Category Archives: Current Affairs

Sentimental Education

Regarding Blogger Civility, I’d like to add that where there are real threats, of course the person threatened should complain, and if the threatener can be tracked down, there are already laws that apply. Also, some people think that technical subjects aren’t contentious enough to provoke threats; those people apparently haven’t yet gotten crazy rants from people who incorporate technology into their conspiracy theories, or who fear technology because it might help people oppose their favorite policies, or who don’t like technology because they’ve always been afraid of people who understand it, or who don’t like women/gays/blacks/whites/southerners/foreigners/whatever participating in it. And there are people who think the blogosphere is unusual in harboring threats; those people apparently don’t get out much. I wonder what sort of mail somebody like Condoleeza Rice or Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama or John McCain gets?

Anyway, the idea of a blogger code of conduct reminds me of something else:

A technique to detect favorable and unfavorable opinions toward specific subjects (such as organizations and their products) within large numbers of documents offers enormous opportunities for various applications. It would provide powerful functionality for competitive analysis, marketing analysis, and detection of unfavorable rumors for risk management.

— Overview, Sentiment Analysis, IBM Tokyo Research Lab, accessed 13 April 2007

Yet another artificial intelligence scheme; ho hum. Or is it?

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Blogger Civility

Doubtless everyone has heard of Tim O’Reilly’s Draft Blogger’s Code of Conduct, which is an attempt to instill (restore? inspire?) civility in blogging. I had some difficulty with the concept from the beginning, since it centers around the "tone of the blogs", which is a vague and very subjective thing. O’Reilly’s draft code of conduct isn’t much less vague and subjective:

We define and determine what is "unacceptable content" on a case-by-case basis, and our definitions are not limited to this list. If we delete a comment or link, we will say so and explain why. [We reserve the right to change these standards at any time with no notice.]

Now if "we" means the individual blogger, fine. However, if "we" means some external authority, well, I have problems with that "we".

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Dating RIsk

Chander Howell about a fiance wasn’t happy about his fiancee requiring him to undergo a background check before dating:
’ll bet he wasn’t, given that in the United States, the SSN is still the golden key to access someone’s potential lines of credit. Someone has probably already figured out that they can use a demand for this information as the source of inputs to commit full-fledged identity fraud. It’s an emotionally loaded demand, so it will probably work. Then, the scammer can break off the relationship for something that was allegedly found in the check. It’s the worst security of all: Insecurity in the name of security.

— Beware the Dating Security Complex, by Chandler Howell, Not Bad For a Cubicle, March 9th, 2007

I bet it’s already worked. How long before some dating service that does background checks and reveals them to members before dating gets sued bigtime?

-jsq

Pirates and Net Neutrality

Today be Talk Like a Pirate Day, me hearties, so here be a pirate video: Pirates of the Caribbean Verizon commercial.

The fine captains of Verizon, AT&T, Bellsouth, and other ships o’ the main Internet shipping lanes tell us they be needing special timbers to deliver the goods, like that pirate video, and so all ye land lubbers be able to speak to each other.

Yet some captains of politics, such as Ted Kennedy, say avast! We be already speaking just dandy, and what we be needing is more lanes for all, and faster!

‘Tis a fine day to be speakin’ free, I say!  Arr!

-jsq

Terrorism as Theater

Security theater is not real security, but terrorism is theater. And the terrorists seem to be pretty good producers. They’ve got us so scared passengers are insisting on throwing people off airplanes because they “look Middle Eastern,” one man got thrown off a plane (at the airport, I hope) for reciting prayers, cosmetics, dogs, and smoke detectors are getting people investigated for terrorism, and of course we’re all putting up with ever-more-intrusive airport security that accomplishes little. Airport security recently ratched up after a plot to down international flights in which none of the plotters had even bought tickets.

Bruce Schneier spells it out:

I’d like everyone to take a deep breath and listen for a minute.

