Udderings

LeBron James changes to #6 to push a league-wide retirement of #23.

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 19:44:44 -0500

LeBron James changes to #6 to push a league-wide retirement of #23.:

purns:

RESPECT.

That’s awesome.

That’s stupid. What makes Jordan special? Everybody knows he only won so many championships because Len Bias went and exploded his heart that Jordan dominated for those years.

Admittedly, I lost all respect for Jordan with all the shenanigans he started pulling with the Wizards that caused a man I truly respect, Abe Pollin, to fire him, but Jordan’s on the court appearances don’t blow away everyone else.

"Just don’t forget to leave the empty keg on your porch. I always got a kick seeing a sweet old..."

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 20:23:12 -0500

“Just don’t forget to leave the empty keg on your porch. I always got a kick seeing a sweet old Asian lady carting three empty kegs down the road in a shopping cart to Blanchards with a huge smile on her face on Sunday mornings.”

- Troubled Allston intersection turns deadly once more | Universal Hub

If you live in Allston, you realize how hilarious this is.

Shire's Gaucher drug approved - Boston Business Journal:

Sat, 27 Feb 2010 18:12:32 -0500

Shire's Gaucher drug approved - Boston Business Journal: :

If you care about the drug industry, you’ll find this fascinating. Or if you care about patents and the drug industry.

One of the advantages of a patent is a monopoly. You’re the only one that can make a drug for a disease. Since finding a drug is difficult, frequently this means you’re the only one who can treat a disease.

Last June, Genzyme started facing some difficulties in their Allston, MA plant, which has led to a shortage of two drugs, Cerezyme and Fabrazyme ever since. This means that people with the diseases these treat, Gaucher and Fabry respectively, have either not received drugs or received lower doses.

This was a legitimate health crisis. So, the FDA looked in their pipelines and saw that Shire had drugs on the way for these diseases and allow them to be prescribed on an emergency basis without regulatory approval. They also fast tracked the treatment for Gaucher disease, meaning it has now been approved a year or more before it otherwise would have reached the market.

So, Genzyme not only squandered the monopoly opportunity of having the only drugs on the market to treat these diseases, but they also caused a health crisis that led to their period of monopoly being shortened.

Sucks to be a Genzyme shareholder right now. I’m actually kind of impressed with the FDA’s actions, but the whole situation presents some questions about drug patents. If there had been generics on the market, presumably some of them could have stepped up production. But if there wasn’t patent protection, the drug might not have been invented at all. I’m not quite sure what to think.

A Softer World: 531

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 20:14:55 -0500

A Softer World: 531

Colorful, friendly and fun I’ve always thought St. Louis...

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 09:33:55 -0500

Colorful, friendly and fun

I’ve always thought St. Louis Children’s Hospital is one of the most beautiful places I’ve been. This is an awesome photo essay showing this off.

Google Nexus One versus Apple iPhone 3GS Display Shoot-Out

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 18:45:21 -0500

Google Nexus One versus Apple iPhone 3GS Display Shoot-Out:

I feel like when this is finished, it will be quite an interesting read.

ideachute: (via chain:...

Sat, 20 Feb 2010 07:52:46 -0500

ideachute:

(via chain: graciefacie:haosworld:nogodsnomasters:grayskull:lydiagallant:)

Defiance, Ohio || Anxious and Worrying

I don’t think I really like this song … but I grew up 20 minutes outside Defiance, Ohio (in Hicksville, Ohio, which is in Defiance County) … and as a result I will eternally love this band, punk lisps and all.

This got me to pull back out the great Defiance, Ohio/Ghost Mice split for this morning’s listening pleasure.

Sowing the Seeds for the Ideal Crop

Sat, 13 Feb 2010 17:18:15 -0500

Sowing the Seeds for the Ideal Crop:

If you have any interest, positive or negative, in genetic engineering of plants, this is a great piece on what scientists are currently trying to do and how. Extremely well written.

