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Why we're a divided nation
by R.A. Hettinga 10 Nov '04

10 Nov '04

This is one of the best arguments for minimal government I've heard. Like most good arguments, it's blindingly simple. Cheers, RAH ------- <http://www.townhall.com/columnists/walterwilliams/printww20041110.shtml> Townhall.com Why we're a divided nation Walter E. Williams (back to web version) | Send November 10, 2004 Recent elections pointed to deepening divisions among American people, but has anyone given serious thought to just why? I have part of the answer, which starts off with a simple example. Different Americans have different and intensive preferences for cars, food, clothing and entertainment. For example, some Americans love opera and hate rock and roll. Others have opposite preferences, loving rock and roll and hating opera. When's the last time you heard of rock-and-roll lovers in conflict with opera lovers? It seldom, if ever, happens. Why? Those who love operas get what they want, and those who love rock and roll get what they want, and both can live in peace with one another. Suppose that instead of freedom in the music market, decisions on what kind of music people could listen to were made in the political arena. It would be either opera or rock and roll. Rock and rollers would be lined up against opera lovers. Why? It's simple. If the opera lovers win, rock and rollers would lose, and the reverse would happen if rock and rollers won. Conflict would emerge solely because the decision was made in the political arena. The prime feature of political decision-making is that it's a zero-sum game. One person or group's gain is of necessity another person or group's loss. As such, political allocation of resources is conflict enhancing while market allocation is conflict reducing. The greater the number of decisions made in the political arena, the greater is the potential for conflict. There are other implications of political decision-making. Throughout most of our history, we've lived in relative harmony. That's remarkable because just about every religion, racial and ethnic group in the world is represented in our country. These are the very racial/ethnic/religious groups that have for centuries been trying to slaughter one another in their home countries, among them: Turks and Armenians, Protestant and Catholic, Muslim and Jew, Croats and Serbs. While we haven't been a perfect nation, there have been no cases of the mass genocide and religious wars that have plagued the globe elsewhere. The closest we've come was the American Indian/European conflict, which pales by comparison. The reason we've been able to live in relative harmony is that for most of our history government was small. There wasn't much pie to distribute politically. When it's the political arena that determines who gets what goodies, the most effective coalitions are those with a proven record of being the most divisive -- those based on race, ethnicity, religion and region. As a matter of fact, our most costly conflict involved a coalition based upon region -- namely the War of 1861. Many of the issues that divide us, aside from the Iraq war, are those best described as a zero-sum game, where one group's gain is of necessity another's loss. Examples are: racial preferences, Social Security, tax policy, trade restrictions, welfare and a host of other government policies that benefit one American at the expense of another American. You might be tempted to think that the brutal domestic conflict seen in other countries at other times can't happen here. That's nonsense. Americans are not super-humans; we possess the same frailties of other people in other places. If there were a severe economic calamity, I can imagine a political hustler exploiting those frailties here, just as Adolf Hitler did in Germany, blaming it on the Jews, the blacks, the East Coast, Catholics or free trade. The best thing the president and Congress can do to heal our country is to reduce the impact of government on our lives. Doing so will not only produce a less divided country and greater economic efficiency but bear greater faith and allegiance to the vision of America held by our founders -- a country of limited government. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Secession
by R.A. Hettinga 10 Nov '04

10 Nov '04

<http://www.townhall.com/columnists/tonyblankley/printtb20041110.shtml> Townhall.com Secession Tony Blankley (back to web version) | Send November 10, 2004 I assume the Republican National Committee is busy recording and archiving the idiotic statements coming out of national Democratic Party leaders and commentators. There is no doubt that the election has not only yielded a victory for the Republicans, but also a bumper crop of self-destructive vitriol and bitterness from the Democrats. The opinion pages of the New York Times (that would be pages A-1- D 37 inclusive) have been running articles by prime cut liberals, the general themes of which have been that conservative Christians are the equivalent of Islamic terrorists and that the benighted provincials who voted for President Bush are simply hate-filled bigots who have no place in America. The apotheosis of this political dementia was put forward in my very presence on last week's "McLaughlin Group" by my friend and colleague Lawrence O'Donnell. Lawrence, in cool blood and in apparent full control of his senses, asserted that this election will give rise to a serious consideration of secession from the Union by the blue states. I should point out that though Lawrence has been barking more than usual in this election season's TV commentary, he is a brilliant political analyst and a serious Democratic Party player. He was the late Sen. Moynihan's top Senate staffer. He comes from one of the great Democratic Party families. I believe it was his uncle who was President John Kennedy's White House chief of staff. He is also the most gifted writer/producer on the NBC show, "West Wing." He is not one of those no name nitwits who the cable shows pull from obscurity to recite Democratic Party talking points. I elaborate on his enviable pedigree and qualities of mind and experience because if he says such a thing to a television audience of six million viewers, it must surely reflect some measurable body of senior Democratic Party sentiment. And although it is inconceivable that any senior elected Democratic Party officials would ever repeat or act on such a deranged notion, it is a measure of how deep is the Democratic Party elite's contempt of and estrangement from the American public. In this regard, I couldn't help thinking of the founding election of the modern Democratic Party -- the election of 1828, when General Andrew Jackson of Tennessee defeated John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts by 139,000 votes out of 1.1 million cast. That election, which defined the Democratic Party that we have known for almost two centuries, has been called the first triumph of the common man in American politics. It pitted the moneyed interests of the Northeast against the farmers and working free laborers of the South and West. It was the first election in which almost all of the states (22 of 24) used direct popular election rather than state legislatures to elect the presidential electors. It was capped with a raucous inaugural celebration during which "rustic" common people shocked Washington society as they wandered through the White House celebrating, drinking and shaking President Andy Jackson's hand. And so started a bond between the Democratic Party and the typical working American that lasted 176 years -- until last Tuesday. It's not that the Democrats lost an election; obviously both parties have lost numerous elections. But never before in my memory -- which goes back faintly to 1956 -- has either party in its loss reacted with such venomous contempt for the American people. When we conservatives got shellacked in 1964 -- with Goldwater losing 61 percent-39 percent to Lyndon Johnson -- we knew we had a lot of work ahead if we were going to educate the public to our views. But I can honestly say that although I remember thinking that the public was misguided in its judgment, I never hated or felt contemptuous of the majority electorate -- of my fellow countrymen. This dominant sentiment of the Democratic Party elite -- that scores of millions of Americans are categorically unacceptable as fellow countrymen -- is evidence of a cancer in the soul of that party. These Democrats, quite expressly, are asserting that "christers," people who believe in the teachings of Jesus as described in the inerrant words of the Bible, are un-American, almost subhuman. Some of these Democrats would rather secede than stay in the same country with such people. If they were in the majority with no need to secede, what would they do? Their bigoted and absolutist view of religious people is at least a second cousin to the Nazi view of the Jews. In Europe, the few remaining people of faith have recently taken to calling the increasingly more adamant European secularist majority "secular fundamentalists." While that phrase is unfair to the perfectly respectable fundamentalist religious sentiment -- it shows how much more harsh and filled with fear the religious/secular divide is becoming. Fortunately, most rank-and-file Democrats are not infected with such secular bigotry. Democrats don't need to secede. They just need to purge their party of such of their leaders and intellectual vanguard as spew forth such rubbish. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Morgan Stanley website breach
by R.A. Hettinga 09 Nov '04

