AgPerson

Perhaps it is a measure of confidence in this day and age. The Orange County delegation to the United States Macabbeah games, this kinda Jewish olympics thing for kids, has decided to not wear the t-shirts that they’ve already purchased and printed. Why? Because they are going on a plane, and there are 40 of them, and the shirts say “JCC” (Jewish Community Center) and, although I’m not certain, probably have a Star of David or some such symbol on them.


We have federalized airport screeners, massive lines, triple ID checks, armed military personnell, bomb-sniffing dogs, the works, and people are still not comfortable traveling on planes. So I guess our security measures, for all their hassle, are not working.


I try to take a more logical view of the thing. The Arab terrorists tend to follow certain patterns, scouting locations, having patience, taking a long time to make sure they get it right. They aren’t prone to random killings, they like doing things that are big. I would not worry about traveling on an airplane over the next year or so. The terrorists are smart enough to know that there are plenty more much less protected targets for them to blow up.


Ya know, we talk about government excess and mismanagement, and I talk about outdated systems and stupid old procedures. My dad tells me about an article he read that examined the FBI mentality, part of which is the idea that “real” cops don’t use computers. With all of this wonderful tracking technology, super-duper spyware, powerful censorware, great snooping and sniffing tools, our government is no good at targeting the people who matter. Is it that they are incompetent? Should I stop worrying about infringements of liberty, and instead worry about how crappy our spy agencies are?


Or perhaps I should look to the failed war on drugs and other initiatives with no clear goals or aims but to use huge amounts of money to make the public feel warm and fuzzy. For how much I hate the idea of running the government like a for-profit enterprise, I seem to keep finding myself agreeing with those people who think that we need real accountability, and perhaps the best way of getting it is through a true free-market approach. As in, no sweet deals, no politics, just results.

Apollo 13 on IMAX comes out that day…this I have to see. Awesome!!!

A study by the University of New Hampshire of college students says women are as violent as men toward their partners.

The Family Research Laboratory study suggests that when only one partner is violent, it is twice as likely to be the woman.

http://www.nbc5.com

Red-light cameras actually cause an increase in rear-end accidents. The pro-camera forces know this and are trying to keep you from seeing the data. Part 4 in a series.

Weekly Standard

Aunt Linda gave me as a birthday present a trip to the play Always, Patsy Cline. First let me say I’m not a fan of country music (I had to go look up Patsy’s name just now to make sure I was getting the spelling right). I could tell from the title that this was going to be some kind of a Patsy Cline retrospective, with lots of extraneous singing. When we got there my suspicions were confirmed and I became even more worried: the play had two actors, a five-piece band, and about two dozen country songs.

I’m not in to country, I know nothing about Patsy Cline, yet the play was perfectly tolerable. First off, Sally Struthers, as Louise, was completely charming and witty. The woman who played Patsy sang all her songs quite well and in a style I can only assume is her way of singing. The story centered on Louise and her boring life, hilighted by one day spent with her personal queen of country.

A few times during the play Sally looked at me, one time I was sure she winked. She did a dance number with an older gentleman named Rudy during the first half, and then at the end she came to the edge of the stage (I was in the front row) and shook my hand. 🙂

She was charming, and I had never seen any of her acting before. And for some reason she took an interest in me. Which was kinda funny, seeing as, while I was into much of the show, I wasn’t into the ever-present song and dance.

Oh, we also ate at a nice italian place that was so verrrry slow. I had some of their “world famous” cookies, and they were pretty sad. But the Creme Brulie was quite good. 🙂 And I know I spelled it wrong.

Its a funny thing about airports. It’s probably because I bought my ticket the day before on Priceline. I got my bags extra screened, my person extra screened, but, for some reason, the guy checking the bags (after they got through the x-ray machines) neglected the big central compartment housing my computer. I mean, why would I put a bomb in the magazine and paper pockets? Oh, well.

I’m sure I’m being singled out because of the method and timing of my ticket purchase, but I still like to think its because I’m the only passenger who is happy and nice to the staff.