Why American Express has an 8 character password limit

Sat, 13 Feb 2010 06:58:43 -0500

Why American Express has an 8 character password limit:

marco:

(via iamdanw)

The reasons given don’t sound quite right. If there’s really anything to this, I’d love if an expert in the matter could enlighten me with the details.

Translation: This sounds like bullshit, but if I’m wrong, I don’t want to appear too ignorant.

I’ll skip out on commenting on the American Express response, but the idea that you can’t have an 8 character alphanumeric password that is secure is just as much bullshit. Especially on a financial site where they’ll typically shut you down after a few consecutive failed login attempts. There are other responses online from American Express that indicate they believe more in their ability to detect failed log in attempts than in “excessively strong” passwords.

I read a couple pieces by people online complaining about this. Some things to note:

If someone doesn’t care what account they break into, really what they’re guessing is a combination of your username and password. I don’t know what American Express’s restrictions on usernames are, but I do know someone said their username is longer than their password on the site. These random attacks don’t care that your username is displayed in the clear when you type it on your screen logging in, they still have to guess it. This makes the “entropy” that many people have been calculating using just the password is actually much larger for a random attack.
- the corollary this is that a nonrandom attack where they already know your username is protected against by the failed login attempts policy
Many of the people complaining seem to not being able to use their “normal” passwords. Using the same password on every site is essentially giving a table to certain sites of usernames with passwords to try on other sites. Not many people seem to talk about this, but I think it’s actually a huge industry in the background. Maybe I care because I believe at an early age my hotmail account password got stolen this way. (Site has your email, if you give them the same password as you use to log in to your email, why can’t they can’t they get into your account).
- I know of some sites that have strange requirements just to force users to change their password from what they use on other sites. I very much dislike this policy, but I can’t argue that it isn’t effective.
It’s surprising how many people online think a longer password will protect them from phishing. This is just illogical. Someone creates a phishing site and users input their real username and password, then the phishing site has it. It doesn’t matter how long your username and password were.
I’m not aware of any financial rewards someone gets from breaking into your american express account. They can’t see your full card number and they can’t charge anything to your card from what I can tell. People can tell me if I’m wrong, but all they can see is where you’ve spent money. Sure, your privacy is at risk and you could be blackmailed or something for spending money in some sketchy way, but it’s not like a banking site where someone can transfer your whole account to another institution if they break into your account (but that too isn’t actually that easy, usually you receive a confirmation email from your bank and the transfer takes two days between institutions by law, so you can stop that shit as long as you have access to your email).

So, American Express might have a nonsensical response, but I think many of the complaints are for extremely invalid reasons. The only valid complaint is that there’s no reason for American Express to have this restriction. They would have more satisfied customers if they just removed this restriction. Claiming that it is negatively impacting their security though is just not true.

Yozamp wins ‘Jeopardy!’ Championship | Student Life

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 21:46:29 -0500

Yozamp wins ‘Jeopardy!’ Championship | Student Life:

some kid from my undergrad won the Jeopardy College Championship. Pretty cool.

I hope you appreciate the irony that MIT’s announcement...

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 19:32:03 -0500

I hope you appreciate the irony that MIT’s announcement for their iPhone app uses flash… the first time I’ve ever seen flash on the MIT home page… (subscribe to MIT daily home page if you want to keep track of the designs)

Somerville entrepreneur charged with hosting underage drinking fest | Universal Hub

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 20:54:49 -0500

Somerville entrepreneur charged with hosting underage drinking fest | Universal Hub:

If you live in the Boston area and know who Johnny Monsarrat is, this won’t surprise you in the least. I’ve spent enough time away from LJ to have nearly forgot this guy and then he pulls something like this to throw himself back in the the news….

You might think somebody would steal something a bit less obvious than a large-screen LCD TV | Universal Hub

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 06:13:09 -0500

You might think somebody would steal something a bit less obvious than a large-screen LCD TV | Universal Hub:

Interesting cases of people just walking out of stores with TVs and getting away with it.

"We’ve decided to disable plugin (not to be confused with add-ons, which are supported) support for..."

