Friday, October 31, 2003

Fear not

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear - from Frank Herbert's Dune.

Thursday, October 30, 2003

In search of Utopia

Or: Just who are you anyway and does it really matter?

Warning: this is certainly very long and could easily be very boring!

My true identity is quite easily discovered, yet to the casual reader of this blog I remain, respectively, "Blog Gently". However I believe my identity is more than my name, date of birth, phone number, social security number or any other random selection of vital credentials an inquistor requests from me. Indeed I believe my identity transcends beyond what I look like, my finger prints, retinal scan or DNA sample. Most people, when pressed would probably agree. The "I" of the minds eye is inside us. Our unique experiences, our behaviour, and reactions are the very stuff that makes us different from anyone else who happens to look like us and have a collection of fake IDs proclaiming they are us. That is probably why some of the most difficult human conditions to deal with are mental disorders that leave a person responding in a markedly different manner from before, or suffering some significant memory loss. If I were to suffer such a condition I might not even realize it myself, and from the outside my physical identity would be unchanged. All DNA, fingerprint or other tests would still identify me as me, yet for people who knew me, there would no longer be any me there at all. Would I still be "me"? To be honest I don't even know how to answer that question - for many legal purposes (my citizenship of a country) I would, for some (power of attorney) I might not.

So I perceive identity as constant puzzle of the human condition. In the absence of, or degradation of, a persons mental responses, one is left to rely on the physical condition, and yet in so many instances a mere mental response - that of reciting four digits of ones social security number, or a date of birth - is taken to suffice for ones identity. Any interloper searching through trash, on the Internet, or any person with $25 can now impersonate that mental response. Hence the puzzle - why are people so afraid of any attempts to identity systems? I genuinely believe that had the framers of the US Constitution (bless them, those venerable ancestors of todays stupid white men) lived in modern times they would probably seek to tack onto the Bill of Rights, the right to identity and the right to anonymity. Yes we already have the right to privacy in our own homes, and the right to free speech, but no actual constitutionally blessed right to anonymity nor to have a mechanism to prove our identity. The problem is that ultimately both of these are enshrined in technological solutions which are as yet imperfect, and may ultimately be unatainable

I am reminded of this because of Dave's comments on the US Mail's plan to require bulk mailers to attach a valid from address on all their mail. Is this, we ask ourselves, the first dangerous millimeter down that slippery slope towards complete loss of our right to privacy and free speech? I do not blame such fears, I have them myself. But I also do not believe that the US Mail, nor its employees have any obligation to carry any anthrax laden package, death threat or kindly gift from another Unabomber wannabe to its inevitable destination. It is true that a letter, suitably transcribed and dispatched casually in a remote mail box, is the classic medium of free speech combined with right to privacy i.e. an anonymous sharing of information. To require the identity of the sender of all postal items to be verified would deprive the public of such a medium.

Perhaps some limitation - only letters could be sent with unverified identity - would aleviate the problem? But what about that tainted envelope containing just a dash of anthrax or some new neural agent that will kill its recipient on handling? Does one just write that off as a price to pay for anonymity and free speech by mail? Or do we just abandon all hope of anonymity by mail and let the information find its way by other means. After all when it comes down to it, verifying the identity of a sender is just a flawed as the schemes used to identity people in the first place. Anyone who truely wanted to send information anonymously would just find a fake ID of some happless John Doe and use that. This is of course a common ruse in use today by many email spammers.

Which brings me on to my original point - my identity. As I pointed out, all current commonly used systems of identity have their flaws. DNA doesn't work for identical twins but works for the remaining 99.6% of us. However anyone who has seen the movie "Gattaca" can imagine that most non-rigorously applied DNA tests could be defeated and provide a fake DNA identification for anyone. The same applies to fingerprints because current scanners can easily be defeated by fake prints, or genuine fingerprints could be destroyed or lost via amputation. Ditto for retinal scans. I myself have suffered changes to my retinal pattern from a viral infection and later on from contact lens abuse. If a damaged or lost eye (I've known blind people with no eyes at all) were to invalidate your identity it would not be a very good system at all. Once again, if you watched the movie "Demolition Man" would could easily imagine some retinal scan identities could be faked in some rather unpleasent ways. So whats it to be? Will we be expected to submit to barage of physical identificaiton systems everytime we want to mail a letter and then wait to have experts on hand to study results and pass judgement if anything should not match up? What if something goes wrong and they say we are no longer who we say we are?

