He has, err, film of the working contraption. Cool.
A fully functional Super 8 Movie Projector I built with Kalle using Lego Technic. The only non-Lego parts are the lens, the reel spindles and the lamp.
The projector uses just two engines and is fully featured with automatic feeding, 24 fps, fast rewind and 120m reel capabilities. A decent LED flashlight makes it pretty amazingly bright.
Monday, May 23, 2011
Lego: is there anything it can't do?
Well, it can go together to build a working Super-8 film projector:
Boys, I only did my duty; the old flag never touched the ground!
July 18 is not May 23, even in the Mayan calendar. But it comes close in the calendar used by the U.S. Army in the second half of the nineteenth century.
On July 18, the Massachusetts 54th Volunteer Infantry assaulted well-entrenched Confederate infantry at Fort Wagner, South Carolina. This has been well depicted in the outstanding film Glory:
The 54th Massachusetts, of course, was a Regiment made up from African Americans. It was said that those "boys" (as they were called at the time, and indeed were called up until my lifetime) wouldn't fight.
Those Men fought, and fought like demons. And when the Color Sergent was shot down, Sergent William Harvey Carney caught them before they fell. He kept them for the rest of the battle, waving them from the parapet of the fortress to rally the troops until the retreat was sounded. Then he brought Old Glory back to friendly lines. He never let it touch the ground.
The fastest way to get your ticket punched to the Hereafter during the War Between The States was to carry the standards. You made the natural rally point for your side, which made you the natural aim point for the other side. To expose yourself was expected in that maelstrom, but strong men were unashamed to let someone else bear the Colors.
But not William Harvey Carney.
It was a day when racism was easy, and everywhere unashamed. And so Sgt. Carney had to wait almost 37 years for the recognition that was his due. Delayed by the odd U.S. Army calendar I've spoken of, he was awarded the Medal of Honor for gallantryabove and beyond the call of duty on this day in 1900. While his was not the first MoH awarded to an African American, his deeds of valor were the first so to be recognized:
On July 18, the Massachusetts 54th Volunteer Infantry assaulted well-entrenched Confederate infantry at Fort Wagner, South Carolina. This has been well depicted in the outstanding film Glory:
The 54th Massachusetts, of course, was a Regiment made up from African Americans. It was said that those "boys" (as they were called at the time, and indeed were called up until my lifetime) wouldn't fight.
The fastest way to get your ticket punched to the Hereafter during the War Between The States was to carry the standards. You made the natural rally point for your side, which made you the natural aim point for the other side. To expose yourself was expected in that maelstrom, but strong men were unashamed to let someone else bear the Colors.
But not William Harvey Carney.
It was a day when racism was easy, and everywhere unashamed. And so Sgt. Carney had to wait almost 37 years for the recognition that was his due. Delayed by the odd U.S. Army calendar I've spoken of, he was awarded the Medal of Honor for gallantryabove and beyond the call of duty on this day in 1900. While his was not the first MoH awarded to an African American, his deeds of valor were the first so to be recognized:
Rank and organization: Sergeant, Company C, 54th Massachusetts Colored Infantry. Place and date: At Fort Wagner, S.C., 18 July 1863. Entered service at: New Bedford, Mass. Birth: Norfolk, Va. Date of issue: 23 May 1900. Citation: When the color sergeant was shot down, this soldier grasped the flag, led the way to the parapet, and planted the colors thereon. When the troops fell back he brought off the flag, under a fierce fire in which he was twice severely wounded.Delayed, but not denied.
Opus 4000
Next month I'll hit my third blogiversary, so while that new blog small is long gone, it's not like I've been around forever.
But this is my 4,000th post. I'm a bit of a Chatty Cathy (as if that's a surprise to anyone). By rough calculation I do around 25,000 words a month, so the total so far should be coming up on 900,000 words (!).
Yikes.
But thanks to everyone who stops by to listen to me go on and on (and on and on and on)!
But this is my 4,000th post. I'm a bit of a Chatty Cathy (as if that's a surprise to anyone). By rough calculation I do around 25,000 words a month, so the total so far should be coming up on 900,000 words (!).
Yikes.
But thanks to everyone who stops by to listen to me go on and on (and on and on and on)!
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Oh. That earth shattering kaboom
Nuclear test explosions to Tchaikovsky's 1912 Overture.
Your argument is invalid.
UPDATE 22 May 19:56: Err, 1812 Overture, as Merlin so kindly points out. The 1912 Overture would involve an event of mass death from that year. Sort of like this:
But your argument is still invalid.
Your argument is invalid.
UPDATE 22 May 19:56: Err, 1812 Overture, as Merlin so kindly points out. The 1912 Overture would involve an event of mass death from that year. Sort of like this:
But your argument is still invalid.
Alas, no MA Deuce
Or whistling, Dixie or otherwise. But there is Beethoven (Moonlight Sonata) and a metric ton of slow motion full automatic shooty goodness.