09 Nov '04

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5059129-103676,00.html> Guardian | Morgan Stanley website breach Rupert Jones Wednesday November 10, 2004 The Guardian A credit card company with more than 1 million customers has closed an online security loophole that could have allowed people to access account holders' details and move money about. Yesterday it emerged that the Morgan Stanley website had allowed users to access their credit card information after entering just the first digit of their credit card number. The incident comes four days after internet bank Cahoot closed down its website for 10 hours following a tip-off that users could view other customers' private details. Cyber crime experts said banks and other companies must take more responsibility for providing their online customers with security or run the risk that people will steer clear of these services. Morgan Stanley had permitted customers to let their PC "remember" their password so they only had to enter the first digit of their card number before the "autocomplete" facility provided the rest. This meant that someone using the same computer could potentially access another's accounts. The Association for Payment Clearing Services (Apacs) recommends that companies disable the auto function to remove the risk of this happening. The problem was reported to Morgan Stanley by the BBC after a viewer contacted a programme about the flaw. A Morgan Stanley spokeswoman said it had "taken immediate steps to turn off the auto function to ensure there are no possible security issues". "Morgan Stanley has received no customer complaints or calls on this issue to date, and to our knowledge no accounts have been accessed improperly," she said. But Philippsohn Crawfords Berwald, a city law firm, said the loophole "potentially enabled users to shift money across accounts with incredible ease". -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Sunrise in the West
by R.A. Hettinga 09 Nov '04

