Category: Rant

(via Scheier’s security blog)

Do you know the current American terrorist threat level? Probably not. And why is that? Because almost since inception, the threat level has been at yellow. Occasionally, it climbs up to orange. In certain parts of the country, it has been at red at times. But never has it been at blue or green – the two lowest levels. And what does that mean? It means since the inception of this idiotic political ploy the current administration has saddled us with, we have been told to be aware of anything out of the ordinary, for there is a significant risk of terrorist attack.

Let me let you in on a little secret – we are no more at risk of terrorist attack now than we were 10 years ago – OK, maybe a little more at risk given our attack on a country on questionable evidence of potential threat, thereby alienating many people who previously didn’t care enough about the US to even think about us, and making the ones who already hated us even more hateful and driven by vengeance – but really, that’s a tiny change, probably not even enough to measure on that little chart on the right. The only difference is the 9/11 attacks showed us that we were at risk, when we thought we were safe and secure in our little bubble of North America. And I don’t call the threat level security model stupid because of who is in the White House – honestly, I believe that had a Democrat been in the White House, we’d still have some stupid model of similar design. It might be something different, but it would still be there. And why do we have it? So politicians can point out the elevated risk in an easy to understand format and use that as justification for taking more of our money to spend it on more stupid “security” measures that won’t actually increase America’s security, and likely will reduce it.

The problem with constantly telling everyone to “be alert” is that we aren’t given any guidance on what we are to watch, how to tell if something is out of the ordinary, what we might expect as a higher risk attack, or anything else that would make an elevated alertness warning have meaning. And we’re Americans. Do you know what that means? We have short attention spans, an unwillingness to change our ways, and a tendency to ignore security and safety procedures when they inconvenience us. Even if the threat level model were any good, it’s been at yellow too long to matter. To make an impact on Americans’ behaviors at this point, it would probably take a red alert – I doubt even an orange alert on a nationwide basis would phase 99+% of the people in this country.

So, why the rant over all this? Well, the British are going to be implementing a similar poorly-conceived alert model. The one difference is, they suffer attacks sufficiently more often than we do that it might make a difference. It won’t, mind you, but potentially it could. If their government is smart enough to maintian a blue or green alert stage equivalent the vast majority of the time, going to yellow or orange equivalent might make a difference in peoples’ behaviors. I just hate to see more money wasted on more “security precautions” that are just well publicized ways for governments to spend money on actions that typically reduce security instead of improving it.
Continue reading “British adopt stupid threat level model similar to US”

(via PVR Wire)
Some foolish CBS researcher went and did the unthinkable – he looked into the claim that PVRs (Personal Video Recorders – think Tivo and ReplayTV) are bad for the networks.  Upon conducting this study, he found out that PVRs are good for the networks.  Of course, much like the reality that downloaders are the biggest purchasers of music, this fact won’t sway the fear-mongers who are trying to prevent good technology from making the lives of consumers better.

It seems like the most obvious thing in the world that digital video recorders are bad news for TV networks. DVRs make it easier for viewers to record a show tonight and watch it four days down the road — or to capture it tonight after it ran four days ago. Some of them even enable viewers to save an entire season of a series to the DVR’s hard drive with one click of a button.

By further distorting the TV schedule, these VCRs in overdrive would appear to diminish the value of the advertising on which television networks rely. After all, many ads are time-sensitive. What’s the point of touting tomorrow’s release of a Hollywood blockbuster if people won’t see the tout until after the all-important first weekend?

And so, during a recent lunch hour, in a meeting room in Pasadena, the chief research officer of CBS presented TV critics with the other side of the story. And according to David Poltrack’s statistics, DVRs are just dandy for big networks like his.

Why?  Well, let’s look at some of the realities he found:

• DVR penetration in the United States is at 12% to 15% of households, versus 8% last year
• the public is adopting DVRs at a slower rate than some observers predicted, and the idea that a DVR revolution would sweep away the networks’ scheduling power has “been thoroughly discredited.”
• DVR-equipped viewers of the big four U.S. networks still watch 90% of their shows live, although this figure drops to 82% for prime time
• Sixty-six per cent of viewers who have recorded a show on DVR watch it by 6 a.m. the next morning, Mr. Poltrack said, and 80% watch within two days
• DVRs will increase the total audience. Case in point: On U.S. television this autumn, two very popular shows, Grey’s Anatomy on ABC and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation on CBS, are going toe-to-toe at 9 p.m. on Tuesdays (this scheduling conflict does not occur in Canada)

Less PVRs (I call them PVRs, he says DVRs) than expected, slower growth, high same day/next-day viewing, extremely high live-TV viewership?  All kinds of crazy stuff.  The end result is for the vast majority of PVR owners, the devices have changed very little in peoples’ actual viewing habits.   Mr. Poltrak (the CBS researcher) also notes that people already skip commercials on VCRs, so PVRs won’t change that.  Plus, people “get” the ads, even at high speed or with only limited exposure.

