Duane Gran’s log of thoughts

Eric Sink has written an excellent article about the decision tree involved in testing software. It is full of battle-tested lessons about software development and pragmatic decisions.

It isn’t often that you get 250+ people, many without chairs, to attend a lecture concerning global politics in the post cold war era. Unless, of course, the speaker is Francis Fukuyama — The author of The End of History and America at the Crossroads. He is, by many accounts, the most prominent Neo Conservative in academic circles, but lately he has been unpersuaded by the rationale for war and the Neo Conservative agenda. I had the priviledge of hearing him speak at The Miller Center.

In the course of tracing the roots of Neo Conservativism from depression-era leftists, he cites three mis-applications of the Wilsonian doctrine:

1. Pre-emptive war — We have conflated our worries about stateless terrorism with the relative pre-2003 stability of Iraq. While the underlying sensibility of pre-emption — to strike first those who intend you harm — is nearly accepted fact, it hinges on solid intelligence. Furthermore, many cases of preemption require that you predict the future.
2. Benevolent hegemony — The current imbalance of political and military power is unprecedented in history, but we presume it to be the natural order. American exceptionalism, which condones our invasion of Iraq while demanding that India not invade Pakistan, is predicated on the belief that we are benevolent with our power. While many Americans believe this to be so, the contradictions inherent in the policy undermine what benevolence we proclaim to posses.
3. Nation building — If you had asked a political scientist in 1988 about a hypothetical end to Communism few would have predicted its end and nearly all would have expected it to be violent and protracted. The quiet demise of Communism set up an expectation that all enemies of America are paper tigers. This hubris has lead us into what is characterized now as a long war.

I’m a skeptic of Fukuyama’s thesis (see my previous notes) and still believe there is room in the world for grand re-ordering of society. I didn’t ask any questions, as the audience of professors, statesmen and one ambassador were better suited to the dialog. The audience was respectful but many questions probed the internal consistency of Neo Conservativism, particularly on the matter of vigorously endorsing democracy in one place (Iraq) while sanctioning obscene failures of human rights in another (Saudi Arabia). Fukuyama acknowledged these deficiencies as collateral for any administration and emphasized that devoting resources to one cause necessarily depletes options for another.

Had I wished to ask a question, I would have asked the following:

• Is the Bush doctrine Wilsonian?
• Realizing that hegemony — benevolent or not — breeds discontent among nations, what can America do to engage other nations to be part of the solution such that we are not acting as the world police?

Update: (26 May 2006): Helena Cobban, a fellow writer in Charlottesville was also at the event, summarized her experience with far more comprehension than I’ve given.

The Complete, Unquestionable, And Total Failure of Information Security.

The security company Scanit recently conducted a survey which tracked three web browsers (MSIE, Firefox, Opera) in 2004 and counted which days they were “known unsafe.” Their definition of “known unsafe”: a remotely exploitable security vulnerability had been publicly announced and no patch was yet available. Microsoft Internet Explorer, which is the most popular browser in use today and installed by default on most Windows-based computers, was 98% unsafe. Astonishingly, there were only 7 days in 2004 without an unpatched publicly disclosed security hole. Read that last sentence again if you have to.

The article is full of keep-you-awake-at-night concerns about computer security, most of which represent intractable problems. Unlike many security missives, the author isn’t dumping on just one application, but gives a wide survey of the uphill battle against a host of n’er do wells. The author plans a follow up article with practical suggestions and welcomes comment from computer security professionals.

My only nugget of wisdom to contribute is that the computer should assist with identifying suspicious behavior, but it shouldn’t assert the bona-fide safety of any particular activity — SSL being an exception. Once the computer says “this email is safe” or “this program is certified from vendor X” it creates an opportunity to impersonate some portion of the web of trust. Letting the computer do the bulk of analysis, as in the case of Bayesian spam filtering, and leaving the remaining 10% for human evaluation is a pragmatic approach which doesn’t lull the computer user into a false sense of security.

A Time article explains how Mayor Daley plans to transform Chicago into the premier green city in the United States:

Chicago, a blue-collar city of asphalt and glass and concrete canyons, would seem an odd place for admitted tree-hugger Sadhu Johnston to think he could save the planet. But Johnston, Mayor Richard M. Daley’ s environmental commissioner, believes that cities are actually the answer to the earth’s environmental ills. And with that in mind, he is working to turn Chicago into what he claims will be the most environmentally friendly city in the U.S. — as well as the nation’s center for environmental design and the manufacturing of components for the production of alternative energy.

I lived two summers in Chicago and had the pleasure of recently returning. In a word, this is excellent news and I believe Chicago stands an excellent chance of making good on the commitment, given their high ratio of parks and public space.

Now, if they could just do something about those outrageously cold winters I just might consider it again.

Today, while attempting to pay a property tax bill online with Albemarle County, I noticed that they have a “convenience fee”, amounting to 3% of the bill. I’m not sure what is convenient about this, but the page cites Virginia Code 2.2-614.1 as justification for the charge.

I mailed them a check. Sure, it is less convenient, but I hardly feel motivated to pay for the privilege of paying property taxes.

See the following Java visualization of the random number generator in the Java programming language. The patterns reveal a lack of randomness, which should give software developers pause if they build secure systems which rely on this facility. It also raises interesting philosophical questions about random events.

Essays: ‘Hammer & tickle’ by Ben Lewis | Prospect Magazine May 2006 issue 122

You can’t imagine Stalin or Khrushchev telling a joke about his own unpopularity, but Gorbachev did. In 1996 he appeared on the Clive Anderson show in Britain and told this one, whose lineage can be traced back through the 20th century: A man is queuing for food in Moscow. Finally he’s had enough. He turns round to his friend and says “That’s it. I’m going to kill that Gorbachev,” and marches off. Two hours later he comes back. “Well,” says the friend, “did you do it?” “No,” replies the other, “there was an even longer queue over there.”

The full article is a great for anyone interested in cultural issues surrounding Communism. If you want to poke fun today, consider a good-natured contest to remix The Internationale — probably the most widely translated and known song in the world, promoting worker solidarity.

Ambrose Bierce once quipped that “War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography.” Were that this silver lining were true, but unfortunately after decades of war American geographic literacy is, to put it bluntly, in a dismal state of affairs. Take for example the findings from a 2002 National Geographic survey which sadly reports that:

Despite the threat of war in Iraq and the daily reports of suicide bombers in Israel, less than 15 percent of the young U.S. citizens could locate either country.

In all fairness, the report explains that most nations exhibit a certain amount of a blind spots toward geographic regions which don’t frequent their news cycle. All hand wringing aside, are geography nuts like myself making a Mount Fuji out of a Saharan sand dune? (extra credit if you can point at these on a map)

Not at all. The world is becoming ever smaller and approachable, but the ability of the American electorate to grasp basic facts about nations, as well as our place in the worldwide community, will be vital to attain peace between nations. Any nation possessing nuclear weaponry (or other weapons of mass destruction) owes it to the international community to promote geographic understanding at home.

There may be some hope yet. The recently released 2006 National Geographic survey shows some improvement, as now 37% of young adults can find Iraq on a map. There is much work yet to be done.

Today is May Day, a day of remembrance for the Chicago haymarket riot in 1886 and for solidarity in the international worker’s movement. However, you won’t hear many chants about the proletariat and the bourgeois on this day. The phrase du jour is si se puede — a rallying call for immigrant workers who assert their claim for a dignified occupation, irrespective of political land boundaries.