October 2009 Archives

Information Cards, also referred to by the moniker InfoCards or the Microsoft brand name Cardspace, have been a long-promised (and little implemented) addition to the identity and security landscape for some time now. The idea is essentially that they would work like a personal digital ID card that would securely sign you in to any site you to which you belong. Rather than memorizing dozens of usernames and passwords, you could just plug in your handy digital ID and 'Open Sesame." In general, Infocards are touted as being more secure than passwords because they are highly encrypted. To keep your card safe, you would only need to know one password, stored locally on your computer or thumb drive, so that your co-worker or other random person couldn't pirate your card. The piece of software used to store and deploy InfoCards is known as an Identity Selector; there is a new one available that works with Linux and Firefox 3.5 called openinfocard.

In the rush to eye candy, it seems sometimes that the most important part of written communication -- the words -- is sometimes forgotten. In the niche of the information society occupied by crusty Unix/Linux diehards, however, the word is still at the core of their communications. In some ways this is not surprising, since one of the distinguishing features of LInux is that its configuration files are virtually entirely human-readable text, as opposed to the obscure codes locked in the bowels of the Windows registry. Naturally, a operating system based on text needs a text editor -- or two, and a decades-long intramural rivalry among GNU/Linux users continues to bubble along over whether the vi editor or the emacs editor should be one's editor of choice. Of course, in some ways it is a false dichotomy; as one emacs proponent recently stated, it is like "comparing apples and combustion engines."

To my mind, you would be hard pressed to find a neater, cleaner piece of software than the vi text editor, whose beauty was forged in the crucible of the severe constraints of the early computer industry. With a minimum of code and a minimum of memory, vi was designed to be present on every Unix system so that programmers could edit text over achingly slow connections as the pea-brained monsters of the paleolithic computer world slowly emerged from the torpor of the punch-card era. VI had to be elegant and powerful; elegant so that it would gobble a minimum of precious computing resources and powerful so that it could efficiently edit significant amounts of code with great precision.

If vi is a surgeon's lancet, emacs is more like the fat Swiss Army knives that used to enthrall teenage boys with multiplicity of their blades -- a stainless steel tool for any occasion just waiting for a junior MacGyver to push it to its true limits. Emacs may not have the elegance of single purpose that vi does, but it does have the beauty of complexity and the fascination of what it is difficult (as the twentieth century's greatest master of text put it).

I have flirted with both vi and emacs over the years since I first encountered vi as an undergraduate, but I only began to use vi seriously about a year ago. It's a beautiful text editor, but I am finding now that I want to extend my reach beyond simply editing text. The new spark in my emacs romance initially flared as a result of my interest in a free self-validating XML editor. However, I was immediately diverted by emacs, built in news reader. Although USENET is largely a relic of the past, it turns out that the gnus news reader in emacs is well adapted to managing email. It took me almost two days to get the email/news function up and running on both my laptop and my desktop, but I think that the installation and configuration is now complete enough so that I can really begin to play with the email. The possibilities of a program designed for editing, with a powerful search engine based on regular expressions, and the capacity to thread and prioritize common themes in a fast text-based interface are enticing at the very least. It may not be the engine that associates all one's data with the email on the screen envisioned (and patented) by a friend of mine, but it would be a delicious irony if a decades old program were in fact the next leap forward in managing email.

Email, like sex, should be a pleasure not a burden. (That does not mean that one cannot get enough of it!). And in both cases keeping it fun and safe, without killing spontaneity, requires a little planning and the right equipment!

To the possible disappointment but not the surprise of anyone reading, I am going to discuss email, at once one of the greatest and most abused inventions of the twentieth century. Indeed, former University of Chicago Professor Bruce Redford once credited it with reviving the lost art of personal correspondence.

Personally, I maintain five email accounts, as follows:

1. My personal account, which I reserve for correspondence with friends and family.

2. My Gmail account, with which I take advantage of Gmail's search, sorting, scripting, and storage capabilities. Apart from personal correspondence (and a few system messages), I funnel the vast tide of mailing lists, bills, advertisements, and site registrations to Gmail, to be promptly labeled, sorted, stored, and, occasionally, read (mostly just the bill reminders).

3. My hushmail account, which lets me send encrypted mail from workstations and my iPhone.

4. My Yahoo account, which serves mainly as an OpenID for access to other Yahoo services.

5. My work account, for, well, work. It is an Outlook/Exchange system.

My software of choice, when I have a choice, is Thunderbird on the desktop. My mail client is configured to take advantage of both S/MIME and GPG encryption. For those more technically inclined, I also use the excellent Horde Project for groupware on my home server running Ubuntu Linux. This gives me web access to my email, among many other excellent features, wherever there is a browser connected on the 'net, while storing my mail on my server rather than in the cloud. I prefer to use IMAP rather than POP servers, so that whether I access my mail on my iPhone, my laptop, my destop, or a remote desktop, it is always the same.

Gmail is in some senses sui generis owing to its unique design, but I approach both my personal and work accounts from the same set of principles. These I have derived as closely as I could from David Allen's justly celebrated modern classic Getting Things Done.

