Not all ereaders are the same

As we count down to end of 2009, the emerging star of this year's holiday shopping season is shaping up to be the electronic book reader (or e-reader). From Amazon's Kindle to Barnes and Noble's forthcoming Nook, e-readers are starting to transform how we buy and read books in the same way mp3s changed how we buy and listen to music.

Unfortunately, e-reader technology also presents significant new threats to reader privacy. E-readers possess the ability to report back substantial information about their users' reading habits and locations to the corporations that sell them. And yet none of the major e-reader manufacturers have explained to consumers in clear unequivocal language what data is being collected about them and why.

As a first step towards addressing these problems, EFF has created a first draft of our Buyer's Guide to E-Book Privacy.

ebook privacy graph

Like I was saying not all ereaders are the same and for me the Sony is the logical way to go.

I just upgraded from the Sony PRS 505 to the Sony PRS 600 which is better known as the Sony Touch Reader, due to its touch screen. My only regret is the screen on the touch isn't as nice and shiny as the 505, in actually fact when put side by side its quite bad, as this video show. But on the plus side, the refresh rate is 3x as fast, I can now search and make notes alongside my ebooks. Also I'm glad to say the Sony Touch reader keeps all the open features of the 505, aka no spying on what books I'm reading or even the need for software to transfer books. What really impressed me however, was the format of the notes and annotations. Yep thats right all in XML and easy to get at because the device mounts like a USB drive. So I'll be writing some TomboyNotes converter/transformer via Conduit soon I expect. And if that wasn't enough, the freehand sketch notes on the touch reader are also in XML/SVG. Which means with a bit of work, it should be easy to convert/transform a rough sketch in a meeting into something which I could use in Inkscape later. Very impressed that Sony kept things simple, open and transparent.

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The Psychology of Being Scammed

I love reading about social engineering type stuff, and this paper (PDF) by Paul Wilson and Frank Stajano is ideal Christmas after turkey reading. Schneier has the low down as usual.

This is a very interesting paper: “Understanding scam victims: seven principles for systems security,” by Frank Stajano and Paul Wilson. Paul Wilson produces and stars in the British television show The Real Hustle, which does hidden camera demonstrations of con games. Frank Stajano is at the Computer Laboratory of the University of Cambridge.

The paper describes a dozen different con scenarios — entertaining in itself — and then lists and explains six general psychological principles that con artists use:

  1. The distraction principle. While you are distracted by what retains your interest, hustlers can do anything to you and you won't notice.
  2. The social compliance principle. Society trains people not to question authority. Hustlers exploit this “suspension of suspiciousness” to make you do what they want.
  3. The herd principle. Even suspicious marks will let their guard down when everyone next to them appears to share the same risks. Safety in numbers? Not if they're all conspiring against you.
  4. The dishonesty principle. Anything illegal you do will be used against you by the fraudster, making it harder for you to seek help once you realize you've been had.
  5. The deception principle. Things and people are not what they seem. Hustlers know how to manipulate you to make you believe that they are.
  6. The need and greed principle. Your needs and desires make you vulnerable. Once hustlers know what you really want, they can easily manipulate you.

It all makes for very good reading. Two previous posts on the psychology of conning and being conned.

Talking of Schneier, he was talking in London on the 11th December and although I was in town I couldn't make the event. Luckily someones recorded the lot and put it up online.

Bruce Schneier did a benefit gig for Open Rights Group last Friday and here's the video of his 'Future of Privacy' talk and the 45-minute Q&A.

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Most Downloaded Movies on BitTorrent, 2009

There are quite a few differences between popularity at the box office and on BitTorrent. Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs and 2012 are ranked 2nd and 4th based on their worldwide grosses but didn’t make it into the top 10 list of most swapped movies.

On the contrary, RocknRolla is the third most pirated movie on BitTorrent this year, but with a minuscule worldwide revenue of $25 million it was ranked just 168th at the box office in 2008 when the movie came out. Part of the success of RocknRolla is that it was released by the infamous uploader aXXo whose releases are always guaranteed to have at least a few million downloads.

Taken from TorrentFreak

rank movie – downloads = worldwide grosses

  1. Star Trek – 10,960,000 = $385,459,120
  2. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen – 10,600,000 = $834,969,807
  3. RocknRolla – 9,430,000 = $25,728,089
  4. The Hangover – 9,180,000 = $459,422,869
  5. Twilight – 8,720,000 = $384,997,808
  6. District 9 – 8,280,000 = $204,570,836
  7. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – 7,930,000 = $929,359,401
  8. State of Play – 7,440,000 = $87,784,194
  9. X-Men Origins: Wolverine – 7,200,000 = $373,062,569
  10. Knowing – 6,930,000 = $183,260,464

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Experimental Compiz Fusion Plugins

Ubuntu has build in support for Compiz fusion now called just compiz since version 8.04 I believe. But the plugins included haven't really been increased in a while. So most of us are missing out on some of the creativity and downright oddness coming out of experiemental corners of the internet. Theres a whole page of how to get the plugins from GIT if you want to take a walk on the wild side.

