrors traditional sharing. This digital system would allow you to share with your friends without retaining a copy for yourself.

Years ago, the music and motion pictures industries (digital media publishers) that are “losing sales” to piracy should have created a system that allows users to purchase one copy to do with as they please. A simple solution is to create a central web server that contains all available material. Access is then controlled based on holding the license to the material. If a person wants to share or sell media, the user should give up their license and pass it on. We could make the access control very user-friendly, virtually transparent, while providing ubiquitous access and promoting sales.

Sharing is good. We should foster the bonds of sharing. We should not proliferate copying.

Learning HTML/CSS?

Are you new to HTML/CSS? Knowing the basics of HTML/CSS is extremely useful. Below are a couple options to get started in learning HTML/CSS. There are great resources freely available at http://htmldog.com/ and http://www.w3schools.com/htmL/.

So you understand there are tags opened and closed with angled brackets, “<” and “>”, now what? To create your site you have two main options:
1) SSH in and poke around. Edit files with your favorite editor (nano, pico, vi, etc.).

2) Modify files locally. This can be done easily two ways:

<style media=“screen” title=“currentStyle” type=“text/css”>@import “SSE.css”;</style>

Now you’re on your way to figuring out the Internet! View and edit your favorite pages or create your own. If you see something you like, view the HTML/CSS and learn! It’s quick, easy, and useful. Good luck!

Did I miss something? Was this useful? How did you learn HTML/CSS?

Update: Thanks for the help, Steve and Lane.

Forget Ocean’s 11, these heists are all digital

Over the holidays Wired published an article, the Seven Best Capers of 2008, that ran down a list of crafty, entertaining schemes that ultimately resulted in the perpetrator getting caught. I encourage you to read the entire article; you’ll find that every story involves a digital component. Here’s the top rated heist:

The Snohomish Smokescreen

In September, a robber disguised as a gardener pepper-sprayed an armored car driver using a pesticide sprayer and ran off with a bag stuffed with $400,000 in cash. When police arrived seconds later, they found the sidewalk crowded with dozens of men decked out in the same attire as the perp: blue shirt, Day-Glo vest, safety mask and glasses. While the cops hacked through a forest of suspects, the real perp fled to a nearby creek and escaped in a waiting inner tube.

Turns out the unwitting decoys had been lured to the crime scene by a Craigslist ad that promised construction work to those showing up in a “yellow vest, safety goggles, a respirator mask … and, if possible, a blue shirt.” A month later, following a lead from a homeless man who witnessed the preparation for the Brinks job, police arrested 28-year-old Anthony Curcio fresh from a Las Vegas vacation. Curcio is now charged with “Interference with commerce by threats or violence,” because “Pulling the most awesome robbery ever” isn’t listed in the U.S. code.

Missing from the list are the scams by Wall Street, car companies, and any other bailout recipient as well as individuals like Bernie Madoff

While not as entertaining to watch as the daring Ocean’s 11, the list helps to highlight how new media (using twitter to create flashmobs, for example) and cybercrime are the way of the future. A realistic movie about any one of these heists would involve a kid at a computer for days on end, slowly accumulating wealth.

Stealing physical items was much easier to catch and prosecute; with modern plots siphoning off fractions of a cent per transaction, we face a brave new world. America has to increase technological infrastructure, educate citizens about risks, and allow greater research into security.

What do you think? Have I misinterpreted? What’s the future of crime and high-stake heists? How can we prevent it or at least mitigate the losses?

Fundamentals matter in the end

I am an experience junkie and a lifelong learner. I love trying new things and learning a variety of topics, so I have a very broad knowledge base. My self-taught methods are extremely effective in learning ~75% of a topic, however, I’ve now seen the value of fundamentals.

Typing. I’m an above average (100 WPM) typist. On the command line I can fly; with chats I’m fast. However, whenever I have to type random words (like on a typing test), my speed decreases to ~80WPM. My difficulty is that I learned to type by chatting and playing computer games when I was an early teenager. I went from hunt-and-peck to touch-typing, getting up to a workable ~60 WPM. But I avoided using my pinkies, I crossed the center line (r, t, y, u, d, f, g, h, j, c, v, b, and n were pressed by either hand), and did not use my thumb on the space bar.

