Side Channels

Recently, I needed to carry a small suitcase with my bike. I always have a some bungee cords attached to my bike for when I do grocery shopping. So instead of walking with both suitcase and bike in each hand, I did the following:

You’ll need the suitcase’s wheels to be robust, so I would expect that this only work with quality brands; I went quite fast with mine without a problem. Another issue to be aware of is that the cords should be a bit loose in order for the rigid handle poles not to break; this also helps while turning.

This was a great idea and a great interview. People are amazing. It is a shame the process of growing older tends to blunt so much of our ability. It makes you think everything might not be as bad as it sometimes seems if we could just expand our ideas.

http://www.greenstar.org/butterflies/Hole-in-the-Wall.htm

Summary: An Indian entrepeneur exposes Indian slum residents to a free PC and internet connection with no training. The results are described and an interview with the entrepeneur follows. About 5 minutes reading.

I’m not much of an instant messaging (IM) user. But, I use skype for messaging and now briefly used the GMail embedded Google IM.

When I chats with people, they often take so fucking long to reply (there is no excuse for not giving me their undivided attention, btw.) Now, I don’t know if they are going to reply to the last thing I wrote or not (Google tells you the other person is typing, which helps). So, I need to wait. Not wanting to waste time, I start typing something about another topic after a reply doesn’t arrive within a few seconds… but then they reply to the “old” topic and I am forced to delete (sure, I could, inconveniently, CNTRL-X it) what I’ve written and respond to the last topic, then retype. Sucks!

I propose another entry box on-top of the existing one, so I could keep what I’ve written and respond in the top one to the new reply. This way, I could “multitask” two topics in the same session. Is that clear? I’m too lazy to draw a diagram, so I can clarify in the comments if need be.

If Skype developers are reading this, please take note of my other Skype suggestions and qualms.

(There might as well be an IM client that does this already, I haven’t gone through any of them.)

I’m going to attempt coining a new term now (if you are aware of an existing one, let me know.)

leighvoice: The change in voice pitch men have when they talk to their significant other over the phone.

You know what I’m talking about. I’ve noticed this before, but certain members of our group have reminded me of this phenomenon as I eavesdropped for my research. The “leighvoice” is named after the wife of a certain member who exhibited the most pitch differential I’ve had the privilege of hearing.

I’m not a World Cup follower… but I can feel the pain of people who care about it when it comes to penalties. Penalties suck! They are downright unfair. So here’s the fix:

1. After extended time, there is another 20 minute extension in which offside is cancelled.
2. Teams start with 9 players each and every 5 minutes a player is taken out from each team.

If they can’t score then, they both deserve to leave the cup!

There, problem solved; I require no royalties, only credit.

Last week I attended most of the WEIS and PET sessions. The topic is a bit removed from my interests but it was good to hear what is out there and chat with all the interesting people. The most valuable thing I learned, however, was that I am happy where I’m at, as far as research interests goes.

I have a Dell Inspiron 9300 laptop, better described as a “desktop replacement.” It’s a great computer, but not for hauling around. I don’t take it to conferences or workshops; some of it has to do with the weight of the thing, but mostly, I believe that if I am somewhere, I should be fully there and give my undivided attention to the person on the podium–they deserve it.

As an experiment, I tried to phase out the speaker’s voice and listen to what I’ll call “conference clicks,” it’s quite astounding, you should try it. Looking around, I see that many people stare at their screens, meaning that they are not fully there; I can only imagine how the speaker feels (I have not spoken in front of this large crowed before.) I’d feel quite insulted, to be honest; I’d rather people not be there at all than not being fully there.

My solution? Cut the WiFi during sessions and have cabled ports outside the hall for people who choose not to attend the lecture. This may sound outrageous to some, but I think this is where we are headed.

To tie in one of my other rants, I’d ban laptops from business meetings too. When I am king/CEO, that will be corporate policy and I think this will become more wide spread soon as well.

Say no to “conference clicks”!

Spam mostly come from zombie computers. Weblog comment spam comes from zombie networks as well.