09 Nov '04

<http://www.techcentralstation.com/110904A.html> Tech Central Station Sunrise in the West By William J. Stuntz Published 11/09/2004 The conventional wisdom holds that America is and always has been divided between North and South. Actually, there is a bigger and deeper divide: between East and West. The West is winning, hands down. Consider these facts. Thirteen times since World War II, the country has elected a President from West of the Mississippi River. Easterners have won the White House twice in that time, and one of those -- Georgian Jimmy Carter -- beat another Easterner, Michigan's Gerald Ford, the only Eastern nominee of his party in the past fifty years. Eight times, an Eastern candidate squared off against a son of the West. The West won seven out of eight. Four of the seven victories were landslides. The East's one win -- John F. Kennedy over Richard Nixon in 1960 -- was a squeaker. In today's more Western America, it would probably squeak the other way. The West's growing dominance has a lot to do with the Republican Party's. Thirteen of its last fifteen nominations have gone to Westerners. Nine of those candidates won; six won at least forty states. The two Easterners, New York's Thomas E. Dewey and Ford, both lost. The Democrats have been more geographically balanced: seven nominees from West of the Mississippi, eight from the East. Also less successful. Easterners Kennedy and Carter won, barely; Carter later lost massively to Californian Ronald Reagan. The other five Eastern Democrats, along with three of the seven Westerners, lost to Western Republicans. Another way to measure the country's Western tilt is this: Since World War II, tickets with two Westerners have run seven times. They won all seven elections, five by landslides. Tickets with two Easterners have run, and lost, four times. Six of the seven West-West tickets were Republican. All four of the all-East tickets were Democratic. Some of this can be chalked up to geographical coincidence. But not all, and probably not most. Deep differences of attitude and spirit separate America's two halves. Easterners like theory and process. Westerners care more about outcomes than procedures, and they like whatever works. Easterners are cautious; Westerners take chances. Easterners like universities, legislatures, and the U.N. Westerners like businesses, the executive branch, and the Army. Eastern politicians are more likely to talk down to voters -- think of Dewey, Adlai Stevenson, or John Kerry -- because they are instinctively less democratic; they come from a world where social and educational class matters and where institutions seem to outlast people. (I teach at a university that is nearly four centuries old.) Western politicians are more optimistic, believe that problems can be solved and limits surpassed. Also that institutions are temporary things: they are the creatures; people are their creators, and creators matter more than the things they create. The flip side of optimism is rootlessness: if life isn't working out, go somewhere else and reinvent yourself, like Easterner-turned-Westerner (and Democrat-turned-Republican) Ronald Reagan. Easterners are more likely to be defined, and confined, by place. Eastern candidates want to protect a lead and play it safe -- Dewey, anyone? -- while Westerners roll the dice, not only in campaigns but in the White House: Reagan's simultaneous tax cuts and defense buildup (Howard Baker called it "a riverboat gamble," and it was), Bush's war in Iraq and his decision to wrap his arms around the third rail of American politics. The patterns don't always hold. Bob Dole comes from Kansas and is a small-d democrat to his core, but most of his political instincts are Eastern. The elder George Bush voted in Texas but lived most of his life in New England and Washington, D.C., and it shows. John F. Kennedy was Eastern through and through, but his politics showed a Western optimism: cut taxes and revenues will rise; promise that we will walk on the moon, then make it happen. Today, New Yorker Rudy Giuliani is one of the nation's most Western politicians -- like a New Yorker of the last century who loved the West (the West loved him back) and had a Giuliani-like executive temperament: Theodore Roosevelt. And the regional breakdowns are more complex than first appears. The Pacific Coast votes with the Northeast in national elections, though it still has a different political feel: One can hardly imagine Arnold Schwarzenegger, a classic Westerner, rocketing to the top of Massachusetts politics. So, too, the South -- including its Eastern seaboard -- usually lines up with the West in national elections, a pattern that goes back to William Jennings Bryan, and maybe to Andrew Jackson. But the West dominates this West-South political alliance, at least in presidential politics. The current President Bush is a good example. Though he is sometimes called a Southerner, Bush's orientation is more West than South. White Southerners (the modifier is important) are instinctive pessimists, perhaps because their ancestors lost a great war. They are rooted, not just to the land but to one particular piece of it, in a way Westerners aren't. Even their religion is different, more respectful of church authorities. Bush's Methodism is fiercely independent; it draws more inspiration from the Pope than from his own church's bishops. And Bush is Reagan-like in his fondness for taking big chances, rolling the dice. John Kerry, meanwhile, is a classic Easterner. Kerry may not have shaped the Senate during the past twenty years; he does not appear to have had much influence there. But the Senate has shaped him. His outlook on governance is quintessentially legislative -- and quintessentially legal. Legislators, like lawyers (Kerry is both), believe that if you get the process right, if the right people are consulted along the way and the right arguments are made at the right times, good decisions will follow. Executives know better. Sometimes more process only gums up the works. Consultation helps only if those who are consulted give wise advice. The bottom line matters more than what steps one takes to get there. Perhaps Kerry's critique of Bush's approach to terrorism didn't sell because it boiled down to two inconsistent claims about process: Don't consult allies in Afghanistan; that's outsourcing. Consult everyone in the world -- well, everyone in the United Nations -- about Iraq. On the campaign trail, Kerry often said that he "might" have gone to war in Iraq, but that if he had, "I'd have done it right." Meaning, he would have gotten the right process. There is a very different critique that one could make of Bush's presidency: The process has been fine, but too many bottom lines are wrong. Maybe going to war in Iraq was too risky a venture. (Al Gore was right about one thing: George W. Bush really does like "risky schemes.") Today, Bush's massive tax cuts coupled with equally massive spending increases -- and we haven't even begun to fix entitlement programs, which will cost a bundle -- look like a losing bet. The problem with Bush is not that he prays, not that he takes chances or shoots from the hip, not that he doesn't listen to Jacques Chirac or Gerhard Schroeder. It's that he often makes bad decisions. An executive critique rather than a legislative one might have won the election. We'll never know. For my part, I'm torn, as I suspect many Americans are: Eastern and Western blood flows through a lot of the same veins. I don't like risk; huge deficits terrify me. I'm a lawyer by training and so tend to value process too highly. But when I look at the broad sweep of American history, I see a country that, time and again, ignored process and took gambles that paid off big. Westerner Abraham Lincoln -- in his America, Illinois was definitely the West -- fought and won a long, hard war that freed millions and saved mankind's last, best hope. Westerners Truman, Eisenhower, and Reagan fought and won another long, hard war, and millions more taste freedom because of it -- and they did it without incinerating half the planet. The sheer size of those achievements boggles the mind. Maybe, just maybe, two decades from now the Near East will be filled with Muslim democracies; young men and women (women!) will fight their battles with ballots rather than bombs. If so, that too will be a mind-boggling achievement, the happy bequest of a Westerner who once ran a baseball team, and loved to swing for the fences. William J. Stuntz is a Professor at Harvard Law School. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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What Next for Libertarians?
by R.A. Hettinga 09 Nov '04

