Nothing to hide?

In this short essay, written for a symposium in the San Diego Law Review, Professor Daniel Solove examines the nothing to hide argument. When asked about government surveillance and data mining, many people respond by declaring: "I've got nothing to hide." According to the nothing to hide argument, there is no threat to privacy unless the government uncovers unlawful activity, in which case a person has no legitimate justification to claim that it remain private. The nothing to hide argument and its variants are quite prevalent, and thus are worth addressing. In this essay, Solove critiques the nothing to hide argument and exposes its faulty underpinnings.

link (pdf)

Alternate link

Ideas Venn

Control Senile Agitation

Powershell - get modified files only (mofio) from subversion

# Get modified files only
function mofio {
    param([string]$rev="HEAD")
    $url = ([xml](svn info --xml)).info.entry.url 
    $cmd = "svn diff -r $($rev):HEAD --summarize --xml"
    $files = (get-xpn ([string](Invoke-Expression $cmd))).select('/diff/paths/path[@item="added" or @item="modified"]')
    if (test-path "build") { rd build }
    $files | split-path | sort | uniq | foreach {mkdir "build\$_"}
    $files | foreach {
        $path = $url + "/" + $_.value
        $cmd = "svn export `"$path`" `"build/" + $_.value + "`""
        $cmd = $cmd.Replace('\','/')
        Invoke-Expression $cmd
    }
}

What's another word for...?

This gadget is based on WordNet from Princeton University.

Behind the scenes it uses the new Google App Engine to store and query a database of more than 100,000 synonyms.

If it can't find any synonyms for a word it shows a link to Google search -



Try it out here...



Add it from Google's directory

Arrogance

"Nothing can be so amusingly arrogant as a young man who has just discovered an old idea and thinks it is his own."

- Sidney J. Harris

Texas Hold'em - Do you feel lucky?

Would you go all in against 9 players if you were dealt AA?


Stemming from my current obsession with Texas Hold'em and having some free time while looking for work I've created a web service that returns the chance of winning a hand of Hold'em against 1-9 opponents.

The web service can be found here.

And then I wrapped the web service as a Google Gadget so it can sit on my iGoogle page.

It's not pretty, but it works. So now you can see that holding bullets (AA) against 9 opponents is not even a 1 in 3 chance to win. Don't do it donkey!

Not even four aces guarantees you will win...



Try it out -



You can use the +Google button to add it to your iGoogle page.