I disproved Google’s “Bacon Number” feature in under five minutes

Posted on September 14, 2012 by wellsdc

A new and generally useless feature on Google today is the Bacon Number, which allows you to quickly search for the number of degrees of separation any actor or actress is from the iconic Kevin Bacon.

Oh, by the way, this image is kind of scary.

Of course, this sort of game is no fun unless you challenge it, and what greater challenge could there be than silent film mainstay Lon Chaney, Sr.? Also known as The Man of a Thousand Faces, he appeared in over 150 films before his death in 1930. They’re not kidding about the thousand faces, either. His Phantom of the Opera was freaking scary, and it was done with a 1925 level of film technology. I figured this would be a good challenge, considering that he died 28 years before Kevin Bacon’s birth in 1958 (yes, this means Kevin Bacon is 52 years old, which also means he was about 26 in Footloose. I’m a little freaked out, too.)

Anyway, Google returns a Bacon Number of 3 for Lon Chaney, connecting them via Kenneth Branagh and January Jones.

There is a slight problem here. The Unknown is a 1927 film, and Kenneth Branagh was born in 1960. Oops.

Google actually didn’t need to go to the trouble of creating a search capability for Bacon Numbers. The website Oracle of Bacon already does this, and it has been doing it since 1996.

What does it have to say about Lon Chaney?

Huh. Still a Bacon Number of 3, but now it’s two people I’ve never heard of, plus a Kevin Bacon movie I’ve never heard of. Shall we check IMDB?

The Phantom of the Opera does, in fact have Lon Chaney and Rolfe Sedan (in an uncredited, “undetermined” role.)
Rolfe Sedan’s last credited movie was 1979’s The Frisco Kid, in which he was one of nine actors credited as “Rabbi.” The movie also had Eda Reiss Merin as “Mrs. Bender.”
Sure enough, Eda Reiss Merin appeared in 1983’s Enormous Changes at the Last Minute as “Ma.” Kevin Bacon appeared as “Dennis.”

Clearly, Google has been outmatched in this round. (Also, I have wasted a significant portion of the workday.)

Where the Government Creates, the Private Sector Sexifies

Posted on July 26, 2012 by wellsdc

I mean “sexify” in the sense of “make marketable” or “desirable”–“sexy,” to use the parlance of our times. I am specifically referring to the internet. Al Gore did not invent the internet, and he never claimed he did. It was actually a decades-spanning effort of government agencies and private companies with government contracts, gradually building computers and networks that could eventually integrate to create a truly decentralized, global system.

Partial map of the Internet based on the January 15, 2005 data found on opte.org. Each line is drawn between two nodes, representing two IP addresses. The length of the lines are indicative of the delay between those two nodes. This graph represents less than 30% of the Class C networks reachable by the data collection program in early 2005. Lines are color-coded according to their corresponding RFC 1918 allocation as follows:
Dark blue: net, ca, us
Green: com, org
Red: mil, gov, edu
Yellow: jp, cn, tw, au, de
Magenta: uk, it, pl, fr
Gold: br, kr, nl
White: unknown

Many of the essential components of what we now call the internet actually would have been foolish ventures, had private companies undertaken them. Perhaps it was a gamble by the government, but it was a gamble that paid off big. According to Farhad Manjoo at Slate:

In 1960, an engineer named Paul Baran came up with the idea of a packet-switching network. Baran was working for the RAND Corporation, a government-funded think tank, and he’d been looking for ways to create networks that would survive a disaster. Baran saw that the country’s most basic communications infrastructure—especially the telephone network maintained by AT&T—had several central points of failure. If you took out these central machines, the entire network would fail. His insight was to create a decentralized network, one in which every point was connected to every other point in multiple ways—your message from New York to San Francisco would get split into packets and might pass through Chicago, New Orleans, Atlanta, Tampa, or St. Louis. If one of those nodes were taken out, most of your message would get through, and the network would still survive. Continue reading →

The Robot Apocalypse begins here

Posted on July 14, 2012 by wellsdc

This may be the coolest thing I have ever seen:

According to Ray Walters at Geek.com:

Morphex was created by Norwegian Engineer Kare Halvorsen who has a passion for creating hexapod robots in his spare time.

Probably one of his more impressive pieces of work, he has recently updated Morphex to not only have the ability to transform from a ball to a robot, but also to be able to roll about while in sphere form as illustrated in the video above.

To create the aforementioned locomotion, the six-legged robot uses the motors on one side of its body to push itself along while contracted into a ball. The result, while not optimal, is a method of travel that moves Morphex in an arc rather than a straight line. Because of the asymmetric design that results from the hexapod moving itself across the floor, it’s impossible right now to straighten itself out. Still though, this is a pretty impressive upgrade that Halvorsen has incorporated.