There are just so many problems associated with identity. One could suggest that perhaps varying degrees of identificaiton works. The rigour with which our identity is probed could depend on the situation. But wouldn't a very common occurance, like getting on an airplane, warrant very strict identity checks? When people risk their lives based on the positive identificaiton on others shouldn't they expect the very highest of standards to apply? Thus I find it amazing that systems for "expidited transit" through airline security checks are gaining popularity as a valid solution to "long delays" at airport security checks. Personally I'd rather be on a plane with only the people who stood in the long line than on the plane that also had people with the "known good guy" ID. I'm reminded of how many non-concealment schemes to carry illegal items through security checks usually revolve around exploitation of a happless stooge who wont be subject to normal security measures, or is less likely to get "profiled". Or have your evil-doer just pretend to be such a person - dress them in a flight attendant uniform, give them an easily faked "good doer" ID and whatch them whisked through security. This is simlar to "evil doers" exploting, perhaps under duress, a identifiable "good doer" to do their bidding. For example the scenario of bank manager with wife and kids kidnapped and told he has to unlock a safe to secure their release. You see, even provable identity does not buy us freedom from security risks.

Well then, maybe mental identification schemes would work, how about a rigorous challenge response scheme for instance? These are commonly used by banks when they ask you questions about your financial activity. My experience is they are as fallible as we. I once was unable to access my account because I couldn't accurately answer several questions about my bank balances, and recent deposits and withdrawals - this was inspite of all the physical identity proofs they had requested. Also who is to be the guardian of such information, these shared secrets, and who is to say that someone who had gained such information illegally or by other legal means could not more easily pass such a test than myself? After all if you really dug into my public records you could easily find many trivia that I have long since forgotten but might be used to give a compelling impersonation of me. Indeed this is the basis of many a confidence trick where the trickster pretends to be someone by going back to distant school day memories and relying on the victims unwillingness to admit to a poor memory for faces or names.

Eventually I'm lead to wonder if identity and anonymity are really the holy grails some people perceive them to be. In a modern society that has become fixated over perceived security issues related to proof of identity I believe what is really of prime importance is proof of truthfulness. In the end requests to prove identity are usually hand in hand with some transaction that has certain constraints. Does it really matter who is buying our house if they will fullfil the contract to pay us? Does it matter who is living next door to us if they pay their taxes and never do us any harm? Or consider the converse - perhaps there is person previously convicted of a terrorist act on our plane, but if we know he has no intent to blow it up or crash it into a building do we care? If the person we are considering employing has done five years in federal penitentiary should we discriminate against them if they are now entirely trustworthy, more so than the applicant without a record who is fully intending to rip us off? What assurance do we have that any proof of identity carries with it any assurance we can trust the bearer? For the most part, none at all! Trust is always derived by other means quite separate from regular proofs of identity and should be treated in via a quite different mechanism. For example: if the person dropping an anonymous piece of mail into the mailbox can certify they are doing no harm to the mail carrier or the recipient then why should we care to identity them in the first place?

Ultimately I believe, in my utopia, the perfect mechanism to assert truthfulness is more important than any for proof of identity. For those interested in an exploration of life with such a mechanism you might read the novel The Truth Machine. Many of the significant consequences on society are played out in this book, and for a while it does seem like utopia indeed. Of course there is a catch (it being a novel rather than a straight intellectual exploration of the future) so as ever the finale reminds us that the search for utopia (of which I am often accused) is the same as the search for perfection: without the latter one just hasn't reached the former. But can one ever trust a proof of perfection and will everyone ultimately just have to trust and believe in something they can never prove?

Monday, October 27, 2003

Viral marketing: the antidote

Miss Me tells the story of yet another viral marketing scam. Ditzy gals in a bar dupe gulible guys into beliving the latest bottled water product leaves them feeling "so great, so real". Ah that would be "so real" as opposed to "surreal" I guess.

