Musings

General-purpose musings

There are 780 posts filed in Musings (this is page 15 of 78).

Edward Snowden and NSA spying

I haven’t known what to make of Edward Snowden, the well-paid contractor who revealed the extent of the NSA’s spying on Americans. Is he a civilian version of Cpl. Bradley Manning, the Army analyst whose release of thousands of secret documents put Wikileaks in the news? I don’t think so. Manning isn’t a whistleblower; he didn’t seem to know or care what he was releasing, he just wanted to release it. There was no greater good he was serving other than himself. I still think Manning should be punished for his deeds.

Where does that leave Snowden? After all, he also broke his oath to keep secrets, too, and unlike Manning he was getting paid handsomely to keep those secrets. Also, the type of NSA collection he exposed first appeared in the press way back in 2006 (or perhaps even a year earlier). Is one guilty of revealing a secret if what one reveals isn’t a secret anymore?
Continue reading →

Walled gardens winning?

I took the time today to install the Tiny Tiny RSS newsreader, a replacement for the doomed Google Reader. Switching back to my own newsreader allowed me to immediately see how many feeds that I once followed have since vanished. It seems many blogs have dropped off the Internet entirely, and many of these only very recently.

Like the word “croatoan” carved in the tree that became the last word of the Lost Colony, some of these blogs left us with a “last post” entry but no real clue where they went. Is blogging dying? Are the walled gardens winning?

I have to admit myself to not posting as often as I once did. Yes, I use Facebook but only post updates there every few days. The job I took in February has sucked up much of what was once free time. And frankly, I’m saddened to see how our state legislature is now hell-bent on destroying this state. There’s not much inspiration there.

I still have a few more observations in me, though, and will post them when they’re ready (or even when they’re not ready – that’s never stopped me before!).

North Korea’s virtual war

As I groggily woke up before dawn this morning I had some insight on North Korea pop into my head. North Korea has been broadcasting bellicose statements to the world, escalating international concern much higher than in decades. Curiously, these threats have come in the middle of the night, Korea-time. The North Korean populace seems completely unaware.

The insight is that, no matter how large the North Korean army is, Kim Jong Un can’t win. If he nukes someone, he definitely loses, but it wouldn’t take a nuke to destroy his society.

Let’s say he’s dumb enough to send troops to invade South Korea. This is an army, while formidable in numbers, doesn’t trust its soldiers at the DMZ to go sprinting across to the South. If they get to South Korea, what will keep them from not returning?
Continue reading →

Remote control death

I read about the death of 8-year-old Martin Richard in Monday’s Boston Marathon bombings and it brought a tear to my eye. Here’s this innocent little kid who never hurt anyone, waiting to give his dad a hug and he gets killed by a bomb blast. Whomever would do this to an innocent kid is a coward.

Then MT.Net reader Aetius points out that this is what happens when U.S. military pilots, flying drones from miles away, fire rockets meant for terrorists into foreign homes. If I were a Pakistani father whose innocent 8-year-old son was just murdered by a man sitting safely miles away, would I feel any less outraged than we do with the Boston attacks? Would I consider the killer any less cowardly than the perpetrator of the Boston attacks?

Does our President have the right to express outrage about the Boston attacks when he knows full well that he has approved the killings of potentially hundreds (if not thousands) of innocent people through secret drone strikes? At what point did we Americans acquiesce to our President becoming judge, jury, and executioner without any oversight whatsoever?

Any innocent death is one death too many. Does it really matter whether that death comes from a jury-rigged pressure cooker bomb or on the tip of a Hellfire missile? The Defense Department is withdrawing its plans to award medals to drone pilots. What does it say when even the DoD has doubts about the bravery of its remote control killers?

Is remote control death the business America really wants to be in?

Terrorism by any other name

Yesterday afternoon, some coward blew up bombs on a crowded Boston street near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. At this point three people have died and over 100 were injured. It was a horrific ending to what should have been a triumphant moment for these runners, their families, and their friends. So far President Obama has stopped short of calling it terrorism. Others suspect it’s terrorism and some are even speculating that it’s domestic terrorism.

I am aghast that anyone could think it’s anything but terrorism.

Wikitionary defines terrorism as:

The deliberate commission of an act of violence to create an emotional response through the suffering of the victims in the furtherance of a political or social agenda.

