Torture is Effective -- So Stop Saying It Isn't and Argue That It's Simply Wrong

Let’s talk about torture … after all, everybody is today.  It’s all over the news. 

We won’t talk about what torture is or if what’s being discussed in the news today qualifies, there’s too much difference of opinion on that – instead we’re going to talk about whether torture is an effective tactic to begin with.  And, please, keep in mind that I haven’t told you what my opinion is on that – it might surprise you.

It’s become very popular today for those who do think the tactics used by US interrogator’s at Guantanamo to make a blanket statement that “torture is not effective”. 

My problem with this statement is that it’s only situationally correct – meaning that it’s true sometimes and others not,  but it’s being used in reference to a situation where it’s not true.

Now, the people saying it should know better, so they’re either stupid or being deliberately deceptive and that makes me distrust everything they say. 

Torture, at its most basic, is designed to get the victim to do what you want him to.  Whatever you’re asking for, eventually, he will give it to you just to make the pain stop.

The catch here is that if he knows the answer you’re looking for, he’ll give it to you even if it isn’t true.

This is why torture is not an effective tactic for gaining confessions – eventually, anyone will confess to anything, just to make the pain stop.

However, if you’re asking for information, information that only the victim has and you’re asking a general question, not giving him the answer you want, then torture is very effective.  Here are examples:

“You’re a terrorist, aren’t you?”  Bad question – the subject knows you want him to say “yes” and will eventually do so, no matter what the truth is.

“Where’s the bomb?”  Good question – eventually, once the subject has been absolutely reduced to nothing, you’ll get the truth, because he wants the pain to stop and you’re not giving him an answer to parrot back.  Sure, he’ll lie at first or refuse to answer, but eventually he’ll give you the same answer over and over again and you’ll know it’s the truth.

Now this post isn’t about whether torture is right or wrong – it isn’t about whether the US techniques qualify as torture – and it isn’t about whether torture is a fundamental violation of the principles this country was founded on … it’s only about whether it’s effective or not.  Which it is.

These idiotic statements that it isn’t in these situations are demonstrably false … we know that we’ve gotten information, good information, truthful information, that stopped pending attacks on the US and other nations by using these techniques.  So saying they’re “not effective” is a lie.

And if you’ll like about that, why should I listen to your opinion about whether or not it’s wrong?

If you want to convince people to oppose the practice, then you need to tell the truth and convince them of the position, not lie about its effectiveness.

The $100,000,000 Cup of Coffee

What do $100,000,000, a Venti Latte and a pack of gum have in common?  Well, they all have about the same significance … depending on your perspective.

Recently President Obama announced that he had instructed his Cabinet to cut $100,000,000 from the Federal Budget … and True Believers fell in line to praise this display of fiscal responsibility.  But what, exactly, does a hundred million dollars really mean in the grand scheme of things?

The 2010 Federal Budget is a little over $3.5 trillion (tens of billions of dollars is “a little”, in this case), that’s $3,500,000,000,000 – which, in technical terms understood only by high-level money-managers, is sometimes referred to as “a shitload of money”.

Unfortunately, the 2010 federal income is projected to be only $2.4 trillion, leaving a deficit of a little over $1 trillion (“a little” is a hundred billion or so, in this case). 

Not to mention the federal debt, money we already owe, of over $11 trillion.  Keep in mind, as you listen to the talking heads, the difference between debt and deficit.  The debt is what we already owe, the deficit is how much more we’ll owe for that year.

Now a bit of perspective …

How much is $1,000,000,000,000?  You would have to spend $1,000 an hour, twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year for … wait for it … 126,000 years in order to spend a single trillion.

How about some perspective on the whole mess?  Let’s put it in terms everyone can understand by making the comparison to a family, say a family of four where both the mom and dad work modest jobs and earn a total of $120,000 a year.  That’s not rich, that’s a firefighter and teacher raising a family.

So this family earns $120,000 a year, but they spend $177,500 a year … or almost $60,000 more than they make.  Every year.  Plus, they already owe $560,000, or almost five times their annual salary.

What would you think of such a family?  Would you think they were fiscally responsible, or complete morons who have no concept of money management?

Let’s go further in our example and say that this family sits down and goes over their finances and decides that they may be spending too much money, so they ponder and come up with a plan that cuts their spending by … wait for it … $5.  For the year.

That’s it … they owe half a million dollars, spend tens of thousands more than they earn each year, but they’re happy because they saved five bucks.