09 Nov '04

<http://www.techcentralstation.com/110904C.html> Tech Central Station Ryan H. Sager What Next for Libertarians? By Ryan Sager Published 11/09/2004 Libertarianism is in a bad way following the 2004 presidential election -- and not just because Libertarian Party candidate Michael Badnarik failed to overtake Ralph Nader for third place (though, if it's any consolation, he tied the erstwhile consumer advocate in the Electoral College). No, the problem is that both parties proved themselves able to ignore libertarian ideas almost completely this year and are only likely to do so increasingly going forward. Now, make no mistake about it, this was an election mainly about foreign policy (a topic to which libertarian philosophy has traditionally been difficult to apply). While much has been made of the fact that 22 percent of voters chose "moral values" as their "most important issue" when asked in exit polls -- making it the most popular of the options given -- that was only because "terrorism" and "Iraq" were listed as separate choices. Together, those foreign-policy topics, inextricably linked in the minds of many, were the deciding factor for 34 percent of voters. But the utter irrelevance of libertarian ideas this year can't be written off simply because of the nation's current foreign-policy concerns. It's impossible to ignore the fact that the domestic agendas of both parties this year were based firmly on expanding the power of the state. The Kerry-Edwards campaign, in its only small-government gambit, opposed certain provisions of the Patriot Act; but, for fear of looking soft on terror, that position was, shall we say, deemphasized. Otherwise, the Democrats pushed a pretty standard, statist line: "rolling back" tax cuts (otherwise known as "raising taxes," be it only on the rich), nationalizing health care, leaving Social Security to fester, spending more on education, increasing the amount of environmental regulation and putting a flu shot in every pot. The Bush-Cheney team had its version, a little lighter on economic statism but heavier on cultural statism: leaving in place its own move toward socialized medicine (a.k.a., the colossally expensive Medicare prescription drug benefit), cracking down on "indecency" and banning gay marriage. Tax cuts were also promised, though not paired with any cuts in programs to pay for them. Social Security reform may have been the only bright spot. So, what can we expect from the Republicans going forward? More of the same -- but worse. Karl Rove is already out in the press promising President Bush's evangelical base a renewed push to pass a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. And there can be absolutely no doubt that such an amendment, if not passed soon, will become a central issue in the 2006 midterm elections, used as a wedge issue to paint any Democratic senator or congressman who doesn't go along as a hopelessly out-of-touch liberal. And what can we expect from the Democrats? It's too soon to tell definitively, of course, but there are really only two directions the party can move, neither of them terribly favorable to the libertarian-minded. The party could begin playing to its liberal base -- MoveOn.org, Michael Moore, etc. -- but that would only pull it further out of the mainstream, leaving the Republicans to run the country unchallenged. More likely, we'll see a serious move by the party to close the "values gap" that supposedly cost its candidates so dearly this election cycle. There are any number of ways this could happen. Suddenly, Democrats in Congress could join Republicans in supporting a flag-burning amendment. They could suddenly become quite attached to the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. They could roll over on the anti-gay marriage amendment. And it would be completely unsurprising if Americans woke up suddenly to find the Democrats initiating new hearings into violence and sex in the music industry, television, movies, video games, Web pages, comic books or wherever. Libertarianism never flourishes during times of war, but that's exactly why people concerned with economic liberalism and social freedom should be concerned. With the War on Terror likely to be the defining issue of a generation, libertarians must begin to grapple with it seriously instead of pretending it doesn't exist. The forces of statism in this country have grabbed onto this war to move the center of gravity in our politics to the left economically and to the right socially. Karl Rove and the forces of "national-greatness conservatism" embodied in places such as The Weekly Standard have seen the chance to create a "permanent Republican majority" -- a platform combining traditional Republican strength on national security with a radical expansion of the size of the federal government, designed to rob the Democrats of their natural constituency. The Republican Party under Bush, in short, has ceased to be a hospitable environment for libertarians, and the alternative looks no better. The party that came in second isn't the only one with some thinking to do right now. Those of us in fourth need to wake up as well. Ryan Sager is a member of the editorial board of The New York Post. He also edits the blog Miscellaneous Objections and can be reached at editor(a)rhsager.com. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Mark Shuttleworth Interview: Open source is the business
by R.A. Hettinga 09 Nov '04