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Wow! The universe as far as we currently know…

If you've never seen the start of Contact (the film with Jodie Foster) you're not only missing out on a great film but also a fantastic opening sequence which rolls back from present day earth out beyond out solar system and the milky way, way into the deep darkness of space. The Known Universe does the same but goes as far as we currently know (16.7 billion light years). Its amazing and worth watching in HD at full screen if possible.

The Known Universe takes viewers from the Himalayas through our atmosphere and the inky black of space to the afterglow of the Big Bang. Every star, planet, and quasar seen in the film is possible because of the world's most complete four-dimensional map of the universe, the Digital Universe Atlas that is maintained and updated by astrophysicists at the American Museum of Natural History. The new film, created by the Museum, is part of an exhibition, Visions of the Cosmos: From the Milky Ocean to an Evolving Universe, at the Rubin Museum of Art in Manhattan through May 2010.

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HP doesn’t care about black people

Amusing little video about the new HP webcams which don't track black faces, but will happily follow a white face. Racist no but Black Dezy did have me chuckling, specially since he bought one. Recognition software isn't always what it should be, for example some of those voice recongnition systems can't deal with the deepness in my voice and never catch any of the numbers or words I use. Very frustrating when you know your not the problem in the chain. I expect the camera just can't cope wit the lighting of the store/office and if you shine a light from the front it will work.

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Orange offer MMS to Twitter

Orange and Twitter

I only just saw this on the twitter blog….

The UK has had an outsized cultural impact on the world. From music to sports to literature… and now – MMS with Twitter.

Today, not only has Orange UK turned on Twitter SMS, but it has added a first-of-its-kind special enhancement. Orange UK users can also send picture messages (MMS) to 86444 in addition to text messages because of a site that Orange UK has created called Snapshot. The best part is that it is incredibly simple to use:

1. Take a photo on your Orange mobile phone
2. Select 'Send via MMS' or 'Send multimedia message'
3. Send it to 86444

Twitter does not charge for this service. It's just like sending and receiving messages with your friends — your carrier's standard messaging rates apply. Give it a try by sending a text message to 86444 with the word “START.” This means that with the same shortcode, 86444, UK users can tweet via SMS with Vodafone, O2, and now Orange.

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Learning XQuery

I'm convinced that Xquery is somewhat the non-elegent child of the xml family of technologies. Every single technology from XSL to Xpointer, Schema to XMLencryption seem to pick part of the puzzle and do that bit very well. So you can forgive me for thinking Xquery would only be useful for querying data from a xml database, somewhat the SQL of the XML world right? Nope, in actual fact its not only SQL but also PHP and the XML doesn't even have to be in a database at all. The crossovers with XSL is quite shocking for such a elegent family. Fear not, Xpath forms a large part of Xquery meaning us XSL lovers can jump straight in and feel a little at home with its strangely non-xml syntax, I actually quite like writing xml to create/transform xml. And if things get a little too weird in Xquery land, you can run for the beach by telling Xquery to do a XSL transformation on a tree of data instead.

Although it doesn't quite fit, its actually darn powerful and beats messing with XSP or other templating languages. For example, in about 6 easy to understand lines of Xquery, I was able to pull down a XHTML document, rip off its head element and append the body inside a ATOM feed. I could do the same with XSL but it would be much more lines and the way Xquery is setup, it seems to make more sense. One of the big issues people have with XSL is that it doesn't know anything about its environment. So for example calling the present time would require looking up a webservice or some other external logic like PHP, XSP, JSP, etc. Well with Xquery, you get all that type of logic which you could even pump into a XSL transform.

I'm learning Xquery right now mainly through Exist DB and this nice wikibook, which I converted to PDF using the wikibook system for offline reading and reference on my Ebook reader.

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Hitting the credit card companies where it hurts

I'm one of those people who doesn't carry around much cash, I'm that person who will pay for a coffee with a piece of plastic if possible. I know most of you hate me for doing so but its so much easier to track stuff later (yes I know this also means i'm also easier track too).

But what bugs me is going to places like computer fairs and having to either carry lots of cash, fiddle around with a cheque book (which the UK has decided to kill by 2018) or only use certainly suppliers because they accept cards. Talking to most suppliers, the number one reason why they don't accept cars is because Visa and Mastercard charge quite a bit extra on each transaction (yep everyone knows this) and they charge a lot to rent those pin machines. Yep talking to one it can be as high as a extra grand a month for those machines. Which is fine if your a business doing lots of transactions but not so great if your selling small goods at a computer fair.

In steps a new startup called Squareup.com which is trying to bypass the whole special pin machines by offering small retailers an suppliers the ability to take card payments on there own smartphones. Visa and Mastercard still make there usual transaction fee but at least the supplier doesn't have to rent some expensive machine in the hope someone will use their card.

Its all pretty neat, and I wish the guys luck. I had wondered if this was a classic example of emulating the pirates which have been using a similar device to collect stolen credit cards for a while now. So power to the suppliers, but I can certainly see this being exploited for many peoples gain. Proceed with lots of caution!

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