The Boston Globe (ostensibly defending its parent company) reports that the fact that the US was monitoring SWIFT for funny money transactions was the worst kept secret in the history of espionage. Obviously Congress believes that terrorists do not use the Internet and that their only source of counter-intelligence is the Washington Post and the New York Times.
Paul Graham writes wonderful essays on technology an sociology including his recent The Power of the Marginal. A choice quotation to whet your appetite:
“The big media companies shouldn’t worry that people will post their copyrighted material on YouTube. They should worry that people will post their own stuff on YouTube, and audiences will watch that instead.”
I told a friend today that 5 years from now I bet we’d be watching more YouTube than regular televsion. Then I though about the past few days and realized that today I watch more YouTube than regular televsion. The Marginal is going mainstream.
To quote the fictional yet wiser than our own President Bartlet:
“…is there an epidemic of flag burning going on that I’m not aware of?”
See the NYTimes article on the flag burning amendment
Clint Deboer writes 10 reasons why HD DVD is doomed to failure. There is precisely one reason that HD DVD is doomed to be the next laserdisc (at best): there is nothing better about it. That is a lie - there is lots of new technological improvements, but if you ask the average consumer what they think, they will tell you that they see nothing new. Comparing the DVD to HD-DVD transition to the DVD to VHS, most consumers will tell you they buy or rent DVDs because they can skip the previews, don’t have to rewind and the picture never gets fuzzy in the middle of the movie. Compared with the videophiles who bought DVDs for better quality, most people are only now buying HD TVs and starting to realize that DVDs actually look and sound better.
Clint is right on the mark comparing the HD-DVD format wars to competing video game systems. Another big difference is that (small children aside) most consumers do not watch the same movies daily whereas people do play the same video games repeatedly. The only consumer media formats that have gained wide acceptance have been the unified ones: from LPs to tapes to CDs and from VHS to DVDs. All new DVD players can also play both SACD and DVD-Audio but those formats are dead in the water. If there was new software (i.e. movies) available exclusively on HD-DVD then we may see increasing interest. When faced with the proposition of having to buy a new player and then pay double the price for the same exact material (better quality aside), consumers will go with what’s cheap and easy.
Lebanon’s EFXFilms is getting help from LA based 900 Frames to film a public service announcement that they plan to air on Iraqi television. The message? Don’t suicide bomb. The ad is purported to be a graphic depiction of an Iraqi square before during and after a bombing. I’m sure they’ve considered that this will not accidentally inspire would be suicide bombers who glorify violence in jihad.
The rhetoric on the liberal political airwaves lately has been all about whether the Democrats can win back the House or Senate and the likely 2008 presidential candidates jockeying for position. The key Democratic hopefuls are trying to capitalize on diminishing support for the war in Iraq by standing up and taking blame for voting for the war. The problem is that they are wrong.
With identical bills introduced into the Senate and House giving the President permission to use force against a perceived threat, the right move on the part of Congress was to vote yea. A nay vote would have been an empty threat. The issue is that the bill was overly broad and premature - a huge strategic failure on the part of the Bush administration. Having survived the Cold War we are aware that the only thing worse than failing to threaten to go to war is to have to follow through on that threat. No one listened to Sen. Robert Byrd when he said that it was a bad bill, with effectively no checks on the power that it granted. Apparently it has been too long since Vietnam and our congressmen have forgotten their responsibility to keep a check on the executive power, lest the President starts to think that he can do anything.
The Democrats need to stop taking the blame for voting for the war or the country is going to start blaming them for it. A yea vote for the war in Iraq was the right vote, but it was a bad bill to begin with. The Bush administration and the GOP have shown their lack of strategic sophistication and a propensity towards poor planning. Memo to Democrats: it is going to take a lot more than a misguided apology if you have any hope of regaining the public’s trust.
CNN reports that almost 10% of drivers would fail a sample state licensing exam created by GMAC Insurance. While my wife claims that I’m bitter about getter a lower score than she did I am mostly disappointed at the poor excuse for “reporting” on the part of CNN. Instead of doing some critical analysis of the test, CNN regurgitates the statistical manipulation as provided by whoever fed them the story. Taking the test immediately reveals a number of fallacies.
