The Lair

Perhaps little noticed in the midst of all the other conflagrations but there is a war raging on in Estonia right now. Unlike your conventional conflict with the bombs, tanks, guns and allegations of human rights atrocities and genocide notwithstanding – this little tiff is being fought out online. Apparently one of the most wired nations in the EU (errm. that factoid isn’t backed up by numbers, but anyway), Estonian infrastructure has been under siege from massive, persistent and allegedly Russian sponsored denial of service attacks. The nation to nation equivalent of cramming an ATM card slot with chewing gum, if you like.

Some interesting background first – The Tribune notes that the denial of service attacks have stretched to almost 3 weeks now. It all started with the proposed movement of a WW2 memorial statue from downtown Tallinn to the outskirts of the city – seen by the pro-Russians as a slur on the war dead. Soon, rioting and protests on the streets (or so the story goes) spread into massive distributed denial of service attacks on Estonian websites.

Random aside here: remember the Daily Telegraph’s downtime last week? Also caused by a DDOS, although perhaps unrelated. DDOS has been a favoured tactic of extortionists and crackers everywhere – the TimesOnline article mentions at least one such case. It has long been suspected that other nations (China and North Korea, for example) provide state support for electronic espionage and other activities. But this latest attack on an entire country’s infrastructure is an interesting development – and a possible test case for how such activities will pan out in the future. There has been much made of NATO observers flying into Estonia (and rather meaningless expressions of solidarity) to well… observe how things are being handled but there isn’t much else that can be done.

The Economist picks up the story at this point and also makes an observation that friendly countries (.ee is part of NATO) have cooperated with Estonia in minimizing the effect of the packet flood. Swedish telecoms, for example, apparently cooperated in dropping packets destined for targets somewhere in Estonia. The fact is – it’s been several weeks, lots of Estonian sites have been hit and taken down and there doesn’t seem to be much let up. It’s also not particularly easy to stop a full scale distributed denial of service attack, even more so at the volumes of traffic that are being bandied about here – one article estimates 10,000 gigabytes of data. Yikes.

It’s a full scale war which seems to show no signs of abating any time soon yet it’s not being reported much. Perhaps (and rightly so) because there have been no casualties… It’s difficult to make pretty soundbites where there is no war footage, no IED blasts, no perceived casualties. Yet …

Last year a Department of Trade and Industry report found that more than 50 per cent of businesses had suffered “a premeditated and malicious” security incident in the past twelve months. For large businesses, the average cost of the worst such incident was as much as £130,000, the report said.

Yeah. It’s businesses, who cares etc etc. The Economist went a step further with the Estonia DDOS though (not sure if the full article is available online). There were quotes alleging that such large packets (hundreds of megabytes a pop, *goggle eyed*) could not have emanated from Russia without complicity from the telecoms in the country.

There are also parallels with other incidents – including this one. Should be interesting to see how long it will take before some regionwide agreement is made for these eventualities.

That’s two bad jokes (Fudd and Rarebit) combined to make a spectacularly terrible bunnyhop at humour.

Ah well. The weekend combined large amounts of flail with some small and depressing amounts of fail. The weather and general gloom isn’t helping much either. Also looking at my wordcount and how much I have left to explain (even to myself) about the work I’ve done over the past few years … I sometimes wonder if 2007 is a slightly overambitious submission year. There is brief amounts of cheer when I incorporate a fresh paper. Zoomclimbed my page/wordcount into the heady +10/+5000s but only to be replaced by more gloom as ruthless copy editing trimmed it down into a single digit page gain. Blah.

Oh. Obscure factoid. In 1950s Britain, pizza was referred to as Italian Welsh rarebit. A fact which caused me no end of amusement – combined with the lengthy (and possibly accurate) history behind the rarebit term.

And completely apropos, I made myself some rarebit this morning. With splashes of brown sauce and strips of bacon on the side. Yeah. I really need to do something about reforming my diet. I was setting myself a target of healthy eating for ages but that date has come and gone more than an year hence and I’m still eating like my arteries are plastic.

And now for something completely different. Pornography as social commentary. Was it ever anything else? I think not.

Yeah, this is one of those stream of consciousness type posts which is mostly random bits and pieces that are flitting through my head. When I go postal one of these days and start shooting the place up, these are the blog posts that a sensationalistic media will point to and say “yeah. he was nuttier than one of those fancy almond encrusted breakfast cereals. Why didn’t anyone see it sooner??!!”.

