Climate Change is a Huge Business Opportunity

Climate-change is the greatest business opportunity since the American westward expansion of the 1800s.

American unbridled imagination could lead the world in adapting to it.

That is, if government stopped coddling businesses already making more profits than they know what to do with on financially safe, but dirty and wasteful, old technologies.

As the seas rise and the weather worsens over the next few decades, millions of structures will be damaged and flooded. How are we going to preserve and protect them?

Weather is becoming more extreme. Tornadoes more frequent. Hurricanes farther north and earlier in the year. Unusually high winds. Dry thunderstorms igniting fires. Sudden snow storms out of season. How do we adapt to this new normal?

We need creative thinking. Roofing materials must be redesigned to withstand higher winds and bigger hail. Homes and high-rises must be reinforced. Building codes require massive overhaul to allow for the new approaches and new materials.

Established industries that refuse to adapt will fail. New business models will require a deferment of short-term profits. Owners and stock-holders must be willing to invest in risky new technologies that are not as profitable today but have the best chance to prevail in the future.

Solar panel technology is advancing almost as fast as computers. It will soon be cheaper to produce electricity at the point of use rather than a central location. Utility companies that embrace that fact will prosper by providing standardized, reliable point-of-use systems. Such systems could use of the existing transmission infrastructure for load-balancing and second-sourcing.

The most dramatic reduction in energy use and pollution may not even come from solar panels and electric cars, but instead from a better Internet.

Why do we consume vast amounts of energy and pour out tons of pollution to drive across town twice a day? Why do we leave one perfectly good building empty, only to occupy another? Most jobs today are information workers who could be located anywhere. Why not at home?

That means renovations to create better home-offices. Installation of higher speed Internet and faster computers. More sound-proofing. More ergonomic chairs.

It also means renovating office buildings into apartments. Maybe more two-car driveways to accommodate service vehicles parked at the technician's home while off-duty instead of in a big parking lot.

More extreme weather means more damaged roofs and broken windows. Flat video displays that use very little power are now common and rapidly getting cheaper and more efficient. Digital cameras likewise. For safety, energy conservation and your choice of views, why not "virtual-windows"?

The massive upheavals caused by climate change will create unprecedented economic opportunities... for those ready and willing to embrace it.

photo credit: Climate Indicators - Relative Sea Level Change Along U.S. Coasts via photopin (license)

Your Vote Does Not Count

I believe most programmers can't help but fear that the outcome of elections for many years have been determined largely by incumbent politicians, bureaucrats and the handful of election software companies... all of them highly conservative.

While there is probably still enough restraint to allow a landslide vote the other way to prevail, my own sense is that most single-digit victories probably are fraudulent.

Democratic elections require transparent and verifiable election software at all levels. None is currently allowed in any binding election in this country today.

The reaction to the 2000 presidential election debacle was a masterful use of a crisis to set in motion a campaign to strip away most of the civil rights gains of the last 50 years.

Your vote doesn't count, and neither does mine, until this "electronic ballot-stuffing" is ended.

Ayn Rand

Just watched Ayn Rand on Johnny Carson (1967)

This was not the usual late-night-talk-show guest interview. No jokes. Very serious. And went over into what was supposed to be another guest's time. (total of about 30mins)

If Ayn Rand were alive today and could speak for herself, I think she would vigorously denounce Rand Paul, Paul Ryan and the rest of her "neo-disciples"... and they would denounce her.

For example... In this interview, she very strongly asserts that no one has the right to another person's life. To that end, she clearly expresses her opposition to any draft for any reason. Only individuals have the right to decide to risk their lives.

Seems to me that the Republicans have hijacked some of her philosophies (primarily laissez-faire capitalism) to justify destroying the lives of others in furtherance of their own affluence.

This interview indicates that in her philosophy of Objectivism, she expected everyone to vigorously pursue their own self-interest. To me, the flaw in it was that she seemed to think everyone had roughly the same capacity to do that. We know that they don't. But at the time of the interview (1967), the divergence was far smaller than it is today.

