Thursday, March 25, 2010

SSL secure, browsers NOT.

It turns out that the government IS spying on not just anyone, but EVERYONE. Not just any government - all governments. Browser weaknesses allow ANY browser accepting CAs to be used as an espionage tool without alerting the user. The weakness? Certificate Authorities willingly leak keys to agents who ask for them. This allows seamless interception of ALL messages, Email, web browsing, and in the case of Windows - your entire operating system.

1st Nail:
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/03/researchers-reveal-likelihood-governments-fake-ssl

2nd Nail:
http://www.thoughtcrime.org/software/sslsniff/

3rd Nail:
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/Sony-PlayStation-PS3-VeriSign-SSL,news-3235.html

In Science, it is necessary to provide only ONE piece of evidence to disprove a theory, and at least three pieces to promote a theory. That makes things pretty robust, and that's why the "theory" of evolution is so strong. After 100+ years, nobody has introduced anything to actually disprove evolution. In the meantime, thousands of pieces of supporting evidence flow in each year - reinforcing the theory.

When THREE pieces of evidence come in to disprove a theory - it's considered absolutely dead in the water, sink it, bury the pond, and plant tulips. The theory that browsers are secure is utterly shattered.

Sleep well.

Friday, March 19, 2010

Asimov was right...

This is similar to my P.I. article.

America's highest technology has been outsourced overseas in never-before seen multinational supra-corporate development - in which corporations take precedence over nations.

Here on the Rolls website:
http://www.rolls-royce.com/defence/products/combat_jets/f136.jsp
And again, here on the Register:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/19/f35b_vertical_landing/page2.html

It is clearly and openly discussed as a corporate enterprise covering multiple nations security forces. Rolls Royce must have pretty high security clearances. Sure, I bet they're required by a contract to conform to security standards and not to share the technology, but never before have corporations been the guardians and keymasters of critical technology. In the past this was always a US laboratory staffed and operated by an elite team of scientists - who often worked WITH corporations and the military, but not FOR.

Nations are merging into corporate "bloks" as predicted by Communism. Yeah, you know, Communism, the USSR, et al. The Russians were right. Human rights and civil rights, nation economies, and peace are all less important today than corporate profits. Anything is good when it's gold is the growing and prevalent morality.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

More Marketing Bullship using made up numbers

Apple Insider, also known as the Apple Liar magazine, is so far up Apple's backside that I can't believe anyone takes this seriously as journalism. The most recent fiasco today is the tiny, statistically insignificant study that the released citing how " 40% of Blackberry users would buy an iPhone."

BULLSHIT. Why would you trade in a Rolls Royce for a Toyota?

Technology impairment aside, why would I want a phone that locks down everything, deletes my personal data without asking, and basically have to deal with a tyrannical company that's imitating Microsoft business practices? Few people like AT&T, and though the iPhone was cool when it came out, Apple shot itself in the butt by forcing ALL iPhone owners to use AT&T - a convicted felon.

AT&T then of course proved that it's now a different company by behaving responsibly and opening up the phone... not. That's alternate universe-land. AT&T proceeded to lock the iPhone down even further.

A quick look at this "study" - an abuse of the word if I've ever seen one, reveals that less than a 100 people responded to the Blackberry question, not 1000+ as the advertising insists. Even 1000 users is irrelevant if they're all coming in through a Pro-Apple marketing campaign!

The company that released this bogus data gives NO sources, no methodology, and in short, there's no way to check their numbers. In other words, it's all lies. On the internet, if you don't provide proof, you might as well be lying.

Why? Because it's too easy to just quote your sources [ABC survey co] and methodology [rigorous double blind, randomized questions] as well as your data manipulation methods [incidence of dual ownership, leapfrogging, per capita, etc.]

The iPhone marketing scam, I mean this latest advertising disguised as a survey, does none of that. After "registering" with the "survey" company, you get a little bit more data - enough to see that they're basically lying through their teeth.

CAVEAT EMPTOR.

1 DO NOT believe everything in print.
2 Consider the source.
3 A little paranoia will save you a lot of money.

re:
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/03/16/39_of_blackberry_owners_say_theyd_switch_to_an_iphone.html

Monday, March 8, 2010

Oscars = Incestuous Process = Self-serving.

The largest voting block is: actors.

