tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3690933Tue, 22 Jul 2008 12:00:00 +0000http://webpages.charter.net/allanms/noreply@blogger.com (AMS)Blogger133125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3690933.post-2664713635628797920Tue, 22 Jul 2008 09:22:00 +00002008-07-22T02:22:49.861-07:00When I was in Kuala Lumpur earlier in July, my old friend and die-hard foodie KC Toh took me to the Petaling Jaya home of a local chef for an impromptu cooking lesson. Ah Pan, pictured here teaching me to fry noodles, is a hawker. I'm not sure what his specialties are. I can be forgiven for not learning this since he and I didn't share a mutually comprehensible language. He doesn't speak much http://webpages.charter.net/allanms/2008/07/my-new-career.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (AMS)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3690933.post-4657996735739787401Mon, 21 Jul 2008 22:51:00 +00002008-07-21T15:52:19.199-07:00Law #11: If Microsoft defines the Laws of Security, we're in trouble.http://webpages.charter.net/allanms/2008/05/11th-immutable-law-of-security.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (AMS)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3690933.post-136521064187904998Sat, 19 Jul 2008 19:01:00 +00002008-07-21T15:57:31.992-07:00thought this was a friendly game instead nothing can be taken back there's a clock why didn't you tell me soonerhttp://webpages.charter.net/allanms/2007/12/touch-move.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (AMS)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3690933.post-658875029002372974Tue, 08 Jul 2008 11:15:00 +00002008-07-08T05:09:22.158-07:00I'm in Sydney (actually in suburban St. Ives) but only last week I was in Malaysia. I saw Eric and Jane Toh's new baby boy, Keith. Eric is the son of my old friend and well-known raconteur KC Toh. Eric, a native speaker of both English and Hokkien, asked me if his son should be taught to address me as Ah Chek or alternatively, Ah Kong. Without telling him that this is the first time I've beenhttp://webpages.charter.net/allanms/2008/07/your-first-lesson-in-hokkien.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (AMS)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3690933.post-647171340782488491Thu, 20 Mar 2008 12:12:00 +00002008-03-24T16:32:57.281-07:00He was one of those "greatest generation" guys who fought WWII (both fronts), got educated on the GI bill, created the baby boom (me and my two sisters) moved to the suburbs and took the train every day into the city. His parents were from Eastern Europe. He was the first one in his family to be college educated, I think. Attended CCNY after the war like so many NYC Jews, finishing a year beforehttp://webpages.charter.net/allanms/2008/03/leonard-schiffman-631926-3202008.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (AMS)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3690933.post-2026960130804233647Tue, 04 Mar 2008 03:08:00 +00002008-03-03T20:05:28.835-08:00It may make me a cliche, but Buddism has always interested me, and it is one more piece of culture affinity I have with Phylis. Recently, she and I have been reading the works of American Buddhist Nun, Pema Chodron. We first found about her when she was interviewed on Bill Moyer's PBS program Faith and Reason. I am thinking of reading Don't Bite the Hook next.Here's an excerpt from Karen http://webpages.charter.net/allanms/2008/03/not-another-buju.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (AMS)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3690933.post-2271859391124267735Sat, 22 Dec 2007 05:22:00 +00002007-12-21T22:30:36.887-08:00Poor dear Tropicana, our 18-1/2 year-old kitten, has severe chronic renal failure. She's on a lot of drugs, including human EPO (the feline version isn't out of trials). We have a veterinary tech visit daily to give her meds. Phylis and I ask ourselves every day: was today a good day for her? Was there something positive that perhaps balanced out her obvious discomfort and weakness -- her http://webpages.charter.net/allanms/2007/12/take-me-to-your-leader.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (AMS)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3690933.post-2810864295357940032Sun, 26 Aug 2007 06:06:00 +00002007-08-26T00:31:01.573-07:00From 1972 to 1978 or so I lived in Singapore and Malaysia; first as an exchange student, then as a expatriate hence presumptively expert computer programmer. The exchange student part was in SUNY Stony Brook's program at ???? (that's Nanyang University to you) where I learned the Mandarin that I still barely retain. Typical of desperate male Nantah students I visited Singapore U., where I met http://webpages.charter.net/allanms/2007/08/finding-my-playmate.