Recently in Misc Category

A persistent problem at races is long lines for the portapotties. I've actually missed the start of races because I was waiting in line. I've often wished that races would sell some sort of premier access where you would pay a little extra on your race fee and get to use special portapotties. (This is effectively Odzlyko's Paris Metro Pricing idea applied to a different kind of uh, resource.) Actually, what I would probably prefer would be a guarantee that the race would have an extra premier toilet for each X racers that paid for premier access.

Anyway, the New Orleans Rock and Roll Marathon seems to have implemented a more elaborate version of this:

To get your race off to the best possible start, we'll have comfortable, climate-controlled restroom trailers set up at the starting line. Running water, flushing toilets, and some Run Happy® surprises await.

To access this pre-race luxury, you'll need to snag a Brooks VIP Porta Potty pass in one of two easy ways:

1. Head to Varsity Sports between 2/1 and 2/27 and purchase $50 in Brooks or Moving Comfort apparel or Brooks shoes. Offer valid at both Varsity Sports locations.

OR

2. Come to the Rock 'n' Roll Mardi Gras Marathon™ & 1/2 Marathon Health and Fitness Expo on Friday 2/26, or Saturday 2/27, and purchase $150 in official Rock 'n' Roll Marathon merchandise, Brooks apparel or shoes, or Moving Comfort apparel.

Either way, you'll receive a sticker for your race bib. The sticker is your race-day pass to Brooks' VIP Porta Potty, to be expertly staffed by Varsity Sports volunteers and Brooks employees,

It's hard to figure out how much this really costs: I don't wear Brooks shoes, but presumably I could find some Brooks gear that would be comfortable, so figure like 20% of the amount you're expected to spend, which isn't so bad. Anyway, I've got no objection to emptying my bladder in comfort, of course—and the portapotties at races can get pretty bad—but really my priority is being able to go without having to wait. I'd be interested to hear from anyone who was at this event and used this service how long the line was.

I recently had occasion to rent a car from Enterprise (long story). As I picked up the car and prepared to drive away, I noticed that the tank was only half full. I pointed this out to the customer service guy and he informed me that this was part of their new "half full/half empty policy", i.e., ordinarily you get the car full and you bring it back full. Here, they give it to you half full and you bring it back half full. I couldn't quite tell if this was what Enterprise always does now or just something they sometimes do, but while it seems superficially the same as the original policy, it's actually quite a bit worse for the renter.

With the old policy, life was simple: you found a gas station close to the car return, filled up the tank, maybe grabbed a receipt, and dropped the car off. By contrast, what happens here is that you drive around, filling up the tank if necessary, and at some point you need to return the car. If you're over 1/2 full then you just end up gifting the remainder to Enterprise (who can just fill up the tank completely and require the next customer to return it full). (What, you were going to drive the car around until you had burned up the gas? Or maybe you were going to siphon it out into some empty Gatorade bottles...) You could, of course, never fill the tank above 1/2 way, but this is a huge pain. Even if you're lucky enough to be at less than 1/2 full when you need to return the car, you're unlikely to be exactly at 1/2, in which case you need to put some gas in. You're reasonably likely to overshoot (again, taking gas out of the tank isn't easy.), in which case Enterprise again gets some free gas.

Either way, this is likely to be a win for Enterprise and a lose for you.

My friend Terence just got written up in the Stranger as the first purchaser of Caleb Larsen's A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter (hereafter ATtDaS). Briefly, ATtDaS is a black cube with some electronics inside that, when connected to the Internet, attempts to sell itself on eBay. (Current auction here). The purchaser is (allegedly) required to provide an Internet connection (semi-absurd EULA can be found at the auction site. sample quote: "Any failure to follow these terms without prior consent of Artist will forfeit the status of the Artwork as a legitimate work of art. The item will no longer be considered a genuine work by the Artist and any value associated with it will be reduced to its value as a material object and not a work of art.") and has to kick back 15% of the profits from the sale to Larsen.

Terence paid a stupefying $6400 for the privilege of not-really owning this object. Here's what he has to say for himself:

It sort of uniformly falls into two categories: either, That's an enormously appealing, thought-provoking piece of art, or the other thing is, That's the most foolish thing I've ever seen. They're really defensive about it.

