Friday  28 Jun 2013           comment?

I've worked in software since 1978. Most of the programs I wrote are no longer used by anyone, what with changes in machines, OSes, and requirements. That's mildly ironic in the sense that the code itself doesn't wear or rot like physical objects do.

Part of the appeal of making the kinds of things one makes out of wood is that I can imagine someone using them 100 or more years from now.

It would've been cool to have done programming for the Voyager spacecraft. These 1970s devices are now making measurements at the pewiphewy^* of the solar system and transmitting their findings to us. And what they're saying is interesting; the relation between solar particle flux and magnetic field out there isn't what we expected. Unexplained phenomena are just fun to hear about and are part of what drives science along.

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Tuesday  25 Jun 2013           comment?

Earlier today, the NSA pulled a "fact sheet" off their web site after Senators Wyden and Udall wrote to them about how erroneous it was.

That probably won't get as much press attention as what people say about Edward Snowden. The NSA would rather see attention on anything but their own behavior, and the media gladly supply such distraction.

As Snowden put it, "Unfortunately, the mainstream media now seems far more interested in what I said when I was 17 or what my girlfriend looks like rather than, say, the largest program of suspicionless surveillance in human history."

That said, some aspects of the unfolding Snowden drama are captivating. It's perhaps the biggest embarrassment for the NSA since 1960.

Lots of Americans shrug off the extent of government surveillance, as if the Fourth Amendment isn't there for a good reason. Give a government the power to find dirt on just about anyone, and there will come a point when that power will be abused. Consider what the Bushies wanted to do to Juan Cole not that long ago.

A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves.

Sunday  23 Jun 2013           comment?

The Guardian:

In June 2008, the head of the US National Security Agency, Lt Gen Keith Alexander, visited Menwith Hill, the giant listening station near Harrogate in Yorkshire, and set the audience of British and American intelligence staff a provocative challenge: "Why can't we collect all the signals all the time?" he asked. "Sounds like a good summer project for Menwith." The tone sounds almost jaunty — but it meshes with a similar and entirely serious ambition revealed in internal documents from within GCHQ, the sister UK organisation charged with monitoring communications — mastering the internet. MTI for short.

The New York Times:

An American official who would explain the remark only on condition of anonymity said: "General Alexander's comment was a quip taken out of context — nothing more."

This is as good an occasion as any to quote Monty Python dialogue:

Vicar:	It's about this letter you sent me regarding my insurance claim.
Devious:	Oh, yeah, yeah — well, you see, it's just that we're not ... as yet ... totally satisfied with the grounds of your claim.
Vicar:	But it says something about filling my mouth with cement.
Devious:	Oh well, that's just insurance jargon, you know.

Saturday  15 Jun 2013           comment?

Editorial comment from Caltrans, aspiring to yet short of being actual humor.

Sunday  09 Jun 2013           comment?

I like how German words can have tripled letters, e.g. Sauerstoffflasche (oxygen tank), for which some typefaces include an fffl ligature—arguably unnecessary, at least if you follow the rule that ligatures shouldn't join letters in different syllables. Tripled s can be written either as ßs or sss. It doesn't even need to be a compound word for it to arise, e.g. when making an adjective from the name Gauss. Russian took Massstab (in the sense of scale on a map) as a loanword, although the phonetic rendering (масштаб) loses the splendiferous triplicity of the original.

Saturday  08 Jun 2013           comment?

Hot day today.

Friday  07 Jun 2013           3 comments

From a Senate hearing on March 12, 2013 (video here):

Sen. Wyden:	So, what I wanted to see is, if could you give me a yes or no answer to the question, does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?
Gen. Clapper:	No, sir.
Sen. Wyden:	It does not?
Gen. Clapper:	Not wittingly. There are cases where they could inadvertently perhaps collect, but not wittingly.

Asked yesterday whether he stood by that statement, General Clapper said, What I said was, the NSA does not voyeuristically pore through U.S. citizens' e-mails. I stand by that. Oh, what a tangled web we weave When first we practise to deceive!

Thursday  06 Jun 2013           2 comments

Spying is in the news this week, with the release of documents supposedly leaked by an insider who was appalled at the extent of surveillance.

Spy agencies and their supporters in government say, trust us, we're careful, there's oversight. And yet—

[Senator] Wyden repeatedly asked the NSA to estimate the number of Americans whose communications had been incidentally collected, and the agency's director, Lt. Gen. Keith B. Alexander, insisted there was no way to find out. Eventually Inspector General I. Charles McCullough III wrote Wyden a letter stating that it would violate the privacy of Americans in NSA data banks to try to estimate their number.

