Posts by tom dial

Re: RE Should someone point out to the EFF that the US constitution for free speech ...

One upvote, and one observation.

"Outright buying of elections" is charged with some frequency, but difficult to confirm in practice. Electoral winners are determined by counting ballot marks or electrical/electronic equivalents made by individual voters. It probably is illegal in most jurisdictions to bribe voters for specific action, and because of the mechanics of elections would almost always be unenforceable in practice. If done at all, it almost certainly is rare and probably has essentially no net effect. There are well-substantiated reports of political organizations distributing money and other things of some value (commonly food or food vouchers) on election day to "get out the vote," and that often was done with a wink and a nudge that conveyed the wishes of the organization if its identity alone did not do so effectively. That falls a bit short of "buying."

There doubtless are many easily documented cases in which the better financed candidate, who could afford more and better publicity efforts, won election, but copious financing, depending on its source, may have negative effects as well, and there certainly will be a many cases where the best financed was not elected. The most recent example, of course, is the recent presidential election, in which Democratic candidates outspent Republicans by 5:4 and the losing candidate, Hillary Clinton, outspent the winner, Donald Trump by more than 5:3.

Re: I propose two things to women:

The problem with the wage gap is not so much that it does not exist as that those who proclaim it are not honest about it. The 70% or 75% number bandied about seems to reflect all employees, without taking into account that the range of jobs held by women is not the same as that held by men, even in the same field, and most of the gap can be accounted for by that alone. Historically, female physicians have tended to be better represented in pediatrics and family practice, specialties where average compensation is lower than various surgical specialties in which men are better represented. Moreover, women are much more likely than men to leave the work force for varying periods in connection with child raising, and as a result may be absent for a significant part of the mid-career period when large organizations are selecting for upper management positions and in any case may not be maintaining and increasing technical skills.

I would not argue that this type of thing is necessarily right, although in a relatively free economy it is pretty much inevitable and monkeying around with it is likely to have unintended and undesirable long term effects. However, it is not something employers can reasonably be tasked to correct because so much of it is embedded in the overall culture in which they exist. Large companies probably are better at it than small ones, but even they are limited in what they can do by such things as the entry applicant pool.

My recollection is that in US federal government documents and correspondence the first use of an acronym is to be in parentheses, immediately following the fully spelled out name of whatever the acronym is for. It is not always done, especially in documents intended for internal use for acronyms well known within an agency.

I suggest it, respectfully, for general use. It will add considerable clarity for those who do not recognize an acronym immediately without unduly annoying those who do.

Re: Enforcement?

It is not quite correct to say that the US has no protection laws. It does, but the first and fourteenth amendments to the Constitution severely, and in my opinion correctly, constrain them. There are, however, laws that constrain free speech, such as:

Threats can be illegal if specific enough, although vague ones like "Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?" probably are not and certainly would be difficult to prosecute without a fair amount of context supporting a claim that it was meant as a specific directive to do something.

Libel may be criminal, but I think is more commonly handled as a civil matter. Where political actors or other public figures are concerned, standards may be somewhat relaxed even here.

Re: The Chinese aren't spying...

One upvote for this, and deserving of more.

Both sentences are quite correct. What is left out is that the US and most other countries collect and analyze intelligence data, part of it gotten through espionage, for exactly the same reasons: to find out the truth, and because they will not get it from their foreign counterparts. It has been so for as long as we have any recorded history and probably longer, and will continue to be so as far as we can see into the future.

Re: "Government of the people ..."

Like it or not, and I am far from thrilled at the outcome, Donald Trump was the choice of a majority of those who voted in 21 of the 50 states, and of a plurality of those who voted in an additional 7 states. Nearly all Senators and US House members were elected in their states and districts, respectively, by a majority of those who chose to vote. So also were the state governors, secretaries of state, senators, representatives, and so on who determined the electoral districts from which US House members (as well as the state representatives and senators) were chosen. By the rules operational for the last 225 years, that counts as "by the people" and "of the people." Whether or not it is "for the people" is for the people to decide at the next election.

Re: @tom dial

I also have read both, and to my thinking the Republican platform plainly contains more and stronger and statements supporting Ukraine than the Democratic one. It is true that the D platform was not weakened, and it also is true that the R platform was not strengthened, and an attempt to do so was opposed by the Trump campaign.

Platforms always are fuzzy for at least two reasons. They are written with the expectation that someone, likely enough an opponent, actually will read them and use what they find as an attack point. It is easy to imagine, and all but certain, that Clinton's campaign would have characterized a Republican plank promising to deliver weapons to the Ukraine (as the proposed change had it) as warlike and reckless, as well as displaying total ignorance of foreign affairs. In addition, they are written with the intention of avoiding opposition within the party.

Re: So who's worried about the browser vendors?

Debian, for one, and very probably Red Hat and a number of other distributions, are working on the problem of assuring that the executables verifiably result from the published source. I've followed the Debian discussion some, and concluded that while they are making progress, it is a seriously difficult undertaking and will take a fair amount more time. As noted, "open source" alone is far from sufficient.

There are no serious technical impediments to producing and deploying a cryptosystem that would be subject to third party decryption. Key escrow systems, for example, have been known for decades at least. It may be unwise to use such a cryptosystem, and it may be comparatively easy to use readily available alternatives (possibly with penalties for use that one might need to evaluate), but incorrect claims that it is infeasible confuse and obscure the real issues.