Guitar. I was above average. At my best I could play virtually anything: Eruption, tons of Metallica, Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughn, classical pieces, and I was on my way to learning Dream Theater. However, as I got into extremely fast pieces my poor picking technique became a limiting factor. When I held my pick, my thumb pointed up instead of down. This made it slightly slower to transition between strings and create harmonics. I also could not transition between strings as quickly as was necessary in the fastest of pieces.

There are other examples, tennis for example, that helped teach me this lesson. I don’t play guitar anymore, but my typing has improved dramatically over the years. Since finding that fundamentals matter, I have worked to correct my methods, and I try to start properly. The web is a wonderful place to find information! Videos on YouTube and tutorials on various sites are helping me to right the wrongs and make it all the way to grandmaster in my pursuits

What’s new? Ads!

I hope my lovely, intelligent readers do not mind the two new ad panels (at the bottom of individual posts and in the sidebar); RSS readers should not notice any changes. This was a fun technical project that may make me a dollar over about twenty years

Here’s how I added ads to the sidebar and the end of single posts in my WordPress blog. You may be able to do it easily with a plugin, such as one of the ten featured in this article, but I chose to do it manually to learn more.

For ease, I used two tabs. In one tab I generated ads and another tab was used to edit pages.

Generating Ads. Google makes it easy with AdSense. You can see your options for ads here. First, sign up for AdSense then enter the AdSense Setup page, the Get Ads tab. Both my units are AdSense for Content; one Ad Unit and one Link Unit. After choosing the options I wanted, I was given sample code. I copied this code and switched to the other tab.

Editing Pages. First, get to the Theme Editor:

• Log into the administrative panel.
• Click the Design tab
• Click the Theme Editor

I put the banner ad at the bottom of the single post. To do so I copied the generated code then performed these steps:

• Selected Single Post (single.php)
• Pasted the following code above the line “<?php get_footer(); ?>”:

<!— Ad support. Added by Seth Holloway on Jan 9, 2009 —>
<div id=”ads”>
<script type=”text/javascript”><!–
google_ad_client = “pub-2003017988956692″;
/* 728×90, created 1/8/09 */
google_ad_slot = “5798236936″;
google_ad_width = 728;
google_ad_height = 90;
//–>
</script>
<script type=”text/javascript”
src=”http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js”>
</script>
</div>

For the sake of looks, I then needed to edit the stylesheet in the following manner:

• Selected the Stylesheet (style.css)
• Added this to the code:

/* Ad support. Added by Seth Holloway on Jan 9, 2009 */
#ads {
text-align: center;
}

I then generated the sidebar link unit, copied the code, and followed these steps:

• Selected the Sidebar (sidebar.php)
• Pasted the generated ad unit to the code above the final “</ul>”:

<!— Ad support. Added by Seth Holloway on Jan 9, 2009 —>
<li>
<script type=”text/javascript”><!–
google_ad_client = “pub-2003017988956692″;
/* 120×90, created 1/8/09 */
google_ad_slot = “2887058896″;
google_ad_width = 120;
google_ad_height = 90;
//–>
</script>
<script type=”text/javascript”
src=”http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js”>
</script>
</li>

And voila! We now have two unobtrusive ads on sethholloway.com.

Later, I would like improve the relevance of the ads and to add Digg, Reddit, and Sharethis buttons.

Any tips for items missing from the blog? Did you notice the ads? Do you hate them?

Why not make use of loading screens?

I’ve seen a lot of loading screens recently: in video games, movies, TV shows, cable box resets, iPod power ons, etc. Most are effective yet bland–a logo and a progress bar. These brief moments break my attention, but do not offer enough time for me to switch context and do something else. Producers and developers could use this time to educate and inform users while simultaneously keeping people engaged. Watching Once? You’ll get to read a blurb about the star, Glen Hansard. Playing World of Warcraft? Read the storyline for the zone you’re entering while you wait!