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (AMS)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3690933.post-6277646563004712821Wed, 18 Apr 2007 12:13:00 +00002007-04-18T07:49:54.918-07:00The bitter-coated sugar pill, that is. I'm a week late noting Vonnegut's death, but, hey, I'm traveling (today: Sapa, Vietnam). I was a fanatical fan of his during my teens. It comforted me that someone else noticed there was no damn cat and no damn cradle.http://webpages.charter.net/allanms/2007/04/swallowing-pill.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (AMS)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3690933.post-705193092171370420Tue, 13 Mar 2007 22:56:00 +00002007-03-13T16:35:12.627-07:00BitFrost is the preciously named "security platform" for the One Laptop Per Child project. Naively simplistic, querulously written, and lacking acknowledgements (Garfinkel doesn't count), the specification is nonetheless interesting and worth reading. CapDesk creators, call your office.http://webpages.charter.net/allanms/2007/03/pola-axis.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (AMS)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3690933.post-7681632997764674322Sat, 17 Feb 2007 06:18:00 +00002007-02-17T02:21:09.428-08:00Andrew Patrick's Blog has interesting commentary on the research methodology used in The Emperor’s New Security Indicators: An evaluation of website authentication and the effect of role playing on usability studies (henceforth to be called TENSI:AEoWAatEoRPoUS for short or better, TENSI for shorter). The paper is to appear in the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, and has already been notedhttp://webpages.charter.net/allanms/2007/02/not-emperors-new-security-studies.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (AMS)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3690933.post-116469999032275364Tue, 28 Nov 2006 07:46:00 +00002006-11-27T23:54:30.976-08:00Complaints Choir of Birmingham I may have been (as usual) the last person to notice this. But if you haven't seen this, you should. Why does my computer take so very long? Why can't the bus driver talk to anyone And why is the beer so expensive in town? I want my money back, My job is like a cul-de-sac, And the bus is too infrequent at 6.30. Why don't they pay me more? Life was good before Andhttp://webpages.charter.net/allanms/2006/11/complaints-choir-of-birmingham-i-may.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (AMS)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3690933.post-116286197882900416Tue, 07 Nov 2006 01:02:00 +00002006-11-06T17:12:58.843-08:00I wanted everybody to notice the new look for one of CommerceNet's portfolio companies, ChipIn. To celebrate, I've built one of their new contribution widgets. So, hand me your money. http://webpages.charter.net/allanms/2006/11/holdup.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (AMS)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3690933.post-115847355401996124Sun, 17 Sep 2006 05:20:00 +00002006-09-16T23:12:34.093-07:00Sir Roger Penrose, distinguished Mathematician and Physicist, prolific Author, and perhaps somewhat confused philosopher of consciousness has written a quite remarkable book. The Road to Reality : A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe attempts to cover general relativity, quantum mechanics and the modern theories that attempt to unify them both (i.e. String theory, Loop Quantum Gravity & http://webpages.charter.net/allanms/2006/09/are-reals-really-necessary.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (AMS)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3690933.post-115847032824355347Sun, 17 Sep 2006 05:07:00 +00002006-09-16T22:18:48.413-07:00For those who follow Stephen Wolfram or those who were merely baffled by the the book: now it has been revealed what all that stuff was for.http://webpages.charter.net/allanms/2006/09/new-kind-of-ringtone-generator.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (AMS)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3690933.post-115101599965040397Thu, 22 Jun 2006 22:24:00 +00002006-06-22T15:39:59.696-07:00Apparently it's been available since last October, but I've just been turned on to VMware Player, and their Browser Appliance download fills the bill very nicely for the Safe Computing with Ephemeral VM Environments idea I described two years ago.Maybe not such a bad idea after all, huh, EKR?http://webpages.charter.net/allanms/2006/06/you-had-heard-it-here-first.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (AMS)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3690933.post-114848387160277591Wed, 24 May 2006 13:38:00 +00002006-05-24T08:39:16.650-07:00For those who can't wait for our return from China, some uncaptioned pictures.http://webpages.charter.net/allanms/2006/05/pictures-from-exhibitionist.