Internet-Onset Attention Deficit Disorder

The internet makes it hard to worship together. Today is CES fireside Sunday and all eyes are on L. Tom Perry behind the Marriot Center pulpit. Meanwhile, the smells of chocolaty Scotchies reach out from the kitchen; birthday preparations echo from the dining room. Perry visits the apartment from a laptop screen; he doesn't mind the ambiance. However, life static makes it impossible to give more than a half-hearted attempt at attention, and even then attention is fragile. I can't help but think back on a BYUSA banner reading, "It's Better When We're All Together," and now realizing BYUSAs motivation: in person we pay attention, however the choice to watch the fireside from a laptop has pulled the place apart.

Dr. Martinez shops bazaars

In 2003, Dr. Tony Martinez published The General Inefficiency of Batch Training for Gradient Descent Learning; the ideas of online learning are analogous to bazaar development. Batch training is comparative to cathedral development, where changes roll out after an epoch of improvement. On the other hand, online learning is like the bazaar: every fix quickly integrates with the result, and the many small changes converge on the goal with greater efficiency. Dr. Martinez also points out that large training sets take orders of magnitude longer to learn than smaller ones. So it is with development styles. Moreover, here lies the analogy to Brooks Law: with large teams, complexity rises by the square, while work done only rises linearly. In machine learning, complexity lives in the dataset size. These analogies are not perfect. The reasoning behind cathedral style development is that the user should see the fewest bugs as possible, while for batch training, correctness motivates withholding updates until the end of an epoch. In addition, vanilla online learning is not parallel, though it can be parallelized. However, whether or not this analogy is complete, results are slower for the cathedral and the Batch approaches. The scaffolds in code development and machine learning slow progress and increase overhead.

Reaction to The Cuckoos Egg

21st century hackers, transported to '86, would have a heyday. Openness and trust is the '86 that Stoll paints in his book, The Cockoos Egg. It is a world of hackers. Stoll spent a year repainting this world: he is the MVP of tight security, correcting his generation's loose computers. I wonder if generation Y has learned from generation X's follies. Or are today's security problems identical

In '86, software updates traveled dirt roads, but 20XX paved those roads. It hurt me to learn that Stoll fought for six months for security patches before government agencies perked up. It would be another six months before catching the hacker. Today, however, attack reporting is streamlined. There are clear avenues for reporting problems. If you find security holes, you issue bug reports directly to the software company. Then, the company fixes the bugs and automatically updates your software. Gone are the days of mailing patches via tapes. Software companies in '86 stayed quiet about security flaws because the news would motivate hackers. Today, thanks to instant updates, this problem is eliminated. What surprised me most is that government agencies knew about security holes in Unix for years, but they never reported the problems. We are better off today: such government disregard will not fly with today's technology.

Generation Y learned from the past: they designed safer computers and systems. Look at BYU's CS accounts: users must use non-dictionary words for passwords. If Stoll's hacker tried his password guessing attack today, he would get nowhere. By design, security today is stronger, and we have Stoll to thank for his lessons on security. Also, in '86 a higher percent of computers had an open door, and it was usually some obvious entrance. I am amazed to hear how mismanaged systems were back then, with guest accounts and built in default accounts open to hackers.

'86 had no Norton AntiVirus. Today, anti-virus programs give computers a sixth sense about viruses. Bob Morris's son would be hard-pressed to overrun one of today's networks.

However, today's attack surface is an ocean, not a pond. Hackers are more rampant and malicious, but networks are much more closed. In '86, the Internet was a seed. Now a redwood, internet users must assume that every user is malicious. This is the difference between Cliff's day and ours: trust. There is less trust today because of hackers. Safety has increased substantially to reestablish trust, but threat count has increased too.

What is the next step? The problem with security is the user. Systems need good system managers. And secure user accounts require smart users. So informing people about good security practices is the next step. Informing users was the intractable problem of '86, and still is the main problem today.

To jailbreak or not to jailbreak

Tempted to jailbreak your PlayStation 3? Don't: it's illegal unless your PS3 is an iPhone. George Hotz was asking for trouble with Sony: he jailbreaks his PlayStation 3, distributes the hacked code, and makes a how-to video for his disciples. Maybe Curious George was just confused -- as I was -- about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). I figured jailbreaking was jailbreaking was jailbreaking. However, carefully examine the DMCA and you will find jailbreaking a PlayStation 3 is illegal; however, iPhone jailbreaking is outside the DMCA umbrella. Huh. Modifying an iPhone's firmware to run unapproved applications fits under fair use, while doing an almost identical activity on a PS3 is wrong. The difference balances on copyright protection circumvention. Copyright laws are ever changing, though, and it may not be long before Apple finds a way to defend its territory under the DCMA, as Sony has.

Hackers drive Facebook upgrades.

Tunisia hacked Facebook (Glad I’m not in Tunisia: I live Facebook). To kill political protests, the government injected a key logger into Facebook, stealing credentials. Joe Sullivan secured Facebook within the week and ended the madness. This event worries me because I could be the next victim. Facebook knows me better than my bank. It knows who my friends are. It knows my likes and interests. It even knows what I look like. I’ll bet this intimate info is worth gold to someone. What's more, Sullivan's patch is not implemented in the states. Glad I’m not in Tunisia? Facebook is fine in Tunisia; the problem is here. What I'd like to see is my cookies protected from students using Firesheep. I'd like to see SSL/TLS obliterate sidejacking. Kashmir Hill talked with Facebook representatives and says we can look forward to a secure Facebook if hacking gets worse. A thanks goes out to all the pioneering hackers (and their victims) for goading Facebook toward a safer future.

the two-edged smartphone

Wake up and smell the smartphone theft: http://money.cnn.com/2011/01/11/pf/smartphone_dangers/. As we move toward a smartphone oriented society, our phones become huge targets for thieves. With convenient apps we transfer money, shop, and pay bills. But in enemies' hands, an unsecured smartphone leaks personal information. Thieves can steal your money, masquerade as you on Facebook, or (gasp!) buy boots via the Zappos app. To protect myself, can I just avoid the smartphone bandwagon? Unlikely. Smartphones will, as all technology does, accelerate business life. Personal life will be victim to acceleration also. Lately, I've realized that swimming against the tech flood is not an option, so I'm buying an Android next pay check. I plan to protect it with my life though (no one is spending my Zappos bucks!). And to all you promiscuous Androids out there: cling to your humans! Don't leave them for strangers at Starbucks.

On iPhones and Mentos

Today I mistook E4 for F4 and the Talmage vending machine cranked out fruity Mentos instead of powered donuts; as a vending machine usability tester, I suggest moving the letters E's and F's to distant rows. My Mentos mishap brings me to grips with the irreversible nature of vending machine transactions (and technology in general). Technology has irreversible consequences. Take Apple's App Store for example: developers can make bank if their apps go viral. Are there negative consequences? Obviously it threatens desktop apps, but think bigger. iPhone apps envelop society's trend toward an all-at-once lifestyle --  a life where more and more is immediately available at our fingertips. Society demands time saving devices for our fast-paced world. But the time-saving iPhone can easily devour our free time with recreational games. This Catch-22 makes the Neil Postman inside me shout out that new technology bring both positive and negative consequences.