The point of terrorism is to cause terror, sometimes to further a political goal and sometimes out of sheer hatred. The people terrorists kill are not the targets; they are collateral damage. And blowing up planes, trains, markets or buses is not the goal; those are just tactics. The real targets of terrorism are the rest of us: the billions of us who are not killed but are terrorized because of the killing. The real point of terrorism is not the act itself, but our reaction to the act.

What the Terrorists Want, Bruce Schneier, Schneier on Security, August 24, 2006

In other words, terrorism is theater; what they do isn’t their goal; it’s an act that is intended to provoke an emotional response in the audience. And we the audience are overreacting just like the terrorists want. They don’t even have to blow anything up to get us to take off our shoes, leave our toothpaste at home, and snitch on our fellow passengers for looking different from us. Continue reading →

Why not Biomass?

Here’s an interesting question:
Many American farmers are asking why Brazil, Cuba and African nations are taking the lead in biomass technologies. In Brazil, three-quarters of new cars run on a mix of biofuel and petrol. Cuba is currently experimenting and furthering the advancement of biofuels for much of their economy. Last month in the African nation of Senegal, they formed the African Non-Petroleum Producers Association (PANPP). This organization’s primary goal is to develop alternative energy sources, namely biomass. ‘Our continent,’ said the Senegalese president Abdoulaye Wade, ‘should have as its vocation to become the primary world supplier of biofuels.’ As Jatropha, a wild shrub from Mali, is being used to make biodiesel to run generators and water pumps and other African nations are experimenting with crops to produce biofuels, surely American political leaders can also play a more active role in the use of cleaner energy by using biomass. America is home to one of the greatest and richest landforms in the world that produces tremendous amounts of plant life, the Great Plains. But still the question remains, ‘Why is the funding and technical research surrounding the possibilities of biomass not a priority?’

Biomass And The Birth Of A New Populist MovementM. WorldNews.com, Sun 20 Aug 2006, Article by WorldNews.com Correspondent Beverly Darling.

Less dependance on oil, more prosperity for the homeland, fewer terrorists, less risk of war, what’s not to like? So why isn’t it happening?

-jsq

Toys and Laptops

While I applaud the UK spooks who foiled the recent airline plot based in Britain, some of the reaction is getting a bit extreme and inconsistent:

An Alaska Airlines flight was evacuated on landing at Los Angeles International Airport on Monday after the flight crew became suspicious of a toy found on board.

Alaska Airlines Flight 281 from Guadalajara, Mexico, landed normally at LAX but taxied to a remote part of the airport, where passengers were quickly taken off while police using bomb-sniffing dogs investigated, an FBI spokesman said.

"The device was identified as a type of toy transmitter and a thorough search of the plane and cargo hold for explosives came up negative," he said.

Jet evacuated at LAX after toy spooks crew Mon Aug 14, 2006 7:58pm ET135, Reuters

OK, that makes some sense, given that Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) in Iraq are being set off by anything from a cell phone to a water hose (fill it with water and the pressure of a truck driving over it flips a switch).

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Concentric Circles

How did MI5 find the suspected terrorists in the U.K. in order to foil their plot to down multiple transatlantic airliners? By casting a net over the entire countries telecommunications and looking for needles in that huge haystack? Apparently not; rather by good old-fashioned detective work:

Given that the four British men who carried out last July’s suicide bombings in London were radicalised in Pakistan, British officials have been acutely interested in potential links between UK-based al-Qaeda sympathisers and established militants in Pakistan.

Based on the information from Pakistan, MI5 began its watching operation last year. The BBC last night reported the operation began in July, but The Scotsman understands it started several months earlier.

Arrest in Pakistan led MI5 to airline terror plot suspects The Scotsman, 11 Aug 2006

I heard British Home Secretary John Reid say on the radio yesterday that they had been following the specific group of plotters since December. But how did MI5 find them those plotters in the first place?

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