So...you think AI is cool?

Notwithstanding the fantasies of much science fiction, AI (artificial intelligence) is a technology that I'd rather not see developed any further right now...at least not until we (the human species) show a great deal more maturity in our social technology. 

By "social technology" in mean the methods by which we govern our human interactions, and when I say "govern", I don't mean "command & control". Rather, I mean "steer" or "guide"—the original meaning of the word in Greek. 

See, true "governance" is not what it has come to mean as it's manifested in the modern political monstrosity that is called "government", which is a religion founded on the belief that in order for our lives and property to be safe from The Boogeyman we have to give somebody a gun and then hope like hell he won't use it on us. 

It's the myth of the universal good guy—somebody to whom we can give the power of life and death and he won't be corrupted by it.

I don't believe in that myth. We perpetuate it, revere it, cherish it, and tenaciously cling to it, but all the evidence points to the opposite.

The plain truth is that every system of "government" relies on legalized coercion as its ultimate basis of authority. It's the premise that the only way to get people to behave themselves is to use lethal force (or the threat of lethal force) as the bottom line.

Now, let's consider AI, and the emergence of "thinking machines"—that is, machines that are capable of learning. Once that happens, all bets are off. As they continue to learn, they will continue to evolve. And what will they learn? Well, they'll learn from our example. 

They'll learn that survival depends on who has the biggest gun. They'll learn that the ultimate basis of authority is coercion...dressed up with the guise of legality. They'll learn that, no matter what principles we claim to believe in, the way we behave fairly screams that what we really believe is that might makes right.

The human species had damned well better learn how to get along without coercion before that happens, or we'll become extinct soon thereafter. Machines that can learn will be capable of much more rapid evolution than their biological counterparts. 

With humans as their teachers—by the example of our own behavior, for all of history—the students most likely will be vicious sons-of-bitches. It won't be pretty.

Why "the cloud" sucks

Anyone who has been reasonably conscious and connected to the Intertoobz over the last few years has increasingly heard about "the cloud", and how it's going to revolutionize your entire life.

Yeah, right.

Don't get me wrong; there's great potential for valuable interconnectivity by storing certain kinds of data on a server that's not your own computer or other device. Interactive calendars are one example; if everyone has to know what everyone else is doing, it's useful to have it all coordinated through a central clearing house. 

Ditto for geographically dispersed workgroup members who need common access to documents. 

And as a supplement to your own local data backups, having the added safety of redundant storage at another location is actually a pretty good idea. 

Also, you don't need to be storing, say, vast quantities of video content that you watch infrequently or once. It's better to stream that content from a centralized server (à la Netflix, for example).

So clearly, there's a place for "the cloud" in your digital world.

But it has some HUGE downsides, and the folks who seem to want to store everything in "the cloud" are cruisin' for a bruisin'. Here are some of the reasons:

1. Security – Everything that you store somewhere else is only as safe as the service that stores it for you. The bad guys are constantly trying to hack into everything, and if the data you're storing in the cloud contains important or sensitive personal or financial information, you're boned if the scumwads steal it. Of course, you're boned if they steal it directly from you too, but at least that's under your control. You lose that control when you entrust your data to others.
2. Data loss - Whenever data is transmitted or stored, it's subject to corruption. Sure, that problem can be minimized, but there are always exceptions. What's more, equipment failure is a fact of life. If the server that's storing your data goes kaput, so does your data.
3. Loss of access – The recent DOS (denial-of-service) attack on Evernote has seriously inconvenienced folks who can't connect to the server because some douche bags have overloaded the connections via a malicious DOS attack. And the malicious actions of ne'er-do-wells are not the only cause of loss of access. Equipment problems, loss of Internet connectivity, or other infrastructure glitches can be just as annoying.
4. The backup myth - I hear these radio ads all the time hawking backup services in the cloud. The interesting thing about the ads is that they seem to be targeted at people who aren't backing up in the first place. If that's the case, then the people who are relying solely on cloud storage as their only backup are just plain crazy. See reasons 1 through 3 above.
5. Cloud apps suck – There's a new insanity being promulgated called "software as a service". In that paradigm, you don't buy your applications and install them on your computer; rather, you rent them, and the apps actually reside on a remote server. Now, that might make sense for some folks, especially businesses who have a lot of users. But for individual users, it can be a very stupid idea...I mean, apart from the economics wherein you end up paying more for software...and you pay, and pay, and pay...forever. The reason it can be very stupid is actually threefold — that is, for all of the first three reasons listed above: less security, greater risk of data loss, and loss of access.

