This is most definetely a work in progress and will probably be changing in the near future.
You can find the old blog here, including all time favorites like US Plans Death Camp and The Mercados Family and Photography.
Yeah, archive links are kind of weird some times, which is why I'm moving to Movabletype. Omnia Mutantur, after all.
I wonder what he would say if he was alive today and reading CNN. Anyhow, happy birthday George.
While sarcasm might save the world in the long run, cryptography will help us in the mean time. Feel free to use my public PGP key to e-mail me when necessary.
Yes, Virginia, not only drug dealers and terrorists use encryption.
First of all, a brief plug (as if the man needs it) for Eric S. Raymond's Armed And Dangerous blog. For those that don't remember his name, Raymond is the author of the seminal The Cathedral and the Bazaar, on which he details how enterprise-level software can be built by a distributed team of motivated developers just as well - or sometimes better - than by a monolithic corporation.
Raymond is a member of the Free Software Foundation and the president of the Open Source Initiative. As such, two of his main causes have recently come under attack by SCO who, wanting to cash in on their current holding of the Unix copyright - something that Novell is disputing, by the way - have started making a lot of noise about Linux (not GNU/Linux, the Kernel only - more on this later) infringing their copyrights. SCO then launched a lawsuit against IBM and have been spreading a lot of FUD around, including their licensing their Unix code exclusively to Microsoft (boy, what a coincidence!). In their mad crusade to get as many people working against them as they could, SCO also tried to have the Gnu Public License declared illegal.
Not surprisingly they succeeded. Not in declaring the GPL illegal, mind you, but on getting as many people as possible working against them. One of the most recent salvos has been Raymond's An Open Letter to Darl McBride, a brutally direct document detailing the how laughable SCO's claims are. Enjoy.
Going back to GNU and the FSF, I recently had the pleasure of attending a conference by Richard Stallman, the founder of the GNU project and a man who has been warning people about the dangers of software patents for decades. Stallman was in Costa Rica to give a couple of conferences, one of which was fortunately free (as in beer) so I was able to attend. I expected it to be an evangelization for business types on how free software was better for them than proprietary software, but attended anyway because I wanted to hear the visionary himself in person. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the conference was more about the philosophy of free software than the technological specifics.
Stallman, who gave the conference on a perfectly understandable Spanish (most of the time, anyway), didn't diverge much from the history of the project that you can find on their web site. He pointed out several times that Linux was merely the core of the operating system, where most utilities people needed such as the console and compiler were actually provided by GNU; so people would do the GNU project a lot of favor if they just called the operating system GNU/Linux instead of just Linux - and for some reason people thought he was joking. His analysis of the recent "trade agreement" and how it affects software was interesting, as was the questions and answers session that came after the conference.
But seeing the man himself give the conference was the real treat. His unassuming attitude got everyone's attention, while his obvious devotion to the topic hooked the audience immediately. His love-it-or-leave-it attitude is probably hard to swallow for most people, since he just doesn't believe closed or proprietary software should be used. There is no middle ground for him, a Tyler Durden of software, and he's not just rallying against Microsoft: he has no love for Java because of Sun's insistence on keeping their implementation closed and the standard under tight control, for example; and Open Source is a half-assed attempt for him, because what use is the source code if you don't have freedom to use it?
Which is the crux of his argument: software should be free. Not just open, but free for you to do with it what you want. His firm, uncompromising belief and his clear arguments on why this is the only way for the world to progress made me feel dirty about earning a living working on a closed platform developing a proprietary software to be licensed. Stallman, however, does not demand that you leave everything and follow him. Just asks that if you're going to follow him, you should do it properly.
I have the nagging idea that after this project, going back to Java will feel just as bad as working in Microsoft's .Net. Something else must be found.
It's the freedom that should be important above platform concerns.
I received this form today from the mail forwarding service I use, called United States Postal Service Application for Delivery of Mail Through Agent, which I have to sign if I want to retain Interlink's services - or, more likely, for the USPS to allow Interlink to continue operation. Among the clauses were inocuous little things like upon request the agent must provide to the Postal Service all addresses to which the agency transfers mail and when any information required on this form changes or becomes obsolete, the addressee(s) must file a revised application.
Translation: we're going to keep track of you, even though you live outside our borders.
All was not lost - on the top there was a note reading See Privacy Act Statement on Reverse. At least, I thought, they're acknowledging privacy.
The reverse was an empty, blank page.
The Jefferson Muzzles are intended to commemorate instances of people, companies or governments trampling freedom of speech, in the hope of reminding the general public of Thomas Jefferson's exhortation that freedom of speech "cannot be limited without being lost." They're an award in pretty much the same way that the Darwin Awards are, but recipients of a Jefferson Muzzle should feel even more embarrassed: at least those who get a Darwin Award had the unintentional decency of removing themselves from the gene pool.
With no further ado, I give you the 2004 Jefferson Muzzles, an illustrative cross-section of the current state of free speech in the U.S.
There have been privacy concerns popping up all around over GMail, Google's free web-based e-mail service. Most of the uninformed concerns bugged me, but not enough to do a write up about it. Then I ran into the alarmist site G-Mail is too creepy, which summarizes the issues I've seen raised.
I thought I'd go over those issues and chime in myself.
Their problems with GMail are:
Yes, you're getting tons of space. People you're e-mailing will probably not delete their messages, ever. Yes, GMail can modify their privacy policies whenever they want. Yes, the government can subpoena these e-mail messages.
So what?
Yes, ad matching may not be the best. It's the price you pay for using a free service, and the same thing can happen with any other site you visit.
About changing the privacy policies, so can Yahoo, or Hotmail, or any other free e-mail service you're using. It's part of the system. It's their server, they can do whatever the hell they want with it - the moment you agree to use their services, you have to abide by their rules.
If the people you're e-mailing never delete their messages, it's an user problem. GMail has nothing whatsoever to do with this, and if you're sending somebody a clear text e-mail message (more on that later) filled with sensitive information, and they're lazy enough not to delete it, you're e-mailing sensitive information to the wrong people.
And sure, the government can subpoena these records whenever they want. Before you accuse me of just being a flunky to Draconian governments, you may want to take a look at my views on politics. But you know what, buddy? It's not GMail that has Draconian conditions. They're just complying with the Draconian laws of the government they're operating on. Were you expecting a free (as in beer) service to fight for your private rights?
Bloody hell. Campaign against the Patriot Act, not against GMail complying with the jurisdiction it operates under.
And that bit about Google being able to keep a copy of every message sent to its service? Not only this is a possible problem with any other free e-mail services you may be using (or even with a company you're renting a server from), but if the fact that there may be copies of the message floating around concerns you, well, it's just because you don't know how the Internet operates.
You may be thinking that when you go online to send an e-mail message (or read a web page, or download a file, or any other operation), there is some sort of magical tunnel being opened between your computer and the machine you're contacting, a marvelous secure channel that only the machines at both ends can see into.
What happens is actually that each operation you attempt, for instance, sending an e-mail, is bounced across dozens or possibly hundreds of machines called routers, spread all across the globe and which allow the two machines (like your machine and your mail server, or your mail server and the destination e-mail server) to talk to each other.
Each and every one of these routers may, if they so wish, be maliciously keeping a copy of your messages.
I'll repeat that: when you send an e-mail message, many machines around the world see it before it reaches its destination. And last time I checked, none of these routers had come around to show me their privacy policies.
So, should you just accept the inevitable and bend over? No. But if you're going to be that paranoid, why the hell aren't you using encryption?
Start worrying about the real problems, people, and do think before spreading FUD.
I promise I won't rant too much. Just head over to Ars Technica and read the fine article about the Federal Communications Commission's claim that they control each and every aspect of telecommunications, including what you can do with content you've received in such manner.
For those of you in the audience that are going screw that, I don't live in the U.S., bear in mind that will end up trickling down to your country.
That's not a paranoid statement - it's a fact. For Costa Rica, the "Free Trade Agreement" (somebody explain to me why there are so many restrictions in it if it's free trade) had implications tying it to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, which allows corporations to set up their own use restrictions well outside copyright law (which is already ridiculous) and is being capitalized on in the U.S. for neat purposes like illegal subpoenas.
I remember seeing once a bumper sticker begging God, deliver me from your followers. I guess the same could be said about libertarian fiction writers.
A few of them, like Vernor Vinge, manage to subtly convey a feeling of what libertarianism is like and why it may be better, with superb novels and shows in which libertarian philosophy takes a back seat to good, enjoyable fiction.
Others... well, others are a lot more like L. Neil Smith.
A good friend of mine, who is also a libertarian, lent me Pallas - and even though I rarely leave a book unfinished, I wasn't able to get more than 10% into it. Descriptions were the literary equivalent of 3-day-old Papa John's and characters were nothing but sock puppets used to either regurgitate the author's view, pat on the head others that come to the same conclusions, or condemn the cardboard villain of the book. Apparently he doesn't understand that if you present the morally corrupt villain as someone that does everything from landgrabbing and mind control to raping underage girls, you just give ammo to the people opposing libertarianism - you open up the possibility of someone saying that socialist system failed because of a corrupt leader - you just have to put a good guy in charge. In the process, he forgets about Sol Steins' maxim that the purpose of fiction is to convey emotions.
Not propaganda.
I remember thinking that characters couldn't be flatter if they were drawn on a page, and guess what? On the latest version of The Probability Broach they actually are.
Lucky for me, I guess, since wading through it is a lot easier when you don't have to suffer through most of Smith's descriptions. How does thou bore me? Let me count the ways...
