No Grasp of Your Reality

To security professionals, Bruce Schneier is considered a guru. His book, Applied Cryptography is considered the authoritative book on computer security, and is the first book anyone should purchase when considering entering the field.

Bruce has published an article in Wired entitled, “The Eternal Value of Privacy“, where he defends an almost Calvinistic distrust in the goodness of those in authority.

While the entirety of the brief article is a must-read, his summary quote should challenge anyone who argues that “If you aren’t doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide?”

Too many wrongly characterize the debate as “security versus privacy.” The real choice is liberty versus control. Tyranny, whether it arises under threat of foreign physical attack or under constant domestic authoritative scrutiny, is still tyranny. Liberty requires security without intrusion, security plus privacy. Widespread police surveillance is the very definition of a police state. And that’s why we should champion privacy even when we have nothing to hide.

After watching recent events regarding our Federal Government reading the phone records of American citizens, and the acknowledgement by the NSA chief that they’re monitoring the phone calls of Americans, I’ve decided I’m getting a little annoyed with these casual little incursions into our privacy. Since it seems that our Federal Government has show no interest in preserving our privacy rights, I’ve decided that in the little ways that are afforded to a private citizen, I’m going to begin pushing back.

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Once again, it’s time for the (fourth) annual pig roast, and you all are invited to attend the party at the home of Tom and Sarah Albrecht.

We plan on starting off around noon, and going into the evening. The pig should be done around 4pm, but we’ll be serving food throughout the party. Please RSVP to us (phone call, email, whatever) so we can get an approximate head count and let us know if you’re interesting in helping supply food.

See you then!

Since the kids have been asking to go treasure hunting again, I finally broke down and bought a GPS receiver, a Garmin GPSMap 60. We’re planning on going out today or tomorrow to go find some caches in Lancaster county.

For a small fee, I found out I can upgrade Google Earth to import data from my GPS. So, today I recorded my commute to work, imported it into Google Earth, and exported the data as a kml file. You can overlay it onto your copy of Google Earth by downloading and running the file.

Looks like some students at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee conducted a dialect survey, asking questions like how do you pronounce “coupon” (the correct form is “coop-on”), or whether selling things in your back yard is a tag sale, a garage sale, a rummage sale, or a yard sale (again, the correct answer is “garage sale”). They then mapped out the answers to show how the version change by region.

The most important question they asked is what that long, deli meat sandwich is called. Hoagie came in second, but it was a way distant second to the #1 sub. But, as anyone who went to Subway can attest, it’s not the same thing as a hoagie.

My boss and I were sitting in the business class lounge at Narita Airport. We had been out the night before at a bar on Akasaka-Mitsuke playing darts, and had a great time. As often happens when I have a glass of Bailey’s Irish Cream on ice in my hand, an epiphany came over me.

We all know that there are two kinds of sports in the world… real sports and fake sports. Real sports include football, soccer, hockey, etc. There are sports where the professional athletes are specimins of physical strength, who’s athletic qualifications are obvious for everyone to see.

Then, there are the fake sports. You know… the “sports” like NASCAR and poker where there really isn’t much if anything physical going on.

The epiphany that came over me was that I realized I could not categorize professional dart players. Darts is not an easy sport. It’s amazing to watch these guys throw these needles into an area about two square inches in size from 7 feet away regularly. These guys are good… consistantly good, not “oi, I hit three bullseyes the other night down at the pub, mate!” good.

No one ever looks at a person and say, “wow… he looks good! He must play darts.”

You know, my life is busy enought with “normal” activities without the random emergencies that keep popping up.

Somehow, my wife managed to get the SurfSidekick installed on her computer. ‘Tis an annoying piece of software that causes random advertisements to load up one’s browser, no matter what you happen to be doing. I ran Ad-Aware and Windows Defender on the system, but no matter what I did, the software kept resuscitating itself. Finally, I told my wife to save every important file she had to my file server, and I wiped out her system.

Not wanting to have to go through that pain again, I tried installing one of the newer upstart Linux distributions, Ubuntu. Ubuntu is based on the Debian distribution, which, though I’ve never used it, I’ve heard very good things about. I downloaded the torrent and burned it onto DVD. Then I loaded it up.

