House of the rising Moonglum

I ran across an interesting article about computer security and what the FBI thinks about it for the average user. It turns out that the situation is pretty bad (who’s a guessed) but the details revealed in the article are pretty interesting. I really wish that I could have been at that talk. (The article is about an academic talk by an FBI agent which the author attended.) One fun tidbit was the fact that the Mounties are the best at Macs!

I was jealous of Pam’s map of places she’s been, so I had to do one for myself. Here you can see it in all of it’s “I really shouldn’t be spending any time on this” glory.

Details: I don’t count flying over, but I do count layovers. All times are cumulative, and if the month boundary were a little higher than a month I would be more positive about some of these. I’m not sure that I have actually spent a month in Hawaii or Rhode Island, yet, but it is close. I’ve probably spent a month in Nevada by now, but all my trips were really short there, only one week long vacation. Same with Oregon and Washington, but without the week.

North and South Dakota confused me. I might have been in both of them, I know I passed through North Dakota, but have gone back and forth over the country so many times now, I probably hit South Dakota as well. I know I hit 80, 94, and 70, but I’m less sure about 90. I think I stopped at Wall Drug one time, which would prevent me from having to go again.

Other than that, a nice driving vacation though the south would finish me off. Oh yeah, and I have to move to Alaska. The thing that really amazes me is just how long I have spent in states that I have never lived in.

So it looks like the Iraqi GC is putting together their first intelligence unit. Of course the history of intelligence in Iraq is a little shady, but the article makes it look like they are doing it pretty carefully. I think that it is so important to have Iraqis doing that sort of thing. Especially where doing raids of the houses is concerned. I mean having people who actually speak arabic in the uncomfortable situations is so much more helpful. And of course having people who can tell who actually is from the country would be very helpful.

Of course the CIA is training them so…

Apparently it happens. Beware this link is not for the faint of heart. Yes a whale exploded in Taiwan. Yes the men were entranced with the size of its… maleness. The best quote at the bottom of the article: “More than 100 Tainan city residents, mostly men, have reportedly gone to see the corpse to ‘experience’ the size of its penis.”

So the current Iraqi parliament recently found a lot of receipts for oil transfers from the former Iraqi regime. These vouchers were given to different people and organizations for many different reasons. Some were in exchange for military hardware, others were for expensive gifts for Saddam’s friends, and still others were outright bribes.

This list has been making the rounds inside Iraq, and it looks pretty damning to a number of people who are now making a large number of denials. Suffice it to say the Iraiqis are none too pleased. It looks like MEMRI did a translation of a newspaper article about it. They do a good job describing how the vouchers worked, which helps qualify the list and what they could have been used for. Some quotes:

“One of the traits of our country’s fascist regime is that it lacked decency and was always in need to use others in order to feel superior. Therefore, it corrupted even those who had good intentions and noble goals when defending the Iraqi people and trying to lift the siege imposed on it. [...] The case of Mr. Galloway is truly distressing. This man, who defended just Arab causes, became a loser as he got closer to the Iraqi regime. Galloway, who was banished from the party for this reason and who defended himself vehemently, and even attacked Tony Blair’s and Bush’s policies, will not be able – in my opinion – to refute Iraqi documents that incriminate him conclusively.”

and

“However, the regime itself tarnished the moral and humane ethics of the international campaign to lift the unjust sanctions, because by the end of the day the sanctions did not harm it [the regime], but harmed our poor people and the middle class. We saw that whenever the international campaign to lift the sanctions got closer to its goals, the regime – by its behavior and insolence – shoved it again into a dark tunnel, and at the same time turned our country into a free-for-all richly loaded dining table, awaiting a stream of hearty eaters and obedient servants.”

Note that in the same breath it calls the sanctions unjust, and the regime fascist. It is interesting to pay careful attention to the language used in the Iraqi news reports to understand the true feelings. They do feel that the sanctions were unjust, but place a portion of the blame for it on the regime. I’ll be interested to see if and when the western media pick this story up, and what happens then…

OK, that didn’t take long. Looks like the denial makes you noticed quicker.

Me sitting in my new chair at 3:20 having not left since this morning, and noting that my back still doesn’t hurt…

“But go eat! IT’s late. Your chair will make you starve.”

I seem to keep coming back to reading the Iraqi blogs. I’m not quite sure why it is, is it voyeurism? A drive to know what’s going on in the world? I think what it really is, is a simple desire to understand how other people feel and think. I just read something that nearly moved me to tears. The extreme frustration and helplessness. But with that comes pride, and a desire for better. Perhaps it is that hope that I read it for. A desire for us, as a country, to have done “the right thing”. And the hope that the future will bring a better life to an abused people.

Go read the link now. It is good.

