RSA NSA how do you tell the difference

So it turns out the RSA corporation was really the NSA in civvies

One of the most interesting things about the whole “the NSA knows where you live and what you think” etc has been in spite of all their vaunted technical prowess the NSA has relied almost completely on no hacking whatsoever but back doors , trapdoors, wide open doors , doors wide shut, transparent doors etc etc and of course the RSA being idiots to trawl data at the “all you can suck from our pipes” buffet

To put it another way they have relied on the age old "here let me make a copy of the key will you "
and of course corporation after corporation bent over while whispering "yes I'll take the vanilla flavored lube if you don't mind please Mr NSA agent man " .

For those who think the corporations had no choice that is garbage, look at lavabit. What do you think would have happened if GOOGLE and MSFT had shut down all services saying the govt was forcing them to break trust and faith with their customers. You really think people would be like "Well if you have nothing to hide..." ."Oh and down with Snowden"

The original sin of course was the Patriot act , and the almost comically grotesque Kafkaesque parody of 1984 it made sure we all live in . When James Sensenbrenner starts talking about how the Patriot act might have gone too far it really is time to listen

Where will all this end up , no clue ( though I would love someone to recall Diane Feinstein). It is clear on this issue the democrats are just as bad or worse than the republicans ( barring a few good men notably Senator Wyden ).

My guess is eventually corporations will bypass NSANET ( yes well I know we call it the internet for now ) for their internal communication while the public continues to get shafted and the 4th amendment slowly moves from law to history. Hopefully we’ll figure something out but apathy is and has been the NSA’s best friend ( the other is sheer stupidity also know as “See Snowden was wrong to ….” )

If a couple of big corporations whose services we all depend on start making a real fuss and service disruption maybe the masses will notice, I’ve practically given up on the telecom companies doing anything I mean they suck so bad when it comes to privacy

OR Linus Torvalds could come up with some sort of open source encryption scheme or some such :-)

MBA Case Study Part troix

 

In past case studies here and here  we looked at various aspects of business strategy. Today we will be looking at certain complicated issues around workplace ethics.

You are happily married. You are also strangely attracted to your boss culminating in regular adulterous carnal events. Because balance is important you are also having an affair with a coworker. Please answer the following (it is important to keep in mind that you are happily married) multiple choice questions

1. Who are you cheating on?
   1. Your Spouse
   2. Your wife
   3. Your co worker
   4. Yourself by not having sex with more people
   5. Other ( please describe at length, in two to three sentences )
2. Your boss is indicating that she might be getting promoted soon thereby creating a vacancy for her position. Should you
   1. Insist that she promote you , thereby making sure that your one-on-one meeting with your boss and subordinate will be very hands on
   2. Insist that she promote your coworker so that your one-on-one with your boss and your skip level can be hands on
   3. Request to be sent on a campus recruitment trip to the top 10 party colleges of the year to set a good example
   4. Refrain from saying anything , this could be a trap
   5. Other
3. Your wife is pleasantly surprised by your improved skills in bed and in conversation asks you “darling where did you learn to do that :-)”. Should you
   1. Tell her you have enrolled in an ONLINE THEORY ONLY “Improve your Cliteracy™”  course
   2. Tell her you felt it was the right thing to do in your soul because you know  love
   3. Refrain from saying anything , this could be a trap
   4. Other
4. Your wife is unpleasantly shocked by your new moves in bed and right away yells “HEY where the hell did you get the idea that was ok!!!” Should you
   1. Say Anything
   2. Other
5. Your boss is thinking about firing your coworker. Should you
   1. Plead your coworkers case so you don't have to go to the trouble of convincing her replacement to have an affair with you
   2. Say that firing is too much and ask for her to be transferred to another department and unselfishly volunteer your time to find a replacement
   3. Request to be sent on a campus recruitment trip to the top 10 party colleges of the year to set a good example
   4. Other
6. In your opinion will hiring a nanny at this point in time Add or reduce balance  in your life
7. Would it make a difference(with ref to question 6) if you had children or not
8. What in your opinion is the secret to having a happy marriage like yours
9. Are there any industry specific factors to be considered when contemplating such an arrangement ( for example if you work in gay porn it might be hard well not hard exactly but anyway …)
10. Who is worse Monsanto or Walmart ( Editor’s Note : we believe the question makes more sense when you add the phrase “or you” at the end )

 

Obamacare is here , run for the hills

Obama care is here. In theory I can buy insurance from the WA health exchange in a bit (oh we are all probably on a path to doom death despair and destruction as per the GOP)

I first lost employee funded insurance  in Jun 2009. Fun times!!!