That’s pretty damn amazing, but something about this is troubling me….

Yup, that’s it.

This “internet doomsday” thing apparently is not a hoax, but it’s also not a cause for panic. Who knew?

Posted on July 6, 2012 by wellsdc

This is what happens when you search for image files labeled “computer virus.”

When I first saw the posts about the “internet doomsday” virus and something that is supposed to happen on July 9, I assumed it was a hoax or a phishing scam. Considering that I first read about it in someone’s Tumblr feed did not necessarily inspire my confidence. That said, Snopes has apparently confirmed its authenticity, and multiple news sites have reported on it:

Thousands could lose access to the Internet on July 9 due to a virus, DNSChanger, that once infected approximately 4 million computers across the world.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation first gave details about the virus last November, when it announced the arrest of the malware’s authors. The virus, as its name indicates, affected computers’ abilities to correctly access the Internet’s DNS system — essentially, the Internet’s phone book. The virus would redirect Internet users to fake DNS servers, often sending them to fake sites or places that promoted fake products. Once the FBI shut down the operation, it built a safety net of new servers to redirect traffic from those infected with the virus.

But that safety net is going offline next Monday meaning that anyone who is still infected with the virus will lose access to the Internet unless they remove it from their machine.

You can make sure your computer is okay in 2-3 relatively easy steps (I can’t say with 100% certainty that all of this is legit, but I’ve checked around quite a bit. Still, proceed at your own risk):

1. Get your IP address for your computer. If you don’t know it, use a site like WhatIsMyIP.com.

2. Check to see if your computer has the virus (specifically, check to see if your IP address is linked to one of the rogue DNS servers associated with the virus). You can do this through the FBI or through the DNS Changer Working Group (DCWG). If the test comes up negative, congrats, you’re done, go back to looking a lolcats or whatever it is you do during the day.

3. If you’re positive, the DCWG has tools you can use to clear the virus from your computer. My computer is clean, so I don’t know how this part works.

Good luck!

Photo credit: ‘Virus rezon’ By DROUET (Own work) [GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

Just Because It’s Natural…

Posted on April 27, 2012 by wellsdc

I’ve written two posts this week on things that are purportedly “natural:” first food, then beauty. A few months ago I poked fun at the notion that my new hydrogen peroxide-based contact lens cleaner was somehow not “chemical-based” (I also mistakenly created the impression that I store my contacts in water, which I do not.)

It occurs to me that words like “natural” and “chemical-free” are really just shorthand for something to the effect of “not things we don’t like.” Of course my contact lens cleaner, with all of its bright-red, large-print warnings not to put it directly into my eyes, is not free of “chemicals.” Of course those bits of “shredded” “wheat” are not “natural.” We just tell ourselves this to feel better about an overly technological, strangely alienating world that has nonetheless done a pretty good job of keeping us from dying of smallpox.

There’s no real point to this post, other than to point out other things that are clearly natural, and juxtapose them with things that are not at all free from chemicals.

Chemical-based: Dihydrogen oxide.

Natural: Hurricanes.

Continue reading →

“Consumerism on steroids”

Posted on March 18, 2012 by wellsdc

Via Addie Broyles at the Austin American Statesman, here’s an interesting take on South by Southwest Interactive:

For your Sunday reading, a baffling letter to the editor in @statesman about SXSW interactive fest: “I can’t think of anything more diametrically opposed to the arts than the high-tech industry, which cannily creates addictions to countless gadgets that further detach its users from actual experience and emotion.”

(h/t Don Cruse)

I will be the first to admit that South by Southwest Interactive is a smorgasbord of first-world problems and self-important navel-gazing, but I would hardly say that it bears no relevance to “the arts” per se. Some huge percentage of all internet technology is now devoted to transmitting music and movies around, and much of the conference seems devoted to finding newer and shinier ways to do that.

People do make good connections and do quite a bit of business at SXSWi. Much of the purpose of the conference, after all, is to connect people in ways that will make them money. Having never been to a Star Trek convention, I have no idea if any business networking goes on or if any actual products get rolled out there. Maybe haters are just gonna hate.

Even if the vast bulk of what goes on at SXSWi is generally useless fluff, the same can be said for nearly every gathering of people in history. After all, it’s only five days. The Constitutional Convention needed four weeks, to use a wholly-inappropriate analogy.

Cue Sturgeon’s Law, paraphrased as “ninety percent of everything is crap.”

