The devil is in the operating system... maybe

Over the past week I've been several calls or messages a day from a friend who has been trying to figure out why his laptop takes forever to startup. The calls range from excited "I've found it" type messages to depressed resignation to the fact that "it" whatever it may be, will never be found. Apparently the laptop didn't use to behave this way so as the resident PC expert in his life we suspected anything from a configuration problem, virus to spyware. Either way, to the uninformed one might conclude his laptop is possessed by some nasty daemon. Now this guy is not a computer neophyte, he's written an real-time operating system, debugged embedded systems with his bare hands, and been a CTO of a multi-billion dollar company. But somewhere along the line he resigned from his duty of keeping up to date with the details of computer maintenance and that just about coincided with Microsoft Windows becoming the prevalent desktop platform.

So in the past week I've given him the low down on his registry, where all the startup program hide and how to use 'msconfig' or 'regedit'. I've given him Norton System Works (tip buy: last years version from eBay, a snip at $6 or less!) to clean up his invalid registry entries and remove IE plugins and ActiveX cruft, Ad-Aware to scan for spyware, and pointed him to Sandra 2004 to check all his system hardware configuration. Giving remote assistance its a slow process, you know how it is trying to get an exact explanation of the "all I did was" or "I didn't change anything" scenarios that inevitbly preceed dire straits. To date we've removed a lot of redundant cruft, and found one spyware program NewDotNet which was something particularly incidious lurking in his network stack that even I hadn't heard of yet. I guess I should have, however I tend to stay well away from programs that contain any spyware - its been a couple of years now since I fell victim to anything like that.

However, as far as I know, the truth is still out there and the laptop is still misbehaving. I'm hoping to avoid a "laying on of hands" session - if I'm lucky I'll depart on my vacation before that becomes necessary. I know this guy has probably spent the best part of 20 to 40 hours on this problem now and I'm about ready to recommend he back up the personal data and reinstall the OS, or at least try a system repair.

In the mean time I'm reminded that unauthorized modifications to the system code is one of the things that the next major version of Windows aka "Longhorn" is supposed to cure once and for all. Apparently much maligned data protection features that are being built in at the hardware level will also be turned to protect the operating system itself from modification. The use of data protection for enforcing copyright protection is highly contentious - it seems, that like on the freeway, everyone wants to be free to break the law even though they know its illegal to do so. Maybe that is just part of freedom - freedom to transgress the rules of society for whatever reason and freedom to experience the loss of freedom. However using data protection to protect the neophyte, or not so neophyte computer user from having to think about viruses and spyware is an emminently sensible thing to do. I'm not entirely sure how the protection of the OS from viruses and the like will work - if a program wants to install and pops up the classic license dialog with some disclaimer in 1point text way down at the bottom, how is the OS supposed to differentiate legitimate user approved installations of software from installation of spyware or other updates of drivers etc.?

Maybe future versions of Windows will, by default, be configured in such a way that only software digitally signed by Microsoft can be installed. After my last week of experience I'm begining to wonder if this isn't such a bad idea. For a certain class of computer users I'm sure there is a very strong case to be made for having the computer pre-configured and permanently locked in a mode where system maintenance, including installing programs can only be done remotely by a Microsoft support person or agent. This might actually save a bundle of cash on calls from people who went in and deleted half their system files, or messed with the registry or something like that. These things can be painfully slow to diagnose and debug and its probably just better to never let people get into this mess in the first place. So what about freedom? Well sometimes you've gotta earn freedom or pay a price to keep it. In this case I think 95% of computer users really don't need the freedom to install anything but approved off the shelf packages and should be given a discount for enduring blissful ignorance of the world of pain that awaits them once they start installing at will all the random junk that is lurking out their on the Internet. One benefit of having such a system could be that a higher degree of accountability could then be placed on software vendors for damage their software may cause. After installing a certain package the system becomes "unstable" its much easier to point the blame and seek recompense or at the very least remedial action. A company could no longer shirk its responsiblity and blame viruses or some other user action for the problems.

In the mean time I wont hold my breath waiting for Longhorn, and I'll continue to swaddle myself with anti-virus protection, firewalls, and the usual armoury of system utilities that are necessary to keep clean and free in the age of Internet Enlightenment.

Unsung superheros: Knee Defender!