I couldn't disagree more with today's Republican interpretation of Ayn Rand's philosophies. I could say the same about the Christian churches' interpretation of Jesus' philosophies. I think both have been used to further agendas that each would abhor were they alive.

Perhaps that's why these "reinterpretations" have only come about well after the icons were too dead to disagree.

Republicans are Scared. We Democrats are too.

We have become highly "risk-averse." The uncharitable would say, "cowardly."

I've been one of those. But I may be coming out the other side now.

We are afraid. We are overwhelmingly afraid.

We have a lot to be afraid of. More than most of us can rationally handle.

For most people, "truth" is almost totally determined by how much we trust the speaker. But Watergate began an irreversible erosion in the reliability of that instinct in this country. Iran-Contra was another milestone in that process. The 2000 presidential election.

The election of Barak Obama filled us with hope that the nightmare was finally over.

Then came Mitch McConnell and the R's war on the the first black Presidency, the Supreme Court's ruling on Citizen's United, and countless other recent events.

Now we have ISIS and Ebola... dangers for which it is socially acceptable to freak-out over because they are external rather than internal.

(Maybe it's like beating up somebody for calling your brother names... the same brother you pick on mercilessly every day.)

The freakout over Ebola is really our pent up fears finally having an outlet for their expression.

"Fight" and "flight" are both reactions to fear. Despite our prejudices, "flight" is often a wiser choice for ultimate success and survival than "fight."

Most species have a predilection, an instinctive bias, for one or the other. Cultures often develop such biases too. But unlike instincts, cultural bias can take less time to change in light of traumatic events.

By the 1940s, the Japanese culture had developed a "fight" bias when faced with adversity. A couple of atom-bombs however converted them to a more thoughtful "flight" bias. Look at them now!

The Republicans have a strong prejudicial "fight" bias. For them, "offense" is not just "the best defense," it's the ONLY defense. Anything else is considered shameful.

Democrats however have a "flight" bias. Most try to avoid conflict, "find common ground," and compromise for the common good.

Democrats force ourselves to respect the views of people we truly believe are just "bat-shit-crazy."

Democrats often have "bleeding hearts," but they bleed because their heads are restraining them from trying to give more than they have.

Democrats work hard to stretch forethought as far as possible to anticipate and overcome problems with our own ideas. (A practice that's often used against us, BTW.)

Democrats then, it seems to me, are the only hope our country has for survival. We are the only ones looking ahead, and using our heads, to overcome the dangers we face.

I never thought I'd say this but... Republicans are not "bad people."

They're just scared.

It is up to Democrats to protect them as well as ourselves.

It's up to Democrats to find solutions, as Republican fears have stopped them from even trying.

The Republican leadership have become like cornered animals. All rationality is gone. They see little or no way out. The only, very slim chance they see for survival, is an almost certainly suicidal attack.

We Democrats have to get off their backs and take action ourselves... though we don't know what to do any more than they do.

But their "fight" bias has them taking action anyhow. Actions that have put us all in that desperate corner.

Those Republican actions are lethal.

We Democrats had better figure out better ones... and quickly.

Germany offers free college tuition to U.S. and international students

All German universities are now free to Americans and all other international students. The last German state to charge tuition at its universities struck down the fees this week.

The ramifications...

• Germany is about to be flooded with student visa applications.
• The cost of rent in Germany will skyrocket.
• The Germany economy is about to boom to far greater than that of the U.S. on a per-capita basis.
• German is about to become the hottest course in U.S. schools.
• U.S. student enrollment is about to plummet causing a short-term spike in tuition in a futile attempt to make up the difference. After a year or two, the U.S. will be forced to follow Germany's lead.
• A great many U.S. students that get into Germany will do their best to stay after graduation as European governments and societies share the beliefs and ideals of young people far better than the U.S.

Maybe there is hope...

Shellshocked?