And the first comment cracks me up:
And the first comment cracks me up:
I'd rather hear the guns fire in slow motion then hearing this gay music, music ruined it all! Just my opinion! Why the hell would you put music over the actual sound of the gun!!!!! StupidOn the contrary, the only thing that would have made this video more awesome is if the shooter had worn a dinner jacket.
Spectacular failure
Some of my friends are scary brilliant people. Actually, my older brother is like that.growing up in that environment pulled me into orbit around their precocious smart. For example, a friend and I weren't too keen on reading Steinbeck (*COUGH*)commie symp!(*COUGH*) as high school freshmen. We asked the teacher if instead we could read Dostoyevsky. Her reaction was interesting.
Well, when some of these friends got out of college, they landed some interesting jobs. One of them was at a company doing Artificial Intelligence. Mind you, this was back around 1980, with computers that were slower than what you're using to read this now. They knew that the hardware needed Moore's Law to drive it to smaller/faster/cheaper, but were absolutely convinced that we would have thinking computers "in 20 or 30 years".
You'll notice that it's 30 years later, and we don't have thinking computers (or flying cars, for that matter). I quite simply didn't believe them at the time, although it was a gut feel reaction - I've heard a lot of predictions from technologists based on extending a trend line, and so I developed a healthy skepticism even at an early age.
But this idea of thinking computers keeps coming back. Even a smart guy like Aretae talks about it:
If only we could describe what most of these looked like, went the thought, we could detect attacks as they actually happen. It was pretty sexy stuff (if you're a security geek). The problem is that it doesn't work.
We don't understand what's normal well enough to capture it in an automated computer analysis. As a result, IDS has been shunted off to the sidelines. While most IDS systems have thousands of signatures, only a hundred or so get turned on. We used to call these the "Nifty Fifty" - the (back then) fifty signatures that never went wrong. Now there are a hundred, maybe two hundred. Of course, no attacker worth his salt will do anything to trigger any of them, and so IDS really isn't very useful.
In technical terminology, incorrectly identifying normal activity as malicious or undesirable is called a "False Positive" situation, ind this is deadly for IDS systems. Customers would report that they were getting thousands of false positives a day, and so their operators would turn the systems off. Quite frankly, that's what the "Nifty Fifty" idea was trying to do - ship with most of the system turned off. Of course, at that point why would you want one at all?
And so to Artificial Intelligence. Computers do some things really well. Pure mathematics is simply not worth doing by humans, because computers are so fast and accurate. But computers are unbelievably bad at pattern recognition, and do not seem to be getting better. It's not that people don't keep trying, but success is really limited. The IBM Watson Jeopardy winning computer was really just a voice recognition system married to a database lookup system. What made it unbeatable was that it didn't have thumbs - the electronic relay it used to buzz in was simply faster than the human reaction time on their buzzers. But Watson couldn't have a conversation with you. Even a three year old would be a more interesting conversationalist.
And thus my skepticism about AI taking over. AI's failures in pattern recognition have been persistent, and sometimes simply spectacular:
Fail.
The idea that we'll simply catalog "what the patterns are" is seductive, but so far has led to nothing but madness - the patterns have been too hard to classify reliably, other than in extremely limited situations. Even something as well-specified as computer networking protocols are essentially beyond our scope of understanding, at least from an IDS point of view. We've tried, with really really smart people (I know these people, and can vouch for their intelligence).
And after 15 years of development, people turn off their IDS systems. The failure is spectacular, and complete. I expect that people will continue to work on AI, and that we'll continue to be 20-30 years away from "thinking computers". Just like we were in 1980.
I guess this is a good time for a disclaimer, seeing as I'm making predictions about the advance of technology. Anyone who does that is a fool, so I've tried to keep this short. Your mileage may vary, void where prohibited, do not remove tag under penalty of law.
Well, when some of these friends got out of college, they landed some interesting jobs. One of them was at a company doing Artificial Intelligence. Mind you, this was back around 1980, with computers that were slower than what you're using to read this now. They knew that the hardware needed Moore's Law to drive it to smaller/faster/cheaper, but were absolutely convinced that we would have thinking computers "in 20 or 30 years".
You'll notice that it's 30 years later, and we don't have thinking computers (or flying cars, for that matter). I quite simply didn't believe them at the time, although it was a gut feel reaction - I've heard a lot of predictions from technologists based on extending a trend line, and so I developed a healthy skepticism even at an early age.
But this idea of thinking computers keeps coming back. Even a smart guy like Aretae talks about it:
in 2050, barring the singularity, Robots will do most work, including most work we currently consider to be intellectual work, and 90+% of the population will live largely useless (n the historical sense) lives, because robots can do EVERYTHING better than they can.I'm very skeptical. I think that computer security can help explain it. One area that was hot, hot, hot in the 1990s was "Intrusion Detection" (IDS) - looking for patterns of log messages or network traffic that you would expect to see during an attack. For example, someone who is probing for services to exploit will have a very characteristic signature that is pretty unmistakable - lots of connections to different services from a single computer. Nothing actually works like that, and so it must be an attack.
If only we could describe what most of these looked like, went the thought, we could detect attacks as they actually happen. It was pretty sexy stuff (if you're a security geek). The problem is that it doesn't work.