The article claims that, based on a 70% passing score, 1 in 11 drivers would fail the simulated driving test. While many states use similar ratios, written tests are primarily used for permits. Such tests are also designed for people who have just studied a state specific driver’s manual. CNN also fails to mention questions that may have state specific answers and is not critical of questions that are poorly worded. Here are a few that may be easier to answer if one were to study an accompanying manual (spoilers):
“1. Where should you park when you need help after your tire suddenly deflates while driving on a highway?”
Great question, but the “correct” answer (”b. Off the pavement”) doesn’t apply to many interstate highways that don’t have an “off the pavement” because there is a guardrail. A better “all-purpose” answer might be “c. Where your car will be visible for 200 feet from the front.” If I one were really being critical one might point out that the answer does not qualify whether he disable vehicle should be visible 200 feet from the front of the car or from the front of a car approaching from behind. In addition to not specifying whether the highway has a shoulder (which is on the pavement and the correct place to park a disable vehicle), the question also does not specify whether the highway is divided, in which case the correct place to park is on the left shoulder if the car is in the leftmost lane when the tire suddenly deflates.
“8. Turn your front wheels toward the curb when you are parked _____.”
If you take this test in San Francisco, you would (correctly) be torn between “a. Facing uphill” and “c. Facing downhill,” since this is required in both cases.
“10. If you have trouble seeing other vehicles because of dust, precipitation, or smoke blowing across the roadway, you should drive slower and turn on your_______:”
My wife and I disputed our answers to this question (she agreed with the test writers). During the day it is safer to use fog lights or parking lights during obstructed visibility. The reason is that water particles and sand in the air reflect your headlights, in effect reducing visibility. There is nothing wrong with using headlights during precipitation. At night you have your headlights on in any case. My wife chose headlights because she said that running lights and parking lights may not be the same thing. Right or wrong, it is a poorly worded question that depends on the specifics of the situation and the features available on the vehicle that you are driving.
“11. If your vehicle starts to hydroplane, you should:”
This is another question that depends on the vehicle. The “correct” answer is “c. Slow down gradually by easing the gas, and not applying the brakes” but this is not true if you can effectively pump the breaks or have anti-lock breaks which can provide some increased friction.
“12. When a car with bright headlights comes toward you at night, you should:”
The answers to this question again had my wife and me in confused consensus (and again she guessed right).
“a. Move toward the right edge of your lane
b. Look above the oncoming headlights
c. Look below the oncoming headlights
d. Look toward the right edge of your lane”
We both ruled out b and c as ineffective but while my wife decided that choice a. could lead to you driving off the road, I reasoned that in choice d. it would be dangerous to take your eyes off of the road.
The simulated test might be a wonderful bit of trivia but relatively useless for anything else. With a spread of 3 questions (15% of 20 questions) between “smartest” and “dumbest” it is meaningless to try and draw any practical conclusions. The questions were not validated (there is no proven correlation between a slightly lower score on this test and worse driving). Answers to some of the questions are ambiguous, depending on unspecified conditions. Finally, these types of tests are designed for beginner drivers who have studied an accompanying manual from which the questions (in particular the wordings) are derived.
What might be a practical method of checking driving skills across the country? The way every state actually does its licensing (not permitting): an actual driving test administered by trained instructors.
Jason Mazzone at Concurring Opinions writes that the new DHS grant allocation process is based on best protecting ”national monuments or icons [that] attract the interests of terrorists.” I have not confirmed the source of his suspicions but the idea that a group of government employees can properly assess the terrorist risk of targets throughout the United States is ludicrous. Terrorists are opportunists. If they can cause fear and anger they consider themselves successful (that is why one big attack every few years is more effective than lots of little ones). They could care less about Mount Rushmore or the Grand Canyon but large populated areas where people feel safe have been prime targets (Cafes, Trains, Office Buildings, the Pentagon).
Of course blindly allocating funds to states with the most office buildings is not only infeasible, it may have little effect on the safety of these structures. Short of anti-aircraft artillery, the best way to protect the Twin Towers was locking the cockpits of planes. The only way to completely thwart the 1993 attacks was to catch either the perpetrators after the planning but before the execution or stop the vehicle in a location where on the stop detonation would have caused minimal damage.
Perhaps DHS should spend more time talking to some real security experts instead of substituting terrorists’ values with our own.