The Iron Yuppie

Yahoo! News - Suicide Bomb Kills 125 Near Iraq Marketplace

I was actually looking on some of my favorite blogging sites for coverage of this brutal bombing today, but I could hardly find anything. I must admit I'm surprised, especially from a lot of the bloggers who I read with daily coverage of the activities over there (before you send me an avalanche of postings, just assume for a second that I looked through my blog roll (on the right) and did not see the coverage).

Anyhow, I've been thinking about these events for a long time. My conclusion is that the lawfulness of our society basically depends on the ability of people not to be able to do math supported by a moral system. I know that many many people have stated opinions like this before (Hobbes would be one of the most well known), but the only reason that people are not out committing crime all the time is that people are generally afraid of getting caught. I do not believe beneath our chewy exterior we are all sociopaths just waiting to murder at the earliest opportunity, but minor, and even major, non-violent crime seems only to be deterred by the thin blue line of police enforcement. If just 2% of the population decided to commit a crime, there is no way the police could prevent it, let alone catch a significant amount. In Iraq, where there is effectively no enforcement, some vanishingly small percent (less than 2%) actually are out there committing crimes. Most are not the type of this terrible suicide bombing... most are stealing wire or taking bribes or other corruption. And, as a result, a lawless culture is born. I believe that this lawless culture then engenders the acceptability of more severe crimes like the one from today. Unless you turn EVERYONE into police officers or create wide spread vigilantism, crime will continue to be wide spread until the population begins to police itself through social norms. I'd like to think that creating this sort of self-enforcing culture would have been far more important than elections and certainly would have been possible sooner had we done a bit more sensible planning up front.

OXO International

NOBODY makes products like these guys. NOBODY. My favorite is this:



Oxo Measuring Cup Look at it! You can see what's being measured from the top so you don't have to bend over as you're pouring your liquid in! It's so smart.

I wish they made more; I'd be willing to buy it all. Oxo umbrella. Oxo 1040 form. Oxo car. Oxo relationship. Oxo baby. Sign me up!

Soros sees oil tie to dollar slide

As a very recent visitor to our neighbor to the north, I miss the days of getting a 50% sale on everything I bought up there. Thanks to the weak dollar, it’s practically the same as spending American coin up there (and getting a huge price hike)! According to George Soros, a man who knows a little bit about currency speculation, the fact that the central banks in oil exporting countries have moved from dollars to euros as a currency of exchange is the reason I’m paying so much more for a crepe, a Cuban cigar and a pair of Aldo boots. Is it possible that those countries are afraid of some form of punitive action by the US administration and are trying to limit the U.S.’s ability to get funding in a pre-emptive attempt to stop said action? Or could it be that they just do not trust that we will not fall into a spiraling deficit? Anyone who knows more about this than many (READ: anyone), please feel free to enlighten me.

FCC Censorship via /.

How can anyone in the FCC justify this? The point is that it is less harmful (according to the government) to dump toxic waste than it is to show half a boob during the super bowl. I may be expressing the full measure of blue state perception here, but I cannot imagine anyone on Earth making a case that the disparity between those two fines makes sense.

The Kerry Spot on National Review Online

I disagree with Mr. Geraghty on two points:

1) "So many American news consumers" may be a bit of an exaggeration. First, the NYT and WaPo still get more readership than most other daily papers put together. Further, reading news is not exclusive... it is possible to read more than one news source in a given news cycle. With online aggregators, either through blogs, web sites and the like, I would argue that it is more likely than ever that people get multiple view points on a given story.

2) The coverage at the Belmont Club as well as the Captain's Quarters appears to be just as biased in the opposite direction. Except for the one comment from Hilary Clinton about the success of the Insurgency (is that capitalized or what?), they are all positive stories, including the non-story about Canada sending 30 soldiers to train Iraqis. Surely there must be SOMETHING negative happening in Iraq that can be covered.

Perhaps the problem here is not the publication of the stories, but the perception of unbiasedness of any outlet. I've read the NYT for a long time, and I've thought it to be fairly unbiased, so I may be a bad test for this, but what we really need is not for outlets to change their reporting style, but to have an unambigous way of understanding exactly what a news outlet's biases really are. Accurate ways of measuring and reporting this are yet to be determined.