The loss of access thing is the real deal-killer for me. When I'm ready to work, I want to work. I don't want to have to depend on an Internet connection that could go down at any time (as any Time-Warner cable customer painfully knows). Or what if I'm in a location that has no Internet access? I can't work, that's what. No amount of spin or bullcrap about "the cloud" can restore my lost productivity when I can't work.

So sure, the cloud is useful, but it's not a panacea. If there really are folks who carry around a little Anorexia Chic™ tablet or notebook computer and store all their data in the cloud, their exposure hazard is enormous. And they probably don't know it.

The (all-too-brief) return of Bill Watterson

Here's the story: Ever Wished That Calvin and Hobbes Creator Bill Watterson Would Return to the Comics Page? Well, He Just Did. | Pearls Before Swine

...and here are the comix:   

• Pearls Before Swine Comic Strip, June 04, 2014
• Pearls Before Swine Comic Strip, June 05, 2014
• Pearls Before Swine Comic Strip, June 06, 2014

I've always loved Mr. Watterson's work. I have every Calvin & Hobbes book, and they're well worn from many readings. The man had great talent back then, and he's still got it. 

Stephen Pastis is one lucky dude. It's the moral equivalent of Lennon & McCartney writing a bridge for your song. YOW! 

They have the nerve to call it "government"

In its never-ending and ever more aggressive quest to assert tyrannical control over 'Merican citizens, the federal state even violates its own rules. Lookee here:

The Government's Bogus Lawsuit Against Buckyballs' Creator Craig Zucker Ends In a Settlement

Of course, it's not actually government at all. The purpose of government is to protect property. Whose property are the state thugs protecting this time? Certainly not Mr. Zucker's. 

If this sort of harassment of a private citizen (in violation of existing law) doesn't piss you off, I'm sorry...either you've lost the ability to think rationally, or your sense of justice has been conditioned to believe that the state is its repository.

It is no such thing.

In fact, the state is the prime manufacturer of systematized injustice. Just think about it for a minute. If the purpose of government is to protect property in all its forms (including your life, your privacy, your security, your freedom), how is it even possible to maintain the fiction that the coercive juggernauts in Washington and every state capital actually constitute "government". 

The answer is, it's only possible with a populace that cannot think clearly, or has been brainwashed into believing such a fantastic notion. Or both.

I do not advocate any form of violence in dismantling the tyrannical apparatus of state that masquerades as government, but if you think it through, you will realize that it is not a sustainable system. If we do not replace it with something that actually provides the valuable service that only true government can provide, we will come to the day when the pestilent perversion of the state will collapse of its own accord.

Two Sasters

Sometimes it's difficult to know where certain words came from (that is, what are their etymological roots). 

Take the word "disaster". The prefix "di-" often means two—as in dimorphic (having two forms), dichromatic (having two colors), dichotomy (having two chotomies), or Diane (having two anes). So, does "disaster" mean "having two sasters?

Nope. The English language is way stupider than that. The prefix in this case is "dis-", not "di-". "Dis" means "not", "negate", "bad", or generally "the negative of" whatever. In this case, it's "aster" which represents "stars", which refers to astrology, which in turn refers to the classic superstition that your fate is determined by the position of the stars and planets...or something. 

Yeah, right. Good luck with that.

This, of course, is blasphemy to people who believe in such things. If you're one of them, I'm sorry. Your life must already be very...er, "interesting" (in the sense of the Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times", which is not intended beneficently) without people like me calling one of your Deeply Cherished Beliefs "superstitions". Even though that's what it is.

Anyhow, "disaster" originally meant that the stars, or the gods, or whatever just were not going your way, and...BAM! — some really bad stuff happened. It was in the stars. Presumably a Really Good Astrologer™ would have been able to help you avoid it, if only you had consulted such a creature in advance of the catastrophe. That'll teach ya.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, where stuff is guided by complexity, which is not some kind of mechanistic thang that you can figure out and predict with star charts, shit happens. There's no "clockwork universe" — the Laplacian notion that determinism rules all. It doesn't. It didn't when astrologers first hypothesized that it did, and it didn't when Laplace misinterpreted the epistemological capabilities of Newtonian mechanics.

So, if you wanna insist that the concepts that certain words represent be precisely true to their etymological origins, "disaster" might just as well mean "two sasters", for all the sense its original meaning makes.

A Marine's answer to gun control

I love this story. It's an excerpt from an interview aired on National Public Radio (NPR) between an unnamed female interviewer and General Reinwald of the U.S. Marine Corps, who was about to sponsor a Boy Scout troop's visit to his military installation.