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I was watching late night TV yesterday and I saw the first part of Reader, I married him. On a vaguely bookish theme, this dealt with romfic or romantic fiction as a genre. I expected to nod off shortly into a few cutscene interviews with gushing women about how romfic changed their lives but it was a slightly more compelling documentary than I had anticipated, filled with interesting little factoids about the industry.

For example, I discovered that romfic accounts for 40% of all paperback sales? That’s a lot more than I imagined. There were also some theories that fewer men buy books written by women; that men are reluctant to buy books with the word Love in the title and most fascinating of all, reading romantic fiction can reduce stress levels by as much as 20%. Only the last was even quasi-experimentally established though, the first two observations sounded like anecdotes to me.

I rush to call out the apparent anecdotes because I’m currently in the middle of the intriguing Lymond Chronicles which are written by Dorothy Dunnet. I’ve also professed fandom in the past for Julian May – who turned out to be a female. I’m not sure which way that last example can be counted though; perhaps more women need to write with masculine sounding names to test out the hypothesis? Then again, perhaps it’s not wrong – the other half dozen or so books on my reading hopper right now are all by male authors.

There was also a lot of malarkey about romfic book covers being targetted to a specifically feminine audience; with horrifically anti-masculine cover colours of pink and lilac and lavender and … well, pale pastel shades. Some commentary was also devoted to how romfic was sneered upon by most people, despite its apparent popularity at the sales till. Actually, I’d probably call BS on sneering for elitism’s sake. Forget about the book covers. I come from a household where books are reasonably plentiful and as females outnumber the males; romfic is easily available. I’m slightly queasy at admitting it but in times of dire need (ie:, boredom and lack of anything else to read), I may have actually tried reading some of that tripe. It’s uh.. formulaic, predictable and sometimes vaguely funny, unintentionally so. If my (admittedly limited) sample size is anything to go by, I think most romantic fiction authors can be replaced by a moderately “intelligent” piece of computer software and a few hundred randomly generated key phrases, plotlines and sex scenes.

Onto something related, the idea of profiling… What you read can, in effect, be used to deduce things about you. The trivial romfic example is that someone is almost twice as likely to be female if they buy a bodice ripper from a bookstore. But this trivial form of statistical profiling can be extended in new and somewhat sinister ways too. Take, for example the NewScientist piece on new software from Microsoft being used to discover identities. And people are running around screaming like this is a new thing.

Actually, from experience in doing the same thing (more or less) a few years ago, I find that making educated sloppy guesses about gender and age and a particular income demographic is not hard at all, even with very limited resources. However, obtaining information with high precision is much much harder. Put another way, it’s easier to differentiate the the 21-50 year olds from everyone else than it is to differentiate the age bands 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s. Targetted online marketing has been around for the last decade or so but when I was writing software like this – the cost for the average marketing/promotional campaign did not even come close to the amounts required for really detailed demographic surveying. Perhaps now the techniques and the data volumes are finally available to people who can made it ubiquitous. Not an entirely comforting thought, especially if Microsoft and Google are going to try muscling into the territory.

Update: Interesting idea on thwarting monitoring and profiling systems starts here or later on in the same thread, winnowing and chaffing.

Well, that was a spectacularly unamusing week, right there. So much so that a fairly crappy Monday (as per usual) is looking positively rosy in comparison. Some of the Ach stuff has been brewing for a while, so I thought I’d externalize the accumulated angst once and for all by writing about it. Elliptically, of course.

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It’s been a strange strange week for any number of reasons – ranging from the utterly bizarre to the mildly WTF-ish moments. I could comment on the random asshattery that has been invading various parts of blog land but … ah, can’t be bothered.

So instead, I’ll jabber on about the bizarreness that was Eurovision. Let me explain how things work, for the uninformed. A bunch of countries get together, each nation (not just European nations, but Russia and Israel and a few other almost West Asian countries are included) puts forward a song for vote. Each nation can in turn pick 10 favourite songs (excluding their own, of course) after the performances; with a variable number of points being awarded by rank. When all the votes from all the nations have been tallied, the highest rated song … wins. Sounds simple and above board, does it not?

It isn’t.

(more Eurovision hate)

Yeah, I said I’d do one of these sometime or the other … so here we are.

(more lameass photoshopping)

So I was all out of my favourite mouthwash and the supermarket wasn’t stocking the same brand. So I had to settle for a bottle of suspiciously punk-rocker-hair blue coloured liquid instead. Yeah, it was the closest thing on the shelf, I just had a cursory look at the constituent chemicals and grabbed it. That’s my usual shopping methodology for non-essentials.