So what am I going, you ask, and why? Well, the thing is, all summer I’ve wanted to take a jaunt back to Brandeis and meet up with people and places. And then Adam suggested I jet back, and offered me a free room, and offered to pick me up and drive me around. Cool! So although Robin is gone to Switzerland and there aren’t a terrible amount of people I know who are handing around campus, I jumped onto the web and looked for some tickets for the next day. Well, Travelocity promised the best rates, and on every one of them when I clicked through the tickets were sold out or restricted to a week from now. Southwest offered tickets for, I think, about $550. Which would not be worth it for a fun five day jaunt. So I tried Priceline, typed in $329, and ten minutes later got an email telling me to pack my bags.

So I did, and here I am in Pittsburgh, on my way to good old Waltham. What’ll I do when I get there? Meet up with Jon, prolly, and say hi to some folks and bug Rich Graves and hang out with Adam and Dave and Aaron. And we’ll talk about computers and web stuff. And they’ll probably make me sit down and get all the bugs out of my new site template so it can be switched over. And all will be merry.

Oh, and of course, I will see Sally! Yay!

I watched Gosford Park on the ride here, and it was great, and I had on closed captioning so I could understand some of it and so that the lady in the next seat could watch, and they guy in front of me kept banging back into his seat and putting it further back, and I swear he was trying to kill my computer, and I got here, and I ran around trying to find the terminal, and now I’m about to board the flight, which is leaving late, even though US Air won’t acknowledge it. Oh, I mean US Airways. Musn’t forget they changed their name a little while back to improve their image. But for some reason they insist on spelling it U(dot)S AIRWAYS, which is stupid. The dot is in the middle, where a dash would be. And I don’t know why they can’t put a dot after the “S” as well, but I guess “United” stands for something and “States” doesn’t and then we can spell out Airways. Right.

Before I left I went to Shaina’s last video class at Tarbut V’Torah and got to see much of their little movie, which was pretty well done considering the roudiness of the class. Then Mom and Shaina accompanied me to lunch and then the Orange County Airport. So that is what I’ve done to get into this strange journey.

Nothing more to say now. Gotta board!

It took a few reloads, but I think all is well is OSXServerland right now. If AgBlog stays up, that will confirm it. 🙂 I will say this: FileMaker + big important company database = loads of hurt. Trust me, I’ve been there.

No new points, but a very good introduction for the layperson of the evils of copy-protection.

Why are people getting sick of The West Wing? Because The West Wing has gotten smug. And Sorkin puts stupid things in his scripts. Like his talk about artists as just people who captivate their audiences, as opposed to, say, caring. Here is the TWoP response:

A person who cares only about captivating his audience isn’t an artist at all — he’s an entertainer. The truth is the foundation of every artist’s work. An artist captivates his audience in the way he interprets the truth, even as he bends our perceptions of it to include impossible, supernatural elements, even as he sets it to music, even as he turns it inside out, paints it with the perspectives all out of kilter, and covers it in elephant poo — even as he denies that there is even such a thing as truth. All the dead artists in the world are collectively spinning in their graves at the suggestion that, like Sorkin, they were all just telling their “little stories.” Those little stories, and paintings, and plays, and symphonies, and poems, and yes, television shows have shaped every single culture on this planet, and in some cases, are all we have left of them. If Sorkin is afraid to be a part of that because he’s afraid of getting it wrong, or afraid that people won’t understand, or if he’s just afraid to — oh, I don’t know — grow a pair and take his critical lumps just like every other artist and learn from it, then fine. We lose a talented mind with an interesting view of the truth, and he loses the right to call himself an artist. But I will not just sit here and say nothing as he tries to drag the rest of the art world down with him. Hundreds of artists throughout the world and across time have been censored, imprisoned, exiled, and executed, and it wasn’t because they were simply trying to “captivate” people. It happens because, to put it in Sorkinese, sometimes an artist stands up, too. And they accept the consequences when their perceptions of the truth get them in trouble because they were wrong, or more frequently, because they were right. And finally, nothing an artist produces is as captivating as the way he shows us his truth. Nothing.

