June 2011 – rc3.org

Month: June 2011 (page 1 of 2)

Robert Morris, RIP

Computer security pioneer and original Unix hacker Robert Morris has passed away at age 78. My favorite part of his obituary is the first sentence:

Robert Morris, a cryptographer who helped developed the Unix computer operating system, which controls an increasing number of the world’s computers and touches almost every aspect of modern life, died on Sunday in Lebanon, N.H.

It’s amazing and delightful to think that after all of these years that no operating system has surpassed Unix as a network server. It seems like a long time ago now, but it was widely believed that eventually Windows NT would kill off Unix. I’m glad that didn’t happen.

Most people recognize his name thanks to his son’s worm that essentially crashed the Internet back in 1988:

As chief scientist of the National Security Agency’s National Computer Security Center, Mr. Morris gained unwanted national attention in 1988 after his son, Robert Tappan Morris, a graduate student in computer science at Cornell University, wrote a computer worm — a software program — that was able to propel itself through the Internet, then a brand-new entity.

Relinquishing our own rights via tort reform

June 29, 2011 / Rafe / 1 Comment

Last night, I watched Hot Coffee, a documentary that’s extremely critical of the tort reform movement. It occurred to me a long time ago that the civil court system is one of the few avenues by which regular people can seek redress against the rich and powerful, especially against corporations. The others are by voting for politicians who are pro-regulation and consumer rights, through organized labor, and in more recent times, by publicizing your cause on the Internet.

Corporate interests consistently work to undermine those channels to insulate themselves from being held accountable by regular people. Hot Coffee makes it clear exactly how business interests have spent tons of money to weaken the court system and even eliminate it entirely through binding arbitration clauses in contracts.

These practices are fundamentally undemocratic, and the money that has been spent on them has an effect that distorts the legal system in a way that is profoundly negative for regular citizens. Businesses spend huge sums to elect judges who will rule in their favor in civil cases and more importantly, will uphold state legislation that caps the damages that can be awarded in civil trials. Those same judges are consistently right wing on every social issue imaginable, and tend to take a narrow view of civil rights as well. Corporations spending money to expand and protect damage caps for plaintiffs are keeping people like Radley Balko in business when it comes to the rights of defendants in criminal proceedings as well.

Most importantly, the documentary shows how the corporations built public support for laws that almost nobody would be in favor of if they actually understood how they worked. It’s a must-watch. It’s airing on HBO now, and will be available on Netflix sometime in the future, I guess.

Differentiating between politics and activism

June 24, 2011 / Rafe / 0 Comments

I’ve been thinking persistently about the difference between politics and activism basically since Barack Obama was inaugurated. As the old saying goes, politics is the art of the possible. Activism is about fighting for principles regardless of their possibility. We run into problems when we expect politicians to be activists, or expect political campaigns to be activist movements. Likewise, activists oftentimes make poor politicians. That said, political change is contingent on effective activism. In short, activism creates the changes in public opinion that result in political change.

I have a lot more to say about this, but Ta-Nehisi Coates just posted a useful illustration of what I’m talking about.

The limited practical applications of fair use

June 23, 2011 / Rafe / 1 Comment

Andy Baio explains how he got sued by the photographer who took the iconic cover photo of Miles Davis’ album Kind of Blue after he used a pixellated version on the cover of a CD he produced. He felt he had a good defense under the principle of fair use, but in practical terms, that doesn’t matter:

Anyone can file a lawsuit and the costs of defending yourself against a claim are high, regardless of how strong your case is. Combined with vague standards, the result is a chilling effect for every independent artist hoping to build upon or reference copyrighted works.

Here’s what the Constitution says about intellectual property:

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

I think it makes sense to look at every intellectual property law and court case with this test in mind: does the statute promote the progress of art or science? I think it’s tough to argue that Andy Baio paying damages to the photographer in this case passes that test.

In related news, the Patent Office is considering changing the rules so that the first person to attempt to patent an invention will have priority in the process over the first person to actually create the invention in question. This is great news for patent trolls and big companies, but it doesn’t even come close to passing the Constitutional test.

Update: Here’s another example. Apple (and many other companies) apply for tons of patents, many of which never make it into products at all. Does an invention that is never turned into a product promote the progress of science or the useful arts? I would argue it does not.

The predicament of Jose Vargas

June 23, 2011 / Rafe / 2 Comments

Today the New York Times ran the first hand story of Jose Antonio Vargas, a well-known journalist who, in the piece, confesses that he unknowingly came to this country illegally as an adolescent and, after learning of his status when he tried to get a driving permit, still managed to graduate from college and work for some of the country’s top publications, most notably the Washington Post.

I really recommend that you read the story. While I’m sure he feels better having relieved himself of the burden he’s carried all these years, there’s a good chance he’ll wind up being deported unless someone else intervenes on his behalf.

Hopefully his story will shed some light on the state of many people who came to America as undocumented immigrants as children, are for all intents and purposes Americans, and yet face deportation if they’re ever found out. While I understand that giving such people a direct path to a Green Card or citizenship provides an incentive for illegal immigration, I don’t care. There is nothing to be gained by sending people away who are already fully assimilated and who would suffer greatly by being deported.

Editor Chris Suellentrop writes about how the New York Times Magazine came to publish the story.