That $100,000,000 in spending cuts is the equivalent of the family’s $5 (do the math).  It’s meaningless … Obama, essentially, ordered the Executive Branch to skip a stop at Starbucks for one day. 

Was $120,000 a year too much income for you to relate to?  Let’s give an example right at the poverty line, a family of four earning only $21,600 a year.  That’s not a lot of money to raise a family on, in fact, it’d be almost impossible … but what would you think of that family if they actually spent $32,000 a year and already owed over $100,000?

And then they got excited and bragged because they’d cut their spending by ninety cents for the year?  Can you even buy a pack of gum for ninety cents?

Those two examples are simply taking the 2010 budget, deficit and the current national debt and dividing them enough to get the income down to understandable levels – by 20,000,000 and 110,000,000, respectively.

You should be disgusted with those two hypothetical families and you should be disgusted with the crew in Washington, because, unlike those families, Congress and the President are spending your money.  They’ve taken the American family and its income, which comes from all of us in taxes, and they’ve been as stupid and profligate as these examples.

Then they have the audacity to proudly proclaim that they cut their ridiculous budget by $100,000,000?  They skipped Starbucks for a day … they didn’t buy a pack of gum.  You should be pissed and you should write your Congressman and Senators and the President to tell them that you’re pissed:

http://www.house.gov
http://www.senate.gov
http://www.whitehouse.gov

In addition to being pissed, you should be offended that anyone is suggesting those $100,000,000 in cuts are, in any way, significant … they’re trying to make you think skipping a day’s coffee is real change, and it isn’t.  Real change would be skipping Starbucks every day, not just once.

For real change, we need a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution and leaders in Washington who are willing to make the hard decisions necessary to stop the profligate waste and demand fiscal responsibility with their votes. 

Use the links above to send Washington a message about spending or sign The Bloviater’s free RallyCongress petition to send your Senators and Representative this message:

I am writing to you as a concerned citizen, taxpayer and voter.

The 2010 Federal Budget projects a deficit of over $1 trillion, an unsustainable level of spending and accumulation of debt.  While it took the United States until the 1980s, over two hundred years, to accumulate $1 trillion dollars in debt, we are now adding that amount every year.  Our children and grandchildren will not be able to pay the interest on this debt, much less the principle.

I urge you to take a stand and vote against deficit spending and against any proposed budget with a deficit.  In addition I urge you to support and encourage amending the Constitution to require that the Federal Budget be balanced and not allow the incursion of debt, except in time of national emergency.

If a family or company were in the same debt and spending pattern as the United States, it would have no choice but bankruptcy.  The time for fiscal responsibility is now, and we, the people, depend on our elected representatives to show leadership and make the hard, necessary decisions in these troubled times.  The necessary decision now is to stop spending money that the United States does not have and never will.

Sign the petition now and tell Washington that the American Family, like any other, must live within its means.

Two Years Without Television – Windows Media Center and Streaming Alternatives to Cable

March marked two years since I stopped paying for cable or satellite television.  No, I didn’t string a cable from the neighbor’s box, neither did I give up watching movies and television shows altogether – I simply stopped paying cable and satellite providers for content that was already being paid for via advertising.

At the time I made the decision to do this I’d noticed that most of the programs I watched were made available on DVD at some point, and that I’d almost always rent the DVDs to catch up on missed episodes; also, online alternatives were becoming more prevalent, so what was the point in paying exorbitant cable or satellite fees?

So I set about building a Windows Media Center PC and, since I’m lazy, ripping all my DVDs so I wouldn’t have to get off the couch to watch one.  Actually, Media Center wasn’t my first choice – I was originally going to simply build a file server and get a media extender device, like those from DLink.  In fact, my first purchase toward this goal was a DLink DSM-320RD. 

The 320 worked wonderfully for streaming music, but I soon found problems with video, especially DVD-quality video and the device’s interface.  The way these devices typically work is that video is streamed from a PC to the device, so the server software is important.  After trying the software that came with the 320, the compatible software from Nero and the free TVersity, I finally gave up on the dedicated-device solution and decided to hook a PC directly to the television.

Base Hardware

One nice thing about building a Media Center PC these days is that you don’t need to get the latest, fastest hardware in order to make it work.  Ultimately all it’s doing is playing video, so there’s not a lot of horsepower required.

Intel Dual-Core 1.6GHz
2 GB
On-board 256 MB Video with DVI connector
300 GB Main Drive
SoundBlaster Live! 24-bit External
Media Center Remote
Wireless Keyboard and Mouse

This has proven to be plenty of power, even with some other things I run on the system, which we’ll get to in a bit.

