I Think

Ubiqitous Electronics and Privacy

2011-07-09T06:40:00.008-05:00

Interesting bit of foofrah about an 'art' project! It seems that one Kyle MacDonald has come to the attention of the Secret Service for capturing pictures of unsuspecting people browsing computers at an Apple store and then posting them on a site as a 'art' project called People Staring at Computers.

At the time of this writing no charges have been laid and it is not clear that any 'crime' has actually been committed but Mr. MacDonald's computer has been confiscated and is apparently being scrutinized by the authorities.

While it would appear from what I read that Mr. MacDonald actually physically added software to at least one store computer (which he claims he had permission from the store to do) to take and forward pictures for his use, it is not necessary to do that. It is possible, I believe, (No I do not know how, but have been told that it is possible) to remotely turn on any internet connected camera and capture the resulting images at another location.

In fact, Apple itself has applied for a patent for technology to allow it to turn off the camera function in any one of its phones should they happen to discover the images not to be to their liking. Obviously then, they can monitor the images being fed through their phones, and it seems quite likely that they can be turned on remotely as well and I am sure that there are a number of people with the knowledge and equipment to do so.

So what? Well if you are at all paranoid, I strongly suggest that you disconnect from the internet when you are doing anything in the same room as your computer (or phone) that you want to stay private! It would almost appear that any reasonably well informed person might be said to have no 'expectation of privacy' at any time or place with any kind of electronic equipment around!

Of course, the truth is that with the millions of phones and computers and cameras there are to tap, the odds that anyone would tap yours is (for most of us, at least) pretty darn small. Most of us just aren't that interesting.

The rumor is that all phone calls are computer monitored for key words and those with one of the key words are recorded and followed up but come on.... At any given moment there must be several hundred hours of phone calls happening. Even if only one in a million of those calls contained a key word there would still be thousands of man hours a day required to actually listen to even those calls.

The reality is that 'general' surveillance of any type is really only useful after a crime has been detected ( or at least 'suspected') by other means. If the authorities know a place and or time to look, having surveillance records of that time and place can be very useful but as a way of 'discovering' crime it is are pretty much useless. There are simply too many times and too many places.

Privacy is an obvious growing concern. In the case of Mr. MacDonald the question is one of what rights do we have to prevent or at least profit from the exploitation of our own image? I do know that in art photos it is generally considered necessary to get permission for use from any recognizable individuals in your photos. Mr. MacDonald did not do that! But is that a matter for the Secret Service? I suspect that their interest was as much that he was exposing the simplicity of a tactic they would rather not have the public widely aware of.

Apple? Well their suggested interest in being able to shut down phone cameras was to enable the control of piracy of copyrighted material. For example they could monitor images coming from a concert or movie opening and shut down the phone cameras if the copyright holders desired them to do so (and presumably paid for the privilege, also). But what about images of a protest, or police brutality? They would shut down the cameras at police request? What about individuals having phone sex (with video!)? Would they be responsible for NOT providing video of a crime? I am very surprised if their legal advisers did not warn them that having the ability to 'do a good thing' might leave them open to liability claims if they failed to do that 'good thing'. Having abilities carries responsibilities and I am not sure that on sober thought they would even want the abilities they applied to patent.

The SAFE Act

2007-12-08T15:53:00.000-05:00

Below copied from an article 'House Tries to Make the Internet SAFE' by Frederick Lane, of newsfactor.com

By an overwhelming margin -- 409 to 2 -- the U.S. House of Representatives passed new legislation on Thursday aimed at making the Internet safer for children. The Securing Adolescents From Exploitation-Online (SAFE) Act was sponsored by Texas Democrat Nick Lampson, one of the founding members of the House Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus.
......
According to a press release from Rep. Lampson's office, ISPs would be fined $150,000 per incident per day for first offenses, and $300,000 per incident per day for second and succeeding offenses.
.....
the bill's definition of ISP -- anyone offering an open Wi-Fi service -- could apply to municipalities, libraries, coffee shops, or even individuals who fail to password protect their Wi-Fi router. The language of the legislation, which was adopted without congressional hearings or significant debate, may also apply to social-networking sites, e-mail service providers, and Internet search engines
........
As it is currently drafted, the legislation applies not merely to photographs of minors engaged in sexual activity (which is clearly child pornography), but also more subjective material, including photographs of minors in provocative poses and sexually explicit cartoon drawings depicting minors.

__________________________________________________________________________

Well our great elected officials are at it again. Under the guise of 'protecting the children' they are moving again to censor and terrorize the freest form of information dissemination currently available to the populace. Is any one 'in favor ' of child pornography? Well I suppose some are, but I am certainly not among them and if this legislation had any chance of significantly stemming the business or, for that matter was even intended to, I might support it.

However it simply has no chance of working as supposedly intended. It is literally as blatantly stupid as saying that the US Postal Service, United Parcel Service, FedEX, DHL, and any other courier/mail service be fined 500,000 dollars (average shipping is 3 days so with the per day rate.....) anytime they transport a package that turns out to have something that someone might possibly consider to be pornography in it.. Or maybe the telephone company should be fined $150,000 to $300,000 anytime they transport a FAX that someone somewhere might possibly consider to be pornographic. (In fact, why aren't they suggesting that the telephone and cable companies be fined $150,000 to $300,000 for every objectionable image they allow to be transmitted over their service? Couldn't be because that would madden the people spending bribe money so lavishly to get the right to completely control the Internet I suppose.)

I am willing to accept that most of the 409 'yes' voters are just too ignorant to see the uselessness of this bill to cure the actual problem and voted 'yes' because “How could you be against the kids?”. But you certainly don't get that kind of vote without some pushing and shoving by somebody. I mean, when was the last time a bill even got 409 votes in any direction at all (except for pay raises, of course)? So what were the proponents really after?