09 Nov '04

<http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=Insight-TenQuestions&ao=125244> Mail and Guardian Online: Wednesday, November 10, 2004, 2:39 Africa's first online newspaper est. 1994 TEN QUESTIONS Open source is the business 09 November 2004 14:33 Mark Shuttleworth gives a thumbs up for Africa and open source software. (Photograph: Mikhail Grachyev, AFP) Open-source software: what difference will it make to my life? If you're new to computers, then open source is a whole new universe waiting to be discovered, at no real cost. Almost every kind of application is freely available as open-source software -- from business applications such as word processors, presentation software and spreadsheets to specialist tools such as programming languages and databases. Open source is the best way for a student or child to discover the world of the computer, because there is no limit or restriction on your ability to learn how the software works, since it comes with full source code. So, for new computer users, open source is "the business". If you're in the software industry, then open source is interesting because all indications are that it will come to be the default on the desktop, just as it has come to dominate the server software scene. Why should I change from Windows, Microsoft Word or Internet Explorer to open-source products such as Linux and the likes? If what you have works for you, then I would not recommend changing. If, however, you are considering an upgrade or buying new computers, then open source is certainly worth considering. If you need to run Windows, then there is a lot of open-source software for Windows too -- you don't have to switch to a Linux-based operating system such as Ubuntu to get the benefits of open source. For example, on my Windows PC I don't have Microsoft Office, I use OpenOffice from www.openoffice.org, which is freely available and has a word processor, spreadsheet and presentation package that are compatible with Microsoft Office. I also use the Firefox web browser and Thunderbird e-mail software, from www.mozilla.org, which have had very few, if any, virus attacks against them. In general, open-source software is cheaper to acquire and manage, improves faster, has better support for internationalisation and is more secure than the older proprietary alternatives. If open source takes hold, what will our desktops/computers look like in 10 years' time? Hopefully they'll look pretty familiar! Open-source software looks just like older proprietary software, it's just produced and licensed freely. Also, it tends to be easier to get different pieces of open-source software to talk to one another, because the people who produce it have an interest in making collaboration happen and using open standards rather than locking you into their software. A big area of innovation in open source is collaborative work, allowing you to work on a document simultaneously with other people, and I think this sort of open-source innovation will be the main driver of new products and concepts in the information technology industry over the next 10 years. As much as people moan about Microsoft, aren't Microsoft products superior and easier to use than many open-source programmes available today? Certainly not. Of course, it depends on the application. For example, the open-source Apache web server is generally considered to be much better than any web-server software from Microsoft, and as a result, Apache is the most widely used web-server software on the internet. In desktop office applications, I think Microsoft still has an edge, but the gap is narrowing so fast and innovation in the open-source environment is so rapid that I am confident any gap will have disappeared in two or three years. That's why I'm advocating that South Africans embrace open source now, ahead of the curve. Is Bill Gates enemy number one? Not at all -- few people in the world have been effective at managing a small business and a large business, and Gates has been brilliant throughout Microsoft's history. In the 1980s, we didn't have the internet, so a single company was probably the most efficient way to produce software that worked well together. Nowadays, the internet allows collaboration between companies and volunteers, which has resulted in the rise of open-source software. You just couldn't make open source work in the 1980s because too few people were connected, but today it's proving to be the best way to produce software. You are a capitalist, yet you preach open-source software? How do you reconcile that? The emergence of open source isn't the end of the software industry by any means, it's just yet another big change in an industry that thrives on change. I think open source is the way of the future, so I put that into practice as much through my non-profit foundation work in education as through my business investments. I believe the business model in the software industry will have to evolve, so I'm investing in companies like Canonical that have newer business models that might (or might not) work in a world without software licensing fees. Only time will tell which ideas will prosper. Was your very successful business that made you billions based on open-source software? Yes, entirely. The web server and database software that held the business together was all open source (in those days I used the Apache web server and the MySQL database, though now I prefer the PostgreSQL database). A lot of the core cryptography at Thawte was also handled by open-source tools. How have you come to terms with your wealth? It's a struggle, but... :-) I can't seriously pretend that it's a hardship, but it is a sword with several sharp edges and no real handle. Certainly, it's changed my material life, but I'm constantly reminded that the things which make me happiest are only complicated by wealth, particularly new personal relationships. Being able to do whatever I want, in many ways, creates the responsibility to try to do the right thing for me and for the people I care about. And what's really interesting is the extent to which time is a great leveller. No matter how wealthy you are, you get exactly the same amount of time in your teens, twenties, thirties and so on. Instead of being locked into a specific job, I have to choose very carefully what I do with every single day -- there are more projects that I can dream about than I have time to do properly, or even funds to do, oddly enough. So it's a great privilege and at the same time a great responsibility. Are you the Bill Gates of Africa? No, I'm one of a few Mark Shuttleworths of Africa, and apologies to the other guys who had the name first, I hope I'm not wearing it out! As to comparisons with Bill Gates, I think he's achieved far more than me in the way he has steered a large and ultimately huge company through several decades of change, and I admire that skill greatly. It's something I don't think I'd have been able to achieve; I don't have the same stamina. Even if open source is now going to dominate the industry, it doesn't detract at all from the accomplishments of Gates and the Microsoft team in the past. When are you going to the moon? Have you been in touch with Richard Branson about more space travel? For the next space mission, which I hope one day to have the opportunity to fly, the moon wouldn't be out of the question. But I think it would involve more "Nazdarovya" than "Virgin". -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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A hard case resists a makeover for the new age
by R.A. Hettinga 09 Nov '04