Yeah, I know I should never quote a wiki but it’s a good definition.

I would say that murdering innocents is always considered terrorism. Any time some disturbed person goes on a deadly shooting rampage, it’s terrorism. Any time an American with a chip on his shoulder detonates an explosive-laden truck near a crowded federal building, it’s terrorism. Any time some coward leaves backpacks on a crowded Boston street to kill innocent people, it’s terrorism.

There is no such thing as “domestic terrorism.” It’s terrorism. If someone kills someone I love, I’m not inclined to treat them differently based on where they live: it won’t bring my loved one back. Whether a foreigner with a twisted sense of justice blows someone up or a fellow American with a twisted sense of justice blows someone up doesn’t matter. They are both killers and both cowards.

They way to defeat terrorism is to go on living and refused to be cowed by these cowardly attacks. That, and do all you can to bring the bastards to justice.

Saving passwords in browsers

SalesForce.com
I get annoyed at some companies’ misguided attempts at password security. Take SalesForce.com, for instance (please!).

SalesForce is a web-based customer relationship management system. It holds a lot of sensitive corporate data and rightly should be protected from unauthorized access. While we SalesForce customers are expected to trust SalesForce with we consider sensitive data, SalesForce does not trust us with what itconsiders sensitive data, namely one’s own SalesForce password. SalesForce deliberately disables the ability of Firefox and other webbrowers to automatically save your SalesForce password and automatically re-enter it when you return to the login page.
Continue reading →

Not fast enough

I had to laugh last week when I overheard a conversation in the breakroom between two coworkers. One was at the microwave, complaining that he had to enter the full cook time, rather than hit one button for a preset time.

I laughed when I realized how absurd the thought was. Here was a miraculous invention that could cook food in mere seconds and my friend was griping that he had to wait an additional two seconds. If there ever was a “first world problem” I’m sure this is it.

Google Reader and the danger of walled gardens

Sadly, I learned today that Google is pulling the plug on Google Reader, it’s RSS aggregation service. No explanation was given for the move.

Over on the Google Reader forums, I posted this question:

So, with Google’s shutdown of Google Reader, do the “walled gardens” of Facebook and Google Plus win? Is this the end of the easily-searchable, anyone-can-set-up-shop-on-the-Internet days?

Why would Google intentionally make it HARDER for its users to follow their interests online? How could Reader possibly be sapping enough resources to justify its end?

Continue reading →

Chopping veggies or copying code?

Last night while I was chopping vegetables for tonight’s supper, I thought about my service in the Navy. At the time I was a cryptologic technician, which included a security clearance and sounded pretty futuristic. In actuality, I learned how to copy Morse Code: the oldest form of electronic communication available. I haven’t used either my Morse Code nor my security clearance in a job ever since.

It made me wonder whether I should’ve used my Navy training to become a cook. Now there’s a skill that will never be out of demand! The cooks on the ship really had respect, too, because if you treated them right they might get you an extra can of coffee or give you dibs on certain foods.

There’s also a kind of zen involved in chopping vegetables, a meditative state where one simply zones out and lets one’s hands do the work. At the same time, though, listening to Morse can also put one into a sort of trance, with the stream of dots and dashes requiring a certain kind of focus and having a certain kind of rhythm.

At the end of the day, however, no one wants to eat dots or dashes!

Gone in a flash

Gone in a flash


The picture above captures what has long been one of my favorite activities: riding bikes with the kids to school. It was 24 degrees when this photo was taken, but it was still fun. As you can see, I’m normally left in the dust on these rides.

I had been feeling wistful about this wonderful daily routine and how it will soon be coming to an end. Hallie graduates to middle school this fall and for the first time in a long time our morning schedules will no longer align. Travis still has two years of biking to school to be done but this glorious age when they’re both biking to school together will forever end.

How is it that when I was a kid life seemed to stretch on forever? How could it have ever seemed like one lifetime would be all I’d ever need to do all the things I wanted to do? Why didn’t anyone warn me how quickly life slips through one’s fingers, careening away like these cackling young cyclists?

With the kids growing inches every few months, it’s hard to keep up with all that’s happening in my life. I don’t want to miss a moment. I want to hug these kids and never let them go. I want to never forget what it’s like now, having such a wonderful family.

The kids will grow up, make their own way, and live successful lives. No matter where time takes us, though, I will always savor this moment in our lives.