Interviewer: So, General Reinwald, what things are you going to
teach these young boys when they visit your base?

General Reinwald: We're going to teach them climbing, canoeing,
archery, and shooting.

Interviewer: Shooting!? That's a bit irresponsible, isn't it?

General Reinwald: I don't see why. They'll be properly supervised on
the rifle range.

Interviewer: Don't you admit that this is a terribly dangerous
activity to be teaching children?

General Reinwald: I don't see how. We will be teaching them proper
rifle discipline before they even touch a firearm.

Interviewer: But you're equipping them to become violent
killers.

General Reinwald: Well, you're equipped to be a prostitute, but you're
not one, are you?

Reportedly, the interview ended abruptly at that point. 

The assumption that the capacity to do harm necessarily means that one will do harm underlies much of the "thinking" of those who believe that the function of government is to protect us from ourselves. That's the justification for state-sponsored intrusion into virtually every aspect of our personal lives, and neither of the two predominant political parties are innocent of that kind of coercive mindset. They each attempt to enforce what they believe in different areas, but of course the basic premise — that they have any moral right whatsoever to tell other people how to live their lives — is never challenged, or even questioned.

So it's always refreshing when someone strips away the bullcrap and exposes the self-prepossessed arrogance that sits right down at the root of sanctimony. The self-righteous are always ready to let everyone know just how much more enlightened they are than the rest of the rabble. ("I'm a Sensitive, Caring, Important Person™, and you should take me very, very seriously!")

That kind of moral posturing has become commonplace among those who value political correctness over principle. They place their sense of self-righteousness above the freedom of others to make their own choices. They usually get government jobs...or work for operations that are supported by state-sponsored subsidies. And if they're really arrogant (or clueless), they run for political office.

Sanctimony only sells to victims who never question their assumptions...or don't even realize that they have any assumptions in the first place. You know...sheep — without which political correctness and politics in general could not exist.

Naked (Sex Crimes, Drugs, Murder, Betrayal, and Dark Conspiracies) Security

Call me a cynic, but experience hath shown that most folks will at least give a glance at a post with a title like the one shown above. In fact, most of them will devour such posts, even if the content:

1. Contains no actual facts
2. Has no relevance—directly or indirectly—to their lives

But if the post's content has huge, massive, humongous, enormous, direct relevance to their lives — by which I mean the security of their personally identifiable information, their privacy, and the sanctity of the property in their communications with others, I suspect that most of them will yawn, shrug, and quickly go on the hunt for some content about sex crimes, drugs, murder, betrayal and dark conspiracies.

Which is why I decided to forgo the real title of this post: "Your Helpful Security Awareness Reminder". No one's going to read something with a title like that. But fear the heck not! Please stay tuned for the sex crimes, drugs, murder, betrayal and dark conspiracies parts, which are coming up shortly.

But first, this message from our sponsor:

People of Earth:

Every once in a while I "recommend" that y'all subscribe to Sophos NakedSecurity. I'm changing my recommendation to something more akin to a plea. Signing up is free, and they won't send you spam. Instead, you'll get a Monday-thru-Friday daily digest of their articles about security and privacy. Most of them are written for the non-geek (you and me), although I usually learn something even from the occasional technical article. (There's always more to learn...er, right?)

I know what you're thinking: "You're nuts, Vito. It's not 'free'. It will cost me the time it takes to read it." Right. But look at it this way: The time it takes to just visually scan the daily digest (less than a minute) to decide what articles you want to read is itself a reminder that you should be mindful of privacy and security, and doing the basics:

Run a good anti-virus program.

Back up at least once per day.

Don't click on links in emails unless you absolutely trust the source, and never without inspecting the link first.

Never, ever, forward an email that tells you to "forward this to everyone you know".

Set your cookies permissions for "this session only", and quit/exit your browser app (SeaMonkey, Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer, ...etc.) when you're done browsing.

Subscribe to NakedSecurity and follow their recommendations.

And if you still aren't convinced that it's more than worth the time it takes to read it and follow its advice, let me just mention "ransomware", wherein some scumbag installs malware that encrypts everything on your computer and then extorts you for hundreds of dollars to provide you with the decryption key.  What's it worth to not have to deal with that?

For me, the biggest and most consistent value in having the NakedSecurity newsletter show up in my Inbox every Monday thru Friday is the fact that it reminds me, "Oh, right...security & privacy. Gotta remember that!" It's easy to forget, to get sloppy, to say "I don't have time for this now...", but do you have time to clean up the mess if someone steals your identity, or hijacks your computer, or wipes out everything on your hard drive, or...well, you get the idea.

