Scripting News
Scripting News, the weblog started in 1997 that bootstrapped the blogging revolution...
How I know watch computers have a future
I spent a couple of hours on a bike ride earlier this month with Rex Hammock. Rather than have him pay for a CitiBike, I rode my Giant, and used my key to check out a bike for him.
We went uptown, then downtown, when the 45 minutes were up we checked in the original bike and he got a new one. 25 minutes later we're ready to finish the ride. Since Rex was staying at a hotel downtown, and I live uptown, we split -- each going our own way.
When I was about a mile north, I realized this wasn't going to work. Rex needed my key to check the bike in. So I pulled over and dialed him on his cell phone.
No answer. So I left a message, and kept going north. Until I heard my phone ring. Of course I pulled over. It was Rex. He saw my name flash on his Pebble watch, and realized it must have been something important. We met up, returned the bike, he checked one out on his own, and it had a happy ending.
I saw Elysium this weekend. Two great stars, Matt Damon and Jodie Foster.
The movie had a couple of interesting ideas, but they were in the trailer. Nothing to hold your attention or even entertain. I was fidgeting the whole time.
In contrast, the new episode of Breaking Bad was dramatic, lots of great action, incredible fine touches. Little extras that weren't required, but make it so much more interesting.
Why can't Hollywood make an action movie that also has something to entertain the mind?
Five minutes of Breaking Bad had more in it than 1.5 hours of Hollywood blockbuster.
Privacy is sometimes the wrong word
You can talk about the security of your personal information in a different ways, each of which suggests a different set of issues.
If I call it "privacy" -- I think of walking around with my fly down. People can see something that normally they're not supposed to see. The risk of a privacy problem is embarrassment, or maybe worse -- you could get divorced because of a privacy problem.
But what if what is exposed is illegal, something you could be prosecuted for, then jailed, or maybe even executed. Like treason for example. A word that's thrown around far too casually these days. That's how totalitarian governments work. They have all kinds of hooks into data about people, the more the better, and then they either use existing laws, or create new ones, that make the things ordinary people do all the time illegal, and punishable by jail or death. Couldn't happen in the US? People thought that about Germany all the way up to the point they "discovered" death camps all over Europe. We had slavery in this country, a time when human beings were considered property and could be killed whenever you wanted, if you owned them.
Obama said some easily misunderstood things in his press conference on Friday. He talked about the intentions of the current government.
We know from Snowden that even a low-ranked analyst at a contractor can read your emails. So what do we know about the intentions of all of those people?
And this tells us nothing about the intentions of future governments. Our emails are being stored in a big data warehouse where anyone at NSA, now or in the future, can get at them.
Either Obama is a con man or extremely naive. I don't think he's naive. I have no idea what motivates him. He must know that governments, even democratically elected ones, persecute citizens.
Imho, he's trying to cover up the biggest scandal since Watergate. Has he studied history? Does he really think this is a "phony" scandal, as he's said? That it will just blow over? I wonder if perhaps he was too young when Watergate happened, and didn't study the history of the attempted coverup that didn't work.
And all the reporters who talk about the value they add by investigation, it's time to pony up. And stop suggesting that people be jailed for doing the work you say you admire so much. This is serious business.
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