09 Nov '04

<http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/columnists/10116684.htm> The Philadelphia Inquirer Posted on Sun, Nov. 07, 2004 Center Square | A hard case resists a makeover for the new age By Chris Satullo Guantanamo Bay Nov. 7 My dear wife, They are letting me write one letter to let you know that I am alive. I am at the new Liberal Media Re-Education Camp here at Gitmo; I am not allowed to see a lawyer or make phone calls. They are afraid that if I talk to a lawyer, I'll pass a coded message to my old colleagues on the Editorial Board, telling them to oppose the flat tax or support Arlen for Judiciary Committee chairman or something. This letter will be censored, so I have to be careful. First thing: I am OK. I am not harmed. There has been no torture. Yet. We're not in those steel cages in the sun or anything. It's a simple barracks, Spartan but not filthy. We get three squares a day, though the fare isn't doing much for my South Beach diet. It's all takeout from Cracker Barrel, Hardees, Bojangles. They say we've got to learn to eat like real Americans. You must have been worried sick. I don't know what they told you, but here's what happened: Wednesday afternoon, the gang and I were on our way to a mourning lunch at that French/Arab/gay fusion bistro where we like to go and plot our liberal propaganda. Suddenly, guys in dark glasses swooped up in black vans and snatched us. They didn't take the black hoods off our heads until we got to Gitmo. I haven't seen Trudy Rubin since we got here. I hear she's being treated as a "high-value" prisoner. The high values are in a cell block across the compound. Rumor has it she's in a cell with Molly Ivins and Maureen Dowd. Word is some torture goes on over there. Bill Moyers supposedly was gagged and forced to listen to Chris Matthews talk for two hours straight. Today, the guy next to me at mess, used to be a columnist at the Fresno Bee, told me they flew Paul Krugman and Michael Moore out of here by chopper last night. To Pakistan, is what I hear. Some good news: Bob Shrum, Kerry's campaign consultant, is being held somewhere in the compound, too. May he rot in his cell, the idiot. I'm not considered high value, thank God. Just a run-of-the-mill lib-symp. They chuckle when I explain I'm really a centrist. My "trainer" says nobody wants to hurt me; as soon as I show I've seen The Light and can cover the news "objectively," "without bias" and "with proper appreciation for all the President has done for the nation," I can come home to you. I'm working on it, my love. But you know those character traits that made me spend most of high school in detention? They keep coming back. Like, I'm in this seminar today called "Christian Nation: How the Bible and the Constitution Are Really One and the Same." And I raise my hand and ask: "If one candidate is a practicing Catholic who carries a rosary in his pocket, and the other one is some vague evangelical who doesn't even freaking go to church on Sunday, why did the Catholic bishops order the flock to vote for the non-Catholic?" My trainer was upset with me. So tonight I have to read three Tim LaHaye novels and write an essay on why George W. Bush is the doorway to the Rapture. Have to say, these LaHaye books are crisply plotted. Got in trouble yesterday, too, during a lecture class, "Living in Fear, and Loving It." Right after the Cheney video, I asked, "How come the states where terror attacks have actually happened or been planned went big for Kerry, while the states that Osama bin Laden's never heard of, the ones with more sheep than people, went for Bush?" For that, I had to sit through a double session of Remedial NASCAR 101. Did you know, that, of the 249,982 laps possible in 781 career starts, Terry Labonte has completed more than 90 percent (226,729)? I think of you all the time, and the kids. I know I should submit and scour my brain of the horrible addiction to facts and reality-based analysis that landed me in this hellhole. If I can do that, maybe I can come home. I'll have to get a job writing obituaries or jingles or something. They've made it quite clear my days as a pundit are over. But they tell me that if I sign the Bush loyalty pledge, my pension is safe. As safe as anybody's, anyway. But, hon, there's this guerrilla voice inside my head that just won't shut up. The Boss keeps singing in my mind: No retreat, no surrender. Even &%$!#@ Kerry couldn't spoil that song for me. Sorry, babe. Vive la Resistance! When not immersed in paranoid fantasy, Chris Satullo is still (he thinks) editorial page editor of The Inquirer. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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No mandate for e-voting, computer scientist says
by R.A. Hettinga 09 Nov '04

09 Nov '04

<http://gcn.com/cgi-bin/udt/im.display.printable?client.id=gcndaily2&story.i…> No mandate for e-voting, computer scientist says 11/09/04 By William Jackson, GCN Staff Despite wide use in last week's presidential election, direct-recording electronic voting still is a faulty method of casting ballots, one computer scientist says. "Paperless electronic-voting systems are completely unacceptable," said Dan Wallach, assistant professor of computer science at Rice University. Assurances about the machines' accuracy and reliability are not based on verifiable data, Wallach said today at the Computer Security Institute's annual conference in Washington. Wallach was one of a team of computer scientists who in 2003 examined source code for voting machines from Diebold Election Systems Inc. of North Canton, Ohio, and reported numerous security flaws. Cryptography implementation and access controls showed an "astonishingly naive design," he said. "As far as we know, these flaws are still there today." Diebold has defended its technology and said the computer scientists examined an outdated version of the code. Wallach countered that without access to current code for any voting machines, it's impossible to verify manufacturers' claims. The proprietary nature of the code and a lack of government standards for voting technology also make certification of the hardware and software meaningless, he said. The IT Association of America hailed the Nov. 2 election as a validation of direct-recording technology. But Wallach said sporadic problems with the systems have been reported, and a thorough analysis of Election Day procedures and results is under way. Plus, a paper ballot that can be recounted is essential to a reliable system, he said. "Probably the best voting system we have today is the optical scan system, with a precinct-based scanner," Wallach said. "It is very simple, it is accurate, and it is auditable." He suggested that a hybrid voting system that produces a verifiable paper ballot would be as reliable as optical systems and would offer convenience and accessibility for disabled voters. A number of states, including California and Nevada, have laws or legislation pending to require that voting machines produce paper ballots. Wallach said technical standards that demand transparent certification processes would go a long way toward increasing voting reliability. "I think the Common Criteria would be a good place to start," he said, referring to the set of internationally recognized standards for evaluating security technology, either against vendor claims or against a set of needs specified by a user. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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China's wealthy bypass the banks
by R.A. Hettinga 09 Nov '04