Most of us have heard about it by now, that inciduous consumer brain washing scam called "Viral Marketing". One of the proponents of viral marketing is Big Fat Worldwide Inc. who say "we infuse brands into the target's life without disrupting their everyday, normal behavior." The logical conclusion of viral marketing is that no one will express any opinion about a product without expecting to get paid for it, and everyone will express any opinion if paid for it. There will be no independent trusted third party information to be had on products, only paid for viralmercials. Most web sites that allow free input of consumer product opinions have experienced this problem. Sooner or later a site gets large enough that paid shills start posting bogus AAA+++ reviews, genuine reviews start migrating to the next web site and before the credibility of the entire site is drained to zero.

So what is the antidote? Viral anti-marketing. The target host will recognize the attacking viral agent and produce antibodies. The antibodies will "identify viral agents, expose them, surround them and disable their viral messaging mechanisms rendering them harmless". The antibodies are of course us, that is those of us that have woken up to the reality of walking, talking billboards penetrating our social environment. We willl be trained in the art of viral marketing agent recognition and go about our business of routing out the phoney consumers. At such time we will summons any adjacent antibodies and start loud conversations about how much the product sucks, or how many pounds they gained from drinking said sugared beverage, or what a big rip-off paying $3 a bottle for flavoured water is when a $12 purifier will give you a 1000 gallons of tasty beverage straight from the tap.

However I suspect that deep in the bowels of consumer exploitation land, sick and twisted minds have already dreamed up paid-for viral anti-marketing. Companies are, as I write, no doubt sending out paid viral anti-marketing agents to attempt to counter attack the viral messages from their competitors. Its only a matter of time before the first viral marketing vs. viral anti-marketing agent fight breaks out. So the next time you hear two loud-talking beautiful people asserting how their water has left them feeling "so great, so real", get ready to duck because the sugared soda water company agents may just be lurking in the corner ready for the kill.

Sunday, October 26, 2003

Its no murder mystery

Last week Oakland chalked up its 100th murder for 2003. Alphonso Jose Carbajal, 29 was found shot in the head on the morning of October 20th and was pronounced dead shortly afterward. I'm sorry to say this comes as no shock to me, I've always known that Oakland has one of the highest homicide rates in the country and I've lived here for over nine years now. For a city with a population of 400,000 we'll end the year with a homicide rate of over five times the USA national average (5.5 homicides per 100,000 in Y2K).

As I noted in a previous blog entry the USA national average is already several times that of most European countries, and almost ten times that of Japan. That means Oakland is running at twenty times the homicide rate of the United Kingdom, or fifty times that of Japan. According to OECD figures the United Kingdom and the United States have approximately the same number of police per capita (around 240 per 100,000) so why the huge difference in homicide rates? And within the USA why the huge variation? After all isn't Oakland situated within the Bay Area, one of the most affluent regions of all the United States? Oakland has around 800 police (778 in 2002), which is 20% under the national average, but still not massively so. In Japan they make do with almost half the number of police per capita of Europe and the USA so you can't just blame it on lack of police.

Sitting here in the safest district of Oakland I can hear what must be the dozenth set of police sirens this evening. Its a warm night and I'm sure people are out on the streets enjoying it. Sadly the odds are another two people will have died by then end of the weekend. I'm not going to pretend I have the answers. But I do find it shocking as ever, that one can live in one of the wealthiest area of the nation and find oneself slap bang in the middle of one of the most dangerous cities in the nation. I believe it goes to show that some things are very out of balance in this country and that a concentration of wealth certainly does not inherently lead to any answers. Crime will follow the money and the follow the opportunity to redistribute wealth and benefits down the food chain from were they have been vacuumed in vast quantities for the last 30 years.

Monday, October 20, 2003

Airline economics for dummies

Apparently Concorde needed one ton of fuel per passenger, that's about 2,000 pounds of fuel. A 747 takes one-quarter that amount, so 500 pounds of fuel. I will soon be making a round trip to England by 747 so that will be 1,000 pounds of fuel burned to haul me there and back. Total cost of ticket exluding taxes: $270. By my calculation a thousand pounds of fuel is about 100 gallons so I'm buying 100 gallons of aviation fuel, plus paying for all the rest of the airline infrastructure costs, employee salary, food (okay, thats about $1 worth) etc. etc. Its easy to see how airlines are barely making a profit at this price. I guess I'm just along for a cheap ride with the 1st and Business class people who are paying the bulk of the cost.

