Why the no-fly list is bad

As usual, someone else who writes better than I do explains why something I dislike is actually bad.  The article covers two cases of mistaken identity for the U.S. no-fly list.  In the first case, a Canadian man is basically accused of being a terrorist because his name matches that of a known terrorist.  That’s not inherently bad, but get taken back to Canada while trying to fly to Mexico, without ever landing in the U.S., and then getting thrown in to detention?  Yes, it’s another plan that Mr. Bush imposes on Americans that so far has a 100% failure rate.

The second case is a story about a four year old child who is not allowed to fly because he has the same name as someone who is on the no-fly list.  And in case you didn’t know, Senator Ted Kennedy also was not allowed to fly recently because his name turned up on the no-fly list.  Can anyone see the problem with a list that only uses names to identify people as terrorists?  Has anyone in the administration considered the possibility of more than one person having a given name?  Apparently not.  Bad security is worse than no security.  At least with no security, you know where you stand.  With bad security, you can be fooled into thinking you are safe, lowering your guard, and getting caught by a threat you would have noticed had you known no security was in place.  So all of you that have read this now know you are not made more secure by this bad program, so don’t let your guard down.

[tags]Schneier, Bad Security, No-Fly list, False Positive[/tags]

Talking politics? Parts of the brain shut down…

Next time you’re having a political argument with someone and you start thinking “How in the world could they believe that?” you’ll be happy to know the answer has been found.  It turns out that the part of the brain responsible for reasoning pretty much shuts down when comments are made that threaten their preferred political candidate.  This makes it easier for one to stick to claimed beliefs, even when obvious facts show those beliefs to be invalid.

From the article:

Democrats and Republicans alike are adept at making decisions without letting the facts get in the way, a new study shows.

And they get quite a rush from ignoring information that’s contrary to their point of view.

[. . .]

The study points to a total lack of reason in political decision-making.

[tags]Politics, reasoning, logic, brain[/tags]

MPAA: “Pirating is bad – unless we do it”

Oops.  So much for the “ALL forms of piracy are illegal and carry serious legal consequences.” stance of the MPAA.  The MPAA claims they pirated the film because they were concerned about their employees’ safety.  Read the whole article for the details.

As The Consumerist notes, “If you’re really worried about the well-being of your employees, you call the police, end of story.”

[tags]Piracy, MPAA, Hypocrisy[/tags]

Joel on great design

Joel is another favorite of mine.  Like Paul Graham, almost anything he writes I find interesting.  His specialty is design.  Or at least, most of his writing that I read is about design.  If you do interface design, Joel’s latest column should be of interest to you.  I don’t do interface design because I stink at it.  Thanks to Joel, though, I can at least recognize bad design, and sometimes even make suggestions to improve things.

Here’s a great part of his column:

Here’s why I’m afraid to turn off my cell phone: because I can’t always seem to muster the brain cells necessary to turn it back on.

It has two buttons on it, a happy green button and a scary red button. They have funny icons on them that don’t mean very much to me.

You might think that the green button turns it on. Green means go, right?

Wrong.

[tags]Joel, Software, design[/tags]

Paul Graham:How to do what you love

I’ve never seen a Paul Graham article that wasn’t a great read.  His latest, as noted in the above header, is “How to do what you love.”  As always, he covers lots, and it does take a little while to read.  But it’s as good as all his other stuff.

To do something well you have to like it. That idea is not exactly novel. We’ve got it down to four words: “Do what you love.” But it’s not enough just to tell people that. Doing what you love is complicated.

[tags]Paul Graham, work[/tags]