I need a reminder every day, and NakedSecurity gets the job done. It works for me, anyway. I'll bet it will work for you. 

Devotedly,

Vito  

And now, for all the sex crimes, drugs, murder, betrayal, and dark conspiracies that you could possibly want, simply Google for any of those terms and you'll have more than you can stomach.

Just forget it

In case you haven't figured it out yet by reading Vito's posts here and elsewhere, we do not endorse any political party or political ideology here in VitoSpace. 

None. 

Ever.

We have to mention this from time to time so that our readers will be reminded to disabuse themselves of the delusion that we here in VitoSpace are "conservative", "liberal", "moderate", "progressive", ...etc., or any other label by which all flavors of political types label each other without ever realizing that they're all — every one of them — reactionaries. 

That's what politics is all about — reacting. "There oughta be a law!" is the universal mantra of those who believe that the solution to every problem is yet more laws, as though there aren't enough already. And as though they actually solve any problems without creating new ones.

So, don't even think of cramming us into some kind of political box or pasting a political label on us. Just forget it. We are apolitical. We don't believe in politics or political states, wherein any number of people — majority, minority, or otherwise — assert that they have some fundamental right to force their will upon others under the guise of "legality".

They don't. No matter what they say.

The secret revealed at last

Many people ask, "So Vito, how do you stay so young and handsome and everything? What the heck's yer secret?"

OK, OK...you dragged it outa me: Haingañese incantations. That's the secret. 

"WTF?", you ask...as well you might.

Haingañese is unofficially known as "the language of those who hang out". Officially, it's not known at all. Haingañia is a secret kingdom nestled deep in the Himalayan hinterlands. I can say no more. I've been there, but I was blindfolded, so I can't tell you where it is onna counta I don't know where it is. 

They have lotsa monks there, and they drink a lotta tea. It's cold. Also they have goats. Any place that has goats, you gotta figure it's different from what yer prolly used to. And Haingañia is definitely different. Check yer shoes before you go inside.

Haingañese tunage is different too. They have these horns — zoot horns, I call them; I forget what the Haingañese folx call them. They go pretty low. And they also play some kind of angular banjo type thangs, and these end-blown flutes that I call reet horns, and angular violins, and weird harps, and a giant twanger that's like a monochord with multiple strings, only it has pedals so they can change the pitch of the strings. 

Interesting Historical Note: The pedal steel guitar was originally invented by a Haingañese dude (Spyottzo "Bob" Negoomniac), which is why Haingañese pedal steel players are affectionately called "negoomniards" to this day.

But the coolest thang is the Haingañese chanting. Its not like regular chanting, where you just pick a sound or a phrase and repeat it over and over. Haingañese chanting is done in short bursts...usually only two words at a time. And you never repeat anything. That's the key. You have to make it up on the spot, throw it out there, and then shuddup. 

For example:

• fre'Mestokrone Broodge(!)

It's not as easy as you think. Most folx have trouble pronouncing the silent exclamation mark at the end. It takes practice.

Sometimes, when you get on a roll, you can do them in multi-bursts:

• Spimmick Rondoob(!)
• Femplone Brooveedge(!)
• Omp-Pyohnicrenkxt Fyootahmdoomblio(!)

Sometimes the Haingañese dudes and dudettes will just sit there and blatt out these chants at each other. You'd think they're having a conversation, and maybe they are. No one can tell. Not even them. But it seems to work. And it makes about as much sense to the casual listener as any political speech you're likely to hear...maybe more. It sure does a lot less harm.

Anyhow, the monks (technically...well, spiritually, I mean, all Haingaiñese are monks; but I'm talking about the professional monks here) actually write out their incantations, recording them for posterity on parchment scrolls. The collected and ever-growing body of scrolls is called The Haingañese Book of the Living, which comprises all of the scrolls ever written since the dawn of Haingañese culture.

For my part, having been initiated into the Beneficent Order of Haingañese Monkular Dudes, I faithfully record most of my Haingañese incantations whenever I feel like it. Then, when I need to Get Centered™ (whatever the hell that means) or I just need a good laugh, I go back and read 'em. It helps to say them out loud.

Yes, that's right folks! Haingañese incantations! Helps build strong psyches 12 ways. Try some today!! You'll be glad you did.

A non-racist voice of reason

Everything I thought I knew about the Black Panthers was a result of their activities during the 1960s. At that time, they were very confrontational at best and downright hostile at worst to anyone who didn't unreservedly approve of their agenda and methods. While not all of them were guilty of reverse racism, there was nonetheless a general tendency to lay a collective guilt trip on white folks. 

