Blayne Sucks

One of the most highly charged pieces of legislation that has been passed by Congress in recent years is the Protect America Act. Probably the only good thing about it is the sunset provision that ensures it will expire in its current form unless Congress acts to renew it or make it permanent. That debate will be soon; the act was extended yesterday for another 15 days.

I haven’t commented about this much because there’s been quite a bit of coverage of it in the mainstream media. If you have somehow managed to avoid that coverage, and landed on this blog (Hi Mom!) the 15-second summary of the Protect America Act is that it allows the NSA to skip the established process of getting a warrant to wiretap communications by using an entirely internal process of reviewing the need for the wiretap. The White House wants this legislation because they believe the current process of obtaining a warrant is too slow for present needs.

Furthermore, there will be debate on a second major initiative of the White House: retroactive immunity for the companies involved in recently allowing illegal wiretaps. The 15-second summary of this situation is that an AT&T employee blew the whistle on a secret room that was setup to see all the data sent over the Internet for AT&T and several other companies. There is a class-action lawsuit against the companies and the Bush administration would like to get them off the hook by making their actions legal after the fact.

If you would like a quick overview of the situation as of November to catch yourself up on what might be on the news in the next two weeks, check out this YouTube video:

There are many places to go for more information on these issues. The Center for Democracy and Technology has an excellent guide on the amendments. EPIC spotlights surveillance issues here. The EFF has more information on warrantless surveillance here.

However, the best resource and the primary reason I chose to make a blog post about this topic is the paper entitled “Risking Communications Security: Potential Hazards of the Protect America Act” by Steven Bellovin, Matt Blaze, Whitfield Diffie, Susan Landau, Peter Neumann, Jennifer Rexford that will appear in the Jan/Feb issue of IEEE Security and Privacy Magazine. If you only read one article linked from this post, the Risking Communications paper is the one to pick. Matt Blaze has a post about their article, as does Steven Bellovin.

I have talked about some of the things I would like to see in electronic book readers before. I have a feeling that this is a list that is fundamentally incomplete simply because I haven’t sat down and actually analyzed the problem from an engineering standpoint. However, I read something on Cult of Mac recently that was truly depressing.

It appears that analyzing electronic book readers from an engineering standpoint is probably fruitless because they are fundamentally crippled from a marketing standpoint. Cult of Mac cites a New York Times blog post about Steve Jobs passion for computers and electronic devices. In that post Steve Jobs is quoted as saying the following about the Amazon Kindle:

“It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore. Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.”

His opinion on this area is probably more important than the average person might realize. One of the things that Jobs has demanded mercilessly has been incredible user interfaces. This goes back a long way to his interest in calligraphy. If anyone were to design an electronic reader and do it right, it would be Apple. If I were to bet, I would bet that they have considered making a product like this in recent years and ruled it out based on their findings.

Of course, Cult of Mac also posted a link to a recent study on reading by the National Endowment for the Arts. The full study is morbidly fascinating and about 100 pages long, many of which are charts on reading trends. It seems that at every level reading is in decline.

In particular, I thought that the statistics on those who were college educated or above were frightening. The report also makes some general conclusions that the decline of reading skills will affect our democracy. This makes sense if you consider the fact that our government was designed based on the idea that the citizenry would be educated and actively engaged in the process. Sort of an ominous thought to consider…

In a recent IBM commercial, the company implies that virtual worlds are a fad and, as a result, a waste of both time and money. For those who haven’t seen it, the commercial starts with an employee showing off his avatar to someone else, presumably a boss. The employee is all pumped about how he can conduct business in this virtual world and how he owns an island there. The boss asks if he can make money. The employee responds with something like, “Virtual money or real money?” This sets up the boss’s response that “The point of innovation is to make actual money.”

There are many reasons why this commercial is unintelligibly stupid. First, the point of innovation is actually not to make money; it is to improve quality of life. For some, this translates directly to making money, but not everyone is that shallow. Second, implying that innovation is only worthwhile if there’s a foreseeable profit in the future fails to recognize that many of the most successful businesses got there because they saw something that other businesses didn’t see. (Not to mention a significant number of scientific discoveries that were made with no clear profit motive in mind.) Third, this commercial, and really the whole series of commercials, implies that actions are unilaterally more important than words, but the reality is that there is extreme value in planning. Dwight D. Eisenhower once said, “In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” This absolutely applies to business as well. Actions are important; this is why people talk about what to do before going out and simply doing something for the sake of acting.

