BENOIT MANDELBROT: The theory thinks that things move slowly, gradually, and can be corrected as they change, whereas, in fact, they may change extremely brutally.

NASSIM NICHOLAS TALEB: Now you understand why I'm worried. I hope I'm wrong. I wake up every morning -- actually, I don't wake up every morning now. I start to wake up at night the last couple of weeks hoping that I'm wrong, begging to be wrong.

I think that we may be experiencing something that is vastly worse than we think it is.

PAUL SOLMAN: And we think it's pretty bad.

NASSIM NICHOLAS TALEB: It's worse. Of all the books you read on globalization, they talk about efficiency, all that stuff. They don't get the point. The network effect of that globalization, OK, means that a shock in the system can have much larger consequences.

They are "talking their books" rather than providing a specific observation about the present situation but I still find this interesting.

Chaos Theory and the Credit Crisis

If we've learned one thing from funding so many startups, it's that they succeed or fail based on the qualities of the founders.

Which means that what matters is who you are, not when you do it. If you're the right sort of person, you'll win even in a bad economy. And if you're not, a good economy won't save you. Someone who thinks "I better not start a startup now, because the economy is so bad" is making the same mistake as the people who thought during the Bubble "all I have to do is start a startup, and I'll be rich."

Why to Start a Startup in a Bad Economy

Using data provided by the U.S. Census Bureau, the ACLU has determined that nearly 2/3 of the entire US population (197.4 million people) live within 100 miles of the US land and coastal borders.

The government is assuming extraordinary powers to stop and search individuals within this zone. This is not just about the border: This " Constitution-Free Zone" includes most of the nation's largest metropolitan areas.

My understanding is that they cannot perform a border search when they are not at the border unless its fairly clear that you did cross the border. This ACLU information suggests otherwise but doesn't substantiate that suggestion as far as I can tell.

American Civil Liberties Union : Constitution Free Zone

The low hanging fruit, i.e. idiots whose parents paid for prep school, Yale, and then the Harvard MBA, was there for the taking. These people who were (often) truly not worthy of the education they received (or supposedly received) rose to the top of companies such as AIG, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and all levels of our government. All of this behavior supporting the Aristocracy, only ended up making it easier for me to find people stupid enough to take the other side of my trades. God bless America.

Fuck you, Fuck you, Fuck you, You're cool... Fuck you, I'm out.

Andrew Lahde bows out in style

Some arguments have been made that podcasting does not involve public performance of a musical work — but merely the transfer of bits over the Internet, and therefore public performance rights should be challenged (see Cross, 2005; Phillips and Moore, 2001).

I was googling around and I learned that a reply I made to a blog post on Internet Music became an academic reference. Nice!

Podcasting: A new technology in search of viable business models

Palin’s qualifications to be president rank as voters’ top concern about McCain’s candidacy...

Hart argues that voters have turned against Palin. The negative opinions of her have “reflected badly on McCain and essentially hurt the ticket dramatically.”

Palin dragging the Republican ticket - Decision '08- msnbc.com

About the totally awesome democratic government that we helped establish in Afghanistan.

Earlier this year I published a post about a 24-year-old journalism student in Afghanistan who was sentenced to death for asking "disruptive" questions in class and for downloading and distributing a report to other students that was critical of the unequal treatment of women in some Islamic societies.

Sayed Pervez Kambaksh (at right in a Kabul courtroom with his defense attorney) was tried and sentenced to death for blasphemy last January without having a defense attorney to argue his case.

Tuesday, an appeals court commuted the death sentence to 20 years.

Five witnesses appeared before the court, four of whom condemned Kambaksh for violating the tenets of Islam. The fifth witness retracted accusations he'd made earlier that Kambaksh had committed blasphemy and also revealed that he'd been forced to make the accusation by members of Afghanistan's intelligence service and by a professor who had threatened to expel him from university.

The neocons must have missed the part were Fukuyama said liberal democracies.

Afghan Student's Death Sentence Commuted to 20 Years in Prison | Threat Level from Wired.com

A former federal prosecutor has decided to take on his ex-employer in defending a woman against charges that she violated federal laws in allegedly creating a MySpace account used to bully a teenage girl who committed suicide.

Orin Kerr, professor of law at George Washington University Law School, was a criminal trial attorney in the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section at the Department of Justice as well as a special assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Kerr wrote on the Volokh Conspiracy blog that the government was essentially charging Drew with criminal trespassing on MySpace's server for allegedly providing false information to open a MySpace account under the false identity of a nonexistent teenage boy. Kerr said this essentially made it a federal crime to violate any online terms of service contract.

1. I'm sympathetic to Kerr's perspective on this... it would be better for everyone if TOS violations did not create criminal liability.

2. I think the DOJ is only prosecuting this because the mob demands it and I think they pulled this strategy out of a hat because its plausible enough to litigate but they intend to loose. If they intended to win they would have chosen something less radical to charge this woman with. Lets hope they don't accidentally win.

3. I agree with one of the comments in the attached thread... that if an adult man created a MySpace account posing as a teenage boy and made false romatic advances toward a teenage girl, and that girl committed suicide, that man would be prosecuted under some sort of sex crimes/child predation statute such as attempted child molestation with huge prison sentences and permanent sex offender registry associated with it. The fact that the exact same crime is treated in a completely different way because the perpetrator is a woman speaks to the absurdity of our political response to these issues on the whole.

4. I think people care about this case because the media has drawn attention to it, and I think the only reason the media cares is because it has something to do with the Internet, and plays on fears that parents have about what their children are doing on the Internet. Bullies drive people to suicide every day in the United States. Literally several times a day. This case is not exceptional.

5. Are bullies legally culpable if they drive someone to suicide? I'm not sure how I feel about that question as a policy matter, but my understanding is that as a legal matter in general they are not. I don't see why the internet should change that. The internet has absolutely nothing to do with it. The same rules ought to apply whether this woman sent emails to her victim or she sent letters through the mail.

6. If we think bullies ought to be culpable when their victims commit suicide, than we need new state laws across the board. That means letting this one go, no matter how incensed the pitch fork carrying mob is. No Ex-Post Facto laws!

Note that this is different from my earlier read on this. I don't think this falls into the definition of what the law means by fraud because Drew did not cause economic harm.

Former Justice Dept. Prosecutor Joins Defense in MySpace Suicide Case | Threat Level

New research suggests that the type of television you watched as a child has a profound effect on the colour of your dreams.

While almost all under 25s dream in colour, thousands of over 55s, all of whom were brought up with black and white sets, often dream in monchrome - even now.

Black and white TV generation have monochrome dreams - Telegraph

BTW, If you somehow read this blog but aren't aware of it, I'm speaking on Friday night at 9PM at Phreaknic. The talk will be on border laptop searches, so if you've seen me speak at another conference this year (Summercon, Hope, Dragoncon), you may already have seen some of this content, although the situation has evolved considerably from where it was back during Summercon and my talk has evolved with it.

Phreaknic 12 - October 24th - 25th, 2008