I've often contemplated how useful defensive tactics against compulsive airline seat recliners would be. Unfortunately I never thought about it until after the seat slammed down into my knees. What I found most interesting was that in business class its even worse - the seats recline so far if you are sitting by the window you have to crawl over your neighbors lap to escape. However my favourite superhero Knee Defender comes to the rescue! As with the best in ventions its small, disarmingly simple and cheap. I love their little courtesy card to explain the predicament to the passenger in front.

Now all I'm waiting for is the Back Defender that prevents the annoying little oik behind you from kicking your seat compulsively.

The fundamental interconnectedness of being

With a blog named "The long dark tea-time of the soul" you'd expect me to believe in the fundamental interconnectedness of things. However it never ceases to amaze me when life really does appear to be fundamentally interconnected. Tonight I went to a Bay Area development planning meeting in San Francisco. Its one of those things that until a few months ago I would never have considered attending. But thats where you end up when you start taking an interesting in your own neighborhood and wondering just who is making all the important decisions and why.

So I'm riding the elevator to the 26th floor of some non-descript downtown skyscraper late at night and I think "wow, this is just like in that Josh Kornbluth movie, 'Haiku Tunnel' when Josh is skulking around some downtown skyscrapers late at night trying to post those letters... " I sit through the five hour planning meeting watching a bunch of planning commissions make decisions about how the city will be developed. At 11:30pm I get out of the meeting - five hours without food, drink or coffee (do I qualify for Survivor yet?) - and I take BART back home. Then as I get off BART at West Oakland I bump into an old friend of my girlfriend whom I haven't seen in over a year or more, and who just got laid off from Salon Magazine and hence is just about to leave town for Los Angeles. So it was probably just the last chance I would ever have of bumping into her and certainly the last opportunity to invite her to come to my girlfriends Art Exhibition (shameless plug). Even more bizarrely she just happened to know my travelling companion from the days when he worked from the City of Oakland.

Then I go home and I decide on a whim to listen to my voice mail that's been piling up and my friend is complaining about some 5Mb email he's been jamming up my mail servers with. So I go checking my server logs and there I notice that Josh Kornbluth was trying to send me an email today but failed because I'd retired my old email address due to too much spam. I send Josh some email telling him my new email address and he gets right back to me almost immediately and from his reply I find out Josh just started his own blog about taxation this week. So I'm posting a comment about taxation of The Rolling Stones on his blog when I think: "Wait a minute - wasn't I thinking about Josh earlier this evening riding the elevator to the meeting in 50 California?"

And just then I realized I knew what I would blog about this evening.

So IQs did drop sharply

Following my previous post about Diebolds "disconcerting" news I'd like to publicly question the intelligence of those in Alameda County who bought their system. Apparently the fact that Diebold had applied an unauthorized (and uncertified) patch to their voting machines was not detected until an audit done after the most recent election.

What amazes me is that anyone buying an electronic voting system could allow one where the manufacturer could apply a code patch without this being a) detected and b) rejected before voting commenced. Just how hard is it for the voting system to require an independent verification that the code being executed is that which was certified? If the checksum of the code being executed doesn't match that of the code certified the machine should be not be usable for voting. Period.

Sigh.

The Bellevue Bounty Hunters

I found it amusing that Microsoft is now offering two $250k rewards to anyone who can deliver recent virus auhors. Such bounty hunter tactics may get a lot of press but I have my doubts about how successful they will ever be (remember the $25M bounty on Saddam?).

Based on the estimated economic damage done by viruses and worms I don't think it will be long before someone is offering the following counter bounties to capture various big business evil-doers:

• $1 billion for the person who added support for VB script attachments in Outlook
• $1 billion for each person who did an unchecked copy of data to a buffer
• $1 billion for the person who, after adding all the security to WinXP decided the default install should disable most of it
• $1 billion plus tar and feathering for the person who decided to market Oracle's database as "unbreakable" only to have it hacked on the launch day

The Hitchens vs. Danner Smackdown Part II

I just finished watching the second Hitchens vs. Danner debate, click here to do so for yourself. I watched the first one in person before the war and it was interesting to hear if opinions had changed.

For those that don't know Christopher Hitchens is a very bright intellectual with a ton of facts at his finger tips. He's been studying and writing about politicts, foreign policy and all kinds of things for a long time. He even wrote a book on Mother Teresa and frequently manages quick and witty come backs. Of Hitchens, one of my friends said "He's just too clever for his own good" and thats because he can present such well reasoned arguments you'll find yourself following and believing his train of thought until at once you realize you completely disagree with his conclusion. Then you feel tricked and apt to not trust his arguments any more. Danner is also intelligent and well read, written and traveled. However Danner does not present that "snobbish intellectual" front that Hitchens sometimes does.