Day By Day by Chris Muir, cartoon for: 2/15/2005

I found this cartoon quite interesting. There's an arrogance to the blogsphere and popular sites especially in considering themselves the only real media source or the new thing. Blogs continue to be exceptionally good at fact checking and getting lots of incremental opinion out there. X says something, Y comments on it and adds two cents and so on. But I certainly would not consider them new competition. There has been competition as long as there was more than one media outlet. Any given paper would absolutely LOVE to have shown an alternative publication was inaccurate. Forbes Digital uncovering Stephen Glass is a great example. If there was one thing that bloggers do well it is turn up the volume on stories or points which were previously lost in the noise. This can be an exceptionally good thing or an exceptionally bad thing. I think one of the major problems is that the vast majority of bloggers (myself included!) simply pass the story on with no additional information other than their opinion. I know how subjective the mind perceives things and, trust me, just because you read something in 14 blogs that all linked to the same story does not mean everyone believes it.

Raffaele Iannello Knife Block via Gizmodo



If anyone out there can get me one of these, I will pay. BIG.

Quiet Headphones: EX29 Extreme Isolation Noise Reduction Headphones

Now THIS is why Google is so cool. It's a search engine that reads ME. I was browsing around in my web page looking for a link that I wanted to post and I caught this in the ad section. I love it!



As for the headphones, how do you reduce noise more than your standard noise cancelling headphones? Why you bring it to the EXTREME of course! 29dB is a lot... it's effectively 1000x quieter than whatever you're listening to right now. When I foolishly waste $89.99 (plus shipping) on it, I'll let you know how they work.

One of the best parts about having a blog is that when you say something controversial/ intelligent/stupid/etc, someone who is equally, if not more, controversial/intelligent/stupid/etc comes along to give you feedback. Hopefully she is more intelligent than stupid, but any feedback is great. Certainly this was the case when an individual commented on my post of a few weeks ago. It was quite thorough, and I hated the thought of the comment being buried in an archived comment. So, in its entirety:

Generally speaking, of course, Joel is correct. But every once in a while you learn that the model that a piece of software implements genuinely is broken, and you're left with no choice but to revisit the architecture. If the state of the art in software development were more advanced than it is, "revisiting the architecture" wouldn't mean "rewrite," but here we are.

So why a Coyotos? The reason is that it's an object-capability OS, and only object-capability security addresses two major flaws in the traditional ACL model that Windows, Mac OS X, Linux... use. They are the Confused Deputy Problem and the Grant Matcher Puzzle. The overwhelming majority of security issues that Windows exhibits are of the Confused Deputy type.

You can indeed paper over a lot of the issues in Windows; see Polaris: Toward Virus Safe Computing for Windows XP (PDF) for an initial attempt. But pay careful attention to the limitations and consider the costs that this approach imposes in the form of installing an external "shell" and the overhead of some of the file-copying operations that it performs under the covers.

So while it's true that something like Coyotos isn't like to ever become mainstream, what will hopefully happen is that it will inspire the Microsofts and Apples and Linus Torvalds of the world to migrate from ACLs to object-capability security in future OS releases.

To the degree that the project is a research experiment and encourages behavior in more commonly used OSs, I very much agree with him. And because the amount I know about ACLs and confused deputies certainly does not match up with Mr. Snively, I will not debate this point either. It is a problem that we, as computer users, attach so much value to legacy, and ultimately may lock us into the decisions that were made 15 years ago when it came to designing a security model. If we were willing (or able) to throw it all away, there is no doubt there would be new and better ways to design the products today. But of all the product redesign and refactoring I've seen while maintaining some semblance of compatibility, I remain confident that people will be able to rework Linux and Windows XP to attempt to address these problems. With Mr. Snively's comments, at least I now know what to look for.