Re: WTF?

They said that in their (majority) opinion, the FCC order exceeded the authority given by the Congress. They might have meant some other, nastier, things, but are not so stupid as to utter them publicly.

Re: Google is an index

I give this an upvote on the basis that liberty extended to the population in general will be abused by some, but is better than some of the alternatives. Corporations are not people, but they are legal constructs organized and operated by people for the benefit of their owners and operators, and broadly have liberty to pursue their goals, subject to legal constraints much the same as partnerships, proprietorships, and individuals.

Addressing the root cause - terrorist web sites - may, however, be a bit beyond the reasonable capability of single governments, or governments generally, without bringing serious damage to the Internet as a globally accessible resource. Some input from Chinese people might inform here.

Re: Another slight issue?

The article says the routing station will be in geosynchronous orbit, if memory serves about 22,300 miles.

Re: the Founding Fathers are spinning in their graves

Taking the Fifth probably has been assumed an admission of guilt and resulted in convictions from time to time, but never has been so considered legitimately. While it is not quite the same, the judge in criminal trials normally instructs the jurors that they may not infer either guilt or innocence from a defendant's failure to testify.

Re: He needs to raise the Hillary defense...

By using an unapproved server for her government work, Hillary Clinton violated the law, federal government regulations applicable to all employees (and contractor employees), and Department of State instructions.

That might not have extended to violation of the Espionage act or another law that carries a criminal punishment, it is far from the trivial offense her supporters claimed.

Whether or not DHS has done anything is a matter for the House Government Operations committee and its Senate counterpart. The fact is that they, not the FCC, are on the hook to do so. My impression, as of 2011, was that they then were acting on that and I do not have any reason to think they are not.

The notion that the DoD should have the responsibility might run up against the Posse Comitatus act (1878), which severely limits use of the Army in domestic matters. Later modifications have applied that to the Air Force, and Navy regulations similarly restrict the Navy and Marine Corps.

As far as concerns government streamlining, DHS actually is the outcome of such a streamlining effort, consolidating the Coast Guard, Immigration, Customs Enforcement, TSA, the National Cybersecurity Center, US-CERT, and a number of other agencies generally concerned with matters of internal security. In the context of PPD-21, the FCC has a defined cybersecurity role, largely consultative, as Chairman Pai is reported to believe. It is not clear that new legislation is required.

Re: Based on bad assumptions

Comey seems to have claimed that "under appropriate circumstances" the government has the right to demand that people answer questions. He did not express a view that the government has a right to know everything we are doing and saying, at least as reported in the article. That is far from the same thing, and everything that logically follows from it is pretty much nonsense, including likening the relation between government and citizen to that between a farmer and his livestock. The fact is that the main complaint by a great many, both lefties and Trumpists, is that the (US) government is not enough like the farmer looking after his sheep.

Re: In the original Foundation trilogy

I know I am a couple of days late to this party, but cannon resist making an observation that some might find interesting.

The intent might have been to target those who otherwise did not bother to vote, but it is not clear from a comparison of the totals from the previous couple of presidential cycles that it succeeded for either of the two largest parties. The two-main-party vote was about 2 million more in 2016 than 2012, roughly in line with what one might expect given voting age population growth over the four years, and certainly not larger. It also was about a million fewer than in 2008.

On the other hand, over the two cycles, the smaller party vote grew from around a million (2008) to 2 million (2012) and near 8 million (2016), suggesting that much or most of the popular vote increase went to parties such as the Libertarians and Greens and was cast by those unhappy enough with both major parties to vote for a candidate with no conceivable path to an electoral win.

So money spent for such highly tailored adverts seems to have been largely wasted, especially since it is nearly certain that the Clinton campaign did it substantially more judging by the campaigns' total expenditures.

Re: How about his replacement?

Columbia Sportswear is a publicly traded corporation with more than 5,000 employees, of whom many would have some kind of network account. Auditing all the user accounts would not be a one person job, nor would it normally be the job of the head of the organization.

On the other hand, it should not be too hard to assign an operational employee (or better, two or three independently) to periodically compare the payroll list to the accounts and look carefully at any accounts for which a check was not issued in the most recent payroll cycle. That "Jeff Manning" seems to have operated for two years before detection indicates slackness beyond even the US OPM showed.

"All that official business" seems to involve fewer than three dozen email messages during Pence's four years as governor of Indiana. I am tempted to think that is less than 1% of his official email messages during that period.

I quite agree that overlapping personal and official email is undesirable, but it sometimes is unavoidable, just as it is not always possible to make business related telephone calls from a business telephone. When I worked in IT for the USDoD, before the agency provided a government laptop or cell phone I could use off premises. Accordingly, when something blew up in the middle of the night, I took the call on my home phone and used that and my personal email account (not server) for communication with the data center located in another state and the email account to document, for myself, my managers, and if necessary, the application users. Although that was well after use of government facilities became the approved means, the agency allowed it. I probably still have some old emails from that time, as it always has been easier and by some definition cheaper to increase storage than to search them out and purge them.

Re: TI was backwards

While starting with bit 1 rather than bit 0 is a bit quirky, bit 0 (or 1) often or usually is the most significant bit on word-oriented processors like the TMS9900, Motorola 68000, and IBM 360/370/390.

Re: "Why does the size have to be identical? "

I think I do, and I also think the article was primarily about sha-1 sums of data, not the signing of the sha-1 sums.