Television

I started with a 42” Mitusbishi real-projection television that we already had.  In fact, this is the reason I chose a motherboard that had DVI out for the video, instead of HDMI.  Though HDMI was newer and better, the existing television, that was already a few years old, didn’t support it, so I went with DVI. 

After connecting the television and the PC, I ran into the problem of overscan, or the fact that tube and projection televisions project outside the border of the television itself.  This is somewhat incompatible with computer video, so some of the desktop was cut off along the four sides.  Media Center adjusts for this phenomena, but the Windows desktop doesn’t, making the experience fine in Media Center, but rather awkward using the browser.

Last year I replaced the television with an LCD – since LCD’s don’t have an overscan problem, I now have a true 1080p desktop. 

Software

Everything you really need is included in Windows Vista Home Premium or Ultimate.  There are a lot of people out there who still use XP Media Center Edition, but I’ve been running Vista for two years now and haven’t had a single problem that was Vista’s fault.  That being said, I’ll still be switching to Windows 7 Media Center, because of the new features.

A nice thing about Media Center, though, is that it’s extensible and there are two plugins that are essential.

First, is the MyNetflix plugin, written by Anthony Park.  Obviously, since my goal was to replace cable and satellite with online and DVD, Netflix was a critical component to my solution, but beyond the mailed DVDs is the Watch Now feature of Netflix.  The MyNetflix plugin provides a Media Center interface to Watch Now, allowing you to browse, search and view Watch Now offerings from within Media Center.

You can also browse your mail queue and search for movies, adding them to your mail or Watch Now queues with a Media Center remote.

MyNetflix is free, but donations are accepted. 

The second essential plugin is My Movies from Binnerup Consulting.  My Movies is important to me because it helps organize my DVD collection and plays them from the hard drive. 

My Movies has tons of features, including a comprehensive database of DVD information – front and back cover art, cast and crew, categories, and descriptions.  All of this is searchable and browsable through the Media Center interface, so you can, for instance, find all the movies you have that star a particular actor.

My Movies manages a DVD collection whether you rip them to hard drive or not and supports several DVD carousels.  Even without having the DVD online, it’s nice to have a database of your collection and My Movies also allows you to export your collection data to a website provided by Binnerup – here’s mine.

Getting movies into My Movies is easy, the software can recognize a DVD when it’s inserted into the drive by its Disc ID.  Alternatively you can enter its barcode or scan the barcode with a webcam, search the main My Movies database by title, or enter the data manually.  That last option is useful for entering your own videos – for instance I have all of my family’s Christmas and birthday videos, as well as my daughter’s dance recitals, as part of the collection, so when someone visits I can just browse to these with the remote and show hours of family videos …

There’s also a My Movies client, written by a third-party, that can access the My Movies database from any Windows client, even without Media Center.  I put this on my son’s XP system so he can watch movies in his room.  With My Movies and this client, my original DVD discs remain safely stored away, no matter how many times he wants to watch Star Wars.

My Movies is also free, with donations accepted.

One change I’ve made to my Vista configuration is to enable multiple Remote Desktop Sessions – this is a hack that lets me access the Media Center PC remotely while it’s also running a session on the television.  This allows me to use the Media Center PC to perform other tasks even while I’m watching something.  What tasks?  Well, I’ve used it to capture and process video from old VHS tapes, download large files, even to rip a new DVD while watching a different movie – the CPU isn’t really struggling to play video, either streaming or from a file, so there’s plenty of processing power available for me to use.

Ripping DVDs

I use two programs from Slysoft for ripping DVDs: AnyDVD and CloneDVD.  This combination allows me to rip just the title and audio tracks I want, leaving behind the trailers, menus, special features and other languages.  Doing this reduces the amount of space necessary to store the main title, which is what I typically watch anyway – if I want to watch a special feature, I can always dig the original disc out of storage.

This space savings is important to me – a typical DVD, with all features and sound, runs upwards of 7GB, but stripped of non-essentials, they average between three and six.  One or two gigs may not seem like a lot to save, but added up over four hundred titles, it becomes significant.

Storage

I went ‘round-and-‘round on the storage issue at the beginning, debating between internal storage and external.  Remember my original intent was to build a file server and stream to a media device, so internal storage made sense, but when I changed my mind on that it also changed the storage solution.