I love Television Without Pity. They just have a way of saying things that other people could never quite say right.

This evening I went to the Marketplace with the idea that I’d eat at Corner Bakery but nothing else planned. I knew there weren’t any movies there that I’d want to see, so I just ordered my standard order (combo – 1/2 chicken pomodori panina, a bowl of chili, and a raspberry bar for dessert). I went out on the patio and listened to some very nice music by the live band. I was given my order almost immediately, which was cool, and for some reason they gave me both my soup and a WHOLE chicken sandwich. So I packed up half to bring home…I was gonna tell someone they should be more careful but they were all very busy when I walked back in, and I heard someone else ordering a combo and being told that she gets half a sandwich, so I guess it was just a fluke.

Anyway, I was sitting on this patio on a nice warm night listening to a band sing Van Morrison and Stevie Ray Vaughan and I’m delicately cradling my grilled panini and popping garlicky crisps into my mouth and I feel completely and utterly contented, without feeling overly snotty. Okay, I know this makes no sense, but I was eating this food that made me feel very calm and good and content but not snobby but not common or lowly. I can’t describe it, it just felt so…so clean and correct.

Anyway, I left there after they finished the set and walked over to Barnes & Noble. I was reading David Brin’s wonderful The Transparent Society about liberties and freedom. He talks about something that a few years ago I was a big advocate of but in recent times I have forgot about — it is the reason I started this blog, the reason why I think blogs are the way of the future. It is the idea that some privacy invasion can often be tolerated when it is reciprocal.

The wearable computer, my erstwhile goal in life, now just a hobby as I’ve sadly moved on…allowing anyone to have cheap digital wear, including a camera that sees what they see and that transmits records to a secure location, using GSM phone frequencies or whatever, so that everyone is watching everyone else. It is encrypted, watermarked, timestamped, and safe, so it is true, verified, and absolutely beyond refrute, but only the recorder has access to it. The crimes of rape, of murder, theft, of muggings…anything where you comfront another person, they would all be drastically reduced. What, everyone’s going to wear a ski mask everywhere? Even when other forms of identification can be sensed, other biometric readings taken?

An open society is desiable over Ashcroft’s closed one, over the society of the Taliban and all the other terrible evils of the world, the evils that we hate but start to gradually become. And wearables would make society open.

Similarily, logging is essential to everything. If someone looks at my credit rating, I want an email telling me who, where, and when. Brin goes a step further with the wonderful assertion that, as we know, security through obscurity is no security at all, and that the ultimate solution for security is transparency of logging. If someone breaks in, as they will always do, the best thing to know is who they are, where they came from, how they broke in, and what they saw. We can’t stop break-ins all together, more firewalls will never compensate for lax passwords. Logging is our best hope.

Again, it has to be timestamped and digitally signed and verified and stored off-location. I think the most important step forward right now will be a completely independent and completely trustworthy digital identity verification system. I’m thinking someone buys an island and starts a country with the sole idea of it being a security capitol. They are accountable to no government or agency, but their operation, including all financials, all employees, everything they do, is completely open to review, voluntairily. The moment they start to throw up veils of secrecy is the day they are supplanted by another trustworthy carrier.

They need to make and distribute free powerful digital signature programs. And all the programs and protocols should be completely open, free, and verified by experts. They should establish a trust metric and a server trust system. They should give trust to local branches, and revoke trust if wrongdoing is uncovered or suspected. People should gain online reputations using real trust metrics.

We have PGP, but it hasn’t caught on. We have various document storage and delivery services, but none are standardized. We need someone to start with, say, the PGP standard, make an easy to use client for all platforms, and start providing verified timestamped authenticaed secured storage at a small cost per megabyte.

Think about it. What would it change? Well, everything that you sign, everything that you buy with credit or check or debit, every time you show your drivers license, every time you verify that something is real and authentic…any time you want to make sure there is no tampering. All of these things would be changed. And police brutality. And rape. And murder. Reduced, removed, taken out of style. Computer crime, wire fraud, breaking contracts, failure to pay, all gone. Yet we can still maintain limited and powerful privacy zones, zones similar to those, to again cite Brin, used in voting. Wherein intense verification takes place, but once you get past the checkpoints, your vote is your own and is anonymous. This would be an amazing leap, and I can see it within ten to fifteen years. Perhaps I’ll have to play a part in it.

