What if TheNew York Times goes out of business—like, this May?

That would seriously suck.

End Times - The Atlantic

You may have noticed that you are getting logged out. There is a Cookie problem. We're trying to figure it out but it isn't easy to reproduce.

All told, real GDP was expected to fall much more sharply in the first half of 2009 than previously anticipated, before slowly recovering over the remainder of the year...

Real GDP was projected to decline for 2009 as a whole and to rise at a pace slightly above the rate of potential growth in 2010. Amid the weaker outlook for economic activity over the next year, the unemployment rate was likely to rise significantly into 2010, to a level higher than projected at the time of the October 28-29 FOMC meeting.

The disinflationary effects of increased slack... caused the staff to
reduce its forecast for both core and overall PCE inflation. Core inflation was projected to slow considerably in 2009 and then to edge down further in 2010.

The fed doesn't think Ben has created too much liquidity. I wonder if disinflationary is used in order to prevent the word deflation from appearing in print.

fomcminutes20081216.pdf (application/pdf Object)

A classic example of how today's copyright system suppresses art, effectively forcing artists to make creative choices based on licensing concerns rather than on their artistic vision.

How Copyright Restrictions Suppress Art: An Interview With Nina Paley About "Sita Sings The Blues" | QuestionCopyright.org

If you haven't already decided to write off Ayn Rand here is a decent example of why you should. I stumbled upon this passage today being upheld as a maxim of wisdom:

"There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil.

That is just about exactly wrong. In my experience, most real political issues are far too complicated to reasonably reduce to two sides, and the extremists, not the moderates, are the ones who are almost always evil. Its easy to invent examples where one side is totally wrong but real life is almost never like that. The passage continues:

The man who is wrong still retains some respect for truth, if, only, by accepting the responsibility of choice. But the man in the middle is the knave who blanks out the truth in order to pretend that no choice or values exist, who is willing to sit out the course of any battle, willing to cash in on the blood of the innocent or to crawl on his belly to the guilty, who dispenses justice by condemning both the robber and the robbed to jail, who solves conflicts by ordering the thinker and the fool to meet each other halfway. In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit. In that transfusion of blood which drains the good to feed the evil, the compromiser is the transmitting rubber tube..."

This sort of black and white thinking is not offered in the service of truth. It seeks to blank out the truth that moral choices involving real people are complicated, in favor of oversimplified thinking that makes people feel comfortable with their actions. The examples given are transparent straw men, from which the reader is urged to extrapolate to difficult issues. Difficult issues are difficult because they don't fit this simple mold. The truth doesn't care if its on a side.

Why Ayn Rand was a fool...

If you'd rather let someone else do the hacking for you, by the way, check out http://www.help-israel-win.org/, where they have an application you can download and install that uses group computer technology (sort of like SETI, Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, http://www.seti.org). Their application attacks anti-Israel Web sites; I don't know if it's legal, but it is easy.

No, its not legal, and as of this writing, its down.

Digital World: How to beat anti-Israel hackers at their own game | Internet and Technology | Jerusalem Post

Decius wrote:
1. Anyone can host identities.
2. Anyone can accept identities.
3. The identities mean something.

I figured I'd preemptively answer the obvious question this raises. The way you achieve this is by:

1. Allowing identity providers to make assertions about the identities they provide.

2. Providing identity acceptors with mechanisms for managing the list of identity providers from whom they trust assertions and what sort of assertions they trust.

--

1. Allowing identity providers to make assertions about the identities they provide.

Basically, the identity host must be able to say things like:

User Bob54 says his name is "Bob Marley."
User Bob54 says his email address is "bob@gmail.com."
- We tested this with a verification email on 01/01/06 and it worked.
User Bob54 has been a user of our system since 01/01/06.

Preferably, the user should be able to control which assertions the provider provides to which acceptors, so that private information can be managed in the system.

2. Providing identity acceptors with mechanisms for managing the list of identity providers from whom they trust assertions and what sort of assertions they trust.

There are many possible architectures here. It may be the case that a small number of widely trusted identity providers will emerge, but unlike passport the system will be open to competition. One approach that I like is to have an entity that audits identity providers and publishes a list of ones that follow certain best practices. That entity could collect user fees from both providers and acceptors.

