How Apple is beating the FBI

One word: openness. 

http://www.wired.com/2016/03/fight-fbi-apple-ditched-secrecy-openness/

Trump the unifier?

"Donald Trump is not a leader or a presidential candidate. He is an outcome, a viral manifestation of a serious malignant illness. He is the mirror of our emptiness, the emptying out that has been happening to our country for a very long time."

True that. 

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/23/donald-trump-campaign-america-unifier-eve-ensler

Millenials Conundrum

I totally agree with this article.

Millennials aren't playing by the boomer's rules that we gen X'rs just kind of grudgingly accepted. They're not buying houses, cars, or even getting married the way that generations before them have.

And why?

Because it can seem pointless, that's why. School costs are insane to account for overruns and a shitty outdated education system. Housing costs are insane so that the boomers can retire. Cars are a burden, not a freedom - when you can live downtown and bike or walk or take transit everywhere.

And why get married when you were likely raised in a broken home, that not only upset and hurt everyone, but financially devastated them too?

It's a no-win raw deal. And the only way to play those kinds of games is not to play at all.

We need to change the rules so these kids can win.

http://www.lifehack.org/304505/recent-research-finds-millennials-are-the-best-educated-yet-worst-paid-generation

Bloom County is Back!

Bloom County is Back!

Election 2008 - A Digital Policy Scorecard

Election 2008 - A Digital Policy Scorecard

from Michael Geist Blog by Michael Geist

As the national election campaign launched five weeks ago, I wrote that "the election presents an exceptional opportunity to raise the profile of digital issues."  While the economy unsurprisingly dominated much of the political discourse, each of the national parties unveiled platforms and positions that included some discussion of digital policy.  With Canadians headed to the polls today, my weekly technology law column (Toronto Star version, Ottawa Citizen version, homepage version) offers a scorecard on each party's digital policy positions.

Conservatives.  The Conservatives were the last party to release their platform, but it included considerable discussion of digital policy issues, including telecommunications, spam, and copyright.  On the telecommunications front, the party committed to preventing companies from charging fees for unsolicited text messages.  It also promised to strengthen the powers of the new Commissioner of Complaints for Telecommunications with an emphasis on establishing a code of conduct for Canadian wireless carriers.

Several years after the National Task Force on Spam recommended introducing anti-spam legislation (I was a member of the task force), the Conservatives promised to follow-through with the long-delayed bill.  The party also pledged to wade back into contentious copyright reform, promising to reintroduce the legislation that sparked considerable concern from Canadians across the country, and to introduce tougher anti-counterfeiting measures, which may indicate continued support for the still-secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.

Liberals.  The Liberal party used its platform to emphasize its commitment to universal access to high-speed Internet.  As part of its infrastructure investments, the party promised that it would "complete the job of making broadband Internet service available to rural communities." The platform also announces plans to develop a Canadian Digital Media Strategy.

The Liberal position on copyright remains somewhat unclear with much of the focus on the need for broader consultations before introducing a future bill.  Several candidates committed to protecting both creator and consumer rights, with the party's Bill C-60, which died on the order paper in 2005, serving as a likely starting point for new legislation.

New Democrats.  Consistent with their position before the election, the New Democrats were the most outspoken on digital rights issues.  Led by Charlie Angus, a Member of Parliament for Timmins-James Bay, the party promoted telecom and copyright as key concerns.  On the telecom front, it focused on net neutrality, arguing that the issue deserved greater prominence in the electoral debate.

On copyright, the party was highly critical of the Conservatives' copyright bill, arguing that it would "criminalize fans, leave artists on the sidelines and offer a windfall to corporate lawyers."  Dozens of party candidates committed to copyright consultations and protecting user rights, while suggesting that the legislative focus should be on commercial piracy rather targeting private users.

Greens.  While the Green party is associated primarily with environmental issues, the party presented a fairly robust digital policy position.  It rejected copyright legislation based on providing legal protection for digital locks, called for an end to crown copyright, and provided the most explicit support for net neutrality, noting in its platform that it would prohibit "Internet Service Providers from discriminating due to content while freeing them from liability for content transmitted through their systems."