Sunday, October 19, 2003

All these words on the web, lost like tears in the rain?

Given the propensity for the collective masses of "the internet" to pour their hearts out in digital form alone, I am led to wondering just how long they will survive after they are published? We are all familiar with "404 Not Found" errors that signify another website bit the dust. On occassion their content can be recovered via the great Google cache in the sky, or The Way Back Machine at archive.org. Other times the content just never made it into any semblance of semi-persistance. For instance this blog does not appear on archive.org because it is bound to an IP address that is shared with other domains and The Way Back Machine appears only to hit individual IPs and not registered domains. Even though available IP addresses probably outnumber registered domains by about 100 to 1 it seems a large percentage of web sites and hence content will still slip through the cracks of archival like this one.

Even if my site were to end up archived by one of these remote data suckers, what is to say that the archived data will ever survive for any significant period of time? While, as I have previously noted, the cost of hard drive storage capacity is still dropping precipitously, there is still no guarantee anyone will have the interest or money to continue to archive new web content or preserve old, no longer valid content. Furthermore, even if I rely on my own personal archives - a backup drive and the occasional copy to CD-R - I know these copies will probably not last more than ten years due to "data rot" and hardware obsolesence, or in the event of my untimely demise significantly less. How many of you have uncovered an "old" 5 1/4" floopy disk and wondered just what you will need to do to get data from it. Often even to discover if the disk has anything useful on it would require it to be sent to an expensive data retrieval service. Then what will you do with the old WordStar, WordPerfect or Word1.0 files on it? Take it to the Tech Museum to find a computer able to run the software to decode it, or employ someone data archaeologist to reverse engineer the storage format? It should be clear that persistance and utility of archived data requires a continuous effort to keep it maintained in a useful format on a reasonably persistent media that is still supported by current and affordable hardware.

So it occured to me that what should really be happening is that someone should be archiving data by simplying printing onto paper. Good acid free paper kept away from fire and prolonged water logging will usually last a few hundred years at least. Furthermore it requires no special reading equipment, and is readily converted back to digital format by contemporary scanning equipment. Eventually it is quite possible that entire books could be scanned without even opening them (using X-ray techniques). Thus I'm tempted to start a web preservation campaign called "bits to books". It'll be bad for trees, but if it requires planting large numbers of trees, turning them into paper and not burning them it will actually be a great way to suck large quantities of carbon-dioxide out of the environment on a long term basis and do some good. I haven't yet done the math, but I think with a small, but still readable without optical assistance, font you could probably get 20k bytes of text on a single 8"x10" sheet of paper. I doubt if I could generate more than a gigabyte of original text content in my lifetime, that would be a lot of keystrokes considering the average person only gets 2 billion seconds or so on this planet and never going to spend every waking moment typing! I've yet to do the math of how many pounds of paper that gigabyte translates to and hence many trees will be required to archive my lifetime of data. I suspect its actually not very much at all especially compared to the 750 pound per year average consumption of paper by Americans for non-archival purposes. Counting all the wood pulp that goes into packaging, toilet paper and other wood fibre based products people use brings the total to over 3,000 pounds per year. Suddenly archiving my data to paper suddenly looks quite practical so long as I can find somewhere to store it!

Wednesday, October 15, 2003

Beware of thieves wearing white collars

Today I came across an interesting interview with Frank Abagnale of "Catch me if you can" fame. I've previously got upset about the amount of money corporate America funnels into offshore tax havens each year. I've also got upset about the amount of money that gets laundered through off-shore havens for other purposes. But Mr Abagnale now points out quite rightly that its incredible that no one is getting upset about the staggering amount of money, estimated at $600 billion, being pissed away each year due to white collar crime. That makes Bush's $200 billion to finished Daddy's war look like small potatoes.

Admitedly some of the $600 billion eventually filters back into the economy via the black market. But some of it, too much probably, filters up and out of the food chain into white collar tax havens and cash mountains. As another article by Clifton Leaf seems to indicate, huge amounts of this bleeding of our wealth occurs due to large scale corporate fraud. We've all seen the tips of the white collar crime icebergs in the last couple of years - icebergs called Enron, Global Crossing, and Tyco to name a few but by all accounts the vast majority of white collar crime remains beneath the surface, either undiscovered, unreported, or unprosecuted.

