B.S. Footprint

Wasted Youth

bsfootprint — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 01:08:55 +0000

First, a quick lunchtime survey:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=MHtDF-z77wk

Which leads us, naturally, to this insanity:

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=VxHfYNTrnic

Which leads me to this:

http://www.plognark.com/?q=node/1129

Well, duh.

bsfootprint — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 01:10:32 +0000

First, we have The Onion Facebook-CIA faux-expose.

Now this:

In February 2011, the Department of Homeland Security announced that the agency planned to implement a program that would monitor media content, including social media data. The proposed initiatives would gather information from "online forums, blogs, public websites, and messages boards" and disseminate information to "federal, state, local, and foreign government and private sector partners." The program would be executed, in part, by individuals who established fictitious usernames and passwords to create covert social media profiles to spy on other users. The agency stated it would store personal information for up to five years.
[...]
The records reveal that the DHS is paying General Dynamics to monitor the news. The agency instructed the company to monitor for "[media] reports that reflect adversely on the U.S. Government, DHS, or prevent, protect, respond government activities."
[...]
The DHS instructed the company to "Monitor public social communications on the Internet." The records list the websites that will be monitored, including the comments sections of [The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, the Huffington Post, the Drudge Report, Wired, and ABC News.]"

Source: EPIC v. Department of Homeland Security: Media Monitoring via British Tourists Arrested in the U.S. for Tweeting (Bruce Schneier)

All I can say is... what did you expect?

Peak Sustainability

bsfootprint — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 22:05:46 +0000

Sustainable. Sustainability. Those words were rarely used before 1960. Then there was a rapid increase in the use of the word "sustainable".

According to Google Ngrams, we reached peak sustainability sometime around 2004.

It's all downhill from here.

Inspired by xkcd:

Source:xkcd

Encryption won't save you

bsfootprint — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 16:34:39 +0000

Note to lawbreakers or anyone relying on encryption to protect them: Judge Orders Defendant to Decrypt Laptop.

Source: xkcd

A judge on Monday ordered a Colorado woman to decrypt her laptop computer so prosecutors can use the files against her in a criminal case.

The defendant, accused of bank fraud, had unsuccessfully argued that being forced to do so violates the Fifth Amendment’s protection against compelled self-incrimination.

...just another example why you shouldn't encrypt anything without compelling reasons: the mere presence of encrypted data puts you at risk. Legally and physically. Of course, it may be useful for preventing surreptitious disclosure, but it probably won't protect you from being compelled to cough up the goods. You'd best be prepared for some serious giblet-cracking.

More here and here.

Via: Bruce Schneier.

For more information, see: Self Incrimination and Cryptographic Keys by Greg S. Sergienko

Facebook

bsfootprint — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 16:12:37 +0000

THIS. IS. FUNNY. (Or is it?)

View video

Via Bruce Schneier

Addendum

Privacy? What privacy?

View video

Quote: That dreary tribe ... who come nocking towards the smell of 'progress' like bluebottles to a dead cat. (George Orwell)

bsfootprint — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 13:51:10 +0000

George Orwell, in The Road to Wigan Pier, shares his opinion of why the working class might be turned off by Socialism, as presented at the time.

Quote:

The truth is that, to many people calling themselves Socialists, revolution does not mean a movement of the masses with which they hope to associate themselves; it means a set of reforms which ‘we’, the clever ones, are going to impose upon ‘them’, the Lower Orders. On the other hand, it would be a mistake to regard the book-trained Socialist as a bloodless creature entirely incapable of emotion. Though seldom giving much evidence of affection for the exploited, he is perfectly capable of displaying hatred—-a sort of queer, theoretical, in vacua hatred—-against the exploiters. Hence the grand old Socialist sport of denouncing the bourgeoisie. It is strange how easily almost any Socialist writer can lash himself into frenzies of rage against the class to which, by birth or by adoption, he himself invariably belongs...

The fact is that Socialism, in the form in which it is now presented, appeals chiefly to unsatisfactory or even inhuman types. On the one hand you have the warm-hearted un-thinking Socialist, the typical working-class Socialist, who only wants to abolish poverty and does not always grasp what this implies. On the other hand, you have the intellectual, book-trained Socialist, who understands that it is necessary to throw our present civilization down the sink and is quite willing to do so. And this type is drawn, to begin with, entirely from the middle class, and from a rootless town-bred section of the middle class at that. Still more unfortunately, it includes--so much so that to an outsider it even appears to be composed of--the kind of people I have been discussing; the foaming denouncers of the bourgeoisie, and the more-water-in-your-beer reformers of whom Shaw is the prototype, and the astute young social-literary climbers who are Communists now, as they will be Fascists five years hence, because it is all the go, and all that dreary tribe of high-minded' women and sandal-wearers and bearded fruit-juice drinkers who come nocking towards the smell of 'progress' like bluebottles to a dead cat. The ordinary decent person, who is in sympathy with the essential aims of Socialism, is given the impression that there is no room for his kind in any Socialist party that means business. Worse, he is driven to the cynical conclusion that Socialism is a kind of doom which is probably coming but must be staved off as long as possible. Of course, as I have suggested already, it is not strictly fair to judge a movement by its adherents; but the point is that people invariably do so, and that the popular conception of Socialism is coloured by the conception of a Socialist as a dull or disagreeable person. 'Socialism' is pictured as a state of affairs in which our more vocal Socialists would feel thoroughly at home. This does great harm to the cause. The ordinary man may not flinch from a dictatorship of the proletariat, if you offer it tactfully; offer him a dictatorship of the prigs, and he gets ready to fight.

Who Said It?:

George Orwell

Quote Source Links:

http://www.george-orwell.org/The_Road_to_Wigan_Pier/10.html

Eerily Familiar

bsfootprint — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 03:56:16 +0000

I thought there was something oddly familiar about those photos of Warren Buffett receiving his reward.

Ludwig von Mises Institute: True Money Supply (TMS)

bsfootprint — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 07:27:26 +0000

Link: "Ludwig von Mises Institute: True Money Supply (TMS)"

Another alternative to the official money supply stats...

The TMS consists of the following: Currency Component of M1, Total Checkable Deposits, Savings Deposits, U.S. Government Demand Deposits and Note Balances, Demand Deposits Due to Foreign Commercial Banks, and Demand Deposits Due to Foreign Official Institutions.

Quote: I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means -- except by getting off his back. (Leo Tolstoy)

bsfootprint — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 03:00:18 +0000

Tolstoy, from Writings on Civil Disobedience and Nonviolence.

Visualize it.

Quote:

I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means - except by getting off his back.

Who Said It?:

Leo Tolstoy

Quote Source Links:

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/l/leotolstoy153953.html

http://thinkexist.com/quotation/-i_sit_on_a_man-s_back-choking_him_and_making_him/341243.html

It's March, 1933. Do you know where your liberties are?

bsfootprint — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 03:30:40 +0000

Well, Congress passed, and Our Beloved President is expected to sign into law, the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), including the objectionable "indefinite detention" provisions.

Salon.com has a piece that dispels the three myths put forth by the bill's supporters. Link below (see Sources.)

It's getting harder not to scream: That's it man, game over man, game over!