Reverse Double Dutch Auction

Seems like an interesting idea for Courier World.  Description of a Double Dutch Auction from (Introducing interaction-based auctions into a model agent-based e-commerce system—preliminary considerations):

This auction is relatively counterintuitive and in
its basic version works like this (based on [1]): a buyer
price clock starts ticking at a very high price and continues
downward. At some point the buyer stops the clock
and bids on the unit at a favorable price. At this point
a seller clock starts upward from a very low price and
continues to ascend until stopped by a seller (who offers
product at that price). Then the buyer clock resumes in a
downward direction, followed by the seller clock moving
upward. Trading is over when the two prices cross
(purchase is made at the crossover point).

 

So a reverse version would be the above just in reverse.

 

Using Twitter as a proxy for malicious intent

Today I went to a security talk and the speaker gave a demonstration of how when you tweet a link various “robots” will follow the link and index it and do other things.  He gave a couple of example of what could be done.  One example was tweeting links to login forms with valid user id but invalid password.  Since most login forms will lock the user out after some number of tries this will annoy users.  Especially since based on his research the links will be revisited long into the future.  So, the user may have to reset their password multiple times.  If you had all of the usernames one could lockout all of the users without anyone knowing it was you who did it.

He also was trying to actually figure out whether it was a human that actually attempted to load the link.  So, he discovered that different browsers have a certain cut off on the number of 403 redirects it will handle before quitting.  However, he has found that many bots will just continue to follow the redirects.

He also showed some other cool hacks.  The spring lunch group went out with a bang :)!

Gene Patenting

Today, April 15 2013, Supreme Court will hold oral arguments on the following question:  can one get a patent to gain the exclusive right to do research on specific genes that have been taken out of the body?

 

Myriad Genetics, Inc., has obtained several federal patents on “isolated” forms of two genes.   On the one hand, Myriad claims that it was entitled to patents on its isolation technology because it did something that no one previously had been able to do, and its legal papers have claimed that this took “an enormous amount of human judgment, including how to define the beginning and end of these genes.”

 

On the other hand, those who oppose patenting of isolated genes claim that Myriad did not create anything new, since the genes remained the natural material they had inside the human body, unchanged, and patents cannot legally be given to “natural phenomena” or something that is merely the product of “the laws of nature.”

 

For a discussion of the legal issues, see

http://www.scotusblog.com/2013/04/argument-preview-the-right-to-study-genes/
For a discussion of some of the implications of the case, see

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-12/biotech-industry-at-stake-in-human-gene-patent-decision.html

 

I got this in a new email I subscribe to.  Crazy thing is that back in 2007 I wrote an essay on how I think patenting genes is illegal.  This argument has been going on for a very long time.

https://www.box.com/s/77lg40s26ktive6kqrm1