Update: Suzy Khimm reports that it’s unlikely that Vargas will be deported.

The FBI does not understand Web hosting

June 22, 2011 / Rafe / 4 Comments

The New York Times has a report on an FBI raid that knocked some of my favorite sites offline yesterday. The FBI visited a colo facility and seized at least one full rack of servers leased by DigitalOne, taking down sites like Instapaper and Pinboard. Apparently they were going after a specific host but they had no idea how to seize only the hardware associated with that host, and in the age of virtualization, going after one VM could still cause many hosts to be taken down.

The modern mix of work and play

June 21, 2011 / Rafe / 0 Comments

I think Matthew Yglesias nails the modern mix of work and play. He’s talking about a study that shows that email users check their work email on weekends, on sick days, and even when they’re on vacation. It’s a two-way street:

At the same time, looking at our traffic stats here at ThinkProgress it’s evident that an awful lot of people are reading blogs when they’re supposed to be at their desk working. Not that I mind, you understand, it’s just a noticeable trend. And traffic really falls off during that week between Christmas and New Years when relatively few people are working. That’s not because nobody can access the Internet when they’re not at their office, it’s because the flipside of using digital technology to work even when you’re not “at work” is using digital technology to slack off when you are at work. Certainly I do both of these things—it’s neither rare for me to be reading an ESPN article during working hours nor to be reading a work email after hours. That’s the nature of modern life.

The other day someone was telling me about a food truck cook they were talking to and how demanding the job is. I responded that we have a great luxury in that even when we’re working hard, we can always check on Twitter or read some stuff on blogs if we need a mental break. That luxury is worth the cost of always being on call to some degree. Heck, I’m writing this blog post while I’m at work, but at the same time I’m going to be up in the middle of the night launching some new stuff. I’m comfortable with the tradeoff.

How out of control is executive pay these days?

June 19, 2011 / Rafe / 2 Comments

I’m already convinced that America’s growing income gap and out of control executive pay are real problems that are getting worse. If you are not convinced, this article on executive pay may change your mind. Don’t miss the visual aids. (Via James Fallows.)

Links for June 14

June 14, 2011 / Rafe / 1 Comment

Today it’s all about the technology links.

First, Peter Knego data mines Stack Overflow and finds that older developers are scarce but valuable.

John Gruber compares Apple’s approach to Google’s when it comes to software development, arguing that Apple focuses on quality of user experience whereas Google focuses on reach — making their software available to the largest audience possible. I think he’s right on the money, and of course it’s worth pointing out that Google’s usability is fine for most users. I prefer Apple’s approach to interface design, but I am a happy user of a large number of Google products.

Tim Bray compares native apps to web apps on mobile devices. In my opinion, a good Web interface is the basic price of entry. Every company that’s deploying Web-based services should have one. Then, if they have the budget to support it, they should build native OS X and Android clients as well, if they can provide any value at all over the basic Web interface. Like Tim, for services I like, if there’s a native client, I pretty much always install it and use it rather than the Web site.

James Fallows looks at a non-obvious reason why Google may be deprecating its translation API. Very interesting.

OK, this link isn’t technical, but it is interesting. Researchers found that rebounding in basketball is a mental skill. I loved this bit:

What allowed the players to make such speedy judgments? By monitoring the brains and bodies of subjects as they watched free throws, the scientists were able to reveal something interesting about the best rebounders. It turned out that elite athletes, but not coaches and journalists, showed a sharp increase in activity in the motor cortex and their hand muscles in the crucial milliseconds before the ball was released. The scientists argue that this extra activity was due to a “covert simulation of the action,” as the athletes made a complicated series of calculations about the trajectory of the ball based on the form of the shooter. (Every NBA player, apparently, excels at unconscious trigonometry.) But here’s where things get fascinating: This increase in activity only occurred for missed shots. If the shot was going in, then their brains failed to get excited. Of course, this makes perfect sense: Why try to anticipate the bounce of a ball that can’t be rebounded? That’s a waste of mental energy.

We should be afraid of Facebook

June 13, 2011 / Rafe / 5 Comments

First, I started seeing more and more Web sites with Facebook like buttons on them. Then I saw Facebook widgets that showed my friends’ activity when I visited third party sites. Now, I’m seeing lots of blogs switch over their comments to use Facebook as a third party comments system. In the meantime, I’m seeing more and more people use Facebook to host images and video, and even Facebook as a URL shortener. Today, Nelson Minar commented on the fact that Facebook is taking over single sign on.

Here’s his warning:

The problem is that Facebook is creating a monopoly. That’s a huge risk to every other company on the Internet. It’s bad for users too, we’re losing the ability to use pseudonyms online. And while Facebook’s technical execution is excellent the company has demonstrated over and over again its willingness to act unethically towards their users. We don’t want them controlling user identity.

In my opinion, Facebook is more like the old, proprietary AOL that it is like the Web. When you put content on Facebook, it’s walled off from the rest of the Web, and yet I see more and more people and worse, organizations, as the repository for their photos and so forth. There’s no doubt that Facebook makes it easy to do that sort of thing, but I don’t think it’s too smart to turn your valuable work over to them to take care of. And if you publish a blog, I certainly don’t think it’s a good idea to turn your users over to Facebook to manage, either.

I just don’t trust those guys.

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