Preston L. Bannister { random memes }

chandanlog(3C): The Story of OpenGrok – the Wicked Fast Source Browser
it takes lot more effort to make things simple than to make things complicated.

Oh yes.

Schneier on Security: The Value of Privacy
Two proverbs say it best: Quis custodiet custodes ipsos? (“Who watches the watchers?”) and “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Cardinal Richelieu understood the value of surveillance when he famously said, “If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged.” Watch someone long enough, and you’ll find something to arrest — or just blackmail — with. Privacy is important because without it, surveillance information will be abused: to peep, to sell to marketers and to spy on political enemies — whoever they happen to be at the time.

Privacy protects us from abuses by those in power, even if we’re doing nothing wrong at the time of surveillance.

We do nothing wrong when we make love or go to the bathroom. We are not deliberately hiding anything when we seek out private places for reflection or conversation. We keep private journals, sing in the privacy of the shower, and write letters to secret lovers and then burn them. Privacy is a basic human need.

A future in which privacy would face constant assault was so alien to the framers of the Constitution that it never occurred to them to call out privacy as an explicit right. Privacy was inherent to the nobility of their being and their cause. Of course being watched in your own home was unreasonable. Watching at all was an act so unseemly as to be inconceivable among gentlemen in their day. You watched convicted criminals, not free citizens. You ruled your own home. It’s intrinsic to the concept of liberty.

Wired News: Court Deals AT&T a Setback
SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge Wednesday shot down telecom giant AT&T’s efforts to recover and suppress internal documents that a former AT&T technician says demonstrate the company’s collusion in illegal government surveillance.

Once long ago documents took substantial time and effort to copy. The widespread use of copying machines in the 1970’s and 80’s radically cut the needed effort. though copying a substantial document was still time consuming. With the current use of computers, inexpensive mass storage, and the Internet – once in digital form, the cost to make practically unlimited number of copies is essentially zero.

The wording in this situation is rather obsolete. If the “original” documents given to the court was on some sort of physical media, that could be “recovered” by AT&T. This would be meaningless as doubtless copies have been made. A request to “gave back” the document(s) is meaningless (how many copies would you like?). Once in digital form, there is no distinction between an original and an identical copy.

The only meaningful request is to require the destruction of all copies of a document. In effect saying “forget you ever saw this…”

Wired News: Under Attack, Spam Fighter Folds
A startup whose aggressive antispam measures drew a blistering counterattack from spammers two weeks ago that brought down the company’s servers along with a wide swath of the internet is shuttering its program targeting junk e-mailers.

The spammer’s business works because they can spew out millions of emails for essentially no cost. Given the low cost the business is profitable if only a tiny fraction of the volume of spam generates a response. Clearly a very profit from spam, with the very many burdened by wasted time and extra cost. Nasty business.

The spammer’s business model breaks if each spam email sent out generates a reply.

nothing comes between me and my apple on Flickr – Photo Sharing!

Old oak on Flickr – Photo Sharing!

Playing with autostitch again.

Schneier on Security: NSA Eavesdropping
“ The NSA would like to remind everyone to call their mothers this Sunday.
They need to calibrate their system. ”

Adult industry welcomes .xxx domain rejection
Adult companies have joined conservative groups in celebrating an Internet regulator’s decision to reject the creation of a domain for adult Web sites.

Now just this by itself ought to give most anyone pause. Why are pornographers apparently in agreement with “conservative groups”?

On Wednesday, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) voted against the proposal, which would have led to the creation of an .xxx domain suffix for pornography sites. Conservative groups in the U.S., such as the Family Research Council, have welcomed the decision.

“This would have been a landgrab for pornographers, and ICANN did absolutely the right thing,” Charmaine Yoest, a vice president of the Family Research Council, told Bloomberg.

Right now there is no effective way to block off pornographic content from entering your home or business. Creation of the “.xxx” domain would be a huge step forward, as blocking the “.xxx” domain (at your request) would be dead easy. Your ISP could offer this as a service. The box that connects your home (or business) to the Internet could offer this as a feature.

Pornographers pay at least lip service to the notion of excluding minors from access to “mature” content. Some are quite sincere – others less so. Those that sincerely want to keep pornographic material away from children should be quite willing to move all pornographic material to the “.xxx” domain.

Once pornographic material is segregated, it can be blocked. Blocking the “.xxx” domain from schools, libraries, businesses, and homes would be easy.

On the flip side, doubtless a significant chunk of the pornographers business comes through access from those locations.

So who the heck is the “Family Research Council” and why are they siding with pornographers?
Pornography is a very profitable business. It is possible the FRC is a front for less-ethical pornographers? (Don’t you just love organizations with names that tell you almost nothing, or are misleading?)

Looking at the FRC website, in no place could I find even nominal interest in the viewpoints of their members. So who sets their policy?

From the FRC website, and the Wikipedia article it appears the organization represents the views of one rich guy with a popular radio program.

While they may not be interested in your opinions, you – of course – are free to agree with his opinions … wholesale.

So either this one guy is either operating in a clue-free zone (probable), or he has an interest in the pornography business on the side (possible).

“Adult companies do not want an .xxx domain because there is no additional profit in it (in fact, there is additional cost) and exposes them to possible future regulation. What’s the point of moving an extremely popular and profitable Web site from a .com to an .xxx domain?”

Alexander added that adult companies actually want to make content more mainstream and claimed the majority were therefore opposed to the .xxx domain.

“The idea in the adult entertainment industry is to mainstream adult content to the point where it is not different from selling any other commodity, such as groceries,” Alexander said. “The more publicly mainstream porn becomes, the more money the adult entertainment companies make…Creating an ‘Internet red light district’ goes against mainstreaming adult content, so most of the producers I know were against the .xxx suffix from the beginning of the debate.”

Lets all be sure to give the FRC the appropriate credit for helping out the pornographers. As a father, you can be certain that I will.