Do no give away your password 3/n

life size table football in my University

This blog is censored in the People's Republic of China

coda:

greatfirewallofchina.org

From the cold

I had the privilege to meet 2 friends from Scandinavia



(The picture was taken with my PDA, so the quality is poor)

We meet here:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=38.713880000,+-9.138780000&layer=&ie=UTF8&z=18&ll=38.714033,-9.13878&spn=0.001833,0.006748&t=k&om=1&iwloc=addr

and had dinner here:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=38.751450000,+-8.967600000&layer=&ie=UTF8&z=18&ll=38.751607,-8.967601&spn=0.001832,0.006748&t=k&om=1&iwloc=addr

Do no give away your password 2/n

Now I am receiving spam from Where Are You Now (WAYN)

Apparently someone I know has been tricked to give then the password of his email account.

Do no give away your password

Recently I have received spam from zorpia.

The explanation: Apparently some people are giving away their webmail passwords (hotmaill, gmail, yahoo, aol, etc) , so zorpia managed to search people's email and collect all the addresses in the emails, addressbook, calendar, etc. (with the password they can do almost all they like).

Pretty scaring its it?

(a month ago I have been spammed by "names database")

Sunshine, or true meaning of the word solarisation

Picture1: Film poster

Picture2: Oxigen Generator


Thanks to a nice invitation of Castello Lopes Multimedia I had the fun to go to an avant-avant-premiere screening of the SF film "sunshine".

The film is OK.

I am not going to tell the story, but just to answer to my answers to a serie of question that crossed my mind during the projection.

Q - To lose communications BEFORE the orbit of Mercury. Isn't that completely preposterous

A - Yes with today Sun. Not necessarily with the altered Sun of the movie.

Q - How do they braked the ship after the gravitational slingshot at Mercury, to dock with Icarus I.

A - By heliobraking (cf. aerobraking, lithobraking)

Q- How could some one name Icarus I and Icarus II spaceships send to the sun

A- They are absolutely ignorant of the Greek mythology

Q- Any homage To Kubrik / Clarke

A- Several. First, the strange scenes near the end. Second, "2001", "Thus Spoke Zarathustra", "Friedrich Nietzsche", "God is dead". Third the solarisation.

Q- In the film the sun suffers strange phenomena. Wouldn't such phenomena be detectable in other stars?

A- No necessarily, if it is a rare and transient phase.

know (one of) your enemies

You know the Bible 80%!

 

Wow! You are truly a student of the Bible! Some of the questions were difficult, but they didn't slow you down! You know the books, the characters, the events . . . Very impressive!

Ultimate Bible Quiz
Create MySpace Quizzes

Links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_Delusion

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_Your_Enemy

my Chronicles from the Sprawl (20/n) - First We Take Manhattan

I hadn't been to New York for almost 20 years (They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom?). Not even to the airport, in transit - nowadays most flies to the West Cost, from Europe, are direct, over Canada.

And there are so many things to do, so many places to visit.

But last August I land again in the JFK airport and my son took this picture of N.Y. (in the far, far, background) while we were crossing the Bronx Whitestone Bridge, going to Massachusetts (I would eventually return to New York, but only a few weeks later)

Where the picture was taken:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=40.81000,-73.83500&ie=UTF8&z=12&om=1&iwloc=addr

Links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_We_Take_Manhattan

Coda:

Leonard Cohen - First We Take Manhattan - 1988 album "I'm Your Man"

They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
For trying to change the system from within
I'm coming now, I'm coming to reward them
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin

I'm guided by a signal in the heavens
I'm guided by this birthmark on my skin
I'm guided by the beauty of our weapons
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin

(Chorus:)
I'd really like to live beside you, baby
I love your body and your spirit and your clothes
But you see that line there moving through the station?
I told you, I told you, told you, I was one of those

Ah you loved me as a loser, but now you're worried that I just might win
You know the way to stop me, but you don't have the discipline
How many nights I prayed for this, to let my work begin
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin

I don't like your fashion business mister
And I don't like these drugs that keep you thin
I don't like what happened to my sister
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin

(Chorus:)
I'd really like to live beside you, baby ...

And I thank you for those items that you sent me
The monkey and the plywood violin
I practiced every night, now I'm ready
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin


(Chorus:)
I am guided

Ah remember me, I used to live for music
Remember me, I brought your groceries in
Well it's Father's Day and everybody's wounded
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin

Dalits

So much talk about India. So little talk about the Dalits, perhaps the secret behind the "Indian Success Story"

Why nobody asked the people burning an effigy representing organizers of "Celebrity Big Brother," in Patna, India, Jan. 17, what they think about the Dalits?






Links:

http://www.zeenews.com/znnew/articles.asp?aid=348409&ssid=50&sid=BUS


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6282883.stm



http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/06/0602_030602_untouchables.html


http://www.guardian.co.uk/uklatest/story/0,,-6352459,00.html


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalit

Yes

(click on the image for a high-resolution version)

Links:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/29/AbortionLawsMap.png

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_law

http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/2003monitoring/WorldPopMonitoring_2002.pdf

http://europa.eu/bulletin/en/200207/p102001.htm#anch0010

my Chronicles from the Sprawl (19/n) - Edward Dean Adams Power Station

I have posted some scenic pictures of he Niagara fall before, but this one is different.