In order to process my email, I have five primary folders: Inbox, @Reply, @Archive, @Pending, Spam, and Trash. Of these, the first one and last two are automatic and self-explanatory. The first goal, as often as possible, is to bring the Inbox down to zero. This can be done by immediate response and filing or immediate filing for future response. In either case, the email can either be trashed or archived. If it needs a reply that you cannot prepare until later, put it in @Reply and be sure to scan the folder at least daily. Label and sort replies by urgency and then by date, if possible.

If the email refers to something someone needs to do for you, put it in the @Pending folder, which you also need to check at least once daily.

Once an email requires no further processing or response, move it to the @Archive folder. Remember, however, that eventually the archive may grow to a size that degrades the performance of the mail server. To avoid this, I use a program that allows me to remove my mail and save it in compressed form in a file on my workstation. (Outlook has an archive function built in.). On my Linux workstation, I use a program called, appropriately enough, mailarchive. I set it to run once a month and archive any mail older than 90 days to a gzipped file. Of course, this is only helpful if one can read the file, but fortunately the mutt mail client works well for this purpose.

Now I think I have some email to catch up on.

A series of on-line lectures and tutorials introducing users to the Ubuntu Linux operating system begins November 2, 2009 with Ubuntu Open Week. Anyone who wants to get more out of his or computer should consider attending.

Having widely outraged some sensibilities with my recent unequivocal call for decriminalization of drugs, it will come as a surprise to no one that I also advocate legalization and licensing of prostitution.

The goal of bringing both drugs and prostitution out of the underworld and into the sunshine is to limit both their prevalence and their harmful effects. Ironically, the drug problem drives in part the prostitution problem, as many young women become prostitutes in order to feed a drug habit, and many pimps inculcate drug habits to maintain control over their prostitutes.

There are few social problems more rife with hypocrisy than prostitution. As a rule, we punish the largely female prostitutes more severely than the largely male customers, although even then the usual punishments are so light as to call into question any genuine commitment to ending the trade. I positively admire Deborah Jeane Palfrey and Sidney Biddle Barrows compared to the two-legged cockroaches David Vitter and Eliot Spitzer, who hypocritically condemn the very lusts in which they are most deeply steeped. Cf. Angelo in Measure for Measure. My objection, mind you, is not so much to the lust as to the loathsome hypocrisy. Ms. Palfrey should not have been the one who suffered, or at least not alone.

Mind you, calling prostitution a victimless crime is cant. Overwhelming, it appears, women sell their bodies out of economic compulsion not simply profit maximization. In doing so, they frequently suffer danger and disease, not to mention whatever psychic cost there is to repetitive, anonymous copulation. But calling for legalization, as with drugs, does not imply endorsement; it merely recognizes the futility of our efforts at interdiction and the excerbation of the costs of the behavior in question.

The first benefit of legalization of prostitution would be to undermine the element of coercion. Not only would employers be more closely scrutinized by the government, but also women who decided to engage in the sex trade would have more opportunities and greater job mobility. Moreover, legalization would hopefully undercut the economic gains of kidnapping and sex slavery. If women are to have control of their own bodies, they must have enough economic freedom that prostitution is an option, not a last, desperate necessity.

As a recent article in the Guardian demonstrates, a second significant benefit would be disease control. See http://bit.ly/2VVRAE . Puritanical South Africa apparently wants to legalise prostitution for the duration of the World Cup in the hopes of avoiding an explosion of HIV infection. Nearly half of South Africa's prostitutes are HIV positive, and without screening and treatment, authorities fear that there will be an explosion of HIV infection among the 3.2 million fans. Meanwhile, proponents of legalisation in South Africa are mainly dismayed that the country is only talking about legalisation during the games rather than on a permanent basis.

It is time for more dignity and less disease. The time for legalization is now.

Just discovered Yale Law School's Avalon Project, a collection of major historical documents from ancient times through the twenty-first century. It looks as though it will repay a second, and third, look.

Bringing anything back from a near death experience takes time, care, and patience, and this blog is no exception. I am slowly trying to work myself back into the habit of making entries at the same time that I am tweaking the code a little bit for faster loading, easier commenting, and more enjoyable reading. Patience is encouraged and suggestions are welcome. If the blog can survive work, children, and Facebook, it can survive anything.

I haven't made any decisions about how much effort I am going to put back into the a la menthe. As the more focused blog, it has always enjoyed more attention than this one, but it is more effort to keep up when one does not have actual physical contact with the country. My inclination for the moment is to let "the a la menthe" continue to lie fallow and bring any Moroccan subject matter back into A Web Undone 2. If anyone actually reads this, and if makes a difference to anyone, leave a comment, and I might reconsider.

Hypothesis: Alcohol kills more people in this country than all illegal drugs combined.

Proposal: Decriminalize all drugs now. Marijuana, heroin, cocaine, LSD, meth, ecstasy, the lot. Disparage them, discourage them, tax them, treat them, but decriminalize them. Restrict sales to adults. (If you object that the kids are going to get ahold of them, ask yourself what the kids are doing now in the face of our failed interdiction policy.) Decriminalize drugs, and the end of artificial scarcity created by interdiction will drive down the price, the gangs will wither, and violence will decline. If you doubt it, ask yourself how much bootlegging goes in this country. We need to stop the enormous profits from trafficking from fueling ongoing international violence and providing a pretext for repression. We need to restore balance to the market so that some farmers will reallocate their production to to other crops. We need to get the vast number of young people guilty of nothing more than seeking a quick high out of jail. What do you say?