RE: Mind blowing delivery of Identity 2.0

This presentation does a very good job of laying out the problem, but we've been talking about this problem for years. What is the solution? It doesn't seem we're going to get one out of Sxip. They have a Firefox plug that fills out website forms for you and the speaker here has gone to work for Microsoft. I'm pretty sure there were Windows apps that did what the Sxip plugin does 8 years ago.

Why hasn't identity 2.0 happened? Nobody with the money and the userbase has been willing to create a platform that solves this problem, because they don't care about part of the problem, or because they think that controlling some aspect of the architecture will make them rich. The best architecture has the following characteristics:

1. Anyone can host identities. (Passport didn't work because Microsoft was the only identity provider and no one trusted them.)
2. Anyone can accept identities. (This is why the federated identity stuff is solving a different problem.)
3. The identities mean something. (This is the problem with OpenID.)

The two most interesting developments in this space right now are:

1. RealID. Governments have traditionally been the identity providers. They handle 3 and 2 quite well. Traditionally, they've gotten around 1 by forcing people to work with them. I think its interesting and surprising that RealID hasn't happened, but I'm not going to bet against the state. At some point soon some government will issue smart cards that can be used as online credentials with a USB smart card reader. One could imagine child predator hysteria being leveraged by an enterprising group to create a social networking site that can only be accessed with government issued credentials - an environment that is "safe for children." Its a natural evolution of current laws prohibiting sex offenders from using social network sites. Providing those sites with a way to check secure government issued credentials from every user is the only way to enforce that sort of requirement.

2. Facebook. They've created an application platform that is centered around user identities. They also handle 2 and 3 well. They share problem 1, but they are attempting to overcome Microsoft's trust problems by creating an environment where privacy is carefully managed. The day when someone asks us if MemeStreams will accept Facebook credentials is fast approaching.

I'd love to be able to create a system that solves all three problems. I really don't think there are any outstanding technical barriers to doing so. The problem is that its a big project and it has no patron.

It is the unfortunate consequence of our economy that:

1. Its expensive to develop a good platform.
2. Platforms only work if they become pervasive.
3. Charging for things creates a barrier to adoption.
4. Barriers to adoption prevent platforms from becoming pervasive.

RE: Mind blowing delivery of Identity 2.0

Population trends point inexorably toward a more dominant U.S. role in a world that will need us more, not less. For the past several years, the U.N. has published a table ranking the world's 12 most populous countries over time. In 1950, six of the top 12 were developed countries. In 2000, only three were. By 2050, only one developed country will remain -- the United States, still in third place. By then, it will be the only country among the top 12 with a historical commitment to democracy, free markets and civil liberties.

The World Won't Be Aging Gracefully. Just the Opposite.

Rational Nation States no longer seek empires, at least in the traditional sense. Conflict in the world today is largely the product of non-state actors. Nearly all of these conflicts involve minority groups who cannot identify with the nation state they are supposedly governed by. Catholics in Northern Ireland and Muslims in Leeds are essentially outsiders in their own land. They fight because they do not fit in.

Israel cannot peacefully exist as a Jewish state anymore than Alabama can peacefully exist as "the place for white people." Furthermore, no "two state" solution is going to work anymore than "separate but equal" worked in Alabama.

You could take the whole territory, including the west bank and gaza, and make it a nation state with the same liberal institutions, and it would work, without terrorism, so long as the place was sold as something that both Arabs and Jews could identify with. That means not having a Star of David on your flag. You have to be a place and not a religion. Your diversity has to be a pillar of your identity and not an asterisk.

They say Presidents are a product of their time. Governance is a bit like IT - Sometimes if you are successful, no one notices, because nothing happened. But if you fail in a massively visible way, people pay attention, and if you can't be held directly responsible for the catastrophe you get to "respond" in full view of everyone. You get to be a hero...

Whats interesting about Canada is that they managed to not have the same sort of violence in the 1970's that they had in Ireland. And it wasn't the heavy hand of martial law that prevented it. It was that they genuinely fought to create a country that wasn't English anymore.

That is what Israel must do. But right now they care more about that Star of David on their flag than they do about not seeing children maimed by explosives. If Canadians had the same attitude about the Union Jack, I think they would be just as fucked right now, and just as entrenched in their attitudes.