Code Monkey Ramblings

Oh Lord, wontcha buy me... a gallon of gas

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 21:01:43 -0500

This is not the first time, nor will it be the last, that God hears such a "lamentation."

The mafia's new business model

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 12:20:07 -0500

Selling protection packages for local businesses to ensure that they are not disrupted by corrupt local cops. In some jurisdictions, this insurance would sell so well that the mafia would become the Blackwater of the insurance industry.

Prosecutorial imperialism

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 08:50:22 -0500

Let there be no more doubt that prosecutors really ought to be the ones who are subjected to the utmost scrutiny in our legal system:

Imagine a fellow who lives in a dry county in Mississippi (where alcohol is not sold or served) goes to a friend´s bar in New York and has a drink. Shortly thereafter, the bartender visits his friend in that dry county in Mississippi. The local sheriff arrests both the bartender and his friend for an act committed in New York.

Most people, quite properly so, would argue the Mississippi sheriff has no business arresting people for a legal act committed in New York, even though it would have been illegal if committed in Mississippi.

Unfortunately, some prosecutors in the U.S. federal government are now acting like the rogue Mississippi sheriff described above when it comes to gambling, securities and tax laws in foreign countries.

The federal government under the Bush Administration has made this country increasing inhospitable to foreigners who want to visit or do business here because it is getting more and more dangerous for foreigners to come here. We should have learned our lesson when the federal government arrested executives from a British gambling company because they didn't stop Americans from using their online gambling services. Such actions show absolutely not one iota of respect for the sovereignty of other nations, such as Britain and Switzerland, and it's only a matter of time before other countries begin to do this in earnest to our citizens in retaliation.

Cases like this serve as high markers for how dangerous prosecutors can really be. They're the link in the legal system that are typically forgotten. We hear all about rogue judges and cops, but not nearly enough about rogue prosecutors who come up with these insane legal arguments just to expand their own power. Short of a prosecutor behaving like Nifong in the Duke Lacrosse case, they rarely get called out to explain their actions and be held accountable for them. If civil liberties groups want to do more good, it would be better to stop focusing on the police, and start focusing on holding accountable this country's prosecutors because they've been able to operate with impunity for too long.

He did it

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 21:39:15 -0500

Ok, so there might be a snowball's chance in Hell that Mark Zuckerberg really isn't guilty as charged, but Facebook's actions make that seem impossible:

James Ware, a U.S. district court judge, barred reporters and the public from attending the June 23 hearing in San Jose, Calif. He also put many of the documents in the case under seal. CNET Networks filed an objection to Ware's decision last week.

On Wednesday, Ware said he would release a redacted copy of the transcript from the June 23 hearing and allow a magistrate judge to decide on whether some of the other sealed documents should be released. What was redacted is still unclear, according to CNET lawyers who were at Wednesday's hearing.

Facebook has agreed to pay ConnectU's founders cash and stock as part of the terms of the settlement, but the exact amounts have not been released.

It's pretty much a given that whenever a company agrees to pay someone off in a settlement of this nature that there is some merit to the accusations brought against it. From what little I know about this case, Zuckerberg used to be associated with the guys who worked on ConnectU, so I don't think their case is outrageous in the least from what I've gathered about it so far.

The guys who rise to the top in this industry seem to have a habit of having an almost Macchiavellian view of dealing with others and their intellectual property rights. Microsoft under Bill Gates got dinged several times for taking others' code. Of course, you almost have to be like that in order to succeed in this industry, so I don't know that there is much that can be done about that.

Well, it looks like the guys at ConnectU will now no longer have any bitching rights. They'll be able to smoke antique Cuban cigars lit with $100 bills for the next twenty years when Facebook finally goes public.

How would you handle this?

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 09:10:41 -0500

An interesting dilemma for the libertarians who read my blog. According to this, many of the industrial materials needed to make things like LCDs will be exhausted from known supplies by 2017. Simply put, if these chemicals are gone, there will not be enough materials anymore to continue making a lot of common display technology. Even copper is starting to become scarce.

