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LiveJournal for Gavin.
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| Monday, July 21st, 2008 |
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State crime lab analyst Kathryn Troyer was running tests on Arizona's DNA database when she stumbled across two felons with remarkably similar genetic profiles. The men matched at nine of the 13 locations on chromosomes, or loci, commonly used to distinguish people. via The Agitator The FBI is disingenuous when they claim Troyer is misusing their database by running unusual searches. As the database becomes larger and it is used more often the chance of invalid matches becomes much greater. A statistical calculation made when the database held a few thousand people is not relevant when the database reaches the millions. The use of DNA for law enforcement and civil actions is still increasing rapidly, this will boost the opportunities for invalid matches. At the very least database matches must be rejected as direct evidence. If a person is a suspect a second match with the original sample needs to be done. |
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| Wednesday, July 16th, 2008 |
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In the wake of my successful predictions regarding Heller and the financial meltdown, I am venturing on another prediction. As with my other predictions I don't see unlikely events far into the future. I am simply stating what should be obvious to anyone paying attention. Heller was not an unqualified success for gun rights. In fact it was a nearly unmitigated disaster. It is true that some limit has been placed on gun laws but its a very minor limit. It was previously possible to believe that some future Supreme Court decision would deem the words 'shall not be infringed' to have actual meaning. This is now impossible, even though the court has recognized some minimal individual right. However governments can restrict that right to almost any level, provided it isn't a complete ban. In practice this means obstacles can be raised to any height, as long as a few determined people manage to overcome them. ( Read more... ) |
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| Tuesday, June 24th, 2008 |
| Friday, May 16th, 2008 |
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Last month a US court ruled that border agents can search your laptop, or any other electronic device, when you're entering the country. They can take your computer and download its entire contents, or keep it for several days. Read the link at the bottom of the article too. Truecrypt seems reliable. I haven't used their whole disk encryption yet, but the volume encryption appears solid. You may have to securely wipe your drive and send the data on an encrypted flash card to your destination. The data can be uploaded in country. When you leave rebuild the card and wipe the disk again. If you use a laptop at all, you need to up your paranoia level. Government and freelance criminals are becoming aware of the valuable nature of laptop data. Phone and PDA are even more vulnerable. Consider a separate cheap phone for border crossing. I don't think any popular PDAs support serious encryption, so don't send them via mail. I don't know if anyone is still unaware of this but deleting or wiping or encrypting data is utterly insufficient unless your entire drive is included. Operating systems and applications write 'slack' and 'cache' data all over the disk, even against protocol. |
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| Thursday, May 8th, 2008 |
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"I reject the notion that Al Qaeda is waiting for 'the big one' or holding back an attack," Sheehan writes. "A terrorist cell capable of attacking doesn't sit and wait for some more opportune moment. It's not their style, nor is it in the best interest of their operational security. Delaying an attack gives law enforcement more time to detect a plot or penetrate the organization." Terrorism needs to be put in perspective. Even the famous terrorist incident of 1914, wouldn't have caused WW1 if the great powers had not overreacted. |
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John, as Henry's disciple and successor, was, like other disciples, narrower than his master in the master's own way. from Prince Henry the Navigator |
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| Thursday, May 1st, 2008 |
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| The answer is that the tragedy has never been properly memorialized, its victims rarely acknowledged. Too many too easily brush aside the suffering that occurred. Today, we do our small part to remember some of the victims. Keep them in your thoughts--the millions of victims of communism worldwide, the Cossacks extradited to the USSR by nations of the 'free world', the victims of the Khmer Rouge, and the North Korean laborers in modern day Russia and Czech Republic. | ||||
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| Tuesday, April 29th, 2008 |
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Nevertheless, this Great Boom is also very different from all previous bubbles. This time around, globalization either will succeed and humanity will achieve a degree of freedom and prosperity that can scarcely be imagined, or globalization will fail and capitalism or even humanity itself may come to an end. The real alternative to good globalization is world war. A somewhat pessimistic view but not absurdly so. The current recession may be fatal to global economic integration and fatal to many humans too. Nothing that will happen in this recession is truly disastrous, if governments react rationally. However, the track record of government rationality is extremely weak. We know FedGov made many bad decisions after 1929, including provoking the Axis into war with America. |
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| Monday, April 28th, 2008 |
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This administration believes that when it comes to foreign policy and national security, its powers are absolutely limitless, and not subject to congressional or judicial oversight. The remedy is simple. Congress can refuse to vote money for any department which fails to comply with the law. When executive branch employees realize they aren't going to get paid, their loyalty to POTUS will vanish. Judges can also jail these employees for contempt. Once these officials have spent a few nights in a cell for spouting nonsense in court, they will come to their senses. Of course congressmen and judges know all this. They don't wish to enforce the law. |
