My only real complaint about the book is that with so many authors, things don’t always flow as smoothly as they could when moving from chapter to chapter. This is however made up for by the general high quality of the work. In particular, un addition to the authors mentioned above, you’ll also want to make sure to read the sections by Lori MacVittie, Brian Honan and Kevin Riggins.

This book is targeted at decision makers, managers and othesr who need to understand cloud from business view, so if that’s you, I encourage you to read this book. Definitely worth the price.

Ada’s Technical Books is Seattle’s only technical book store located in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. Ada’s specifically carries new, used, & rare books on Computers, Electronics, Physics, Math, and Science as well as hand-picked inspirational and leisure reading, puzzles, brain teasers, and gadgets geared toward the technically minded customer.

From the store’s blog, “Grand Opening: June 11th”

I’ve been helping David and Danielle a little with book selection because they’re good folks and I love great bookstores. I encourage Seattle readers to stop by.

The story of how John Cooke built his arguments against that claim is told in entertaining and accessible depth in “The Tyrannicide Brief” by Geoffrey Robertson.

As his website says, “Geoffrey Robertson QC has been counsel in many landmark cases in constitutional, criminal and media law in the courts of Britain and the commonwealth and he makes frequent appearances in the Privy Council and the European Court of Human Rights.” So he knows what he’s talking about, and he knows how to tell an engaging story.

The principle that no one is above the law is an important one. So today raise a glass and remember John Cooke.

I wrote this review in April of 2008, and failed to post it. Part of my reason is that I have little patience for, and less to say about most experimental fiction. I am in this somewhat like a luddite, unwilling to tolerate experiments which ought to have been kept confined to a laboratory. And so, knowing that this book won a prize worried me greatly, but for reasons which I’ll get to in a moment, I persevered, and I’m glad that I did.

The “lost books” consist of very short stories, usually of a few pages or so. The context, is of course, the Odyssey, and the actions of its heros and villians.

It falls into that class of writing which is simply a delight to read. The stories are beautifully crafted, surprising and casting new lights on old stories.

The richness and character of the writing is exceptional and engaging, all the more so for the origin and nature of the work. As Zachary Mason explains in the introduction, “The Lost Books of the Odyssey” were in fact lost and recovered, in a feat perhaps nearly as impressive for its cryptanalytic acumen as for its literary importance.

It is entirely worth reading, and since I first read it, it has been winning substantial literary prizes, and the New York Times calls it “dazzling.”

Finally, I should mention that Zachary and I were roommates at Miss Hall’s School for Precocious Youth in Arkham, Mass. I would like to offer my most sincere apologies for anything he remembers.

[Updated, fixed a spelling error]

It’s a highly readable first novel by Ari Juels, who is Chief Scientist at RSA Labs. The story is about a cryptographer who discovers an ancient plot involving a secret conspiracy. The ending is a little Stephenson-esque, insofar as it’s abrupt, but I got the feeling that that was authorial intent, not accident.

I enjoyed it, but since I don’t review a lot of fiction, I’m a bit unsure what to say about it. Is it better than Cryptonomicon? It depends how you weigh value per word. I was jolted into writing a short review by the new FTC rules, because I both bought a copy and was given one. I read the one I bought when Ari launched the book at RSA last year, and after I’d read it (but months ago) his publisher sent me a copy. Oh, and Ari’s employer has bought me dinner, but not in the last year. Finally, the link to the book is a non-affiliate link as far as I know. But given the complex messiness of Amazon linkage mechanisms, I’m actually unsure.

Since I haven’t read the copy I was given, and I already had a copy, was I really given anything?

As regular readers know, I regularly disclose such things and have since I started this blog. But as this example shows, putting long and complex rules in place will never cover the messy and emergent chaos which is the world in all its glory.

Anyway, you should buy a copy and read Tetrktys.

]]> http://emergentchaos.com/archives/2009/10/tetraktys-is-the-best-cryptographic-novel-ever.html/feed 0 http://emergentchaos.com/archives/2009/09/podcasts-with-amrit.html http://emergentchaos.com/archives/2009/09/podcasts-with-amrit.html#comments Fri, 25 Sep 2009 10:46:08 +0000 adam http://emergentchaos.com/?p=3217 I had fun recording Beyond the Perimiter Episode 48 and 49 with Amrit.

I think Amrit asked some of the broadest, most complex questions I’ve been asked, and it was hard to keep the episodes short.

Go have a listen!