So, sometimes my wife needs chocolate late at night. I aim to please, so I left her the last little (very little) bit of Wisconsin fudge out last night. I went off to Iaido, and she was at home and went to eat some fudge when she saw a mouse on the counter. This resulted in the mouse running away and her calling me on the cell phone. At first I thought that she was going to ask me to come home and take care of it, but the first thing she said was, “I’m putting my shoes on so I can stomp on it if it comes back! I’m talking mouse guts everywhere!” Hmm I wonder, why did she call me then? “It ate my fudge!” Now that is worthy of violence!

My wife is so cool. And less scared of mice than I am.

One interesting aspect of this case is that the Plaintiffs were never sued themselves by Lemelson. This could make them look bad, like they are just in it for the money. The Lemelson countersuit does not sue them, it just claims the right to sue their customers. And finally, Cognex got no money out of this. They spent millions on this suit, just to indemnify their customers (and protect their inventions). That is pretty unusual to see a company thinking that far ahead now a days. Pretty cool.

The decision (last link in the last post) actually makes for an interesting read. The judge write fairly clear legalese. This case could be much more important than I thought. Apparently there were a number of other cases waiting for the results of this one before proceeding. Another nice thing is that the Judge was very complete in referencing much much older judgments. It kind of reads like a history of patent law.

Wow, this is a day that I never thought I would see. The Lemelson Partnership has a number of patents (4,338,626, 4,511,918, 4,969,038, 4,979,029, 4,984,073, 5,023,714 , 5,067,012, 5,119,205, 5,128,753, 5,144,421, 5,249,045, 5,283,641, 5,351,078) which basically cover all of barcode reading as well as computer vision. These patents cause a huge amount of consternation among the computer vision community for years. The problem is, people who have patents like this are easier to pay off than to fight in court.

The Lemelson partnership has made a lucrative bsiness for the past few years collecting royalties off of every machine vision, computer vision and barcode reader customer in the US. Apparently to the tune of $1.5 Billion. Yes that is with a B. I’m a little amazed that he never tried to sue any university that had the gall to have a computer vision department. The problem is that there was no giant in the industry that could afford to bring the fight to court.

Another interesting aspect to the case is that the Lemelson partnership (Lemelson himself died in 1997) never actually sued the companies that make the vision products, just the customers, notably Motorola and Ford. (Both settled before the case went to court.) One has to wonder if they did this, because the companies that actually made their living off the stuff would fight it.

Fortunately the industry has grown to the point in the past few years that, while there is no Microsoft to knock it down, there are a few companies that have become large enough to take them to court, Symbol in barcodes, and Cognex in computer vision. They were not sued themselves but sued the Lemelson partnership to protect their customers. Their cases were combined and they won against that juggernaut. Symbol also released their own press release although that one is for barcodes, not the more computer vision type patents.

When I started computer vision in 94, there were people who actually weren’t entering the field because of Lemelson. When someone shows up and makes Boeing and Ford pay, how can the little guys hope to do anything at all? I’m glad these were finally blown out of the water.

Ever wonder what John Kerry was doing in the Vietnam era? Doonsberry has a few strips about it. (Use the calendar on the bottom left to read the next few as well.)

Our next day we took to ourselves. We slept in wonderfully late in our nice little Bed and Breakfast, The Stagecoach Inn which is run by a lovely family. They bought the building as it was about to be condemned and refurbished it themselves. It is now an absolutely wonderful and cozy little inn. When we woke up we went downstairs for a great breakfast in the very cozy ground floor pub.

After some great conversations with the other patrons we decided to take a (pretty chilly!) walk up and down historic Cedarburg. Of course the first store we ran into was a southwest store! This store actually had an impressive array of southwest stuff. Not the least of which was an impressive collection of hot sauces.

In fact they had a real collection with a few numbered items that were truly impressive. I’m not sure these are things that you would actually use for anything, but they were neat to see!

And of course today is Dave’s birthday, so I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to get him something special. Look at the shelf carefully, something is missing!

We also stopped in… well every store in Cedarburg. But the weather started to turn on us and we didn’t want to be driving in the snow, so we came back home to Chicago after a quick stop for lunch at The Chocolate Factory. And of course what would a trip to Wisconsin be without a stop at the Mars Cheese Castle?

Unfortunately I was too slow with the camera to grab a shot of the Bong Rest Area.

Well, they seem to have been able to resurrect Spirit and Opportunity has landed. Again, you can see the minute by minute update for yourself.

This is just an amazing day. Now we have four US and one European spacecraft operating at Mars at the same time. By utilizing the Mars Orbiter to relay data, they were able to recieve an amazing 78 images on the first martian day.

We are really starting to realize the dream of building an infrastructure for exploring mars. This is so exciting, the amazing number of pictures that are coming in are just incredible. And it looks like it landed in a crater with potentially actual bedrock showing! It sure is a good thing that Arnold was in the control room to witness this amazing batch of science data being beamed in, because he understands how important science is. I mean he only just cut the UC grad student pay after all!

But all in all a very exciting day.