Taking the idea a step further, a platform could allow for loading screen customizations. Imagine if your iPhone had a common thread across all applications! With the aggregate time you could read a book, polish your vocab, increase reaction speeds, read the latest headlines, learn a language, or anything else that can be chunked into simple, discrete pieces! I’d love to get a couple lines of Atlas Shrugged in every loading screen. It’s not the fastest way to read a book, but I’d get through it (eventually )!

The code necessary to change the loading screens should be easy: add a variable to track the message number and modify the load screen to accept a variable corresponding to the message number; then increment the message number every time you display a load screen.

I’ve seen the idea partially in action; for example, while loading a song in Rock Band, trivia is displayed. The problem is that the pool of messages is very slim and never updated. The platforms for this game (PS3, Xbox360, and Wii) are all Internet-enabled so it should be possible to periodically update or replace the stash of messages.

Another (somewhat) similar service, Daily Lit, allows you to read books in email messages or RSS feeds. Daily Lit provides a proof-of-concept demonstrating first, that it is possible and second, that people want this form of entertainment.

What do you think? Would you use this service? What would you want in your loading screens?

Passively heated homes

I love architecture and green building! I’m not as well-informed as I should be, but green homes are an area I would love to explore later in life. One of the best ideas I’ve seen is the passive house (Passivhaus). Passive homes seek to retain the home’s heat with little or no extra energy usage. They achieve the effect by combining several features, notably superinsulation, a special airflow system, and optimized floorplans.

The NY Times has a nice article on passively heated homes and a family living in one in Germany. Germany is important to the tale because they are pioneering the practice, and many of the worlds 15,000 passive houses are in Germany. Unfortunately, America is slow to adopt similar practices. One explanation is America’s population center in warmer-weather climates. Because the passive house is designed to retain heat, it would probably not deliver a desirable effect in the summer in Austin

America’s green building code, the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standard, is lagging behind in achieving energy independence. (More information can be found at the US Green Building Council site.) LEED is more about using reusable supplies than it is about living off the grid. In any case, the  idea and innovation in the passive house brings me joy!

What do you think? Would you live in a Passivhaus? Is it worth an additional 5% upfront in order to never pay another utility bill?

Tech Star: Seth Goldstein

Technologists affect the world tremendously, but America does not value the contribution nearly as much as they do pop stars and athletes. We must change this! If technologists were more prominent, students would have a wider range of role models and education would be taken more seriously.

In an effort to give worthwhile technologists the spotlight, I’d like to share one of my favorite technology researchers: Seth Goldstein, professor at CMU. Beyond having an awesome first name, Dr. Goldstein is working on world-changing, futuristic research: Claytronics. Claytronics is a form of programmable matter. composed of claytronics atoms, catoms. Catoms are tiny, autonomous sensors that, together, create emergent behavior. The end goal of Claytronics is to allow pario–a new media that recreates three-dimensional data (just as a radio recreates sound and TV recreates video).

Claytronics is the talk of the town, getting featured on the CMU site, Make Magazine, Robots.net, and WorldChanging.com. CNN boldly claimed that Claytronics is the true next-generation of robotics. These articles are fairly shallow, so I encourage you to read scholarly articles about Claytronics.

Still confused? Here’s a video of a meeting that uses Claytronics to view and dynamically alter a 3D model in real-time.

They are not there yet. Recent progress looks more like this:

Three catoms are aligning themselves. Currently, manufacturing technologies do not exist to create nanobots. Goldstein sees three distinct periods from now until Claytronics realization: macro, micro, and nano. The macrobots, as seen in the above video, are large and locomote using magnets. Because of their weight and relatively weak attractive forces (magnetic), the catoms can only move in two dimensions. However, as the catoms shrink they will reduce their weight sharply and be able to use other forces to move. Nanobots may work more like this:

The work is on-going. The vision is clear and we are progressing nicely. Claytronics provides an excellent motivating application example for research into manufacturing, communications, robotics, AI, and more. I look forward to a world where pario is a reality. Thanks to a technology star, Seth Goldstein, we will know that world!