Yet another reason why social media is actually quite awesome

Posted on March 17, 2012 by wellsdc

It sounds like something out of a movie or a cheesy Google commercial, if they ran commercials for Google Earth. From Yahoo! News, the story of a boy from India who found his family after 25 years using Google Earth:

Saroo Brierley was only 5 when a train zoomed him hundreds of miles from home. It took 25 years and a technological revolution for him to get back

An Indian man separated from his family for 25 years has defied the odds by tracking them down — using little more than a vague recollection of his childhood and some help from Google Earth’s mapping technology.

In short, when he was 5 years old in 1987, he and his brother boarded the wrong train, thinking they were going home. They fell asleep on the train, and when they woke up, they were on the wrong side of the country, with no money. Also, he was only 5.

A tragic saga ensued. His brother died, and he was eventually declared a lost child and adopted by a family who took him to Tasmania. Tasmania is very, very far away from India.

Finally, using Google Earth and vague memories of childhood, he began searching the area around the train station until he found his hometown, Ganesh Talai. Using Facebook, he corresponded with some people from the town, and went to India and pounded pavement until he found them.

He says he plans on making a movie about the experience. I’d watch it.

Photo credit: Tasmania.A2005320.2355.250m by Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, NASA/GSFC[see page for license], via Wikimedia Commons.

SXSW Diary, Day Five

Posted on March 13, 2012 by wellsdc

Nothing remotely related to SXSW was going on in the building today

I began the last day of the Interactive festival in just the way that anyone trying to leave their law career behind would like to begin it. By going to court.

I also had a rather inauspicious beginning to the day due to an unfortunate goof. Since I spent the weekend at a sleepover of sorts, I had not had an opportunity to “spring forward” with any of the clocks at home. When I got home last night, tired from a day of learning and growing as a person, the time change of the previous day was the farthest thing from my mind.

When my alarm clock went off at 7:00 a.m., affording me a whole two hours to wake up, shower, remember how to tie a tie, and get my butt to the courthouse, I did not realize it was actually 8:00 a.m. For once, I’m glad I have this compulsive need to wake up earlier than is strictly necessary. Rather than make it to the courthouse with around 30 minutes to spare. I arrived with around 3 extra minutes. The simple fact that I arrived on time should be cause for a damn parade, but I still don’t see any bunting.

Miraculously, I was in an out of court in record time, arriving at just short of 9:15 a.m. and adjourning just after 9:30. With the catastrophic traffic, I was parking near the Convention Center by about 10:15, and comically changing clothes in the car. Luckily, no one walked by to see the show.

Since I had just been reminded that I am a lawyer…

I got in just in time for a CLE presentation, which I decided I should attend because hey! CLE credit!

I went to two CLE sessions, which I will delve into on my law blog:

Gimme Shelter from the Storm Clouds, dealing with copyright and putting music in the cloud
The Automobile as Network Node, addressing the integration of mobile and other communications technology into cars

Back to the Lounge!!!

I could tell I was burning out on panels, almost for good, as I fled the CLE room ahead of a panel on something like “Maximizing Revenues from Film.” You would think I could want to hear that, but I felt like just talking to people.

Once again, the bloggers’ lounge proved to be a great place to get free food and meet people. I met a fellow legal ghost-blogger. An interesting band called the Sweetness played, and then they kicked us out at 4:00 p.m., a couple hours earlier than on previous days.

SXSW NSFW

To cap off the conference, I headed with a friend to a session at the Sheraton Hotel. Thus involved a rather comical search for a Car2Go and a ponderous drive through absurd amounts of traffic. Our destination? A session titled “This Talk Is NSFW: Nudity and Online Journalism.” Thanks to traffic, we missed the first half, and I’m not sure I ever quite picked up the thread of the discussion.

As we walked in, the speaker, Keith Plocek, the Director of Web Content and Traffic at Village Voice Media, was showing slides of people in various states of undress and asking people to vote on whether they thought the image was “NSFW.” The issue was when a newspaper or other news source should tag an article or picture as NSFW. The general rule relates to context, but it can also be quite political. Whether or not to tag a picture, he said, largely depends on who is being sexy in the picture. Pictures that seem “gay” are much more likely to get tagged. Using the NSFW tag is a great way to get traffic, but it will get you angry comments if it’s too tame. You don’t want to deceive your readers about this issue, silly as it may seem, because that erodes your overall credibility.

He also talked about the importance of “covering” events as opposed to “pandering.” “Pandering” would be putting a naked woman somewhere and taking pictures, as opposed to covering a porn convention already in progress. He showed photos of the World Naked Bike Ride in Los Angeles from a few years ago. He said the page got about 800,000 views when they posted it, and then it leveled off. The page got even more hits the following year, in anticipation of the next ride, and now it’s up to about 2.5 million hits. Obviously, the NSFW tag gets attention.

They have to make some editorial decisions about what to cover, though, so they don’t over-use the tag. For example, they cannot cover every burlesque event in the city.