What they are after is a club! A 'big frippin club' with which to terrorize Internet Service Providers, Network providers and Search Services. Because those 'damn things' keep telling everybody everything! This law is totally impractical for its stated purpose. There is not, at this point in time and in all likelihood ever, any software that can tell the difference between 'acceptable' and 'unacceptable' images. Therefore, the only chance the services have to comply with the law is to hire thousands upon thousands of humans to view each and every image that anyone anywhere in the world attempts to store, however temporarily, on their equipment, and immediately pass accurate judgment as to its 'acceptability'. Not only is the cost totally prohibitive, the privacy intrusion is ridiculous and the likely acceptability of the results negligible because of the vagueness of the definitions. So, of course, no service will even make any serious attempt to comply. But the backers of the legislation are completely aware of this! And it is exactly what they want! If the bill were to become law ALL Internet services could be blackmailed into the censorship that supporters of the bill actually desire at any time. “If we see anything more about Iran not having nukes, we might go looking for kiddie porn.” and since it is possible to key word search and destroy text, well.... how hard do you think even the best financially set services could resist?

Nothing threatens tyranny as much as an informed populace so nothing is as important to the tyrant as controlling the 'information' available to the populace. This bill, The 'Patriot Act', and most if not all bills pushed through on an agenda of 'saving the people' are simply 'clubs' designed in reality to strip away our freedoms, probably most importantly our 'freedom to know' what the 'powers that be' want hidden.

Josh Wolf and Blogger Journalism

2007-09-20T09:51:00.000-05:00

Is the implied relationship actually relevant?

I was watching “Cranky Geeks” (www.crankygeeks.com/) today and the program for the week centered around the case of Josh Wolf, the blogger/journalist who set the record for the longest stretch in jail for refusing to honor a subpoena for his video work and information to a Federal grand jury.

Why it was even a Federal case is somewhat questionable but since it involved a protest over some sort of World Summit the Feds decided to pretend it was a terrorism issue (anything involving protests by or about or near foreigners must be terrorism, right?) and took over a case of 'assault on a police officer' in an attempt to 'get the goods' on some unspecified 'domestic terrorists' (which of course anyone who disagrees with the administration must be).

As I understand it, Josh has an established blog on which he covers this sort of event whenever possible and he was on hand for the protest and taking video which he then posted, edited down of course, on that blog. Several local TV stations scarfed his video from the blog and used it in their newscasts regarding the summit and the protest, etc. When Josh became aware of this he notified the stations of his copyright and billed them for the usage and they all paid up. The problem arose when the Feds saw the TV reports and asked the stations where they got the footage and thus found Josh. They insisted Josh turn over all the outtakes and answer questions about everything and anything they wanted to ask in front of a grand jury. Josh refused to honor this blanket request and, to make a long story short, ended up getting cited for contempt even though he offered to let the Judge view the tape outtakes so they could see there was nothing relevant in them and even though he had been taping at a place nowhere near where the officer was assaulted and there was no reason to believe that anything on his tape outtakes could have any relevance to that matter.

In fact it is clear that his refusal to 'give' them the tapes was never really the issue. They were never physically hidden and had the authorities had any grounds to do so they could have seized them under a search warrant at any time and presented them to the grand jury.

He was finally released when the authorities agreed that if he published the outtakes on his blog they would be satisfied. He agreed and was released and did so.

He had offered basically the same in the beginning but that was apparently not good enough. It would appear that, as he thought, the Feds were actually more interested in getting him under oath in front of a grand jury to be questioned about the people he may or may not have known within the protest movement (he has a history of covering and having a relationship with anti-government protesters of various types) then they actually were in what was shown in the outtakes, and not having any grounds to subpoena him directly, went after his video and his explanation of it instead.

Combine that conclusion with the fact that there is no Federal 'Shield' law anyway, and the “blogger is/blogger isn't” a journalist question is not relevant to the case. The real question is can a person be forced to testify before a grand jury even in the absence of any realistic reason to believe that person knows anything about the situation the grand jury is investigating. The answer would appear to be “YES!”

How about the rest of us?

Does this concern only those who video tape things of potential interest to zealous policemen (or over zealous witch hunters, depending on your point of view)? Perhaps so at this point in time. It is abundantly clear that coerced eyewitness accounts are not likely to yield much without other backup. Recent experience tells us it is possible to be Attorney General of the United States and a nearly complete amnesiac at the same time.

However; the principle apparently upheld by the Josh Wolf case is this; It is not up to the authorities to show that you know something relevant to their investigation, it is up to you to prove that you do not. And that, my friend, is one terribly dangerous principle.

Why? Because it can be used to justify all sorts of actions by the authorities! Hypnosis, truth serums, or sensory deprivation are just a few of the more mild things that might be justified under that principle. Josh carried a video camera, but we all carry a full sensory recorder in our heads.

Anyone anywhere in the vicinity of any situation of interest to the authorities might well have pertinent, even important, information in their heads and so, under the principle of “prove you don't know”, could be 'justifiably' subject to any procedure that might be expected to pull stored (consciously or unconsciously) information from their heads.

In essence, accepting what was done to Josh Wolf as legal (all questions of whether he is a journalist or not, aside) is to accept the principles of any police state, namely; “When the authorities do it, it is legal.”

The 'H' Word

2007-08-30T07:50:00.000-05:00

Three decades ago, I served in a conscript military, in an
unpopular war, in a country of no consequence to me or my comrades.
There was no law there that could force me to do my job, there was no
law that could force anyone there to do anything. As we used to say,
"What are they going to do? Send me to Nam?"

It became obvious to me that the military was functioning more 'in
spite of' than 'because of' the formal military rules. It continued
to function without good leadership, clear purpose, or popular
support because the average soldier, some of whom would have
willingly shot their commanding officer had the officer ever gotten
in front of them, would not willing endanger their comrades even to
save their own hides.

The 'code of conduct' many of us operated under was not exactly
the idealized version, but it was allegiance to it and, not any law,
that kept the situation from deteriorating into complete anarchy. The
word for that allegiance to a code is "honor".

Honor is the adherence to a specific standard of conduct,
without legal or other obligation.

I believe we are losing respect for honor in our society. We use
the title 'The Honorable' and snigger when we say it. We assume a
lack of honor in our politicians. It has become 'politically correct'
to belittle military honor.

Is honor important? After all we have laws, don't we? We believe
in the Rule of Law!

Of course there are some areas where we recognize that 'honor' has
some value. Like, maybe, for the military?