And by all accounts white collar crime pays if you can get away with it. According to Abagnale and Leaf if you do the white collar crime, the odds of being investigated, prosecuted or incarcerated are much much lower than virtually any other crime. The advice of the infamous Abagnale that is supposed to make us feel better? Ignore worthless identity theft insurance, buy a good cross-shredder and check your credit reports as often as possible.

Monday, October 13, 2003

Memos of mass deception

Thanks to Chicken or Beef? for digging up the link to the internal Enron memo mentioned in my entry The Arnold, Enron and Republican power conspiracy. I think this smokng gun of a memo just about confirms Greg Pallasts assertion that Governor Grabass really is in cahoots with the corporate power grabasses at Enron. There seems little left for California to do other than bend over an tell the Republicans "Grab ass!". Sorry I forgot, the majority of the state already did that. Sigh.

Thursday, October 09, 2003

Why software is like a baby

Today I overheard a mother talking about her baby over the phone. The baby had been crying all day and was apparently not well however the mother was just not able to tell what was wrong with it. That's the problem with babies, they have a binary happiness indicator: screaming or not screaming. That tends to rub off on the parents so they become either happy irrepressible champions of their wonderful kids, or screaming beating miserable protagonists of their rotten kids. Both kids and parents alternate between the various states at varying frequencies and seldom is a steady state ever achieved.

While listening to the mother trying to figure out what was wrong with said baby over the phone I was reminded of a software engineer asking a customer or field service person technical questions about their application.

Parent debugging childEngineer debugging program
Is it crying now?Is it still running?
Did you try changing its diaper?Did you apply all the patches?
Did it throw up?Did you get an error message?
Did it have a bowel movement?Did you get a core dump?
Does it keep crying after a bath and feeding?Does it crash after you power off and restart?
Is it screaming and kicking?Is the code thrashing?
Is it lethargic?Is the program slow to respond?
Has it become strangely silent?Has the program hung?

And so it goes on. The evolution of software from its earliest, must buggy days is much like a baby growing up. However unless given the right nurturing it may remain unpredictable, buggy and vulnerable. Much like a baby growing into a kid and eventually an adult. But as we know even adults and mature software are prone to succumb to really nasty viruses and collapse in a useless heap possibly infecting all around them before the do.

A well raised program will give informative error messages, be designed for easy tracing of faults to allow quick diagnosis, and support quick and easy patching for remedy of faults. Moreover it will be well tested, as will patches. The code will be robustly engineered to detect and reject bad inputs or state thus preventing problems from remaining undetected, or causing major unrecoverable data loss and system failure.

So right now as the pointy haired bosses are about to embark on a management offsite I feel like I'm the baby-sitter looking after some software that is undergoing yet another bi-polar disorder episode. Meanwhile the dysfunctional parents are out in the woods trying to find themselves with some primal screaming. Too bad they didn't go for shock therapy...

Oh joy. Pass the Lagavulin by the left hand side because it sure beats baby medicine.

Life at the end of the puddle

Looking at the map of which counties voted for the recall its easy to imagine the Bay Area as the last vestiges of a pool of progressive liberalism evaporating. Deepest in San Francisco county with 80% against the recall, it is surrounded by shallows and lowlands of indifference, rising quickly to ominous mountains in favour of the recall.

I'm reminded of one of those documentaries about life on some African plain, near a lake that is in the final stages of drying out. The people of San Francisco are like the fish helplessly gulping for oxygen as the water stagnates and turns into foul mud. Eventually the water is gone, the fish die and the lake turns to cracked dry earth. All that is left is the relentless heat of the sun and a harsh wind blowing dust across the land.

When is it going to rain again?

Wednesday, October 08, 2003

Watch your back - Governor Grabass is in town!

Well it appears the damage may have been done and Governor Grabass may soon be heading north for Sacramento. Unfortunately for him his wife says she wont be going with him because there aren't any houses nice enough, and there aren't any schools good enough for their kids. Before you ask, no, their kids don't even go to public schools. I guess its too risky for those representing "powerful interests" (not special interest mind you, that would be different altogether) to have their kids in a public school. But its a moot point, they can't even find a good enough private school. So I expect California will be paying for Arnold to fly back and forth to Sacramento on a very regular basis.