So how should this be handled? If it is left up to the free market, there are two possibilities. Either someone will eventually figure out a way to get around this using alternate chemicals, or a company will rise up that does industrial recycling and sells the materials that are harvested from landfills to computer companies--probably at significant cost because of the labor force required to pull out the dead electronics, among other factors. The alternative, is state governments make it a misdemeanor to be caught throwing electronics out in the trash. Instead, you have to take them to a special recycling facility or your trash service will do it for you.

I lean toward the former out of principle, but practicality tells me that the latter might be necessary just because of how many people will act like their human rights have been violated by not being able to constantly consume as much electronic hardware as they can afford.

Black men, dating and the War on Drugs

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 14:54:39 -0500

Ilya Somin makes some good points about how the War on Drugs affects black demographics:

As I have noted in the past (here and here), some 55% of US federal prison inmates and 21% of state inmates are non-violent drug offenders. And over 62% of incarcerated nonviolent drug offenders are black(most of them poor black males). I don't claim that this racial disparity in drug incarceration is caused solely - or even primarily - by racial prejudice. But even if undertaken for the best of motives, it drastically reduces the available pool of marriageable men in poor black communities. And, as Kerry notes, those men who remain have far less incentive to marry because their stronger bargaining position caused by scarcity makes it easier for them to obtain sex without making any longterm commitment to the women they do it with. Even after drug offenders are released from prison, they are likely to be worse marriage prospects than before, if only because it's hard to get a steady job after being in prison for several years.

Some conservatives might argue that the kinds of men who get arrested for drug possession or dealing wouldn't make good husbands even if they stay out of prison. Perhaps that is true in some cases. But these men still probably beat the alternative of single parenthood. Moreover, Kerry's point about bargaining position is crucial here. If fewer men from these communities were in prison, there would be more competition between them in the dating market and thus stronger incentives for them to behave in ways that appeal to women. To the extent that women prefer men who don't get high to those who do, that might well include staying off the drugs - as well as becoming better providers and fathers in other ways.

Ending the War on Drugs would certainly be no panacea with respect to the problems that the black community faces such as the rate of illegitimacy among black children. However, one need only look at the statistics cited above to realize that the War on Drugs has done tremendous damage to black demographics when it comes to the ability of black men to become stable providers and contributors to society. You cannot have such a large percentage of black men with black marks on their records for what are, objectively speaking, petty offenses without serious problems for black family life. Not only will it be harder for them to get good jobs, but it helps continue the poverty that fosters lower expectations about what sort of role black men can, should and must play in their communities.

To see evidence of what Somin says about black men having more power, one need only look at the disparity between college-educated black women and college-educated black men. There are significantly more of the former than the latter, and that gives college-educated black men a great advantage over black women. Not only is it easier for them to find a black woman at their social level than it is for a black woman to do the same, but their position also gives them more access to women of other races.

If drug dealing were no longer a profitable, black market enterprise, that would also provide incentive for more black men to do well in school and follow other social norms. The single biggest problem with the War on Drugs is that it gives many people a lucrative alternative to the normal economy for making a living, thus allowing them to effectively not contribute to society while making money.

When the lawyers fail the police

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 12:54:34 -0500

This is an interesting take on what happens when the politicians, judges and prosecutors fail to hold up their end of the criminal justice system. Namely, some police begin to feel that they cannot actually do their basic job if they have to turn to the courts because the courts so thoroughly fall down on the job. While I appreciate law and order as much as the next guy, I can see how some of the controversial tactics mentioned in that post would actually be good for some of the poorer parts of the community. Besides, you can only shed so many crocodile tears for serious criminals who finally get their comeuppance when the police and community work together to find more "organic solutions" to the local crime problem when the courts just routinely slap the offenders on the wrist for serious crimes.

The primary reason why these failings happen is because it is antithetical to "democratic wisdom" to suggest that we should only elect people to the legislature who have some sort of serious philosophy of law and justice. Why, that might smack of elitism!

There must be killing

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 14:49:34 -0500

Zimbabwe needs to be purged:

A baby boy had both legs broken by supporters of President Robert Mugabe to punish his father for being an opposition councillor in Zimbabwe.

Blessing Mabhena, aged 11 months, was seized from a bed and flung down with force as his mother, Agnes, hid from the thugs, convinced that they were about to murder her.

She heard one of them say, "Let's kill the baby", before Blessing was hurled on to a bare concrete floor.