It has always seemed a little silly, to me, to have rules about
how your are to go about killing your enemies. However; the soldier's
primary job, even in war, is not to kill the enemy but rather
to protect his own society.

Soldiers need, and we civilians need to believe that they have, a
strong allegiance to specific 'code of conduct', because so much of
their required conduct is way outside what is normally allowed in
society. When we train a wolf to guard the sheep pens we need
something that restrains the guard wolf. The same reasoning applies
to other occupations where 'codes of conduct' are often mentioned
such as medicine and law enforcement.

These are certainly not the only areas where 'honor' is a
consideration. What about the wild wolves of society.? Can a thief be
honorable? Of course, a thief is usually outside the pale of
acceptable conduct and deserving of punishment. However, we commonly
lighten the punishment based on our judgment of the thief's sense of
honor. For example if they did not go armed, worked carefully to
enter only empty homes, or held a reputation for dealing honestly
with their peers in their daily life, they might well be judged
worthy of receiving a sentence much lighter than the maximum allowed
under the law.

The fact is that all human society functions on the honor system
or it soon ceases to function at all!

Does this statement seem extreme to you? Think about it a bit.
What percentage of crimes are ever solved by the police? I can't give
a figure but I think that we can agree that there is a sense that
most crime is not solved. And given that feeling, fear of punishment
cannot be a powerful deterrent to crime. So why isn't criminal
activity the norm instead of the exception?

Because most of us have a 'sense of honor' that tells that it is
not OK for me to steal your stereo just because I happen to know that
you and all your family will be in another city for the weekend.
Because most of us have a 'sense of honor' that says it is not Ok to
push into the front of a line, a 'sense of honor' that says it is not
OK to grab a kids Halloween candy. Each of us has the power to be the
wolf sometimes but we usually don't do it because of our 'sense of
honor'.

The decline of respect for honor is an excellent indicator of the
impending dissolution of a society, because there is no rule of law
that can force 'proper' conduct from a population. My military
experience would certainly back that idea.]

Is it critical what standard of conduct one holds allegiance to?
Not nearly as much as you might think?

Is someone who would steal your stereo while you were out of town,
or some one that would drive after having a beer or two, or some one
that would hire out as a soldier to the highest bidder, or some one
that would sell sexual favors 'dishonorable'? Not by the definition.

Of course, as with the thief, a code of honor outside the range
considered acceptable within your society will lead to personal
troubles sooner or later; However; the definition of honor does not
concern the terms of a particular standard of conduct to which a
person holds, but rather the degree of allegiance to a standard.

We have become so dependent on the idea of the rule of law that we
are in danger of forgetting that law cannot rule anything. Any law
that is not supported by the 'honor' of the majority of the
population, cannot be effective.

Honor is an allegiance to a personal standard of conduct, a
personal standard of integrity, without legal or other obligation.

The standard of conduct may well vary from time to time, place to
place, or person to person, but, the decline of a society is not
signaled by changes to the 'standard of conduct' but rather by
decline in respect for allegiance to a standard.

It is important that we instill a sense of honor in our children
and reinforce it in ourselves.

For without honor there is no 'society', without honor there is no
law, without honor there is no future!

2007-03-28T09:37:00.000-05:00

Dale Coparanis posted a long comment on my article 'Evolving' and I have responded as follows:

(Dale's lines are in italics, mine are not. ( I hope) )

As you know, Dan, I'm not a believer in the Faith of Evolution. Those that do believe it, however, want everyone else to accept that from nothing came the present day. Now I would call that a fairly big change.

I can't see any reason to believe it a big change. The present day did not come from nothing, it came from yesterday. I was here yesterday and it wasn't all that different in anyway that I can see. And as for the “Faith of Evolutuion” Well, I can tell you that I have directed evolution and seen the results of that evolution and I have seen the results of many other peoples work in evolution also. So while I do not insist that evolution is the only possible explanation of the present day ecology I can tell you that there is evidence I have observed for the existence of evolution and absolutely none that I have observed for any other explanation. 'Faith' is when you choose to believe something for which there is no evidence. Personally I find 'faith' to be a weakness that I hope we may someday overcome.

To bring it down to a more manageable level, it is believed that we evolved from apes (which evolved from smaller mammels, which evolved from reptiles, which evolved from fish, which evolved from single celled creatures, which evolved from the primordial soup, which evolved from rain falling on rocks, which came about from the earth forming out of space dust, which formed from material left over from the big bang, which came from??? I really like to think that one of my ancestors was a rock.). Therefore, it is quite reasonable to ask what the next step is. Certainly the differences that there are between the apes, "Lucy", pre-cro magnon man, and us are significant. Since evolution, in theory, doesn't stop, what's next? What do we look like? Are we bigger, smaller, fatter, thinner, have more arms, more eyes, fewer fingers?

One thing you should note is that the differences between us and a chimpanzee are in fact very small, when expressed as a percentage of our genome. Another thing to note is that whether you are supporter of the Biblical creationist approach, or tend away from the 'faith' side things, it would appear that you and I are descended from something in a mud pie.

To say that we have reached our evolutionary peak is kind of presumptuous, don't you think? I know that you haven't said that, per se, but you imply that with: "but the 'next step' will become the norm when it needs to or not at all."

Why would you think I suggest that we have reached our evolutionary peak (whatever that is)? And how could you find it presumptuous when you don't even believe we have an evolution to have a peak of? No 'change' in one or more members of a species is likely to become the new 'norm' for the species unless it imparts a significant advantage over those that do not have the 'change'. For example the ability to withstand the HIV virus, which is a possible 'next step' that we already knows exists, is not currently a significant advantage, evolutionarily, for those that have it, because currently only a very small percentage of the species dies from the result of the HIV virus. It will not become the 'norm' for the species. unless some virus shows up that is a lot more contagious and deadly than HIV and these people are also immune to that and everybody else dies off. Then an evolutionary step will have taken place. The 'next step' will becomes the 'norm' when it needs to or not at all

Since we are messing with evolutionary theory by doing work with DNA, one of the logical questions to ask is: "should we?" And, yes, I am serious. Can we be trusted to do what's right? Given the amount of evil in this world I would say no. In addition, given the willingness of many people to do whatever simply for immediate gratification (money, etc.), how can something as important as evolution be tinkered with in the right way?