We don't understand what's normal well enough to capture it in an automated computer analysis. As a result, IDS has been shunted off to the sidelines. While most IDS systems have thousands of signatures, only a hundred or so get turned on. We used to call these the "Nifty Fifty" - the (back then) fifty signatures that never went wrong. Now there are a hundred, maybe two hundred. Of course, no attacker worth his salt will do anything to trigger any of them, and so IDS really isn't very useful.
In technical terminology, incorrectly identifying normal activity as malicious or undesirable is called a "False Positive" situation, ind this is deadly for IDS systems. Customers would report that they were getting thousands of false positives a day, and so their operators would turn the systems off. Quite frankly, that's what the "Nifty Fifty" idea was trying to do - ship with most of the system turned off. Of course, at that point why would you want one at all?
And so to Artificial Intelligence. Computers do some things really well. Pure mathematics is simply not worth doing by humans, because computers are so fast and accurate. But computers are unbelievably bad at pattern recognition, and do not seem to be getting better. It's not that people don't keep trying, but success is really limited. The IBM Watson Jeopardy winning computer was really just a voice recognition system married to a database lookup system. What made it unbeatable was that it didn't have thumbs - the electronic relay it used to buzz in was simply faster than the human reaction time on their buzzers. But Watson couldn't have a conversation with you. Even a three year old would be a more interesting conversationalist.
And thus my skepticism about AI taking over. AI's failures in pattern recognition have been persistent, and sometimes simply spectacular:
Automatic image-analysis systems are already used to catch unwanted pornography before it reaches a computer monitor. But they often struggle to distinguish between indecent imagery and more innocuous pictures with large flesh-coloured regions, such as a person in swimwear or a close-up face. Analysing the audio for a "sexual scream or moan" could solve the problem, say electrical engineers MyungJong Kim and Hoirin Kim at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in Daejeon, South Korea.It false positives on the laugh track. 93 percent may sound like a lot, but it's far short of a usable system. Consider a company that implemented an anti-porn surfing system that was 93% accurate. That means 7% of what employees download will be misclassified, and a bunch of that will misidentify innocent content as being porn. A human being will have to investigate each of these. You'll need a roomful of HR drones to keep up with the false positives.
...
The model outperformed other audio-based techniques, correctly identifying 93 per cent of the pornographic content from the test clips. The clips it missed had confusable sound, such as background music, causing the model to misclassify some lewd clips. Comedy shows with laughter were also sometimes mistaken for pornography, as the loud audience cheers and cries share similar spectral characteristics to sexual sounds.
Fail.
The idea that we'll simply catalog "what the patterns are" is seductive, but so far has led to nothing but madness - the patterns have been too hard to classify reliably, other than in extremely limited situations. Even something as well-specified as computer networking protocols are essentially beyond our scope of understanding, at least from an IDS point of view. We've tried, with really really smart people (I know these people, and can vouch for their intelligence).
And after 15 years of development, people turn off their IDS systems. The failure is spectacular, and complete. I expect that people will continue to work on AI, and that we'll continue to be 20-30 years away from "thinking computers". Just like we were in 1980.
I guess this is a good time for a disclaimer, seeing as I'm making predictions about the advance of technology. Anyone who does that is a fool, so I've tried to keep this short. Your mileage may vary, void where prohibited, do not remove tag under penalty of law.
Giacomo Puccini - Nessun dorma
Austin seems like the Tuscany of Texas. Beautiful, rolling hill country. Towns (well, houses) built on the hilltops, with farmland in the valleys in between. Local wine that, while I haven't tried it yet, is from a climate that should produce something good.
When you think of Tuscany and classical music, you think of Puccini. We're not quite to the point of "Puccini = Opera." Not quite, but close. His works include La Bohème, Tosca, Madame Butterfly, and Turandot, some of the most romantic operas ever written.
Nessun Dorma is from Turandot, Puccini's last - and actually unfinished - opera. Puccini was stricken with throat cancer, and traveled to Brussels for a new experimental radiation therapy. He never returned to Italy, or finished the Opera. It seems that he knew his chances were slim, because he left a notebook explaining how to finish it, which Franco Alfano did. Toscanini conducted the premiere, and stopped the performance at the point where Puccini's music ended saying, "This is where the maestro laid down his pen, but his followers finished is work." The orchestra then resumed play. Very romantic.
Jose Carreras has perhaps the greatest operatic tenor voice of our day. While perhaps best known as the third of the "Three Tenors" (along with Luciano Pavarotti and Placido Domingo), his voice has a purity which is unique. Like Puccini, he was stricken with cancer (leukemia) ; unlike Puccini, he won his struggle, and nessun dorma became a theme song of sorts for him. You see, the song ends with a determined - indeed triumphant - "Vincerò!" ("I will win"). Audiences interpreted this as a musical embodiment of the will to live.
Quite romantic all around, if you think about it.
