Encroachment of the military police state

It seems that another disaster is being leveraged to help shoe-in a military police state. Although denying the military any authority domestically is a long-standing safe-guard, it seems that the current administration is looking into changing all that. The military is already permitted to do domestic emergency relief, but they cannot do policing, searching, or arrests. Apparently that's not good enough, even though what was needed after katrina was prompt emergency relief, not policing. The 'looters' didn't start causing trouble 'til AFTER they were starving and abandoned, and there weren't really all that many of them.

Followup:
Pentagon begins review
Questions asked

Trusted Computing

So, this trusted computing crap. It puts a little PKI system into the hardware of every computer. The chip builds keys, authenticates keys, and such on chip. The most secure keys never leave the chip, and its memory is secure and encrypted, so no program can get at it. At first this seems like it might be good. We all like the PKI system, it's great. It gives us SSL and GPG and the like. I like those things. Make no mistake about it, this is not friendly for those of us who like computer security!!!

First off, it puts control of those function on-the-chip, in hardware, in such a way that you cannot alter them without losing all functionality it provides. Think of it as your key generator being on-chip. That's what it is. But it's more than that, as one of the critical keys is known by the manufacturer and the chip only, not by you. It can be used to identify your machine no matter what.

This means that security related things can be handed off to this hardware function, meaning you don't need encryption software. Apple might call such a thing CoreEncryption or CoreSecurity. It can be billed as a time-saving feature, especially if it's cross-platform. Then commerce and, banking sites will come to require such things 'for your own protection from evil identity theft'. Soon the government will pass legislation requiring the same thing of ALL vendors 'for your protection' and 'stop terrorism'.

Now step back and see what has been created. There is a separate, top-down controlled, quite possibly government back-doored -- think I'm being paranoid, think of the newest revelation that the printer manufacturers have been embedding secret codes in your printouts that the government uses to track the author of documents -- encryption system that can handle all the problems that big-business and government have an interest in letting you solve. They control the whole thing. Now all they do is make software encryption, or anything BUT this trusted computing, illegal. Boom, one-fell swoop, it's all over. That's the end.

Mark my words, this is how it'll happen. The government doesn't want us to have encryption, but they can't do anything about it now because we use it for banking and commerce and the economy depends on it. With this system they get their back-door -- possibly without our knowledge like with the printers -- stupid consumers don't know the difference, and the big-businesses that implement it get some really useful cartel powers and lock-in tools.

Peace and Injustice in Iraq

We've all heard of the insurgent hotbed that was Fallujah for a great while. However, I was surprised to learn of some of the events which led to Fallujah's violence. This article does a good job explaining how killings of innocent civilians touched off the violence that cost so much.

A quick, interesting read

Unfortunately I don't have long to post on this. It's a very concise, well-written and well-referenced article on the neo-con hawks that are trying for U.S. Hegemony worldwide. Don't read it right now if it's not a good time to get pissed off. Bastard Bush and Co., grumble mumble, %&#& ...

YAIT (YetAnotherIdentityTheft)

Now, in what is the largest breach ever, some 40 million credit card numbers have been stolen by hackers, proving, yet again, that scattering this sensitive information all around is just asking for identity theft, and that we need a better system.

Hopefully I'm not the only one who sees this.

Defense spending

I found this link today. The story is good. It's not really new, but it is always good to be reawakened to such things.

It's stuff like this that contributes to my growing hunch that the U.S. might suffer a very significant economic collapse (and I mean collapse, not depression, recessions, or any other such pansy economis term). We're going to be in some very big trouble soon if things don't change, and there are few options for such change. This sort of excess spending only hurts us.

However, on the other hand, when the government runs us into the ground, we'll default on our loans.

It also makes me think about the dollar and the best way to invest these days. As Buffett has made all too clear, the stock market isn't all it used to be. The dollar is currently taxed at what, something like 2%/year, but if shit starts hitting the fan that'll go up. Maybe we should actually all get into debt up to our armpits and then wait for the dollar to devalue. Then we'll be able to pay off our loans in a hurry, once bread costs $100/loaf.