09 Nov '04

<http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2004/11/09/business/yu…> China's wealthy bypass the banks By Keith Bradsher The New York Times Wednesday, November 10, 2004 WENZHOU, China The Wenzhou "stir-fry" is not a dish you eat. But it is giving indigestion to Chinese regulators and could prove troublesome to many investors worldwide, from New York money managers, Pennsylvania steelworkers and Midwestern farmers to Australian miners. Here in this freewheeling city at the forefront of capitalism in China, the dish is prepared when a group of wealthy friends pool millions of dollars' worth of Chinese yuan and put them into a hot investment like Shanghai real estate, where they are stirred and flipped for a hefty profit. The friends often lend each other large amounts on the strength of a handshake and a handwritten IOU. Both sides then go to an automated teller machine or bank branch to transfer the money, which is then withdrawn from the bank. Or sometimes they do it the old-fashioned way: exchanging burlap sacks stuffed with cash. The worry for Chinese regulators is that everyone in China will start cooking the Wenzhou stir-fry and do it outside the banking system. In the last few months, borrowing and lending across the rest of China is looking more and more like what is taking place in Wenzhou. The growth of this shadow banking system poses a stiff challenge to China's state-owned banks, already burdened with bad debt, and makes it harder for the nation's leaders to steer a fast-growing economy. The problem starts with China's low interest rates. More and more families with savings have been snubbing 2 percent interest on bank deposits for the double-digit returns from lending large amounts on their own. They lend to real estate speculators or to small businesses without the political connections to obtain loans from the banks. Not only is the informal lending rate higher, but the income from that lending, because it is semilegal at best, is not taxed. For fear of shame, ostracism and the occasional threat from thugs, borrowers are more likely to pay back these loans than those from the big banks. Tao Dong, chief China economist at Credit Suisse First Boston, calculates that Chinese citizens withdrew $12 billion to $17 billion from their bank deposits in August and September. The outflow turned into a flood last month, reaching an estimated $120 billion, or more than 3 percent of all deposits at the country's financial institutions. If the bank withdrawals are not stemmed in the months ahead, Tao warned, "this potentially could be a huge risk for financial stability and even social stability." And with China now accounting for more than a quarter of the world's steel production and nearly a fifth of soybean production, as well as some of the largest initial public offerings of stock, any shaking of financial confidence here could ripple quickly through markets in the United States and elsewhere. For instance, if the steel girders now being lifted into place by hundreds of tower cranes in big cities across China are no longer needed, that would produce a worldwide glut of steel and push down prices. On Oct. 28, when China's central bank raised interest rates for one-year loans and deposits by a little more than a quarter of a percentage point, it cited a need to keep money in the banking system. Higher official rates should "reduce external cycling of credit funds," the bank said in a statement. Eswar Prasad, the chief of the China division of the International Monetary Fund, expressed concern about bank withdrawals in a speech in Hong Kong three days before the central bank acted. The main Chinese banks have fairly substantial reserves, but they need those reserves to cover huge write-offs of bad debts some day. The hub of informal lending in China is here in Wenzhou, 370 kilometers, or 230 miles, south of Shanghai. Some of China's first experiments with the free market began here in the late 1970s, and the result has been a flourishing economy together with sometimes questionable business dealings. Depending on how raw they like their capitalism, people elsewhere in China describe Wenzhou as either a center of financial innovation or a den of loan sharks. But increasingly, Wenzhou is also a microcosm of the kind of large-scale yet informal financial dealings now going on across the country. The withdrawals by depositors and the informal money lending has spread so swiftly here that it is only in Wenzhou that the Chinese central bank releases monthly statistics on average rates for direct loans between individuals or companies. The rate hovered at 1 percent a month for years until April, when the authorities began limiting the volume of bank loans. Borrowers default on nearly half the loans issued by the state-owned banks, but seldom do so here on money that is usually borrowed from relatives, neighbors or people in the same industry. Residents insist that the risk of ostracism for failing to repay a loan is penalty enough to ensure repayment of most loans. Although judges have ruled that handwritten IOUs are legally binding, creditors seldom go to court to collect. "If it is a really good friend, I would lose face if I sued them in court," said Tu Shangyun, the owner of a local copper smelter and a part-time "silver bearer," a broker who puts lenders and borrowers in touch with each other, "and if it weren't a good friend, I wouldn't lend the money in the first place." Violence is extremely rare, but the threat of it does exist as the ultimate guarantor that people make every effort to repay debts. "Someone can hire a killer who will chase you down, beat you up and maybe even kill you," said Ma Jinlong, who oversaw market-driven financial changes in the 1990s in Wenzhou as director of the municipal economic reform committee and is now an economics professor at Wenzhou University. An austerity policy was invoked, its goal to slow rapid economic growth in the hope of stopping a spiral in the inflation rate. With consumer prices rising at 5.2 percent a year despite price controls on many goods and services, and with less-regulated prices for goods traded between companies climbing nearly twice as fast, people lose buying power while their money is on deposit at a bank. The interest rate for informal loans jumped last spring to 1.2 percent a month, or 15.4 percent compounded over a year, and has stayed there ever since. According to the nation's central bank, total bank deposits in Wenzhou have been dropping by $250 million a month since April as companies and individuals withdraw money, either because they can no longer obtain bank loans for their investments or because they want to lend the money at higher rates to each other. For lenders, these interest rates are much more attractive than earning a meager 2.25 percent a year, even after the recent rate increase, on a deposit at a government-owned bank. And while Beijing assesses a 20 percent tax on all interest from bank deposits, nobody pays tax on the income they receive from lending money on their own, Ma said. Most informal loans have traditionally gone to relatives or neighbors to finance the starting of small local businesses. Wenzhou is now one of the world's largest producers of no-brand sunglasses; Dong Ganming, the owner of a 350-employee sunglasses factory here, said that his plant was just one of almost 1,000 here involved in making glasses. Fierce competition has prompted local residents to borrow money to exploit every possible niche in the industry, with some factories making nothing but bridges for sunglasses so that they will not slide down customers' noses, other factories making only the lenses, and so forth. Any government crackdown on informal loans would carry the risk of stifling highly efficient small and medium-size businesses that have little hope of obtaining loans from the state-owned banks, which still allocate credit based partly on political connections. Dong said that loans from friends and family allowed him to start his sunglasses company with 10 employees a decade ago; he quickly paid off the loans and has been reinvesting most of the profits ever since, putting very little into bank deposits. "The interest in the bank is very low," he said. "If you invest the money, you can get much more money." But more recently, residents here say, a lot of money has been flowing into real estate here and in other big cities, especially Shanghai, helping to fuel double-digit increases in interest rates. Deals increasingly involve people who have no family or neighborhood connection, raising the risk of disputes. Kellee Tsai, a specialist in Chinese informal banking at Johns Hopkins University in the United States, said that many overseas emigrants from Wenzhou had also been sending their savings back here to be lent at much higher rates than are available in the countries they have moved to. Some local investors have been able to pay for their investments with profits from businesses here, like Chen Shen, the owner of four shops that sell shoe-manufacturing equipment to the hundreds of shoe factories that have popped up in this area. She said she paid cash for an apartment near Shanghai's Bund, its riverfront district, that had appreciated as much as 60 percent in less than two years. Still, Chinese regulators do not like the practice, and officials have been trying to stamp out such operations with limited success. They have outlawed the practice of pooling savings into various kinds of informal banks that make loans for real estate and other investments: Organizers are subject to the death penalty but are rarely caught unless the informal banks collapse. Oriental Outlook, a Chinese current affairs magazine, reported late last month on the trial of a man accused of operating an illegal bank northeast of here that collapsed a year ago, leading to the filing of more than 200 civil lawsuits. Another man who lost money in the scheme and went bankrupt as a result assaulted the defendant outside the courtroom, the magazine said. The extent of such pooling is unclear. But it poses the greatest risks of damage to financial confidence if bank runs occur at these informal institutions, economists agree. Bank runs, with depositors lined up clamoring for their money back, have been an occasional problem around China for years, but are always quickly contained as the authorities rush to distribute as much cash as necessary. "The policy with bank runs, even with illegal banks in some cases, has been to flood the bank with liquidity and pay everyone off," said Michael Pettis, a finance professor at Beijing University, who criticized as ill advised the Chinese policy of bailing out even illegal banks. "One of the most salutary ways to let people know not to put money in these is to let two or three go bankrupt." -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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[osint] Leftist, Islamic terrorist lawyer cites need for violence
by R.A. Hettinga 09 Nov '04

