Applied Indifference

This article about the PATRIOT renewal stalling is interesting. Seems that there ARE some conservatives left in the GOP. The original PATRIOT act didn’t trouble me overmuch. Sure, it took some controversial things already in play in RICO and DEA actions and extended them to terrorism. But there was court oversight, and the ability to at least attempt to avoid mistakes. But some of the stuff that is being requested in the reauthorization bill is unacceptable.

Relevant section of the above article:
Among other powers, the legislation would have given law-enforcement officials the power to compel compliance with administrative subpoenas, one of the most controversial elements of the Patriot Act that a sizeable group of Republicans on the Hill are trying to abolish. Administrative subpoenas may be issued by law-
enforcement agencies without the approval of a court.
Administrative subpoenas need to go away entirely, not be expanded. We know that without proper supervision we end up with Waco, or at worst, Abu Ghraib. To give that kind of power, unchecked, to employees (who are not accountable to the people) is a Bad Thing.

There are only two things in the PATRIOT act and in the suggested “enhancements” to it that I object to. Anything that lacks court oversight is totally unacceptable. Anything that is not completely open and transparent needs to have a damned good reason for being secret, and should have extra-special court scrutiny applied.

However, that this review is happening shows one very good thing about our system of government. In its own good time, it does work. This review also points out something else - that it is a good thing for laws to expire and require reauthorization. I’d like to see ALL legislation have hard ending dates, if for no other reason than to keep things in the public eye.

Tags: Politics by Brian Corbino
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From the Dennis Miller show (CNBC, 11 May 2004) - Author Greg Palast (”The Best Democracy Money Can Buy”) asks the question “How many guys do you want to come back in boxes before we say it’s stable and sufficient?”

I have a simple answer. No less than 3,000. That’s how many of our fellow citizens were obliterated on Sebtember 11, 2001. I’d have prefered a nice round number, say 0, but that’s kinda unrealistic, expecially with our focus on minimizing collateral damage, but hey. It’s not a perfect world, is it?

Tags: Politics by Brian Corbino
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Moore’s law, attributed to one Gordon Moore, founder of Intel states that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit doubles every 18 months. Note, this has nothing to do with speed or power consumption, just the number.

Anyhow, a friend and I were discussing this last night. Intel’s problems with 90 nm lithography. TSMC’s difficulties even getting to 130 nm (0.13 micron). The reason this matters is simple - if you want to pack more transistors onto a device, you have to do something about the twin evils of power consumption and heat generation. Sure, you could (theoretically) make a Pentium4 with 55 million transistors on the same 1 micron technology that was used in the original Pentium. But it wouldn’t run at even 60 MHz without severe problems in power consumption, heat generation, etc.

So, the answers have traditionally been to shrink the “feature size” of devices on the chip. However, there are limitations that we run into very quickly. The primary on is not, as one might expect, physical. It is economical. We didn’t come up with a definitive answer, but we concluded that at some point it is going to cost too much to build a fab to make a chip to run that fast. Intel spent BILLIONS to make a 90nm process fab that runs on 300mm wafers. How many Prescotts do they need to make to break even?
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Tags: Computers by Brian Corbino
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Read this article and dance along with me.

Remember: the Democrats recently stated that Bush had made “secret deals” with the Saudis to lower oil prices before the election. Then they said that the “abuses” in Iraq would lead to retaliatory pricing of oil. So no matter what happens to the price at the pump, they have a negative issue to use against Bush! Either he sold out to the Saudis, or he pissed them off.

Amazing.

Tags: Politics by Brian Corbino
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That this is happening is no surprise. What is even less surprising is that Kerry is suggesting (in a back-handed kind of way) that maybe the President should resign over it. I’ve been waiting for Kennedy or Rangel to propose impeaching the President, but it seems that Kerry has beaten them to the punch.