The question...

Should bash shells be replaced with the new patched version?

US-CERT recommends users and administrators review TA14-268A, Vulnerability Note VU#252743 and the Redhat Security Blog (link is external) for additional details and to refer to their respective Linux or Unix-based OS vendor(s) for an appropriate patch.

A fact...

• "Bash is standard on Mac OS X and many Linux systems"

A timeline...

• Oct 2012 - "Apple is added to the NSA’s list of penetrated servers"
• Dec 2013 - Apple Says It Has Never Worked With NSA...
• Sep 19, 2014 - Likely that NSA has now demanded Apple's data and they are resisting
• Sep 24, 2014 - US-CERT is aware of a Bash vulnerability affecting Unix-based operating systems such as Linux and Mac OS X

Ramifications...

• The Bash shellshock "vulnerability" has been a "feature" of Bash for 22 years. You'd think in all that time, in all those high-security environments that run Unix or Linux, someone would have worried about misuse.
• Now, every installation of Bash in the world is about to be replaced.
• Though Bash is open-source, few people actually take the time to study the code of such large and complex programs.
• Bash is written in C, which supports embedded assembly-language code. Code that even fewer programmers have the skills to read.
• Bash is written in C, which easily supports treating any block of binary, such as something labeled as data or a small image, as code.
• Thus, a skilled programmer could hide "backdoor" code in plain sight, and it probably wouldn't be discovered unless it caused an error of some kind.
• Extremely high-skilled programmers that break the law are often employed by federal agencies.

On Income Inequality ...

re:
On Income Inequality: A French Economist Vs. An American Capitalist
by MARILYN GEEWAX, May 11, 2014 5:40 AM ET

Strangely enough, I think they're both right... In the same way each of the proverbial blind-men is right in their description of the elephant they only know by touch.

The healthiest possible economy occurs when 100% of the population feels maximum incentive to risk innovation in the pursuit of happiness (i.e. success).

Because the motivaters of the 1% are mostly in opposition to those of the 99%, maximum prosperity can only be achieved at some point of equilibrium between them. We've been WAY out of equilibrium for about 10-20 years.

Charlie Crist for Governor

Former (Republican) Governor Charlie Crist has come over from "the dark side" and is running to be our next (Democratic) Governor. Want to help him out?

With the massive unlimited money that the Koch Brothers and other Republicans are already throwing behind incumbent Rick Scott, "the odds are against us, and the situation is grim."

But times have changed dramatically. My generation still gets most of their info from TV, and so will be saturated with millions of dollars of highly polish and cleverly deceptive anti-Crist propaganda. And there's a lot of us in Florida.

But younger generations (and a smattering of us old farts) recognize that there's a lot more truth on the Internet... and we've learned how to find it. We've learned to distinguish truth from the Internet's abundance of unsubstantiated opinion and undeclared fiction. That gives us an edge.

Koch and company are trying to buy votes, as they just did in the 13th District defeat of Democrat Alex Sink. Their base is made up of diligent voters. Our base is not. So they have the advantage of money and participation.

What we have truth, honesty, compassion, thoughtfulness, empathy for all and...

... we still believe we can make a difference

... we still believe that tomorrow can be better than today

... we still believe that WE can be better tomorrow than we are today.

The history of our country is replete with dramatically outspent candidates that won. Money does not necessarily buy votes. We must remember that...

WE, together, are the government.

WE, together, own this country.

WE, together, decide what is right and wrong.

But WE have let our representatives become our masters.

And WE have the authority and the responsibility to set things right.

We must try. For even if we fail, our efforts inspire others to try again.

Sound like fun?

... help elect Charlie Crist

I'm not affiliated with the Crist campaign in any way. I can't help in person they way they need but will keep writing in support of Charlie Crist for Governor -- robert "docsalvage" watson

Wildlife Ambassadors

Instead of banning Orca captivity entirely as a California Congressman's bill does, I actually think there should be laws requiring much more humane living conditions for them. SeaWorld has done more for Orcas that anyone else by bringing them into our world. If not for SeaWorld and other major aquariums, the public wouldn't care any more about "Killer Whales" than they do about sharks, rattlesnakes, scorpions... get my drift?