I am getting about 40 a day now; all of which are put in my moderation box because they contain words that are in my blacklist (these people are not very creative on the content front.) The IP address that the comment came from is recorded and contained in the email I get notifying me a new comment has been posted. Although it won’t point to the spammer, I though it would be nice to map where the spam is coming from using the Google maps API. In a more effective and useful form, bloggers may send a dedicated webpage their comment spam and it will add the IP to the map/database. Wordpress or other tools can be made to send a copy of the email to this website automatically upon detection of comment spam (there is really no privacy issue here.) I think that would be neat and may help in some way to identify spammers. If anyone is interested in making this happen, let me know, I’ll contribute what I can.

SM pointed me to mailinator.com which is a on-time-e-mail service that is very cool… and also to hostip.info for getting IP information… go there and see if they got your location right.

A 21 year old came up with a clever idea to cover his university fees and still be left with (lots of) change. The result is theMillion Dollar Homepage. This is another one of those internet fads that have an interest spike that quickly trails off. However, the original innovator gets to make a good sum of cash in the process, while the imitators don’t get to make much, if any, money. I doubt that the guy will be able to cash-in more than $20K or so before the interest dies out. (This prediction excludes the chance that goldenpalace.com would buy a banner size ad from him, of course; they are the ones who bought the 10 year old “virgin mary grilled cheese sandwich” and other crap on ebay for publicity.) Still, that’s good profit for a good idea like that. I wish him all the best and once again, disappointed that I did not think of it myself.

(imitators here and here.)

Maybe I should have my own “The $1000 For Your Name On The Thanks Section Of My PhD Thesis Homepage” to fund my studies. You think that would work?

It is always a hit to the ego to call tech support (TS), isn’t it? In a fact, one is publicly admitting the need for help, and that is hard. Much like asking for directions.
Back in the day, when I called TS, I wanted to demonstrate that I knew more than them. I had the attitude of an expert that got into trouble with a very hard problem and that the TS guy/gal would be unlikely to be knowledgeable enough to help me, but I am giving them a shot at it. Well, in most cases I was the one with the red face at the end of the conversation. Most often it was just a check-box, or some other pedestrian setting.
After a while, I decided to take a different approach that proved to be much, much more effective: playing the newbie.
I call in and gracefully describe the problem and follow their instructions without resistance, sighs or “I’ve tried this and it doesn’t work!”I found that this way, you get the problem fixed faster. First, I call the TS sooner instead of trying to get it on my own (finding the right check-box is hardly a challenge I would be proud of, so I’d rather have the answer given to me) and second, they have the procedures to find the problem fast and they might know of issues that I will never find on my own.
Some time back, I’ve given this “secret recipe” to my neighbor. Yesterday he told me he used the “saar method” of tech support and was very satisfied. Another happy customer :)

In a related story: during my very first peer-to-peer LAN setup I ran into trouble; well, it just would not work. I labored for a whole weekend, called friends, tried every protocol, switched cables… no go. I finally gave up and called Netgear TS. They concluded that the problem is with the ethernet card (!) and gave me an RMA. This was valuable lesson in my greenhorn days: hardware may fail, even though I naturally assumed it was my lack of knowledge or the software setup.

The company I work for has about 3,000 employees. I am always amazed at the cavalier attitude people take towards sending emails to world@company.com or region@company.com. I am also surprised that the company permits anyone to send emails to any and all distribution lists (DL.) That got me wondering about how much it costs to deliver an email? From pressing ’send’ to the arrival at the recipient’s mailbox (not including the time to write or read the content) of say, a 1K size email. I could not find any analysis that quantifies this cost, considering infrastructure, IT personnel and so on. I also have no real knowledge to estimate this cost… $0.000001? $0.001? If that cost was known, maybe companies would pay more attention to the amount of inter-mail spam.

The goal is to minimize unwanted emails and to reduce the traffic in the pipes. I think that permission to send emails to DLs should be tiered according to the sender’s hierarchal position in the corporation and to the size of the DL. For example, only VPs would be able to send emails to world@company.com; Sr. Directors to division@company.com and so on. Me? I’ll be able to send emails only to neighboring cubes :). This will prevent people from sending unwanted emails to uninterested people, protect people from themselves from “reply-all” fiascos, and reduce infrastructure and support costs for the company.