Blessing, who may never be able to walk properly, was one of the youngest victims of atrocities against the opposition party Movement for Democratic Change in the run-up to last Friday's sham presidential election.

There is a time for peace, and a time for war. Mugabe's faction has passed into a new frontier: a time for extermination. Zimbabwe will not know peace until every person who actively helps this man has been sent to the gallows. You cannot support a man, and be freely associated with men like these, without crossing a line which effectively revokes your right to live.

News, links and random thoughts

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 10:58:42 -0500

The danger of content filters hits the American Family Association. Hilarious results ensue.

Two reasons why I say that you should always be very, very cautious about trusting anyone in law enforcement whose job is drug law enforcement. Ain't a whole lot of difference between the average drug cop and the average drug dealer when it comes to upholding the law and doing what's right. **UPDATE**: Make that three reasons. Whenever drug criminality hits close to home, the drug warriors' hearts begin to beat again.

Another important breakthrough in quantum computing. No, it doesn't play Doom or Quake.

Leave it to the Irish to tell nature what's what.

If I ever get enough time to myself, I may have to read some of these references on compiler design.

An admin who ran a major Bit Torrent site just got busted. For their sake, I hope the guys who run the Pirate Bay never come anywhere near U.S. territory as they'll be shot on sight.

One of my best friends worked the last month or two as an intern for his state's senator after having spent the previous few years working as a very well-paid mechanical engineer. His experience as an intern caused him to make the observation that one of the fatal flaws of our government is that we pay these people and the staffers so little. Like barely a few thousand dollars for the average intern for their entire internship, and the staffers largely make $25-$35K. He wagers that our country wouldn't even have to spend more than an extra hundred million dollars to fundamentally restructure the paige/staffer system so that they could be paid a lot better. As it stands right now, the paiges are usually paid so little that all a lobbyist has to do to curry subtle favor is to serve good catering at a presentation. Sick, isn't it?

One last thing. I have a new spam filter in place. It's the TypePad Anti-Spam system that's part of Movable Type 4.2. If anyone notices problems with anonymous commenting, please create a user account or log in by TypeKey or OpenID and let me know.

Now you know they're just repeating feminist talking points

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 23:32:09 -0500

Jews are among the most highly educated minorities in America. More than half of all Jewish adults (61 percent of men and 50 percent of women) have received a college degree, and a quarter (29 percent of men and 21 percent of women) have earned a graduate degree. Jews are almost twice as likely to hold a college degree than Americans generally and four times as likely to hold a graduate degree.

Unfortunately, their academic and professional success decreases their dating pool since, as Cohen says, "men want to 'marry down' and women want to 'marry up.'"

Although no one is advocating that women avoid graduate school, Dr. Michael J. Salamon, a psychologist and the author of The Shidduch Crisis: Causes and Cures, says "the problem [in the Jewish dating scene] is that women are overeducated and find the men boring. The men are intimidated. And the women are not getting what they want."

The rate of Jewish men holding a college degree is a little over twenty percent higher than that of Jewish women, and the rate of Jewish men holding advanced degrees compared to Jewish women is even higher than that. Yet we are still expected to believe that despite such a disparity there that is clearly in favor of Jewish men, that the real reason that Jewish men tend to be skiddish today about marrying Jewish women is because they are "boring" and "intimidated by Jewish women." Could it possibly be that Jewish men are instead increasingly just not interested in putting up with the behavior of much of the female segment of the Jewish population (as alluded to in the article at least once)?

Nah... that couldn't possibly be it! As we all know, the male ego is fatally fragile the moment it comes into contact with even the most modest female accomplishments. Why, if a woman has accomplished more than brushing her teeth, putting on her clothes and being able to roughly carry on an intelligible conversation, it sends men of every sort running to the hills for the soft, non-confrontational, plasticy embrace of blow up dolls, video games, porn, maxim, bachelor pads and all that.

The moral of this story is that if you are going to regurgitate the old talking points, at least have the good sense to not do so while presenting numbers that invalidate the talking points after no more than a moment's contemplation.

