] From the navigation of a badly damaged spacecraft
] to impending carbon dioxide poisoning, NASA's ground team
] worked around the clock to give the Apollo 13 astronauts
] a fighting chance. But what was going on behind the doors
] of the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston now Lyndon
] B. Johnson Space Center wasn't a trick, or even a case
] of engineers on an incredible lucky streak. It was the manifestation
] of years of training, teamwork, discipline, and foresight
] that to this day serves as a perfect example of how to do
] high-risk endeavors right.

How to do high-risk endeavors right

] Today, the rights of individuals are being eroded: by
] government, by corporations, by society itself. This
] icon the Individual-i represents the rights
] of the individual.

So, here is Schneier's logo for individual rights. The problem with this symbol, much like Raymond's hacker logo, is that the originator of the symbol is attempting to impose a meaning for the symbol, while also associating the symbol with a concept that has a different meaning to most people. Symbols that work work because of the meaning that the masses choose for them and not because of the meaning their originators conjure up.

In Raymond's case he is holding on to a mid 80's view of computer ethics. He doesn't understand that computer security is orthagonal to the hacker ideal. The people who are most likely to use his symbol don't draw the lines he draws.

In Schneier's case he has taken a conservative concept (individual freedom) and wrapped it in some liberal ideas (such as freedom of sexual orientation.) This is a case where both sides claim to support individual freedom but neither really do. He should add gun ownership to his list of things the symbol stands for, just to see what impact that has on who employs it.

Individual-i

] What we are seeing, for the first time, is a fundamental
] challenge to the rule of law itself.

I keep telling myself they aren't this stupid... its all theater... They won't actually do this stuff...

Latest Assault on Judges Threatens Rule of Law

] On nin.com, Trent Reznor is offering a complete mix of a
] song from the forthcoming Nine Inch Nails album as a
] Garageband 2.0 file.

This is the moment when upgrading from my G3 began to sound like a good idea.

Boing Boing: NIN's Trent Reznor releases song as GarageBand file

k wrote:
] [ Be fair, the vast majority of people don't even know this
] happened, so they really have no opinion on it. They're
] getting fucked in the ass while they focus on other shit, like
] American Idol, or being poor already.

Yeah, but the pundits have been talking it up a bit in certain circles.

Its worth pointing out that the Democrats are certainly to blame here. They are all taking handouts from the finance industry. Publically visible figures like Edwards and Pelosi are "speaking out" to maintain some sort of connection with their constituency while the vast bulk of party voted for the bill. In Edward's case its positively creepy. He has voted for this stuff over and over again, and now that he is a party leader he is using opposition to this to promote himself. The only thing worse then a bunch of guys kicking cancer victims in the teeth for personal profit is a bunch of guys who do that while claiming to oppose it.

RE: MarketWatch: Illness And Injury As Contributors To Bankruptcy -- Himmelstein et al., 10.1377/hlthaff.w5.63 -- Health Affairs

] In 2001, 1.458 million American families filed for
] bankruptcy. To investigate medical contributors to
] bankruptcy, we surveyed 1,771 personal bankruptcy filers
] in five federal courts and subsequently completed
] in-depth interviews with 931 of them. About half cited
] medical causes, which indicates that 1.9-2.2 million
] Americans (filers plus dependents) experienced medical
] bankruptcy. Among those whose illnesses led to
] bankruptcy, out-of-pocket costs averaged $11,854 since
] the start of illness; 75.7 percent had insurance at the
] onset of illness. Medical debtors were 42 percent more
] likely than other debtors to experience lapses in
] coverage. Even middle-class insured families often fall
] prey to financial catastrophe when sick.

There IS something more perverse then this bankruptcy bill. Its the conservatives who are celebrating its passing. These people are getting screwed, and they are happy about it. They are cheering it. They have been completely manipulated.

The idea that this bill is intended to prevent irresponsible people from using bankruptcy to avoid the consequences of their actions is simply not supported by the facts. If that were the case, there would be no reason that exceptions could not be made for people who face catastrophic medical expenses, and people who have dependent children and had recently been divorced. Neither of these circumstances is predicatable, and therefore neither can be considered irresponsible behavior. This can happen to any middle class family. Furthermore, an exception for medical bills exists for veterans. If it can exist for veterans, then it can exist for anyone.

Why not? All you have to do is ask why not have an exception for medical catastrophies. Keep asking until you get an answer that seems satisfactory. You will be enlightened.

Conservative readers will refuse to beleive what I'm suggesting the answer is. They will seek out any other explanation even if it is not entirely sound. They are fooling themselves. I encourage them to keep asking that question.

