Scott's Blog

The One Laptop Per Child ( OLPC ) project has an interesting take on building security for the laptop. Here is my list of why the OLPC is especially vulnerable to security issues. 100's of millions of these near identical laptops will be produced, making it a target for crackers. The OLPC group want the child to be able to hack their own laptops, get right down to the code. Some of the children are going to be very young, entering a password or even replying to dialog prompts may be asking too much. These devices automatically connect to each other and automatically connect to the Internet. So what will they be doing to improve security? They have a system called Bitfrost , which comes from Norse mythology, where Bitfröst is the bridge which keeps mortals who live in Midgard from venturing into Asgrad, the realm of the gods. Nearly all programs running on the laptop will be running in a fortified chroot, sort of like BSD jail. Programs will store their data on a new object oriente...

I think I've been vindicated when I said that the Sony PS3 would be a failure. The main issue with the console was the insistence of putting a BluRay player on the device. I think it shows how there's an organizational/cultural problem at Sony. They insist on putting an expensive add-on to the game simply to satisfy some people in the media division of the company. The BluRay player does nothing to improve the gaming experience and in fact it a little slower than a fast DVD player. The rationalization was that some people would by the PS3 just for the BluRay player . And maybe, they might buy a game too. What kind of game do you sell to someone who doesn't really want to play games? In a related note you can buy the PS3 with Linux pre-installed . Although that's really neat, it means there's one more reason to buy a PS3 and not play games! Every current PS3 sold is sold at a loss. The only way Sony can recoup that money lost is by the licensing money from P...

I just discovered Google Notebook that I knew existed but had never tried it, I heard it referred to as a post-it note type tool, but it's more useful than that (I'm not a big Post-it™ fan). If you install the extension, you can quickly select and gather snippets from a web page and throw it in your notebook . It automatically keeps track of the originating link and the date you clipped it. The notebook supports rich text and images, in that sense it's quite complete. The only thing missing is the ability to take an entire notebook and make a blog entry for it. Maybe I could make it my 20% project .

Professor José Antonio Meira da Rocha has done some number crunching and found that the OLPC XO laptop will cost about R$0.59 per child per hour (about 27 cents US). This includes the cost of the laptop, electricity, training, OLPC servers, and internet connection. In comparison having Computer labs where 5 or more students share one computer would cost R$9.90 per hour. His numbers show that the total cost of ownership (TCO) OLPC will be R$94.07 per year (vs. a computer lab's TCO of $R586.00). The problem with computer labs is that the child doesn't feel any ownership of the shared computer, he or she can't just pick it up any time and start using it. Also kids don't like sitting in chairs for hours at a time. On top of that the OLPC has a better display than a typical computer and so is better for reading. Having just spent R$300.00 on books, pencils and paper for my son for school this year, $94.07 looks like a steal.

It's always fun to make some predictions so you can make a fool of yourself in 12 months time. So here it goes: The Nintendo Wii will outsell the XBox 360, although it may take all year. Most XBox 360 owners will also have a Wii. The US economy will do worse in 2007 than in 2006. A part of the reason will be because of lowered housing prices. Brazil will do marginally better in 2007 than 2006. The OLPC will have a rough start mostly because of political reasons and an extended smear campaign but will be an utter success as 2008 rolls around. We'll start seeing more machines with Linux pre-installed on it instead of Windows in 2007 or with a sticker saying "linux ready" or some such. We'll slowly start seeing companies putting Linux on their employees desktops instead of windows because it is easier to administer and catches less viruses. People will start understanding that DRM is evil and will actively try to avoid it, despite the lack of legal choices. Some s...

There's 3D sudoku

For fun I wasted some time creating diagrams using the dot language. It's pretty fast to get a diagram out, except that there are a lot of things you can't do, like make shadows or rounded and filled rectangles. With this dot code: digraph "User Clicks" { node [ shape="rectangle" style="filled" ] server [label="Server"] java [shape="ellipse" label="Java\nCode"] provider [label="Service\nProvider"] browser [label="Firefox"] browser->server[label= ]; server->java[label= ]; java->provider[label= ]; provider->java[label= ]; java->server[label= ]; server->browser[label= ]; } You can click on the image to see the SVG rendered in Firefox, if you use that. I wrote a little python program to call the dot command outputting the diagram as an SVG file. Then I used the batik-rasterizer to convert SVG into PNG . Unfortunately, dot doesn't do an excellent job on the SVG that it outp...