At which stage, even if a name like Landgraf von Richthofen (Red Baron or not) for someone that would expropriate other people's lands and rights doesn't make you wonder if this was written by George Lucas, and Evilus Maleficus is going to walk through the door any time now, I'd like to point out that by Goodwin's Law we've already lost.
As with Pallas, characters are nothing but propaganda conduits, channeling Smith's philosophy. As with Pallas, plot is nothing but a scarecrow, there only for show - and probably to stop the book from becoming My dinner with Lt. Bear. And as with Pallas, I'm left totally non-plussed by it.
Books like these only preach to the converted, creating an echo chamber where everyone who already agrees with you tell you what good points you make. If you turn the government into nothing but a poorly drawn charicature, others will be left thinking this could never happen here, my government's employees don't dress up like COBRA thugs.
Don't just give them the iron fist on a horribly scarred nastie. Show them the velvet glove worn over it by a homely-looking bird-flipping cowboy-and-everyman-impersonating millionaire, and they may begin to get it.
Peace War this ain't.
Wouldn't you know it? Right on the heels of the REAL ID act, Tony Blair has introduced a similar plan for the United Kingdom.
They all seem to forget that as Ron Paul points out, criminals don't obey the law. This will just affect law abiding citizens, who know will have even their biometric information in places more accessible to crooks.
But I doubt that the government really cares about identity theft - not when the upside is having even more control over its subjects.
Here's a biometric DVD to go right along with your REAL ID.
Then, when the DVD was popped into a specially equipped DVD player, the viewer would be required to re-enter his or her password or fingerprint. The system would require consumers to buy new DVD players with RFID readers.
As someone pointed out on /., this will probably be a non-starter anyway - it's too obtrusive, and people will either reject it outright or just break it.
Not to mention, fingerprints can be duplicated.
Once again law-abiding people will be screwed, and crooks won't give a crap.
Like it or not, a name is one of the first impression someone gets from you. As soon as they hear it, images spring into the mind's eye, even before they know who you are. As if that wasn't enough, every time your name is spoken that image is conjured again, reinforced in someone's mind.
Take the case of the Movimimiento Libertario.
That's not a regular party, not a mere political group organized to promote its candidates for public office. No sir. It's a movement, an organized effort by supporters of a common goal. What's the goal of this movement? Freedom, of course, as stated clearly by that all important libertario word.
It made you think - wow, these guys are different.
Not anymore, unfortunately. As of Saturday 25, 2005, the Movimiento went from a libertarian organization to a wholly-owned subsidiary of Otto Guevara, a political party with no other apparent purpose that getting it's various candidates into office, faster than you can push a scientist and a fly in to a telepod and press Blend.
What will they do there? Who knows. Each candidate, many of which are not even libertarians at all, will have his own agenda. My guess is that the purpose is to elect Otto at all costs, which will not happen against Arias in the 2006 election, so the idea is to get as many yes-men as possible into Congress so that they can be blandished as negotiating weapons.
In the process, each will be free to pillage, plunder and vote for new taxes (pretty much the same thing), now that they're free of the contract the Movimiento was supposed to bind them with.
Oh, right, I hadn't mentioned that. Libertarian-elected congress people can now do whatever the hell they want, regardless of the promises that got them elected. Business as usual.
Leaving aside all ideological considerations, they've just shot themselves in the foot. The single advantage the Movimiento Libertario had over the other parties was easy to sell.
They always had the high moral ground. People knew their word was good.
That's not true anymore. To me, they've demonstrated that they're more than willing to compromise their principles for an end. They've lost the high moral ground. They don't have the unions like PAC does, they don't have the history and rabid following of PLN and PUSC. On giving that up, they've just become the political equivalent of the Decaffeinated Diet Coke.
No sugar, no stimulants. All cancerogenics.
If you were a libertarian, the party just screwed you. If you believed in the Movimiento's No más de lo mismo! war cry, you better look somewhere else - they are now the same damn thing as anybody else. If you had been volunteering for them, joke's on you.
Three strikes. I'm out.
PS: If you're interested in more detail about what went on, instead of just my venom-spewing, you can read my friend Jorge's take here.
Lo bueno de cuando las cosas pasan públicamente, es que uno no tiene que confiar en la palabra de una sola persona. O dos. O dos y varios periódicos. O...
Aparte de mis comentarios, el exhaustivo análisis de Jorge Codina y las noticias en varios medios, se abrió un grupo de discusión recientemente para comentar la reciente Asamblea Nacional, y la subsecuente purga de personal libertario a nivel del partido.
Pueden encontrarlo aquí, incluyendo varias denuncias y la carta de renuncia del Doctor Álvaro Cordero, quien prefiere no ser diputado a que ir postulado por esa agrupación.