So basically it went exactly the way I thought. Hitchens still saying "it was justified - we had to do it" and Danner saying "Its a huge mess, I told you so and the US government is going to have a really hard, if not impossible time fixing it".

Danner spared Hitchens the embarasement of reminding him of his predictions of a very quick shock and awe victory followed in quick succession by democracy. It would be interesting to go back and listen to the original debate.

My conclusions are:

• a) I don't believe Hitchens premise that this was the only route the USA could take, and that they had to take it.
• b) I believe Danner's statements on how dangerous it is right now, and how hopeless the USA's efforts to restore relative safety are.
• c) Pulling out is not an option and because of b) there will be a protracted, very bloody and very expensive military occupation of Iraq.
• d) Even if the government sticks with it, the American people will tire of the cost of keeping, or trying to keep peace in Iraq long before the government does. This will probably lead to some very unfortunate consequences.
• e) I just don't buy Hitchens assertion that the American people are safer now than they were. The escalation of hatred towards the USA and the race to acquire nuclear arms by small nations are very concrete indications that big stick policies don't work. You reap what you sow...
• f) The palpable deception of the American people over pretty much every fact relating to this invasion was disgusting and I didn't even hear Hitchens say "yes, but it was necessary". It has only helped to bring the American government into ill-repute.

I have thought all along that the USA should have been using its power to enforce the UN as a just and reliable enforcer of world peace and router of tyrants who cause genocide and commit other crimes against humanity. However it is clear to me that only the "eye for an eye" tactic for "peace keeping" is currently in vogue. Unfortunately we know from so many, many conflict situations around the world that tit-for-tat violence leads nowhere but a bloody spiral down...

The people of Iraq deserve better. Saddam was an evil saddistic tyrant, but he's still out there and many immitators have rushed in to fill the void. No, I didn't have any great plan to get him out of power and to stop the blood letting at home. But I would have found a compromise to get UN backing and support, and I would have been upfront with the true cost and arrange for a large enough force and sufficient forward planning to make the road to stability, peace and independence again a smoother one.

But ultimately is the USA or even the combined efforts of the UN even in a position to consider such benevolance towards every country that is suffering under the remaining tyrants of the world? Their efforts in Afghanistan clearly show that UN involvement alone is not sufficient and that billions of dollars does not even come close to the true cost of peace. If we want to buy peace for every country that threatens us or does not meet up to our expectatins of democracy imagine that it will be tens if not hundreds of trillions of dollars that are required. and will peace that is bought ever be lasting? Somehow I doubt it. There are probably easier but much slower ways to achieve world peace. They may require patience, diplomacy and nerves of steel. But witness the crumbling of the Soviet Union as a case in point. Or the brokered peace in Northern Ireland.

Right now America is clearly following a foreign policy that is threatening, ambiguous and dangerous around the world. People asked "why do they hate us?" after 9/11, and I'm sure a great number of people still ask themselves that question. I don't think we'll ever be able to rest easy at home until the majority of Americans understand why agressive, preemptive, unilateral foreign policies are the touchstone of resentment and hatred. Unfortunately that may be a long time coming for America and the world as a whole, we only have to look at our internal situation to realize that. But that's a whole different story...

From his own mouth

"Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in "mission creep," and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible. We had been unable to find Noriega in Panama, which we knew intimately. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as out as well. Under those circumstances, there was no viable "exit strategy" we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land."

Brent Scowcroft and George H. W. Bush's A World Transformed (1998).

Diebold's "disconcerting" digital deception

I can't say I'm at all surprised to read today that Diebold has been accused of installing uncertified software on their voting machines, and this time by the California Assistant Secretary of State no less. Diebold officials "seemed surprised" - I don't blame them. After every warning about the dubious security of Diebold systems and their practices had been ignored across the country I guess they thought they were home free to do whatever they want with our voting system.

For an external view of what other countries think of some of Diebold's "features" you should read about how one Australian company approached developing an e-voting system. In their system public exposure of the source code is part of the software development process, and not just a flaw in the secrecy used to protect otherwise unknown software code. Most people are starting to inherently doubt any claim of security based on secrecy within a collection of people who's trustworthyness is largely based on financial reward. After all if your trustworthiness is based on money then it stands to reason when the price is right secrets always have a way of leaking into untrustworthy hands. As the saying goes "money talks".