The other aspect of restricting people from sending email to DLs is information security. For example, the company has an incentive to prevent a disgruntled employee sending out confidential/sensitive/incriminating/vindictive information to every single employee.

_{* The guy from “Internet Security” has other related ideas I agree with.}

Ever since I created my webpage www.saardrimer.com, I’ve been searching for my name on all the search engines to see if they “caught” the site and of course what rank I am getting. So I thought of creating a “search all” page where you enter the string only once and it opens a new window with the results for each of the search engines selected. Pretty simple, so give it a shot.

Oh, don’t forget to press CNTRL to disable your popup blocker… and, “HaKol” means “everything” in Hebrew. Enjoy.

“Making the rental process fair!”
A form completed by the landlord and given to the prospective renter

I would like to a fix to the inequality between landlord and renter with respect to the rental application process. In many places in the US, the rental applicant is required to provide detailed and private information while the prospective landlord is not obligated to disclose any; this is unjust.

Typically, the required information consists of:

• contacts of last two landlords
• place of work and manager’s contact
• credit report and credit card number
• social security number
• photocopies of identity documents (passport, driver’s license)

The rental applicants provide private and confidential information to enable the prospective landlord to inquire about their past in order to evaluate them as tenants; however, the renters have no real means for doing the same. Essentially, they can not validate a single thing the landlord is saying and can only trust their intuition. The current customary process is biased against the renter and this has to change (man, it’s aggravating!)

I suggest a webpage that will provide a reasonable solution to this bias by providing an equivalent to the rental application, the “landlord application.” This is an application that the landlord completes and provides as a counter to the customary rental application. The following information should be included on such a form:

• contacts of last two tenants

In order to hear a more objective view of the rental, it is a good idea to talk to previous tenants. They will tell you of the leaking faucet, creaky ceiling, why they left and if the landlord stole from their deposit. Practically, they will tell you what the landlord never will.

• landlord’s full name and address

This will enable the renter to inquire with the local courthouse if there are/were any cases brought against this landlord. For example, you might find out that they have been sued for an unjust deposit deduction several times. You might find other things that will make you shy away from the place.

• number of people, occupation and ages of people living in house (if shared)

This is a given, but I think this should go on paper rather than as just a conversational item.

• landlord’s place of work

Although not critical, this is useful information to have as part of the renter’s evaluation process.

Ultimately, I would like to see this as common practice and part of a formalized process that is mandated by law. Currently, a landlord will typically label the one who asks too many questions as an “undesirable.” But it has to start somewhere, and the more people asking for the above information, the more it will become mainstream. Landlord will resists, naturally; they just had it too good for too long: ZERO accountability, and that’s hard to give up. If it a “renter’s market”, this will be more appealing to landlords because they need to compete over the applicants and want to show their glorious past (it might even make them treat the current tenants better, so they recommend them in the future.) However, in a “landlord market,” landlords get down right abusive and treat current and prospective renters more like cash cows than people (renting in the silicon valley during the “boom” was pure hell so I know what that is like.)

In the Bay Area, a studio will run for about $800 - $1000 a month; that’s about $12,000 yearly (including utilities and all.) Who in their right mind pay that sum for anything other than a rental under the current conditions? Think about it: the seller is unknown, no records are available, only superficial inspection is allowed before purchase, you can’t ask too many questions and there is no return policy! Would you buy a car like that? Both parties should check the history of each other and the property’s so they can make a knowledgeable “purchase” rather than take a chance.

Everyone needs to know who they are entering an agreement with; it should not be as one-sided as it is today. Typically, disgruntled tenants give up going to court over grievances because it just takes too many resources (financially and mentally) and that plays into the landlord’s hands. It is much better to know what you are getting into up front and avoid the aftermath.

If a webpage ever comes about, it could also host a database of rental properties ratings and reviews reported by tenants. Currently, there is apartmentratings.com, but it only covers apartment complexes.

If you’d like to work on such a project, feel free to do so; I’ll help as much as I can.

Your comment are much appreciated.

Here is a “Landlord Application” sample form I created; use it as you please.

Make sure you vote on my related post on halfbakery.com.