Quotulatiousness

September 23, 2009

Information is data, but data is not information

Filed under: Liberty, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:12

Wired obtained several hundred pages of information through a Freedom of Information Act query relating to internal surveillance of Americans by the FBI — including information from hotels, car rental agencies, and at least one department store chain:

A fast-growing FBI data-mining system billed as a tool for hunting terrorists is being used in hacker and domestic criminal investigations, and now contains tens of thousands of records from private corporate databases, including car-rental companies, large hotel chains and at least one national department store, declassified documents obtained by Wired.com show.

Headquartered in Crystal City, Virginia, just outside Washington, the FBI’s National Security Branch Analysis Center (NSAC) maintains a hodgepodge of data sets packed with more than 1.5 billion government and private-sector records about citizens and foreigners, the documents show, bringing the government closer than ever to implementing the “Total Information Awareness” system first dreamed up by the Pentagon in the days following the Sept. 11 attacks.

Such a system, if successful, would correlate data from scores of different sources to automatically identify terrorists and other threats before they could strike. The FBI is seeking to quadruple the known staff of the program.

The last paragraph needs a bit of analysis . . . because just adding more data won’t “automatically” do any good for domestic security or individual privacy. There was no lack of data on the 9/11 terrorists: if anything, there was too much data. Data is useless until it is corelated with other data to form actual information, a pattern of data that shows something of interest. The various intelligence-gathering arms of the US government already gather lots and lots of data, but they haven’t always been able to turn that collection of raw data into useful information . . . at least, not in a timely fashion.

Opsahl cites a October 2008 National Research Council paper that concluded that data mining is a dangerous and ineffective way to identify potential terrorists, which will inevitably generate false positives that subject innocent citizens to invasive scrutiny by their government.

At the same time, Opsahl admits the NSAC is not at the moment the Orwellian system that TIA would have been.

Those false positives may be enough to disrupt the private lives of many Americans and non-citizen residents, because everyone still has things about them they don’t particularly want to be broadcast to the world. Many employers reconsider their employees who are deemed to be “of interest” to the government, leading to potential loss of employment, diminished opportunities for promotion, or other less obvious but still negative consequences. Having “nothing to hide” is no defence . . . in fact, it may make things tougher — if they don’t find anything obvious, they may decide to dig deeper, creating more disruption.

Of course, things could always be worse: the EU is busy working towards their own Precrime database. (Obscure reference explanation.)

Watch the collector value of M1 rifles drop now

Filed under: Asia, History, USA, Weapons — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:05

The South Korean government is planning to sell off its large holdings of M-1 rifles and carbines, according to this BBC News report:

South Korea has come up with a novel way to boost its defence budget — by selling a vast stockpile of old Korean-war rifles to collectors in the US.

The guns were originally sent to Korea as military aid, and some were also used during the war in Vietnam.

For more than five decades, they have been kept mothballed in warehouses.

Most of those on offer are M1 rifles — a weapon once described by US General George S Patton as “the greatest battle-implement ever devised”.

I recall when the Canadian Forces retired the FN C1 rifle . . . the government freaked at the thought of thousands of “assault rifles” being sold to civilians, so they changed the regulations to move the FN into a more restricted category (which most casual gun owners didn’t qualify for).

Condescending Brits on CanLit

Filed under: Books, Cancon, Media — Tags: — Nicholas @ 08:04

The feathers are well-ruffled in yesterday’s post on In Other Words, as a British judge for the Scotiabank-Giller Prize tries to describe CanLit:

It seems in Canada that you only have to write a novel to get grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and from your provincial Arts Council, who are also thanked. Complaints were once voiced that most shortlisted Giller novels emanated from just three big-name publishers, all owned by Bertelsmann, and that virtually every winner lived in the Toronto area. Now, many of the submitted authors, and their rugged subject matter, hail from Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland. That’s maybe because small publishers too are now subsidised, and they proliferate. If you want to get your novel published, be Canadian.

H/T to (yes, this time I’m sure) Chris Taylor, who expects “predictable outrage from hypersensitive arts community in 3..2..1”

September 22, 2009

The Guild, Season 3 Episode 4

Filed under: Gaming, Humour — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 15:36

<br /><a href="http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-US&#038;vid=2db36212-baaf-4fe6-9cc5-cdefe4b27f40" target="_new" title="Season 3 - Episode 4: Get it back!">Video: Season 3 &#8211; Episode 4: Get it back!</a>

And try to imagine the horror . . . or just go to http://finnsmulders.com/.

