I told you RFID didn't belong in passports!

<rant>

A recent RISKS issue contains this item contributed by the editor, Peter G. Neumann:

Using inexpensive off-the-shelf components (a Motorola RFID reader and antenna, and a PC) ... Chris Paget ... built a mobile platform in his spare time that can clone large numbers of the unique RFID tag electronic identifiers used in U.S. passport cards and next generation drivers licenses. While driving around San Francisco for 20 minutes, he was able to harvest two passport tags without knowledge of their owners from up to 30 feet away.

Read the rest of the RISKS item over at the archive, or a complete article over at SecurityFocus.

Given the huge security risks that ought to be self-evident here, what justifies the use of a technology like RFID that can be read at a distance without the awareness of the document holder?

The only sensible approach in the first place was to use an optical technology such as a 2-D barcode symbology if it really was necessary to put more information into the electronic record than just the passport number itself. Printed inside the cover (or on the back of a card) it would be immensely more difficult to read at a distance, and since the cover would normally not be left open, it would rarely be possible to get the content without the holder knowing. Even better, because the symbol is visible the owner would be more likely to know that the threat exists, and avoid leaving it laying out open to the symbol in plain view.

In contrast, the RFID tag is invisible to the owner and can be read without opening the document (or without even removing it from a pocket or wallet).

Until the world comes to its senses, wrapping your passport in copper foil may well be the only sensible action. Of course, you will then have to explain yourself to the nice TSA agent at the security checkpoint...

</rant>

Coraline, now in theaters in 3D

We saw Coraline^[IMDB][wiki] the other day. It was shown in one of the new digitally projected 3D systems at our local multiplex.

Wow.

I was very taken with the book by Neil Gaiman, who is one of my favorite authors. It is a simple story about a young girl who feels neglected by her workaholic parents. They move to an old house that has been divided into flats, taking the large flat for their own. While exploring the house, Coraline (not Caroline!) finds a locked door in the parlor that appears at first to open onto a brick wall. Later, she finds it opens into another world where her "other" mother and father dote on her. They seem a little creepy, an effect enhanced by having large black buttons sewn in place of their eyes. She can stay, but only if she consents to have the buttons herself.... Read the book and you'll never look at buttons the same way again.

The movie actually extends the story beyond the book in several ways, and it does it without breaking it. In fact, the film's version of the story is better at least as handled on screen. The writers added an entire new character and improved the depth of the back story of the villainess. They even managed to fit a musical number in that was written (but not performed) by They Might be Giants.

Given that it was directed by Henry Selick (who directed Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach, and Monkey Bone) the stop-motion animation is as striking as could be expected. More striking is the delicate use of 3D projection. The 3D was used to give extra depth to the scenery without abusing the audience. It was not used as a gimmick. There is a hint of the effort expended on the animation in a short segment after the credit roll that shows a sequence shot from a wider angle and without any of the clamps or wires removed. There was some CGI used, but mostly for cleanups and wire removal.

In short, see this movie.

Valuable, Open Content Creation Tools

As a software developer, I am certainly no enemy of commercial software. However, the quality of some of the free and open source alternatives has been giving their commercial competitors quite a run for their money. This is especially true for the casual or occasional user. It would be extremely difficult to justify a complete set of professional-level commercial tools just to support a hobby, but when the price is $0, the question is more one of learning curve and disk space.

Adobe has always had a large market share of the paint and drawing markets with Photoshop and Illustrator. They invented the PostScript page description language and the closely related PDF file format. They are the current owners of the high-end publishing system FrameMaker, and recently became the owners of the widely used Shockwave and Flash tools. For each of these niche products, a slew of "almost as good" commercial competitors have also been around for a while, but the open source community has been a lot slower to catch up.

Here are a few free alternatives that should be on the radar:

The GIMP is a paint tool that has overcome its anti-Windows roots to become a widely used and extremely powerful competitor to Photoshop. I haven't personally used it (when I had the chance to adopt it instead of Photoshop, its developers were still exceedingly hostile to the idea that it would ever run on Windows, so I bought Photoshop instead) but reviews and testimonials make it pretty clear that it must be taken seriously. If I were new to the market today, I would strongly consider buying Lightroom from Adobe for its RAW file handling and lightweight DAM capabilities and installing the GIMP for use on larger editing tasks such as stubborn corrections and montage.