I share your concern over the potential problems we could get ourselves into tinkering with evolution. True we have done it for centuries and are still here but we have made some fairly serious errors before an now we have the potential to really spoil the soup. But as they say “you can't put the genie back in the bottle.' If you honestly think that any amount of outlawing DNA manipulation can stop it from being done then I believe you are deluded. I would be very surprised if there were not a clone baby or six running around a nursery or six somewhere. And if you think it hasn't even been attempted then I have a nice Caribbean island which I am sure you would enjoy and I think I could make it yours for a very nominal sum if you could just be the first to send me $10,000 in small unmarked bills......

All I can see coming from outlawing research into the field is that good honest people will have no say in what is developed from it.

Your statement: "Every species evolves as needed or it dies out. is interesting. This explains why there are so many "living fossils" that have been discovered and why there is so much diversity in nature. It's really amazing how, accidentally, we have such an abundance of flora and fauna and why there are so many overlaps with them. I mean, just how many different types and colors of flowers does a meadow need?

Certainly there are a number of 'living fossils' . Alligators, crocodiles and many species of sharks to name a few. They haven't needed to change much at all. Or maybe you are talking about those rare finds of things that we know from fossils were once relatively common but had never been seen in recorded history until we started fishing miles down or some such. Well so what! If they still exist un-evolved from millions of years ago then all it shows is that, for at least some part of their habitat, evolutionary change was not required for survival. And, of course there is diversity in nature. Why would you think that evolution would require uniformity? Change happens! But not all change is 'evolutionary.' There are dozens of colors of pansies. Why? Because change happens. But all pansies are not one color because there is no particular advantage of one color over another.

Evolving

2007-03-28T09:32:00.000-05:00

Dale Coparanis posted the following as a comment on my article Creationist Truth

Dan - what are we going to evolve into? Since evolution is always happening, what's the next step for humans?

When does that happen?

Do we risk upsetting the process of evolution by messing with DNA, cloning and other related scientific work?

If so, then should we stop all that work?

Dale, Evolution doses not happen in particularly large steps. For example we may evolve into being able to defeat all viruses naturally. Some people have been shown to be essentially unaffected by HIV for example, so if a virus were to evolve that killed anything that did not have this inborn defense mechanism then the species would eventually come to consist only of those that do. The next step is whatever is necessary to survive a changing environment. We either make it or die. The universe does not care which.
When will it happen? In one sense it almost certainly already has, but the 'next step' will become the norm when it needs to or not at all.
Do we risk upsetting the process of evolution by messing with DNA.cloning and other scientific work? Well in one sense the answer is "of course!" But in another sense "how could we?". We may kill ourselves off completely with an atomic holocaust, for example, but then again that may just be the assist the species needs to bring the trait of 'extreme radiation tolerance' into the 'norm'. We may also become the first(?) species to direct its own evolution consciously and go branching off deliberately and purposefully to occupy every environment possible and thus to exist for as long as there is a universe to house us.
Should we stop all that work? Get serious Dale! Are you going into the middle east without your cholera vaccine? Would you be pleased if some luddite decided that steel was 'unnatural' so when you took a bullet they had to cut it out with a flint blade?
Evolution is not some sort of weird and unusual thing. It has happened and continues to happen all the time and the rule is simple. Every species evolves as needed or it dies out. And as Baretta used to say, "That's all there is to that tune."

Creationist Truth

2007-03-28T09:23:00.000-05:00

A comment by Ruth MacGill on Bert B's article entitled “About Faith and Doubt“ put me in mind of another common place 'creationist' argument. The one that says “Clearly, God made this world for us. Look how beautiful it is and how well it provides for us !” The first thing that comes to mind when I hear that argument is “What colossal hubris!” The world is a fine place for fish and fowl and bear and elk, etc. But of course it was made for us, not them? On what ridiculous basis do we assume that it was made for us?

The real problem is that the argument is ridiculous. We evolved here. How could we not find the world beautiful and supportive. Would anything evolve into a situation it found ugly and non-supportive? Of course not! Whatever, if anything, evolved in the interior of the sun would surely find it a beautiful and hospitable place. And, quite possibly, thank its God for being so kind as to create it such a fine place to live.

Good Old 'Trickle Down'

2007-03-22T17:10:00.000-05:00

"Trickle down economics stems from the early 1950's when we were the only Western country whose industrial infrastructure had not been smashed and it was accurate to say that whatever was good for General Motors was good for the United States. That was no longer true by the time Reagan came to power, money was being left in the hands of America's economic elite which was investing it overseas -- not in America."

The above is from a comment by George McNaughton on an article by Dan (open minded conservative) K called Dear Mr. President .

It illustrates a problem with the Republican approach to the 'cut taxes to stimulate the economy' idea. It never was accurate to say that 'whatever was good for General Motors was good for the United States." In the 1950's and now the accurate phrasing of the statement is "whatever is good for the United States is good for General Motors." ( though General Motors may have already been demollished by the decades of abuse of the real 'United States')

To put it in terms more in line with what most people think of as the 'trickle down' concept; "what's good for the rich is good for the rest" is, was, and always has been false! the proper statement is, was, and always has been "what's good for the rest is good for the rich!" You do not stimulate an economy by stimulating rich people. any more than you water a tree by spritzing its top leaves. Rich people get rich when a whole lot of 'not so rich' people have money to pay them for what they supply.

'Rich people' don't consume much more that poor people and whatever they can consume they already are consuming so giving them more money does nothing for the economy.

And an economy is not made more vigorous by upping the available funds to create things, it is made more vigorous by upping the available funds to consume things.

The ability to create a product will never make you rich, it is the ability (and willingness) of customers to buy your product that makes you rich. Stimulating an economy is all about stimulating the consumers not the producers. A ready and able consumer is all the stimulus any producer needs!

What Do You Know?

2007-03-20T22:09:00.000-05:00

What Do You Know?

What a loaded question. It leads, however to some pretty profound insights. (Maybe!)