Since then, here is what I have realized about the system as it exists! Trying to buy individual insurance and dealing with the insurance company is roughly equivalent to

Having to sit on a cactus!

A thorny cactus!!

With fire ants on it!!!

Without lubricant!!!!

Clear. Oh good. On the other hand all my gainfully employed friends (99% of whom all make oodles of money by any standard) really don't have a problem with the healthcare system as it stands pre-Obama care .

So like every other system there will be winners and losers and in the current system people like me who have not had access to employee funded HI were clearly the losers. I don’t know if the affordable care act will fix any or all or my issues with the insurance industry but you know what; I am absolutely certain it cannot get any worse. Will there be any losers because of the ACA. Of course! And you know what suck it!!!!!

Recent events with the health situation in my family have made me really think about how ridiculous the Pre ACA situation in this country was/is.

The way in which insurance companies will try and dictate the care you get,  right down to subtly and not so subtly making sure that diagnostics procedures like MRI’s etc are scarce is  downright disgusting.

For someone like me who has options it’s not the end of the world, but I really wonder how other folk manage.(I can guess and it’s not pretty).

The battle over the affordable care act and the road to even more decent outcomes for health care is really very simple:

We are the richest country in the world and some of us think it is not ok to say “there is a treatment available for what you have and if you can’t afford it suffer in silence you serf” or even worse “Your problem could have been easily detected and solved if you only had done your medical checkup in time. Oh no money?could not afford it?  yeah well then death becomes you “

This is a true story,   last year someone I knew died from colon cancer. He was 36. It is very rare in someone so young.

Fun fact : had they caught it time who knows.

Funnier fact : doctor told him to get a colonoscopy some months ago.

Totally hilarious fact: he was not too well off, in between jobs, his shitty insurance would not pay for a colonoscopy for anyone under 50.

Outstandingly ROTFLAMO fact: He could not afford what a colonoscopy would cost on his dime so he choose to risk it . 5 cards later (poker players will get it)…. suck out!!!

The Oscar for the best comedic performance fact: Obama care = death panel

Now when faced with the story above one can say

“shit happens, Blessed be the name and works of Ayn Rand”

or one could try and be a human being and think about ways to mitigate this (no Senator I agree we cannot save everyone) which involves some of us paying for others, so that in the event we ever need the help we get it ( whether it is taxes for a single payer system or a mandate where the healthy subsidize the sick in the event you ever get sick )

And finally while we are at it, this one is for all those idiots who make an excellent living , have employee funded health care , and cannot really point to anything that the affordable care act does , that will personally hurt them but FREEDOM something !!( that would be every single republican in both houses of congress)

You know what, I hope you choke on your vomit and die. I hope you your kin and the ones you love all suffer from cancer of the balls or vagina or whatever and then are told that there is a super easy treatment sadly which cannot be afforded to you because you know freedom

I hope you get a genetically mutated form of chicken pox and watch in amazement and pain as your skin peels off in agony, but you stay comforted at the thought that FREEDOM!

May your next shampoo give you all the side effects of chemo therapy without chemo and then cancer so now you can take chemo again BUT  hey good news ,  because now that you know, why you will never buy that shampoo again !

Hopelessness, dread, despair, gloom, agony, destruction, pain and suffering , may they be your eternal companions.

Oh and Have a nice day!

Debt Ceiling for Dummies(ok to read even if you are not a dummy)

So apparently 44% of Americans or some such number, are opposed to raising the debt ceiling and as always this just means on any given topic 44% of Americans don't get it (cough ios 7)

(Editor’s Note : We would appreciate it greatly if no cheesy credit card analogies were used )

So here is what is hilarious though. I’ve spoken to a few people in the last week or so, people who otherwise can be thought of as reasonably well informed, and each and every one of them suffers from a misunderstanding of the debt ceiling, essentially variations on how “the debt ceiling” is the same as “the debt” and raising the debt ceiling means you are taking on more debt (this at a time when the deficit is falling like a rock)

So let me see if I can explain how this works without using a credit card or dumbing it down.

So every time congress passes a law, it is possible, that it will cost the Govt. Money (from Medicare benefits to appropriations that allow the NSA to read this as I type it) many, many laws have the effect of driving up spending from govt.

Now when the govt needs to spend money to meet its legislative obligations (this is the key part though IT IS NOT OPTIONAL, TREASURY HAS TO MEET THE OBLIGATIONS THAT LAWS PASSED BY CONGRESS CAUSE) it asks the treasury to “make it so”

Now this is where the fun( Editor’s Note: we apologize for this particular usage of the word fun , the author does not get out much) starts, because treasury you see needs to borrow money to pay for the laws passed, and in just about every other country on the planet this is not an issue, if the legislative branch of govt passes a law requiring govt. to spend 100 bucks Treasury can just borrow a 100 bucks to pay for it; since passing the law is TANTAMOUNT TO SAYING YOU FRIGGIN HAVE TO (repeat after me) HAVE TO PAY FOR IT!!!!