When you think of Tuscany and classical music, you think of Puccini. We're not quite to the point of "Puccini = Opera." Not quite, but close. His works include La Bohème, Tosca, Madame Butterfly, and Turandot, some of the most romantic operas ever written.
Nessun Dorma is from Turandot, Puccini's last - and actually unfinished - opera. Puccini was stricken with throat cancer, and traveled to Brussels for a new experimental radiation therapy. He never returned to Italy, or finished the Opera. It seems that he knew his chances were slim, because he left a notebook explaining how to finish it, which Franco Alfano did. Toscanini conducted the premiere, and stopped the performance at the point where Puccini's music ended saying, "This is where the maestro laid down his pen, but his followers finished is work." The orchestra then resumed play. Very romantic.
Jose Carreras has perhaps the greatest operatic tenor voice of our day. While perhaps best known as the third of the "Three Tenors" (along with Luciano Pavarotti and Placido Domingo), his voice has a purity which is unique. Like Puccini, he was stricken with cancer (leukemia) ; unlike Puccini, he won his struggle, and nessun dorma became a theme song of sorts for him. You see, the song ends with a determined - indeed triumphant - "Vincerò!" ("I will win"). Audiences interpreted this as a musical embodiment of the will to live.
Quite romantic all around, if you think about it.
Saturday, May 21, 2011
And so the Rapture passed us by
And all Right Thinking People™ are yucking it up about the whole thing. And I have to admit, you do have to question the sophistication (let alone the reasoning ability) of people who think that a Lightbringer can work miracles, usher in a new post-racial time, close down illegal prisons in Guantanamo, end the endless wars in the Middle East, finally make us proud of our country, stop the seas from rising, and let the Planet begin to heal.
Even if it is in their Holy Scripture.
I mean, srlsy, what sort of naif would believe something that far fetched?
Even if it is in their Holy Scripture.
I mean, srlsy, what sort of naif would believe something that far fetched?
First, we kill all the lawyers
The world in general, and my industry (high tech) in particular is filled with people who think that a Better Mousetrap will change society. Engineers are prone to the technocrat's disease: it's elegant, and insanely cool, and wildly useful to society, and so it's obvious that it will not just be built, but will dominate the market.
You'd think that one look at Microsoft® Windows® would disabuse them of that notion, but the attitude is perennial.
Via The Antiplanner, we find an example that encapsulates this fallacy to a T.
This has no hope of ever being fielded in quantity. The reason is Lawyers. Audi spent years defending itself against frivolous suits claiming unexpected acceleration. It was all driver error by elderly (i.e. failing faculties) yuppies (i.e. sense of entitlement; ignore the "y" in yuppie) SWPL types.
And even so, it destroyed the Audi 5000 brand. And this wasn't a one-off situation, a "black swan": the Fed.Gov just put Toyota through the wringer for precisely the same thing. Of course, it was all driver error, too.
But Borepatch, I hear you say, if you could eliminate driver error, that would solve the problem, wouldn't it?
Nope. This isn't an engineering problem.
Consider a hypothetical future, where engineers design self-driving cars. There's little doubt that these cars will be safer than today's cars. There's also no doubt at all that the design and implementation of the new system will have defects. This is, after all, my chosen profession, and we can take it as a give that software have bugs, and that some of those bugs will be horrendous.
Now add lawyers into the mix. There's typically little money to be made chasing wrongful death lawsuits caused by reckless or intoxicated drivers. The insurance payout is in part designed to make this the case, and unless it's a business involved, the return on legal hours invested in a lawsuit simply doesn't pay.
So the current high rate of death is a given, but cannot be compared to our hypothetical future. When a software bug causes a fatal crash - and it's not a question of "if", it's a question of "when" if millions of driver-less cars end up on the road, the legal calculus changes. Now there are deep pockets (Toyota's), and you have an actual error due to their design or implementation failure. A jury will want to find for the plaintiff.
Enter Game Theory. If Toyota is smart, its Product Managers will be performing Annualized Loss Expectancy (ALE) calculations as to expectation of legal outcome. The profit from the expected potential additional vehicle sales is almost certainly swamped by potential losses from litigation.
The benefits of the hypothetical system accrue to individuals (people who do not die in accidents caused by drivers, and their dependents) or society (higher capacity factor for existing roads). The losses are concentrated (people who die in accidents caused by software bugs, and the auto manufacturers after the heirs of the deceased win lawsuits).
In short, why on earth would a rational company invest in this technology? Sure, it has real benefits. Overwhelmingly good benefits, in fact. But qui bono?
The only thing that would change this calculation would be for government to shield the manufacturers from judgement. I'm not at all sure that this would be A Good Thing, as it is somewhat of a disincentive for product quality investment. But it doesn't appear that the Fed.Gov is interested - after all, they just put Toyota through the wringer for something that wasn't Toyota's fault. And The Antiplanner himself captures the problem with the current ruling class and their attitude towards SWPL prestige projects:
The ruling class is happy with their false, feel-good stories. It's not an engineering problem, it's a philosophical world-view problem, and it won't be solved by private enterprise.
You'd think that one look at Microsoft® Windows® would disabuse them of that notion, but the attitude is perennial.