David Hume in his Treatise On Human Nature put forward a proposal that I find compelling because of its usefulness in illuminating human behavior. He postulated a three tier hierarchy of information in the human mind. Stage 1 is perception, Stage 2 is belief, Stage 3 is knowledge.

He then defined 'knowledge' as that information which is so deeply ingrained that we act upon it without any conscious awareness of it. An example of 'knowledge': How do you walk? How do you talk? You can not tell me because you are not conscious of what it takes. You 'know' how to do it.

By now you see the problem with the title question. Under Hume's theory, any answer to that question is bound to be false. If you are conscious of it you do not 'know' it and if you are unconscious of it you would not be putting it in your list.

So how do we get to be what we are? Hume postulates that we perceive things and that when perceptions are consistent, persistent, and vivid enough they become beliefs and should they reach even higher levels of consistency, persistence, and vividness the information content of those perceptions becomes 'knowledge'.

Now according to the theory, we are born with a bunch of methods of perception and one basic piece of knowledge. For the most part, we can hear, see, feel, taste, smell and perceive our own thoughts. And what we 'know' is “I AM”. Everything else we learn over time.

How do we learn? We perceive! And if the perceptions reach a certain level of “persistence, consistency, and vividness” the perceived information is established as belief and if they are even more “persistent, consistent, and vivid” it becomes established as “knowledge” and is acted upon without any conscious awareness.

Two very important things should now be obvious.

One: If this theory is more or less accurate, we cannot possibly believe in our own non-existence. One might theorize that at some point one's self did not exist and at some point in the future one's self will not exist. One might even hold that idea as 'likely', however; since 'non-existence' cannot possibly be perceived, the concept cannot even reach the stage of 'belief', much less 'knowledge'. Therefore , by our very nature, we are bound to try to 'rationalize' this conflict between what we eventually come to perceive about everybody else, ie. They end, and what we 'know' about ourselves, ie. We have always been and will always be. Hence Heaven, Hell, Karma, Reincarnation, Valhalla, you name it. A million and one attempts to rationalize a dichotomy forced upon us by our very nature. To be human is to be tempted to religion. And to live without that crutch will ever be the hard road.

Two: Much of what we 'know' must be false! Why? Because our tools for perceptions are extremely limited and not very reliable. We can only see a very limited range of the electro-magnetic spectrum. We are so blind we 'knew' it was dark at night! We can only hear a small spectrum of sound waves so we 'knew' that giraffes make no sounds and bats fly silently trough the night. We knew that most things don't have a smell. We knew that the sun and moon were just a little further away than the top of a high tree or hill or tree on a hill. We 'knew' it for thousands of years and we were wrong for thousands of years. And there is a source of perceptions even less reliable than our eyes, or ears or nose. And if we don't learn to watch it closely at all times and question it constantly, our load of 'false knowledge' can actually threaten to overwhelm us entirely. That is our mind. Remember that a major source of our 'perceptions' is our mind. Our memories, of perceptions real or imagined, produce information we perceive almost constantly. Our conscious minds and our unconscious minds constantly serve us up thoughts. Our perceptions of these thoughts are as 'good' as any other perceptions, in that, if they are 'consistent, persistent and vivid' enough, their information will become knowledge! The problem arises from the fact that memories of perceptions are often inaccurate, either as the result of inaccurate perceptions from the physical world or from the fact that they are completely imaginary to begin with. But our mind does not care about truth! It only cares about 'consistent, persistent, vivid'. Meet that criteria and 'knowledge' is born. Serve a mind the 'consistent, persistent, and vivid' perception that Brits are cold and aloof sort of people and that mind will 'know' this even though its owner never met an Englishman. In fact, isolation from Englishmen will enhance the 'knowledge' as the consistency of the perceptions will be secure. Only constant questioning of perceptions and beliefs can possibly keep our 'beliefs' and 'knowledge' near the truth.

What do you know? Not all that much I hope!

China Leads the Way Again

2007-03-12T04:51:00.000-05:00

Finally someone has recognized the hazard! China, that bastion of progressive correct think, is leading the way again. There can be no doubt that internet addiction is a major human problem. Communication and curiosity are diseases. We are so blessed to have the land of the Little Red Book and the estimable Red Guard to show us the way.

Variations On a Theme

2007-02-24T21:58:00.000-05:00

I bought a $10 digital camera. Can it do anything? Amazingly I think it can!

This is the Original Shot.

Not too bad. But..... Other Things are Possible..........

For example:

A Raku Fountain..

One of the things about digital photography that makes it so fun is the manipulation that can be done.

Here are some variations on the theme.

My Sister Is On Steroids

2007-02-24T10:47:00.000-05:00

Do I qualify for Jerry Springer now? Well I suppose since it is just prescription shots of cortisone, maybe not. She probably won't bulk up like Barry Bond because I am pretty sure she won't be getting into any weight lifting regime and 'roid rage' is not a likely outcome. She has some sort of back problem or something and it is really very painful. She can not stand for more than 5 minutes at a time or walk for more about 200 feet.

That would be a bummer for anybody, but when one of your major entertainments is flea markets and estate sales and auctions and such, well it is a real bummer. I, for example, might not feel that put out by such a circumstance. A good chair, my wireless keyboard and mouse, a nice big monitor and I could computer geek it all day. Not good for me but reasonably satisfying.

Anyhow, now she has a 'Rascal', a red one, Ferrari racing colors I believe, though she did settle for the 5mph model instead of the 15mph model. Can you imagine that, 15mph on a Rascal. Like I told her thats fast enough to be a 'grab and go' shoplifter. I can see the headlines now; "Red Rascal Terrorizes Tuscon" or "Market Mesmerized by Marauding Madam".

With that kind of speed you could organize actually exciting races in the park. Book the skateboard facilities three afternoons a week or something. With sponsors and all it could develop into big money, ESPN, pay per view, who knows! We baby boomers are a really growing market these days! Any maker out there going for that 20mph baby? In British racing Green?

A Cross Post test

2007-02-17T18:32:00.000-05:00

Cross posting

The Case For KISS

2007-02-12T19:43:00.000-05:00

I was reading an article called “Murphy Laws of Computing” and came across this one:

9. A complex system that doesn't work is invariably found to have evolved from a simpler system that worked just fine.

....and it struck me how well this applied to any structured procedure. And it has a corollary:

Any simple system that works just fine will almost inevitably be massaged into a complex system that does not work as well, if at all.

