jawfish

An Act of Privacy
john posted in politics & culture on June 30th, 2005

caveat: my personal data has not yet been stolen, as far as I know, by greedy unscrupulous computer data thieves. It is held by numerous greedy, unscrupulous organizations.

My data and your data is held by banks, brokerages, schools, governments, insurance companies, medical companies, credit card companies, retail companies, on and on. In short, your personal data is managed by every sort of unscrupulous, greedy institution on the planet, except you. All these institutions can withhold, update, or give out your data at their discretion. You, on the other hand, have far fewer options, unless you choose to lead an Amish life.

Think this talk is paranoid? Your bank sells your data to a variety of direct-mail companies. Just ask them. Your DMV sells your data to anyone who will pay. Your Federal Census gives away your data. Check your credit card receipts – about half will show your full account number. Join an association like AARP for instance, then check your junk mail.

Today in the LA Times, Michael Hiltzik writes a column about his data being lost by the BofA. He wonders why his data was on a laptop at all, and why they aren’t taking better care of it.

I know why the holders of your data don’t respect your privacy – they think your data belongs to them.

So, in the spirit of California’s crazy propositions, I propose an amendment to the Constitution. The amendment shall state that personal data, such as phone number, address, vital statistics, electronic or other virtual address, income, IRS data, birth date, social security number, account numbers, medical information, right down to shoe size shall be considered property of the individual. Each statistic shall be considered a separate piece of property. Any use of whatever kind of this property shall be considered felony theft, unless explicit written or electronic secure permission is given for each separate occurrence of use. Short, but mandatory prison sentences shall be given out for stealing this property. Blanket future permissions are expressly forbidden.

This is intended to make spam a felony, direct-mail a felony, unsolicited commercial phone calls a felony. Losing, selling, or giving away your data is a felony. The most important rule in this proposal is a change from opt-out to opt-in sharing. You automatically own your data, and willingly choose to let it be used, when you see a benefit – opt-in – instead of the flimsy do-not-call list style- opt-out- which requires you to fend off the automated advances of hundreds of parasitic organizations.

Since all of the institutions that hold your data are political donors or governments, there is precious little chance of passage.

Eminent Domain
john posted in other on June 29th, 2005

A couple days after the Supreme Court’s decision that there are no limits on eminent domain, a California man has requested that Justice’s Souter’s hometown seize his house. He proposes to build a hotel and museum to lost liberty. “The justification for such an eminent domain action is that our hotel will better serve the public interest as it will bring in economic development and higher tax revenue to Weare.” Of course, I would condemn the Reagan Library in favor of mini-golf and go-karts, but thats just me.

I even agreed with about half of what George Will said on this issue. Of course, he stumbled through his default rant of how this was a liberal plot, but I ignored that. Otherwise I thought he was pretty much on the mark. This is a terrible idea, letting governments seize real estate, just to increase the tax rolls, or more likely, enrich some mini-mall developer. It’s already happened, of course, see Chavez Ravine and Dodger stadium in LA for a classic instance. At least they weren’t supposed to seize the neighborhood for a municipal project and then turn it over to the O’Malleys.

footnote: Dodger Stadium is a great place, or was while the O’Malley’s owned it. Besides, Vin Scully works there.

Since the land developers are virtually the only source of local political donations across the country, see City of Quartz, I think this amounts to the WalMart and Home Depot Manifest Destiny Rule. Towns which have already sold their soul and future quality of life, not to mention property values, to strip mall developers, will be able to move any obstacle to pave the way for new mini-malls and big boxes. The temptation to erase a sagging downtown and build Sam’s Club will be irresistible. Narrow streets can be widened, firetruck turn-arounds established, and storm ditches straightened. Needless to say there will be zero ball fields, parks and greenbelts developed.

The American product is growth, so maybe enterprising towns will just start re-condemning mini-malls in a loop. As they get older and shabby, about two generations of stores worth, the town council can just tear ‘em out and build again. Jobs will be created, and tax money will make up the difference between the fair-market payoff to Old Developer, and the absurdly low price for New Developer. Anybody with a cornfield near an intersection had better start lining up a real-estate lawyer. You shed is about to become a nail salon.

Robert Moses would be proud.

Fusion Power May Be Un-American
john posted in politics & culture, technologies on June 29th, 2005

Just a couple of days ago, I wrote an innocuous little piece on the US lack of support for science. Yesterday, an international consortium, mostly France and Japan, but with a 10% share from the US, announced the French site of a very long-term nuclear fusion power project, ITER. Fusion power is a long way off, and American teams have been working on it for years, but this still rings like another American failure to control our destiny. Even if it fails commercially, it will establish the city, and the universities which feed the project, as pre-eminent centers of research. Think of Cape Canaveral, and the so-called Space Coast. Like the space program ITER is sure to produce a spin-off of people and ideas for a long time to come.

