Bruce Guenter's Thoughts

Friday, July 22nd

The media and hate crimes

A former local aboriginal leader, David Ahenakew, was charged and now found guilty of wilfully promoting hatred (against Jews in this case).

During the proceedings of this incident, starting from the first reporting of the interview until now, nearly every article I have come across has repeated the critical text from the hate propaganda Ahenakew used. Given that the statements themselves are not necessary to each article about the proceedings, could the media outlets doing the repeating themselves be legitimately accused of hate crimes? The only exemption I can see that the media might have is that the reporting would be "in the public interest". While I have no problems with reporting the issues being in the public interest, the nearly endless repetition of the hate propaganda itself is not necessary.
Bruce on 07.22.05 @ 02:19 AM CST [link] [No Comments]

Friday, July 15th

Bruce Schneier in Turnrow

Here is another great Bruce Schneier interview in Turnrow, talking mostly about security and risks, and how decisions about them are made, and should be made.
Bruce on 07.15.05 @ 03:54 PM CST [more..] [No Comments]

Thursday, July 14th

Self-taxation

I read, a while back, a quote that describes the tax system as this: Take a group of people that each has a handful of peanuts. Take one peanut from each of them (taxation), throw half of them away (economic friction), and give the rest to one person (beneficiary). Unfortunately, I have since lost the source of that quote, so I can't tell you who to attribute it to.

It occurred to me yesterday to compare this behavior to lotteries. Everybody participating in a lottery gives a small portion of their wealth to buy a ticket. The lottery organizers use or give away part of the source money (some to run the lottery, maybe some for profit, it is also common here to use lotteries to fund community non-profit groups). Finally, one person receives the windfall from what remains in the source money. In effect, the participants tax themselves.

There are more parallels, too. In a lottery, if you buy more tickets, you have a better chance of winning the lottery. In taxation, if you are taxed more (typically a penalty of the misdeed of earning more), the government is more likely to pay attention to your needs, although this effect usually only works if you voluntarily give additional taxes through lobbying.

While being a close analogue to a tax system, there are some differences that make the comparison a little less amusing. Taxation by lottery is purely voluntary, while government taxation is enforced by government's authority to use violence. Also, the outcome (beneficiary) of taxation is usually specified before the taxation happens, while the outcome of lotteries is unknown until after everybody has paid in (assuming, of course, the lottery organizers aren't corrupt, as has happened).
Bruce on 07.14.05 @ 11:21 AM CST [link] [No Comments]

Wednesday, July 6th

High court OKs personal property seizures

I just about fell right off my chair when I read this report: WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that local governments may seize people's homes and businesses -- even against their will -- for private economic development. What in the world were they thinking? What ever happened to actually owning something? If I own something, how can you legally take it away from me without first successfully negotiating compensation?
Bruce on 07.06.05 @ 02:07 PM CST [link] [No Comments]

Interview with Marcus Ranum

SecurityFocus has published a good interview with Marcus Ranum, "the Chief Security Officer of Tenable Network Security, Inc., the producers of the Nessus vulnerability scanner and a suite of security vulnerability management tools", by Federico Biancuzzi. In it, they talk about trends in computer security issues.

Some quotes:

If [a protocol is] broken, adding crypto just makes it broken and hidden.

Sometimes, patience is a terrific strategy. Wait and see what happens to the early adopters. If they're all getting hacked to pieces or spending tons of money on patches and upgrades and fixes to the stuff they bought - then it's not ready, yet.