It's either Thursday or not Thursday

Or maybe both.

I guess that "both" would be in the Schrödinger Dept. of Physics.  Seen on Facebook, along with this:

Wonder if Facebook is going to add a cool new feature "upload picture without cutting off the right hand edge".  That would be sweet.

Googling with the KGB

OK, it's not google (work with me here) and it's no longer the KGB (it's the FSB, work with me here), but I've shifted to the Russian search engine Yandex.  I like it quite a bit, and (perhaps unexpectedly) think that it's more secure than Google.  First, the highlights:

1. Russia has a bunch of excellent computer scientists, and Yandex seems to have picked up a bunch of them.  The Russians always excelled at algorithms (I'd go so far as to say that their mathematics training beats ours handily), and search is a game of algorithms.  I'm told that the Russian language is more difficult for computers to deal with than English (it is an inflected language, unlike ours), and so the Yandex algorithms originally developed for Russian really shine when aimed at English sites.

2. It gives me very good results - for most things I've been looking for, better than Google.  Google's blogsearch has become a joke, which is perhaps a testament to Google's internal lack of focus.  I find that bloggy related searches are much more productive on Yandex.

For example, I had no idea at all that I'd been linked to by Democratic Party News.  Google simply missed this, but Yandex sees all. And by "all" I mean a metric s**t ton more.  If you blog and want to see who's linking to you, take Yandex for a test drive.

And now we come to what brought me to Yandex in the first place: Google is evil.  We all know it.  Furthermore, Google seems to be playing footsie with the US Government Intelligence Agencies:

One privacy advantage Yandex has which Google never will: Yandex does not do business with American intelligence agencies.  I do not like the fact that Google has become an arm of US intelligence agencies. It is to their credit that Google discloses their relationship with the US government (most of Silicon Valley is in bed with the spooks, but they don’t talk about  it). It is the surveillance  state that I abhor. Yandex may very well be doing the same thing with the Russian government, but the FSB is a much smaller threat to American civil rights than our own spooks. While I see no immanent dangers from the all-seeing eye, and I am far from paranoid, the US is going through a weird time right now, and history is a dark and bloody subject. Do I really want the future government  to know what websearches I was doing in 2010? No, thanks,  tovarich.

I recall (from my days at Three Letter Intelligence Agency) the saying there are friendly foreign governments, but there are no friendly foreign Intelligence Agencies.  Looking at the history of the last 15 years - from the Clipper chip to Carnivore to the strange privacy twilight that has descended after 9/11, I would tend to remove the ford "foreign" from that statement.

And once you do that, the question becomes stark: who do I think is more interested in the spoutings and bloggy poo flingings of your humble host: the Russian FSB or the FBI/CIA/NSA/it's-a-great-place-to-start?

To ask the question is to answer it, так?

And so fair thee well, Google.  I don't trust your rankings, and I think that the meat and potatoes of your business - search - is increasingly missing stuff I think is important.  And I simply don't trust you, or our Three Letter Intelligence Agencies.  I so don't trust you that I seem to be more comfortable with the FSB monitoring my search activity instead.

Booting a MITS Altair 8800

Set the boot loader via front panel switches.  No school like the Old School, baby.

Ever had a day when you wanted to smack everyone upside the head?

It happens to me sometimes.  And so to balance out my karmic debt, here's a cute kitten playing on an iPad:



Need to amuse a kitten?  There's an app for that.

Quote of the Day: Hope

So let it be written:

Through many dangers, toils and snares
I have already come;
'Tis Grace that brought me safe thus far
and Grace will lead me home.

So let it be done.  Amen.

What came before the Internet, and inspired it

I've spent my career working on Internet related technology.  As not just someone trained in engineering but in history, I knew that the Internet concept dated to 1969 or so and an ARPA study on self-healing networks.  Lots of folks know that.

What I (and I dare say most people) didn't know was why ARPA gave a damn.  It was SAGE:



The closing lines of this video are prescient: SAGE created essentially all the technologies that we associate with the Internet:

The  SAGE system had many firsts: it was the first nation wide networked computer system. While it used special leased telephone lines and some of the first modems (at a blistering 1300 baud), it was effectively the internet, long before the internet. It was the first to use CRT screens. The first to use a “touch screen interface” via the use of light pens on the CRT. It was the first to use magnetic core memory. It was the first real time, high availability computer system. It was the first computer system to use time sharing. Many people attribute the genesis of computer programming as a profession to the SAGE system. Modern air traffic control, and computer booking systems of course, descend from the SAGE system.

And it could control fighter jets responding to bomber attack, from guiding them to the target, setting fire control, launching weapons, and returning to base.  And it was built using vacuum tubes and magnetic core memory, and went online a few months before I was born.  I was born in August 1958.  

While I never had a job replacing vacuum tubes in computer systems, my older brother (the genius) had friends who did.  They got paid to play cards in the computer enter - at least until the main CPU bucket started having problems.  Then they would hot-swap vacuum tube modules in the guts of the beast, and then all set down for the tedium of removing each tube for individual testing.  Eventually they'd find the bad tube(s), replace them, and go back to playing cards.