The party was also the only one to focus on the emergence of open source software.  Its platform says that the party will "ensure that all new software developed for or by government is based on open standards" and that it would encourage and support transitions to open source software in government and education.

With all parties offering much food for thought, it is clear that digital issues will have a role to play regardless of who emerges victorious on Tuesday.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/MichaelGeistsBlog/~3/420533403/

US Economic Bailout

Interface

Great book and a very fun read. I think Stephenson co-wrote this book before Snow Crash. For sure before the horrendously long Cryptonomicon and it's sequels.

The story follows US Governor William Cozzano, who suffers a stroke just before he runs for President. A loose consortium of financial interests called "The Network" come together with the aid of a biotechnologist and a spin doctor to embed a biochip in Cozzano's head to recover from the stroke. This it does, but it also allows the Network to control and manipulate Cozzano into becoming the perfect candidate, and one that will work in the Network's best interests.

Very good read.

http://www.amazon.com/Interface-Neal-Stephenson/dp/0553383434

PSI Spies: The True Story of America's Psychic Warfare Program

Interesting, crazy stuff... great Christmas reading though.

'Remote Viewing' is the term used to describe a psychic or paranormal ability to see places and events far removed from the normal line of physical sight. This would such psychically gifted men and women the perfect reconnaissance and information gatherers on an enemy's operations. In short, it would make them the perfect spy. What is not generally known is that the Russians during the height of the Cold War tried to develop a remote viewing program. When the American military discovered this, they embarked on a similar program. Award-winning journalist Jim Marrs lays out the entire story of this little known aspect to the Cold War confrontation between the Russians and the Americans in "Psi Spies: The True Story Of America's Psychic Warfare Program". He reveals how the U.S. Army trained men and women to try to psychically access secrets of Soviet command centers, missile complexes, biological warfare centers -- even the Kremlin itself. Also included are the stories of how skilled remote viewers learned about the fate of the Mars Observer that was 'lost' as it entered orbit around Mars; gained knowledge of a series of mysteries (the most prominent of which was the assassination of President John F. Kennedy); and even applying remote viewing to the legendary Loch Ness Monster. Of special note are the tips on how the reader can develop remote viewing abilities themselves! "Psi Spies" is a deftly written, thoroughly fascinating, informed and informative reading recommended for anyone with an interest in Metaphysical Studies and 20th Century American Military History.

- Midwest Book Review

http://www.amazon.com/PSI-Spies-Americas-Psychic-Warfare/dp/1564149609/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1200084900&sr=1-1

Greenspan and Stewart on the Economy

A great watch... it's funny that the clearest explanation of the US Fed and economy is on a comedy show.

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2007/09/19/greenspan-cracks-a-joke-and-breaks-it-down/?mod=fpa_blogs

Mandriva: No Deal Microsoft

Excellent...

Novell, Xandros and Linspire have signed well publicized agreements with Microsoft.

Rumors on the Web have hinted that we might be next on the list. So we would like to clarify our position.

At Mandriva, we believe working in heterogeneous environments is essential to our customers. So, interoperability between the Windows and Linux world is important and must be dealt with, and anything that helps this interoperability is a good thing.

We also believe the best way to deal with interoperability is open standards, such as ODF which we support strongly and we are ready to cooperate with everyone on these topics.

As far as IP is concerned, we are, to say the least, not great fans of software patents and of the current patent system, which we consider as counter productive for the industry as a whole.

We also believe what we see, and up to now, there has been absolutely no hard evidence from any of the FUD propagators that Linux and open source applications are in breach of any patents. So we think that, as in any democracy, people are innocent unless proven guilty and we can continue working in good faith.

So we don’t believe it is necessary for us to get protection from Microsoft to do our job or to pay protection money to anyone.

We plan to keep developing and distributing innovative and exciting products and making them available to the largest number in the true spirit of open source.

François Bancilhon

 

http://corp.mandriva.com/webteam/2007/06/19/we-will-not-go-to-canossa/

Brilliant Commentary On Paris Hilton

From Stephen Colbert and Tommy Chong... 

Climate Change: A Guide For The Perplexed

 

Very illuminating and informative article...

 

Our planet's climate is anything but simple. All kinds of factors influence it, from massive events on the Sun to the growth of microscopic creatures in the oceans, and there are subtle interactions between many of these factors.

Yet despite all the complexities, a firm and ever-growing body of evidence points to a clear picture: the world is warming, this warming is due to human activity increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and if emissions continue unabated the warming will too, with increasingly serious consequences.

 

http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/dn11462

Ballmer vs Stallman

I think this is going to go one of two ways:

1. Microsoft wins the patent argument and the lawsuits come down to companies, universities, government agencies, etc where it serves to motivate the government to reduce the power and scope of software patents. Which hurts Microsoft and opens them up to attack on the software front because of weak patents.

2. Microsoft loses because of IBM, etc -- and opens up it's own litigation nightmare. IBM probably owns more patents that Microsoft infringes than Microsoft owns patents.

there's a shadow hanging over Linux and other free software, and it's being cast by Microsoft (Charts, Fortune 500). The Redmond behemoth asserts that one reason free software is of such high quality is that it violates more than 200 of Microsoft's patents. And as a mature company facing unfavorable market trends and fearsome competitors like Google (Charts, Fortune 500), Microsoft is pulling no punches: It wants royalties. If the company gets its way, free software won't be free anymore.

The conflict pits Microsoft and its dogged CEO, Steve Ballmer, against the "free world" - people who believe software is pure knowledge. The leader of that faction is Richard Matthew Stallman, a computer visionary with the look and the intransigence of an Old Testament prophet.

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/05/28/100033867/index.htm

Nine Inch Nails: Year Zero Reviewed

 

 

Trent Reznor is certainly up to some interesting political messages here... and he's certainly sparking a debate. I think this is great to see.

Best-selling industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails' latest album, Year Zero, delves into new ground. For the first time, the group's front man and primary writer, Trent Reznor, focuses mainly on politics. He seems to be jumping headfirst into a game of politics with the resistance party.

However, he does so not just with the album's music, but also numerous accompanying multimedia-- Reznor has thrown a private concert, scattered random tracks in random locations, made websites, all above and beyond the album itself. And it’s all about his message of resistance. Reznor covers nearly all the bases: The war on terror, the military industrial complex, the death of America from the loss of liberty, and the resultant New World Order. Reznor even had a flag made to represent the NWO.

The video to the album's first single, Survivalism, shows, in all its Orwellian glory, cameras in black and white strategically located around town displaying people in the bathroom, watching TV, having sex, preparing to vandalize a wall with graffiti, and finally, there’s Nine Inch Nails performing the song in a dingy room. There are CCTV cameras everywhere now, not just in public places. What should be private is public and worse, the people either don't realize they are being watched or have become accustomed to living without privacy.

I'm definitely going to check this album out.

http://www.jonesreport.com/articles/010507_year_zero.html

The OSS Developer's Dillemma

 

If Riehle's analysis is correct - and while his thinking is logical, he offers no hard proof of the economic effects he describes - then what we're seeing playing out among coders is what I'll term the Programmer's Dilemma. Because skills in open source programming are increasingly necessary to enhance the potential career prospects of individual programmers, individual programmers have strong motivations to join in - and as more programmers join in, the incentive for each individual programmer to participate becomes ever stronger. At the same time, the total amount of money that goes to programmers falls as open source is adopted by more companies. Individual programmers, in other words, have selfish motives to engage in collectively destructive behavior.

Baloney.

As a developer, and one that uses and contributes to open source, I think some key points have been missed.

1. Seth nailed one of them -- it's not a closed system. If you think in terms of proprietary stacks and jobs for a given company, then sure. But the world is a big place. Big companies aren't innovating any more. Name something truly mind-blowing that has come out of Microsoft, IBM, SAP, or Oracle. It's not happening. If we developers let the market be stifled by corporate short-term thinking and mismanagement, the market as a whole will die off.

2. Joy. Good developers don't write good code because they have to, they write good code because they want to. It's like an artistic thing: corporate life hampers the interesting innovative stuff you want to work on, so when you go home you write interesting code and release it to the open source community. Simply for the joy of it.

3. Community. Many (not all) good developers are slightly introverted. Contributing to a community of like-minded people across the world gives a great sense of belonging that you simply don't get in a corporate environment.

4. Continuity. You can work on the same OSS projects for years. Jobs are short term. Working for free sucks. But many (good) developers are either contractors or skip companies every 1-3 years. They go to where the interesting work and good pay is. This is a direct result of offshoring. Companies are getting back what they've been dishing out. So what if developers get paid less at IBM because they aren't building as many proprietary solutions any more -- go work for someone that will value you.

5. Gives you a sense of purpose. Not all of us are driven completely by money -- something that economists don't get. There are other levers, including contributing to the development of third world nations. Look at Ubuntu. It was created specifically to address the needs of Africans that can't afford proprietary software.

6. Street cred. Nothing gives you more cred and notoriety (and into interviews) than contributing something genuinely elegant or innovative back to a bunch of people that can appreciate it.

7. Control. You get to decide on what to create, not some suit that doesn't get it.

8. Meritocracy. Your work is judged on it's own worth, not how you look, your accent, or what school you come from. Geeks love meritocracies.

9. Freedom. You own open source. Requiring proprietery 'ware means that it owns you.

http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2007/04/open_source_and.php

Vonnegut Says It Like It Is About Iraq -- In 2003

I can't add anything to it, and I want to hang on to the article, so here it is in full:

Kurt Vonnegut vs. the !&#*!@

By Joel Bleifuss

In November, Kurt Vonnegut turned 80. He published his first novel, Player Piano, in 1952 at the age of 29. Since then he has written 13 others, including Slaughterhouse Five, which stands as one of the pre-eminent anti-war novels of the 20th century.

As war against Iraq looms, I asked Vonnegut, a reader and supporter of this magazine, to weigh in. Vonnegut is an American socialist in the tradition of Eugene Victor Debs, a fellow Hoosier whom he likes to quote: “As long as there is a lower class, I am in it. As long as there is a criminal element, I am of it. As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”

You have lived through World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Reagan wars, Desert Storm, the Balkan wars and now this coming war in Iraq. What has changed, and what has remained the same?

One thing which has not changed is that none of us, no matter what continent or island or ice cap, asked to be born in the first place, and that even somebody as old as I am, which is 80, only just got here. There were already all these games going on when I got here. … An apt motto for any polity anywhere, to put on its state seal or currency or whatever, might be this quotation from the late baseball manager Casey Stengel, who was addressing a team of losing professional athletes: “Can’t anybody here play this game?”

My daughter Lily, for an example close to home, who has just turned 20, finds herself—as does George W. Bush, himself a kid—an heir to a shockingly recent history of human slavery, to an AIDS epidemic and to nuclear submarines slumbering on the floors of fjords in Iceland and elsewhere, crews prepared at a moment’s notice to turn industrial quantities of men, women and children into radioactive soot and bone meal by means of rockets and H-bomb warheads. And to the choice between liberalism or conservatism and on and on.

What is radically new in 2003 is that my daughter, along with our president and Saddam Hussein and on and on, has inherited technologies whose byproducts, whether in war or peace, are rapidly destroying the whole planet as a breathable, drinkable system for supporting life of any kind. Human beings, past and present, have trashed the joint.

Based on what you’ve read and seen in the media, what is not being said in the mainstream press about President Bush’s policies and the impending war in Iraq?

That they are nonsense.

My feeling from talking to readers and friends is that many people are beginning to despair. Do you think that we’ve lost reason to hope?

I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened, though, is that it has been taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup d’etat imaginable. And those now in charge of the federal government are upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka “Christians,” and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or “PPs.”

To say somebody is a PP is to make a perfectly respectable medical diagnosis, like saying he or she has appendicitis or athlete’s foot. The classic medical text on PPs is The Mask of Sanity by Dr. Hervey Cleckley. Read it! PPs are presentable, they know full well the suffering their actions may cause others, but they do not care. They cannot care because they are nuts. They have a screw loose!