Via The Antiplanner, we find an example that encapsulates this fallacy to a T.
This has no hope of ever being fielded in quantity. The reason is Lawyers. Audi spent years defending itself against frivolous suits claiming unexpected acceleration. It was all driver error by elderly (i.e. failing faculties) yuppies (i.e. sense of entitlement; ignore the "y" in yuppie) SWPL types.
And even so, it destroyed the Audi 5000 brand. And this wasn't a one-off situation, a "black swan": the Fed.Gov just put Toyota through the wringer for precisely the same thing. Of course, it was all driver error, too.
But Borepatch, I hear you say, if you could eliminate driver error, that would solve the problem, wouldn't it?
Nope. This isn't an engineering problem.
Consider a hypothetical future, where engineers design self-driving cars. There's little doubt that these cars will be safer than today's cars. There's also no doubt at all that the design and implementation of the new system will have defects. This is, after all, my chosen profession, and we can take it as a give that software have bugs, and that some of those bugs will be horrendous.
Now add lawyers into the mix. There's typically little money to be made chasing wrongful death lawsuits caused by reckless or intoxicated drivers. The insurance payout is in part designed to make this the case, and unless it's a business involved, the return on legal hours invested in a lawsuit simply doesn't pay.
So the current high rate of death is a given, but cannot be compared to our hypothetical future. When a software bug causes a fatal crash - and it's not a question of "if", it's a question of "when" if millions of driver-less cars end up on the road, the legal calculus changes. Now there are deep pockets (Toyota's), and you have an actual error due to their design or implementation failure. A jury will want to find for the plaintiff.
Enter Game Theory. If Toyota is smart, its Product Managers will be performing Annualized Loss Expectancy (ALE) calculations as to expectation of legal outcome. The profit from the expected potential additional vehicle sales is almost certainly swamped by potential losses from litigation.
The benefits of the hypothetical system accrue to individuals (people who do not die in accidents caused by drivers, and their dependents) or society (higher capacity factor for existing roads). The losses are concentrated (people who die in accidents caused by software bugs, and the auto manufacturers after the heirs of the deceased win lawsuits).
In short, why on earth would a rational company invest in this technology? Sure, it has real benefits. Overwhelmingly good benefits, in fact. But qui bono?
The only thing that would change this calculation would be for government to shield the manufacturers from judgement. I'm not at all sure that this would be A Good Thing, as it is somewhat of a disincentive for product quality investment. But it doesn't appear that the Fed.Gov is interested - after all, they just put Toyota through the wringer for something that wasn't Toyota's fault. And The Antiplanner himself captures the problem with the current ruling class and their attitude towards SWPL prestige projects:
Apparently, all it takes is a totally unrealistic vision to persuade people supposedly as sophisticated as the editors of the LA Times. The truth is bullet trains are far more expensive than airlines (75 cents vs. 15 cents a passenger mile); Amtrak’s safety record is far worse than the airlines (1.4 vs. 0.1 passenger fatalities per billion passenger miles); and cleaner depends on the energy source (and powering trains with renewable energy won’t help much if all those trains do is displace some other energy consumer who therefore relies on fossil fuels). As for “reducing reliance on gas-guzzling automobiles,” the state’s own extremely optimistic numbers show that California high-speed rail won’t displace more than 2 or 3 percent of the state’s auto driving; and by the time it is built, autos won’t be guzzling that much gas anyway.But they don't think about this, and don't want to: Don't bother me with your pesky facts, I'm building the New Progressive Jerusalem.
The ruling class is happy with their false, feel-good stories. It's not an engineering problem, it's a philosophical world-view problem, and it won't be solved by private enterprise.
Quote of the Day - Roissy edition
Surprisingly, not at Roissy, but over at Sonic Charmer's place:
Note to readers unfamiliar with Roissy: likely most women and a large number of men will be appalled at his posts.
The comments are spirited, but interestingly do not address that last point on women's views. Maybe it's because all the commenters are male. I'm not sure if any of my lady readers want to go edumacate them or not.
This all goes along with my theory of Ideologies As Sex Fantasies, which I’ll state more briefly here (from a guy’s POV):
Women have not-identical but complementary for being attracted to one of the above ideologies, of course.
- Theocrats/fanatics want society to let them own women for exclusive sex. Their main worry is being cuckolded.
- Socialists want to shape society so that it supplies them with easy women. Their main worry is not being attractive, successful etc. enough to get any sex.
- Classical liberals/conservatives want society to stop shoving sex in their face. Their main worry is their daughter turning into a slut.
Note to readers unfamiliar with Roissy: likely most women and a large number of men will be appalled at his posts.
Jimmy Baldwin - Peace, Love & Chicken Fried Steak
Texas has a lot of bands, and a lot of singers. Austin in particular is blessed with an abundance of local artists, most of whom people in the other, lesser States never get a chance to hear. That's a shame, really.
Jimmy Baldwin serves up a tasty song here, with his trademark humor. He's worth searching out, because he's not your run of the mill cowboy singer/songwriter. You'll find mariachi flavors sometimes, or even reggae.