That was in the 1970s, and the technology was pioneered by SAGE.

If you read early science fiction - say, Isaac Asimov's Foundation stories - you get a flavor of the expected size of computers.  That was based on SAGE, too.

We stand on the shoulders of giants, who created the modern world with vacuum tubes, new-fangled modems, and iron core memory.  Wow.

LOL

Actively Disengaged rules.

Where do you want to hack today?

A bunch of folks emailed me about the CNN article on the Shodan search engine.  Shodan is cool, and I posted on it quite some time ago.  Here's a good overview of what it is and how it works.





Remember, only use your Powers for Good ...

Life without Sitemeter

Sitemeter's recent outage made me reconsider how much attention I was paying to traffic here.  On a lark, I decided to stop paying attention to it.  I haven't looked at the traffic stats for quite a while, and it's rather liberating.

I wonder if this means that I'm growing up as a blogger ...

The Dollar bubble?

Moldbug (as is his wont) brings teh Smart:

The dollar is already the global monetary standard - what creates any incentive to switch to Bitcoin?  If the dollar was financially perfect, there would be no such incentive.  The dollar is anything but financially perfect.

Probably the easiest way to see this is to consolidate dollars, Treasury notes, and in fact all securities explicitly or implicitly supported by the US Government - a strong argument could be made that this set now includes both the stock market and the real-estate market - as USG liabilities.  To put it crudely, a dollar is a share of stock in America.  Like a frequent-flier mile (which is also a liability), it confers no explicit rights, but can be redeemed for valuable privileges (especially on April 15).

This set of liabilities is constantly expanding - quite a bit more rapidly than the Bitcoin pool.  In plain English, USG leaks money.  It bleeds, in fact, like a stuck pig.  When we do accounting in a diluting equity like this, the rational way to track our positions is not by the number of shares, but by the percentage of ownership.  If we adopt this "normalized accounting," we see that normalized money is constantly being sucked out of our bank accounts.

The only thing that I'd add is that while the US Government can no doubt strangle Bitcoin in its cradle, the Gods of the Copybook Headings pay no heed to fiat currency.  The problem we may face is a combination of 1930s economic depression combined with 1920s Weimar hyperinflation.  Quite frankly, the Fed.Gov wouldn't need to raid your 401(k) account - just let inflation run at 10% a month and they take it all, via the Federal Reserve printing press.

Me, I'm a fan of hard assets.  Real property (not mortgaged), gold and silver (not paper, but physical assets).  Tam's idea of buying collectable firearms is a good one - if the bottom drops out of the economy the gats will be likely even more valuable.  Gunpowder and lead is optional, but only a store of value if you don't go shooting.

Good morning - I'm a real Cheerful Charlie today.  Hope 'n' Change!

Can I just say ...

... that being a grown-up is a pain in the keister?

Look up

I've traveled a lot in my day, and was fortunate that most of it came when upgrades were still plentiful and First Class meant something.  The life seemed glamorous to people looking at it - as opposed to those who lived it, who while the appreciated the quality of the wurst in the Lufthansa Senator Lounge, knew that it was just grabbing a quick bite on another if-it's-tuesday-it-must-be-Brussels business trip.  Another trip away from the family.

But every once in a while you find yourself in one of those moments when you realize at the time that you'll remember it years hence.  For me, it was a drive up the Neander thal (yes, that one), a bunch of random Germans showing me around their home city one weekend, and a particularly interesting conversation with a Flight Attendant in First Class on Air France.  He and I were the only ones up front on that flight to Stockholm, and it was intellectual mano a mano in a most enjoyable and memorable way.

But I never did a trip like Brigid did, nor did I ever write about it like she just did.  This is perhaps her best post ever, and you know what that means.  And she ends with this, which every traveler has engraved on his heart - but which few of us can give words to:

Nothing you wish for is easy, something I always told those that wanted to learn to fly but put it off saying they were too old, or didn't have the time or the money. If there's anything I have learned in life it is that. That love does not exist just in one place and in one instant and in one body out of all the time you have, all the bright light and streaming sky of your life, it is there, waiting for you, with no price tag but your happiness. It's within your reach if you just look up.

She should put some of these together into a book.  I'd pay cash money for a hardback first edition of that.

The University and Say's Law

Image via Wikipedia

Jean-Baptiste Say was a notable French economist during the early years of the Industrial Revolution.  That revolution was truly revolutionary in the sense of entirely changing how people lived and worked, and the social structures underpinning society.

And in its early years, it was not at all clear to anyone just what was going on.  Say - a big enthusiast of free markets and competition - attempted to explain it.

What's interesting is that the most commonly found statement of Say's Law comes not from Say or his contemporaries, but rather from John Maynard Keynes.  I myself learned Keynes' formulation when I was an 18 year old undergraduate:

Supply creates its own demand.