And what syndrome better describes so many executives at Enron and WorldCom and on and on, who have enriched themselves while ruining their employees and investors and country, and who still feel as pure as the driven snow, no matter what anybody may say to or about them? And so many of these heartless PPs now hold big jobs in our federal government, as though they were leaders instead of sick.

What has allowed so many PPs to rise so high in corporations, and now in government, is that they are so decisive. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reason that they cannot care what happens next. Simply can’t. Do this! Do that! Mobilize the reserves! Privatize the public schools! Attack Iraq! Cut health care! Tap everybody’s telephone! Cut taxes on the rich! Build a trillion-dollar missile shield! Fuck habeas corpus and the Sierra Club and In These Times, and kiss my ass!

How have you gotten involved in the anti-war movement? And how would you compare the movement against a war in Iraq with the anti-war movement of the Vietnam era?

When it became obvious what a dumb and cruel and spiritually and financially and militarily ruinous mistake our war in Vietnam was, every artist worth a damn in this country, every serious writer, painter, stand-up comedian, musician, actor and actress, you name it, came out against the thing. We formed what might be described as a laser beam of protest, with everybody aimed in the same direction, focused and intense. This weapon proved to have the power of a banana-cream pie three feet in diameter when dropped from a stepladder five-feet high.

And so it is with anti-war protests in the present day. Then as now, TV did not like anti-war protesters, nor any other sort of protesters, unless they rioted. Now, as then, on account of TV, the right of citizens to peaceably assemble, and petition their government for a redress of grievances, “ain’t worth a pitcher of warm spit,” as the saying goes.

As a writer and artist, have you noticed any difference between how the cultural leaders of the past and the cultural leaders of today view their responsibility to society?

Responsibility to which society? To Nazi Germany? To the Stalinist Soviet Union? What about responsibility to humanity in general? And leaders in what particular cultural activity? I guess you mean the fine arts. I hope you mean the fine arts. ... Anybody practicing the fine art of composing music, no matter how cynical or greedy or scared, still can’t help serving all humanity. Music makes practically everybody fonder of life than he or she would be without it. Even military bands, although I am a pacifist, always cheer me up.

But that is the power of ear candy. The creation of such a universal confection for the eye, by means of printed poetry or fiction or history or essays or memoirs and so on, isn’t possible. Literature is by definition opinionated. It is bound to provoke the arguments in many quarters, not excluding the hometown or even the family of the author. Any ink-on-paper author can only hope at best to seem responsible to small groups or like-minded people somewhere. He or she might as well have given an interview to the editor of a small-circulation publication.

Maybe we can talk about the responsibilities to their societies of architects and sculptors and painters another time. And I will say this: TV drama, although not yet classified as fine art, has on occasion performed marvelous services for Americans who want us to be less paranoid, to be fairer and more merciful. M.A.S.H. and Law and Order, to name only two shows, have been stunning masterpieces in that regard.

That said, do you have any ideas for a really scary reality TV show?

“C students from Yale.” It would stand your hair on end.

What targets would you consider fair game for a satirist today?

Assholes.

http://www.inthesetimes.com/comments.php?id=38_0_4_0_C

LBJ Ordered JFK's Assasination

 

 

This could be the smoking gun as far as JFK's assasination is concerned. From no less than E. Howard, the guy that planned the failed Bay Of Pigs invasion and the Watergate break-in - one of the CIA's top spymasters. I can't help but get the feeling that we're through the looking glass here, and the towers of conspiracy are starting to crumble. I think in the next 5-10 years we'll see a lot of this as the old guard starts to die off and leave their confessions. Add to that the new guard coming in that's probably willing to cash in on the shame of the old.

E. Howard scribbled the initials "LBJ," standing for Kennedy's ambitious vice president, Lyndon Johnson. Under "LBJ," connected by a line, he wrote the name Cord Meyer. Meyer was a CIA agent whose wife had an affair with JFK; later she was murdered, a case that's never been solved. Next his father connected to Meyer's name the name Bill Harvey, another CIA agent; also connected to Meyer's name was the name David Morales, yet another CIA man and a well-known, particularly vicious black-op specialist. And then his father connected to Morales' name, with a line, the framed words "French Gunman Grassy Knoll."