If you can’t get enough, here are some bloopers.

Truth in advertising?

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Media, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:10

Jim Davidson watches the new GM television ad . . . and pukes:

They used to advertise “that great GM feeling.” Nowadays it seems more like “that sinking GM feeling.” Case in point, car-neophyte Ed Whiteacre’s current ad campaign.

“Car for car when compared to the competition, we win. Simple as that,” he says in this bright new ad promoting his complete ignorance about automobiles.

Sure, the white haired old man looks alert and sentient as he parades through a nearly empty show room with strange other people wandering around not selling any cars. But the words make no sense.

Car for car when compared to the competition, GM sucks. And they gave up competing on cars when they went for the enormous taxpayer bailout. It isn’t simple as winning in a head to head car making competition. Remember? GM played that game and they lost. They lost all of their money, so they demanded all of our money.

Later he lies again, “So we’re putting our money where our mouth is.” No, you bastard, you stinking lackey of big government, you filthy thief, you aren’t. GM tried putting their money where their mouth is, and they lost. They went under. So now they are putting our money where their mouth is. He isn’t a nice old man, he’s an evil old liar.

More on the ABM decision

Filed under: Europe, Military, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:50

Following up from last week’s post on cancelling ABM systems for Poland and the Czech Republic, Jon sent the following comment:

I was wondering about this sort of thing when the announcements were first made, but thought that “No, Obama is indeed evil enough to do this just for kicks.” Is is possible, thought, that the Polish and Czech installations are being cancelled as they are being replaced with something else?

Have you read anything to that effect anywhere?

I assumed colossal ignorance and ineptitude, rather than deliberate provocation, but maybe I’m just too naive. I had read something about the SM-3 BMD at Taylor Empire Airways (yes, this time I’m sure it was Chris Taylor). He indicates that it does have a better track record than competing systems and it can be deployed much faster, but that there are also some caveats.

Retirement planning

Filed under: Cancon, Economics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:24

Dark Water Muse had a post a few days ago about the troubles with retirement planning (he’s just gone through the process).

I guess what only just in recent days became DWM’s “trailer park” retirement lifestyle, which he can almost afford, becomes his “cardboard box” retirement lifestyle. Assuming the healthcare system can afford then to cover the costs of treating paper cuts.

The scary part. DWM is one of the “lucky” ones, in a really good position, according to financial advisors. If this is true then how can anybody, in the past 30 years, have realistically expected “average” North American to be able to afford to retire? Aren’t these the same bong puffers who have been trying to eradicate the poppy fields in Afghanistan?

I guess addiction really is an irrational behavior, even when you dress it up and call it economics.

I wrote a comment, and then thought it might be a useful thing to expand on it a bit here:

This is a multi-pronged problem that will yield to no single solution.

The mere existance of the Canada Pension Plan (and the regular payroll deductions that fund current retirees) lull far too many Canadians into thinking that they’re going to be receiving enough money from CPP to carry on their pre-retirement lifestyle. That’s a huge, unconscious reason for people to fail to save for retirement.

Many Canadians have pension plans that are tied directly to their current employer. For the tiny fraction who successfully keep working for that firm/organization all the way to retirement age, it’s a winning bet. For far too many, three years in one plan, five years in another, seven years in a third will yield three miniscule pension cheques (far less than the amount if they’d been fifteen years in a single plan), as most pensions are geared to long-term employment. Given the commonly quoted notion that most Canadians will have three careers between entering the workforce and retiring, planning on putting in 20-25 years of pensionable work with a big firm is a pipe dream.

The banks and other finance organizations don’t help, either, as many of their print and online offerings for potential customers over-estimate financial needs (“What? I need $3 million to retire at 55? That’s impossible!”).

Schools don’t even attempt to provide financial planning information for students, and even if they did, who among us thought about retirement before age 35? It would likely be a wasted effort, unless it was a mandatory part of the graduation requirements. And even then, everyone under 25 thinks they’ll either live forever or be dead by 30, so it wouldn’t make much practical difference.

