| Monday,
July 7, 2008 I am very late on getting the July column done,
so that will take first priority. There were several essays and lively
discussions over the weekend;
see last week's View. One matter settled was the notion of an open Forum
here. It won't happen. I don't believe that it would add to the quality of
reader experience (ye gods, am I learning the Microsoft patois?) and in any
event would eat a lot of my time for what I believe would not be a lot of
good.
One problem with day books -- I have a pretty good claim to have begun
the practice of an open log book way back in BIX days -- is that if one
isn't careful, the discussions tend to be what a vocal bloc of readers want,
and not what the principal of the site wants to talk about. If I have
anything worth subscribing for, it is enough experience to recognize topics
that don't get a great deal of play elsewhere but which I think important
for understanding either the screwy world we live in, or technology, or
both. Recall that Richard Feynman wanted me to teach a Cal Tech senior
seminar on "Technology and Civilization." I always regretted that the Cal
Tech president rejected the notion largely because I was identified with
"Star Wars", because I really looked forward to conducting those discussion.
In any event, if there is a common theme to what goes on here, that's
probably the subject. Technology brings us potentials for both good and
evil, and Moore's Law makes it certain that technology will flow to us at an
ever expanding rate: can we build social and political institutions that can
deal with the new technologies?
Back about 1982 I made a prediction: that by the end of the Century,
everyone in Western Civilization would be able to get the answer to any
question that has an answer. Facts, dates, who said what, how to build
gadgets, how to do things -- all that available to anyone. Note that I said
"Western Civilization" thus excluding the Iron Curtain countries (some of
you may remember when there were 26,000 nuclear warheads aimed at the United
States, and young officers of both the U.S. and U.S.S.R. sat in silos with
the keys to Armageddon).
About 1986 I realized that the USSR as a totalitarian society was doomed:
the only way a large nation could maintain military power and control over
its citizens was to allow small computers to become ubiquitous -- but that
meant free exchange of ideas within that society as well as with outsiders,
and that would end the state monopoly on information. Arthur Koestler had
observed that a sufficient condition for the end of totalitarian regimes was
the free exchange of ideas; small computers made that free exchange
inevitable.
These were the ideas I wanted to discuss in my seminars, but alas it was
not to be.
And enough rambling. I have to get the column in shape before dawn
tomorrow.
===================
And a warning:
Trojan trawls recruitment sites in ID harvesting scam
Jerry
A serious issue:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/07/
jobsite_data_hackharvesting_hack/
"Hackers have turned the harvesting of personal
information from Monster.com and other large US jobsites into a lucrative
black market business
A Russian gang called Phreak has created an online
tool that extracts personal details from CVs posted onto sites including
Monster.com, AOL Jobs, Ajcjobs.com, Careerbuilder.com, Careermag.com,
Computerjobs.com, Hotjobs.com, Jobcontrolcenter.com, Jobvertise.com and
Militaryhire.com. As a result the personal information (names, email
addresses, home addresses and current employers) on hundreds of thousands of
jobseakers has been placed at risk, . . . data that might be applied to
targeted phishing attacks."
Oops.
Ed
(and see
mail)
================
Bob Miller, have you changed you email address recently?
James Utt, have you changed your address recently?
============
I sent a mailing to subscribers today. If you did NOT get
it, please send me a note that says that you are a subscriber, you did not
get the message, and give your subscription address so I can correct it. I
have about 30 returns as undeliverable. In some cases the subscription
hadn't been renewed in years, and I have deleted those, but some are quite
recent.
==========================
The radio is telling me that in the LA School District,
Algebra is responsible for most dropouts from high school. It is taken in
9th grade and those who don't pass it generally don't ever graduate from
high school. I need to look into this, but it's pretty clear that this
is generally a part of what's wrong with American education.
Algebra is at least in theory required for college
admission: but is it a requirement for being a citizen? (Assuming it is,
does making it compulsory for graduation make sense if you can't require a
high school diploma to register as a voter?)
Considering that the high school graduation rate is about
50% now, and algebra apparently accounts for nearly 70% of the dropouts, is
there a message here?
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