ctrl.altered.mind

Trusted Computing is controversial. “Trusted” does not necessarily mean the same as “trustworthy” from a user’s perspective. Rather, “trusted computing” means that the computer can be trusted by its designers and other software writers not to run unauthorized programs. Advocates claim it will make computing devices less prone to malware. Opponents (such as the Free Software Foundation) believe this trust in the underlying companies is undeserved and the technology affords too much power and control in the hands of the designer.

[LAFKON] - A movie about Trusted Computing.

Learn more about Trusted Computing on Wikipedia.

I get tons of email alerts as forwards from well-wishing friends, most of which are easy to recognize as hoaxes. I believe these are passed on with the hope that there might be an iota of truth in them, although I’d wish people did some basic research before accepting notions as facts. One such email that I just received seemed quite interesting, so I thought I’d try and find out more, but a quick search immediately classified this as a hoax.

The email goes as follows:

PIN NUMBER REVERSAL (GOOD TO KNOW) If you should ever be forced by a robber to withdraw money from an ATM machine, you can notify the police by entering your Pin # in reverse.

For example if your pin number is 1234 then you would put in 4321. The ATM recognizes that your pin number is backwards from the ATM card you placed in the
machine. The machine will still give you the money you requested, but unknown to
the robber, the police will be immediately dispatched to help you. This information was recently broadcasted on TV and it states that it is seldom used because people don’t know it exists.

There is some history behind such a system - such an idea was patented by Joseph Zingher, a Chicago businessman, in 1998. Banks have never adopted the system despite multiple sales pitches to implement panic code alert systems into ATMs, and for valid  debatable reasons. Mental acuity is greatly compromised when a gun is held to one’s head. Besides, the number reversal system would not work with palindromes (e.g. 7447, 3883) and would require an alternate system anyway.

More info about this urban legend

I discovered Google’s new Click-to-Call feature quite by accident, while looking for coffee shops on Grand Ave in St. Paul. The feature silently appeared as a ‘Call’ link next to the phone number of the business, and clicking this brought up an option to have Google connect me to the business instantly.

A really good feature is the fact that Google blocks your number so that the business cannot see it. Of course, there is the minimal convenience of not having to manually dial the business’ number (and Google temporarily remembers your number over a certain window of time).

To prevent abuse and prank calls, there is a system in place to reject suspect calls from the same user within a reasonable period of time.

The best feature of all? Google pays for all costs of the service, both local and long-distance (excluding airtime charges for a cellphone of course). This means that calling a business anywhere in the US is now virtually free over the internet to any user. I can very easily see this feature being incorporated into Google Talk, an instant messaging program, to compete with equivalent options provided by VoIP companies like Skype today.
Google Click-to-Call FAQ

From The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW):

Her new name is “Mrs. Right Place, Right Time.” When shopper Elizabeth Rodriguez walked into New York’s flagship Apple Store this past Saturday, she was showered with a MacBook, iPod, iPod Hi-Fi, and an Apple ProCare membership, all for being visitor # 1,000,000.

Color me green of course, but my congratulations go out to Liz and Apple. I was at the store last weekend, if only… sigh
Some pictures I took at the store:

Feedmap.net is a new blog-related service that brings a geographical perspective to blogs, and is an addition to the vast array of web mashups that seek to add a mapping overlay to just about every online service conceivable - the most useful of them (in my opinion) probably being HousingMaps (which marries Google Maps to craigslist.org real-estate and housing ads). Strictly speaking, Feedmap is not a mashup as it does not really produce a confluence of services, but it gets pretty darn close, given that most mashups do use Google Maps as their main ingredient. ProgrammableWeb.com, which tracks mashups, has an interesting grid view of the hybrid services available on the Web today.

Coming back to Feedmap (also called Blogmap), the service lets bloggers create buttons for their sites to indicate neighboring blogs and feeds available on the internet (although I’m not quite sold on how much the popularity of blogging in a neighborhood would matter). Also, the service would find popularity with bloggers who would not mind revealing their geographical location in their blogs, which I would guess makes up a smaller part of the web-trotting community. Most bloggers use their online journals as an outlet for the escapist in their minds - adding the geographical overlay only pulls them back to physical reality. Nonetheless, the service would be useful enough for the rest of us (myself included) that do list our identities on the web. It would be interesting, after all, to learn of the blogs that get published around us and from specific parts of the world.