So my lovely wife and I took a little trip up to Wisconsin this weekend and had a wonderful time visiting some friends who we haven’t seen in quite a while. The first stop in our journey was to visit Alain, Annalisa, and the five week old Alexandria!

The happy family treated us to their well known hospitality, and a quiet meal. In fact for the few hours that we were there made us actually think that they had a quiet baby that slept all the time and woke up every now and then to look cute.

But we had to take our leave all to quickly because we had places to be and more people to visit. After a brief stopover at our Bed and Breakfast it was off to Milwaukee to give our best to Robb on his way to Texas.

In addition to seeing Robb off to his exciting new job, we also got filled in on the engagement story! Best wishes to Robb and Heidi on their new engagement! It was a great party with many friends showing up, both from Chicago and Milwaukee.

A great time was had by all, thanks to everyone who hosted us!

Someone did a really nice point by point breakdown of the State of the Union speech. Many of these items were mentioned at our viewing, but looking at all the points individually with pointers to more detailed information is very interesting. USAToday did a similar, though easier to read and less complete version of the same thing. Nice to see that people are getting a little reality check in their news.

Misleading comments in speeches like that really do make me worry, I mean for people who are well informed and closely watching current events, we can understand what he is implying and what he is saying differ. However for those who aren’t as well informed, or who just want to believe that we (as a country) are right and doing everything correctly will be deluded into thinking that everything is fine. *sigh*

I saw a post the other day with 10 things that Clinton did wrong while he was president. It was amazing, that same list was on snopes and shown to all be urban legends or exaggerations. It is easy to convince someone of something they already believe. And then once they have their “proof” it is almost impossible to convince them otherwise.

President Bush’s speech is just that proof for many people. My one hope is that he had so many misleading statements in that speech that one of them will happen to fall in each person’s area of interest and be exposed. Once that door is opened it makes it easier to argue them back to reality. Heck, even Andrew Sullivan has admitted that the given reasons for going to war were wrong. And given that he sees that maybe the whole notion of preemption is wrong.

None the less. What a travesty that speech was.

Breakups over e-mail are sad. But they are even worse when they are over blogs.

So watching the Daily Show last night I discovered that presidential candidate Wesley Clark’s favorite album is Journey’s Greatest Hits. I love Journey’s greatest hits.

In fact, listening to Journey led to one of my more embarrassing moments. In the 80’s I had a copy of a Steve Perry album that I just loved. I listened to it over and over again. Oh Sherrie, oh yeah. So my good friend Dave, many years later (like, in grad school), introduced me Journey. And I’m sitting there listening to it, and say, “Wow this sounds so much like Steve Perry”. Of course Steve Perry is the lead singer for Journey, and was much more famous for that than for his very brief, very lame, solo stint. Suffice it to say that took a while to live down, and I now have my own copy.

So back to Clark. I was listening to Journey the other day (three months ago) and my mom came in the room and said that that was some of her favorite music! Well I couldn’t let that go, so I got it for her for Christmas. And then Clark likes it too! I guess I really have to vote for Clark now. Both him and my mom share their favorite album.

OK, Riverbend points out (the last three paragraphs of the post are key) that Sistani has his own web site so you can get the word from the source. Upon reading that word, I can see a slightly different view of him holding. He has all sorts of stuff, including a more complete biography than the one I pointed to before, and a big list of his interpretations of all sorts of rules. Including marriage. I also didn’t realize that he actually has threatened the GC with fetwas of civil disobedience. *sigh* He is also trying to keep everyone on edge. Still, he is not seeking overt power which gains him at least some respect in my eyes.

I’ve heard some people say that the reason that the IGC is considering transferring Family Law to Sharia is just a sop to al Sistani, the Prime Marja for Shias. It is true that he is a very powerful man in Iraq, and has thousands of followers inside and outside of the country. But it just doesn’t make any sense. Of the religious leaders in Iraq, he is the one who has actually been in the country, and unlike some (like al Sadr) he has no political aspirations.

The Shias in Iraq have historically been against giving religious leaders political control as well. al Sistani has always been a proponent of that view, so giving him control over family law just doesn’t make any sense. I agree that if we piss him off we will have serious problems, but his complaints have all been rooted in what is good for the Iraqi people, specifically he is against the fast turn over of power to a selected group. He feels that that group must be elected, which is true given our track record on picking leaders for them. So to say that he, who isn’t even on the GC, is responsible for this seems really unlikely.

It just doesn’t make any sense… It seems much more likely to be an overt power grab by Hakim or Sadr. But they are on the GC so we can’t point the finger there. *sigh*

Well, the rover isn’t talking to Earth, but Ligia showed me awesome video of the different aspects of the mission. From the launch to the cruise, and then the landing, it really gives you a feel for how the thing works. It also briefly shows the rover unfolding on landing which Alain asked about before.

Of course the best part is the Music.