The Flow of Consciousness

I never got around to posting a 2011 retrospective. 2011 was pretty boring at first: ~2 weeks per month on the road for work, spending a good bit of time working on PLAS. I was on-site during the high tension 11th hour license renewal at the heart of the second largest deal in Vivísimo history. Then 2011 picked up. Pittco had its second largest LAN party ever, Iron Storm XII. Brigette graduated from college in May and I bought an early 2000s Nissan Xterra as a second vehicle, largely for her use (we’ve ended up splitting it 50/50).

Our dining room

Then 2011 got crazy. I bought a house in a suburb of Pittsburgh between the city and nearby Monroeville. It’s a ’50s colonial with two garages — a rarity for my new neighborhood! Brigette and I moved in together and spent most of the rest of the year being frugal when the Xterra’s engine blew a head gasket and had to be replaced. Ouch, my wallet. We’ve since settled in pretty nicely. We’re not really ready yet to show off many pictures of our place, but with each passing month, we’re able to make it look more like a home than a house.

Then came 2012. Why am I doing the first half of 2012 already? It’s just that crazy.

CES this year was great. I met a ton of new folks and connected with some old friends, one of whom may be the last time I see her at CES for a while (she changed jobs shortly after). I really made some solid contacts for Pittco and even talked to a few who’d heard of it outside of my bantering! Sweet! Brand recognition!

Which brings me to Pittco, specifically Iron Storm XIII. IS13 was our largest event ever, as I stated in my STATE OF THE LAN address: 186 people attended! Someone in the media said last year, “LAN parties are dead.” To that, I say, “Well, you mustn’t have been at Iron Storm XIII. I’ve never seen so much life at a LAN party.” Granted, I’m a little biased, but seriously. We’ve grown to the point that we’ve exceeded what our current, longtime venue can hold, so we’re looking for a new place in Pittsburgh to house our event.

I got involved in the planning of the Steel City Ruby Conference, a developer conference aimed at Rubyists. Its target audience is any Rubyist, but primarily Rubyists who’d never attended a Ruby conference. I’m lending my event planning skills (thanks, Pittco! thanks, WPAYL!) while also building expectations as someone who has never attended a Ruby conference but has attended other conferences. Registration went live in early May and we were 50% sold out within a couple of days. The event is in August 2012, so check it out!

The craziest part of this year started April 23 when IBM announced its intentions to acquire Vivísimo. The small startup I joined when there were ~85 people had grown to >120 and “fired its warp drive long enough to be detected“ by a megacorp. Lots of confusion ensued, but ultimately most people were on board. The deal officially closed Thursday, May 24. Terms were not disclosed publicly, so I can’t discuss them here. Sorry!

Thusly, tomorrow, June 1, 2012, is my first day as an IBMer. I never imagined that I’d ever work for such a massive company (#1-2-3 most recognized brand in the world, as we’ve been constantly told) or that I would get into it in this way, via acquisition. I’ll be sticking with it for the foreseeable future, as Vivísimo’s main product, Velocity, a search engine platform, becomes the center of IBM’s push into the Big Data market.

Sent via e-mail to Senators Specter and Casey, as well as Congressman Altmire, all of Pennsylvania…

Senators and Congressman,

I write in regards to a bill with the short title “Internet Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today’s Youth (SAFETY) Act of 2009″. This bill was introduced with virtually the same text into the House by Mr. Smith of Texas as H.R. 1076 and into the Senate by Mr. Cornyn as S. 436.

While the overall goal of the bill — a reduction in the use of the Internet to facilitate the trafficking of child pornography — is noble, I am concerned that a key section of the bill is overbroad and unenforceable.

The section to which I am referring is Sec. 5, the “RETENTION OF RECORDS BY ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATION SERVICE PROVIDERS.” I include the text of the section here for reference:

Section 2703 of title 18, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end the following: “(h) Retention of Certain Records and Information- A provider of an electronic communication service or remote computing service shall retain for a period of at least two years all records or other information pertaining to the identity of a user of a temporarily assigned network address the service assigns to that user.”

My interpretation leads me to understand that this section would require any person operating an electronic communication or remote computing service to retain at least two years of logs of temporarily-assigned network addresses.

If interpreted as broadly as possible, this law could require every person who owns an Internet router — a very common, inexpensive, often wireless-capable networking device — to retain these logs for two years. These devices have a very limited storage capacity and generally do not have logging facilities enabled by default.

This law would essentially obsolete every home and small business router, as Americans would be compelled by federal law to buy a certainly more expensive router capable of storing an great amount of log files. This device would also have to be capable of backing up these logs to one or more external devices in order to ensure that the owner is protected from device failures. The price of these new routers would be much higher than the current market price of a router and this legislation would open the possibility of lawsuits against router makers when a router fails to log or retain the logs.

While this procedure is standard rigmarole for computer- and technology-savvy Americans, including information technology professionals, it is a difficult and potentially costly one for those who are not so inclined.