09 Nov '04

--- begin forwarded text To: "Bruce Tefft" <btefft(a)community-research.com> Thread-Index: AcTGW926BrmmPrOpQHC2HrbnSiYYSw== From: "Bruce Tefft" <btefft(a)community-research.com> Mailing-List: list osint(a)yahoogroups.com; contact osint-owner(a)yahoogroups.com Delivered-To: mailing list osint(a)yahoogroups.com Date: Tue, 9 Nov 2004 07:58:54 -0500 Subject: [osint] Leftist, Islamic terrorist lawyer cites need for violence Reply-To: osint(a)yahoogroups.com http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35232-2004Nov8.html Lawyer Facing Terror Charge Cites Need for Violence By Michelle Garcia Special to The Washington Post Tuesday, November 9, 2004; Page A08 A New York lawyer facing charges of supporting terrorism told a federal jury that she viewed violence as essential to dismantling institutions that perpetuate "sexism and racism." As a federal prosecutor questioned her statements and support for a "people's revolution," Lynne Stewart, 65, testified that her lifelong philosophy included fighting "entrenched ferocious capitalism that is in this country today." Lynne Stewart emphasized that she does not support terrorism. "I believe that entrenched institutions will not be changed except by violence," Stewart said. "I believe in the politics that lead to violence being exerted by people on their own behalf to effectuate change." Stewart cited the American Revolution and the struggle to end slavery as such examples but emphasized that she did not support terrorism, saying, "I do not believe in civilian deaths or wanton massacres." Federal prosecutors presented Stewart's statements in an effort to show that Stewart sought to aid a militant group. If convicted, she could face a 40-year sentence. The case centers on her role in delivering a communique from her client, blind cleric Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, who is serving a life sentence after a jury convicted him in 1995 of seditious conspiracy in a plot to blow up New York bridges, tunnels and landmarks. That communication, expressing the sheik's disapproval of a cease-fire between the Islamic Group and the Egyptian government, is at the heart of the government's case. Prosecutors say that by conveying the message, Stewart violated her agreement to special prison rules that restricted the sheik's communication to the public and allowed him access to his followers in the Islamic Group, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization. Her attorney, Michael Tigar, objected to the prosecution's focus on her beliefs, saying "everyone of us is protected by the First Amendment." U.S. District Judge John G. Koeltl said Stewart's view of violence was not "irrelevant" or "straying into an impermissible area." U.S. Attorney Andrew Dember methodically recounted the events that led up to Stewart reading a handwritten statement to a Reuters reporter. Dember pointed to excerpts from a transcript from taped conversations in which Stewart referred to Patrick Fitzgerald, the U.S. attorney who prosecuted Rahman, as a "devil" and showed that Stewart viewed her relationship with the government as "adversarial." At times, Stewart sparred with Dember over terminology. She took issue with his suggestion that by signing an agreement to the prison rules she had agreed with their intent. She said she viewed it as necessary to gaining access to her client. When Dember showed the jury a copy of the agreement specifying restrictions over mail, she said she understood the term to mean envelopes delivered by the Postal Service. Dember asked Stewart to explain her motivation for continuing to visit Rahman in a Minnesota prison after he had exhausted his appeals. "I think that our legal system reacts differently to people who are paid attention to," she said. "I think the worst thing is the way it treats people who are nobody." ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> $9.95 domain names from Yahoo!. Register anything. http://us.click.yahoo.com/J8kdrA/y20IAA/yQLSAA/TySplB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, discuss-osint(a)yahoogroups.com. -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor bisoldi(a)intellnet.org http://www.intellnet.org Post message: osint(a)yahoogroups.com Subscribe: osint-subscribe(a)yahoogroups.com Unsubscribe: osint-unsubscribe(a)yahoogroups.com *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. 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Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: osint-unsubscribe(a)yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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