Paul M. Jones

Phil Zimmermann and some of the original PGP team have joined up with former US Navy SEALs to build an encrypted communications platform that should be proof against any surveillance.

The company, called Silent Circle, will launch later this year, when $20 a month will buy you encrypted email, text messages, phone calls, and videoconferencing in a package that looks to be strong enough to have the NSA seriously worried. Zimmermann says that surveillance by the state and others has increased vastly over the last few years, and privacy improvement are again needed.

"At the very least I want people, as part of their right in a free society to be able to communicate securely," he said in a promotional video (below). "I should be able to whisper in your ear, even if your ear is a thousand miles away."

via PGP founder, Navy SEALs uncloak encrypted comms biz • The Register.

The TSA should not be streamlined. Administrators should not "review screening procedures." Screeners don't need additional training. The TSA doesn't need to be tweaked. It didn't "go too far" in these specific instances. Its very existence goes too far. The TSA never should have been created in the first place, and it should be abolished now. Immediately. Without hesitation.

...

I am a "customer" of the airlines I fly. The TSA stands between me and the airline with a credible threat that they will not let us conduct business unless I go through a ludicrous song-and-dance routine that involves partially disrobing and then either being subjected to nude imaging or a full-on groping that involves hand-to-genital contact.

via Sunday Reflection: 'Dear TSA: I am not your customer' | Washington Examiner.

The social scientist Dalton Conley wrote a provocative Op-Ed, “A Man’s Right to Choose” in the New York Times on this subject a few years ago. He wrote, “But when men and women engage in sexual relations both parties recognize the potential for creating life. If both parties willingly participate then shouldn’t both have a say in whether to keep a baby that results?”

... I tried to imagine I was having an irresolvable conflict with a man over an accidental pregnancy. I told Conley I just don’t see a compromise: It has to be the woman’s choice.

He said, “Then the man shouldn’t be responsible for the baby.”

via Unexpected pregnancy: Should a man be responsible for supporting a baby he didn’t want? - Slate Magazine.

The New York chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union has released an Android application allowing mobile-phone users to easily capture police patdowns on video, which is then automatically uploaded to the rights group’s servers.

The “Stop & Frisk Watch” application, which is soon coming to the iPhone, is in response to the New York Police Department having stopped, frisked and interrogated people at least 685,724 times last year alone. About 87 percent of those stopped were black or Latino, and 90 percent of those stopped were neither ticketed nor arrested.

The app is programmed to work only in New York City, and has three functions:

The “record” section allows easy video recording, which stops when the phone is shaken or when a button is pressed. The video is not stored on the phone, and instead is immediately uploaded to the New York ACLU. The app can also program your phone to automatically lock when recording is finished.

Once the video is uploaded, the app asks for information about where the images were taken, officers involved and other details of the incident. This “report” function also works without video being taken.

The app’s “listen” function provides real-time mapping of where others are using the app to record police.

via ACLU Phone App Lets You Shoot the Cops | Threat Level | Wired.com.

“But, Dave,” you cry, “Walt Whitman tells me I’m my own version of perfection! Epictetus tells me I have the spark of Zeus!” And I don’t disagree. So that makes 6.8 billion examples of perfection, 6.8 billion sparks of Zeus. You see, if everyone is special, then no one is. If everyone gets a trophy, trophies become meaningless. In our unspoken but not so subtle Darwinian competition with one another–which springs, I think, from our fear of our own insignificance, a subset of our dread of mortality -- we have of late, we Americans, to our detriment, come to love accolades more than genuine achievement. We have come to see them as the point -- and we’re happy to compromise standards, or ignore reality, if we suspect that’s the quickest way, or only way, to have something to put on the mantelpiece, something to pose with, crow about, something with which to leverage ourselves into a better spot on the social totem pole. No longer is it how you play the game, no longer is it even whether you win or lose, or learn or grow, or enjoy yourself doing it... Now it’s “So what does this get me?” As a consequence, we cheapen worthy endeavors, and building a Guatemalan medical clinic becomes more about the application to Bowdoin than the well-being of Guatemalans. It’s an epidemic -- and in its way, not even dear old Wellesley High is immune... one of the best of the 37,000 nationwide, Wellesley High School... where good is no longer good enough, where a B is the new C, and the midlevel curriculum is called Advanced College Placement. And I hope you caught me when I said “one of the best.” I said “one of the best” so we can feel better about ourselves, so we can bask in a little easy distinction, however vague and unverifiable, and count ourselves among the elite, whoever they might be, and enjoy a perceived leg up on the perceived competition. But the phrase defies logic. By definition there can be only one best. You’re it or you’re not.

via You’re Not Special - BostonHerald.com.

