I would expect that the PIN digits have a quite good random distribution. Although impractical at the ATM point a smartened brute force attack could effectively work provided you have some machinery at home.Assuming that the distribution of the dirt per finger (or the distribution of cleaning factor per finger) is flat then the ATM pad at the gasoline station where I usually refuel my car provides some odd evidences.
The numeric pad has some keys clearly cleaner than others – ‘7’ and the square ‘5’, ‘6’, ‘2’ and ‘3’ are much more clean than the rest.
The site of the days is also the application of the day: GNU Talk Filters. Moreover cleans up the mistery about how Zom3 PE0pl3 sUCc33dZ pErZYZt3N7lY IN wRYT!n6 l1cE Th!S.
90% of Research
According to a recent tv-ad 90% of research is funded by pharmaceutical corporations. Maybe this data is a little overestimated, nonetheless it is still astonishing. In other words the research for health and cure is privately founded. I wonder to which extent this is good. I mean the logic driving the research for health preservation and recovering is the logic of the Return of Investment, the dividend and share logic. The same logic that led one of the German pharmaceutical giant during the WWII to produce (and sell to the government) the infamous zyklon-B gas used to kill millions of people in concentration camps.
If you google around in internet for these terms you’ll find more than one reason to be concerned. Even if trusting the human nature, it is not possible to not doubt whether such research could find inexpensive treatments for any disease. What if something could be simply let pass, or just a spoonful of water and sugar is fine?
Leaving aside these gloomy thoughts, the link of the day is to Sibling Rivalry: C and C++ a pdf paper from B. Stroustrup detailing the source of incompatibilities between C99 and C++89 and the parallel evolution of these languages that aimed to be one.
Train of Shame
Speaking about High Speed Train (or T.A.V. Treno Alta Velocità), what about reaching the Moderate Speed level first? What about an Acceptable Level of Service?
Italian commuters experience daily delays ranging from ten-twenty minutes or longer. Because of the inability of the train drivers to stop at the same point every morning, it is impossible for commuters to optimize the space on the platform and minimize the time for climbing-in. Because of the insufficient number of wagons, commuters are forced to uncomfortably stand pressed against each other for all the needed time…
Enjoy your holidays
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all my readers!
Norway travel log
Last summer travel to Norway has been thoroughly described in my [../downloads/Diario_Norvegia_2005.pdf|Summer 2005 Norway log] (Italian only).
On Strike
Tomorrow in Italy there will be a general strike. Workers from all categories will go on strike to protest against the financial law and the current government.I am (not alone I suppose) not very happy of how things are going in Italy now. Let’s make it clear, it is not just a matter of what happened in the last 5 years (at least not only for these), it is a disaster ongoing since a long ago.
So I was faced with a dilemma, I would have liked to go on strike to send a message I have had enough, but if I go on strike I damage the company I’m working for. I have no reasons to demonstrate against my employer, so a strike would be wrong.
Also I noticed that the information about the reasons of the strike of tomorrow have been barely reported by the national media. So I’m a bit worried that what is going to happen tomorrow will be mostly ignored or reduced.
On the other hand I think it is wrong to say anything and silently accept what is happening. So I decided to write here my protest.
I’d like to be proud of being italian, I’d like to live in a country where meritocracy and freedom are the drivers of economy, industry and research, where justice is granted by the system, where the public services both in the medical and in the education fields work at high standards, where the government is a service to the people, not the contrary.
I could emigrate in another country, I had some good opportunities in this direction, but even if I could, why it should be me to leave my country? This is my country! I never did anything wrong so why should I go in exile?
Anyway, this is my angry voice – give us back a good place to live in!
Today conspiration theory
You may have noticed that the new euro coins are no longer made of iron as the old liras were. This is a clear intent behind this choice! They do want we are no longer able to recover lost coins from wells, fountains, trapdoors, tunnels, grates through the clever application of rope and magnets. And the consequence is clear: They have developed a new kind of magnet able to attract euro coins alloy!
Alive
I just realized how much time is past since the last time I updated my blog. While writing the new php code for my blog I was driven by the idea that soon everything would have been ready and that I could start again writing on-line. This is somewhat related to the 99% ready syndrome. Everything seems to be nearly complete, really it misses just few bits here and there… but the time flies.
So, what happened? Apart from writing, I completed Broken Sword – the Sleeping Dragon, Baudolino and Peopleware. I managed another round of WindowsXP vs Intel 2200 wireless adapter. But I have not (yet) completed the new blog code, therefore I wait before updating my blog with all my brilliant thoughts about.
Stay tuned.
Train of mysteries
There are things the go beyond the reach of the human intellect and challenge the human wit. To reach the workplace I use a local train from a local private company. Now riding a train on long standing railway should be a pretty well defined business. By itself a train is quite a deterministic object. There are no traffic jams, commuters are, more or less, always the same, waiting for the carriages about in the same position along the track.
So why a train should be late on a daily basis? The only chance that comes to mind is the time table being wrong. But if the time table has just been changed then it couldn’t be the cause.
But the mysteries don’t stop here. For example, an empty train should be a lot more expensive to ride than a full one. At least for the incontestable fact that a paying commuter bring to the company more money than an empty seat. So the mystery is why everyday an empty train (the (in)famous) Malpensa Express) travels in front of thousands of depressed commuter eyes without letting them in?
The idea is that the Malpensa Express is for travellers going to and from the Malpensa airport. Nonetheless is an empty train that eats up railway time and space (and this is very scarce being a single track railway). On the contrary the commuters train is usually full, reaching its destination hardly with the space for a pin.
Another interesting mystery is how the delay statistics are computed. The mean delay which entitles commuters for a (little) refund is computed as the mean of the delays for the same railway line. Apart that the same commuter hardly spreads her rides uniformly on all the trains, but the damage that the company is causing to the society for the bad service is bound to the delay per person. I mean an empty train late is basically causing no problem, since no one is arriving late at the workplace. On the contrary a train carrying one thousands people late for 5 minutes is causing 5 thousands minutes of delay to the society considered as a whole.
Back from Holidays
Hello my readers, I’m just back from holidays – two weeks on the amazing Dolomiti mountains in Upper Badia Valley and six days in London. Some pics should appear soon (a matter of days) in the photoalbum page. In the meantime I read Ken Follet’s The Key to Rebecca, which proved to be a nice spy story; and continued in the reading of Erik Bethke’s Game Development and Production. Although I’m about at 1/3 of the book I found it very very good to recommend to anyone involved in the development of a videogame be it an amateurish or professional environment.