His argument is that people get the point of ads even at a higher rate of speed (indeed, that kind of absorption of information is the underpinning of the roadside billboard industry). Mr. Poltrack observed that many commercials are now designed to remain comprehensible in fast-forward.

The end of the world does not appear to be imminent for the networks now.  But I’m sure someone will come along, brush the facts under a rug, and work on getting our wonderful congress to pass laws restricting the grand timesaving devices we call PVRs.

[tags]PVRs, network television, PVRs good for networks[/tags]

(via boingboing)

Any of you techies wondering who you have representing you? Have you thought about who it is kowtowing to the telecomm companies who are trying to make the Internet a communication structured controlled by big media and big business?

Sadly, it’s people like this who are “working for” citizens in this country.

I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o’clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?

Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially…

They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It’s not a truck.

It’s a series of tubes.

And if you don’t understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

Yes, you read that right. Senator Stevens (R-Alaska) received an internet which took 5 days to travel via the Internet to him. And the reason for this, he thinks, is because the tubes that make up the Internet were blocked by other companies pushing through things not of interest to him. Because of this, cable internet providers, DSL providers, and other such companies should be allowed to charge the companies which send internets over the Internet so they can assure the senders that their internet will be received promptly.

I have no complaints about people not understanding the technology I deal with every day. But to explain something of which you have no concept and use that as the justification for dry-raping consumers while deep-throating big business is just not right. Learn about something before spewing this crap, and then at least support bad law because you understand the implications.

[tags]Net Neutrality, Big business, Raping consumers[/tags]

Yes, that Charlie Daniels. Not only is he a talented musician, he’s a very bright individual who is not the least bit ashamed of his conservative views. I read his soapbox postings off and on, and always find them worth reading, even if I disagree. His latest is spot-on in calling to task the liberals who act as if getting Zarqawi is a minor news item.

Senator Harry Reid and the libernuts in Washington are acting as if the demise of one of the top three terrorists in the world was nothing more than swatting a worrisome mosquito.

Come on guys, nobody said that it was going to end the war in Iraq but it’s a great step along the way, his name was Zarqawi, remember him? He’s the guy responsible for murdering children on a school bus who had done nothing more than being born into the opposite sect of Muslims.

Can’t you even congratulate the troops for a job well done?
Can’t you take just a little bit of joy in this great victory? Why do you always have to be so negative, are you so bent on politics that you can’t even be glad when we have a big win?

What is it with you guys? Are your real interests in the welfare of America or the welfare of your political party? It’s hard to figure out why you can’t even say a few kind words about the men and women in uniform who have ridded the world of one of the most bloodthirsty, cruel and diabolical monsters ever born.

Regardless of how you feel about the war can’t you be happy for the people of Iraq who have suffered at the hands of this
demented master terrorist? Can’t you even acknowledge that we are starting to get cooperation from Iraqi citizens who are sick and tired of Zarqawi and his kind?

I’ve discussed something like this with a cow-orker recently. No one with any sense should be happy to hear when a President is performing badly or makes a serious mistake. Yet so many people seem glad to hear bad employment news, failings to take out military targets, and other things that might “prove” one party or the other is doing badly. But this is just nonsense. Sure, support your own party and all that, but if the current administration screws up, don’t celebrate. When we have problems at the top, it comes all the way down, eventually. My cow-orkers example was when conservatives kept hoping for high unemployment numbers under Clinton. The problem with that is, some of those very people hoping for those bad numbers could be among the unemployed. If you don’t like who is in charge now, that’s fine – but don’t wish bad things on them, or we all stand to suffer.

[tags]Charlie Daniels, Zarqawi, Liberal idiocy[/tags]

I like it when others agree with me. And I like not letting go of old peeves. So when I see someone talking about something I talk about, agreeing with me, and saying what they have to say months after everyone else forgets about it, I’m happy. In this case, I’m pleased with this ComputerWorld article on what’s wrong with the NSA spying authorized by Bush. I still maintain that this is illegal, that President Bush should be removed from office, and that the less than a dozen congress-critters who were informed of this and didn’t work to stop it should all be removed as well. Here’s some of what Ira Winkler had to say.