I hang out with a bunch of computer security people because I'm a computer security person myself, so they want to know, are you going to hack the box? Is there some way to put it behind a firewall to slow it down so it can't sell itself? Which really adds a whole other dimension because you buy the box and the box immediately starts trying to escape from you. So part of the impulse is, is there a way I can subvert the process of it trying to escape from me? By doing that, you'd in some ways be removing the reason it's interesting.

I'm (of course) one of the people who suggested that it be firewalled off. Obviously, just firewalling it off would be cheating and arguably violate the license agreement (not that I'm convinced it's actually binding). But the natural security guy reaction is to try to find some way to stop ATtDaS from selling itself in some way that complies with the agreement. My suggestion was to firewall off eBay alone, or just forge TCP RST packets. This seems to me the qualify with the relevant term:

Collector agrees that the Artwork will remain connected to a live Internet connection at all times, with disconnections allowed only for the transportation of the work from one venue to another.

Option 2 seems to be to "transport" it from its current venue in Seattle to a venue somewhere in the Himalayas via yak, Sherpa, or the like.

I tried to explain to Terence that this wasn't removing the interesting part but rather going taking an allegedly subversive piece and going meta-subversive, but he didn't bite. Some people just don't appreciate art.

This decade retrospective post is in conformance with Section 123(a)(1)(j)(ii)(c) of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

During this decade, I had the opportunity to use many great fasteners, but in my opinion the best of these was the 10-24 rack mount screw—Allen head, of course, superior to the #2 Phillips (too finicky), and the Robertson (too Canadian). Other excellent choices include the zip tie, 5 minute epoxy, and duct tape.

Terence Spies recently pointed me to the results of survey on a variety of controversial philosophical issues. It's actually surprising how little consensus there is on some pretty straightforward questions:

Newcomb's problem: one box or two boxes? [* -- EKR]

Other 441 / 931 (47.3%)
Accept or lean toward: two boxes 292 / 931 (31.3%)
Accept or lean toward: one box 198 / 931 (21.2%)

... Teletransporter (new matter): survival or death?

Accept or lean toward: survival 337 / 931 (36.1%)
Other 304 / 931 (32.6%)
Accept or lean toward: death 290 / 931 (31.1%)

...

Zombies: inconceivable, conceivable but not metaphysically possible, or metaphysically possible? [* -- EKR]

Accept or lean toward: conceivable but not metaphysically possible 331 / 931 (35.5%)
Other 234 / 931 (25.1%)
Accept or lean toward: metaphysically possible 217 / 931 (23.3%)
Accept or lean toward: inconceivable 149 / 931 (16%)

One thing that surprises me is that quite a few more people (56.4%) accept physicalism of the mind than survival in the teletransporter scenario (36.1%). I'm not saying that there is a straight line reduction from physicalism to survival, but you're think they'd be pretty connected. In other news, 72.8% of philosophers accept or lean towards atheism.

Another odd feature of this survey is that the questions are deliberately sketchy unless you're familiar with the jargon (hence my links above). The survey authors explain this as follows:

The questions are phrased in a minimal way, in part because further clarification would usually be tendentious and would call for still further clarification in turn. Of course any philosopher can find ambiguity or other problems in such a question, so a number of "other" options are available. Nevertheless, we strongly encourage you to adopt the most natural interpretation of each question and to report an acceptance or a leaning toward one side or the other wherever possible.

For the record: my positions are two boxes, survival, and no idea.

Check out this fascinating NYT article on the use of fake badges by New York City police officers (þ Emergent Chaos). The executive summary is that unlike other jurisdictions, the NYPD treats badges like they are made of gold:

In many other cities officers are allowed to have more than one badge, or do not get penalized for losing their badge if promptly reported.

"I remember asking in Miami, 'What happens if you lose a shield?' " said John F. Timoney, the departing chief of police there, who was a first deputy commissioner in New York. "They said, 'You get another one.' It's no big deal."

Mr. Timoney said that he never had a dupe, but that plenty of friends did. "They were so paranoid, they would get a dupe, then they would hide the original in a safe until they retired," he said.

...

