Friday, August 29, 2003

Big Brother, seriously

Perfidy Responds

My response to Trish’s fears in my recent big brother post was lighthearted.  But when I think about the real problems of increasing surveillance, out of control federal agencies, the erosion of civil liberties and the prospect of ubiquitous law enforcement I oscilate between long periods of complacency punctuated my moments of extreme paranoia.

On the one hand, the traditions of the republic are still strong, as witnessed by the consensual freak out when poindexter revealed the TIA with its ubercreepy eye-in-the-pyramid logo.  There are well funded organizations that fight the good fight in our stead, like for example the EFF. 

Libertarians and others fear that the erosion of liberty is a ratchett effect, where there is an ever tightening grip of law and regulation and surveillance, and that every liberty lost is nearly impossible to regain.  I have sympathy for this position - for example, the RICO statutes have proved impossible to remove, despite their manifold flaws, and their frequent abuse.


Posted by Buckethead on 08/29/03 at 05:19 PM
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Geeks in space

That Buck Rogers Stuff

This article about John Carmack (developer of Doom and Castle Wolfenstein) and his efforts to get into space hits at one of the key problems we’ve had in space development over the last forty years:

Testing is key for Carmack, who doesn’t want to work for months only to find out a rocket doesn’t work. He believes the more testing done, the faster the crew can work out any kinks.

“Some people have commented that I am trying very hard to make aerospace like software, and that’s the truth,” he says. “If we looked at what we do in software, if we could only compile and test our program once a year, we’d never get anything done. But that’s the mode of aerospace.”

Only one space program since the end of Apollo has used a rapid development process, and that was the DCX.  Typical NASA programs involve millions of dollars and years of testing before there is even an attempt to cut tin and actually construct a prototype.  Aerospace engineering is not so cut and dried that we can make a perfect design on the computer, build it, and expect that it will fly.

Cost overruns, failed expectations and cancelled programs are the result of this design centric philosophy.  The key to success is to build early, test early.  Lessons are learned quicker, and applied easier through a regime of rapid prototyping and testing.  Just like in software development.  In a matter of months, the DCX team went from a standing start to a 1/3 scale flying prototype.  And spent a fraction of the money that was ultimately spent on the X-33 which replaced it, and which never once flew.

The growing provate space industry is largely funded, if not actually run by successful software magnates.  They seem to be applying the lessons they learned in developing other technologies to the problems of space.  They are expending effort where it does the most good - gaining experience in building spacecraft.  Even if the first, second, third attempts fail, at the end they will have a wealth of experience that NASA has lost in the days since Apollo.  NASA has not designed a new working vehicle in almost thirty years.  They have forgotten how it was done in the golden age, for what was the sequence of Mercury, Gemini and Apollo but a series of prototypes and testbeds to gain the practical engineering skills to reach the moon?  Test early, test often. 

What would have happened if NASA had spent the period between the launch of Yuri Gagarin and Apollo 8 designing, redesigning - on paper - the perfect launch vehicle?  A giant explosion, most likely.  And that is why I am certain that of the twenty teams now competing for the X-Prize, at least several will have successful flights by the end of next year.


Posted by Buckethead on 08/29/03 at 05:04 PM
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Tackling Big Brother head-on

Perfidy Responds

Loyal Reader #0008, Trish, emails with concerns over the growth of big brother and the erosion of liberty in this nation.  Perfidy is nothing if not responsive to its readers, so after some googling and random clicking on the interweb, we have found some solutions.

Here we have a counter-tips program, where we the free citizens of the republic can keep track of nosy neighbors, narcs and informants.

Here we see the efforts of RSA Labs to develop RFID blockers to keep big brother out of our undersclothes.

Enjoy Protection Services Incorporated’s Hospitality Weekend, where you can learn to defend yourself with a wide range of firearms, and learn about guarding against surveillance.

The Big Brother Awards keep track of what bad people are doing to our privacy.  Naturally enough, Poindexter’s TIA won this year.  Here is the award:

Big Brother Award

To fight back, and set up your own surveillance networks, you can go to spyville.com.

For some background on the surveillance and freedom arguments, these articles are good places to start.

For those who need more fuel for their paranoia, this story about MIT’s efforts to develop a RFID tag replacement for the barcodes in current use will help.  A barcode could handle different codes for different brands of rice.  A 96 bit code, this new development could have a unique code for every songle grain of rice on the planet.

Finally, when nothing else seems to work, there is always the tin foil hat.


Posted by Buckethead on 08/29/03 at 04:04 PM
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Won’t Somebody Please Think Of The Children!

Lead Pipe Cruelty

Slate is reporting that the news from California’s schools isn’t so good. Two-thirds of the state’s public schools have just been deemed deficient under California educational standards. You might say, “California, who cares!”, but in reality this is bad news to the rest of us because California’s school-standards criteria closely track those of No Child Left Behind, implying that some 66% of the nation’s schools could potentially recieve failing grades next year when the first round of grades and sanctions hit.

I’m of the opinion that No Child Left Behind is full of holes anyway, and fails to take into account the full collateral effects and implications its policies and mandates could produce. For example, see this paper by economist David Figlio. Although the conclusions and conjectures are ultimately a bit more polemical than I might wish, Figlio uses data from Florida schools to suggest that the schools at greatest risk for year-to-year Federal sanctions are the very schools whose operating budgets most depend (in dollars and in percentage terms) on Federal funding to remain open.  This means that when the Federal government withholds money from such a school, as a part of NCLB sanctions, the school sinks further into a spiral of debt and failure. Where’s the justice in that?

Even if 66% of the nation’s schools don’t “fail” next year any number even in that neighborhood is cause for concern that the standards are badly out of whack. What good is school choice if all the other schools in the area are deemed failures too? What good are waivers if transportation is not financially feasible for districts and private schools accepting transfers?

Finally, Figlio paper listed above also observes that school reputation plays a significant role in property valuation-- if more schools are deemed failures, this could have effects on the real estate markets in many communities, reducing the property taxes and hence local-level public school funding accordingly. Again, this has its greatest impact on those communities and school districts that most need help.

Look… I know that America’s public schools are in the shitter. I also know that many parties are at fault. I simply remain totally unconvinced that a national initiative which is based on withholding funding from schools is the way to do it. Especially such a sweeping initiative whose mandates will come into effect in 2004, long before a sufficient amount of data is collected to make reasonable decisions about what schools have what problems and how best to address them. 


Posted by Johno on 08/29/03 at 03:44 PM
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Levity

Entertainment

For your health, I recommend you go read somethingawful.com‘s ripping-off-Conan-O’Brien Photoshop Phriday, and especially enjoy the last image on the last page. I nearly died of amusement.

Also for your health, I do not recommend using img tags to link directly to images on SA’s site. That is, unless you LIKE obese transvestite pornography. Consider yourself warned.


Posted by Johno on 08/29/03 at 02:42 PM
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James Lileks: Worthy of Ministry Plaudits

War

He’s so good, we stole our name from his idea.
Today’s bleat:

Why not nuke North Korea’s nuke test? They’ve said they’re going to have a test; I presume we know where that will be. So we nuke it the day before. There’s a big explosion, a mushroom cloud; they blame us. We say what are you talking about? You said you were going to light one off. And you did. No! You did it! Right. We nuked your nuke test. And that makes sense . . . how, exactly? It would certainly keep them off their game. And just after we nuke the test - and every subsequent test, of course - we put a call to Li’l Kim’s cellphone, and someone with a Texas accent says oh, I’m sorry, wrong number. I was tryin’ to reach a live man.


Posted by Johno on 08/29/03 at 12:49 PM
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