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I feel like getting arrested

September 3, 2004 /

Hey, wanna see if you’re a terrorist? Excuse me–“Specially Designated National or Blocked Person?” Thanks to the Department of the Treasury, you can, in PDF or ASCII flavors! (As stated above, I do feel like getting arrested, so I was going to write a form script that would search the file for you, but it’s 1.35Mb of unmarked-up plaintext, and I don’t want to kill my webhost with that much sequential search.)

I’m aware of this list because today I had to write down some personal info and sign a release form at work. My company could be getting a federal contractor as a client, so every employee name has to be checked against the list. Fair enough. I don’t like that, but it is the law.

I do have a problem, though, with the fact that we contracted an outside firm to do the checking. Everybody in this company had to sign a paper saying that neither my employer nor this firm were liable for any consequence of having yourself checked. Then everybody had to print his or her first, middle and last names, DOB, and SSN. The forms will be sent off to VeriCorp, who of course can be trusted with my SSN and corresponding information! I guess!

Keep in mind that my employers are probably paying thousands of dollars for this: VeriCorp is going to take a list of a few hundred names, then they’re going to take the text file linked above, and they’re going to have some people hit CTRL-F a few times. And if one of those people makes a typo and you go to Secret Terrorist Jail, whoops! Oh well! They’re not liable!

I am making use of hyperbole here, obviously. Nobody’s going to go to jail; if you’re on the SDN list and the FBI doesn’t know where you are, you’re certainly not going to be working under your real name, much less putting it down on that form. This whole thing is a redundancy measure, a legal fallback.

My point is that there is no reason to be sending hundreds of people’s personal info to an outside contractor, liability-free, when the list is publicly available, and we have an in-house software development team who are all experts at data correlation. I guess the potential client doesn’t trust us to verify our own employees, because we’re an interested party in the negotiations. But if they don’t trust us to verify the information correctly, why trust us to send it correctly in the first place?

August 30, 2004 /

I love the second picture (scroll down) in this Seattle Times article about Penny Arcade and PAX. Like that’s exactly how Tycho and Gabe make the comic: sitting at a clean white table, writer leaning over the artist’s shoulder, staring boldly into the future and posed more stiffly than dead mannequins.

August 24, 2004 /

You know, the only reason iambic pentameter caught on with writers is you can count it on your fingers.

August 20, 2004 /

Yesterday I received two things in the mail for which I’ve been waiting all summer: my first student loan residual check, so I can pay my roommate for back rent, and my new credit card. My new credit card is interest-free until May, and its credit limit is three times as high as my previous credit card.

You know what that means? After nearly six years of life with my beloved, battered P2-450, it is time. I’m going to buy a new computer. It’s going to have two monitors. It’s going to dual-boot XP and some distro of Linux (any recommendations, by the way?). It’s going to have some insane beastly muscle under the hood. And I’ve finally decided–I’m going to build the whole thing from the ground up, or processor out, or whatever. I am going to purchase thermal grease.

August 18, 2004 /

As of today, links in this notebook will no longer open in new windows–a longstanding policy, useful for me when I relied on Internet Explorer, pointless now that I use Firefox. Fare thee well, target="_blank".

August 17, 2004 /

It occurs to me that all known arguments for censorship–in fact, all possible arguments for censorship–are logically rude.

Gerda: I wish to { purchase, view, broadcast } this material.
Grobian: Upon reviewing this material, I find it to obscene. You may not { purchase, view, broadcast } it; it is harmful to the mind, inhibiting moral judgment and causing its viewers to confuse fantasy with reality.
Gerda: Why is it permitted for you to review the material and judge it, and not for me to do so?
Grobian: I have been tasked with reviewing such material, and would not be so tasked if I were incapable of viewing it safely.
Gerda: But if the material impairs judgment to such a degree, and prevents its viewer from realizing that his or her judgment has been impaired, how do you know that your verdict is not the result of impaired judgment?
Grobian: I am striking it down as obscene, instead of running out to commit vicious criminal acts, which I would clearly do if the material had affected me.
Gerda: So your prediction is the opposite of the only available evidence–your own case–of the effects of reading this material. Doesn’t this empirically disprove your prediction?
Grobian: No. If you, for example, were to view this material, you would commit vicious criminal acts.
Gerda: How do you know that?
Grobian: You’re a pervert. The fact that you want to { purchase, view, broadcast } this material proves it.

That’s just one example–not all arguments for censorship use such flagrant circular logic (but the FCC certainly does). I’d have a more powerful argument here if logical rudeness were inherently invalid, but unfortunately, it’s not. Then again, if one’s going to be logically rude in the first place, one isn’t terribly likely to mind being invalid too, is one?

August 12, 2004 /

I’m going to Minnesota with Maria and her brother Michael! I’ll be back Monday! That’s four capital Ms in a row!

Actually I’ll be back Sunday, but I think you saw what I was trying to do there. Anacrusis will hopefully be updated as usual.