Best quote about social networking--ever

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 21:21:27 -0500

Leave it to Dr. Helen to put it so beautifully:

Katherine Berry at Pajamas Media discusses social networking: "Having just spent another morning of my life reading the most boring details of other people's mornings, I've realized how very little things like Twitter, FaceBook, or FriendFeed actually contribute to one's life: it's more like sitting in a room full of over-caffeinated narcissistic Tourette's patients with ADHD who are all trying to be the most entertaining. And, really, what's so social about a monologue?"

I think I check my facebook account maybe a few times a month. Maybe. I think the last time I checked it was when I needed to add a coworker to my list so that we could keep a steady business contact going since he was rotating off of our project and going to work for a different group. The majority of these services just strike me as utterly inane, especially Twitter and any service similar to it. Penny Arcade did a wonderful job dumping all over Twitter in a comic published about two months ago.

Unlike the author of the article that Dr. Helen was talking about, I realized a while ago that paying attention to most blogs and social media in general was a waste of time. I used to have probably a good 50 RSS feeds in Google Reader, and I've narrowed that down to probably about half of that now. The reason for that is that I realized that I was wasting an enormous amount of time consuming meaningless rubbish. As a general rule, if I comment on your blog, it's because I have your feed in my Google Reader list. Life is too short to waste on blogs and social media that mainly revolve around meaningless personal minutia.

In honor of Penny Arcade, I suggest we start calling such bloggers "Twitter Shitters."

Don't be so quick to celebrate the Heller decision

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 11:23:37 -0500

Ilya Somin points to property rights law and rulings as a basis for reminding those of us who were celebrating this decision that this is absolutely by no means a decisive battle in the right to protect firearm ownership:

Unlike in the case of the Second Amendment right to bear arms, the Supreme Court has always recognized that the Fifth Amendment's Takings Clause and other property rights provisions in the Constitution protect individual rights. However, since the 1930s, the Court has defined the scope of these rights so narrowly that they get very little protection in practice. For example, the Court has always held - as it reaffirmed in Kelo v. City of New London - that property cannot be condemned unless the taking is for a "public use." Purely "private" takings are - and always have been - forbidden by the Court. However, the Court defines "public use" to include virtually any conceivable benefit to the public, even ones that might never actually materialize. As a result, the Court still lets government condemn virtually any property for virtually any reason. In theory, there is an individual right here; in practice, not so much.
Similarly, the Court has long recognized that some regulations of property that don't involve physical occupation of land by the government might might still be onerous enough to be considered "takings" requiring "just compensation" under the Fifth Amendment. However, in cases such as Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Commission and Tahoe-Sierra Preservation Council v. Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, the Court decided that such regulations are only presumptively considered takings if they permanently wipe out 100% of the economic value of the property in question. If a regulation wipes out 98% of the value permanently, or %100 of the value for a period of twenty years, the property owner is probably out of luck. In practice, government officials can almost always draft regulations in such a way that their impact is not quite permanent and/or allows the owner to retain some tiny percentage of his land's value. Thus, property owners have little or no real protection against regulatory takings - despite the Supreme Court's recognition of an individual right.

You know that it's very rare that I say "read the whole" thing, that common blogger saying indicating that a post is actually worth dropping what you are doing and reading, so when I say "read the whole damn thing," you know you ought to do that. While I agree with Triton that there ought to be celebration, and there are supporting precedents that may prove useful to gun rights supporters, Somin makes many important points about how the Supreme Court has been able to recognize that a right exists, while using legal mumbo jumbo to effectively wipe out the practical enjoyment of that right. That's part of the reason why I referred to (In)Justice John Paul Stevens with such pure, unadulterated disdain in a previous post. It is amazing that such sophistry is tolerated by society, even while it shows absolutely no mercy for defective thinking and work in industry, but I digress.

Most Americans do not have the slightest clue as to how unfree America actually is because they have never paid attention to the battles that civil liberties groups have fought and lost. They are entirely unaware of the fact that in many practical respects, and I say this with no exaggeration, private property is largely unprotected in our country now. In fact, I daresay that many people who be abjectly horrified if they had any idea how easily, in so many cases of law, the government can simply rip their property away from them with the thinnest of justifications. We have not reached the "just because we want it" stage of the relationship between the state and private property, but it is getting very close. That's why after all of the celebration and hoo-rahs over Heller, I feel like a hung over partier now that I'm brought back down to reality the next day.