But this America land of the exceptional home of the dysfunctional and so naturally we do things differently here (yes that’s right the switch turns on the other way too).

Here we have a limit of how much treasury can borrow to pay for laws already passed and this limit is called (thank you, thank you) “The Debt Ceiling”.

So every time this limit is reached , treasury has zero interest in borrowing more money, however congress just keeps plugging away and working hard (well not this congress obviously but you know in the past) and the bills keep piling up , which of course means treasury now needs to borrow more money but it can’t … BY LAW !!

Therefore from time to time  treasury will ask congress to pass a law saying something along the lines of

“you know how we said you could only borrow 1000 dollars, just kidding you can borrow up to 2000 now, since you know we passed laws requiring the additional money”.

This clever piece of legislation is known as “Raising the debt ceiling” (pay attention now, it’s not raising the debt, that already happened)

In the past, prior to the tea party metastasizing into the cancer that it has become, congress would always raise the debt ceiling (once again if you are upset about govt spending then the correct time to have that argument is when laws are being passed that incur spending) without too much fuss because everyone understood how the debt ceiling actually works.

But all that of course was before the stupid wing of the stupid party suddenly decided that “debt ceiling” was two words, and that was just too hard, one word at a time as Jesus always said (or would have if he thought about it) so let’s just stick with “Debt” and why on earth would we want to “Raise the Debt” (ceiling omitted™ )

Hopefully you now understand this little piece of governmental trivia (explanation via analogy pending)

 

Todd Starnes is an asswipe and that’s OK

There is a parallel universe (in the sense however that it is the same one as mine) where beauty Pageant type things keep happening with monotonous regularity (and hilarity). For those (who rightfully) have no clue about this world,  recently someone called Nina Davuluri  won the Miss America thingy and a bunch of Americans got to show the world  why

• Twitter will never make any money
• they should never breed and produce offspring
• how cruel evolution is
• why geography and fiction are interchangeable in the minds of many
• some idiots think how Ms. Davuluri is not “American” enough

Todd Starnes  (some sort of moron on fox in some way) on the other hand is unlikely to be as completely ignorant . And predictably Indians hither and thither have all gone on and on about how ghastly racist and self-centered and ignorant the Americans are.

At this point we take a little detour in my tale before I may end up making a point (Editor’s Note: You don't get paid unless you make a point, you do know that yes)

So way back in 2002 ( ish )  I was in  a meeting at MSFT. Present were about 7 to 10 people and like many meetings at MSFT they were all Indians.

So naturally this struck me as funny, and I cleverly made some spectacularly witty quip ( as I often do ) about everyone being an Indian . After the laughter and applause died down, one of the people in the meeting cleared her throat and with considerable vim and vigour pointed out the she was an American, thank you very much!!!! (I think she was born in jersey and yes even though snookie has ruined it all, to be fair yes jersey is technically American)

<Back to the present now yes, yes almost certain to make a point now >

As such the story has no meaning to it (one person did not find something I said funny, it’s not like I am keeping score or anything hahaha) on the other hand it has always stuck with me and even though I am hardly the first person to realize and point this out, all it means to be an American is to want it and say it . That's it!!! (ok fine immigration will get involved once in a while, yes ok more than once in a while, yes fine a lot !!  ) which if you think about is just amazing. I am not aware of any other country where this happens. You can stay in India as long as you want as a white person but you will be gently laughed of the stage (while some kindly stranger calls the local asylum) if you start insisting you are Indian.
I am fairly certain my chances of being Japanese or Chinese or Papua New Guinean are slim to none irrespective of how long I stay there or how much I integrate into their societies . Every once in a while it behooves us to marvel at this sociological thing this amazing amazing fact of life about the US.

Nina Davuluri would be hard pressed to be Miss <insert country here > anywhere except the US. It could happen once in a while I suppose but in this case I am genuinely not surprised, Ms. Davuluri is an American and she convinced some people she was best qualified for a competition. That's all there is to it.

Rather than bemoan the twitter chatter from people clearly stuck in Darwin’s waiting room we should be really happy that here in this country something like this is possible. I have zero interest in pageants and yet I find this pretty uplifting all in all

As for Mr.  Starnes and his ilk, ironically by insisting there is an archetype for “Americans” (cough Christian and white ), they are in fact being the very thing the oppose viz completely Un American

Besides this is nothing new, a 100 odd years ago people like him were screaming “the Irish need not apply” or “who wants these damn Italians” and so on and so forth. Asswipes will be around forever and you know what that’s ok asses need wiping after all !