Anyhootenanny, I came back with the mouthwash – plonked it on the shelf … uh, I mean on top of the washing machine (because that’s where these things end up) and forgot about it. Till I had to use it. It tasted … sweet. Now that’s an unusual taste sensation for mouthwash so I had a closer look at the ingredients.

Sodium saccharin. Yeah, the bogeyman sweetener of my childhood – now packaged up in mouthwash.

When I was younger, there used to be this dodgy looking bloke outside the school gate selling luridly coloured popsicles. I can’t remember what they tasted like now, but it was the lurid colour that was the probable attraction more than anything else. Of course, my purchases of said luridly coloured ice blocks on a stick were always greeted with horror by my mom. The standard warning was that they contained saccharin instead of sugar (because saccharin is much cheaper, apparently) and sachcharin was bad and a nasty chemical.

A brief digression, my mom also used to warn me against excess intake of vinegar because it will melt your bones. Now I actually did listen to her when she gave dire warnings about saccharin but vinegar? I used to mash up fruit with chillie, sugar, salt and vinegar. There was no way I was stopping that, so I uh.. ignored the vinegar warning. Although she may have had a point there too… there used to be dodgy artificial acetic acid based vinegar floating around in the old days instead of the toddy stuff that is so freely available now.

But back to the saccharin. In recent years, it’s seen a mini-revival apparently – in the face of inconclusive evidence for its carcinogenic potential. Take, for example, aspirin. There was a time in the 80s when aspirin was the bogeyman of medicines. Now, of course – people use it as a prophylactic for everything from heart disease to bowel cancer. So it appears to be with saccharin. The earlier advisories and warnings seem to have been overturned… Saccharin is in.

Sorta. There is no definitive link between bladder cancer in rats and excessive dosages of saccharin, but I still wouldn’t make it my top choice in sweeteners. Then again, the inclusion of saccharin is probably only to make the mouthwash taste slightly more palatable – you’re not supposed to swig mouthwash like that horrific lucozade.

Hmmm. Wonder if saccharin (like alcohol) is absorbed by coming into contact with the tissues of the mouth and throat?

ManU, that’s who. Oh all right, I wanted the uber rich Abramovich to get his (in a perverse socialistic desire to level the playing field, possibly) and my desire has been sated. Of course, there is speculation that Roman may have lost interest in his blue clad toys and will sell off his interest. Just speculation, though. I’m probably not alone in agreeing that he got a good deal for his money. It was vaguely amusing to watch the Mancunians cheering on Arsenal too.

The season. Ah well. I’ve mentioned earlier that Reading are the team of the season for me. Berbatov was (probably) one of the better signings.

Arsenal? Forgettable. As Lee Dixon summed up last night, “we need a goal scorer, someone in midfield and someone at the back”. That’s like an entire team, then. The Henry dependence has been found out this season and I really don’t think the backline has recovered from the loss of both Sol Campbell and Cashley. Be that as it may, Julio might be heading back to Real Madrid and we’ll probably be getting Reyes back… An eventuality which fills me with some dread (even if our boy Baptista does seem a bit clumsy at times). Even more distressing is the slowing down of Jens… earlier he was crazy (in a staring eyes, foam-at-corners-of-mouth sort of way) but a great goalkeeper. Now he’s just uh.. crazy. He doesn’t even yell at the backline much any more.

Chelsea lost it because none of their signings really fired for them. Schevchenko? Fizzled. No, goals against non-league opposition don’t count. Yes, he’s displayed flashes of brilliance (that looked-like-a-cross-gone-wrong-but-ended-up-at-the-back-of-the-net goal, for instance) but not enough to justify the number of times he’s started. Ballack? spent a lot of time whining and stamping his foot petulantly at the referee, but not a whole lot more. Khalid the Cannibal? Bwahahahaha. He got eaten alive. The only one of the four signings that was worth the money was Kalou. By direct contrast, Henrik Larsson stepped on the field and owned all for Man U.

Actually. Why am I rabbitting on like this? Because (among other things), it’s patently obvious that predicting the winners of the premier league season isn’t an easy job, even for the experts at MotD. *grin*. The phrase “your guess is as good as mine” comes to mind. I don’t know enough about Euro football to critique this piece though – although complaints about the brutal, rugbyesque style English premier league football have been around for ages.

Just like Las Vegas. And I’m not referring to the 30 member strong “Sri Lanka Deserves another chance at the ICC Cricket world Cup!!”. It’s too late for groups like those, people outside FB are already making the same silly protestations.

