In downtown San Jose…
Category Archives: Poetry
BSOD at RSA
The exhibition floor reminds me of a county fair, bristling with prize cattle and pigs. I hate to say it, but I find myself wandering among the herds of vendor logo’d sales people and entertainers, munching from troughs of mediocre food, wondering if this is really the best way to find new/interesting products and make contacts.
Perhaps the most odd thing of the evening was when I found a Blue Screen of Death prominently displayed on a vendor system, and realized I was the only person who seemed to realize that it was a bad thing. I thought about making a big deal of it, but then just decided to help the vendor understand the error and to get the system back up again.
Someone in a PGP shirt walked up to me and said “How does anyone make a decision here”, to which I simply had to reply “Hmmm, let me think about that. I’m not sure, but it’s one of two ways.” He didn’t laugh.
I had fun at the NSA booth where I typed out a message on an actual three-rotor German military Enigma from WWII. The keys are hard to press, but satisfying. Here is the result: QLKERMAKJDU. Pretty cool, eh?
I played some odd ping-pong ball drawing and won a lottery-ticket that won two dollars. I must have had a dour expression on my face during the process because the woman pulling the balls out said “you don’t seem very excited” to which I simply had to reply “oh, is it exciting to stand here and win other people’s money?” I guess I don’t believe in the “free” money concept.
Clearly I was missing something since I really just wanted to find the folks who could solve a few burning questions about encryption and key management for/with me, not play the lottery or place a bet on roulette, or throw bean-bags through a hole…sigh. Ten California rolls, three tiramisus, two kebabs, a slice of roast, some mozzarella balls, two salami slices, six egg-rolls, and a chocolate-covered strawberry later I finally connected with a real crypto-token vendor who gave me a demo and might actually be able to sell me some fobs (no software, no integration, no lottery tickets…).
I also discussed some anomaly and fraud detection software with the IBM engineers, but they kept saying “contact center” instead of “call center”, which started to give me the creeps, so I took one of their squishy brains and moved along. Microsoft said they could sell me software to integrate directories for just $25,000. I almost coughed up a cracker (with cheese) when they tossed that number out at me. Microsoft sells midrange software? They backpedaled a bit “you probably have a reseller who could get it to you in the teens”. It started to sound like an IBM rep talking. Apparently the cough-up your food on the sales engineer technique is handy in negotiation. They were just lucky I wasn’t drinking wine.
All in all, some good contacts, a couple interesting new products, and a fine start to the week. I just wish I had paid more attention to math when I was young.
If thou art diligent and wise, O stranger, compute the number of cattle of the Sun, who once upon a time grazed on the fields of the Thrinacian isle of Sicily, divided into four herds of different colors, one milk white, another a glossy black, a third yellow and the last dappled. In each herd were bulls, mighty in number according to these proportions: Understand, stranger, that the white bulls were equal to a half and a third of the black together with the whole of the yellow, while the black were equal to the fourth part of the dappled and a fifth, together with, once more, the whole of the yellow. Observe further that the remaining bulls, the dappled, were equal to a sixth part of the white and a seventh, together with all of the yellow.
— Archimedes
Lame Duck
“He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.”
“The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.”
— from Metaphors in High School Essays
The state of Los Angeles
Amazing. The New York Times reported that more than a quarter of the smog in Los Angeles is generated in China, and it may soon increase to a third or more. This reminds me of two things, the death of the German forests due to acid rain and the supposed fall-out down-wind (e.g. the jetstream flows from Asia into the US) from nuclear warfare. Looking out the plane window last evening I couldn’t help but notice a thick brown layer hovering over LA. For some reason that reminded me of noisy drunk Bulgarians smoking profusely as we shared cabins on a train out of Denmark. If I hunched over far enough (waist-height) I found I could keep my head just below the dense hovering smoke, but it was uncomfortable and still smelled bad.
The mish-mash of developments also stood out as vastly different than the old science fiction predictions of gleaming lights and shiny buildings all competing for your attention in a dark pitch. Instead I found myself gazing across a bland grey-brown mish-mash; unremarkable features crammed together to form a meaningless and seemingly infinite series of criss-cross homes, warehouses, and roads. The future may not be so much about confidentiality as simple integrity. An overwhelming amount of data can create a kind of secrecy, but the ability to find meaning in the mess is likely to be seriously threatened.
And that brings me to driving in LA. The new GPS navigation tools are far superior to their predecessors. I was able to punch in my destination and then sit back as a soothing european-accented cyber-female voice kept me on track, “left, then right, then left, then right again”. An impossible maze with some of the worst drivers in the world, yet my navigator was able to present meaningful data with only two minor mistakes. The locals fervently try to wash their vehicles into a gleaming and shiny spot of pride, but in reality nothing really stands out other than the ongoing sea of brake-lights and street lamps. A vehicle itself fails to give anything lasting or meaningful (aside from the hidden engineering), especially when compared to a clean park with a fountain, or the ability to actually see clouds and stars. But don’t try to tell that to Jay Leno…
The danger from this awful crisis of data and over-vehicularization seems to have compelled the LA police to consider firing sticky-GPS units at fleeing motorists. The LA Times reports that this is expected to end high-speed car chases. I would expect that countermeasures might be fairly easy to develop, like driving away, jumping out and tossing the locator onto another vehicle, and then continuing to drive.
A small number of patrol cars will be equipped with the compressed air launchers, which fire the miniature GPS receiver in a sticky compound resembling a golf ball, for four to six months as a trial.
Maybe the thing has some fancy hooks or a harpoon-like barb to prevent removal…if not, than I don’t expect a revolution from this technology, especially if a motorcyclist is fleeing. It may help in a few cases initially, but the idea of disabling the electronics on a getaway car seems far more effective to me (particularly since it halts the vehicle and therefore lessens the threat to innocent bystanders down the road). I can see where they are headed, and it begs the question of whether they are trying to fix the symptom rather than address the root causes. Several times last night I was over-taken by squads of squad cars on their way to something urgent and it brought to mind that it is often better to fix the leaky roof than to innovate with mop technology.