Anyway, I digress and maybe, just maybe there is still room for an error in the early calling of the election. From the figures so far its certainly interesting to see how the voting patterns of the state vary from county to county. Its easy to tell which counties voted for the recall - pretty much all those south of Montery and all those east of the Bay Area. Amusingly as I blog, Los Angeles is still showing as a lonely bastion of sanity with the majority against the recall.

However, even though the alleged win for Arnold is being reported as being by a big majority there's actually less than 10% in it. I always find that interesting, how the media interprets 10% as a big number without thought for what it really means. What it really means is that if 5% of voters changed their mind about the recall and voted the other way then there would be no recall at all. Of course even 5% is still a big number, right? Well not really. Do the math. That's one in twenty Californians. Think about it. If we all could name one out of our twently friends that voted for the recall but might have changed their vote, or might have voted mistakenly or based on false information, then the recall would be over - totally.

I don't know about you, but when the decision lies in the hand of one in twenty voters I would call California about evenly divided over the recall and its probably, within the margin of error (hey, not all voters are perfect, let alone the voting machines) a hung state. For me the recall is a big waste of time and money and will only do us harm. It would be nice to think we can all look back Governor Grabass's terrible record in two years and say "I told you so" and feel pretty smug. Anyone in the Bay Area is going to have that privilege being a complete blockade of "NO" voters, with San Francisco county the pinnacle of "NO" at 80% against. But the reality is, we'll all have to suffer for that period to feel smug at the end and just what price will our state pay during that time?

We could draw some comfort in thinking there is already a movement underway to recall Arnold. But I would say that for everyones sanity its essential someone steps up quickly and requires that any future recall should require a two-thirds majority to pass. Thats sufficient majority that it would take more than one in six people to change their vote before the result would change. Everything else is too close to call, or recall.

Just for balance I will report that so far the pinnacle of "YES" on the recall seems to be Stanislaus county that was over 99% in favour. That figure seems quite anomalous since the closest rival was around 75% in favour. Another voting machine problem perhaps???

Tuesday, October 07, 2003

Rober Novak: accessory or Shrub stooge?

Okay I'm going to stick my neck out here, but why the f**k isn't Robert Novak in custody right now as an accessory to the felony of exposing Valerie Plame as a CIA agent? Or at least to be obstructing justice or one of those other convenient "conspiracy to" charges the government always pulls to lock away people who seem to have done something but the evidence doesn't quite match up to the standards required to convict on an "actual" charge.

I know that there is a thing called freedom of the press in the constitution, however I don't believe that gives them the right to commit a crime. And there is no doubt about it, exposing Plame as a CIA agent was a felony plain and simple. And I believe refusing to reveal where he got that information from would be a crime plain and simple since he's not taking the fifth to avoid incriminating himself, he's already incriminated. Or maybe I'm just apply some quaint British standards of justice and there really isn't a thing called obstructing justice in this country. Oh well I'm sure its for the better.

And the reason no Bush aides are guilty? Or so says the Whitehouse... That easy, Bush got Novak to do it himself personally, and Novak will never have the balls to incriminate Bush while he is still in power. You can bet your life as soon as Bush is out of the Whitehouse Novak will be fessing up, or writing a book about it, or maybe collecting a handy payoff somehow for keeping his mouth shut.

Monday, October 06, 2003

That's another fine escape plan ruined

I thought I'd found the ideal location to escape to: Pitcairn Island. This remote island is somewhere in the middle of the South Pacific between Peru and New Zealand (see image below). It has no airstrip, no harbor or port and is 300 miles by boat from the nearest island with one. Its been inhabited more or less continuously since 1790 by the decendents of the Bounty mutineers. In fact a great-great-great-..... grandson of Fletcher Christian was just born there this year. Thanks to a seismic monitoring station it actually just got its first internet connection, having previously relied on a couple of satellite uplinks. According to the CIA world factbook its 50 or so inhabitants managed to generate $730,000 in revenue by selling stamps, registering domains, and handmade craft goods to passing sailors.

Unfortunately when I went to read a bit more about Pitcairn, aside from a fascinating history it also seems to be embroiled in its very own sex scandal. Apparently following the visit of a New Zealand police officer in 1999, there are now seven men on the island accused of sexual assault and abuse. Naturally this has gained quite a bit of press coverage as you can see from this site, the Pitcairners don't exactly seem pleased with the outside interference (or the men don't at least).