One question from the audience was about violent content. The NSFW can be used for violent content as well as sexual content. Apparently there is another tag, NSFL (“not safe for life” or “not safe for lunch”), used for particularly disturbing violent content. People tend to have certain expectations when they click on a link tagged “NSFW,” i.e. boobs. Don’t show them something really gross if they are expecting boobs.

And that’s all she wrote…

I wanted to go to the party thrown by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, but by the time I got home, I knew that is where I’d be staying.

Tomorrow, I catch up on work.

Thursday, music…

Since my iPad case has been so popular, here’s how you can get one too!

Posted on March 13, 2012 by wellsdc

It think it is fair to say that my iPad case has been one of the breakway stars of South by Southwest Interactive 2012. At least six people have approached me asking if they can take a picture of the case, and not a single one of them has asked me to pose with the case. I guess that shows you who, between me and the case, is the photogenic one.

For those who have not experienced the wonder of the case, it makes the iPad look like an Etch-A-Sketch. You know you want some of this.

Thanks to Amazon, such a fly case can be yours, too. You can also get it directly from Headcase. Well, you can do this if you think you could handle this much concentrated awesome. Can you?

Homeless people offer wifi service at SXSW

Posted on March 13, 2012 by wellsdc

The latest gimmick to come out of SXSW has troubled quite a few people while also offering a valuable service. A marketing company called BBH has provided several homeless people with mobile wifi hubs–I think that’s the right term, but I’m not much of a techie–so people can quickly access the internet in downtown Austin, where the sheer mass of people makes accessing the 3G network problematic.

The plan has caused pretty substantial controversy, with reporting in the New York Times and even on BBC News.

I’m of two minds on the matter. For one thing, the name of the program, “Homeless Hotspots,” seems exploitative. Actually, the whole program seems exploitative in one way or another. At the same time, it is offering an opportunity that did not otherwise exist. I think the real debate should be in how the program is managed and how revenues are distributed–payments go directly to the company via PayPal.

Alternet offered a reasonable criticism of the program:

Mark [West] told us that they found him through a homeless shelter in Austin, where he has a case manager helping him look for employment. He doesn’t have an option while he’s out providing internet to check and see how much money he’s earned, but he had cards to hand out to passersby as well with his name on them (he was writing his name on the cards with a Sharpie) so that they could find and donate to him directly.

“The weather and the holidays were kind of sketchy,” he said, “I’m very confident that I’ll have something before summer. I took this opportunity to work now.”

“It’s your company,” he stressed, “What you bring in is what you bring in. They bought the devices, they’re allowing us to use the devices to bring in our own revenue.” But as my colleague Matt Bors noted, when you actually own your own business, no one takes away your supplies after four days. You don’t work for a suggested donation. You work for a salary, for an hourly rate, when you work for a company.

BBH compared the work to the street newspapers that homeless people in many cities use to raise money, but the key difference there is that in those cases, the newspapers are written by the homeless, and contain content that has political views. In this case, Mark cannot use the service he is providing, nor are the users of his service getting his story or his political views.

Of course, this is assuming that the point of the program is to spotlight the problem of homelessness, as opposed to offering a gimmicky service. The major difference between wifi service and newspapers, in my opinion, is that newspapers exist almost solely to convey viewpoints and opinions. The “Homeless Hotspots” program is primarily about allowing people in downtown Austin to get on the internet. Whether they are somehow exploiting or mistreating the homeless people involved in the program, I suspect, is the real controversy. I’m just not convinced that this is a particularly strong argument. Putting homeless people on a sort of technological display seems preferable to a different extreme, as noted by John Cole:

How is paying someone to distribute wifi access any different than paying someone to work in your food stand at SXSW for a week? I don’t see anything unseemly or wrong about it at all- they are providing a service and making some money, and I fail to see how it is different from a vendor selling t-shirts or bottled water.

And the fact that they are using homeless people seems to be better than what normally happens any time a big conference comes to a big city, which is basically they are cleared off the streets and penned up out of sight and out of mind. Again, maybe I’m wrong, but I just don’t get what is so awful about this.

My jury is still out on this. Discuss.

Photo credit: ‘secret wifi hotspot’ by woodleywonderworks, on Flickr.

Cryptic Philosopher

____ Days Since Our Last Industrial Accident!

Category Archives: Technology

I disproved Google’s “Bacon Number” feature in under five minutes

Where the Government Creates, the Private Sector Sexifies

The Robot Apocalypse begins here

This “internet doomsday” thing apparently is not a hoax, but it’s also not a cause for panic. Who knew?

Just Because It’s Natural…

“Consumerism on steroids”

Since my iPad case has been so popular, here’s how you can get one too!

Homeless people offer wifi service at SXSW