Think globally, listen locally.
Usually I put the lyrics here, but Jimmy kindly put them in the video.
(image source)
Friday, May 20, 2011
Quote of the Day - Police SWAT edition
It's no longer correct to call it the "militarization" of the police when the Rules of Engagement are tougher for the Marines shooting at terrorists than for cops shooting at you. Alan nails it:
Just don't do anything illegal, and just don't be there when the cops make a mistake and come to your house instead of the one they meant to, and you don't have anything to worry about.
Yeah, something is not right when the police in the US have looser rules of engagement than the army in a war.
You know what that’s called?
A police state.
Uh oh
Item the first: SCADA exploit demo canceled:
I've been saying for a while that it's a target rich environment, and this shows that people are paying attention to the problem. It's a Good Thing that the researchers talked to Siemens and held their fire. But there will be a ton more of these, and I expect that our infrastructure is fragile and will break quickly and hard when the first of these gets into the wild.
Stock up on food, water, ammunition, and Krugerrands.
Item the second: Explosion of malware aimed at Macintosh:
Apple really has the worst attitude about security of any company I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot. It's pathetic that their customers will get more help here than from Apple.
Item the third: Mobile malware is exploding, too:
Security researchers decided to cancel a planned demonstration of security holes in industrial control systems from Siemens following requests from the German manufacturer and a security response team.SCADA systems control gobs of the systems that make our modern lives possible: oil refineries, electric power generation, that sort of thing. The SCADA systems were what the StuxNet worm attacked, taking the Iranian uranium enrichment centrifuges offline.
...
They shared their research beforehand with Siemens, ICS-CERT (Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team – a division of the Department of Homeland Security), and the Idaho National Lab. Siemens asked the two researchers to hold fire on the talk, which covered possible mechanisms to attack industrial control systems along with a practical demonstration.
I've been saying for a while that it's a target rich environment, and this shows that people are paying attention to the problem. It's a Good Thing that the researchers talked to Siemens and held their fire. But there will be a ton more of these, and I expect that our infrastructure is fragile and will break quickly and hard when the first of these gets into the wild.
Stock up on food, water, ammunition, and Krugerrands.
Item the second: Explosion of malware aimed at Macintosh:
Yesterday I spent several hours going through discussions.apple.com and collecting requests for help from Mac users who have been affected by this issue. I found more than 200 separate discussion threads, many of them from people who have been tricked into installing this software and are desperately trying to remove it. It started with four posts on April 30; this past weekend there were 42 unique, new discussion threads on this subject.A little while ago someone released a malware development kit that made malware for the Mac. There's been a huge spike in reported Mac pwnage. Apple is doing what Apple always does about security problems: sweeping them under the rug:
Apple fanboys, Borepatch's First Law applies to you: "Free download" is Internet-speak for "open your mouth and close your eyes." Any web page you visit or email you read that tells you that you're infected is flogging malware at you. Don't click it, don't download it, don't let it install. Windows users already know this. Welcome to the club.
Apple officials have instructed members of the company's support team to withhold any confirmation that a customer's Mac has been infected with malware or to assist in removing malicious programs, ZDNet's Ed Bott reported on Thursday.
He cited an internal document titled "About 'Mac Defender' Malware," which was last updated on May 16 and says that the trojan, which surfaced earlier this month and masquerades as legitimate security software for the OS X platform, is an "Issue/Investigation In Progress."
...
"Porn sites just started popping up on my MacBook Pro," one user wrote. "Is this a virus? I have never had a virus on a Mac before and I have been using Macs for years. Please help!"
Apple really has the worst attitude about security of any company I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot. It's pathetic that their customers will get more help here than from Apple.
Item the third: Mobile malware is exploding, too:
Juniper makes some righteous corporate firewalls. They know what they're talking about.
SUNNYVALE, Calif., May 10, 2011 — In a global mobile threat study released today, Juniper Networks (NYSE: JNPR) found that enterprise and consumer mobile devices are exposed to a record number of security threats, including a 400 percent increase in Android malware, as well as highly targeted Wi-Fi attacks. Through close examination of recent malware exploits, the study outlines new areas of concern and delivers clear recommendations on essential security technologies and practices to help consumers, enterprises/SMBs, and government entities guard against mobile device exploits.
...
The report, "Malicious Mobile Threats Report 2010/2011" was compiled by the Juniper Networks Global Threat Center(GTC) research facility, a unique organization dedicated to conducting around-the-clock security, vulnerability and malware research tailored specifically to mobile device platforms and technologies. The GTC examines increasingly sophisticated attacks from 2010 and 2011, such as, Myournet/Droid Dream, Tap Snake and Geinimi as well as the pirating of the "Walk and Text" application, new threat vectors for mobile cybercrime, and the potential for exploitation and misuse of mobile devices and data.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Bravo
Well done. So very well done.