Ah well, it'll be interesting, and people who speak english still have good marketability, and likely still will, even after a collapse, although speaking other languages will definitely help. Maybe I'll have to brush up on my Hindi (the language, not the religion, although that wouldn't hurt either. The transition might be stressful...)

Hopefully the U.S. collapse will be analagous to the dotcom bubble bursting. It wasn't the end of the internet, it was just a day of reckoning for excess zeal. We're overvalued and largely insolvent. So we must go burst.

Principle #1

I believe I've finally discovered what my primary goal is in my work. I wish to eliminate the monopoly of force that is possessed by governments.

It may seem odd that such an obvious issue has taken me this much time to discover, but that misses the point I think. I have known that I had a problem with the monopoly of force. However, there were lots of other issues to contend with as well. What about decision-making? What about hierarchies? What about representation? Which is most important.

I have found that I respect the goals and the results of many movements/causes/organizations, etc., even if they weren't in some way 'ideal'. Sometimes ideal is impossible, and sometimes it simply doesn't exist yet. Either way, I still am pleased when something 'better' comes along.

This has led to various situations where I've wondered, though, what the difference is between a possible 'ideal' solution and a government program.

Just the other day I was debating with a friend about Government social services. She was talking about Social Security in particular. She was saying how she didn't think a 'private' solution would be better.

I don't claim to know what would work and what wouldn't with any certainty. However, I have a few ideas, and I'd prefer that the government didn't have a monopoly on the issue. Also, it seems to me that if you can't imagine ways of doing a better job than the government at solving social problems you suffer from an extreme lack of imagination. I have little patience for fearful, unimaginative nay-sayers. (Not that they don't have their usefulness.)

I've created a new thought-tool, too, in the form of a question. As the single distinctive element of the government is a monopoly on physical force/violence, the logical question is, does implimenting this require force/violence? Considering that social security is sort of a combination of a retirement plan and a general emergency/accident insurance plan, the answer seems to me to be 'no'. Private solutions to retirement plans and insurance are the norm, and they're at least as reliable as social security. So it doesn't seem necessary to use force to impliment that solution. So why do we?

Additionally, this monopoly on force allows for the service to suffer. People aren't happy with it? Tough. Pay your taxes or go to jail. Worried that you won't get any money, that your payout is cut? Tough, you're stuck with it. Complain all you want.

Using the force monopoly (the government) is like using root in linux/unix. You don't want to use it for everything. You want to use it only when you have to, and even then you do your best to find a new way to NOT have to. Why? Because if those with malicious intents manage to get access to it they can do very bad things. Using it when not necessary can lead to 'accidents', too. Accidents in this context would be any situation where, just by having this excess power a solution was implimented which used the power needlessly and then had significant negative implications that wouldn't have existed if a different implimentation was chosen.

So, first priority should be to make the overbloated existing governments obsolete and reduce them to some sort of 'night watchman' state. Then, hopefully, we'll be in a position to eliminate them entirely.

Apple's switch to intel chips...

They did it. They really did it. That is the craziest thing. The timing? So weird...

However, the cell processor isn't ready for computers yet, so maybe that's part of it. With the new universal binaries they'll be able to fairly easily span both worlds, and maybe they'll keep it that way, or go to the cell later? Who knows

Better still, imagine wine on OS X... Apple could integrate wine, spruce it up a bit, and kill windows dead. Just a thought. This may be a very offensive move... They wouldn't need to announce this feature now. They could announce that feature with OS 10.5, or with the intel-based macs, or whenever. That would be killer, though. Absolutely killer. Then buying a Mac would be VERY Tempting indeed. Spend a little bit of premium (you know macs will still cost a bit more) and be able to run all your favorite apps, plus all the mac apps, on a mac. Make it possible to dual boot into windows? You could... although you might not need to. Heck, since apple's designs are so slick you might see pc users buying macs just to run windows on them because the macs are cooler looking, just like they buy mac monitors and such. I think this is VERY aggressive....