I’ve been in the working world for nearly 30 years, yet I’ve only ever worked for companies that had pension plans twice. In neither case did I work there long enough to accumulate any worthwhile seniority in the pension scheme (and given that neither company is still around today, I probably didn’t lose much). Among the other companies I’ve worked for, only two had Group RRSP plans (I think the closest US equivalent would be a 401(k) account). . . which paradoxically have been great for my long-term financial health. The broker for the plan at the first company is still the guy I call to get investment advice (each of us has moved on to different firms more than once, but it’s the personal relationship that matters).

I lost a lot of paper wealth in the last 12 months (at the worst, I was down over 45%). My investments — my retirement savings, that is — are back up to about 85% of their peak. If I hadn’t had to withdraw cash during periods of unemployment, I’d be closer to 95%. I’m nowhere near the multi-millions that the bank “planning software” says I should have at this point in my career, but I’m not panicking, yet.

According to the Danish tourist agency, Danish women are easy

Filed under: Europe — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 10:25

The Economist reports on a badly thought-out (and recently withdrawn) tourism-boosting campaign by VisitDenmark:

The film, shot in video-diary style, purports to be the work of a Danish woman with a baby: she says that the child is the result of a one-night stand with a foreign visitor and that she hopes the father will see the video and contact her.

It’s nicely acted, gently affecting, completely fake and unintentionally hilarious. This official advertisement for Denmark, meant to be “a good and sweet story about a mature, responsible woman who lives in a free society and shoulders the responsibility of her actions”, instead conveys the message that if you come to Denmark, you can sleep with attractive locals. Is that really the remit of the tourism agency?

Cloning

Filed under: Religion, Science — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:25

Gregg Easterbrook takes a quick look at the objections to cloning:

Human clones, it is widely assumed, would be monstrous perversions of nature. Yet chances are, you already know one. Indeed, you may know several and even have dated a clone. They walk among us in the form of identical twins: people who share exact sets of DNA. Such twins almost always look alike and often have similar quirks. But their minds, experiences, and personalities are different, and no one supposes they are less than fully human. And if identical twins are fully human, wouldn’t cloned people be as well?

Suppose scientists could create a clone from an adult human: It would probably be more distinct from its predecessor than most identical twins are from each other. A clone from a grown-up would have the same DNA but would come into the world as a gurgling baby, not an instant adult, as in sci-fi. The clone would go through childhood and adolescence with the same life-shaping unpredictability as any kid.

The eminent University of Chicago ethicist Leon Kass has argued that human cloning would be offensive in part because the clone would “not be fully a surprise to the world.” True, but what child is? Almost all share physical traits and mannerisms with their parents. By having different experiences than their parents (er, parent) and developing their own personalities, clones would become distinct individuals with the same originality and dignity as identical twins—or anyone else.

<sarcasm>Of course, the real argument against cloning is that your clone wouldn’t have a soul: everyone knows that the soul is indivisible, so unless you gave yours up (or time-shared it), your clone would be soul-less.</sarcasm>

Over-broad laws can be useful to silence critics

Filed under: Britain, Law — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:13

Richard Dawkins contrasts the scientific way of resolving disputes with the British libel laws:

It is a lamentable observation that because of the way our laws are skewed toward the plaintiff, London has become the libel capital of the world. Litigants are coming to England from another country to sue people who live in a third country over a book that was published in a fourth country – the excuse being that a handful of books were sold here too. A nice little round-the-world jaunt for lawyers it may be, but sensible or liberal it is not. Nor is it just.

Of course there must be redress if you are maliciously attacked in a way that damages you. But if such a law is cast too wide it has disastrous consequences on the public interest, not least in the area of science and medicine where the stakes are high, profits and reputations are guarded jealously, and the vulnerable need to be protected from unproven or fraudulent claims for cures, whether by “alternative” therapists or big pharmaceuticals.

H/T to Chris Taylor Chris Myrick for the link.

September 21, 2009

Come on, Microsoft!

Filed under: Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 14:56

I’ve discovered the guaranteed no-fail, works-every-time method to lock up your Vista laptop. It’s kind of complicated, so follow along carefully with these intricate and unlikely-to-occur-in-ordinary-use steps:

  1. Open Windows Explorer.
  2. Select a file.
  3. Right-click the file and select Rename from the context menu.
  4. Profit?

Yes, that arduous and complicated set of steps — that nobody would ever discover during normal use — are enough to consistently lock up my laptop. Lock up tight enough that recovery requires removing the battery to force the machine to power down.