With a streaming solution, I could put the file server in a back room or closet, which would solve two problems: dirt and noise.  See there are three dogs and nine cats in my house … yeah, I know … so dust and hair are issues.  A lot of internal drives would mean a case with a lot of fans, and a lot of fans add up to two things: noise and openings in the case.  Having that amount of fan and drive noise in my living room when I’m trying to enjoy a movie wasn’t optimal – neither was having a case with so many infiltration points for dust and hair. 

I could have built two systems, and may take that route one day, but I also wanted to keep startup costs low and build up drive space over time as I expanded my library, so I went with external drives.  The current storage solution is made up of:

Western Digital My Book World Edition 1 TB Network Attached Storage (quantity 2)
Western Digital My Book Essential Edition 1 TB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive
Iomega Prestige 1 TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive

The World Books attach directly to the network and the USB drives hang off of them, giving me 4TB of storage on the network.  All the drives were acquired over the last two years by carefully scouring sales, closeouts and store-closings, so I was able to pick them up for much less than the normal price, making it a pretty cheap 4TB.

On a separate note, I think it’s utterly amazing that we live in a world where I can have 4TB of data storage in my house.  To put it in perspective, when I bought my first hard drive, a 20MB drive for my Apple IIgs, it cost around $600 – today, for less than that, I have 4TB just for digital media.  I can’t imagine what will be available in another twenty years or what we’ll use it for … it’s amazing.

Network

I quickly found that wireless simply wasn’t fast or reliable enough to serve video in my environment, so I had to string some cable.  My house has steel studs and wireless has always been a challenge here.  I took the opportunity, while up in the attic, to drop cables into the kids’ rooms as well, so now the only computers not wired are the laptops.  Since they’re usually in the same place all the time, I may break down and string some cable for them, too, leaving the wireless solely for visitors.  From a security-standpoint, I like this idea, too.

Streaming

In addition to DVDs, the Internet a source for me to find video content, with Hulu and FanCast being my favorites.  Although there isn’t an official Media Center plugin available for either site, there is a third-party option in beta.  The SecondRun.tv plugin doesn’t only work with Hulu and Fancast, but other providers as well.

SecondRun has an advantage in that it’s network- and show-based, so content from multiple sources is aggregated based on the program or network, not the streaming provider.  A disadvantage is that, since it’s not provider-based, you have to browse for shows, rather than setting up your Hulu queue and playing that.

I like SecondRun for browsing shows … a lot … but I still want a Hulu plugin for Media Center so that my subscriptions will just show up in my queue.

In the meantime, I’ll simply use a browser.  With Vista set to a large font and a wireless keyboard/mouse, the browser has a decent ten-foot experience.  I can live with it until someone (or me) gets fed up and writes a plugin that accesses the queue.

Done

So that’s it … two years with no cable or satellite bill, I figure that’s saved me close to a couple thousand dollars, more than paying for the hardware.  The Netflix subscription has a fee, but I’d have been paying that anyway to get new movies to watch, so it’s a wash.

It’s a little different – with some shows there’s a delay before they’re available online, so I’m not always “up-to-date” when talking to others about the show, and I’m a year behind if I wait for the DVDs; but even that has advantages, because I can sit down with the full set of DVDs and watch an entire season without having to wait a week between episodes.  I like that.

I really think streaming is the future and sites like Hulu and FanCast have it right – on-demand content supported by advertising.  I’m okay with the ads because they pay for the show and they’re shorter and fewer than in broadcast television.  In fact, I’m looking forward to the day when one of those sites ties the viewer’s profile to the ad-server, so the ads can be targeted better.  Like Google Adwords, being able to target specific markets, instead of just everyone who watches a show, will make the ads more valuable – which translates into fewer ads being necessary and better content … and maybe seeing ads that the viewer’s actually interested in.

As more content moves online, and more viewers realize they have options other than the traditional cable and satellite companies, it’ll be interesting to see how those companies react to the changing market.

Without Regard for Law

In a nation supposedly ruled by law, not men, those are four words with a chilling effect, but that’s exactly the language introduced into our 111th Congress by Senator John Rockafeller (D –WV), cosponsored by Senators Snow (R – ME), Bayh (D – IN) and Nelson (D – FL), via Senate Bill 778 (S.778).

This bill deals with “cybersecurity” and the creation of multiple government programs to address the security and stability of critical networks.  It is described as: “A bill to establish, within the Executive Office of the President, the Office of National Cybersecurity Advisor.”