Chris Hartjes has a nice writeup on dependency injection containers versus service locators. Here's a short way to tell which one you're using:

"If your class has a dependency on a container, you're using Service Locator, not Dependency Injection."

If you have a DI container and you pass it into a class so that class can get its own dependencies from that container, you are *still* doing Service Locator. It doesn't matter that the locator is called a DI container. The key is that the object is pulling in its dependencies, instead of something outside of the object pushing the dependencies into it.

In reporting this news of George Zimmerman's return to jail, more than a few media outlets showed the dangerously deceptive image of Trayvon as 11-year-old cherub.

...

According to the autopsy report, Trayvon was 5'11" tall and weighed 158 pounds, the "ideal healthy weight" at that height being 160 pounds.  He was not the skinny little boy with the Skittles that half of America still believes him to be.  He was at least three inches taller than Zimmerman and only about 20 pounds lighter.

...

In the past year or so, his social media sites showed a growing interest in drugs, in mixed martial arts-style street fighting, in a profoundly vulgar exploitation of "bitches."  

Trayvon posed for one photo with raised middle fingers, another with wads of cash held in an out-stretched arm.  One YouTube video shows him refereeing a fight club-style street fight.  A cousin had recently tweeted him, "Yu ain't tell me yu swung on a bus driver," meaning, if true, that Trayvon had punched out a bus driver.

Zimmerman never saw the cute little boy that the TV audience did.  He saw a full-grown man, a druggy, a wannabe street fighter, the tattooed, gold-grilled, self-dubbed "No_Limit_Nigga."  

The article includes a timeline of events that you may find shocking; doubly so, when you realize the major media outlets have not reported it. Via Articles: What the Media Choose Not to Know about Trayvon.

If engineers were no more honest than the typical politician, all of the bridges would fall down.

If accountants were no more honest than the typical politician, every firm would go bankrupt.

If merchants were no more honest than the typical politician, Paris would not get fed; nor would any other city.

If preachers were no more honest than the typical politician, everyone who took their sermons to heart would go straight to hell.

If physicians were no more honest than the typical politician, all of the patients would die.

If carpenters were no more honest than the typical politician, every house would collapse.

If spouses were no more honest than the typical politician, every marriage would be on the rocks.

If used car dealers were no more honest than the typical politician, no one would risk buying a used car.

If electricians were no more honest than the typical politician, we would all be electrocuted.

If soldiers were no more honest than the typical politician, both sides would lose every battle.

Why believe them? Via If Politicians’ Honesty Set the Standard for Others | The Beacon.

1. Buy experiences instead of things

2. Help others instead of yourself

3. Buy many small pleasures instead of few big ones

4. Buy less insurance

5. Pay now and consume later

6. Think about what you're not thinking about

7. Beware of comparison shopping

8. Follow the herd instead of your head

Number 8 is especially interesting. Via Coding Horror: Buying Happiness.

Small-company edition:

When pressured on the business by employees, CEO always starts with, "I need you to stay focused on..."

You have more than one MBA on the team.

You have a Chief Strategy Officer.

Your CTO just came out of a Phd program.

Your CEO sells instead of listens.

You have a launch party, and no customers attend.

Customers hate the product and vision, so the sales guy is fired.

You are not told the terms of the last funding round (5x liquidation preference?)

You never hear how much cash you have in the bank or see board meeting notes.

You complain about how the customers "just don't get it" and aren't "visionary."

Your CEO says revenue is coming in in two weeks, just after he gets a meeting with the buyer, negotiates price, gets it approved, agrees on terms, writes up up contracts, negotiates them, signs them, and invoices the customer on net 30 terms.

You add features because board members want them.

Your CEO calls himself a "visionary" in his bio.

The CEO keeps everything secret because, "that is how Apple does it."

The CEO approves all of the design decisions because, "that is how Apple does it."

You are selling a platform.

Co-founder agrees to bring in experienced execs but thinks they will report to him.

You are selling to schools, hospitals, or non-profits.

You are commercializing a technology.

Your value proposition is that you help workers break down organizational barriers and work cross-functionally.

Your business model assume you will become one of the 7 websites that the average user visits every day.

Your site is going to be ad-supported, and you have 1500 users.

CEO avoids eye contact.

It gets really quiet.

You get free lunch but have no customers.

Your free lunch is taken away.

You get asked, "how much do you really need to live on?"

You get a pay cut. Your co-worker disappears.

Your CEO still doesn't make eye contact.

You get laid off and become a creditor to the company because they didn't reimburse your last 5 expense reports.

The company declines to buy your unvested shares back.

The liquidation yields 5 Aeron chairs and an espresso machine, and Ashton Kutcher's stock is senior to yours.

via What are telltale signs that you're working at a "sinking ship" company? - Quora.