Month: August 2008

Texas Hold-Em Scrabble

Probably inspired by the recent and unfortunate demise of the ‘Scrabulous’ word game on Facebook, I came up with another variant version of the original board game, based on a fusion with a popular version of poker.

For the most part, it is the same as normal; rules on scoring of letters, how words can be placed, and so forth remain. The big difference is that there are three face-up tiles beside the board. People can use any combination of their seven tiles and the three tiles to make a word on the board. Once the three letters are down and everybody has seven of their own, a three minute timer is started. Whoever can come up with the highest scoring word then gets to place it on the board. Players can use pads of paper to write down possible words and their corresponding scores, if desired. The same person can theoretically go time after time, replacing their own letters and the three upward facing letters every time a word is placed.

Normally, each player subtracts the value of their remaining letters from their score, when the first player runs out of tiles and can draw no more from the bag. (Also, if a player manages to use all seven of their letters in their final turn, they get to add the value of everyone else’s tiles to their score.) A fairer system, for this variant, might be to require that a player use all remaining upright tiles, as well as their own, to earn the bonus from the remaining tiles of others.

[Update: 6 August 2008] Tonight, Gabe, Emily, and I played the first ever game of Scrabble Hold-Em. The experience made it clear that a few rules needed to be refined.

Here are some updates:

  1. There are two variants to the game. In one, the three upright letters in the ‘hold’ change every time a word is put down, getting randomly exchanged for others in the bag. In the other version, only letters used to form words are replaced from the bag. Players choose which version they want to play before the game begins.
  2. In the event that two people have words of equal value, the word with the highest value letter will win (like a high card in poker). If the highest letters are tied, the second highest are used, and so forth. If all letters are tied, a coin will be flipped.
  3. The game ends when one player clears their rack, regardless of whether face-up tiles remain in the ‘hold.’
  4. A one minute time limit makes for a very hectic sort of game.
  5. Because it is harder to make ten letter words than seven letter words, a ‘Bingo’ is worth 75 points. This is awarded to a player who uses all seven of their own tiles, as well as the three in the ‘hold.’

Overall, this game made me feel more as though this could be a good variant upon the original game. It would be excellent if other people could try it and leave comments here.

Human Health in a Changing Climate

Health Canada has followed up the climate change impact assessment carried out by Natural Resources Canada with a report of their own: Human Health in a Changing Climate: A Canadian Assessment of Vulnerabilities and Adaptive Capacity. For some bizarre reason, they have decided not to post it on their website. Rather, it is available through email upon request. To simplify matters, here it is:

When I have the chance, I will merge them all into one file and post it.

[Update: 19 August 2008] Here is the whole thing as one 9 megabyte PDF: Human Health in a Changing Climate: A Canadian Assessment of Vulnerabilities and Adaptive Capacity.

[Update: 1 January 2012] Here is just the overview page as an image file.

Passphrases should be universal

One of the most annoying things about maintaining good password procedures is the fact that various places have different requirements. Some sites I use require one capital letter and one special character (100%Beef!), whereas others forbid special characters but require numbers. Many places have minimum password lengths, while a few especially annoying ones have relatively short maximum password lengths. Relatively few permit you to use a passphrase.

The best option would be to permit an unlimited string, including whatever punctuation and special characters are desired. Using a string basically foils brute force attacks, as the result of the sheer number of combinations. A hardcore password like “Sz5XULBKwPtI” is probably no more secure (and certainly much less memorable) than a custom phrase like: “The thing I most enjoyed about Paris, France was having picnics in the evenings.” Even if you only permit letters and numbers, each additional character increases the maximum possible length of a brute force search by a factor of 36: 62 if the passphrase is case sensitive.

Attacks not based on brute force (such as those where keystrokes are logged or passwords are otherwise intercepted) can naturally be carried out regardless of the strength of the password itself. What a passphrase system would allow is a high degree of security along with lessened requirements for obscure memorization. All it would take is a few minor code changes here and there, after all.

Greyhound bus security

Having spent much of the last week waiting for or riding on Greyhound buses, all the news stories about the man who was beheaded on one caught my eye. Some people are calling for airport-style screening procedures for buses. There are at least two reasons for which this is inappropriate.

The first concerns the mobility of buses. With a plane under their control, hijackers can fly to distant states that might assist them. The only way to stop them is to shoot down the plane, killing everyone on board. Buses are comparatively easy to stop. You can shoot out the tires, put spiky strips across the road, or simply block the route with something heavy. Nobody is likely to escape to sunny Cuba on a hijacked bus. Another element of mobility is multiple stops. Bus companies would need to (a) put security at every permitted stop (b) only allow people on at big bus stations or (c) allow some unscreened people aboard buses. Someone determined to commit a violent act on a bus could take advantage of (c), while (a) and (b) would seriously inconvenience people at many smaller stops.

The second is that someone in control of an ordinary plane can kill a lot of people. They can certainly kill everyone on board. They can also kill many people on the ground. Similar risks do not exist in relation to buses. At the very most, someone with a machine gun or explosive device could kill most of the people on board. There is no clear situation where being on a bus increases the amount of harm a person can do. Someone who wants to kill a particular person can do it at least as easily off a bus as on it; the same is true for someone who just wants to kill people at random.

There is certainly a certain risk of violence on board a bus, but that does not mean that excluding weapons is a sensible use of resources. For one thing, it would increase bus fares substantially and require the redesign of bus stations. For another, it isn’t clear that it wouldn’t simply displace any violence that was to occur to a different venue. Living among humans naturally entails risks, which we can mitigate to greater or lesser degrees in various ways. Reducing risk always involves some kind of cost: sometimes in money, sometimes in freedom. The level of news coverage this incident is receiving highlights just how slight a risk this actually is. The kind of risks that make the news aren’t the sort to worry about, since they are rare by definition. It’s the stuff that is too common to constitute news that you really need to fear: things like domestic violence and heart disease, for instance. Screening bus passengers is not an intelligent use of our resources.