Jason Hong's Confabulations

http://www.scottberkun.com/essays/chiweb.htm Best of the CHI-WEB mailing list.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/index.php?p=1499 Last year, a UK insurance company tested a "pay as you drive" insurance system that uses a GPS receiver package to track exactly what distance a car is driven and set each month's premium accordingly. It's a sensible idea: If you leave your car in the garage for a month, there's no reason why you should be charged the same as someone who drove 500 miles over the same period. Even better, because the instruments are transmitting (not just recording), if your car is stolen it can easily be tracked and the miscreants apprehended. So what? The system has some interesting potential side effects. For one thing, the police (or an estranged spouse) could easily subpoena your "travel records" for use in an investigation. The insurance company could also start charging based on where your car spends time: Long periods in high-crime neighborhoods would affect your premium accordingly. Even more provocative, companies coul...

http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2005/06/12/Comparable Tim Bray bangs his head against the wall when using Java generics. I just turned off the compiler warnings in Eclipse. I don't care how powerful generics are, the syntax is ugly and the effects are unpredictable. Anyhow, a Comparable isn’t a Comparable any more, it’s a Comparable , and an Integer isn’t a Comparable any more, it’s a Comparable , and you’re going to get unsafe-comparison whines every time you try to compile anything (and worse, your API’s customers will too). Then when you try to paramaterize it all with generics you’ll discover that Comparable is kind of surprising, and then you’ll discover there are all sorts of problems with arrays of parameterized types. Anyhow, after pursuing a maze of twisty little Java-Generics passages around the Internet (I read Gilad’s explanation of the unsafeness of generic arrays seven or eight times, even), I stumbled on the key resources to explain this stuff: Peter Williams ...

http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/interviews/v6i20_pausch.html And so, when people say, well, how do you feel having a career doing all this frivolity, I hasten to point out that the number of computer science majors in America last year declined by 23 percent. The direct implications to American productivity, quality of life and educated citizenry and national defense could not be more stark. Not producing enough computer scientists is a mission-critical way to fail for a modern society, and I'm the only guy in town that I know of with a potential solution to that problem. Yet I'm the one being called frivolous? I know Randy's been criticized for working on research considered "non-serious", but he's got an important point here. It sort of reminds me of when people start out saying, "if only people were better, then we could...". Well, the problem is that millenia of recorded human history strongly suggest that people aren't better, and it's a fac...

Ted Koppel correctly notes that there are many privacy threats greater than the PATRIOT Act. One problem, however, is that just because the PATRIOT act is a lesser concern, does not mean that it is not an important concern. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/13/opinion/13koppel.html Part of its mission statement, as found on the OnStar Web site, is the creation of "safety, security and peace of mind for drivers and passengers with thoughtful wireless services that are always there, always ready." As an aside, I was in the Barnes and Nobles last week, and couldn't help but skim through the Revenge of the Sith book. The part I was most interested, though, was how Palpatine actually convinced the Senate to go along with his scheme of creating the Empire, framing it in terms of peace, justice, and security. Supposedly, Lucas based this portion on Richard Nixon and on Hitler taking over the Reichstag. There's something about these themes of "peace, justice, and security...

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/internet/06/09/google.map.hacks.ap/index.html Google charts each point on its maps by latitude and longitude -- that's how Google can produce driving directions to practically anywhere in the nation. Seasoned developers have figured out how to match these points with locations from outside databases that can contain vast amounts of information -- anything from police blotters to real estate listings. Thanks to Adrian Holovaty, 24, who overlayed Chicago Police Department crime statistics on a Google map, house-hunters in the Albany Park neighborhood can pinpoint all the sexual assaults in the district between May 19 and April 19 on a single map. With each crime marked by a virtual pushpin, Chicagoans can quickly learn what dangerous train stations, pool rooms and alleys to avoid. ... Visitors to Floridasexualpredators.com, which combines Google Maps with data on convicted sex offenders, can call up maps of their communities and click on the pushpins to s...

Microsoft is finding customers for its cell phone location server Junk remover 1-800-Got-Junk is among the first to use a specialized Microsoft server to incorporate real-time location information into maps and driving directions generated by Microsoft MapPoint Web Service, the companies announced on Monday. ... The Microsoft offering lets 1-800-Got-Junk pack capabilities into cell phones for its drivers, such as pushing a single cell phone button to adjust a delivery route on the fly should they get lost... The deal is a sign that the market for location-based services is starting to catch on among businesses. However, the technology has not yet caught on among the general public. While Microsoft has had some success with selling location information--it has more than 500 corporate customers generating 20 million maps and directions a day--Seinfeld conceded that it has been difficult getting consumers interested.

http://money.cnn.com/2005/06/01/technology/online_banking/index.htm Now here's an interesting idea. I wonder what kinds of attacks scammers will try on this... NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - What could make you feel more at ease than a picture of your dog, Scruffy? Bank of America (Research) will require Internet clients to register their computers and assign a digital image, such as a photo of a pet, to their accounts in an effort to cut down on fraud, the bank announced. The free service, called SiteKey, lets clients pick an image, write a brief phrase and select three challenge questions. The image will appear on the site every time a customer has to enter a password.