A single power outage or accidental or natural disaster could put someone in a position where they have violated federal law, as they acted as an electronic communication and remote computing service provider and did not retain records as federal law requires.

This is, of course, assuming that the federal agents responsible for enforcing this legislation do in fact police it. Instead, this new data retention requirement will go largely unnoticed, unacknowledged, and unenforced. It will become a law used to convict the ignorant, the careless, and the negligent instead convicting those actually responsible for exploiting children.

I can assume that one or more of you has a wireless router in your home. This law would apply to you, as well. You would need to ensure that your wireless router logs all addresses which it assigns, and you would need to ensure that your logs are retained for at least two years. If for some reason something happened and those logs were lost, you would be guilty of violating federal law.

Moreover, the identifying information contained within these logs is easily fabricated and even easier to masquerade. Two of the three major operating systems can masquerade the most commonly used unique network hardware identifier — a MAC address — with a simple command. A trivial program does the trick for the third. Such a simple fact would easily dismiss a MAC address as evidence in a court test of this entire law, not just the section against which I am campaigning.

I understand that these bills have probably been referred to committees for further exploration. I urge you to exercise extreme caution if this bill comes up for vote alone or as a part of a larger piece of legislation. I urge you to see Section 5 stricken in its entirety on the grounds that it is unenforceable and overbroad.

Thank you for your attention to this matter. If you wish to discuss these or other technology-related bills, my phone is always handy and I’m always willing to share my knowledge.

Colin Dean
Volant, PA

CC: Senator Casey, Senator Specter, Congressman Altmire

Blog reader note: Slashdot links to an excellent summary by C|Net’s Declan McCullaugh entitled Bill proposes ISPs, Wi-Fi keep logs for police.

According to Reuters, the Gas Price Relief for Consumers Act of 2008 passed the House 324-84 today. The GovTrack status page for the act has yet to be updated, though—it is usually updated a day or two after action is published on THOMAS.

I commented in my previous entry, regarding overreaching and unenforceable foreign policy bills in the House.

Read this quote from the article a few times and really think about it.

The bill would subject OPEC oil producers, including Saudi Arabia, Iran and Venezuela, to the same antitrust laws that U.S. companies must follow.

How is the US going to enforce this? The US has no legal authority or ability force its laws upon other countries, other than by gunpoint diplomacy, a policy which has already harmed the US enough.

The Bush Administration, in a rare bout of intelligence, said that the bill “would likely spur retaliatory action against American interests in those countries and lead to a reduction in oil available to U.S. refiners.” This would obviously increase the price, not reduce it at all.

Fortunately, the bill still has to go through the House, where it will hopefully fail with not more than 10 minutes of debate. Clearly 324 Congresspeople are delusional and think that they can exercise their petty will against other countries’ governments.

A while ago, I started using GovTrack.us to watch actions on bills in the house and senate. I did so because I am interested to see how Ron Paul votes and how my Congressman, Jason Altmire, votes. I know that Arlen Specter and Bob Casey, Jr. generally are not going to vote as I would, but it’s nice to see if I’m right whenever there’s some senate action on GovTrack.

Today, when looking through the GovTrack feed, I found three recently-introduced House Resolutions that stuck out to me. I detail them and give my comments herein. I must remind the reader that I am a just little more than a beginner level interpreter of Congressional bills, so if I have incorrectly analyzed or have mistaken a meaning, please supply constructive criticism with links to references in a comment.

H.R. 6074 Gas Price Relief for Consumers Act of 2008. The Gas Price Relief for Consumers Act of 2008 was introduced by Wisconsin Democrat Steve Kagen. Section 101, the “No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels Act of 2008″ (NOPEC, how quaint) amends the Sherman Act, the country’s antitrust statutes, to prohibit any foreign state or agent thereof from working with another foreign state or agent thereof to limit the production of, set prices for, or otherwise restrain trade of oil, natural gas and petroleum products.

What right does the US have to extend our antitrust laws to foreign nations? This act is obviously targeted at OPEC, given its text and its apropos acronym, NOPEC. Now, I see the application of this to oil-related companies in the US which are owned by foreign governments or companies. However, if one of these companies were to be sued under antitrust laws, wouldn’t that suit give them justification to raise the prices in order afford the expensive legal process in the US?

It seems that Congress would be better off spending its time telling Japan to stop having a monopoly on Pocky or telling OPEC non-member Norway to stop being the #3 producer of oil in the world.

H.R. 6079. California Democrat Adam Schiff’s text for H.R. 6079 has not been released yet, but the description says it all:

To direct the Secretary of State to submit a report outlining the steps taken and plans made by the United States to end Turkey’s blockade of Armenia, and for other purposes.

What constitutional business has the US in meddling with arguments between Turkey and Armenia? The US is once again trying to be the bully settling the quarrel between two people it doesn’t usually pick on, thus trying to make itself feel better and look better even though it continues to illogically blockade allies of those two countries, plus many more!

H. Res. 1205: Noting that the Government of Iraq will likely enjoy $32 billion in surplus oil revenues in 2008…. Massachusetts’ Democrat William Delahunt’s H.R. 1205 recognizes that Iraq will bring in $32 billion in oil surplus this year and directs asks the government of Iraq to give $1 billion of that to refugees and displaced persons and that the Iraqi government give that money to other countries to help those countries afford the refugees. There are many clauses in the resolution, but a few are particularly outstanding:

Whereas the United States has a moral responsibility to assist those affected by the violence pervasive in Iraq since the United States invasion and should generously support the efforts of international and nongovernmental organizations to ease the human suffering of the displaced;

Mr. Delahunt, you may see a “moral responsibility” to assist, but I see a legal responsibility for the US to let the government of Iraq do what it deems right. We’ve already screwed up that country enough by meddling in its affairs and invading it without a constitutionally-required Congressional declaration of war. Money to help refugees wouldn’t be necessary if we’d have stopped military action when the “mission” was “accomplished.”

What do all of these bills have in common? They meddle in affairs of other nations and seek to impose our will and our laws in ways which are unconstitutional and illogical. No country has to listen to what another country’s politicians have to say.

If OPEC doesn’t play nice, what is the US going to do? Bomb them? Hardly, even that seems to be the most common answer to non-compliance with the wishes of Washington. If Turkey continues to blockade Armenia, what is the US going to do? Alienate our relations with Turkey in order to help out Armenia? Or are we just going to give guns to the Armenians and money to the Turks, like we did in the middle east with several nations there?

If Iraq won’t give $1 billion to its refugees, what is the US going to do? Will Bush or his successor promise to keep troops in Iraq or continue bombing, thus forcing even more Iraqis out of their homes?

The US has no ground on which it can stand in regard to these bills. It’s empty posturing by delusional politicians who think that they can exercise their will on anyone they choose.

Congressman Altmire,

I write to urge you to argue and vote against H.R. 5990, the “Video Games Ratings Enforcement Act” recently introduced by Rep. Jim Matheson [D-UT]. This legislation unfairly targets video games without citing a reason for the ban on sales to minors, and fails to acknowledge the similarly violent, sexual, and other objectionable content of equivalently-rated television and film.

The Entertainment Software Ratings Board is merely a self-regulatory body established by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA). The review process for video games is based on developer submission of pre-recorded content to the Board, not the Board or its agents actually playing through the video game. This can result in omissions causing a lighter rating or misjudgments causing unfair, heavier ratings.

In fact, two major video game publishers/distributors–Activision and Vivendi Universal–recently left the ESA. A third and one of the largest of its kind in the world, Electronic Arts, is rumored to be considering leaving, as well. They disagree with the ESA’s policies; that is their reason for leaving, as far as I know.

Also, there is no constitutional grounds for this prohibition. Article I Section 8 of the Constitution makes no mention of entertainment media, and more than likely citizens’ rights groups will cry foul that this legislation violates the First Amendment. The interstate commerce clause would allow the Federal government to prohibit sales to minors or mandate rating across state lines as partially stated in Section 2(a) of H.R. 5990, but not within the states–that’s a states’ rights issue supported by the Tenth Amendment.

Moreover, the legislation will do almost nothing to prevent video games with content not meant for minors. Parents will purchase games for their children irresponsibly and without regard for content. If the federal government should do anything in regards to video games with objectionable content, it should urge the ESA and ESRB to educate parents about the rating system and perhaps ask the ESA to mandate that all retailers adhere to guidelines and face penalties or ejection from the ESA if a retailer is caught selling high-rated video games to minors.

If such legislation passes and withstands a constitutionality trial, then a dangerous precedent will be set by which other entertainment media (books, film, television) could, or even /should/ be equally regulated/prohibited.

H.R. 5512, the Coin Modernization and Taxpayer Savings Act of 2008, passed the house yesterday. In addition to changing the composition of penny to a copper-painted steel and the nickel of nickel-coated steel, the Act also repeals current weight requirements for coinage and mandates that all U.S. coinage be minted in the United States, and a few other things.

Why? From the bill text:

(5) The United States Mint gained further experience changing the metal content of pennies in 1982, when it began producing copper-coated zinc pennies as a result of rising copper prices.
…
(7) Given the current cost to make a penny and volume of pennies minted, by simply reducing penny production costs to face value, the United States will save more than $500,000,000 in the next 10 years alone.

(8) Reducing the cost to produce a nickel to face value will save the United States an additional $60,000,000 per year.

It makes sense to save money, since the penny’s copper-zinc weight is worth almost two, and the nickel is worth approximately seven cents, if I recall a recent news report correctly. However, do you think this change is worth devaluing the few ties American money still has to (somewhat) precious metals?