D

Gartner takes Microsoft to task | CNET News.com

I always wondered what it would be like being in the public eye and having your every move scrutinized. Politicians must chomp at the bit about stuff like this... or would if they weren't on the talking head networks 24/7 attempting to explain their position but ultimately offering up something so vanilla that no one knows where they stand. Back to the point, Gartner wrote some pointed comments about what MS should be doing and not doing... for example:

[...] Microsoft has missed an opportunity to make it clear what role it wants to play in the security market, by not stating its intentions, Gartner analyst Neil MacDonald said in an advisory published Friday. The company needs to "articulate whether it plans to be a leader in consumer and enterprise security solutions across desktop, server and server gateway," he said.

"Microsoft's overriding goal should be to eliminate the need for (antivirus) and (anti-spyware) products, not simply to enter the market with look-alike products at lower prices," MacDonald added.

While I am sure that Mr. MacDonald's views are appreciated, I am also sure that those in Redmond probably have already evaluated those points of view. What is the purpose of an article like this? Is it to encourage (however subtly) MS to change their strategy? With 50,000 people working there, you can pretty much be assured that someone has thought of that strategy, and are likely already pursuing it. The problem with such opinionated statements is that MS is not in a binary situation; they can actually release a low-cost solution in the marketplace as well as developing the means to solve the root causes. As to why they are not talking about this, one can argue that with all the noise they have been making about Trustworthy Computing, they have been talking about it. But let's go back to the article:

James Turner, security analyst at Frost & Sullivan, told ZDNet Australia that Microsoft's security strategy is a "commercially sensitive" area and that the company is not obliged to reveal its strategy.

I wish there was a tag in HTML that was "blatantly obvious but thanks for stating it anyway because it appears that not everyone is getting it". Suffice it to say that tag would appear here.

One more thing about the article though:

"The decision to restrict IE 7.0 to the XP platform also suggests that Microsoft wants to force users of older platforms to upgrade, if they want improved security," he wrote. "If Microsoft wishes to be seen as a responsible industry leader in maintaining security for its products and its customers, it should provide IE 7.0 for Windows 2000 users."

MacDonald said that Microsoft should rebuild IE with security in mind from the bottom up, rather than make "evolutionary" security improvements to the browser software.

Ok, the WORST thing in the world that MS could do would be to rewrite a product with SEVEN versions from the ground up. Because that paid off so well for Netscape. As to whether or not the product will appear as part of Windows 2000, that is an interesting question. I do not think that a lack of an IE upgrade would strongly encourage people to upgrade their OS, but it may cause them to switch to Firefox (unlikely) or mega lock down their Windows 2000 desktops (very likely).

Users bypass copy protection on portable Napster

I'm not sure why this made such news. The "analog hole" is a known phenomenon. Until you have a system which is 100% DRMed until it comes out the speaker, you will always have problems with this. Actually, even then, you could put a high quality mic up to the speaker and record it back into digital. OR you could have some composer come along and listen to it and re-record it! Ok, that last one is a bit much, but the problem here is (and always will be) that our ears are not DRMed and there needs to be some conversion from a secure format to an insecure format for us to hear it. Welcome to the digital to analog world.

New proof that man has caused global warming via the TimesOnline

Isn't this the very core of the scientific method? You observe something. You hypothesize what the cause is. Then you test the hypothesis. If you believe that, then man has caused global warming.

Actually, that's a bit of a stretch. First let me say that I believe that man HAS caused global warming, and that we ARE in a period of weather destabilization because of the effect we (as a population) have had. But that said, the problem with this and many other pieces of research which depend on models of this sort is that, as the mutual fund folks like to say, "Past performance does not indicate future results." Yep, this model correctly predicted the past 40 years of climate change. But the only proof of this is making a prediction today and seeing if it come true in the next 10 or 15 years. Which is exactly why we (as a population) have such trouble doing anything that involves action beyond the next fiscal year. We're a very short sighted lot; Johnny in 15 years can figure out his own problems, I want my job shoveling toxic waste now! Whenever it comes to things like this, I generally try and behave with the principle that one person doing something means nothing but a hundred million people doing something means something. Yep, the additional CO2 I caused to be spewed into the atmosphere by throwing one additional plastic cup away is probably damn near zero. But a hundred million people doing the same is a real problem.

Whether or not we need government regulation to step in and help a hundred million people not do something is a blog for another day.