Tags: Politics by Brian Corbino
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Dan O’Dowd - CEO of Green Hills Software (makers of embedded operating systems) has this to say about Linux:

Now that foreign intelligence services and terrorists know that we plan to trust Linux to run some of our most advanced defense systems, we must expect them to deploy spies to infiltrate Linux. The risk is particularly acute since many Linux contributors are based in countries from which the U.S. would never purchase commercial defense software. Some Linux providers even outsource their development to China and Russia.

As usual, when peddling FUD, one tends to not let reality intrude. There are documented cases of closed-source software having back-doors intentionally built into them for malicious purposes, so non-open development methods are no guarantee whatsoever. And with the outsourcing craze in full swing, doesn’t he think that commercial software vendors are vulnerable to the same kinds of intrusions?

The NSA and DOD have been working on a hardened version of Linux for a while now. This is because they have the source code. Do you honestly believe that Microsoft or SCO is going to let NSA and DOD rummage around in their code? Would they let NSA release it to the public after doing so? I have a bridge to sell you if you do.

Any credibility that Mr. O’Dowd would have had went out the window at the bottom of the news article however, when he asserts that, of course, HIS company’s software is secure. Too bad we can’t test that theory.

Did I mention that I hate FUD?

Tags: Computers by Brian Corbino
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I mean, seriously. We know for a fact that the Wahhabi sect of Islam that is the official state government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is the basis for most terrorism in the world. We know that the Wahhabi are financing the madrassas and training camps around the world that breed the peculiar hatred for Western civilization that prepares the terrorists for their evil deeds.

And now we know that the leaders of that nation are black-helicopter-seeing barking moonbats of the first order.

Crown Prince Abdullah:

“We can be certain that Zionism is behind everything,” Abdullah told a gathering of leading government officials and academics in Jeddah as he talked about the weekend attack on oil workers, which killed six people, including two Americans. “I don’t say 100 percent, but 95 percent.”
The Saudi ruler went on to say that the real perpetrators “have tricked some of our sons and they deceived them.” The Saudi militants who committed the attacks on the oil workers had been “misguided by foreigners … They allied themselves with Satan and the followers of Satan and the followers of colonialism.”

Source: Newsweek, via msnbc.com

And Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal followed it up today with THIS whopper:

It is not hidden from anyone that extremist Zionist elements are engaging in a vulgar campaign against the kingdom by espousing and disseminating lies and incitement against the Saudi government.
Source: Fox News

And finally, a press release from the Saudi government says this:

Israel is working with, and funding, al-Qaeda.
Source: Fox News

So, why is it that Saudi Arabia isn’t a smoldering glass parking lot by now?

Tags: Politics by Brian Corbino
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OK. I only have 48 MB of RAM in the SPARCstation. So, the copy of Solaris 8 is out (it needs 64! MB) So, I downloaded a bootable image for Gentoo Linux/SPARC from Gentoo and installed it. It took just this side of forever to build the Kernel, but it worked.
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Tags: Computers by Brian Corbino
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New Haven, CT bans new 24 hour stores. Why? Because of criminal activity associated with all-night stores. Do the morons that inhabit the Zoning Board actually think that if it weren’t for quickie-mart the criminals would be home in bed?

This has nothing to do with crime, and everything to do with giving more power to control the use of private property to the government. It is despicable, and should be stopped.

Tags: Politics by Brian Corbino
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OK, so I lied - no more blog posts from TCF. Here’s the update.

Got a Sun SPARCstation LX - with an external hard drive, CD-ROM, and QIC-150 tape drive, and all the SCSI cables - $45. Add $14 for the VGA adapter plug - instant computer. I’ve always wanted a SPARCstation - just so I can say “I have a SPARCstation” with a tone of feigned moral superiority. Who cares if it’s 50 MHz. It’s still cool.

Also picked up some computer parts. Was thinking of rebuilding the server with a 1 GHz P3 I have lying around. Don’t feel too motivated to tear it apart though. I might use the chip with the mobo I picked up to make a play computer.

Tags: Computers by Brian Corbino
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