Bruce is one of our most important thinkers on real security in our times. Security is so politicized and hyped that hardly anybody takes a real objective view of it. Bruce is one of those. His latest newsletter (below) has a great article on why a national ID card is a terrible idea. And I’m about halfway through his book Beyond Fear, which is pretty darn good.
This looks legit:
(Mr. McDERMOTT asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 minute to revise and extend his remarks)
MR. McDERMOTT:
“Mr. Speaker, the President’s presidential prayer team is urging us to ‘pray for the President as he seeks wisdom on how to legally codify the definition of marriage. Pray that it will be according to Biblical principles.’
With that in mind, I thought I would remind the body of the biblical principles they are talking about.
Marriage shall consist of a union between one man and one or more women. That is from Genesis 29:17-28.
Secondly, marriage shall not impede a man’s right to take concubines in addition to his wife or wives. That is II Samuel 5:13 and II Chronicles
11:21.
A marriage shall be considered valid only if the wife is a virgin. If the wife is not a virgin, she shall be executed. That is Deuteronomy 22:13.
Marriage of a believer and a nonbeliever shall be forbidden. That is Genesis 24:3.
Finally, it says that since there is no law that can change things, divorce is not possible, and finally, if a married man dies, his brother has to marry his sister-in-law. Gen. 38:6-10; Deut 25:5-10″
It is pretty interesting to compare the Bush and Kerry blogs. This site makes it easy:
From my friend JohnK:
Here’s the crazy Tom Peters on outsourcing. One of the few cases where principles that libertarians would espouse are really working.
Also, this thread on Joel on Software is packed with great view points – many from Indian and Russian programmers on the other side of the outsourcing equation.
Outsourcing software exposes how good or bad you are at designing, specifying and communicating. It forces a communication process that most companies don’t make explicit.
johnk
Yet another interesting and insightful article from Thomas Friedman about India.
I love him.
Op-Ed Columnist: The Secret of Our Sauce
The Secret of Our Sauce
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
BANGALORE, India
Yamini Narayanan is an Indian-born 35-year-old with a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Oklahoma. After graduation, she worked for a U.S. computer company in Virginia and recently moved back to Bangalore with her husband to be closer to family. When I asked her how she felt about the outsourcing of jobs from her adopted country, America, to her native country, India, she responded with a revealing story:
This is a great explanation from a great constitutional scholar.
This is a pretty interesting idea. Decide how you feel on the issues, then get matched with the candidate that most reflects those standards. This could have pretty interesting implications on the future of politics.
SelectSmart.com Selectors | 2004 AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE SELECTOR
We attended an incredible speech by Tom Friedman. The text was substantially similar to his War of Ideas editorials. He enjoined us to read 2 things, during his speech. One was a speech given by Malaysian Prime Minister Mohammed Mahathir to the OIC. The other was 2 Arab Human Development Reports, which cost $10 each, but a speech about them is available. Fascinating stuff from a very insightful speaker.
An interesting, somewhat theoretical view supporting file sharing.
A good interview with some more moderate ideas on copyright. Also mentions my friend Robert von Goeben.
Sheldon Pacotti wrote a neat rebuttal to Bill Joy’s pessimistic paper, with some great analogies from science fiction and role-playing games.
The computer-networked, digital world poses enormous threats to humanity that no government, no matter how totalitarian, can stop. A fully open society is our best chance for survival.
Joseph Barillari wrote a great analysis of the RIAA’s case against Dan Peng, a Princeton undergrad. The best part is, later on in his blog he points out that Windows XP has the same functionality!
I’m not smart enough to figure out if this guy is right, but it seems a bit far-fetched. It’s going to be a long long time before legacy receivers can be phased out, and until then, you can’t just step on their frequency bands. Interesting, nonetheless.
“Interference is a metaphor that paints an old limitation of technology as a fact of nature.” So says David P. Reed, electrical engineer, computer scientist, and one of the architects of the Internet. If he’s right, then spectrum isn’t a resource to be divvied up like gold or parceled out like land. It’s not even a set of pipes with their capacity limited by how wide they are or an aerial highway with white lines to maintain order.