So I was lurking around Facebook as I do on occasion and I noticed someone I knew. Rather than add the person directly, I was intending to ask her first but I forgot all about it. Yesterday, I met her husband. Yes, they’re both in the same university and the OH is in my department. Let’s call the hubby Simpson.

drac: “Hey, I didn’t see you on Facebook?!”
simpson: “What ees thees face book?”
drac: “Oh. Uh.” – how do you explain something like facebook? I still struggle with a definition… and hey, this is his wife after all, telling the bloke that his wife is on a “social” site may not go down too well.
drac: “It’s uh. a site where lots of university students hang out.” – ok. close enough, right?
simpson: “Oh. You mean like submitting CVs?”
drac: “Uh. Not quite. But I suppose you could do that.” – No, you’re thinking of that other abomination, LinkedIn.
simpson: “More informal then?”
drac: seizes opportunity. “Yes. Yes. Considerably more informal, but harmless” – dear god, I hope so. I have no idea.

simpson:” Oh. Er. No. I’m not on thees face book”
drac: Danger! Danger, Will Robinson. It’s time to GTFO of this unanticipated social conversational quicksand. “Oh, ok then. I thought you might be, since so many York students are in it already.” – hunts around for a quick subject change.
simpson:” Oh. Er. No. Is [wife] on it?” – *facepalm*. Shit.
drac: Jeebus dude. Why are you asking me? Ask HER. “I have no idea.” – liar liar pants on fyah. Although I can lie fairly convincingly when I need to.

simpson:” Because [wife] and I separated last week.”
drac: … ?!????
*audience draws a collective hushed breath.*
drac:“I’m so sorry to hear that.” – OMFG. I nearly put my foot in it. Way to go, drac ol boy.
simpson:in a matter of fact way – “Yeah. I moved out last week and we will get divorced soon I think.” – holy shit, weren’t you like married only like 6 months ago? and WHY are you telling me this? This is what I get for initiating casual chitchat. I need to STFU and ignore people more often. And oh. Series of hitherto unexplained observations suddenly make perfect sense.
drac:… – almost like a do go on, because I don’t know wtf to say, but accompanied by a sympathetic nod of the head. Jeebus dude, please do NOT start bawling. Ok? I don’t think I could handle that.
simpson: [launches into an explanation of marital breakdown symptoms to which I periodically go uh-huh and make other noises indicating sympathy and assent]

simpson:“So, why did you ask about face book?”
drac: “Umm. No reason, really. Just thought you might be on it or something and I couldn’t find you” – I am not dissembling here. That was the main reason for asking, was it not?
simpson:“Ah. oki. Should I join?”
drac: -take a deep breath, boyo. Not too emphatic, not too loud. Don’t reply too quickly. Pretend to think about it – faux casually, “No. It’s really not that interesting after the first week.”. -mind screams – Oh. Fuck No. Do not join. Do not pass go. Do not collect £200.
drac: – escape! escape! dude is going to figure something out. Offer help and ask him if he wants anything, to which he promises he’ll let me know… and then I flee before more awkward Facebook questions can be posed.

And I duly did. I did persuade the dude to go out to the pub this week though so I don’t feel like I’m totally abandoning him, now that he’s told me about his marital woes.

Next time I feel compelled to bring up Facebook in casual conversation, just have someone stab me in the arm, ok?

Obsessively passing through my mind. I made the upgrade to the new Office 2007 a while ago. The ribbon is the main (perhaps only) thing that immediately catches the eye in the upgrade. Now, while I was using Word – the ribbon wasn’t a big deal. I know all the keyboard shortcuts and I never need to take my hands off the keyboard.

Never having to take my hands off the keyboard – for example, to click on pretty buttons or menus – is a huge interface win for me. I’m much faster and more productive that way. But this is Word, a piece of software I’ve been using for a while now.

Because I like pretty graphs and I have a need for said pretty graphs, I had to use the new Excel and that’s where my problems started. Ma, I can’t find my old menus anymore. And since I maintain compatibility with older versions, I usually get an irritating dialog when I save telling me that there will be minor loss of fidelity. I uh… press save on average about three times a minute, a muscle memory holdover from the times when Office was crashy and power supplies were akin to a flickering light bulb.

So, I’m pondering a facelift for Office. This is it. I’ve officially become a User Interface conservationist. And get off my lawn, you damn kids.

Perhaps I should have stuck to Gnuplot or R, eh?