Hanging Alarm Clock via Gizmodo



Now THIS would work! The snooze button is simply slapping the alarm clock which is hanging over your bed. The catch is that every time you snooze it gets a little further away by retracting the cord and getting closer to the ceiling. Eventually it'll get so high that you'll never be able to reach it from bed. I love it!

Gizmodo : Jigsaw Puzzle Alarm Clock via Gizmodo



I've tried everything to force me to get up in the morning. I've tried setting the alarm clock ahead, putting it across the room, hiding it, you name it. The above is an interesting idea, in that it tries to force you to solve a puzzle to turn it off. But let me tell you, I doubt you've seen a smarter person in the world than me when I'm half asleep trying to turn the alarm off. I have a level of focus and dexterity two seconds after I wake up that rivals anyone in the world at that moment. No matter how complicated it was, if it involved defusing a multi-trigger bomb while flying upside down in a monkey navigated rocket propelled hover sled I'd be able to do it if it meant getting those sweet sweet five more minutes of sleep. This thing just will not cut it.

Kensington noise canceling headphones reviewed via Engadget

You know what I want? 100% silence. Not 80%. Not 30%. 100% noise cancelling. I want to be in a sensory deprevation chamber (as far as hearing is concerned anyway). Is that so hard?

The open-source patent conundrum | Tech News on ZDNet

Patents are all the rage nowadays, especially in the battle between proprietary and open source. Mr. Perens, who is a key representative of open source, has a very interesting post on it. One take on this is that the developer sitting in a room working on a new memory model thought up that thing on his own, without searching through the USPTO to find out ways of implementing memory models. This seems to indicate software patents = bad. The other side is IBM works on a memory model which they patent and then that engineer talks about it with some friends who talk about it on their blog which makes it into a text book which a developer then sits down and reads and implements a memory model which infringes on the original patent. Does this mean that the developer should be sued? I think there needs to be a gray area. I definitely feel that patents add to the overall development of society if for no other reason than people are paid to sit around and think up cool things which can then be turned into money exclusively for the company that paid them. And those cool things filter out into the economy in countless ways. I definitely do not think it's a catch all, however, as there are lots of cool ideas being thought up by lots of people who are NOT being paid to do so and who will not seek patent protection for them, and these people should not have their thoughts stolen because of that fact. Maybe just having an open period for patent vetting would be the solution... someone wants to patent something and someone has six months to submit prior art. USPTO, let the blogsphere do what the blogsphere does well... your research for you.

Harvard Gazette: Snaring secrets of the Venus flytrap

TMQ pointed out (or, more accurately, feared) that this was a federally funded study to determine exactly how the Venus flytrap was able to close, and found this a bad waste of money. I must disagree with him on two counts. First, it's the Venus flytrap... how incredibly cool! The PLANT EATS THINGS. That is badass no matter how you slice it. But second, and more importantly, nature has been developing cool things for about 4 billion years (or less if you're a intelligent design-ist; trust me, it knows how to do things. Like this amazing way of cooling chips that was inspired by the way that butterfly wings cool themselves. Sometimes I think we should spend MORE money figuring out how nature does the stuff it does... worst case: we have a detailed understanding of exactly how cool our world actually is.

U.S. Scientists Say They Are Told to Alter Findings

This is bad. REALLY bad. I don't want to blow this out of proportion, so until I see actual examples of altered findings, I'll reserve judgment. Let me be clear, as well, that I do not feel that this sort of behavior is restricted to the current administration which, unfortunately, the writer chose to indict with the administration's push to revamp the Endangered Species Act. I believe that politicians have been doing this since time immemorial.

However, this is the kind of stuff that blogs and the web will excel at overturning. Wouldn't a simple anonymous blog with the pre-altered data prevent this kind of thing from occurring altogether? The numbers seem extraordinarily large as well. If, as is stated, 31% of scientists HAD been asked to change data, wouldn't that be national news? I think if one had been asked to change her study, that'd be national news. Are they being asked to change data or just findings? I'd love to spend some time drilling into this; I know that everything is subjective, but a little pendulum swing back towards objectivity would be kind of nice.