Thus, an anti-war film, highest grossing movie ever, with stellar performances and all-around five-star skill put into the movie gets beat by a cheap, flawed, and pro-war movie. How? The pro-war movie kissed actors asses.

It didn't help that the BETTER movie had animation and that threatened the Academy, which has always shied away from SciFi for exactly that reason: They're afraid of technology replacing them.

I have bad news for the Academy. Too late. The Oscars will fade into deserved low-attendance and become an inner-circle ritual. That's my prediction for 2010. By 2020, the Oscars will either cease to be run by the same Academy, or will have embraced technology, or will cease to exist.

Why? Compare them:
1. Movie of the year: 11 Million, 500 theaters, most people didn't really like it.
2. Nominee with no awards: 5 Trillion, 50000 theaters, everyone on Earth loved it.

The money will go away from the Oscars and for the films that do NOT win. Thus, the Oscars have shot themselves in the foot and become irrelevant to film, in exactly the same way that actors have just signed and sealed their doom.

Indie producers such as myself and my friends already avoid, abhor, and have extreme distrust of Union-Card bearing actors who want to work with us. They bring the danger of entanglement, cost overruns, and having an actor tell you how to produce your movie. I've seen this, and it sucks. I never want to work with another SAG actor in my life, and I'll refuse to even where there is money on the table.

When you give in to actors, the producer gets another bomb like the one 'Charly' Theron delivered in Aeon Flux. The freakin' anniversary release of the TV show did better than the motion picture on DVD sales. That's how bad, how disappointing, and how stupid the movie was. Sure, take the main character, and completely reinvent it in a way that diametrically opposes the entire basis of the character, and premise of the film. That's Charred, all right.

I've been on sets to observe actors backtalking producers and directors, and flinch when the director or producer fails to correct them. "Actors are fragile," they say. No, Actors are actors. If they can't act, or won't, replace them.

The Academy that runs the Oscars is run by actors, and so every film that wins awards is basically just an Actor favorite. There's no public vote, no vote across the spectrum of movie production - the grips and lighting techs have no say in the matter. It's not a Democracy. It's an industry-serving process as fake as the Monkees and Hannah Montana.

Money is more important than a gold statue, and will continue to be much more sought-after than the lauding of false praises by soon-to-be unemployed actors.

Sunday, March 7, 2010

Chinese Human Trafficking

I am two things, I am a scientist foremost, and a humanist second. There are very clear reasons why humanity comes second to science in my mind -which may sound evil or heartless, but it's actually nothing of the sort. Without Science, humanity will soon be a moot point. The Earth will continue regardless of us.

So, when I see these many articles critical of China, I am appalled and aghast at THE REPORTING. Journalists have NO IDEA how to handle raw data, and do so at the expense of human lives. They routinely, and often intentionally, overstate or misstate the realities to generate a public reaction. This is known as sensationalism. This is why China gets increasingly frustrated with the USA.

FACTS:
China
Total Population: 1.6 Billion.
Abductions estimate: less than 100 per province per year. [At least I've seen no data indicating larger numbers, all reports are in the dozens, sometimes as few as 6, and it is VERY difficult to average out.] Going with a clearly high estimate, that is ONE in 16 Million. [Gross - all ages.] ((Data? See link 2.))

USA
Total Population: 310 Million.
Abductions estimate: 600,000[1]
That's one in 517 people. [All ages, again.]

Which country has a problem? The United States has 30,000 times more trafficking than China. Again, these are raw numbers, arguable numbers, but the overall data is completely clear - America has a much worse problem than China.

China reacts to incidents of trafficking by punishing everyone involved, and in China, jail isn't a place I'd want to end up. They don't give you televisions and horse racing tracks in China, no matter who you are. There is no "house arrest" for the rich. It's a brick and iron cell - they way a prison should be if you're to have one at all. Yes, Science backs incarceration - when done properly and humanely. The purpose of prison is to punish AND reform. You want to release a viable citizen back into the population as soon as reasonable to do so.

In the United States, prisons are run by abusive overzealous religious wingnuts who enjoy tormenting others. I've met too many of them in my pursuit of a law degree and as someone born into extreme poverty. US jailers are to be feared. I'm not so sure I'd be afraid of jailers in China, where abuses by the officials are met with extreme sanctions, including death.