For me, I'll continue to trust Diebold voting systems about as far as I could throw one. Which, by the looks of things isn't going to be very far.

Is there light at the end of the tea-time?

I'm not sure if it was the happy ending of "28 days later" (which I just watched), the thought of returning to England for a bit of R&R, the mental release following yet another meaningless product release cycle at work, or what?. Whatever it is I'm left feeling strangely ebullient that things aren't as bad as they sometimes seem, or at least as I portray them in this blog. Looking back at some previous tea-time entries I can see that sometimes I imply the world is a very dark, dark place indeed. Yes, there's even a certain amount of rage in my writings, not of the "28 days later" kind though, more like outrage. But mostly there's a lot of frustration, frustration that the big changes in the world I'd like to see in my life time are never going to happen. There will still be people labeled as terrorists and people waging wars on them, there will still be pollution, the earth will still be warming, vast numbers of people will still be living in poverty and people will still be dying after living unspeakably miserable lives.

Yes, its depressing and awful to contemplate, its even enough to make you want to scream and shout, protest in the streets, or just plain give up. Maybe in 100 years, or 200 years or 500 years things will have change. My 25th Century counterpart may even extract my blog from archaic printed historical documents and contemplate how awful, primative and barbaric 21st Century life was just as I do when reading about genocide in 1492. However its our phenomenal fortune to placed in a position to contemplate our lot in life. To see with great perspective from whence the human race has come and to realize that while there is only one past, that there are many possible futures. We can see that even if there are unlikely to be many giant leaps "for mankind" in our lifetimes, there will be many small steps to be made. Every journey begins with one step and, if it reaches an end at all, is a journey of continuous steps all the way in between.

This isn't going to hurt very much...

To follow up my identity post I managed to procure some digital identity certificates over the weekend. It wasn't really that painful, but I will tell you it wasn't that straight forward either. I pride myself with being somewhat of a geek and actually know the difference between symmetric and asymmetric encryption systems and have a clue how things like SSL and digital certificates work. But I think I now know why the average price of an SSL certificate is well over $100 and not $10 or less. Its because the average customer purchasing one will need some serious handholding, and we're not talking about the kind of handholding that's in "Cliffhanger" either. It also assumes the average purchaser is a reasonably tech savvy IT person and not just a John or Jane Doe who wouldn't know their security certifcate from their 100-yard breaststroke certificate.

So after my experience this weekend, and having spent most of today resolving issues with actually installing said certificates, not to mention the issue of expense, I find myself wondering just what chance there ever is of the average person being able to adopt and use digital certificates for anything as mundane as sending email. Right now I'd put it at close to nil.

And those were the good old days?

On my bedside table at the moment is Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States : 1492-Present. It was recommended to me about a year ago but it took a trip to a book signing before this book fell into my hands. You see I made the mistake of turning up at a book signing (for another book) with my own copy of the book and see the eyes of the book store people on me as I left I felt a guilt paign and decided I should be some other book. Howard Zinn's work was the only one that stood out as being something I really wanted to read.

Those who have read "A People's History" could probably guess how I'm feeling right now, especially from the title of this entry. Those who have not read it should pick up a copy and dive in, its quite a page turner. Of course Zinn doesn't proclaim to offer a "balanced" view of history in his book, as many have pointed out, history is written by the winners. So Zinn has shamelessly written from the perspective of the losers throughout history - the people. Hence the title. So when others choose to celebrate Columbus and extol his great navigational skills (a mere 33 days at sea - significantly less spectacular than the pacific navigators who colonized the Polynesian islands), Zinn choose to extol his consumate skill for genocide. Yes, it is well documented that Columbus was the first to wipe of the native people of the Bahamas and what is now called Cuba. Hundreds of thousands, if not a million or more were simply exterminated in cruel and horrific circumstances.

And so it goes on. As late as the mid-1700s people were legally being "burned alive over a slow fire" for trying to escape their slave masters. The peoples history told in this book is clearly one that gives the picture from the short and pointy end of the stick otherwise known as "progress" or "civilization". I'm only a few chapters into it so far but I can tell things wont be getting any better between Columbus' first genocidal forays into the West Indies, and the contemporary events of George W. Bush's "war on terrorism". So next time someone tells you "those were the good old days" you should ask them, or yourself, just whose perspective that sentiment is coming from.