The Iron Yuppie

Schneier on Security: Microsoft RC4 Flaw

This is a real shame, as a lot of people who work at MS who really know a lot of about cryptography are going to be painted with the same brush as the individuals who coded this. Suffice it to say it is not that easy to break, as it does require two versions of the same document that have been changed from each other, but maintain the same password. But the amount of work required to avoid this situation is so minimal, it's a terrible situation. I wonder if the security review for office 12 caught this.

The Volokh Conspiracy

VERY interesting stuff. Linked to here is John Lott's (noted gun rights activist) response to the study. The quote that seems to be getting the most play in all the blogs is:

Based on 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications, and some of its own empirical work, the panel couldn't identify a single gun control regulation that reduced violent crime, suicide or accidents.

Interesting data! The exception, not mentioned here, was right-to-carry laws, which apparently does reduce crime. If I was running the next study, I'd like to see if the lack of effect is because gun control laws are not written correctly, or if this is accurate data across all types of laws (not just those that passed their legislative bodies). Did the study compare countries with no guns? What about those with more severe laws, but still allowed guns? Nonetheless, a very solid case has been made, the current gun control laws provide no benefit... and I am a big fan of "if something provides no benefit, it must be removed from the law".

Kudlow's Money Politic$: A Roaring Start

I thought this was a very interesting analysis of the budget, and certainly seems to indicate that things are getting better on the deficit front. I am not an economist, so please take all this with a grain of salt, but in last week's announcement about the trade deficit, the following was mentioned in Mr. Kudlow's report:

• After the first three months of the fiscal year beginning last October, cash outlays increased by 6.1% overall, while tax collections grew by 10.5%.
• The 2005 deficit is on track to drop to $355 billion from $413 billion in FY 2004.
• At this pace the new year deficit as a fraction of projected GDP will descend to 2.9% compared to last year's deficit share of 3.6%.

These facts, of course, will be interpreted differently depending if you're in favor or against the Bush administrations policies. Pro, you'll say that his tax cuts encouraged spending and increased employment. Con, you'll say that the economy would have done even more if it had not been for him. Unfortunately, all we have to draw the conclusions from is what you see there. Did the stock market rise because the capgains were reduced? Or did the US government leave money on the table? Ah the challenge of being an economist.

One thing that was mentioned in the comments, which I have no data on either, was that what is actually going on to reduce spending is a shifting of the expenses from federal budget to the states. Interesting thought and this might actually be ideal for how the country appears to be lining up. Today, if you don't like the way your government is behaving when it comes to an issue (stem cell research, as an example), your only choice is to found your company in another country. If states become more empowered, as California has done, you can still do what you'd like to do within the good-ol' US of A.

Fearless Critic: CJR -- Hopelessly out of Touch

Extraordinarily strong words, but may be closer to the truth that it originally seems. CJR correctly points out that the anti-Bush stories were real news, and deserved the reporting. Mr. Duffy (the Fearless Critic) also correctly points out a lot of stories which could have had (did have?) big headlines The problem here is there is no "standard" for what is a big story and what is not. Every one of the anti-Kerry stories he mentions, I had heard about and read up on. Does that mean it was a big story? And an individual will always think that their side of the story is being underrepresented compared to the opposition. Is the problem here that stories are not correctly being represented, or just a matter of personal belief? Part of the issue in Mr. Duffy’s comparison is the comparative sizes of each of the stories. Reasonable people can disagree about whether or not the Swift Boat accounts linkage to the Bush campaign was or was not as big a deal as MoveOn, America Coming Together, etc being tied to the Kerry campaign. My opinion is that given the message that the Swift Boat folks communicated, and the Bush campaign’s subsequent “fervent” denial, the two organizations being closely linked was a bigger story. But that is just my opinion. And to satisfy Mr. Duffy, I doubt there would be a single source that he would trust to measure the story size and then measure the story coverage. Balance in the news room is a good idea, but it will not make anyone on the right trust the NYT or anyone on the left trust the Washington Times.

IMAO: Blog Myths and Facts via IMAO

I'd say this is about right for most bloggers (myself included)! The best one, which falls into the "funny cause it's true" is:

MYTH: Bloggers are partisan hacks.
FACT: We lack the editing and proofreading to have the status of "hacks."

Social Security: There Is No Crisis

Apparently, someone with the $6.95 to register a domain name believes there is no crisis. I agree but by calling it "a fraud", it's just as bad as the people who disagree with you. They looked at the numbers and determined it is in crisis... I looked at (the analyses of) the numbers and I came to a different conclusion. It is not even whether or not it is in crisis, I want to know what the benefit will be. And if you say greater returns, how are you going to handle the risk?

Cellphone Towers In Iraq via John Robb's Weblog

Mr. Moyse says AsiaCell’s cell tower sites have been repeatedly attacked, though he explains that once a site is up and working the sabotage attempts usually subside, because “even bad guys want to use mobile phones.”

Man, if this isn't the very DEFINITION of economic assimilation, I don't know what is. Now all we need to do is figure out how to get them to try a Quarter Pounder and the McDonald's will be the new safe zone. Or better yet, a thickburger.

Tivo Walked Away From Comcast via PVRBlog

Jeez. I know I do not know about all the details, but clearly Tivo has decided to go alone. They've broken off with DirecTV and now, it seems, they've broken off from Comcast as well. Someday, when we all have IP TV, this would have been the right strategy, and you can get any channel directly from the source, Tivo will own the interface. But unless and until that happens, this may mean Tivo is marginalized for a long time to come.

I'll say this... Tivo got me addicted, but UltimateTV is still my device of choice. 30 second skip ahead, 7 second skip back, two tuners, DirecTV football... I'm not sure how I watched TV before this.

Hacking Coke Machines - Taking Advantage Of Technology

How totally cool... you can hack a coke machine. Apparently, it's really easy too... unless they've changed the default password, which, I guarantee, most have not.

Somasegar's WebLog

You've got to admit it, it's pretty cool that the vice president of a Forture 20 company is blogging. Of course it'd be nice if it was more than twice a month, but still!