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (AMS)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3690933.post-114177418132968734Tue, 07 Mar 2006 23:19:00 +00002006-03-07T17:47:06.136-08:00I missed Ozzie's talk, and Rohit tells me I should have because Ozzie's apparently very successful demo featured Microformats, an initiative that CommerceNet sponsors. In the talk transcript, Ozzie says: I have a concept development team that works for me. I went to them a month ago, gave them rough concepts, and gave them challenge: how can we jam things together in a browser?I have a concept http://webpages.charter.net/allanms/2006/03/more-etech-ray-ozzie-building-bridges.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (AMS)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3690933.post-114177333231223651Tue, 07 Mar 2006 22:41:00 +00002006-03-07T15:15:32.326-08:00I'm in a function room at the Grand Hyatt Manchester in San Diego for O'Reilly's Emerging Technologies Conference, the people who brought you "Web 2.0" and many other desperately hip ideas that they constantly remind you of. I just caught the tail-end of a talk about the Hunch Engine by Eric Bonabeau of Icosystem Corporation. The basic ingredients are a visualizer on some solution space, with ahttp://webpages.charter.net/allanms/2006/03/from-oreilly-etech-hunch-engine.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (AMS)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3690933.post-113921590941783460Mon, 06 Feb 2006 08:21:00 +00002006-02-06T00:57:53.780-08:00I really have gotten out of the habit of posting. I'll try to get back to it. Two topics I should be able to write about every day are: 1) CMU Prof. K. Carley's course on Dynamic Network Analysis (I'm taking it this semester); and 2) ideas about WowBar.As a teaser for the DNA (that's Dynamic Network Analysis, remember) course, I'll mention we've been asked to come up with some new measures for http://webpages.charter.net/allanms/2006/02/non-biological-dna.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (AMS)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3690933.post-113334789440532384Wed, 30 Nov 2005 10:14:00 +00002005-11-30T02:51:34.416-08:00I've just read John Markov's What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry which begins with Doug Englebart getting into place at SRI, looks-in on the creation of Stanford AI Lab and Xerox PARC, and ends after the first few meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club. Some people I know (Dennis and Jim, for instance) figure prominently in the book. I http://webpages.charter.net/allanms/2005/11/feed-your-head.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (AMS)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3690933.post-112931549736816957Fri, 14 Oct 2005 18:35:00 +00002005-10-14T12:14:30.816-07:00Our friends at EducatedGuesswork are discussing the news that the FDA is considering approval of an at-home AIDS test. At issue is whether people can handle the truth without counseling, false positive rate, and such-like. All that misses the point. The unmet need that a fast "oral fluid" HIV antibody test satisfies is screening prospective sex partners. Here, handsome -- let me take your http://webpages.charter.net/allanms/2005/10/ok-baby-we-can-skip-saran-wrap.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (AMS)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3690933.post-112594770624305225Mon, 05 Sep 2005 19:10:00 +00002005-09-05T12:15:06.250-07:00You respond to disasters with the administration you have, not the one you wish you had. I thought I'd put that out there for anybody who wants to pick it up.http://webpages.charter.net/allanms/2005/09/you-can-quote-me-on-this.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (AMS)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3690933.post-112146245034479578Fri, 15 Jul 2005 21:10:00 +00002005-07-15T14:25:28.013-07:00A message from Lorrie Cranor notes that the EFF is asking for aid in the hunt for Privacy Weasels, viz., websites who make empty privacy promises. They give examples such as: Weasel language: "Although we take appropriate measures to safeguard against unauthorized disclosures of information, we cannot assure you that personally identifiable information that we collect will never be disclosed inhttp://webpages.charter.net/allanms/2005/07/weasels-considered-harmful.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (AMS)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3690933.post-112129776049924657Wed, 13 Jul 2005 22:41:00 +00002005-07-13T16:36:00.506-07:00I'm about half way through a wonderful book: The Inmates are Running the Asylum, by Alan Cooper. As an aside, the author's primary claim to fame is the invention of something truly horrible long ago. But I think he's sorry now.The book does a good job of explaining why most industrial products are becoming increasingly unusable.The simple reason is that it is cheap to add a microprocessor tohttp://webpages.charter.net/allanms/2005/07/one-liners-for-digital-age.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (AMS)