MBA Case Study Part Deux

Last time we dealt with some excellent issues around risk arbitrage . This time lets us move on to the wonderful topic of interpersonal relationships

 

You have just been promoted to manager of a fairly non prestigious product unit. (Your parents still seem to think you would have been better served by joining the IAS ). In your first staff meeting you conclude that two members on your team ( P and K ( A,B were taken ) ) have the following issues ; P is stupid, K only asks stupid Questions.

Please answer the following questions ( Note to students : The twitter text restriction is currently not in effect )

1. In the event  of a natural disaster which team member would you assign the job of calling Emergency Services.
2. If you had no choice in the matter who would you rather  harass sexually
3. What would you do of you had a choice !
4. Predict what will happen if K asks P a question
5. Take a moment to reflect on the futility of your life
6. Why did you not join the IAS
7. Which would you prefer Promoting P and listening to K’s questions about it or Promoting K and listening to his questions about it . Consider your answer  in the context of your own recent promotion
8. Who in your opinion is better suited to star in Thicke’s next video ( provide your answerer as an anime )
9. You and Miley Cyrus are both homo sapiens sapiens . How would you explain that to P. How does it make you feel

Steve and I

 

So I read some place on the internet  recently that Steve Ballmer has left Microsoft. I have to say I was a little surprised , not to mention everything that is being said about him , gosh I mean its a lot

My first memory of Steve was over a decade ago , like 13 years in fact, it was around 7 in the evening and it was a gorgeous Seattle summer evening and in the distance I could see him trying very hard to play basketball. It was obvious he totally sucked and so I tried to help him out with a few pointers but the flaw in that plan of course was that I sucked too and so you know it didn't really go anywhere but even back then I was stuck by his steely resolve and never say die attitude.

After the game we stopped at the local dive bar to share a drink and even then I was impressed at his ability to simplify and yet have deep insights. I will never forget as he looked at his plate and sighed “How do you tell the difference between calamari and pig rectum answer me that “

Definitely a sign of thing to come !

The next time I saw him was almost an year later at a Halloween Party where he had come as the ghost of stack ranking. I didn't get it then and I don't get it now but again his infectious energy and ability to throw chairs across the room while screaming “developer developers developers” was truly whimsical charming and magically surreal  . Turned out he was testing a spot for a viral campaign but the Seattle Urban developers League but still…

As an aside I left MSFT in 2006 and one of my definite regrets is that I did not stop by to say bye to him,  I was sure he would be leaving too and well while it took him 7 years to figure out what I had about MSFT ( he always was a little slow ) at least he got it in the end . There have been some rumors about how his exit allowed to him to reach a compensation model somewhat different than mine but I mean come on this was never about the money for either me or Steve ( Editors Note : Wait What now !)

Entrepreneur, thought leader, visionary, forward thinking genius, manger extraordinaire , Numbers man etc are all phrases ( some of which have even been used to describe Steve) but for me everything about the man could be distilled and boiled down to a single moment when I really think the very essence of his being shone through , We were at a Strip club in Lake City way celebrating a product launch and he said to me

< Editors Note : On Close examination of the facts and recollections in this article it has just emerged that the author has been talking about Steve KxrczxBallmer  a polish Lithuanian émigré from Estonia in the late 1990’s. Mr KxrczxBallmer  has confirmed that the “Kxrczx” portion of his name is silent and not pronounced. We regret any inadvertent confusion this may have caused and continue to stand by our original position viz. the author is an overpaid idiot .>

There is no way this happened randomly

One of the things I hear often re the universe , creation et al is the standard “There is no way this happened randomly just look around you man LOOK I SAY ! fractal clouds and cauliflower florets”

Which is all well and good and I am not going to debate the god superstition here however sometimes  its nice to look at the power of random( warning some minimal math and coding involved but you should be able to skip and skill get the flavour of what I am saying ) Editors Note Yeah Maybe

So let us start with a triangle . You know the things that aren’t squares rectangles or circles or anything other than triangles. So we have something like this

                            A

B C

 

Cool Eh !

Now assume there is a point far far way somewhere in the universe . Now roll a perfectly fair die. Here is what we are going to do .

If the die shows up a 1 or a 2 we are going to pick a point halfway between the original point and A and color the midway point blue

if the dice is 3 or 4 then pick halfway between the current point and B and color it red

if the dice is 5 or 6 then pick halfway between the current point and C and color it green

Please note that the numbers on the dice are not relevant All we are doing is randomly picking one number from 3 where all 3 numbers are equally probable to occur in our random picking.