This seems a worthy goal, after all the vulnerability of networks critical to the national security of the United States is pretty much a given, but way down on page forty of the bill is this language, stating that the Secretary of Commerce:

Oppose This Bill

14(B)(1) shall have access to all relevant data concerning such networks without regard to any provision of law, regulation, rule, or policy restricting such access; [emphasis added]

Obviously they’re only talking about government networks, right?  Think again:

14(a) DESIGNATION.—The Department of Commerce
shall serve as the clearinghouse of cybersecurity threat
and vulnerability information to Federal government and
private sector owned critical infrastructure information
systems and networks. [emphasis added]

This bill gives the Executive Branch the power to designate any network as “critical infrastructure” and then access all data about it “without regard to any provision of law”.  What is “relevant data”?  Who decides what’s relevant?  The Executive Branch, of course.

So we will have a branch of the Federal Government empowered to decide what data they want, what network they want it from and may demand access to that information “without regard [for] law”.

Oppose This Bill

Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative, if you care about your rights, the Constitution and civil liberties, you should care about this legislation.  The language above goes too far, giving unprecedented powers for the Federal Government to spy, at will, on virtually all network activity in the United States.  Not just spy, but to demand access and records and data from the private owners of those networks.

We can do something about this.  We can create a public upswell of opposition to this language that will have it removed from the bill – and don’t get me wrong, there are some decent things in this bill, overall, but this language and this new government power must be opposed.

I urge you to contact your Senators through Senate.gov or through The Bloviater’s petition and ask them to oppose the inclusion of these powers in S.778 – following is a sample email:

I am writing to you to express my opposition to provisions in S.778 ("A bill to establish, within the Executive Office of the President, the Office of National Cybersecurity Advisor.")

Section 14(B)(1) of this bill would empower the Secretary of Commerce to access information and data regarding any network or system deemed "critical" to national security interests:

"without regard to any provision of law, regulation, rule, or policy restricting
such access"

The United States is a nation founded on the Rule of Law, protected by inviolable rights guaranteed by the Constitution.  S.778 is violation of those rights, allowing the Executive Branch to arbitrarily access systems, data and historical records without regard for existing laws and in direct opposition to the founding principles of this country.

I urge you to oppose this bill as written and to oppose any future version which includes this or similar language granting powers to the Executive Branch "without regard [for] law".

Using The Bloviater’s petition on this issue you can email the above letter to both your Senators just by entering your zipcode and address.

Full Text of S.778

Library of Congress status of S.778

GovTrack tracking of S.778

Book Recommendation: One Second After

One of my favorite types of fiction is the displaced-person genre, stories where a person or group are dramatically displaced from their normal environment, especially where technology is involved.  Whether it’s about someone with technical knowledge displaced to where that knowledge doesn’t exist yet (A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Island in the Sea of Time and 1632) or apocalyptic tales of people reliant on technology when that technology or the society fails (Dies the Fire and The Stand), there’s something about these stories that appeals to me.

One Second After, by William R. Forstchen, is different than other books I’ve read in the genre because most of those others rely on a certain amount of fantasy or, at least, willing suspension of disbelief in order to achieve the displacement.  One Second After doesn’t need to, its premise is all too real, believable and possible.

The premise of One Second After is: What would happen to a society if an EMP eliminated most technology?

A generally accepted fact is that an EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) caused by a nuclear explosion at high-altitude would damage or destroy most unshielded electronics – so imagine the impact on your life if most electronics stopped working.

Not just our convenience and entertainment, but our very survival relies on electronics.  The average city needs power to pump water to its citizens and trucks (modern trucks and cars need their electronics to run) to bring in more food.  Modern medicine is based around technologically-sophisticated diagnostic equipment and drugs have to be shipped on a regular basis.  Our entire financial system is dependent on electronics – it doesn’t matter how much money you have in the bank if the bank records are inaccessible and no one can take a debit card for payment.

One Second After does an excellent job of examining the consequences of all these things and more.  It also explores the societal changes and how people and groups would behave in such a situation – not always pleasantly or likable, but very realistically.

There is one technical flaw in One Second After that drives me nuts … the author (or some dumb-ass editor) doesn’t understand the concept of contractions like “could have” and “could’ve”.  He thinks people are saying “could of” … or “should of”, “would of”, etc. … which mean nothing in the English language, damn it!  It’s “could’ve”, “should’ve”, “would’ve”!

But I’m picky and demanding and that sort of thing bugs me.

The story itself is well-written and believable … disturbing because of its very possibility.

Stupid People, Doing Stupid Things

Bored rednecks, a 9MM automatic and a bulletproof vest … there’s no way this ends well …

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