Fake badges cause so much concern that when officers are promoted or retire and are required to turn in their shields, they must place them in a special mold at Police Headquarters to ensure that they fit. That's because most duplicates are purposely made slightly smaller to distinguish them from the original.

Metal badges, while an important symbol of authority, are a lousy method of actually establishing legitimate authority. I have no idea whatsoever what a legitimate NYPD badge looks like and I doubt you do either. Moreover, as this article establishes, it's relatively straightforward to make a fake that is mostly indistinguishable from the real thing (you noticed that the fake badges are deliberately different, right?) An identification card is a much better choice: they're probably not any harder to forge (though potentially you could use holograms and the like as anti-forgery measures), but they have the advantage of being biometrically tied to the holder, so if you do lose your badge then it can only be immediately used by someone who looks a lot like you, which is a lot better than use by anyone who picks it up.

Given that, other than tradition, fetishization of the badge, etc. it's not clear what the virtue of keeping a really tight rein on legitimate badges is. Indeed, if officers are so terrified of losing their real badges that they respond by getting fake badges, then the result may be that they take less care with them than if they were merely told to be careful with minimal penalties. Moreover (as has often been observed about fake ids), you've just created a real infrastructure in the production of legitimate-appearing badges. So, whereas ordinarily if someone wanted to impersonate a policy officer they might need to buy a rare lost badge or find someone to do a custom job, now there are plenty of people set up to make high quality duplicates.

Oh, I should mention that this passage reflects a rather odd theory of authenticity:

Called "dupes," these phony badges are often just a trifle smaller than real ones but otherwise completely authentic.

Marcel Duchamp, call your office..

So I heard on the radio today that some Americans were killed in a plane crash. In China... On a Zimbabwean cargo airline... On its way to Kyrgyzstan.

Unfortunately, the spoilsports at CNN now report that the plane was on its way to Harare, which is rather less interesting.

Some non-blog materials I never bothered to point to:

One of my better party invitations

My standard introduction to communications security entitled SSH, SSL, and IPsec: wtf?

I like using history podcasts as background for commuting, hiking, etc. My favorites come from Isabelle Pafford a lecturer in Classics at Santa Clara University (previously at Berkeley and SFU). Pafford has a light, entertaining style, full of jokes and pop culture references.

New:
Classics 11A: Heroes and Heroism
Classics 178: Greek Art and Architecture

Older:History 110: Roman Republic
Hitory 106B: The Roman Empire
History 4A: The Ancient Mediterranean World

Worth checking out.

Another Halloween, another bowl full of candy, and another night when only a few kids show up. Tonight we had 3 groups of kids, each in the 5-7 range. It's not clear to me why Halloween in the Bay Area is so lame; when I was a kid and went out trick or treating the streets would be thick with other trick-or-treaters to the point where you actually had to wait in line at some houses. Here, though, the streets are empty and in a good year we'll see maybe 5 groups. One of my friends lives in San Francisco and says that in the 10 year he's been there he's never had anyone come by. I would understand it this were some crime-ridden area, but I actually live in suburban Palo Alto about 5 blocks from the local elementary school. It's a totally safe neighborhood with lots of kids living nearby. Moreover, this year Halloween is on a Saturday, so you'd think that it would be especially hot.

One theory—popular with the denizens of Fark—is that overprotective parents have ruined trick-or-treating. See, for instance, this article and the related Fark thread. However, this doesn't seem to be correct: no less authoritative a source than the National Confectioners Assoction reported in 2005 that 95% of children intended to go out. I would be interested in hearing reports from people in other parts of the country about their flow rates.

Another explanation is that it's a collective action problem: It's only worth trick-or-treating when enough houses dispense candy to make it worthwhile. [I've written about this before]. Similarly, it's only worth dispensing candy when enough kids come by: I was invited to several Halloween parties and stayed home to give out candy, but I'm not sure I would do that again. So, if you have a neighborhood which is in a no-trick-or-treating equilibrium, it's hard for it to take hold. I'm sure there's some effect here. For instance, Belvedere street in San Francisco has a huge party every year with the result that kids come by from across the city and residents put in huge amounts of effort decorating their houses. On the other hand, when I went out at 5:30 to pick up some more candy (ending up with way more than I needed), I had to stand in line at the register, so obviously people are giving out candy, and that means I don't have a good explanation.