Inkscape is a vector graphic drawing tool that set out to be the both the best possible drawing environment it could and the best example of a full-featured editor for the SVG file format. It is well on its way to succeeding on both fronts. I had tried using Corel Draw in the dark ages (under Windows 3.0, IIRC) and never got hooked. Inkscape lacks the easy templates and shapes of Visio, but then it isn't primarily a diagramming tool, and Visio was never intended to be an art and illustration tool.

Scribus is clearly aiming to become the best available professional publishing tool. This is not for casual users. But if you had a budget and would be considering FrameMaker, taking a good hard look at Scribus might pay for a fair amount of pizza and coffee. I have used FM (it was standard at a customer's site in 1988) but I haven't personally used Scribus (yet) so I'm basing this impression on reviews and testimonials. FM in 1988 was complicated, huge, heavy, expensive, and exceedingly reliable when producing huge technical manuals. FM today is more complicated and no less expensive. Of course, if having a GUI is not critical, then the clear winner over both is probably LaTeX. A good distribution that runs well under Windows is free from MiKTeX.

Blender is one other tool that deserves a mention, although I have not had the chance to even give it a test run yet. It describes itself as a "free open source 3D content creation suite." It seems to have an extremely complete set of modeling, rendering and animation features.

XKCD on Anathem

Today's XKCD is a review, of sorts, of Neal Stephenson's new novel Anathem. Randal seems concerned about the amount of invented vocabulary required for basic comprehension of the story.

While sympathetic to Randal's point, I suspect he hasn't devoted quite enough attention span to get what Stephenson is actually up to in this one. It is the sort of book where putting it down too soon will make it impossible to pick up. Being set in an entirely distinct culture it requires a fair amount of context and vocabulary to keep the alien flavor. Although, if you are well-read in the right topics, a lot of what is said will sound isomorphic to things you already know.

Read in the right frame of mind, it might even teach some hard to explain ideas about the nature of consciousness. There is an interesting riff relating the solving of an abstract problem to the collapsing of a wave function, and a different spin on the many-worlds explanation of quantum mechanics that almost made sense.

As I write this, I've read about 3/4 of Anathem, and it clearly is worth the attention I've paid it.

As proof that XKCD does get it in general, I present the previous comic, which demonstrates the power of a log scale to collapse the entire universe to a comprehensible size...

There's always time for the comics!

Here's another couple of web comics mentioned today at Questionable Content:

Schlock Mercenary

Sci-Fi silliness. Over 3000 strips so far, one a day, with no missed days. The artist says he wants to hit 10000 at a minimum, so it won't be disappearing any time soon. I've just started reading at the beginning, and it looks promising. Nothing even PG so far, and probably safe to open in an office.

Main page: http://www.schlockmercenary.com/

1st strip: http://www.schlockmercenary.com/d/20000612.html

Gunnerkrigg Court

Manga in high style, from the glimpses I got between server crashes. I have no clue what the story is about due to the server crashes, but the art I saw was impressive.

Main page: http://www.gunnerkrigg.com/

1st strip: http://www.gunnerkrigg.com/archive_page.php?comicID=1

Others I've mentioned before

Consider this a reminder that QC (http://questionablecontent.net/) is worth watching... do start near the beginning or the most recent strips won't make sense at all. Be sure to watch out for the daily specials.

And, having now read about half the story so far, I can say that Girly (http://go-girly.com/) is not actually as NC-17 as its advertisers are on average, but it certainly rates a strong R and does feature a complete lack of ambiguity about the hero and her sidekick's sexual preferences. And kittens. And a twisted genius veterinarian.

Also, today's XKCD is a riot. http://xkcd.com/469/

A recent XKCD strip (http://www.xkcd.com/463/) was featured as a summary of problems with Diebold (now operating under some other name) voting machines in Ohio on the infamous RISKS-L list (http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/25.29.html#subj3.1). Apparently there was anti-virus software on the voting machines!?