Cuteness wins!
Category: uncategorized
Newfangled technology
This new wireless keyboard and mouse set is a pain to use. The mouse has a mind of its own. Plus, it poops.
Sokay, I hate nature right back
Not what I was expecting. Or, surprise! Or, me and my big mouth.
So. This morning, on our way to school, Bean and I came across Fred. A snail. A big-ass snail. We left him by the side of the road and went on our merry way, with Bean talking about how he wanted to adopt Fred and take him home on the way back from school if he was still there. I told him to talk to have a look, but to not be safe if he wasn’t there cause he might have found a nice bit of shade (or get eaten by a bird).
I called Katy to give her a heads up about the situation. I didn’t expect to be greeted with this coming home.
We have another tank on the sewing desk, with two snails and a couple of slugs living on some lettuce planters.
Oy.
In Flanders Fields
A statue honouring “In Flanders Fields” poet and Guelph, Ontario native son Lieut.-Col. John McCrae was unveiled today in Ottawa to mark the 100th anniversary of the poem. It was written on May 3, 1915 amid the plethora of poppies and graves that sprouted after the Second Battle of Ypres near Flanders, Belgium.
Lest We Forget.
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
I’ll take that number
We were playing with Microsoft’s newly released Face detection API’s through a webpage called http://how-old.net. This page lets users upload a picture and have the API predict the age and gender of any faces recognized in that picture. We sent email to a group of several hundred people asking them to try the page for a few minutes and give us feedback – optimistically hoping that at least 50 people would give it a shot. We monitored our real time analytics dashboard to track usage and, within a few minutes, the number of people using the site vastly exceeded the number of people we had sent our email to. We watched the usage quickly spread across continents, and, 3 hours later, we had 210,000 faces from all over the world.
How I woke up this morning
Pavel decided that the space right next to my head was a perfect if-I-fits-I-sits spot this morning. So I used him as a purring, vibrating, furry pillow.
yay, office supplies
I’ve been wanting to get one for a while now, and I’ve finally done it :) I’m getting my own address stamper.
Why is this useful, you may ask? Well, first off, I still need to deal with a non-insignificant amount of snail mail and my handwriting sucks. Also, it’ll be very useful in an upcoming repetitive task in the near future. Plus, you know, moomins.
If the Empire in Star Wars Had Big Data…
…the Empire would have won. A search of records would have revealed where Luke Skywalker was living on Tatooine. A more efficient collection and aggregation of Jawa records would have located the droids immediately. Simple data analysis would have revealed that Ben Kenobi was really Obi Wan Kenobi. A search of birth records would have revealed that Princess Leia was Luke’s sister. Had the Empire had anything like the NSA, it would have had all the data it needed, and it could have swept up the droids and everyone else, and that would have been that.
There is an important lesson to be learned from Star Wars: If you are trying to establish and maintain a ruthless Empire, you can greatly benefit from better data aggregation and analysis.
The Empire also could have benefited from a better knowledge of data security:
1. Key hardware and controls should be secured in a locked area. The controls to the Death Star tractor beam should have been located in a less open location.
2. Strong authentication is essential. Any droid shouldn’t be able to plug right in and access all data on the Death Star. For example, had two-factor authentication been used, the rebellion would have been crushed in the trash compactor.
3. Good data breach response is essential. A better response to the improper accessing of the plans to the Death Star might have averted catastrophe for the Empire.
4. Encryption should be used to protect important data. Encrypting the plans to the Death Star would have been a wise thing to do.
Unfortunately for the Empire, its understanding of data was poor. Had the Empire conducted routine risk analysis, invested adequately in its security program, performed annual training of key personnel, and otherwise maintained reasonable administrative, physical, and technical controls, the problems could have been averted, and the Empire would have won.
Star Wars is essentially a movie about data breach response — one that failed rather miserably. With all due respect to all the hard work and late nights that Darth Vader spent responding to the breach, the breach could have been averted, and the response would have been effective had the Empire employed experts on the use and protection of data.
The Rebel Alliance certainly didn’t win by being more savvy. Obi Wan Kenobi needed to learn better techniques of data de-identification. Most experts will advise you that if you want to hide someone as important as the son of Anakin Skywalker, you shouldn’t have him use the Skywalker last name. With all due respect, if Obi Wan Kenobi wants to go into hiding, the name Ben Kenobi is a rather poor attempt at cloaking his identity.
The ultimate lesson in all this is that it isn’t enough to use light sabers and the Force, battleships and blasters, and an endless supply of storm troopers. It’s knowledge about data that is key. Darth Vader and Obi Wan Kenobi should both have been fired and replaced with privacy and security professionals!
Woman logic 101