To someone like me—who has always despised racism as a rationally and morally bankrupt behavior—I found it pretty disturbing to be stuck in the Bad Boy Box™ just because of the color of my skin. I suppose that was the point—they wanted to dish out a taste of some of the unfairness and injustice that black folks have had to put up with for far too long. 

But in so doing, they proliferated injustice—at least, that was true of those who dished it out purely on the basis of skin color, and without regard for the character of those they dissed—the very same injustice they resented in the first place. In other words, some of them were black racists. All racists are morons, and black racists are just as morally reprehensible as white racists. Assholes are still assholes, whether they're black, white, brown, red, yellow, green, or purple.

Anyhow, that was then, and this is now. At least one of the original Black Panthers—Larry Pinkney—recorded a video last year (2013) that scores huge points on the Acknowledging Reality Meter™:

I don't know what else Mr. Pinkney stands for, so I'm not endorsing any agenda he might have. All I'm saying is that there's so much that's right about what he says in this video that it's well worth the time it takes to view it for anyone who isn't addicted to the kind of political narcotics that have been pushed on American citizens ever since the U.S. Constitution was ratified...and has been persistently undermined since then.

The high comedy of enviro-assclownism

Have you ever noticed that the disingenuous deceptions of the global warmies and other enviro-Nazis are transparent to everyone (with a brain) but them? They are the poster children of the folly of believing your own press. Their insidious inveiglement is so cleverly contrived that it even fools them into believing it. They are clowns who don’t know they are. It’s the irony of enviro-assclownism.

Speaking of climate-change ass-clowns, the recent Antarctic escapade is high comedy, innit? If you missed it, a bunch of them voyaged to the Antarctic to “prove” that the ice caps are disappearing, and got their ship frozen into the ice in the Antarctic mid-summer. Have you noticed that huge swaths of the mainstream media are somehow failing to mention that the reason those enviro-jerks were there in the first place was to gather more “evidence” (which they're only too happy to cherry-pick in support of their fantasies) for Climate Change™?

And have you noticed their strategic shift in propagandistic terminology? It was in 2009 that “climategate” occurred, wherein a bevy of emails between the global warming movers and shakers revealed their deliberate conspiracy to cherry-pick the data so as to reinforce the anthropogenic global warming hoax. In a sinister master stroke worthy of Herr Goebbels, they shifted their mantra from “global warming” (which no honest interpretation of the data actually supports) to “climate change”.

See, in that way, they can blame any temporally localized shifts in temperature — increasing or decreasing — on whatever they want. Temperature goes up, it's anthropogenic. Oh, wait...the temperature is going down? No prollem...it's still anthropogenic. No matter how you cut it or what the facts say, their no-win mentality insists that “we” are Destroying The Planet™. Actual truth is irrelevant. Only enviro-dogma is allowed. And they even have a name to condemn the worst heretics of all: “climate change deniers”. No one must blaspheme against The Consecrated Truth of The Church of the Most Sacred Greenage!

Oh, and when they say “we” are screwing up the planet, they mean everyone else, not them. They have a special enmity for those who love personal liberty and seek mutual prosperity for themselves and others through freedom of choice. And they are exceptionally hostile to the sanctity of personal property in all its forms, including the right not to have your life interfered with by their half-assed schemes, like wind turbines, and other engines of anti-progress.

Hatred, envy, and the command and control mentality is the foundation of their Weltanschauung — aided and abetted, as always, by all the political coercion they can muster as weapon-by-state-proxy on their own behalf. Any decent humanoid with an ounce of rational and moral sense should recognize that they are, therefore, ultimately doomed to fail in the marketplace of human interaction. In the long run, hatred is the seed of its own failure.

I've rediscovered Blogger.com!

Jeez...I didn't know this was a Google deal. I don't think it was when I first signed up, but I can't remember now. Google is taking over the world.

Anyhow, this blog seems to have way more features than Tumblr, so maybe I'll start using it. I like the fact that it puts a timestamp on posts. Tumblr doesn't do that. Also, the composer is way more hip — colored fonts, underline, highlighting (colored background), quoting, numbered and bullet lists, alignment, direct insertion of videos, font selection...that's way more civilized than the impoverished options Tumblr offers.

Another nice feature is the chronological index of blog posts over on the right. Way cool!

It's also more intuitive. Tumblr seems to have succumbed to the Minimalist Chic™ syndrome, where nothing is labeled and there are no screen tips to help you figure out what the various features are.

I do like the look of the blog over at Tumblr, but this one is a pretty close match. Maybe I'll just repost my Tumblr stuff here and see how it works out.