Bravo, sir. Full marks. And it reminded me of this, from the days before the TSA ruled the airways:
Bravo, sir. Full marks. And it reminded me of this, from the days before the TSA ruled the airways:
Externalities and the State
If you hang out in Intellectual Pin-Head places like I do (err, so you don't have to), you'll pretty quickly run across the idea of "externalities". Wikipedia has a decent-ish article on the issue:
And in all honesty, the market economy doesn't do a good job of factoring in non-price signals. Pollution is a good example of this - it's nasty and unpleasant, but has often been a sign of cost avoidance where the polluter benefits at the expense of people who have to put up with the yuckiness he leaves behind.
Fair enough. However, Progressives never consider the two word argument that cuts the heart out of their argument for expanded Government:
Sovereign Immunity.
It's hard to sue the Government, by intent. The argument is that nuisance suits would interfere with the legitimate functioning of the Apparatus of the State. Imagine someone bring suit because, say, the Government held Enemy Non-Combatants without trial at a location outside the United States. Err, or something. You get the idea.
But here's where the externality rubber meets the road: if the Government cannot be held liable for even gross misfeasance, who bears the cost of that misfeasance? The answer, of course, is us:
Now riddle me this: if this had been a private company - say a hospital - not only would it be liable for a class action tort, but possibly some of the folks would be looking a prosecution for violation of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. The cost of settling this - or of paying the judgement - would result in a price signal to the market, resulting in (long term) better security of the organization.
In other words, liability ensures that there is no externality.
What about the Government? What liability do they have? In a word, none. Go ahead and try to sue, this will be bounced from the Commonwealth's courthouses faster than you can say "pwned". So who pays the costs of the breach?
The people whose information was compromised, that's who. They're the ones that bear the full cost of information theft, frozen accounts, cleaning up a damaged credit history. The State skates away scott free, courtesy of Sovereign Immunity.
And note to Progressives everywhere: the people bearing the full cost of dealing with the Government's incompetence are unemployed. That means that probably they're poor.
So Sovereign Immunity screws the poor, by passing the full cost of incompetence-related externalities on to them in their moment of maximum financial need. That's one righteous "progressive" vision there, Scooter.
But yeah I know, somewhere in Texas, a village is missing its idiot. Or something.
Rational public policy theory thus says that most government functions should be outsourced, so as not to be protected by Sovereign Immunity. Companies will bid on the contracts, pricing in the externalities. Social Welfare will be maximized by minimizing the number of Government Functionaries. Q. E. D.
So the take away from this (overly long) post is that 99% of all jabber you hear about "externalities" is precisely that - jabber. The speaker is either ignorant of the externalities associated with their proposed Governmental Power Grab (and it's always about increasing Government power, isn't it?), or they're ignorant.
In which case, they're a credentialed (but not educated) idiot.
And before you go thinking about how I'm being so mean to the Democrats, what makes you think that I'm not including Republicans, too?
In economics, an externality (or transaction spillover) is a cost or benefit, not transmitted through prices,[1] incurred by a party who did not agree to the action causing the cost or benefit. A benefit in this case is called a positive externality or external benefit, while a cost is called a negative externality or external cost.Not many discussions on positive externalities, because quite frankly you don't see many of them. But Progressives love negative externalities, and will tiresomely roll them out as examples of failures of the market system and justification for an ever expanding Government Sector.
And in all honesty, the market economy doesn't do a good job of factoring in non-price signals. Pollution is a good example of this - it's nasty and unpleasant, but has often been a sign of cost avoidance where the polluter benefits at the expense of people who have to put up with the yuckiness he leaves behind.
Fair enough. However, Progressives never consider the two word argument that cuts the heart out of their argument for expanded Government:
Sovereign Immunity.
It's hard to sue the Government, by intent. The argument is that nuisance suits would interfere with the legitimate functioning of the Apparatus of the State. Imagine someone bring suit because, say, the Government held Enemy Non-Combatants without trial at a location outside the United States. Err, or something. You get the idea.
But here's where the externality rubber meets the road: if the Government cannot be held liable for even gross misfeasance, who bears the cost of that misfeasance? The answer, of course, is us:
About right, there. Who knows - maybe someone at the Office of Labor and Workforce Development surfed to the wrong pr0n site and got some nanst malware which swiped the data.
The personal financial information of up to 210,000 unemployed Massachusetts residents may have been stolen in a data breach caused by a virus discovered in state labor department computers four weeks ago, officials said yesterday.
Names, addresses, and Social Security numbers, among other data, may have been taken, said John Glennon, chief information officer for the Massachusetts Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development.
It raises a few questions: Why did it take the Department of Labor FOUR WEEKS to report this? I would imagine that anyone that had their information stolen has already found out about it - because their identities are now trashed. How did the virus get into the database? Is it a case of incompetent employees opening files they shouldn't? Holes in security that should have been patched?
Now riddle me this: if this had been a private company - say a hospital - not only would it be liable for a class action tort, but possibly some of the folks would be looking a prosecution for violation of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. The cost of settling this - or of paying the judgement - would result in a price signal to the market, resulting in (long term) better security of the organization.
In other words, liability ensures that there is no externality.