Microsoft's AntiSpyware hit by a Spyware

I'm not entirely sure why this is such a big deal. As some of the Slashdot folks were quick to point out, the anti-spyware app tells you not to run it. Once you start ignoring advice like that, what can you expect? Anyhow, be aware that the MS anti-spyware solution is just one of what should be a multi-level security blanket. I know it's not a silver bullet, but I think one of my favorite things about Longhorn is the ability to run as a non-administrator. It'll save so much pain and agony. Some people equate this to welding the hood of your car shut. I think it's a little more like keeping the hood of your car shut with a set of screws, and requiring anyone who comes along to repair your car to own and know how to operate a screwdriver.

Corporations Sue Google over Results for Competitors via NPR

Is it just me, or does it seem like French courts have no idea what the Internets are all about? First the Nazi decision where Yahoo France had to either drop the Nazi items from their auction site or BLOCK ALL OF FRANCE FROM GETTING TO THEM. Yes, because that's realistic.

Now comes the Google decision which is just as bizarre. Imagine that you're a personal shopper for someone. They say, "Have you heard anything about Kraft Mac and Cheese?". You respond, "Yes, it's quite good. You know what else is good? Velvetta Mac and Cheese." You have just committed a trademark violation according to these courts. Alright, it's a little more subtle than that because you don't own the rights to the words "Velvetta Mac and Cheese", or, more specifically, you don't own the rights to SELL the trademark "Velvetta Mac and Cheese". But it's still pretty darned confusing. Does Google have to track all trademarked items? Shouldn't it be the people who bought the words who are actually committing the trademark violation? I feel like the courts are pretty much fumbling around with the whole Internet and current laws just do not apply correctly.

Boing Boing: Simpsons Choo Choo Choose You valentine to print & cut via Boing Boing



For those of you with SOs who are Simpsons fans, I bring you the perfect gift. For those of you with SOs who could not care less, not so much.

Gothamist: Rice To Riches Racketeering Ring via Gothamist

Please no! The owner of Rice-to-Riches was arrested for running a $21 million gambling ring. Just as long as this does not interrupt the rice pudding. Man that place is good...

Adelphia Brings Hot Hardcore Action via Defamer

Here's one more reason you should be reading Defamer all day every day. You learn interesting facts! Example: the average person views an adult pay-per-view movie for seven-minutes. Man, that's got to be one boring movie if it takes 7 minutes to get to the good stuff.

Tabloids Speak The International Language via Defamer



Note to self: use the Spanish words "Escandalo" and/or "Lesbianas" more often.

Kansas Schools Struggle with Evolution and Creationism via NPR

Ok, you don't believe in evolution. Then how do you explain it? Not where we come from, but all the things that are currently dictated by evolutionary theory that we can see today (just as an aside, why is it still a theory? I mean there’s easily as much proof for evolution as there is for gravity). I think there's a big difference in belief when it comes to the evolution that turned proteins into monkeys and humans and the evolution that allows a single organism in a Petri dish of antibiotics to survive and eventually fill the entire dish. Yet, logically, one must lead to the other, right? Do people who believe in intelligent design (man if that isn't the most PC term I’ve ever heard, I don't know what is) believe in the evolution that occurs in the Petri dish?

I believe the tact that evolutionists are taking (the example used in the story was the intelligence found in the organization of DNA) will paint them into a corner. People fifty years ago were saying the same thing about the nucleus of atoms and how their ability to stay together even in the face of science (two positive protons should repel) proved that there was a greater force holding everything together. Apparently it's not the devil who's in the details, it's God. By cherry picking some laws of science, some felt like they could "prove" God was present. I promise you that, regardless of what you believe, in the next 50 years we will know vastly more about the aspects of the universe we live in. Yet this fact should not deter someone's belief! Faith is faith, independent of your perspective on science. Don't try and mix the two.

One thing I was particularly annoyed with in the story, however, was one woman's opinion that her children should not be taught evolutionary theory, because it's wrong. That's exactly the reverse of what should happen; people should be taught EVERYTHING so that you learn how to make an informed choice between two rational positions. Anything else is a recipe for fundamentalism.