So I don't think I'll be rushing off to take up residence on this particular island in the South Pacific any time soon. However Tahiti is looking promising - if it weren't for global warming eating up Pacific Island real-estate faster than G Dubyah can say "Global warming? Bushit!"

InstallShield Sucks

Just when you thought the whole world was going to hell in a handbasket something comes along to take your mind off it. I know this blog is usually categorized as "Political" but let me make a brief digression to introduce to you, what must surely be the most infuriating piece of software I've used in the last four years: InstallShield. I think the name is ironic because for nearly all of the time I am using InstallShield, it seems intent of doing just that - shielding me from building a working installer. Its such an illogical piece of software and it has so many, many different paths to build something that just doesn't work.

And I'll tell you there's one thing worse than building a installer with InstallShield, only to find its broken. That's the twenty minutes or more you'll spend watching InstallShield churn out hundreds of megabytes of data, then all the time you spend installing it only to discover its broken, and then the equal amount of time watching it uninstalll the broken product, only to have to go and start all over again. It can be thirty minutes, or even an hour just to discover and correct the smallest problem, and as I mentioned, InstallShield seems to be deliberately designed to introduce myriads of ways to generate small problems. InstallShield is a major piece of software thats up to version 8 and is used by thousands of people day in and day out and still has really bad bugs that drive you nuts. No wonder the number of people taking anti-depressants is on the rise, its the thought of going to work and having to face software like InstallShield that's doing it.

There, I feel a little better now. But the problem is I still don't have a working installer since I now have a situation that every time I modify my installer to fix the latest "bug" InstallShield then decides it can no longer do a thing without telling me "InstallShield needs to close now". I think it should preface that message with "I can tell you're too angry to continue to use this software", that's about how I feel. Unfortunately if I quit my job to get away from using InstallShield I wont be able to claim unemployment. Crap, they think of everything. So I'm just going to uninstall it from my work machine, copy the entire 240Mb of pain to my home computer over the net and re-install it there in the hope, that it might, just might, decide to play ball and cough out a working installer before the software I'm trying to install becomes obsolete.

In the mean time, did I mention, InstallShield sucks ???

Sunday, October 05, 2003

Nascar Dads - they've got the whole world in their hands

I guess I'm somewhat behind the times, but this week was the first time I'd heard the term "Nascar Dads". Nascar dad sits on the couch, MGD in hand and watches the cars go around and around in a perpetual left turn, waiting for the eventual crash and burn. Its kind of like watching political candidates go around and around with their spin, waiting for the eventual media induced crash and burn. And there you have it, another Governor Grab-ass or President Grab-Intern (in the cash of Bill Clinton) goes to the wall.

As it happens, the future of the world appears to rest in lap of faithful couch-sitting, beer chugging Nascar Dad since he is now the voter with the greatest inclination to vote for the Republican pipe-dream. Apparently Nascar Dad has bought into the "strong father figure" image that GWB and his NeoCons are selling the country. The strong father figure leader tells tales of necessary hardships where Nascar Dad must take one for the team while the tax cuts go to the strongest for the better of the whole. The strong father figure leader acts agressively to defend the family and again Nascar Dads must expect to take a few more for the team at the front line to defend the home territory.

Here is the full story of just who is voting for Republicans now, and why Nascar Dads don't vote for Democrats any more.

Friday, October 03, 2003

The Arnold, Enron and Republican power conspiracy

Greg Palast just published a column in which he posits that Arnold, Enron and the Republican party have a little conspiracy going to get the power companies of out paying $9 Billion in compensation to California. You can read the full story, but the gist of it is that Ken Lay and Arnold were both present in some secret meetings two years ago just after Governor Gray Davis filled suit against the power companies to recoup some of the money that gouged California for. Palast claims that the plan to recall Gray Davis was cooked up so that Arnold to get to power and settle the suit out of court for pennies on the dollar.

I have to say the theory seems to require a long stretch of the imagination, especially because that makes another $9 billion Arnold would have to dig up to get us out of debt. But... if Arnold wins and the power companies promptly get let off the hook, then don't say Greg Palast didn't say so...