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 06:11:01 -0500

“We’ve decided to disable plugin (not to be confused with add-ons, which are supported) support for this release.”

- Firefox for Maemo RC3 « blog.pavlov.net

For a while, I’ve always disabled both flash and Java from the plugins menu on firefox. I never understood why people used things like flashblock when you could just click a button in the browser to turn them off. It’s interesting to see Mozilla straight up just get rid of plugins on a platform. Meaning my grant to the NIH on WebGL technologies is all the more urgent.

Gotta Love Brighton, Massachusetts Oh Brighton, how much more I...

Sat, 30 Jan 2010 19:47:32 -0500

Gotta Love Brighton, Massachusetts

Oh Brighton, how much more I love you than Allston.

Thaipusam Singapore 2009 (via Jimme Woudstra) One of my friends...

Sat, 30 Jan 2010 07:22:59 -0500

Thaipusam Singapore 2009 (via Jimme Woudstra)

One of my friends in Singapore posted some awesome pictures of this online, but inside the Facebook garden so I could not share. But this album on Flickr from last year’s festival is good as well.

Okular, Debian, and copy restrictions [LWN.net] This is a months...

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 20:45:00 -0500

Okular, Debian, and copy restrictions [LWN.net]

This is a months old article in LWN, but it was linked to this week due to an LCA talk on antifeatures.

I think it’s a great article on the conflict open source software faces in balancing freedom of the user and desire to be adopted in corporate environments.

The solution of having this checkbox is just so ugly though.

I just wanted to add, the iPad was not at all what I envisioned before Apple’s announcement...

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 21:05:38 -0500

I just wanted to add, the iPad was not at all what I envisioned before Apple’s announcement and the ideas I have about using it aren’t things I thought I would want. I think that’s really the sign of a good product, one that fills needs you didn’t even realize you had.

On the iPad

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 20:41:00 -0500

I think too many people are focused on the iPad and comparing it to the Kindle. The surprising point where I differ from people is in the belief that the iPad is meant for power users. Many people have pointed out that it would be silly to have both an iPad and a laptop. If a power user has a laptop as their only computer, it is likely because they need some portability, but they would probably rather have a desktop for their main computing. Frequently, to satisfy themselves with the laptop, they get a specced out 15 or 17 inch macbook pro so the computer is bearable.

For a while, that was my story. What I discovered after buying a desktop for home though was that I don’t really need a powerful laptop. The laptop has mainly become a device for giving presentations (something that the Keynote Demo indicated was possible, and should be equally possible with my Beamer presentations as pdf). I want a device that lets me make my presentations and surf the web during conferences.

But all of that is not what excites me.

What does excite me?

I remember about 18 months ago when Bosco Ho came to visit my lab as a random spur of the moment type event, he had a video of some simulations that he wanted to show us, but all he had was his iPhone with the video on it. We had to crowd around it to watch. The iPhone is barely adequate for showing video to one person, much less 7 or 8. And with molecular dynamics simulations, you often want something even better. Before Apple’s recent bent on games, PyMol was cited as a graphics intense application for high end macs.

The iPad is the first device I can see carrying around at a conference and being able to show videos of simulations to people and having a viewer to easily explore these results. The iPhone was never going to be it. The Kindle just isn’t meant for it. Laptops are just the wrong form factor (for the same reasons they are the wrong form factor for watching a movie on a plane). IBM/Lenovo Thinkpads had the wrong interface for interaction, a stylus.

Apple’s hardware has the graphics capabilities, the correct interface, and the size that I can finally both show movies of molecular simulations, but also pull up models from a simulation and explore them. The software to do this isn’t on the platform yet, but it will be, even if I have to be the one to port it.

Today I bathed myself in some interviews from the past on ideas around e-books. Does anyone...

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 22:41:18 -0500

Today I bathed myself in some interviews from the past on ideas around e-books. Does anyone remember the time when there was idea that we would have e-ink pages? And you would flip through pages, like it was a magazine or book? That idea just sounds so silly now.