Groupa Two in your News Chum Stew

It’s been a busy week — 13 hours of EWW (Extended Work Week) combined with a dearth of interesting news articles led to the very rare situation of no posts during the week. There were a number of subjects I wanted to write about, but I could never find that elusive third article (and I like to have three for a themed post). So here are a bunch of “groupa twos”, as Ken Kay would say…

Privacy and Technology

Here are two articles I wanted to theme together in a post relating to privacy, technology, and the whole kerfluffle about the NSA and surveillance…

• Snowden and His Disclosures. A very interesting piece in US News and World Reports opined that Snowden was the wrong person to make his disclosures. He is doing them in a way that is bringing him harm, and his clumsy handling of things is creating problems for international relations. Who should have made the disclosure? A US Senator. They have the ability to leak information without threat of prosecution, and they are obstensibly working in the interest of the people. Any member of Congress can release any information that they think the public should see — so why aren’t they? Perhaps this is a question you should ask your senator?
• Cell Phone Privacy. I’ve been repeatedly noting how laws haven’t caught up with technology. Here’s a good example: the Supreme Court is exploring whether the contents of a cell phone can be examined when someone is arrested. In general, we’re trying to apply laws and concepts (personal domain, national borders) in an era where things have drastically changed. Further, we have people who are not familiar with the technology trying to decide these issues.

Facebook and Social Networking

I’ve been noticing lately that the Internets aren’t as interesting as they used to be. The Internet is going downhill. I was going to tie this observation to some articles I’ve seen about Facebook:

• Your Father’s Facebook. Perhaps one of the reasons Facebook is dull is that it has been taken over by old folks as they warm to social networking. Of course, as our parents warm to Facebook (and remember, I’m probably old enough to be your parent), the “kids” are going somewhere else. Pinterest. Tumblr. I remember when this happened to Livejournal, and it’s dead over there now.
• Don’t Be Boring. Facebook is updating its algorithms, and it’s new ranking algorithm for your newsfeed will punish you if you are boring. If people don’t like your posts and share them, you’ll be hidden from feeds. This will result in the viral stupidity and cat pictures being ranked high, and long form writing and blogging (such as I do) disappearing from your feeds. Fight the battle! Like this post!

Knitting

Two fascinating articles about knitting, but alas I couldn’t find a third…

• Knitting as Computation. Boing Boing had a link to a really neat article that explored knitting as computation, including concepts such as a stitch processing unit, the knitting needle as stack, archival memory, and the 4-step knitting clock cycle.
• Yarn Bombing. Normally, I don’t get excited about yarn bombing. But when it covers a four-car full-size train, I take notice.

Office Stupidity

The last groupa-two concerns office stupidity. Never could find the third article to make the theme be stable. Perhaps themes are like stools (heh, heh, he said “stool”) — they need three legs to be stable.

• War Against Stupid Office Signs. The CEO of Evernote is at war against office stupidity. This can be seen at his new headquarters, where he is waging war against dumb office signs. People love to be passive-agressive on their warning signs, and it affects office culture.
• Charging for Standards. Here’s another office war — this time against public standards issued by standards bodies that are not free. This often happens when private bodies (such as trade associations) issue standards that government adopts. When you need to get the standard, however, it isn’t free on the nets — you have to pay an ungodly amount for it. I see this often with ISO standards — trying to get a copy of ISO/IEC 27001/27002 is quite pricy. Luckily, I have great google-fu.

 

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Shooting Themselves in the Foot

As usual, while I ate lunch today I skimmed the news. Sigh. The Republicans are shooting themselves in the foot again.

Let me start over. If you know me at all, you know I’m a dyed-in-the-wool Humphrey-ite Democrat. No, that’s not the same thing as being a socialist . Still, I think it is important to have a healthy multi-party system in this country — debate on issues is important, and working to find compromise between parties can prevent abuses and find better solutions.

As I result, I’d like to see a healthy, functional, Republican party. Alas, (shakes his head) I read articles such as this: “Obama Proposes Surveillance-Policy Overhaul“, and… sigh… This whole NSA kurfluffle is one place where the Republicans can gain votes. They can jump on their long-time bandwagon of smaller government, and get the government out of this area. They can argue this is unnecessary government intrusion (hell, you know they would complain if it is was being used against conservative groups). Instead, what do we get? Quoting from the article:

In an early indication of the difficulty ahead, some Republicans who have been defending the NSA surveillance program lambasted the president. Rep. Pete King (R., N.Y.), a senior member of the House Intelligence Committee, called the president’s announcement “a monumental failure” of wartime leadership.

“We need a president who defends our intelligence programs, explains them appropriately to the American people, and uses every legal capability in his arsenal to defeat al Qaeda,” Mr. King said.

A spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) criticized Mr. Obama for inadequately defending the programs. “Transparency is important, but we expect the White House to insist that no reform will compromise the operational integrity of the program,” said spokesman Brendan Buck.

So here is the President arguing for more transparency in the process, for a privacy advocate (yes, it’s not everything, but, c’mon, the guy’s not superman). What do we get from the Republicans? An argument to keep up the spying.

This is yet another example of how the Republican party can’t seem to get their act together — they are being torn apart by various internal factions that is destroying their former effectiveness. They only thing they seem to be able to do is vote to repeal Obamacare.  Further, all the attention they get is from overreaction on social issues from a few individuals and states that opens the entire party to ridicule by connection. My advice — get ahead of the game. Show that you can solve problems and lead — the Republican way. Figure out how to propose solutions that are palatable to enough of congress to get it through both houses, and convince the President that your way is acceptable. Lead the way on immigration reform. Lead the way on restoring civil liberties. Lead the way on creating a health-care system that works (that that means fixing, not repealing, Obamacare).

Now, personally, I’d be happy if a strong Democratic candidate won in 2016, and if the Republican partisianship led to Democrats retaking the house in 2014. But for the country’s sake, we Democrats can’t do it alone. Republicans — please — get your act together and learn to lead.

This entry was originally posted on Observations Along The Road (on cahighways.org) as this entry by cahwyguy. Although you can comment on DW, please make comments on original post at the Wordpress blog using the link below; you can sign in with your LJ, FB, or a myriad of other accounts. There are currently comments on the Wordpress blog. PS: If you see share buttons above, note that they do not work outside of the Wordpress blog.

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