What do mathematicians do in their spare time?

Why, work out the optimum pattern for lacing up shoes. “The knotty problem of choosing the optimum way of lacing up shoes has been solved by a new mathematical proof. The criss-cross and straight patterns are strongest, but the bow-tie pattern is the most efficient The criss-cross and straight patterns are strongest, but the bow-tie pattern is the most efficient

There are many millions of different possibilities but, reassuringly, the proof shows that centuries of human trial and error has already selected out the strongest lacing patterns. However, the pattern using the least amount of lace possible, the decorative “bowtie” lacing, is usually only seen in shoe shop displays.

Burkard Polster, of Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, used combinatorial mathematics to come up with his proof. This branch of maths is used to solve a huge variety of problems, including resource allocation and finding the best ways to lay chips in a computer.

Formulas describing the physics of pulleys were used to work out how much force is exerted on the sides of a shoe using different lacing techniques. The most widely used “criss-cross” and “straight” lacing patterns were identified as the strongest. ”

What would Dewey do? US Librarians grappling with the Internet

I thought this “NYT” piece would be about classification systems, but in fact it’s about the problems librarians face when people use library computers to view sexually explicit material. Makes you wonder if the ‘shame threshold’ is reducing. I remember once using a computer in a Washington hotel lobby to read my email via a browser, and then looking at the ‘history’ cache of sites explored by previous users of the same machine. Every single site on the list was an ‘adult’ one. What does this tell us about human nature?

Internet filtering in China

Jonathan Zittrain and Ben Edelman have created an intriguing online tool for testing whether a particular URL is being filtered. I’ve tried it and got ‘indeterminate’ results, but they have just released a report after trying 200,000 sites. According to the “NYT” summary, “China has the most extensive Internet censorship in the world, regularly denying local users access to 19,000 Web sites that the government deems threatening, a study by Harvard Law School researchers finds.

The study, which tested access from multiple points in China over six months, found that Beijing blocked thousands of the most popular news, political and religious sites, along with selected entertainment and educational destinations. The researchers said censors sometimes punished people who sought forbidden information by temporarily making it hard for them to gain any access to the Internet.

Defying predictions that the Internet was inherently too diverse and malleable for state control, China has denied a vast majority of its 46 million Internet users access to information that it feels could weaken its authoritarian power. Beijing does so even as it allows Internet use for commercial, cultural, educational and entertainment purposes, which it views as essential in a globalized era…”

The BBC Online take on this is that the Chinese censors seem to be ambivalent about porn (some well-known soft-port sites) are not filtered. But they are, for some reason, very exercised about Slashdot, where the only vice is technolust.

Models and monocultures: a fascinating exchange

Paul Strassman did a lovely, polemical piece for PBS about the risks implicit in a software monoculture (i.e. a world where everybody uses Microsoft software) in which he used analogies like the Irish potato famine to illustrate the point. Microsoft then replied with a thoughtful piece. Both arguments are flawed, but the exchange is instructive and would make excellent material for class discussion.

What people actually use broadband for

The conventional wisdom about the benefits of high-speed internet access has little to do with how people actually use broadband, a report has found.

According to the study, the technology’s often-touted selling points – speed and the capacity to be always on – have little clout with the people that use broadband.

Instead it found that the main advantage for users is that they do not have to worry about the cost of spending too much time online.

The work is part of a long-term project by a think-tank, the Work Foundation, into how people use technologies such as mobile phones and the internet. Bill Thompson has written a perceptive analysis of the study, pointing out that, if it’s correct, then broadband vendors are trying to build a business by offering people things (like massive downloading capacity) that they don’t actually value.

Anger as Microsoft hires EU official
BBC Online story.

As Microsoft limbers up for its anti-trust battle with the European Commission, it’s been revealed that it has hired Detlef Eckert, a senior official from the Commission, to work in a business unit which aims to improve the security and reliability of Microsoft’s software. They said he will not be involved in any lobbying activity. Ho, ho. Here is the “NYT”‘s version of the story.

Thinking about Google News

From The Atlantic : nice article by William Powers. The central thing about Google News, of course, is that it’s only as good as the news sources it spiders. GIGO still rules.

Alan Kay joins Hewlett Packard
“NYT” story.

First, we take Baghdad: Scott Rosenberg on (dis)information

“I have been reading with great interest the recent reports on the front pages of the New York Times and (today) the Wall Street Journal, outlining our government’s plan to invade Iraq in considerable detail.

Presumably there are many people in Iraq, up to and including its dictator, doing the same. It must make for even more interesting reading over there.

Has a war plan ever been quite so brazenly run up the flag pole in full view? What’s really going on here?

There are only a handful of credible scenarios:

(1) This “war plan” is bogus. Our military leaders are planting disinformation in the media. This would be an entirely appropriate tactic on their part; what’s astonishing is that the Pentagon correspondents reporting on the plans do not seem ever to mention the possibility that they are being used.

(2) The “war plan” — which involves a blitzkrieg-like “war of effects” to paralyze the enemy’s command structure with precision-guided attacks — is a deliberate intimidation effort, a chess move on the part of the Bush administration to avoid war entirely by convincing the Iraqis that resistance is futile. In such a scenario, there’s a different kind of disinformation at work — an inflation of the potency of American forces to persuade the enemy to fold. Again, it seems amazing that the reporters who may be serving as a conduit for this propaganda game do not ever raise the possibility that this is their role.

(3) The “war plan” is real, and the administration doesn’t want it revealed, but the Pentagon reporters are just so good at their jobs that they got the story anyway. This is certainly possible, but unlikely, given the extremity and effectiveness of the Bush administration’s press-management techniques.

(4) The “war plan” is real, and it is being intentionally leaked to Pentagon reporters by officials who are so confident of our might and so certain that everything will go as planned that they do not mind letting the enemy in on their playbook. In a way, this is the scariest of the possibilities, because it suggests a troubling level of hubris on the part of our leadership.

Yes, the American military is unmatched in the world today. Yes, we have technology that is several generations ahead of our opponents. But war is hell; the fog of war is real; happenstance and chaos remain powerful players on the battlefield. If the big Iraq attack doesn’t go exactly as planned, this kind of overconfidence may come to look costly and foolish.” [Scott Rosenberg’s Links & Comment]

Common sense about copyright. Jonathan Zittrain in the Boston Globe

“[O]nce one embraces turning ideas into saleable items, there is no easy end point. One can claim that a songwriter should be paid when her song is broadcast over the radio, and again when the radio is played in a restaurant – and again when the song is sung by a listener to a group of friends.

It was this reasoning that inspired ASCAP to send thousands of letters to summer camps across the country, demanding hundreds of dollars in annual royalties from, among others, Girl Scouts, presumably for songs sung around the campfire. An ASCAP official explained, ”They buy twine and glue for their crafts… they can pay for the music, too.” He was right as a legal matter – indeed, it is against the law to sing ”Happy Birthday” in public without paying a royalty – and disastrously wrong as a practical one….[ More…]