I am not pro-China, or pro-Communist. I think it's easy to show where science and humanity suffered under "pure" communist rule. However, China is no longer purely communist, and much of the worst that we've come to associate with China is simply no longer true. In fact, the United States is currently much more dangerous than China in many ways. People who protest at the White House get shot with rubber bullets, thrown down by firehoses, arrested, beaten, and even killed. Protests in China are generally met with a calm disdain. The tables, as it were, have turned.

The News Media, I will capitalize because it's a monopoly, more properly known as an OLIGOPOLY of media, will routinely show old footage of people being harassed, and entitle it "today's protest in Beijing." There are major problems with reporting like this, not the least of which is that it's lying, but that not all protests go like that. Peaceful disagreement is respected by the Chinese. Most Americans are completely unaware that China has respect for and actually listens to appropriate political discourse. That's just not what one sees in the news, is it?

What you see on the news are foreign activists who are inciting riot, throwing things, and using loudspeakers. Shouting is extremely rude in most Asian cultures. You can tell a native protest by the quiet, by the symmetry, and by the intellectual level of the protest. The loud, violent, and unruly mobs - those are often lead by non-Chinese persons. These are the people who are arrested and deported, as one of our professors [dumbass] from Evergreen State College discovered.

Here is a quote from a science article about the actual response of the Chinese government in a typical child trafficking ring:

"
Chinese officials arrested 27 suspects in November of 2005.
The Hengdong SWI director’s one-year sentence was the lightest.
The court sent three of the traffickers to prison for 15 years and
fined them each 50,000 yuan (U.S. $6,250).
It sentenced another six traffickers to between three and thirteen years.
Also, the gov-ernment fired 23 county officials in Hengyang and prohibited in-
tercountry adoptions from Hunan Province for several months.
"
[2]

I wish we had that level of direct action in the US government when it comes to ANY act of treason by our own Congress: Selling secrets, giving nukes to allies, killing for fun, giving immunity for bribes, accepting bribes to pass laws, and so on ad nauseum. China tolerates none of that.

1
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/trafficking/about/fact_human.html
2
http://www.ethicanet.org/MeierZhang.pdf

Monday, March 1, 2010

It's now possible to affect voting via internet.

Ars often overstates things, but this data comes from Pew, a conservative foundation that rarely overstates anything. More Americans get their news online than from newspapers, and the internet is now third as a source of news - the boob tube is still raking in more eyeballs in both #1 and #2 positions for national and local broadcasts.

Personally, I find it harder and harder to even watch a single TV show. I've expunged all older TVs from my house but for two - those two owned by my mate. We've got a new LCD coming and I hope to convince her to give away the last two CRTs. What's the big deal? Energy, for one. Attention is the other.

CRTs have a way of sucking people in, drawing your consciousness away from family and your surroundings. Flat screens do not have that affect on me or my kids. I don't know what it is, either the emissions, the light, or something else is just different. Movies look a hell of a lot better on an LCD, and I love movies, but after the movie I can easily get up and go do something else instead of sitting there watching whatever comes on next. Since I started watching movies on my laptop a few years ago I noticed this phenomena.

I've gone kayaking more, gone running more, and I'm generally less interested in television. I wonder how this will shift when more Americans have had their CRTs pass away. Will TV still be the #1 news source? I can't imagine it. The internet is so much more interactive, and with blindingly fast coverage of evolving events. Often long before anyone can cover something up, the video is on youtube.

What's this about voting then? The internet is already affecting voting. People get a more diverse opinion from reading online than is possible from newsprint. Editors carefully control what goes into a newspaper. I know, I've worked for a few. They're so tightly wound they could make coal into diamonds if they sit on it. The internet? Not nearly so much. Often webmasters are their own editors, which gives the lie to grammar nazis worldwide: It doesn't matter. Spelling, word order, and usage, all right out the window.

What's important is the message, and how intelligently is it delivered. TV? Not very intelligent. People like O'Really and Snowjob and Coultroll seem to dominate the press - they're everywhere and overquoted. Stupid is absolutely the rule of the day in TVland. Internet? Intelligence and logic have much more bearing, with actual scientists, experts, and millions of commenters ready to correct any obvious lie.

Obviously, I am biased, for I am a blogger. Not widely read? I don't really care. Blogging has never been about being a media whore. It's about getting information out there. When it comes to voting, knowing the truths about your party and the enemy party is vital. I credit the internet for Obama's election, and thank science for it.





Re:
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2010/02/internet-overtakes-print-in-news-consumption-among-americans.ars