The one thing I do know about Heller is that now that the D.C. gun ban is down and out for now, every resident of D.C. that wants a gun should come to Virginia and buy one. Big ones, little ones, scary ones. I recommend a variety of guns for the defense of the home for the man of the house, and maybe one of these for the little lady, and maybe even one of these for any man whose daughter is starting to date. Lock and load before the other gang in blue gets called out to enforce D.C. Gun Ban Part Deux: Every gun must be kept in a 5'x5' block of cement encased in six inches of Titanium.

Killswitch Disengage

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 16:04:34 -0500

Bruce Schneier may be exaggerating here, but he has a point about where a lot of companies and government agencies would like to take us. However, I think defeating this fear may be a lot easier than he realizes.

OnStar will soon include the ability for the police to shut off your engine remotely. Buses are getting the same capability, in case terrorists want to re-enact the movie Speed. The Pentagon wants a kill switch installed on airplanes, and is worried about potential enemies installing kill switches on their own equipment.

Microsoft is doing some of the most creative thinking along these lines, with something it's calling "Digital Manners Policies." According to its patent application, DMP-enabled devices would accept broadcast "orders" limiting capabilities. Cellphones could be remotely set to vibrate mode in restaurants and concert halls, and be turned off on airplanes and in hospitals. Cameras could be prohibited from taking pictures in locker rooms and museums, and recording equipment could be disabled in theaters. Professors finally could prevent students from texting one another during class.

The possibilities are endless, and very dangerous. Making this work involves building a nearly flawless hierarchical system of authority. That's a difficult security problem even in its simplest form. Distributing that system among a variety of different devices -- computers, phones, PDAs, cameras, recorders -- with different firmware and manufacturers, is even more difficult. Not to mention delegating different levels of authority to various agencies, enterprises, industries and individuals, and then enforcing the necessary safeguards.

Obviously you can't explain that the easiest way to dissuade companies and agencies from this path is to simultaneously disseminate the information used to lock down the private property, and then encourage people to act on it. I think it would be not only a great act of civil disobedience, but an interesting experiment for an enterprising Computer Science or engineering student to make a transmitter that can broadcast the shutdown code to every car on a busy highway during rush hour traffic. That way, no one is likely to be hurt (except by road rage, maybe), but it is likely to create one heck of a powerful public backlash should this technology every actually be put into mainstream use by government mandate.

I'm not convinced that the government will really get very far with this sort of thing just because of the fact that it will be so easy to abuse. Like the backdoors that government wanted in all encryption products in the 1990s, these technologies that are supposed to "help law enforcement" will invariably fall into criminal hands, making them useless for the public and law enforcement. As we know from history, the government simply had to stand down over encryption because the measure of control that it gained over private information was outweighed by the sheer volume of crime that was a likely outcome of forcing the public to use crippled encryption algorithms to protect their data and financial transactions.

Still, we may be in for interesting times...

Why I often say that any educated person can be a lawyer or judge

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 14:00:53 -0500

(In)Justice John Paul Stevens proves why anyone who can read the law as written and memorize it can be a lawyer or a judge:

In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that the majority "would have us believe that over 200 years ago, the Framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate civilian uses of weapons."

The second amendment reads:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

I think it's pretty obvious that there might be just a teeny weeny little restriction there in that bold and italicized part...

H/T to Rachel Lucas for bringing this mind-numbing level of sophistry from Stevens to my attention.

Should they be able to execute them?

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 10:54:01 -0500

I remain torn about this ruling. While I don't personally have any problem with executing child molesters, I share Balko's concern with the fact that not only is our legal system seriously flawed, but there have been too many cases of false accusations to implement this right now. In the context of a system like the Mosaic Law, this would make sense, as those who are falsely accused under the Mosaic Law have far more protection than those accused under secular American law. To implement this, we would need:

Dramatically increased penalties for perjury.
Make it a "stop, don't pass go, lose your license to practice law" offense for any prosecutor who taints or withholds exculpatory evidence from the defense.
Provide some mechanism where an innocent party may compel the prosecution of any government agent or witness, against a prosecutor's wishes, by proving to a judge that it must take place for justice to be obtained. Call it a Demand for Punitive Redress of Grievance or something, but a defense attorney should be able to file a court order to secure the prosecution of those that inflict injustice on their client.