Long Live the King. The King is Dead.

Snarky Alan points out that e-books are outselling the dead-tree variety at Amazon. I find that almost unbelievable. I figured it would happen eventually, but not in 2011.

I guess the convenience outweighs the potential downside of DRM and someone else being the administrator of system that controls your access. What's the worst they could do - delete a book you bought?

New Rifle

I just got permission from the boss to get a new rifle. I'd like to pick one up in case all the rumors about President Obama rolling out gun control legislation is true. I've been looking at the Smith and Wesson M&P15 (the big brother to my M&P15 in .22LR). Maybe S&W will start the promotion for 5 free magazines with the purchase of the rifle. Given the focus on high capacity magazine bans, it would make sense.

From Brick O'Lore

From Brick O'Lore

As a bonus, she told me I had to get a gun safe if I was going to buy a rifle!

Guns

Here is a Facebook post from a friend of mine and then my response follows.

What a week! Happy Friday to everyone.

Just a thought to share this morning and a post that is unusually not about my Megan. In response to the gun talk either for or against this week I have to take a side. 3 out of the 4 early morning news stories today included stories about shootings and or guns - nothing good came from any of them.

http://www.wkrn.com/Global/story.asp?S=13839429 (boy accidently shoots brother in middle TN)

http://www.wate.com/Global/story.asp?S=13833132 (Second Harvest pulls out of firing range fundraiser to shoot Kiffen bobblehead dolls - was this something that they should have signed up for even before Tucson?)

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2011/01/13/1978007/at-least-2-wounded-in-sc-shooting.html (two men airlifted after gunshot wounds after arguing over property lines and trees - really???)

These three strories were proof once again to me that whether acciental or with intentional malice guns are a threat to all of us. If we have such a great military and police forces across this country to protect and serve why does anybody else need them?

I understand and support the sport of hunting - I get it. I agree that a hunter's license and gun owners license for that purpose alone makes sense. Beyond that though handguns in the hands of anyone other than military and police is senseless forever and always, period.

Not asking for any responses, just wanted to take a rare opportunity on FB to post one of my longest standing and strongest beliefs outside of religion and politics. One day I hope that I can be a part of the change through the system to support real change in our laws.

On a lighter note the two ladies from Williamson County who beat up a home intruder with a Shark vacuum cleaner are my new heros!!

My response:

I did not grow up around guns. I did not have strong opinions on the matter until recently. I did not own guns until recently. I normally do not post on controversial topics either, but I likewise feel compelled to add my voice to the discussion.

There are bad people in the world. There is no way to make all the guns in the world disappear. Bad people will get access to guns. Jenny has said that she hates that we live in a world where we might need a gun. I agree, but this world was defined by original sin and we can only work to make it better.

More laws simply guarantee that the people that follow the law will be unarmed. The bad people do not care what the laws are. New York Republican Rep. Peter King said he will introduce legislation to ban the carrying of any firearm within 1,000 feet of what he described as “high-profile government officials.” Ask yourself if such a law would have stopped Jared Loughner. He already ignored the law that said you shouldn’t murder.

More people will be killed in car accidents than from gun related deaths this year. Should we outlaw cars?

Guns sales have risen over the last few years. During that same period, violent crime has decreased. Even if there is no causation, we can say that more guns have not lead to show-downs at high noon on the streets.

If someone was breaking into your house and seconds mean the difference between life and death… the police are only minutes away. A bit trite, but it makes the point. The police cannot be everywhere.

I wish Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom had been armed.

The Supreme Court recently reaffirmed our 2nd Amendment rights in District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago.

Ben Franklin wrote “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

Some of the worse crimes against humanity have been perpetrated by dictators who have taken all gun rights away from their citizens.

Even during this tragedy, the father of 9-year old Christina Green understands the importance of our freedoms – “This shouldn't happen in this country, or anywhere else, but in a free society, we're going to be subject to people like this. I prefer this to the alternative.”

We should be spending more time talking about mental health issues. The root cause of the shooting was that Jared Loughner was sick.

If you would like to go shoot sometime, I’d be happy to host.

Women can take a free handgun carry permit course at Bass Pro Shop in Sevierville.

I did not include specific links to back up may facts, but I could have - most of them came from the bloggers you see on the Gun Links above. I also tried to make connections on multiple levels by providing stats; asking challenging questions; making a spiritual link; reminding her of tragic, emotional events from the Knoxville area; and discussing the larger issues of rights and mental health.

Get your stop watch ready!

Sharp as a Marble likes to make you think.

Bad guy attacks you with a gun.
You take the gun away from the bad guy.
You shoot the man in self defense.
In your state, it is illegal to possess a gun.

Did you break the law by holding the gun long enough to defend yourself? If you held it for less or more time, would it be more or less legal?

Your e-papers, please.

I don't care if it is the Commerce Department. It's the government.

I'm sure there are benefits to a national internet identity, but I'm even more certain that it will create more problems than it will solve.

"We are not talking about a national ID card," Locke said at the Stanford event. "We are not talking about a government-controlled system. What we are talking about is enhancing online security and privacy and reducing and perhaps even eliminating the need to memorize a dozen passwords, through creation and use of more trusted digital identities."

"I don't have to get a credential if I don't want to," he said. There's no chance that "a centralized database will emerge," and "we need the private sector to lead the implementation of this," he said.

No chance, huh? His assurance makes me feel much better.

Police Can Search Mobile Phones

What? If you've been arrested police can search your phone. What?