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| Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 |
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| We probably couldn’t ask for a purer example of the principle that the primary mission of authority is to preserve authority. Even today, knowing that almost anyone could be holding a video camera and their actions could wind up on YouTube, cops will still bully and assault people for refusing to instantly defer to arbitrary authority. | ||||
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| Wednesday, April 9th, 2008 |
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| I'm thinking about using JungleDisk to back up my personal data. I have about 10GB of data on several computers. Anyone know anything against them? | ||||
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| Wednesday, March 19th, 2008 |
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| My prediction is SCOTUS will do their usual spineless split-the-baby trick. They won't rule unequivocally for liberty or for gun control. They will produce some sort of weasel wording about limits to freedom and limits on government power with a topping of noble judicial principle. This will allow politicians, lawyers and ordinary people many more years of pointless wrangling about what exactly SCOTUS meant by some obscure phrase. Naturally all of this makes SCOTUS more important and indispensable, which is how they like it. More people will beat a path to their door to have them pronounce on some dubious interpretation. Of course the more ambitious justices will be allowed to produce utterly meaningless dissents which will improve their standing in the partisan media. | ||||
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| Monday, March 17th, 2008 |
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The Federal Reserve and Wall Street are like a man sliding down a cliff. He grasps each clump of grass on the way down. As the clump pulls loose, he grabs one lower down the slope. None of these clumps will save him. There is no disaster so great that government intervention can't make it worse. I expect Congress to prove that true within the next few months, as the economy tanks. |
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| Friday, February 15th, 2008 |
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The Great Wall of China refers to 2 barriers set up by the government of China. The original is the famous construction along the northern border. The new one is the Internet firewall created to censor information. The traditional view of the old wall is that it was to defend the Chinese people against the marauding hordes of nomads north of the farming areas. While reading a history of China (not yet finished) I noticed 2 references to trade between the Chinese people and the nomadic tribes. It makes a lot of sense that farmers and nomads would trade with each other. Each can produce items which are useful to the other. For example nomads can produce horses and hides, farmers can produce bread and pottery. Along a vast frontier it would be very difficult for a central government to tax this trade activity. The solution is a vast wall to act as a customs barrier. All trade between nomads and farmers would be forced to pass through a limited number of gates controlled by the government. This allows the trade to be heavily taxed. Furthermore any military cooperation against the central government can be controlled. It seems plausible that the old great wall is like the new great wall. It is intended only to benefit the government. The supposed benefit to the people is pure propaganda. I've never heard this theory of a customs barrier before. I am not aware of any historical evidence for it except the points mentioned above. Has anyone heard of this idea before? Maybe it is a well known idea amongst serious China scholars, but not known to the general public. |
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| Friday, February 1st, 2008 |
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| Al Qaeda fanatics plumbed sickening new depths yesterday when they turned two women with Down's syndrome into human bombs to kill 70 people in Baghdad. They are obviously running out of suicide volunteers. It's a sign of weakness on their part. It turns out that notwithstanding Jihadi propaganda, not many Muslims actually want to kill themselves. | ||||
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| Maybe it is time to be more concerned about terrorists cutting those undersea cables in the Middle East | ||||
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| Thursday, January 24th, 2008 |
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Who should I shoot first? 1. An Afghan man torturing his 10 year old daughter for refusing circumcision. 2. Hutu man hacking a Tutsi to pieces in a tribal massacre. 3. American  ernunnos who is coercing me to provide money for an attack on the previous 2 men.Obviously ernunnos who is threatening me personally.(This is not a death threat as I realize his menacing remark is merely FedGov's propaganda machine in operation.) |
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Ron Paul needs to fix his TV advertising strategy. I don't watch a lot of TV but I saw one of his ads last night. It was lame, it made him look like just another Republican. He is running against the establishment. It's not good enough to look normal, he has to look different. Romney and McCain have some establishment support, they can run on a strategy of blandness. Paul is simply wasting an opportunity here. He needs to emphasize his distinctive specific policies, not mumble about lower taxes and liberty. Anyone can do that. Good advice here |
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| Friday, December 21st, 2007 |
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| What a Kant | ||||||
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| Thursday, December 20th, 2007 |
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"Wait a minute," objects the reader, "that's not quite fair! Atlas Shrugged was published in 1957! Practically nobody knew about Bayes back then." Bah. Next you'll tell me that Ayn Rand died in 1982, and had no chance to read Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases, which was published that same year. Science isn't fair. That's sorta the point. An aspiring rationalist in 2007 starts with a huge advantage over an aspiring rationalist in 1957. It's how we know that progress has occurred. |
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LiveJournal for Gavin.
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amused.