It loaded up very clean, and only one error showed up after it was installed. Unfortunately, this error was that the computer couldn’t connect to the Internet. My wireless card didn’t work. No problem… fired up Google and found out that the prism2 drivers just need to be initialized before they’ll work. There is an entire support group working towards getting wireless cards to work in Linux, which is a huge challenge since many wireless manufactures refuse to release Linux drivers.

Anyway, once the system was up and the networking was working, the system works great. Easy point-and-click interface to all the functionality you’ll need to configure, like networking, printers, etc. If you’ve been ready to throw your windows box out the window, or if you’ve got an older computer that doesn’t run well with the newer versions of Windows, I’d recommend trying out Ubuntu…

Ron Paul gave the following speech before the House of Representatives on February 15, 2006. It’s amazing that such an honest man could ever be elected to public office.
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A hundred years ago it was called “dollar diplomacy.” After World War II, and especially after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989, that policy evolved into “dollar hegemony.” But after all these many years of great success, our dollar dominance is coming to an end.

It has been said, rightly, that he who holds the gold makes the rules. In earlier times it was readily accepted that fair and honest trade required an exchange for something of real value.

First it was simply barter of goods. Then it was discovered that gold held a universal attraction, and was a convenient substitute for more cumbersome barter transactions. Not only did gold facilitate exchange of goods and services, it served as a store of value for those who wanted to save for a rainy day.

Though money developed naturally in the marketplace, as governments grew in power they assumed monopoly control over money. Sometimes governments succeeded in guaranteeing the quality and purity of gold, but in time governments learned to outspend their revenues. New or higher taxes always incurred the disapproval of the people, so it wasn’t long before Kings and Caesars learned how to inflate their currencies by reducing the amount of gold in each coin– always hoping their subjects wouldn’t discover the fraud. But the people always did, and they strenuously objected.

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Some people do crossword puzzles when they’re bored. Some people knit. I redesign my website. Actually, I stole the theme from another website and added my own header. It’s not a trivial task, but nearly as complex as the one I gleaned from, which was an enhancement of the default theme.

Anyway, let me know what you think of it. I created the header using a combination of The Gimp and Inkscape. I find that these two graphics tools, used together correctly, can create some very impressive artwork.

Fox Sports is reporting that Lynn Swann, former Pittsburgh Steeler and Hall of Famer, is going to announce that he’s running for the office of governor of Pennsylvania on the Republican ticket.

This is a very intersting development. I have no idea of Mr. Swann’s political views, although I do remember when he was on Mr. Rogers explaining why it was ok for men to wear tutus. Lynn Swann famously was a student of ballet during his NFL career… he thought that it helped him with his football finesse.

For those of you who enjoy this foreign delicacy (and even for those who have not yet had the pleasure), this instructional video on sushi is one of the most informative lessons I’ve enjoyed on the subject.

In this video, you will learn some very useful points of etiquette, including how to enter the sushi-ya, how to find a seat, and most imporantly, how not to insult your sushi chef.

Dozo!
P.S. Berek… I still can taste the natto, and I’m sure to introduce it to everyone who accompanies me back to Japan!

One more shadow of prohibition has been thrown out the door. South Carolina is finally allowings bars to use full-sized bottles of liquor bottles, instead of little mini-bottles used on airplanes.

It never ceases to amaze me how many stupid infringements the people allow the civil government to make on them. The mini-bottles were a trivial matter, but their acceptance for so long is a symptom of a much bigger problem… citizens complacency with government interference.

Bit of shameless self-promotion, but who cares.

My wife has been working for the past few days on different clothing ideas, but so far, I haven’t heard any ideas on how she plans to advertise her products. So check them out and let us know what you think.

I wake from my long slumber to post this interesting tidbit of gossip. According to CyclingNews.com, “The City of Coatesville in southeastern Pennsylvania is conducting a feasibility study to develop a new indoor velodrome and cycling complex.”

For those of you who are aware of the recent golf course debacle at the Saha farm, the city has been trying to find a hook to bring people to the city and revive the economy of the city. Personally, I like this idea much better than the golf course. It’s unique, and, if successfully, would be attractive to bicycle fanatics all over the east coast.

I’ll be keeping an eye on this, and let you know what I find out.