Why would the richest country. with the largest science establishment, and the highest per-capita energy use, fail to be a center for something so economically important?

Is it because this experiment, for there is no guarantee of commercial success, is too expensive? It will cost as much as a couple of months of the Iraq war, but spread over decades instead of months.

Perhaps its ill-conceived and overly-bureaucratic, and an American project will be competitive?

Perhaps there are too many Euros and Japanese with funny accents?

Perhaps its not being run by Bechtel, Halliburton, or Chevron?

Perhaps no one connected with the project gave money during the last election cycle.

Much as I loathe the Republicans for their trailer-trash refusal to believe government can accomplish anything, I have to say Democrats are just as narrrow-minded here. They are terrified of promoting anything that furthers the economy. Yes, I am all for de-centralized sustainable energy, and massive energy conservation, but the only way we are going to keep a semblance of our lifestyle is through Big Power and the grid. Any projects which require big infrastructure, require Big Capital and Big Companies. I think it would be really cool to live off-grid, and someday I might be able, but 99% of everyone else will be on the grid. That’s just the way it is. Until the ill-advised deregulation in California, we had stable, profitable power companies, answerable to the public, with active research departments working on sustainable energy and conservation. Funny how our rates were lower too.

Then again, maybe worrying about American pre-eminence in research and business is muddle-headed. International financial markets and their remoras, the super-rich, are not beholden to any one country, not even the US or to the US dollar. Countries with the foresight to see to their energy needs will prosper, and the others will fade away. If it’s too expensive to smelt aluminum in Washington, or make steel from recycled cars in North Carolina, then those factories can always be moved elsewhere. We’ll just have to move with the healthy economy, won’t we? Oh. We aren’t allowed to move.

Festival of Science and Art
john posted in politics & culture, technologies on June 24th, 2005

Festival of Science and Art ( de-it-fr only )

While we here in America allow cynical politicians to create strawman arguments about religion, in Asia they are committed to the marriage of science and business, and in Europe they are busy celebrating science and art. These days, holed up in the United States of Television it feels like the rest of the world is leaving us.

Of course, there is tremendous ferment here, and the Europeans and Asians were bound to catch up eventually. States like California are taking up funding for research in the absence of federal support. Robotics and private spaceflight are very strong here near the Mojave testing ground. Still, the constant fight to maintain basic respect for the scientific method is exhausting. The Bush administration continues to fight off the weakest attempts to start dealing with global warming, rolls back environmental protection, and promotes a bizzare energy policy. Given the prediliction for state and federal legislatures to become captive to right-wing demagogues like Tom Delay, maybe the answer is in cross-national organization that simply doesn’t depend on individual national eccentricities. This is the model of the Internet, finance, and the super-rich. Perhaps we have to accommodate to it.

Help Yourself
john posted in technologies on June 23rd, 2005

Somebody Start This Business

Discussing the downslide of quality in Dell PCs with a colleague, we came up with two frameworks that would suit us as customers. We agreed that Dell has started to deliver junk components, and that The HP/Compaq camelopard is worse.

(caveat: I have owned HP and Dell machines, and used both for several years. My desk at work currently has one Dell, one G4, and two no-name boxes.)

Well if the convenience and reliablity of the old Dell system is gone, then we are thrown back on building our own PCs again. The problem in this hyper-competitive market is that a lot of hardware is second rate, and often manufacturers produce both good and bad products. Life and work are way too short to test and study this commodity stuff, so we rely on the collective Internet-enabled wisdom of the discussion forum. Well and good, but that still means shopping around and getting various parts here and there, spending way too much money on shipping, and too much time managing orders. Dell used to be a reliable source that, in effect, performed this task for us, and packaged it conveniently. It was a good model for the company, but oh well.

What to do?

Idea # 1:
A company that researches and bulk-buys a small list of well-known parts, and allows the customer to select a compatible set, and order from one source. The customer gives up the warranty on the whole box, and has to assemble it himself. But, the customer would regain one shipping cost and one trusted supplier to deal with. The supplier would intentionally limit itself to a few choices, in order to simplify management and get the maximum bulk order pricing.

Idea #2:
Local buyers of substantial numbers of PCs get together and form a buyer’s coop. The coop makes bulk orders of a few well-known parts, and maintains a small stock for emergency repairs. This would be a natural outgrowth of a user group. Customers would assemble their own machines.

In the end, I’d prefer the old Dell system, and if a few Texas MBAs had to be put to work at real jobs in order to get it back, so much the better. A company like New Egg could easily start the first business, having all the manufacturer connections, warehousing, and Internet profile. For a newcomer it would take considerable capital.

Neither of these notions helps me with folks who can’t assemble their own PC. I don’t know how to answer their question, “What kind of PC should I buy?”