So there it was, according to E. Howard Hunt. LBJ had Kennedy killed. It had long been speculated upon. But now E. Howard was saying that's the way it was. And that Lee Harvey Oswald wasn't the only shooter in Dallas. There was also, on the grassy knoll, a French gunman, presumably the Corsican Mafia assassin Lucien Sarti, who has figured prominently in other assassination theories.

"By the time he handed me the paper, I was in a state of shock," Saint says. "His whole life, to me and everybody else, he'd always professed to not know anything about any of it. But I knew this had to be the truth. If my dad was going to make anything up, he would have made something up about the Mafia, or Castro, or Khrushchev. He didn't like Johnson. But you don't falsely implicate your own country, for Christ's sake. My father is old-school, a dyed-in-the-wool patriot, and that's the last thing he would do."

Later that week, E. Howard also gave Saint two sheets of paper that contained a fuller narrative. It starts out with LBJ again, connecting him to Cord Meyer, then goes on: "Cord Meyer discusses a plot with [David Atlee] Phillips who brings in Wm. Harvey and Antonio Veciana. He meets with Oswald in Mexico City. . . . Then Veciana meets w/ Frank Sturgis in Miami and enlists David Morales in anticipation of killing JFK there. But LBJ changes itinerary to Dallas, citing personal reasons."

David Atlee Phillips, the CIA's Cuban operations chief in Miami at the time of JFK's death, knew E. Howard from the Guatemala-coup days. Veciana is a member of the Cuban exile community. Sturgis, like Saint's father, is supposed to have been one of the three tramps photographed in Dealey Plaza. Sturgis was also one of the Watergate plotters, and he is a man whom E. Howard, under oath, has repeatedly sworn to have not met until Watergate, so to Saint the mention of his name was big news.

In the next few paragraphs, E. Howard goes on to describe the extent of his own involvement. It revolves around a meeting he claims he attended, in 1963, with Morales and Sturgis. It takes place in a Miami hotel room. Here's what happens:

Morales leaves the room, at which point Sturgis makes reference to a "Big Event" and asks E. Howard, "Are you with us?"

E. Howard asks Sturgis what he's talking about.

Sturgis says, "Killing JFK."

 

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/13893143/the_last_confessions_of_e_howard_hunt/print

Be Nice To America

Funny but sad bumper sticker. Because it's true. And because America isn't really a democracy any more.

http://img444.imageshack.us/img444/5098/127711758264244615aff8blo9.jpg

P2P File Sharing Has No Effect On Music Sales

Stating the obvious, but maybe it's because the bulk of music played on the radio sucks? There is a lot of good music out there -- it's just hard to find.

The study reports that 803 million CDs were sold in 2002, which was a decrease of about 80 million from the previous year. The RIAA has blamed the majority of the decrease on piracy, and has maintained that argument in recent years as music sales have faltered. Yet according to the study, the impact from file sharing could not have been more than 6 million albums total in 2002, leaving 74 million unsold CDs without an excuse for sitting on shelves.

So what's the problem with music? The study echoes many of the observations you've read here at Ars. First, because the recording industry focuses on units shipped rather than sold, the decline can be attributed in part to reduced inventory. Gone are the days when Best Buy and others wanted a ton of unsold stock sitting around, so they order less CDs. The study also highlighted the growth in DVD sales during that same period as a possible explanation for why customers weren't opening their wallets: they were busy buying DVDs.

 

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070212-8813.html

Conservatives Hose Us With Net Neutrality

Gee, do you think that Telus might throttle Skype so you can't use VOIP for free when they offer a competing service? How stupid can this be?

Internal documents suggest the Tory government is reluctant to impose consumer safeguards for the web because it wants to protect the competitive position of businesses that offer Internet access.

Documents obtained by The Canadian Press indicate that senior advisers to Industry Minister Maxime Bernier, who has previously declared a "consumer first" approach, are carefully heeding the arguments of large telecommunications companies like Videotron and Telus against so-called Net neutrality legislation.

 

http://www.cbc.ca/cp/business/070206/b0206149A.html