As a former NSA analyst, I’m dismayed by the continuing revelations of the National Security Agency’s warrantless — and therefore illegal — spying. The case involves fundamental issues related to NSA’s missions and long-standing rules of engagement. What’s even more dismaying is the lack of public reaction to this.

. . .

The FISA law allows NSA to request those warrants up to 72 hours after the fact — that is, after the data has been analyzed. And lest you think that the courts from which such warrants are requested are staffed by a bunch of liberal, activist, criminal-coddling judges, they have reportedly turned down only five warrants in the last 28 years. So when President Bush says, “If Osama bin Laden is calling someone in the United States, we want to know about it,” followed by his nervous laugh, he’s laughing at the American public, since “knowing about it” is a totally irrelevant issue. FISA blocks no legitimate acquisition of knowledge.

. . .

If Bush didn’t like the FISA laws, he could have asked Congress to amend them. After all, after 9/11 Congress passed a wide variety of laws (without, for the most part, reading them) that were supposed to prevent another attack. They could have easily slipped something modifying FISA into all of that legislation. They did not, though recent revelations about this administration’s use of signing statements may indicate that they simply didn’t want to raise the possibility of questions.

Ignoring FISA’s rules concerning warrants is illegal. It also weakens national security, since the process of obtaining the warrants has an effect on quality control. To date, FBI agents have been sent out to do thousands of investigations based on this warrantless wiretapping. None of those investigations turned up a legitimate lead. I have spoken to about a dozen agents, and they all roll their eyes and indicate disgust with the man-years of wasted effort being put into physically examining NSA “leads.”

. . .

We have snakes in our midst, yet we are chasing a mythical beast with completely unreliable evidence.

And now we discover that the NSA is searching through every possible phone call made in the U.S.. They claim that the NSA is not receiving any personally identifying information. Frankly, you have to be a complete moron to believe that. It is trivial to narrow down access to a phone number to just a few members of a household, if not in fact to exactly one person.

The government claims that it got the information legally since it was given the data or bought it from the telecom companies. Perhaps, but USA Today reports that at least one company (Qwest) received threats from the U.S. government for not cooperating. That’s extortion — another crime.

Congress is not exercising any backbone at all, and neither are its constituents — a.k.a., you.

. . .

The arguments I hear for it are that 1) I have nothing to worry about so I don’t care if they investigate me, 2) we need to do everything we can to protect ourselves, or 3) the NSA isn’t listening to the content of the calls, so there’s no harm.

Addressing the first point, people who did nothing wrong have been investigated and jailed in this country and others over the years.  Additionally, I believe that Saddam Hussein would cheerfully agree with the tired allegation that if you did nothing wrong, you shouldn’t mind the government looking at your calls.  I think Lenin, Stalin, Hitler and the Chinese government would also agree with that line of thought.  Is this the company we consent to keep in the name of safety?

. . .

At the same time, we have seen the Bush administration go after Joesph Wilson, the ambassador who spoke out against the Bush administration, by leaking potentially classified information about him.  They vigorously tried to undermine the credibility of Richard Clarke and others who spoke out against them.  Now consider that the NSA telephone call database is not classified; there’s no legal reason that they can’t use this database as vindictively as they did, even when the data was potentially classified, as in releasing the information that Valerie Plame, Wilson’s wife, worked for the CIA.

Please, go read the full article.  There’s a lot I’ve left out.  I will be very forward and admit that I think President Bush is a terrible President, that the current administration is bad for America, that our rights are slowly and quietly being stripped away and that I think we Americans were willfullly and maliciously lied to about Iraq to get approval for the war in Iraq that would not have been granted had the truth been provided.  I also think, though, that things would probably be worse, although in a different way, had Kerry won the last election, and the Al Gore likely would not have been a good or inspirational leader after 9/11 when America needed someone who was ready to lead the country through tough times.

All that said, my current anger about the illegal NSA spying transcends party lines – what was done is wrong no matter who decided to do it.  President Clinton lied about his affair with Monica Lewinski.  I didn’t care.  He then lied during a trial while under oath.  Then I started caring.  That was enough to justify removing him from office.  What President Bush has done is even worse, in my eyes, and it really concerns me that so few people in America care that the President has broken the law and doesn’t even care.

I will keep posting about this every time I see a well written article about it, because it matters enough that people need to be constantly reminded until those responsible for this are appropriately punished.

[tags]President Bush broke the law, NSA Spying, Bush hates America, Bush above the law?[/tags]