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Interesting article from Bruce Schneier on Wired:

Parts of the dataset of the Netflix prize have been de-anonymized. There have been other successful de-anonymizations of public datasets but most of the time it was caused by a sloppy anonymization process. This time it’s different. It is an inherent problem of the data, so even sophisticated randomization of the data would not have made a real difference: the data in the dataset of Netflix can be linked directly to user content on publicly available websites. This reveals the fundamental issue within; the data users leave willingly or unwillingly can be reassembled wether they like it or not.

This is great: ISO and UTC are neither acronyms nor initials, more like kind of false friends.

Like with computers, multi-tasking is a mere illusion for humans. There are not so many things one can do simultaneously at any given time. So we (computers and humans, especially when in front of the machines) have to simulate it by constantly switching from one task to another and then back again. But these context-switches cost time and energy, giving an upper limit of how well we can put up with more than one thing to do. And in contrast to machines our context switching is dependent on the complexity of the task we want to jump into and of its familiarity with the task we are trying to get out of.

It is then not very surprising that if we cram in our daily schedule lots of different things, little gets done. What is surprising though is that neither the project planning tools nor any of the calendar programs allow to schedule for these context-switches in an easy straight-forward way: there is no benefit in trying to schedule as large chunks as possible for any given task, so they create the illusion that 5 times one hour is as productive as one times 5 hours work!

So back to your schedule and tidy up!

So what is SOA? — beside a neat three letter acronym?

It is the idea to get the business logic and the data separated and available over the network. Basically. But there’s a row about what it really is. — So go, read for yourselves!

There is a bug in the new version of Microsoft’s Excel: 77.1*850 should give 65,535 but gives 100,000 instead.

Joel Spolsky explains in great detail and, being a programmer on the Excel team in the past, apologetically the inner workings of the program that lead to this behavior.

If you do not want to read the whole article: it’s merely a bug in the way the numbers are displayed, not calculated.

The Tor network provides anonymity, not security nor privacy. They even state this on their website. But people obviously do not know the difference. Bruce Schneier has a nice story to tell about it.

A small step for the implementors, a huge step for the users: BulletProofX!

It’s simple as cake: if for some reason your Xorg fails to start up, instead of sending you to the text console the BulletProofX will start a VESA X11 and reduced capabilities to give non-consolists a chance.

I could not agree more. Full feeds are important.

The argument for full feeds is that it allows a reader to be more efficient because they can digest more information per unit time. At least that is true for me. The other big benefit is that it allows people who want / need to read offline to do so. The question is, “Doesn’t reader efficiency come at the expense of the publisher”? My answer is, no, not if your content is good. In fact, if your content is good, reader efficiency works in your favor. If your content is good, then you as the publisher doen’t want me to have to break my workflow (by switching to a browser, browser tab, or NetNewsWire tab) to determine that the content is good. If I have to break the flow, there’s much less chance that I will do command-shift-P (in NetNewsWire) to pop the your post into Ecto where I can quote it as part of my post (which ought to generate some additional traffic for you). There’s less chance that I will hit command-1 to pop your post’s title and permalink into Twitterific, where it can get pumped into the realtime information junkie network. And there’s less chance that I will hit command-control-’ to pop your post’s permalink into Pukka where I can quickly tag it and stick it into del.icio.us, where it can be immortalized as important, seen by my del.icio.us network, and pumped into my blog and tumblog. In other words, you make it hard for people like me to help you. Now you might not care about that, and that’s a completely rational choice. But since just about everything in the blogosphere (after your good original content) is about getting flow (which doesn’t just mean inbound clicks) from other people, it seems like a short sighted thing to make it hard for flow to happen.

Full article here.

Now that Ian Murdock is working for Sun, he has the task to reform Solaris into a distribution/package based OS in contrast to the current monolithic approach.

In the interview he stressed the importance of a binary distribution channel for modern operating system environments. And the need for flexibility in choosing the appropriate parts for the job at hand.
Most of his statements are very similar to those of the Debian project. That leaves the question if the success of Debian can be repeated by a similar technological concept created by the same man.

The first release is announced for fall 2007.

Now you can get Solaris support from Big Blue as well. I think this makes them the UNIX distributor with the greatest variety.