I guess maybe we could call this the 'Peter Principle' of structured procedures. I am sure that you have seen it happen time and time again. I know I have.

For example: I work for a company that has occasion to end up with a fairly large quantity of odd sized but 'usable to somebody' pieces of material. So rather than throw them out they instituted a system that marked such 'culls' at the time they were created into one of five price categories and they were offered to customers as a service that also made a little extra money. The system worked fine and customers that only needed little odd sized pieces of stuff could get it and the check out system knew how to handle them and all was fine. Convenience on one side and a little extra money on the other. Then apparently someone decided that maybe lots of good stuff was being taken out of the store as 'cull' so a policy was put in place that required the checkout people to measure and describe, in detail, in writing, on a special form, each and every piece of cull material they checked through. This had to be done while the customer (and all the others waiting behind) waited the extra couple of minutes in the check out line. In other words, what had been a service for a small fee to customers now became a major annoyance to customers for a very nominal income to the company. (cull pieces ranged from .5 to 4 dollars a piece)
Well you say , maybe a lot of stuff that was not really 'cull' was going out under that guise! Then if stuff that should not be classified as cull was being classified as cull, monitor the cull bins and correct the procedures for classifying material as 'cull' as needed. Or if stuff that was not actually classified as cull was being checked through by cashiers as 'cull' (for friends or for a kick back or whatever) then monitor the suspect cashiers. Every minute of every day, of every cashiers station, is 'on camera' and every transaction of 'cull' material is pinpointed by the cash register system. (That is after all how they know if a cashiers checks through cull material and fails to fill out the dumb, time consuming form.)
I mean think about it! If a cashier wanted to do a favor for a friend it would be much simpler to not 'ring up' a piece of material at all, than it would be to ring it up as some relatively rare cheaper item.

The point is that experience shows that this 'complication to the point of uselessness' phenomenon is almost universal. It lead to the fall of Rome, the decline of aristocracy, and it will probably lead to the eventual fall of all current governments, democratic or otherwise. It appears to be ingrained in human nature to complicate all our social structures to the point that they collapse and we have to start all over again. I wonder how many Atlantis's there have been?

Ban The Gadgets

2007-02-10T09:24:00.000-05:00

New York Senator Carl Kruger (D) wants to ban the use of any sort of portable information/entertainment device by pedestrians while crossing streets. I guess he compares it to seatbelt laws or helmet laws. But I wonder why it hasn't occurred to him to ban running over pedestrians while they are crossing the street? Maybe because that is already illegal? Or why not just ban crossing the street? That would really keep pedestrians safe! I know! Ban motor vehicles from entering intersections! Ah but then the jaywalkers might get hit by one of the vehicles buzzing back and forth from corner to corner. Ok Ok! now I have it ban vehicles from intersections and ban pedestrians using gadgets from jaywalking and fine anybody caught crossing the street without looking both right and left and fine anybody short enough not to see over the surrounding masses and fine the surrounding masses for blocking the vision of short people and ban thinking while you walk and ban getting hit by vehicles and ban having a headache because it is distracting and ban being alive because it leads to death and ban dying because it is the major cause of death and ............ Oh! Ban it all Ban it all!

Ya RIAA! Or How to Look Very Foolish With a Great Deal of Effort

2007-01-03T13:27:00.000-05:00

The Grand and Glorious Protector of the Artiste has done it again. They have moved on from suing teenagers and grandmothers to suing Russian companies. Of course they sued the Russian company in a New York court because it is apparently acknowledged by all sides that the Russian company is in compliance with Russian law and therefore could not be successfully sued there. And such a nice realistic sum they sued for too! A mere $1.65 trillion in damages. Now according to a New York Times article annual music industry sales for the US are about $75 billion including concerts, merchandising and all other revenue streams. So I guess suing one Russian company for 22 years of music industry gross income is reasonable. Not!!!

And apparently the Russian site has deposited all the royalties with the Russian royalty collection body and the RIAA has not accepted the money, perhaps because it would weaken their claim of “not one penny paid” in royalties. I have no idea if the Russian company has actually deposited proper royalties and it may well be that they are not being “good industry citizens” but one thing I am sure of: For an organization that makes its money off the backs of artists to waste its money on lawsuits it can't win, for ridiculous sums of money, in the name of 'protecting' its clients is unconscionable.

The RIAA needs to reconstituted, but given the distressingly purchasable politician of this day and age I suspect that the best we can hope for is that it is soon relegated to irrelevancy by its own greed and stupidity as demonstrated by the above action.

MAD? Yes, Thats What 'Stars Wars' Was

2006-12-25T03:59:00.000-05:00

The Iranian blustering and North Korean bargain hunting spree has put the question of Nuclear Disarmament in many peoples minds once again. And once again people are suggesting that if we really want nuclear weapons to not spread and to stop being a threat then we must do our part and disarm ourselves to show 'good faith' if nothing else. It puts me in mind of the great "Star Wars" kerfuffle. While there was, and still is, some effort being expended toward some projects of that type we can all be very thankful it hasn't actually worked.

At the time, there were a number of computer scientists and the like openly stating that such a system as could defend any place completely from attack by ICBMs was simply impossible to build. The computer software would be very complex and no complex software has ever been written 100 percent error free and, because of the nature of what the software would have to do, there would be no way to test it sufficiently to remove the 'bugs'.

The argument went as follows; Because the only way it could be particularly useful at all was if it was sure to be 100% effective, and because such complex systems simply are never 100% the first time, (or the second or third) and because it could not be tested to any really significant degree, the plan was doomed from the start. Having done some programming and even more software testing, I have to say that the argument is probably valid, but it maybe a little hard for most people to see.