Basically what Keynes meant was that hey, what was spent building a stock of inventory (say, a factory that creates solar cells) represents money that went into the economy, and so demand overall went up because of the resulting fiscal stimulus.

Well, sure, but that doesn't mean that demand for solar cells went up.  Or more precisely, if I spend $500M to build something, that doesn't mean that anyone else will think it's worth $500M.  This is the well, duh school of economic analysis in action.

And so the the University.  Universities have for years - since the years shortly after World War II - been telling people that a University degree is the ticket to a high paying job.  Just as in the early years of the Industrial Revolution it appeared that there was an inexhaustible demand for cotton fabrics, it appeared for decades that modern economies had an inexhaustible demand for University graduates.  And so the diploma mills mushroomed, because after all supply creates its own demand, right?

In an article published in the journal Human Relations, Belgin Okay-Somerville (PhD, Human Resource Management) from the University of Aberdeen and Professor (of Human Resource Management) Dora Scholarios from the University of Strathclyde claim that the number of "skilled jobs" no longer matches the number of "skilled workers".

This means that graduates have no choice but to take rubbish jobs or, at best, "intermediate level" positions.

Naturally these are a long way from the sort of jobs once dished out to graduates in the days when a degree was a rare badge of distinction, rather than something which fell out of your cornflakes packet following three years of alcohol-fuelled fornication.

The Scottish-based trick-cyclists surveyed 7,787 graduate employees, finding that just 379 met their criteria for what defines a good job. These smug and satisfied employees worked in managerial, professional or associate professional occupations and had already racked up between 5 and 15 years in the real world after graduating.

But well done on the alcohol-fuelled fornication, not to mention leftie indoctrination!  It's funny how the Professors are so scornful of Say's Law (as expounded by Keynes) when they've been flogging it more any anyone in the Free World for decades.  I guess that Irony 101 is no longer taught at the Academy these days.

Epitaph for the Iron Lady

Word:

But there’s one other way to tell what a great woman Margaret Thatcher was. Take a look at the people who hate her. If there is another woman in the world who was despised by more despicable people, I can’t think of one.

Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine,
et lux perpetua luceat eis.

Stoker

Steam engines (steamships, fixed engines, and steam trains) were staffed with stokers, men who shoveled coal fuel into the firebox.  Large ships had massive crews of stokers: the Titanic had 163 stokers and 13 foremen to keep its ravenous boilers fed.  Shovel by shovel, perhaps 5 or 10 pounds at a time, the fuel was moved from storage and into the boiler by hard manual labor.  Now it looks romantic:



Me, I'm glad I don't do this to put food on the table.  This weekend I moved 80 wheelbarrow loads of mulch.  Here was the mulch pile when I started:

Here's what it looks like now:

I figure it was between 4000 and 6000 pounds of mulch that got moved.  I expect that the stokers of the titanic would have kicked mulch in my face for being such a girly man.  Like I said, I'm glad that I only do this when I play Gentleman Farmer.  But the rose garden looks pretty good.  Go Team Me!

70 loads of mulch

That's the tally so far.  Making progress, but dang I'm getting worn out.

He was weak

Friend and former co worker (and gunny-biker dude) Burt emails to point out that Mighty God King, while no longer posting on, err, the Mighty God King, is still relevant to today's news.

Ludwig van Beethoven - Symphony No. 6 "Pastoral-Sinfonie"

Image via Wikipedia

Growing up, this was my favorite Beethoven, which meant my favorite classical music.  For some reason it makes me think of spring and puttering around in the garden.  No doubt Disney's "Fantasia" had a part of that.

The symphony reflects Germany's love of nature, which Beethoven felt in full.  Unusual for his works, it is a series of tone poems  telling a stor in each of the five movements: the listener arrives in the the country, the listener is by a brook, the country dance, a thunder storm, the storm's aftermath.

The piece took Beethoven two whole years to write, perhaps the longest of any of his works.  If you feel like me, you'll agree that it was worth the wait.

The symphony's importance was such that Walt Disney chose to include this in his groundbreaking film Fantasia, which appears here.

Well, I only had Wolfgang helping me garden

Could have been worse.

Coldest March since 1883

In Germany, at least:

Complaining about the weather has reached epidemic proportions in northern Germany this "spring." And with good reason. With Easter just around the corner, meteorologists are telling us this could end up being the coldest March in Berlin and its surroundings since records began in the 1880s.

...
High pressure system Jill and low pressure system Dieter have joined forces to torpedo an Easter full of the flowers and pastels we have come to expect. The average temperature in the northern German states of Berlin, Brandenburg and Saxony-Anhalt has been minus 2 degrees Celsius (28.4 degrees Fahrenheit) this month. If Jack Frost doesn't head back to Siberia soon, this March could break the record established in 1883, two years after records began.

As a point of reference, the Brooklyn Bridge didn't open until April 1883.

Me, I blame Global Warming.  It causes everything: