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Greenland is to become its own country, independent of Denmark. Whoa! Never really occurred to me that people actually lived in Greenland (which, despite its name, is very, very icy).
Suspicion: Greenland will become the “icy Saudi Arabia” (minus the Wahabist craziness). Reason: Global warming is increasing access to oil reserves. Peak oil… what peak oil?
Straight from Joanna Rutkowska’s blog site…
1) Security by Correctness
2) Security by Isolation
3) Security by Obscurity
The first (correctness) sounds unattainable in its complete form, but new frameworks are an improvement. I.e., memory attacks are more difficult in .NET-compiled code vs in native code. The third item, obscurity, refers to randomness, such as ASLR (randomized base addresses), or executables whose runtimes are obfuscated, randomly and at runtime (huge downside: difficult to debug in the field… as someone who does that sort of thing, that one really resonates).
Item #2, isolation, looks intriguing. We do that to an extent (different low-priv usernames, JVM sandboxing), but virtualization gives us the capacity to do that to a much greater extent. So, one compromised VM won’t affect anything else (well, ideally).
As Bruce Schneier likes to say: “security is hard.” And he should know, being a security guru. There’s no silver bullet, but leveraging the three approaches above, taken together—and with a healthy dose of common sense on the part of the user—yields a more secure operating environment.
Obama’s healthcare agenda scares me.
Once a government program gets going, it creates a constituency. Hence, “temporary” programs become permanent. Even die-hard free-market types dare not oppose programs with large constituencies. Hence, government becomes more bloated over time and the system becomes less “democratic republic” and more “social democratic.”
In regards to medical care (not to be confused with health care), I think that there are viable reforms that could be made. In fact, I think, in theory, what Obama is proposing (in regards to a public health ins option) could actually work! The government does have a justifiable role in involving itself in areas of the market where market forces have failed (this is a democracy, after all). However, that theory works out if the government’s involvement is situational, i.e., truly transient in nature.
And we all know that a “temporary” public medical care option will eventually spiral into government-administered “universal healthcare” if it is instituted. Remember that large constituency?
The economics of healthcare are complex, and hence the problem. Critics of the current system, myself included, contend that we pay too much and get too little. That’s true. Small proposals (some have passed, some haven’t) can go a long way to alleviate costs of medical care: HSAs, taxing employer-sponsored health ins above a certain amount, tort reform, etc.
Economics is tricky, and healthcare economics is no different. Proposals meant to achieve one objective have vast, unintended consequences not foreseen even by experts, much less by our clowns in congress. Obama should tread carefully. For while government can “guarantee” coverage and even provide funds, he can’t guarantee that the resultant level of care is better than alternatives, or even than our current system.
UPDATE 6-23: David Brooks (the token conservative of the NY Times) doesn’t like proposed “healthcare reform” either.
This FP post suggests a wheat fungus outbreak could do to wheat what colony collapse disorder did to bees (remember that?).
The Freakonomics blog revisits the pending and likely-to-pass “cash for clunkers” legislation. Levitt is less concerned about the legislation, suggesting it will have a smaller impact than originally thought (good). Unfortunately, there’s usually a way to game government give-aways, and Levitt proposes the following (emphasis added):
If any vehicles are going to qualify under this program, I suspect it will be because enterprising people who already plan to buy new cars will go out and buy old junkers on the used-car market and then trade them in under the program. But those transactions won’t represent incremental new car sales; it will just be a way for people who were already going to buy a car to rip off the government.
So, the government, in their infinite wisdom, will encourage economically unproductive activity among enterprising people who want to earn a buck on our dime.
Having said that, if this does stimulate the auto companies, is that really helpful? Should consumer demand be based on the government’s chosen sector of the economy, rather than from the aggregate choice of consumers?
Ron Gettelfinger, whose union has single-handedly destroyed the US auto sector, makes an impassioned plea for … money? I don’t know, really.
Well, the closing para was pretty good:
If industry stakeholders will continue to work together, we can set the stage for a renewal of U.S. manufacturing, including a revived domestic auto industry.
I suppose the farm lobby will next lobby for a return to the agrarian society, putting us all to work in the fields.
Really, what the car companies should have pushed (in my opinion) is this: a transformation to a knowledge-based company. Manufacturing would take place in developing/emerging markets, primarily, while many high-pay jobs remain in the US as designers and other professions. Economically, that makes a helluva lot more sense for a variety of reasons.
Lastly, I wonder how many people (domestically) are employed in the car industry. Millions, looking at the entire supply chain, I suspect. The idea that it’s better to have more people rather than fewer produce identical output is absurd. I realize no one is explicitly making that argument (if they knew to make the argument, they’d understand the absurdity), but that certainly seems to be the implication.
In other words, real standard of living rises when productivity rises. Fewer people producing the same or greater output is for the aggregate good of the economy. “Saving jobs” is often the complete antithesis of that, meaning that efforts to “save jobs” can actually cause a reduction in the real standard of living.
Not that Gettelfinger, or our political leaders, care about such things, of course.
Kristof has an excellent editorial on China & why the Chinese don’t demand democracy (hint: it’s the economy, stupid).
Kristof also alludes to the possibility that China will inevitably become a democracy (I agree with him):
In Taiwan in 1986, an ambitious young official named Ma Ying-jeou used to tell me that robust Western-style democracy might not be fully suited for the people of Taiwan. He revised his view and now is the island’s democratically elected president.
[The “Buy American” clause] is sparking conflict with American allies and, rather than supporting employment at home, the “Buy American” effort could ultimately cost American jobs.
Foreign and domestic companies that employ hundreds of workers in this country cannot bid for government projects because they cannot guarantee the American provenance of all the steel, iron and manufactured goods in their supply chain, as the provision requires. Others are scrambling to figure out whether American-made alternatives exist to replace their foreign inputs.