Yesterday, my daughter finally dragged me to the Tallahassee Museum of History and Natural Science (nee The Junior Museum)

If you haven't been there, TMHNS is much more a natural habitat zoo than a museum. Like virtually all zoos in the U.S., they do as much as they can within their meager budget to provide natural habitat space for wildlife. Only a few dangerous animals like poisonous snakes live in "cages" (aquariums). Most live in well fenced areas of native Florida habitat of several thousand square feet or more. Visitors are kept high above these enclosures of palmetto bushes, huge oak trees and cypress swamp on a well maintained wooden walkway. The animals ignore us most of the time.

Courage

A note to conservatives...

We know you're scared s***less of any kind of human progress. If it hasn't been done before, it must be "... lies straight from the pit of hell."

We try to explain that things will be better with improvements in the human condition. But your fears just won't let you go there. We understand.

The survival of the human race depends on overcoming our fears of the unknown... "to boldly go where no one has gone before."

That famous line was a metaphor by-the-way. While fictionally "exploring strange new worlds," the story-tellers were really exploring the human condition. How we treat each other. How we react to change. How we overcome our beliefs in what is possible on encountering the "impossible". And how we embrace it a grow as a result.

We know your fears for they are ours too. We've chosen to let our rational minds hold our fears at bay, for there is no way out of fear but through change.

The only way to remove a threat is to learn. We either learn to understand that it is not really a threat, or we learn how to mitigate or overcome it. We'll keep trying.

Ezra Klein... the future of journalism

(Photo: Christopher Anderson/Magnum Photos/New York Magazine)

What is the extraordinary Ezra Klein up to? Here, Let Ezra Explain

There are a lot of us... even old-timers like me, who can see that what  Ezra is doing is the future of journalism.

Mr. Klein grew up with The Internet. It's as familiar and natural to him as television is to the generation before him (mine). What makes him special, is that he has consciously chosen to mine "traditional" journalism for lessons that can be applied to the new medium. Why? It seems, Mr. Klein is never satisfied to accept that things "just are."

Ezra Klein appears to eternally ask, "Why are they?"

NASA's "back in harness"

NASA's new "test harness" for its next generation of interplanetary flight systems gets "first light" this month. -- DocSalvage

Test engineer James Peckham runs an avionics flight simulation to see how SLS will perform during launch.

.@NASA_SLS hardware, software, operating systems integrated & powered up for inaugural run: http://t.co/iw6VJ6yumH pic.twitter.com/uMoVPTS0JX
— NASA (@NASA) January 13, 2014

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Edward Snowden is a patriot

Today, I'm very proud of the ACLU.

I'm proud of ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero for having the courage to publicly pronounce Mr. Snowden a patriot while the administration that I otherwise love continues to vilify him and aggressively seek his extradition and prosecution.

Today, I'm even proud of my country.

It has not been so for many years now. For the last 33 years, America has been dominated by a profound state of fear.

That all-consuming fear has driven administrations to oppress and abuse any who disagreed... both foreign and domestic. That all-consuming fear has driven American business to levels of exploitation and corruption of law not seen in a hundred years. And that all-consuming fear has driven half of the American people to re-embrace racism and sexism; to arm themselves beyond all reason; to actively reject 50 years of making the world a better place in which to live.

I'm proud of my country today because, despite all that, despite the tremendous official and public vitriol towards Edward Snowden ... despite the historic condemnation by many of the ACLU's work ... Mr. Romero and the ACLU have the freedom to speak out without fear of retribution.

That cannot be said in much of the world.

That cannot be said in the world that half of this country wants to return us to.

As one of our most famous patriots once said, "We must, indeed, all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately."