But the problem becomes clearer if you look at it like this:

It takes perhaps 4 or 5 good nuclear bomb hits to effectively take a large country like the U.S. completely out any considerations of economic and/or military power in the world, so, assuming the country to be attacked cannot retaliate because they have relied on 'defense', all that is needed to beat them is to get 4 or 5 missiles through and the attacker wins. If the defense system is 99.9% effective the attacker sends 5000 and wins; if it is 99.99% effective the attacker sends 50000 missiles and wins. As you can see, only perfection in the defense will do for complete security.

What nobody ever pointed out, in anything I read, is what a disaster it would be if it worked.! Why? Just look at the following scenario:

The 'Star Wars” system is perfected and in place around the world (remember Reagan's promise). It is impossible for anyone , person or country, to get a hostile missile up into the air and back down again Nuclear peace at last!???? Everybody gets rid of their nuclear missiles because they can not use them. Of course they were never going to use them except as a retaliatory weapon anyway, but now they don't even need them for that. No retaliatory strikes possible so the missiles are not necessary.

Whoa! What was that last sentence? “ No retaliatory strikes possible.......”

That means that I, the long term planner and rightful inheritor of the world, can defeat the “Great Satan” and survive the conflict intact. All I need to do is build dozen suitcase bombs and secret them around New York, LA, Houston, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., and say Chicago, then set them off and the “Great Satan” is ruined and can't do anything to me, even if they knew who I was, because they threw away their ability to retaliate as they die!. Now I dare an attack!

As distressingly nihilist as Mutually Assured Destruction sounds, it is still all that keeps friends and enemies working together to see that nobody starts the deadly chain reaction. And given that, a successful 'Star Wars' defense system might well be the worst thing that could happen in the world of nuclear politics.

Altrenative Power. Electric or Hydrogen

2006-12-24T08:02:00.000-05:00

This article is also in the main a comment on Bert Bigelow's article Electric Cars? or Hydrogen Cars?

Bert the main problem you find with electric vehicle is the portability of sufficient power for extended range. Here hydrogen has the advantage because either sufficient fuel for a full days driving could be carried on the vehicle or 'recharging' would be a matter of minutes from an appropriately equipped station just as we use gasoline or diesel now. There is certainly a non-trivial problem of the chicken and egg nature in developing and placing infrastructure sufficiently widespread to make the system viable. But you and most comments concentrated on the inefficiency of producing hydrogen through hydrocarbon gasification or coal or atomic powered electricity for hydrolysis. What is wrong with solar powered hydrolysis?

It is virtually non-polluting (except maybe for what to do with all the oxygen gas) and who really cares about efficiency since, once the infrastructure is in place, the energy is very nearly free. Using the sunlight from a square mile or two ( or 10 or 50 or two hundred) of the earths surface to separate hydrogen out of the sea has got to be more efficient than using it to grow algae and plankton and then waiting for that algae and plankton to die, get buried, and turned into coal to be mined, crushed, and gasified into hydrogen and co2.

Anyway you look at it when the energy is there nearly for free, actual efficiency isn't really an important consideration. ie. The fact that hydrogen enough to run my car three hundred miles costs more energy to produce than the gasoline to run my car three hundred miles is completely unimportant if the energy used to produce the hydrogen costs enough less than the energy needed to produce the gasoline.

I have read in a couple of places that the energy cost of a gallon of crude is now greater than the energy produced by a gallon of crude. Oil is an energy loser! It continues to be valuable solely because of its non-energy uses and its portability as energy.

Solar power can never be an energy loser provided its infrastructure energy costs can be returned within the life of the infrastructure. Since the biggest thing keeping it from being more widely touted is the long life of the infrastructure which negates the 'continuing profit' motive, I think it safe to say that returning costs 'within the life of the infrastructure' is not likely to be a problem.

True there is no free lunch and eventually even the sun will burn out, but by the time that happens we will be elsewhere or non-existent and it will happen whether we use the energy or not, so for all practical purposes solar power has no cost except infrastructure and maintenance and I would find it incredible if that were truly significantly higher than any currently used form of electricity except perhaps hydro electric.

So my proposed solution to the 'energy problem'!

Use solar energy to power all energy requirements directly where practical (nearly everywhere for stationary power loads)
Use it to produce hydrogen from seawater for all portable power needs that are beyond the capability of portable batteries.

Bring Back The Draft?

2006-12-23T21:57:00.000-05:00

I was reading an article, to which "www. military.com" had directed my attention, about bringing back the draft. The opening paragraphs follow:

WASHINGTON - Americans would have to sign up for a new military draft after turning 18 under a bill the incoming chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee says he will introduce next year.
Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., said Sunday he sees his idea as a way to deter politicians from launching wars.
"There's no question in my mind that this president and this administration would never have invaded Iraq, especially on the flimsy evidence that was presented to the Congress, if indeed we had a draft and members of Congress and the administration thought that their kids from their communities would be placed in harm's way," Rangel said.

In a way I sympathize with the goals of the sponsors of this bill. I can see the point of there being less readiness to start a war if the military was picked from the population at large.

However I think the best bet for really controlling the urge to war for fun and profit would be to mandate the selection of politicians over 50 and their wives, sons, daughters, grandsons, grand-daughters etc., first.

Of course there is another alternative that has been suggested before: Only those that have served in the military, or similar capacity, could vote or hold office and that only after having completed their service. That should both reduce the political support for war and make sure that the military was not short of manpower. And frankly if the possibility were opened to everybody in what ever capacity of military or community service they were capable of, I see no ethical or 'democratic' problem with the concept.

If military and quasi-military organizations were developed to perform, or assist with, all sorts of general "community services" ( for example: nursing aides and orderlys, teachers assistants, environmental cleanup, simple home care for the elderly and disabled, etc) there would be plenty of work to go around for all those wishing to avail themselves of their political privileges and the services provided could greatly improve the life of the community as a whole.

I do not think that democracy and an all-professional military are compatible and I do not think that being alive is particularly sufficient qualification for the exercise of political power. And while I certainly do not condone limitations to political rights based on such irrelevancies as gender or skin color or even age, I do think that it is reasonable to require a certain level of demonstrated commitment to the society that one wishes to exercise control in. A couple of years service to the society at "room and board and a little spending money" levels of reimbursement would be a good method of demonstrating that commitment.

Shoot the Searchers!

