Many define intelligence at least partly as the ability to learn from one’s experiences. If I make a mistake and I’m intelligent I should be able to see what I did wrong, adjust, and avoid the problem in the future. That’s fine, but I have a better definition. I think what’s even more important is the ability to…
Judging Risk Based On Genetic Testing
I was just taking a shower and had a frightening idea. With all this talk of the National ID program, and the inclusion of biometric identification into the system, I started thinking about other trends in technology that could impact it. So the main danger, critics argue, of the National ID system is that as it becomes prolific…
The Nice Guy Paradox [Solved]
Most guys know about the nice guy paradox. It’s where they’ve been told since they were young — both by women and by society in general — that women like “nice” guys. And because they’ve been told this over and over, most guys grow up trying this approach only to have reality kick them in the groin. This…
The Resonance Of Understanding
Resonance has intruiged me since I learned about the concept in high school. For those unfamiliar, it’s “the tendency of a system to oscillate at maximum amplitude at a certain frequency.” Or, to put it another way, it’s the frequency at which something vibrates the most. I remember one day being at 7-11 getting a Super Big Gulp.…
Security Filters Are All The Same
Let me start by stating that much of what I’m about to cover was seeded by a wonderful talk I heard by Marcus Ranum back in 2003. Since then I’ve been sort of mulling everything over, and here are the basic ideas: From Marcus’s talk: Q: What does a packet filter do? A: Looks at a few parts…
Great vs. Better: The Eternal Quest For Enough
For most people of a materialistic nature, “better” is always superior to great. This is a problem because there’s always something better. If there isn’t now, it’ll be out in six months. So if you ever want to be happy, focus on what you have that’s “great”, and forget about what could be an improvement over it. Another…
The Future: Personal Assistants (Companions)
As technology continues to be come more compact and more powerful, I think one of the biggest consumer/business breakthroughs is going to come in the form of a personal assistance application with pseudo/quasi AI capabilities. Imagine an application that spends 24 hours a day optimizing your life. It will probably run from some sort of hosted provider in…
Learn Languages By Studying Accents
One of the best ways to learn to speak with a proper accent in a given language is to study the accent those people have when speaking your language. You’ll find that the mistakes nuances you hear in the way they speak English are precisely those that you’ll need to emulate to sound authentic in theirs. It feels…
My Gaming Idea
A long time ago (a couple of years) I considered going to market with a gaming idea. The idea was fairly simple, and it’s coming to fruition in many ways already today. The idea was to create a generic virtual world that could have modules built on it — modules for various different kinds of gaming interface. Examples…
Liberals and Conservatives: Taking a Step Back
This is a very old post that I no longer agree with, but it’s still worth reading. One thing that interests me about politics is trying to get to the core of various belief systems. What does it mean to be liberal, or conservative? I am not sure exactly, but since I don’t call myself one or the…
Nanotech Musings
I’ve been thinking a lot about the future lately. A couple days ago I started fantisizing about what nanotechnology could mean to the medical field, and ultimately to the lives of humans. I’m sure the majority of this stuff is assembled from dozens of tidbits I’ve read over the years on the topic, but I’ll indulge anyway. Basics…
Without A Castle
As a consultant, the one thing I really miss is the feeling of owning a network and defending it. In training I’ve attended over the last couple of months I’ve noticed the other students processing all input in reference to that which they are responsible for. I miss that. All I have is a home network to defend,…
A Good Way to Study the Effect of Radio Waves on Humans
I’m one of those people who worry about how much radiation I’m absorbing (especially into my head) via my cell phone. As such, I have been thinking about a good way to study how dangerous (or not) cell phones and two-way radios and the like are to humans. Well, I think I have a good study group. Police…
Student vs. Competitor
I realized something about myself tonight that’s worth noting. It seems that when I approach a skill (say Table Tennis) I focus so much on being a student of the discipline that I almost ignore the element of competition altogether. That may not sound bad, but it is. Essentially, when I study things, I study to master my…
My First Metal Album
I’ll never forget the first time I “got” metal. Up until then I was into dance music — the current-day rap, if you will. Run DMC, The Art of Noise, Houdini, Newcleus, etc. My brother Brian was the one exposing me to new music, and his latest kick was metal. We were downstairs at my grandparent’s house playing…
Effort vs. Outcome
Over the years I’ve noticed something a bit peculiar about myself when it comes to striving for outcomes. In short, it seems that I thrive at difficult things while having fun doing them, but the moment I tell myself to “take it seriously” and really “try”, my ability goes all to hell. I’m aware that there are many…
What Does Your Toilet Paper Roll Say About You?
So I’ve had a theory for many years now. It’s not particularly poignant or anything, but I figured it’s my blog so I might as well indulge. I think it may be possible to determine the degree of masculinity/assertiveness a person has by observing how they prefer to place a roll of toilet paper on the spool. I…
Passive Learning
Many people who read this blog are familiar with what I call passive learning — the phenomenon that causes one to be far better at doing a task after returning from not doing it for a while. Example: I play Table Tennis (not to be confused with ping pong), and when I come back from a layoff of…
Good DRM
I will, in the course of my information security career, become well versed on the topic of Digital Rights Management. The reasons for this are twofold: It’s an interesting subject. The question of how much control consumers will have over digital content they purchase is an intruiging one, and I look forward to putting some thought into the…
Adult Memory: Bad or Just Full?
This Wired piece supports a thought that I’ve had for sometime about the failing of memory with age. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure there is some degree of failure as we age, but I think the reason people in their 30’s and 40’s who have busy lives have bad memories may be more a function of how…
The Maturity Dilemma
More and more I’ve run into a particular dilemma in life, and I think it’s worth exploring a bit. As I get older, my friends are becoming increasingly “mature”, which is to say that they are buying houses, having babies, going to bed earlier, etc. I find that there are some major benefits to this sort of development;…
A Browser Security Idea
One of the comments “How To Fix The Internet” article that’s circulating is the notion of a central organization (like the BBB) maintaining a database of information that sites would presumably dish out to users upon them requesting a page for the first time. Well, how about a standalone security tool to do this? This tool would have…
We Want What’s Transient, and Ignore What’s Already Ours
Why is it that nothing at all is of interest when you have 40 channels of T.V. in perfect clarity, yet when your cable goes out and you only have one channel full of static, your attention is riveted regardless of what’s playing? I know the answer. We want what we can’t have and we lose interest in…
Making Lists
I recently noticed something interesting about myself; when I make a list of things to do I usually keep it around for a short period of time and then make a newer, more revised version of the current agenda. What I noticed is that I always dispose of my older agenda immediately. I don’t seem to like the…
Get Tired
I think that in an ideal lifestyle, one should be both mentally and physically tired when laying down to sleep each night. I have no evidence to support this, but I am sure it is more healthy to push both the body and mind daily. In addition to being healthy, one can also accomplish more by doing so.…