]]> http://emergentchaos.com/archives/2009/09/podcasts-with-amrit.html/feed 1 http://emergentchaos.com/archives/2009/08/the-myths-of-security-what-the-computer-security-industry-doesnt-want-you-to-know.html http://emergentchaos.com/archives/2009/08/the-myths-of-security-what-the-computer-security-industry-doesnt-want-you-to-know.html#comments Thu, 06 Aug 2009 14:09:16 +0000 Richard http://emergentchaos.com/?p=3186 Continue reading →]]> John Viega recently published a new book: The Myths of Security: What the Computer Security Industry Doesn’t Want You to Know.
It’s a great read, especially if you are new to or are interested in the security industry as a whole. However, even if you are a long term security veteran, you will find it enjoyable.
The book is a series of essays addressing a range of topics from “The Cloud” to the state of the AV industry and everything in between. The essays aren’t long, but they are very thorough. This makes it easy to pick up the book become engaged and learn something quickly.
My only complaint is that the essays around privacy and anonymity. They weren’t nearly as deep as I was either hoping nor on par with the rest of the book. Despite this, the book is excellent and well worth reading. I highly encourage you to pick up a copy.

The root cause of the issue is that the version of the Orwell novels available on the Kindle weren’t authorized editions. When contacted by the owners of Orwell’s copyrights, they deleted the books and refunded customers’ money.

All things considered, Amazon did something approximating a right thing in this matter. They didn’t have the right to sell the novels, and so they pulled the novels from the store and customers, and gave the customers a refund. About the only thing they could have done righter was to give something to the people who thought they had the books. The best thing to give them would have been authorized copies of the books, but store credit would be nice, too.

You can find a New York Times article on it, as well as a CNET article, as well as a Tech Dirt article that brings up the very good point that deleting the books was very likely against the Kindle terms of service, which is why Amazon likely should offer those people something.

Among all the handwringing, there are a number of stupid people — or perhaps people who should just know better — who somehow mutter dark things about how this serves people right for getting a device that has DRM in it. (As if they’ve never owned a DVD.)

Some of these people who should know better might think that I’m somehow in favor of DRM, so let me say that I am not. I am against DRM. I am also against nuclear war, swine flu, totalitarian governments, and bad service in restaurants. I’m also against one or two other things. None of them had anything to do with this little contretemps.

The issue is caused not by DRM, but by cloud computing. The problem is that Amazon has a cloud service in which Kindle customers can keep their e-books on Amazon’s shelf, and shuffle them around to any Kindle-enable device they have (like a Kindle proper, or an iPhone running the Kindle app). Customers can even delete a book from their Kindle and get it back from the cloud at a later date.

The event is that Amazon removed the book from the cloud, not that it had DRM in it. If you are concerned by this, you should be concerned by the cloud service. The cloud service enabled Amazon to respond to a legal challenge by removing customers’ data from the cloud. They didn’t need DRM to do it. In contrast, if iTunes store or the Sony e-book store had improperly sold a book, they wouldn’t be able to revoke it because they don’t have a cloud service as part of the store. (eMusic, incidentally, regularly adds and removes music from their store with the waxing and waning of desire to sell it.)

This is why we need to look at it for what it is, a failure in a business model and in the cloud service. Interestingly, the newly-formed Cloud Security Alliance predicts similar issues in which outside parties cause a cloud provider to shaft its customers. Not bad.

Their prescience is a bit limited because the proposed solution to this problem is to encrypt the cloud data with some fancy key management. That wouldn’t work here for the same reason that DRM isn’t an issue. If I know you have a resource, it doesn’t matter if magic fairies protect it, if I can delete it. It’s still good advice, it just wouldn’t have worked here.

What’s needed is some sort of legal protection for the customers, not technical protection. There are many potential warts here. If the owners of Orwell’s copyrights do not desire any ebooks of his works, it’s hard for Amazon to go buy legal copies for their customers (which would have been the most right thing to do). And it’s hard to argue that the seller shouldn’t do everything in their power to undo a sale they shouldn’t have made.

The correct way to deal with this is through some sort of contract arrangement to protect the customer. (The Cloud Security Alliance is prescient on this, as well.) That contract should be the Terms Of Service between the cloud provider and its customers. As TechDirt pointed out, this was likely a breach of Amazon’s TOS. They’re not supposed to delete books. They said they wouldn’t. Because of this, they owe something to their customers who were on the losing end of this breach of contract beyond the refund. I think ten bucks store credit is fine, myself.

They really need to do something, however, because without doing something, then someday someone will violate their TOS with Amazon and defend it with this breach of the TOS.

However, if you want to cluck your tongue, it should not be about buying goods with DRM, it should be about goods stored in the cloud. Everyone who offers cloud services ought to be clarifying now what they will do to protect their customers against lawsuits from outside parties. It can be crypto or contracts, it doesn’t matter, it just needs to work. This may be the first major cloud-based customer service failure, but it won’t be the last.