With me So far?

So lets say we rolled a 1 a 3 and a 6. After 3 attempts our triangle with dots ( in  G minor :-) ) now looks something like

AS the avid and observant readers will have figured out by now : you keep rolling the dice and the colours just randomly start filling up the triangle . On obvious point to note is that once a dot lands inside the triangle all further dots will lie inside the triangle too.There is nothing clever about this , since we are always computing half way point to each edge point we stay within the boundary of the triangle

 

So at his point we have this really clever way of randomly dumping dots on a triangle and really you can get any kid with a crayon and paper ( or wall ) to do this

 

But lets say we run this process a million times ( computers are pretty good at that source code later ). SO a million dots of the primary colours randomly placed over the screen. What do we expect the resultant picture to look like? Anyone?

Well my guess was this amorphous blob of black or gray or maybe even some weird mixing of colours or whatever but definitely almost no structure . And if we ran the program again well this time would get totally different dots of course so like some other random scribbling

 

 

I’ll spare you the suspense . HERE IS WHAT YOU GET EVERY SINGLE TIME NO MATTER THE ORDER OF THE DOTS

 

PRETTY EFFING COOL EH!

Pseudo code in the link…

 

Finally if you have more than a passing knowledge of the math needed to understand Fractals or affine transforms or IFS etc and you know who Michael Barnsley is please spare me everything that is wrong with my simplified explanation :-)

IT still always gets me all excited when a random dice roll can get us this . Maybe this is what the rest of the world is talking about when they talk about a “spiritual experience “

SIERPINSKI YEH TUNE KYA KI

 

OH YEAH!

You can generate this in code really easily

Start with a type

internal class VInfo
    {
        public int x;
        public int y;
        public Color c;
    }

int width = 2000;
int height = 1000;

Initialize thusly

Veritices[0].x = width / 2;
Veritices[0].y = 0;
  Veritices[0].c = Colors.Blue;
  

Veritices[1].x = 0;
Veritices[1].y = height;
  Veritices[1].c = Colors.Red;
  

Veritices[2].x = width;
Veritices[2].y = height;
  Veritices[2].c = Colors.Green;

So at this point you have the triangle set up right .

Now just run  a loop somewhere like so

Random r = new Random();
            Random InitPoint = new Random();
            VInfo pCurrent = new VInfo();
            pCurrent.x = InitPoint.Next(1000);
            pCurrent.y = InitPoint.Next(1000);

for (int i = 0; i < 10000000; i++ )
            {
                int p = r.Next() % 3;

                pCurrent.x = (pCurrent.x + Veritices[p].x) / 2;
                pCurrent.y = (pCurrent.y + Veritices[p].y) / 2;
                setpixel( bits,pCurrent.x,pCurrent.y,Veritices[p].c);

            }

So all you are doing  is getting a random point computing the halfway point between the random point and the vertices you need to and setting the pixel to that colour  AND…. repeat

Its really quite amazing how this simple random process can generate that image…

But But they are stealing my hard earned money

 

This whole notion of how taxation equals theft and you know “hard earned money” just drives me nuts. IT IS NOT THEFT TO PAY YOUR TAXES

Libertarians love to drool on and on about you know contract law etc, well here's is the implied contract when you become a citizen of this country , YOU HAVE TO PAY TAXES, AND ELECTED LEGISLATORS GET TO DECIDE HOW MUCH THOSE TAXES ARE AND HOW THEY SPEND THAT MONEY

Your choices are

i) go to a jurisdiction that has no taxes, Dubai for example

ii) participate in the electoral process by electing people who agree with you in terms of tax rates and how your tax dollars should be spent

I happen to think that abstinence only education or creationism or the war on drugs or the war in Iraq  or no bid contracts to Halliburton or the house GOP spending money on defending DOMA or drug testing welfare recipients are all ABSOLUTELY HORRENDOUS, NO RETURN VALUE, ways to spend our money and so you wont find me in general voting for candidates or parties that support these positions

But it’s not theft. They did not steal my money . I would have to pay those taxes no matter what and you what I am just fine with that. That was the contract I signed on to when I got here , that I would pay taxes

Insisting that taxes are theft is like saying the cable company is stealing from me because you know I did not like every single hour of programming on every channel .

Just like you get to not like some programming you get to not like ( and or rant about )certain expenditures , AND you get to participate in whatever legal fashion you choose to change the laws so as to change govt. spending ( for example WA state just made weed legal , yes yes yes CO here’s looking at you too :-) ). But enough with the Theft bullshit already!

Morons !