It's kind of funny when such people say trust us.

Tuesday  04 Jun 2013           1 comment

In 2006, the USA enacted the Stolen Valor Act, which criminalized false claims of having received a U.S. military decoration or medal. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (and ultimately also the U.S. Supreme Court) found the law unconstitutional.

In an order explaining why the Ninth Circuit refused to rehear the case en banc, Chief Judge Alex Kozinski defended the legality of lying, and gave all manner of examples of deceit in everyday life:

Saints may always tell the truth, but for mortals living means lying. We lie

to protect our privacy	("No, I don't live around here");
to avoid hurt feelings	("Friday is my study night");
to make others feel better	("Gee you've gotten skinny");
to avoid recriminations	("I only lost $10 at poker");
to prevent grief	("The doc says you're getting better");
to maintain domestic tranquility	("She's just a friend");
to avoid social stigma	("I just haven't met the right woman");
for career advancement	("I'm sooo lucky to have a smart boss like you");
to avoid being lonely	("I love opera");
to eliminate a rival	("He has a boyfriend");
to achieve an objective	("But I love you so much");
to defeat an objective	("I'm allergic to latex");
to make an exit	("It's not you, it's me");
to delay the inevitable	("The check is in the mail");
to communicate displeasure	("There's nothing wrong");
to get someone off your back	("I'll call you about lunch");
to escape a nudnik	("My mother's on the other line");
to namedrop	("We go way back");
to set up a surprise party	("I need help moving the piano");
to buy time	("I'm on my way");
to keep up appearances	("We're not talking divorce");
to avoid taking out the trash	("My back hurts");
to duck an obligation	("I've got a headache");
to maintain a public image	("I go to church every Sunday");
to make a point	("Ich bin ein Berliner");
to save face	("I had too much to drink");
to humor	("Correct as usual, King Friday");
to avoid embarrassment	("That wasn't me");
to curry favor	("I've read all your books");
to get a clerkship	("You're the greatest living jurist");
to save a dollar	("I gave at the office"); or
to maintain innocence	("There are eight tiny reindeer on the rooftop").

The judge then suggested that wood veneer paneling and cubic zirconia were popular for the same reasons lying is.

Well. If you're paneling, say, a courtroom, veneer is not only a more efficient use of fine material than thick pieces would be, but also allows repeated nearly-symmetric figure matching. I see veneer less as pretending to be solid wood than as doing what veneer does best.

Cubic zirconia? I think it bespeaks good sense more than it does deceit.

But setting aside the aptness of Judge Kozinski's examples, there's something bizarre about a judge writing at length about the indispensibility of lying.

The list of everyday lies reproduced above includes a fair number of instances that I consider bad practice. And yet I agree with the judge that all of us, myself included, lie on occasion. My goal is to keep it to a bare minimum. A lie is often the lazy way out.

Something I wrote early on in this little blog sums up my feelings:

I may not be able to convince you that truth is always a good thing, but I submit that truth is underrated, people all too often don't give it a chance.

The USA could stand to be more consistent when it comes to deceit. This is a country where some (like, say, the chief justice of a state supreme court) will try their damndest to keep the Ten Commandments on display in public buildings. Yet, as many know from movies and TV shows, the police can and will lie to you with impunity during interrogations.

Not every country's police work that way. Deceit is one of several techniques (along with physical abuse, hypnosis, administering drugs, ...) that German police are forbidden by law to use during interrogations, and statements obtained by such means are inadmissible.

Sunday  02 Jun 2013           comment?

US District Judge Otis Wright recently got (understandably) annoyed with some copyright trolls who specialized in accusing people of having downloaded pirated porn while offering to settle "for a sum calculated to be just below the cost of a bare-bones defense." Long story, but the judge deemed the trolls to be less than fair in their dealings (understatement).

When a troll refused to answer questions in his courtroom this April, the judge told his attorney, "Well if you say answering those kinds of questions would incriminate him, I'll take you at your word."

Last month, Judge Wright issued a scathing order that imposed a sanction of $81,319.72 and promised to refer the matter to the US Attorney and the IRS.

This came to my attention because the order is full of Star Trek references, but I found those less amusing than other parts—like the footnote saying that the punitive value of the penalty was calculated "to be just below the cost of an effective appeal."