The fall are the far side of the water plane (Canadian Falls, 1/2 far left, Goat Island, 1/2 far right) , and we can not see then because we are at the level of the upper part. Canadian buildings, in the other side of the falls, are very visible in the far side though (the mist in the air, seen near the buildings, is the signature of the falls).

But the main interest of this picture is that it shows the entrance of the in-let canal for the former "Edward Dean Adams Station".

Build near the beginning of last century this was the turning point of the adoption of electricity as one of the main process of redistributing energy.

The place itself is quite abandoned and I had to use some old maps (also shown) and some math to find the place.

Satellite Photo (arrow in the place were I took the picture):

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=43.078553,-79.046719&ie=UTF8&z=14&ll=43.078543,-79.046717&spn=0.031409,0.107975&t=k&om=1&iwloc=addr

Links:

http://freenet.buffalo.edu/bah/a/nf/adams/index.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Currents

My New Mobile Phone

I have a new (smart)phone!

I have also a new cellular number.Just call my previous number and you will find a message announcing the new number :-)

Happy new year to everybody!

Quick dirt and cheap(?) narrowband Internet connexion

a letter from Knuth to the U.S. Patent Office in Sept. 2003.

Letter to the Patent Office
From Professor Donald Knuth

Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks
Box 4
Patent and Trademark Office
Washington, DC 20231

Dear Commissioner:

Along with many other computer scientists, I would like to ask you to reconsider the current policy of giving patents for computational processes. I find a considerable anxiety throughout the community of practicing computer scientists that decisions by the patent courts and the Patent and Trademark Office are making life much more difficult for programmers.

In the period 1945-1980, it was generally believed that patent law did not pertain to software. However, it now appears that some people have received patents for algorithms of practical importance--e.g., Lempel-Ziv compression and RSA public key encryption--and are now legally preventing other programmers from using these algorithms.

This is a serious change from the previous policy under which the computer revolution became possible, and I fear this change will be harmful for society. It certainly would have had a profoundly negative effect on my own work: For example, I developed software called TeX that is now used to produce more than 90% of all books and journals in mathematics and physics and to produce hundreds of thousands of technical reports in all scientific disciplines. If software patents had been commonplace in 1980, I would not have been able to create such a system, nor would I probably have ever thought of doing it, nor can I imagine anyone else doing so.

I am told that the courts are trying to make a distinction between mathematical algorithms and nonmathematical algorithms. To a computer scientist, this makes no sense, because every algorithm is as mathematical as anything could be. An algorithm is an abstract concept unrelated to physical laws of the universe.

Nor is it possible to distinguish between "numerical" and "nonnumerical" algorithms, as if numbers were somehow different from other kinds of precise information. All data are numbers, and all numbers are data. Mathematicians work much more with symbolic entities than with numbers.

Therefore the idea of passing laws that say some kinds of algorithms belong to mathematics and some do not strikes me as absurd as the 19th century attempts of the Indiana legislature to pass a law that the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter is exactly 3, not approximately 3.1416. It's like the medieval church ruling that the sun revolves about the earth. Man-made laws can be significantly helpful but not when they contradict fundamental truths.

Congress wisely decided long ago that mathematical things cannot be patented. Surely nobody could apply mathematics if it were necessary to pay a license fee whenever the theorem of Pythagoras is employed. The basic algorithmic ideas that people are now rushing to patent are so fundamental, the result threatens to be like what would happen if we allowed authors to have patents on individual words and concepts. Novelists or journalists would be unable to write stories unless their publishers had permission from the owners of the words. Algorithms are exactly as basic to software as words are to writers, because they are the fundamental building blocks needed to make interesting products. What would happen if individual lawyers could patent their methods of defense, or if Supreme Court justices could patent their precedents?

I realize that the patent courts try their best to serve society when they formulate patent law. The Patent Office has fulfilled this mission admirably with respect to aspects of technology that involve concrete laws of physics rather than abstract laws of thought. I myself have a few patents on hardware devices. But I strongly believe that the recent trend to patenting algorithms is of benefit only to a very small number of attorneys and inventors, while it is seriously harmful to the vast majority of people who want to do useful things with computers.

When I think of the computer programs I require daily to get my own work done, I cannot help but realize that none of them would exist today if software patents had been prevalent in the 1960s and 1970s. Changing the rules now will have the effect of freezing progress at essentially its current level. If present trends continue, the only recourse available to the majority of America's brilliant software developers will be to give up software or to emigrate. The U.S.A. will soon lose its dominant position.

Please do what you can to reverse this alarming trend. There are far better ways to protect the intellectual property rights of software developers than to take away their right to use fundamental building blocks.

Sincerely,
Donald E. Knuth
Professor Emeritus

Links:

http://lpf.ai.mit.edu/Newsletter/programming.freedom.11.html

http://lpf.ai.mit.edu/Patents/knuth-to-pto.txt

http://www.pluto.it/files/meeting1999/atti/no-patents/brevetti/docs/knuth_letter_en.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Computer_Programming

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Knuth

http://www-cs-staff.stanford.edu/~knuth/

http://www.digital-copyright.ca/discuss/1104

http://swpat.ffii.org/gasnu/knuth/swpatknuth.en.pdf

http://swpat.ffii.org/gasnu/knuth/index.en.html