Sir Humphrey is about to be proven correct again

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Politics, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:30

The American government is trying to exhort artists to support its goals . . . and doing more than just exhorting:

If you’ve ever wondered–and worried–about where government support of the arts leads, look no further than the full transcript of an August 10 telecon between an official at the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and a group of “independent artists from around the country.” The short version: It leads to the use of taxpayer-funded culture as a means of propagandizing for specific, partisan political aims. Which corrupts not just art but artists.

[. . .]

Given that the NEA prides itself on being the single largest funding source for the arts in the country, such arm-twisting by agency officials, however masked in fulsome compliments to creators’ genius, is disturbing on its face. It clearly sets a political agenda for the very people who are likely to be applying for, well, NEA and other government grants. Does anyone think that the organizers were fishing around for projects that might complicate the public option for health care?

Embedded in the discussion is at least one other disturbing point: a nearly lunatic delusion that artists are the vanguard of the proletariat. As Mike Skolnick, the political director for music impresario Russell Simmons, told the participants, the assembled crew “tell our country and our young people sort of what to do and what to be in to; and what’s cool and what’s not cool.” While that command-and-control notion is widely shared by liberals and conservatives alike, it is patently false. Artists and politicians hate to hear this, but the audience does have a mind of its own.

Sir Humphrey Appleby put it best: “Plays attacking the government make the second most boring theatrical evenings ever invented. The most boring are plays praising the government.”

Vikings go to 2-0 with win over Detroit

Filed under: Football — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:46

Every team that plays Detroit has a nagging fear that they’re going to be the ones to end the Lions’ losing streak. Detroit played the Vikings well in the first half, getting to a 10-0 lead during the first half, before Minnesota could get their act together:

The Vikings left Ford Field on Sunday atop the NFC North with a 2-0 record. Both victories have come on the road, they have outscored opponents by 28 points and Brett Favre has yet to throw an interception.

So all is going according to plan in the land of Purple, right?

Not exactly.

Favre made that very clear after the Vikings rallied for a 27-13 victory over a Detroit Lions team that has lost 19 in a row, second-most in NFL history.

“To think that we can continue to win games that way, is not going to happen,” Favre said. “Detroit played hard, played well. I was worried.”

Hate the president: it’s a hallowed tradition

Filed under: Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:27

Steve Chapman looks at the long, long, long history of President Derangement Syndrome:

A new president, pursuing policies well within the political mainstream, evokes weirdly angry and intense denunciations from opponents—a reaction hard to explain in terms of anything he has actually done. Does that suggest, as Jimmy Carter insists, that their true motivation lies in racism?

No, it doesn’t, because I’m not talking about Barack Obama. I’m talking about George W. Bush and Bill Clinton — both of whom, from the day they took office, managed to convince a minority of Americans that they were not just wrong but illegitimate, dangerous, and thoroughly evil. Obama’s troubles are not exactly unprecedented.

[. . .]

So you don’t need to turn to race to explain the virulent animosity against Obama. What all the presidents who previously endured irresponsible slander had in common, after all, is that they were white.

Clinton’s experience suggests that merely being a Democrat is enough to evoke hysteria in some quarters. In matters of policy, he was about as congenial as any conservative could have hoped — cooperating with Republicans to balance the budget, advancing free trade, rejecting an international treaty banning land mines, signing welfare reform, and threatening to bomb North Korea over its nuclear program. Yet even today, many on the right regard him as an extreme liberal.

I don’t remember President Ford rousing the standard levels of derangement among his opponents, but that could be because it was before I started paying much attention to U.S. politics. Other than Ford, all the other occupants of that office seem to have generated deep animosity (Nixon? Hell yeah. Carter? Yep. Reagan? A subgenre of musical animosity. Bush I? Yep.)

September 19, 2009

Light blogging today

Filed under: Soccer — Tags: — Nicholas @ 15:14

Just got back from the first half of Victor’s soccer tournament weekend. His team’s record so far, a win (4-0), a tie (2-2), and a loss (2-1). They’ll need to win both of tomorrow’s games to have a chance to be in the final.

Update, 20 September: T’was not to be. Another 2-1 loss followed by a very evenly matched 0-0 tie. Due to some upsets on Saturday, both teams in the second game had the chance to advance to the final . . . with a win. The tie knocked both teams out.

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