So the authorities can have access to my personal e-mail, my work e-mail, contacts, calendar, my Twitter account, my Facebook account, and my Angry Birds' score? Outrageous. Yet another place where the law isn't in sync with technology. You can't arrest someone on the street, drive to their house, and start reading their snail mail. Get a warrant and then have at it! As I've said before, we get blinders on when things move from the physical world to the cyberspace.

Via Slashdot.org

China is scary.

I heard or read that China is pushing for more Chinese language web pages. They are also preparing to move against VoIP providers.

It is scary how much control the government has. It is even scarier how accepting the Chinese people are of the government as patriarch. I've been to China several times and the people I work with don't know that there is any other way. Perhaps the pace of progress has kept everyone happy. They've come so far they don't know that they are missing anything including the freedom of choice. The Great Firewall of China remains important to limiting the exposure of the average person to the world - otherwise the it could all change.

FCC Net Neutrality

Lots of talk about Net Neutrality.. usually I am pro-business, but I view the Internet as essential infrastructure and worry that without Net Neutrality, innovation would be stifled. I think some things just cannot come out of big organizations. Most of these articles are from Slashdot.org.

A simplified view of the Net Neutrality issue.

Obama's FCC Caves on Net Neutrality

Do we really need Net Neutrality?

A Regulated Internet?

The Right's War on Net Neutrality

Private Enterprise

I read David Moon's article in the Sunday paper and it is another great example of what's wrong with the world. Forget if you are pro-gay rights, anti-gay rights, Christian, or an ardent supporter of the separation of church and state - let private enterprise do what they want. If people don't want to do business with a conservative or liberal bank, let them vote with their dollars.

How many are prevented?

Via Slashdot, the Met is reporting that cameras help solve six crimes a day in London.

I know this is a harder question, but shouldn't we be looking for ways to prevent crime? I don't have the reference handy, but I've heard that lights are a better deterrent to crime than cameras.

Government Openness and Individual Privacy

It is a simple equation: Liberty is a function of Privacy of the People and Openness of the Government. Liberty decreases with the loss of privacy or openness.

I cannot fathom any reasonable arguments that would persuade me to think video-taping the police should be illegal. Who watches the watchmen?

Security in 2020

Apologies for being such a Schneier fanboy, but the guy just makes a lot of sense to me.

Security in 2020

"One old trend: deperimeterization. Two current trends: consumerization and decentralization. Three future trends: deconcentration, decustomerization, and depersonization. That’s IT in 2020—­it’s not under your control, it’s doing things without your knowledge and consent, and it’s not necessarily acting in your best interests. And this is how things will be when they’re working as they’re intended to work; I haven't even started talking about the bad guys yet."

We are all going to end up like the passengers on the ship in WALL-E.

From Brick O'Lore

Red Light Cameras

I am not totally comfortable with the red light cameras. I'm not convinced they prevent accidents which should be the primary goal. One of my concerns is about an automated system to penalize citizens. According to this article, at least there appears to be human oversight. On the flip side, how good is a system where you throw out 47% of the transactions?

Parenting and Texting

With all the concern about kids and sexting (or other inappropriate messaging), why don't the mobile phone companies offer a service to parents that delivers a report via e-mail of all text messages and images sent from a child's phone? It seems like an easy way to keep tabs on the kids. It also might encourage the older ones to get a job and pay for their own phone service.

Web Privacy

Ah, I didn't need to worry about technology protecting us, policy will save us!

PC Fingerprinting/Tracking

The WSJ has published a story about the increasing sophistication of the tools used to track Internet users.

From Brick O'Lore

I'm not sure this really scares me. Worse case it is an arms race. Anonymizing services or the privacy modes of browsers could be used to fake/randomize timestamps, fonts, and versions.

MetroPulse Article on Guns

I'm surprised I didn't see this MetroPulse article earlier given all the Knoxville gun blogs I follow. I'm also surprised by the fairly objective tone of the article. While I don't know the people who were interviewed personally, it still reminds me how small the gun community is.

Rules

Funny and a good point:

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

You cannot fix problems by adding more rules. This is as equally true for gun restrictions as it is for quality controls. If you have bad or lazy actors, the rules won't matter. Dhillon and Backhouse suggest in a 2000 paper, "Information System Security Management in the New Millennium," that we need to move beyond traditional rules based security. Focusing on CIA (confidentiality, integrity, and availability) of data is no longer sufficient. We need to recognize the human component of systems and think in terms of RITE (responsibility, integrity, trust, ethicality).

Responsibility of the individual to take ownership of a domain and work to guarantee a positive future
Integrity of the individual to do the right thing and report inappropriate use
Trust as a two-way relationship as opposed to the traditional command and control hierarchy
Ethicality behavior based on informal, shared ethical norms

I saw the comic first on Sharp as a Marble.

Bruce Schneier on the TSA

Bruce has a summary of all the TSA news.

If you've never read anything from Bruce, you should. He points out measures that are just "security theater" and suggests practical, common sense approaches. He puts terrorist attacks into perspective - you are more likely to be killed by a household appliance than a terrorist. It may not make the news, but it is a greater risk. And we are horrible at evaluating risk.

TSA and Security

Lots about the TSA, scanners, pat downs, and security in the news recently...

Part of the problem is that we think technology is the answer to everything. Maybe because I work in IT, I don't see it as a magical solution to every problem. Recently an HR manager complained about the head of the union forwarding e-mails to a third party. She wanted to know if the "ICT Appropriate Use" policy could be used to stop him from forwarding the messages. I had to walk her down from the ledge by asking what she would want to do if he put a memo from her into the postal mail. Turns out, she wouldn't do anything. Why would e-mail be any different?

Tried and true without fancy technology: Israeli Security Approach

It has happened before and it will happen again: How we react has changed