What about the Government? What liability do they have? In a word, none. Go ahead and try to sue, this will be bounced from the Commonwealth's courthouses faster than you can say "pwned". So who pays the costs of the breach?
The people whose information was compromised, that's who. They're the ones that bear the full cost of information theft, frozen accounts, cleaning up a damaged credit history. The State skates away scott free, courtesy of Sovereign Immunity.
And note to Progressives everywhere: the people bearing the full cost of dealing with the Government's incompetence are unemployed. That means that probably they're poor.
So Sovereign Immunity screws the poor, by passing the full cost of incompetence-related externalities on to them in their moment of maximum financial need. That's one righteous "progressive" vision there, Scooter.
But yeah I know, somewhere in Texas, a village is missing its idiot. Or something.
Rational public policy theory thus says that most government functions should be outsourced, so as not to be protected by Sovereign Immunity. Companies will bid on the contracts, pricing in the externalities. Social Welfare will be maximized by minimizing the number of Government Functionaries. Q. E. D.
So the take away from this (overly long) post is that 99% of all jabber you hear about "externalities" is precisely that - jabber. The speaker is either ignorant of the externalities associated with their proposed Governmental Power Grab (and it's always about increasing Government power, isn't it?), or they're ignorant.
In which case, they're a credentialed (but not educated) idiot.
And before you go thinking about how I'm being so mean to the Democrats, what makes you think that I'm not including Republicans, too?
Is it gay or not?
Definitely gay:
Apologies to everyone from West Virginia, but the thread is pretty funny.
Also, as it is probably far more acceptable for men in West Virginia to hold guns than hands, I will assume the term 'shooting me in the face with your .32' is not a euphemism..32 ACP is totally gay. Just sayin'.
Apologies to everyone from West Virginia, but the thread is pretty funny.
The Battle of Ilerda
The Roman Civil War was a nasty, winner-take-all affair. The Republic had grown so big, so fast, that republican virtues were overwhelmed by the vast amounts of money to be made by military conquest. And so the fracture.
Winston Churchill once said, "History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it." And so with Caesar. His Gallic Wars was a sensation in Rome, and it is possible that the most famous words ever written in Latin are Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres.
He continued writing throughout much of his remaining military career. Most of what we know of the battle of Ilerda comes from his commentaries. As such, you need to take it with a very large grain of salt: Caesar wrote at length of his clemency towards the opposing commanders Lucius Afranius and Marcus Petreius, although they seem to have died several years after the battle.
Then things settled down for a long time in Ilerda. The Moorish conquest and subsequent reconquesta mostly bypassed the region. One of Europe's early Universities was founded there in the thirteenth century, just as the Little Ice Age was about to decimate the European population. Then more quiet.
Until now:
A judge ordered the removal of 45 wind turbines on the grounds that planning laws were violated. There was no “general municipal plan” establishing a “reserva del suelo” – i.e. the land was not legally declared appropriate for the erection of wind turbines.Note to Progressives: Live by SWPL, die by SWPL. You like "renewable" "green" power. You like ancient landscapes of Romanesque churches with undespoiled views.
Oops, you also like technocratic legalistic rule by an untouchable elite. The untouchable elite just told you to tear down that "renewable" "green" power, because your technocratic elite are a bunch of incompetent nincompoops, who can't even work the rules they set up to control the rest of us.
Who's a Sad Panda?
You know, some days, getting out of bed in the morning is a pleasure. Oh, and Progressives? You expect us to let you run things when you screw up basic things like this? Please sit down in the back of the room and shut up. Grown-ups are talking here.
(via)
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
TheWonsDay® humor
Your weekly installment of mockery. This one rings true:
Q. What's the only thing thinner than President Obama's resume?
A. His skin.
Q. What's the only thing thinner than President Obama's resume?
A. His skin.
If you have a Playstation Network account, update it right now
And by "right now" I mean RIGHT. NOW.
The good news is that it seems that the credit card numbers were stored encrypted, meaning that (hopefully) the Bad Guys may not have them. The bad news is that the Bad Guys have everything else, including your password, the answer to your security question, etc.
Playstation Network users need to log on and change ALL their personal information that they can, because automated attacks using the information already compromised are going on right now.
Spread the word about this to your gaming friends. This is no joke.
Just two days after the PlayStation Network was restored after a near month-long outage, the PSN password page has apparently been exploited. According to reports, the exploit allows other users to reset your account password using only your e-mail address and date of birth. This personal data was made available to hackers during the initial PSN attack.Reader Joseph emailed me this (literally) breaking news news. Sony's Playstation Network (their online multi-user game playing via the Internet setup) got pwned, and hard. Hackers pwned it, hard, stealing just about all subscriber information Sony had.
The good news is that it seems that the credit card numbers were stored encrypted, meaning that (hopefully) the Bad Guys may not have them. The bad news is that the Bad Guys have everything else, including your password, the answer to your security question, etc.
Playstation Network users need to log on and change ALL their personal information that they can, because automated attacks using the information already compromised are going on right now.
Spread the word about this to your gaming friends. This is no joke.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)