From the Blogmap About page:

Here is a list of things you can do with BlogMap:

* Geo-code your blog feed using the submit page (and get your own BlogMap badge).
* Browse blogs by location using the browse page.
* Search for local blogs using the search page.
* Find bloggers in your neighborhood!
* Get local BlogRoll in OPML format.

Paul Stamatiou mentions that the folks at Global Gaming League (GGL) have compiled a very impressive list of the top 10 colleges that excel at gaming - not for teaching gaming, but for supporting a conducive environment with a strong gaming community and frequent LAN tournaments, not to mention a fast campus-wide network. While it comes as no real surprise that my alma mater, the University of Colorado (at Boulder) is not in the top ten list (although its gaming community is respectably large), it feels stimulating to see that the Twin Cities campus of the University of Minnesota has made it to the top ten (and stands at position eight).

The complete details and survey results are available on the GGL site. Its probably time to sign up for a course at the U of M so I can get connected to the gaming swarm.

Farecast.com is a new tracker service that can promise to put a stop to getting ripped off for domestic flight tickets. The service that originally started as a beta web application for flights departing from Seattle and Boston, has now expanded to over 55 cities. I received a invite to test the beta version a few months back, but it was hardly useful at the time. Little wonder, that I was happy to find an email notifying me that Minneapolis-St.Paul (MSP) is now part of Farecast. The site utilizes predictive technologies and data-mining to improve the online travel experience. The airfare prediction engine technology, which evolved from a University of Washington research project, works well to indicate trends in airfare over the next few days or weeks, allowing better chances of getting a good deal on tickets. The site also links customers directly to airline websites, thereby avoiding booking fees (and ensuring registration for frequent flier miles).

The feature I like most is the ability to set up and track custom airfare predictions via an RSS feed. Now all that remains is to give the service a spin while planning my next trip and hope it saves me some greens.

Its surprising that National Semiconductor, a company that has been doing well recently, atleast apparently so, would even have to lay off 35 workers at its plant in Arlington, TX. National was in the news some time back for announcing its plans to hand every employee a 30GB video iPod, a reward for its best fiscal year ever.

Employees that are on their way out have to turn in the ‘gifts that were’nt’. For the ones who ended up selling or re-gifting their iPods, the company would like the now-ex-employees to pay “fair market value” for the company hardware - which retails around $300 a pop.

Losing their jobs and even their iPods (Star Telegram Article)

Purchasing online is now as fast as searching for the items themselves, with Google’s brand new payment service that rolled out today. Essentially, this means buyers no longer need to keep typing billing, shipping, and credit card information each time they purchase online. Google Checkout can be a Paypal killer, since Ebay’s popular internet payment system is not one of the options you can use with your Google Checkout account. This service is also more global than Paypal for sure in terms of the countries it supports might support online shopping in more countries than even Paypal eventually, but is restricted to US stores at present - that internet purchasing has yet to catch on in most of those countries is a different story.

The biggest advantage for Google (and sellers) though, is the seamless integration of Checkout with Adwords, Google’s search advertising program, allowing online stores to attract new customers more easily, increase sales and process them for free. Some of the bigger stores that have already integrated Google Checkout are Jockey, Starbucks Store, Levi’s, Dockers, Buy.com, Timberland, Zales, amongst others.

Basically, Google has made it easier for me to part with my money.

Link to Google Blog entry

Yes, after months of blogging and drooling over Apple products, I’ve finally got a Mac I can call my own. A humble beginning of course, with a Core Duo Mac Mini. My notebook PC’s partition tables got corrupted a couple of weeks ago and I took it as an opportunity to switch. There were a few applications I needed before I could get around to updating my website, especially NVu (I’d really like a Universal Binary, although Portable NVu works just fine - iWeb is nice and all, but its too basic for my needs). Today was also the grand opening of an Apple retail store close to where I live, and I was there at 9am to grab a free shirt and try my luck at the sweepstakes.

Apple’s fourth retail store in Minnesota opened today at the Ridgedale Mall, just west of Minneapolis, in Minnetonka. While I don’t think people camped outside the mall to be first in line (no IM Pei designs here after all), but there were atleast a hundred people in the store during the first hour - significant when you have three Apple stores within minutes of each other. It might have been more grand if this was at the Mall of America.

And now, for the pictures (click thumbnails for larger versions).