Amazingly, this commercial seems to have actually resonated with someone. The author believes the commercial “plays right to the heart of the matter” and claims that businesses are making decisions based on technology that doesn’t really do anything. Unfortunately this seems to equate “the matter” to some fixed context in which businesses can act on new technologies without thinking about them and still make money. Technology is not a fixed context. (Other bloggers have at least left the relationship between doing and talking as something to consider.) More surprisingly, the author takes this twisted logic and then actually concludes with the right observation by saying “we need to ensure that we pick the [tools] that best fit our business versus playing the ‘me too’ game.” This is exactly correct, but the only way to do that is by thinking about what tools are right for your business; simply “doing” won’t cut it.

Of course, there are many stupid commercials on TV. Why focus on this one in particular? Because of the extreme irony in the fact that IBM has invested heavily in virtual worlds! (Seriously.) Yes, that’s right: They have been doing exactly the thing that they were advertising as something they could help your company avoid. Now, at some point your business might benefit from a technology like virtual worlds, but then, how would you know unless you take a break from all that “doing” to think?

Perhaps this commercial shouldn’t have bothered me as much as it did. IBM has a history in hypocritical commercials.

As I’m sure many of you know, I graduated from Purdue University in 2003 with a degree in Computer Engineering. It’s been 5 years since I graduated and I recently had the opportunity to visit Purdue for the first time since graduation. To say that Purdue has undergone a lot of change in the last 10 years is a bit of an understatement. They have built or significantly renovated 35 new buildings including Ross-Ade Stadium, the Recreational Sports Center, the Boilermaker Aquatics Center, the Purdue Memorial Union, the Dauch Alumi Center, the Lawson Computer Science building, and the Neil Armstrong Hall of Engineering. Some of these renovations took place, such as the Recreational Sports Center, while I was there. Many of them took place after I left.

First and foremost, the primary purpose of the trip was to tour the new Lawson Computer Science building. I want to sincerely thank Dr. Spafford for inviting me and taking the time to visit with me as well as give me a personal guided tour of the building. Spaf, that was exceedingly cool of you, and I appreciate it.

The building was dedicated last year, but still looks new and has plenty of room for expansion. I didn’t take pictures while touring the interior of the building itself, but the picture to the left is a view of the building’s exterior taken on the day I visited. The whole building has a warm and clean feel to it. All the server closets have windows so that the systems and cabling inside are visible. The entryway and the halls are extremely impressive, but I was even more impressed with the labs and classrooms inside.

The graduate student labs all have a kitchen area including a microwave, refrigerator, and sink. Combined with the comfortable reading areas, desks and meeting rooms it would appear that computer science grad students at Purdue would almost never have to leave their lab. Another nice addition for graduate students are the separate offices for TA office hours. There’s even a meeting area outside the offices for group discussions. This is a critical addition as described in Gerald Weinberg’s The Psychology of Computer Programming. Basically, he states that having this commons area will allow people who have the same questions to gather and potentially figure them out while waiting for the TA to be free.

The computer labs, instructional labs and classrooms are similarly well thought out. They are all state of the art. There are video control rooms and server closets close by to ensure that the labs and classrooms are able to service any possible request such as video capture of a lecture in a classroom or special network setups in a computer lab.

I also had the chance to visit the new Neil Armstrong Hall of Engineering, which was dedicated this past October. The picture to the left is a statue of Neil Armstrong right outside of the main entrance. In the entryway is a replica of the Apollo 1 Lunar Module. The building houses a mix of interdisciplinary labs, administrative offices, and teaching facilities as well as a cool-sounding zero-gravity research lab about which I know almost nothing.

Probably the most startling change to me was the renovation of the Purdue Memorial Union. The reflecting pool that was almost always anything but reflective has been replace with landscaping, but the big changes were done on the interior. Basically, the whole commons area has been completely altered and much improved. When I was a student, I spent a lot of time between classes at the Union. I ate there many times and studied there even more often. Several of my regular study groups would meet there in the evenings. Thus, seeing some of the changes was quite shocking.

Pappy’s is totally different. It used to be relatively small looking with dark wooden benches, chairs and tables. Now it is a retro 1950′s style diner complete with nickel jukeboxes on the tables. There are windows along the wall to the hallway that makes it feel more open and everything inside is bright.

The other areas have also changed. Instead of having several stores with a single checkout area, the stores are all independent with their own styles and checkouts. There is even a Starbucks. The only store that hasn’t changed that much is the Oasis. I’m not sure if there’s less seating as a result of the redesign or not. The seating has certainly changed. Most of the old seating areas have been replaced by tables and chairs in the style of the vendor area where they appear. It’s a lot more like several small restaurants rather than a single common area to sit and eat, even though there are still some of those areas.

On the whole, the trip was fantastic! It was weird to be back as an alumnus for the first time and see that Purdue has changed. Of course, everything changes and I’m pleased to see Purdue is improving by leaps and bounds. I’ve posted some pictures from my trip along with more descriptions in my gallery.