2006-12-23T19:27:00.000-05:00

There are numerous developments in the Internet world that should be of concern to all of us. One thing, of course, is the issue of 'net neutrality' which primarily revolves around data carriers attempts to be able to control who uses their services. Basically the deal is that companies like Verizon, Bell, etc. want to be able to sell exclusivity or priority on their available data streams to the highest bidder. Their claims that they need this ability to afford to develop more data carrying capability are completely fallacious, but they have found a way to make it sound reasonable and are willing to bribe as many politicians as necessary to make this happen. The possible profits for them are beyond calculation as they would, of course, quit wasting money on developing more capability and simply sell current capacity at the highest possible price. Can you imagine what, for example, Google might pay to have Yahoo, Ask.com, Amazon.com, etc. denied access or limited to slow dial up lines?

The article “Italy opens probe into Google over bullying video” ( look it up with a Google News Search) points to another insidious attack on the Internet as we know it. In this case the Italian government is trying to hold Google responsible for letting people see a video of four teenagers beating a disabled teen in a classroom in Turin. What the Italian government would have us believe is that Google committed some kind of crime by letting the public find this video on the Internet.

"I've said repeatedly that there can't be double standards, one for the press and television and another for the Internet," Fioroni told ANSA news agency.

The Internet search engine shared the same duty as other forms of media in distributing "responsible" content, he said.

It sounds quite reasonable but think a minute. Is the researcher who finds pictures of naked people in the middle of the New York Sunday Times guilty of the same breach of standards as the editors who put pictures of naked people in the middle of the New York Times? Well according to the Italian government finding illicit published material is the same crime as publishing illicit material. Hmmm!I suppose that the same argument could be made that if someone put the names of all the undercover CIA agents around the world in a flyer and passed it out by putting it under the windshield wipers of all the cars parked in New York City, it would be a reasonable and legal response to try all the people who read the flyer for treason and jail them for life. Only those that destroyed the document and erased all memory of it could be considered blameless.

These actions, in this case by the Italian government but actually distressingly common throughout the world, are taken because governments prefer secrecy. The last thing anyone in power actually wants is an informed public. The Internet scares the 'bejesus' out of the powerful.

Without certain tools the Internet is such a mass of diffuse data that it would be nearly useless, but the search engines, data miners, aggregators, etc. turn it into a tool that everyday people can use. Therefore, quite sensibly from their point of view, governments and powerful corporations have chosen to aim their attack at those tools. If they can manage to make the researchers responsible for what is found they will have effectively crippled the information dissemination potential of the Internet and helped restore the ignorance of the public.

Making these ridiculous attacks as many of the powerful have done, and giving in to them as Google, MSN and others have continually done is not a minor issue. Being a 'little bit' censored is a lot like being a 'little bit' pregnant. There really is no such thing!

The Software Patent...Ahhh..'Problem'?

2006-12-23T19:22:00.000-05:00

Software patents are raising a lot of debate. Do they inhibit innovation by intimidating developers? Do they encourage innovation by insuring that the developers have an opportunity to profit from the innovation?

Patent law, in general, is intended to encourage innovation by insuring a limited time of exclusive rights to the innovator to profit from his/her bright idea. But, certainly, they could have the effect of limiting innovation, also.

For example suppose that Mr. Ford (or Mr Stanley, or whoever) were granted a patent on the idea of putting a wheel on each corner of a rectangular frame and applying drive power to two of those wheels and turning the other two to steer. For twenty years or so, no one else would have been able to make a car or powered wagon of any sort. Pretty stifling on innovation, I should think.

I think the problem arises when :

a patent is granted on too wide a basis. As in the example above, if a patent is granted on the whole concept of doing something instead of a specific way of doing something, it will completely stifle innovation for the duration of the patent.
a patent is granted on the only possible way of doing some particular thing, at least without re-inventing a whole new set of supporting technologies. For example, if a patent were granted on the concept of checking switch states and interpreting them as instructions and/or data, then the whole digital computer industry would be hostage to that patent holder, at least until someone invented a viable analog computer system.

Perhaps the problem is inevitable when most 'innovations' are of the 'concept' type as is the case in the computer industry. Because of the constraints of the basic 'on/off' system and the complete dominance of a couple of basic equipment providers, there is often only one practical way of implementing most concepts.

I think it might be possible to sort through the problem by a combination approach. Disallow patents that are ridiculously broad, but grant patents on truly innovative solutions to specific problems with a variation similar to the requirements for maintaining a Trademark...the patent holder would be required to prove, annually, that they are indeed producing end-user product based on the patented process/concept or they lose the protection of the patent.

Some Questions on Man-Made Global Warming

2006-12-23T18:09:00.000-05:00

As I understand it, man is causing 'global warming' by burning, either fully or partially, vast quantities of hydrocarbons, mostly in the form of oil and coal, thus releasing large quantities of carbon dioxide and water vapor and some other stuff into the atmosphere. Again, as I understand it, these gases are 'greenhouse gases' in that they trap heat from the sun, not letting it radiate back into space and thus gradually raising the temperature of the atmosphere.

To make matters worse, not only is mankind releasing huge quantities of these gases into the atmosphere but he is also destroying large tracts of vegetation which is the mechanism by which these greenhouse gases are extracted from the atmosphere and locked back into solid form.

Do I have the basics right, so far?

If so then the inescapable implication is this; Long ago, when the oil and coal we are currently burning was living plant life, the atmosphere of earth must have been much, much warmer than it currently is. And it must have been cooling more or less steadily, since the beginning of plant life, until man came on the scene and started messing up the whole thing by re-introducing all that carbon back into the atmosphere.

Does the available evidence show this?

I have been told that the earth has undergone several Ice ages. I cannot recall any explanation of why they each stopped. By all the mechanisms being used to blame man for global warming it would seem they should have gone on forever. Especially when you add in the extra reflectivity from all that snow.

Might not there be some justification for the concept that we might be staving off a new ice age by our fossil fuel consumption? That instead of causing gross global over heating, we are simply stopping the cooling trend.

Might it not be that given the rather large global temperature changes that have been clearly going on since way back before we were burning fossil fuels, the effect of man's activity on the atmosphere is likely to be essentially unnoticeable?