Gates: 'Linux makes interoperability harder' - silicon.com

Everyone on the blogs I tend to read seems to be up in arms about the most recent Executive memo from Bill Gates. There are three things that seem to be pretty interesting to me about it. One, almost no one is reading the memo; people are reading the headlines all over the place that "Linux is not interoperable", which I did not find to be the point of the memo. Two, I've used Linux for a long time, and while there is no question that everything has a text in and text out characteristic, this does not make for interoperability. Interoperable is defined by more than simply parsing text output manually and inputting it somewhere else. And third, the real difference between the open source and proprietary models is the nature and style of the testing. Linux and OSS do minimal testing before releases, compared to the development system inside Microsoft. However, this may not be a bad thing! Because as they are developing the systems, each developer EXPECTS to do so little testing, it is much more common that the connections between the systems are less fragile. Microsoft tests the hell out of their software, but then when a key component is missing (your network latency is way too slow as an example), the software tends to fall down more. In addition to that, the Linux folks can and do cut legacy support much more quickly than the Microsoft folks, which further exacerbates the testing problems. Both sides probably agree to all these facts; the volume of disagreement probably occurs due to the visibility of the positions. Given the fundamental "engineer-ness" of everyone involved, I suspect that if they sat down on both sides of a table they'd probably both agree to 99% of the facts. It's a shame that they don't.

New MSN Maps URL (Querystring) Link APIs

Man it is about time that the MSN Mappoint people got back in the game. I've been wondering when people are going to start getting in the Web API world and, though there have been some tests so far, the article in last month's MIT tech review and this feature really brings to light the coming battle. I was actually going to write a stupid little web app that would let me paste in addresses myself, but this is just great. It not only handles pasting in, but you can write entire apps with mappoint as your backend. Cool!

What this really changes is now, having a million machines and some cool features (data, images, etc) allows you to have a revenue stream. Charge a desktop app for accessing your stuff $0.001 a piece and, presto, you've got a business. ISPs (and google) should be all over this.

Salon.com News | "Disruptive" detainees

I know this is old news, since it comes from last week, but can you imagine the state of despair that you have to be in if your only way of causing a disruption is to commit suicide? I know, I know, they said that the majority of them were not entirely serious, but at least some were. I believe it was the Red Cross commentator on NPR said that the rationale for this is because the prisoners have absolutely no recourse… they have not been formally accused and they have no idea if or when they will get out. Remember in the old days when people had to have charges read against them and lawyers appointed to them? Good times…

Defamer: Paris Steals Paris: Back On Videotape

In this case, I must bow to the king of all snark that is Defamer and quote them directly:

The newsstand owner has videotape of Paris [stealing her video] (oh! the irony is crippling!)

INDEED.

No room for progressives on cable news inaugura ... [Media Matters for America]

As much as I see on the blogsphere, it is posts like this which I think make the most difference. On media matters, the author does a simple data posting on the number of commentators on the inauguration and their leanings. This is the kind of stuff that, when presented correctly as it is here, gives the reader a new take on their environment. As for the coverage "bias", it's a Republican majority in both House and Senate and the White House... I'd guess that it makes some sense to cover it with the people who have the best inside view into what's going to be going on. But to Media Matters, especially well done!

Cover the Terror War as a War via Instapundit.com

Interesting theory on how to make the coverage of the war on terror, in Mr. Hewitt's opinion, more accurate for the American public. My biggest problem with the war on terror is that it is absolutely never ending. That pretty much goes against the idea that it is a war. Wars (WWII is the example that Mr. Hewitt uses) have distinct beginning and endings. In the midst of WWII, you could go to Hitler and ask him to stop fighting and, then, peace. What do you do here? Go to Bin Laden? That doesn’t stop it. There is no end to this.

The real parallel here isn’t war, it is crime. You can try and reduce crime, but because the guy who mugs the individual down on the corner has little overlap with the stock broker trading on inside information, you cannot really associate the two. Not to mention the fact that if you define the problem in this way it makes for much more natural organizations to be created. Global police? Check. Security firms? Check. Root cause analysis? Check. Yes, it’s more pervasive, and, yes, it means that you cannot keep bringing it up as a forcing function (“We had to do this because it’s a war on terror!”) but it makes for much more natural choices about what you are going to invest in and why.