That answer is that were such exceptions applied to this law, the result would be unpalitable to its supporters, as likely 60-70 percent of the cases would be eliminated before the means test was even applied. Pile on other concerns such as theft, natural disasters, etc... The result would not have the economic impact that the advocates of this law seek.

People who tell you that bankruptcies raise interest rates surely have a poor understanding of economics. Interest rates are set by economic externialities, price competition, and demand. They are lower today then they have ever been.

Costs in the lending industry don't impact prices. They impact dividend yeilds for owners.

Its quite simple. This law will cause an increase in dividend yeilds measured in small fractions of cents for companies that provide financial services, and the cost is to ruin people who have been the victims of severe unpredicatable catastrophies.

In other words, they are fucking you up the ass, and you are smiling about it all the way.

MarketWatch: Illness And Injury As Contributors To Bankruptcy -- Himmelstein et al., 10.1377/hlthaff.w5.63 -- Health Affairs

] There are powerful people for whom the spectacle of an
] unrepentant murderer for the unborn, a clean-cut movie
] star handsome Christian terrorist, posed political
] problems. Better to defend life in the abstract, keep the
] focus on the enemy at the gates and keep skeletons like
] Eric Rudolph locked up in the closet.

I'm opposed to the death penalty. I'm also opposed to hypocryticial government. I think it is abundantly obvious that if Eric Rudolph was an Islamic terrorist they would be seeking the death penatly in his case.

Eric Rudolph - 'An American terrorist' | csmonitor.com

] In a letter to Congress two months ago, 104 bankruptcy
] law professors predicted that "the deepest hardship"
] would "be felt in the heartland," where the filing rates
] are highest -Utah, Tennessee, Georgia, Nevada, Indiana,
] Alabama, Arkansas, Ohio, Mississippi and Idaho. A study
] conducted by legal and medical specialists at Harvard
] University of 1,771 personal bankruptcy filers in five
] federal courts found that about half were forced into
] bankruptcy because of heavy medical costs.

The house version eliminates the homestead loophole that was causing even international observers to cry foul. The senate version doesn't do this. I don't fully understand the rules for how those kinds of things get resolved. I've heard that minor differences don't require the involvement of conference committee, but how is the final law determined?

The New York Times - House Passes Bankruptcy Bill; Overhaul Now Awaits President's Signature

] President Bush said Thursday that he had been surprised
] to learn in the newspaper of his administration's
] decision last week to require Americans to have passports
] to enter the country from Mexico or Canada by 2008. He
] said he had asked the State and Homeland Security
] Departments to look into other means of tightening border
] security.

Thank you Mr. Bush!

Er... Wait... Fingerprints? I agree that we should not implement a policy that slows the flow of cross border traffic. I don't agree that the solution is to biometric everyone.

There are deep questions here that require some pause for reflection.

You want to have an efficient border. You want to control access. Biometrics, properly implemented, are well suited to this application, whereas they are not well suited to many applications people attempt to apply them to. But this is simply the technical argument.

The real question is whether we want to collect biometrics from everyone. Do you want your government files to be nonreputible? In many people's cases it doesn't matter, because you've already given up your fingerprint for immigration or drivers licenses or because you were booked on a charge. The frogs are already fairly warm.

Its really hard to go through life without getting fingerprinted by the government.

I think that driver's license biometrics are unconstitutional. I have never, ever seen driver's license biometrics actually used to authenticate a holder of a driver's license. Its simply a way of collecting biometrics that police can use in investigations. You could almost argue that its a "pre-search." Its clearly a 4th amendment violation to fingerprint everyone in a town in the wake of a crime to find the criminal, but if we do it in the context of driver's licenses then its not a "search" and so its OK(?!)

This is an example of creeping technological efficiency on the part of the government. The threat is that technological efficiency serves the government regardless of whether it's intentions are good. One reflexively fears this, thinking of the IBM punch card systems used to tabulate Jews in Germany.

But what is the alternative? If you want to control border access then it makes sense to apply these technologies. The alternative is to not control border access. But people reflexively see border control as a smart anti-terrorism strategy.

Is it? Objectively, has anyone really asked and answered whether this is the right way to deal with terrorism? Or is it simply a system that is more effective for other purposes that gets sold as an anti-terror tool? What are those other purposes?

These are the questions which are typically overlooked in these kinds of discussions. I imagine they are being overlooked here. The problem is that I don't know who knows enough about this problem to really know who is able to address these questions critically. Terrorists were stopp... [ Read More (0.5k in body) ]

The New York Times - A Surprised Bush Says He Wants New Travel Rules Reconsidered

The Long Tail is the new Smart Mob.