Mr. Romero and the ACLU have chosen to "hang together" with Edward Snowden.

I couldn't be prouder.

Are men, by nature, rapists?

I believe history provides a great deal of supporting evidence that men are, indeed, exactly that. It is only the "civilizing" affect women have managed to have on men in the last century that curbs the most overt expressions of it.

Male dominance over women is near-universal throughout history.

Note that every major religion is patriarchal and places stringent requirements on women to act in ways that are subservient, powerless, and non-enticing. The Christian Crusades of the late Middle-Ages virtually wiped all of the religions with female deities.

A case can also be made that the "war on women" by conservative men over the last 30yrs, particularly recently, is a kind of retaliation. Greater restrictions on actual sexual dominance may very well have caused many men to find other ways to assert themselves.

"Civilizing" a society is the act of teaching men to think more like women.

The Cannabis Business

Illegal goods and services are a lot more profitable than legal ones if you can structure the market to keep the inevitable legal costs manageable.

In free-markets, the better something is for consumers and business startups, the worse it is for the establish businesses. That's the vital counter-balance competition provides. Without it, business stagnates into a few mega-companies that work in sync to inflate prices and minimize cost by minimizing quality.

Eventually, it becomes so unbearable that enough entrepreneurs join with consumers in rebelling.

If the government leans towards the totalitarian model, it's usually beholden to established business and so attempts suppression, resulting in violence.

More democratic governments like ours elect more liberal, consumer/entrepreneur sympathetic representatives who pass laws that rein-in the worse business excesses. Healthy competition is thus restored without violence.

It's good to see the first glimmers of that on the horizon.

Top 5 misconceptions about open source in government programs

If we want reliable, open government, shouldn't most government software be open source?

posted 21 May 2013 by Adam Firestone on opensource.com
Within US government programs, while the use of open source software (OSS) is not mandatory, it is both permissible and often encouraged. However, due to the Byzantine nature of the controlling laws, regulations, policies, and guidance (LRPG) as well as some popular misconceptions, architects, systems engineers, and developers often encounter reactions ranging from unfamiliarity to resistance when recommending the use of OSS. For the remainder of this article, we’ll debug five of the most widespread misconceptions.

Healthcare.gov: Armchair Analysis

Healthcare.gov may need to be redesigned to just collect and store the application data, then say, "Thank you very much, you'll get an email within 48hrs with a link to your options."

The data would go into a queue database that other, back-end software would process sequentially and produce a results dataset with whatever is needed to present a list of plans and prices for that applicant. The applicant logs back in in a couple of days to start comparing plans.

Reagan Started It All

JJR wrote on Facebook Oct 1, 2013
re: today's government shutdown...

"One of the ways you can acquire a prion disease is to eat right out of its skull the brains of an infected monkey. We are now seeing the country reeling and jabbering from the effects of the prion disease, but it was during the time of Reagan that the country ate the monkey brains. . ."

I was so naive back then. Here I thought no elected official could be more Hitler-like than Reagan. Then I was sure Newt had him beat. Then it had to be "W."

Who knew they were wusses compared to Ted Cruz, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Paul Ryan, Eric Cantor, ... (I'm tired of typing)?

You're absolutely right, Reagan set it all in motion.

Online Security: Self-Signed Certificates

I've never been comfortable with the idea of Certificate Authorities (CAs). It's always felt like a system built on a single-point-of-failure. And single-points-of-failure are anathema to secure and reliable design of any system, computer or otherwise.

Paul Venezia, a system administrator columnist for InfoWorld that I've come to respect, presents a compelling case for a sea change in our approach to online security in his September 16, 2013 column "Restore the right to privacy with self-signed certificates."

Republican Xenophobia Will Kill Thousands

Republican xenophobia will kill thousands.

I will be one of them.

As October 1 2013 approaches, time is running out for the neo-Dixiecrats that have hijacked the Republican party to stop playing Russian-roulette-by-proxy with the lives of thousands of Americans.