When Farscape does a shout-out to both Buffy and Smallville (well, at least Superman). Total coolness.

First the study that says people who sleep longer will die sooner, then this report that sleeping longer and taking nice hour naps will improve memory and concentration. So a shorter smarter life, or a longer stupider one? *Sigh* maybe I’ll sleep on it.

I’m seeing it at Vivendi, and its really sad — a huge corporation dying due to it reaching too far. Well, here is a great article on AOL Time Warner, focused, as usual, around stock price.

Richard D. Parsons, AOL’s new chief executive, must combat the bitterness and resentment that Time Warner employees have toward their sister division at AOL.

New York Times (free registration required)

…kids really can change the world. Yay!

Link is to a Real Audio file from All Things Considered on NPR. It’ll only work if you have the evil Real Player installed.

It makes a nice story.

“From this day forward, the millions of our schoolchildren will daily proclaim in every city and town, every village and every rural schoolhouse, the dedication of our nation and our people to the Almighty.”

– President Dwight D. Eisenhower, upon signature of the 1954 law that added the words “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance.

And we’re just now thinking about the constitutionality of this?

With Mac OS X I’ve tried to move away from any reliance on Microsoft products. Not just because in general I don’t like the company, but because I hate being locked in to proprietry formats like those MS likes to spew forth.

For email I’m now having all of my correspondance forward to my @brandeis.edu account, and am using the free Unix utility procmail to filter it all into folders. No more bloated MS Entourage with its filters.

I want to use Address Book, but I’m gonna wait until Jaguar comes out in a few months, the new Mac OS X with a bette address book.

For word processing I use TextEdit and BBEdit, but for essays I still have to use Word…for now, until I take the time to learn the open TeX format.

For web I use OmniWeb and Mozilla, both of which rock in their own ways.

I use Adium for chat. No AOL ads!!!

What is great about all of these apps (with the exception maybe of Mozilla) is that they are very specialized for what they do, concentrating on doing one thing very well instead of doing a million things poorly. This is The Unix Way(tm) and I really like it.

All of these apps are also very customizable so that I am getting exactly the experience I want when I open them.

I guess most non-nerds, ie the majority of my readership doesn’t really care about all of this, but I just love being able to flip open my laptop and have all of my apps sitting there working exactly the way I want them. I don’t need to conform to a Microsoft way of doing things, my apps should conform to how I want to do things.

I completely agree with the 9th circuit decision, I have believed the pledge should be consisdered unconstitutional since I seriously though about it (about when I entered high school), and, correspondingly, I have refused to say it since that time. I challenge anyone to provide me with one legitimate reason why the phrase “under god” should be legal and should be in our national pledge. The only reason it was put in there was to differentiate America from the godless Commies, and it was a really stupid feel-good measure at the time that never should have lasted this long. I don’t live under YOUR GOD. And if your argument even mentions that our currency uses the phrase “In God We Trust” I will just have to ignore you — since when do two wrongs make a right?

I was trying to make this point, although a lot less eloquently, during a 10th grade discussion in Ms. Ryan’s English class. I was very suprised that this kind of view wasn’t commonly spoken. I think the reason is that the people who have it were not yet of age to write about it, and its just now getting attention:

Can a new generation of gender-blind Powerpuffs conquer inequality simply by optimistically refusing to recognize its existence? For many girls today, this approach seems to work. They don’t cry out against inequality; they simply take for granted that the world will treat them fairly — and in some cases the world seems to follow suit. “Of course I should be able to play football, or wrestle,” they tell us nonchalantly, as if suggesting otherwise is downright absurd — and it is, isn’t it?

http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2002/07/02/powerpuff/

One of my fun jobs at MP3.com is reviewing hardware. I’m pretty proud of this one.