Ian Grigg correctly argues that any internet protocol that has an insecure mode can never be made secure, thus if security is introduced as after thought, will never be secure. Https is exactly such a bolted on afterthought, and to use it one must pay money, and suffer substantial inconvenience. Further, it is a woefully inefficient protocol, so people always try to minimize their use of it to only what is truly necessary, which they are unlikely to ever do …
Author: Jim
Hatred of softly influential groups
Wherever a group has disproportionate economic or cultural success that does not rest upon political power, does not involve the ability to kill people and break things, does not depend upon hard power, for example Jews, Americans, Indonesian Chinese, Indian Fijians, Indians in Africa, the Ibo in Africa, the same hatred occurs, the same accusations, the same fantasies, the same excessive and disproportionate attention, the same concoction of utterly trivial grievances into supposedly enormous crimes – even if the disproportionately …
Bring back the Northern Alliance
The US is winning in Iraq, in large part by abandoning or indefinitely postponing the goal of a unitary state, and cultivating the militias, such as “the Sons of Iraq†(who are more like the sons of Arab Shia Iraq) Afghanistan, however, is going down the tubes. According to Gideon Rachman Our current strategy isn’t working There are no real alternative strategies We cannot afford to lose. There is of course an obvious alternative strategy: The Northern Alliance took care …
A better ID card
Digital Identity Forum has a better solution for ID. Instead of an ID card that tells any purported authority everything about you, an ID smart card that verifies what authority the authority actually possesses, and reveals the minimum information that that authority is authorized to know, for example that you are over 18, to be read by cell phone with nfc cardreader.
Roots of the energy crisis
The energy crisis happened because of optimistic projections – that gas to liquid and coal to liquid would not be needed until the technology had been improved and the cost brought down, that the dramatic growth in China and India could be accommodated by rapidly expanding conventional oil production. The political elite, unable to introduce a carbon tax because it would directly and visibly hurt people, proceeded to block coal and oil developments, thus invisibly and directly hurting people. The …
Rational Oil Prices
It seems that Arnold Kling has been in Afghan cave during the past six months. He does not seem to think that there has been any bad news on oil supply over the last six months. The recent run-up in oil prices represents a similar puzzle. I think that it’s difficult to tell a story for the rise in crude prices for the last six months that is based on the rational digestion of news. Either six months ago folks …
There can be no peace with dar al Islam
There can be no peace with dar al-Islam. In the long run, dar al-Harb must conquer or be conquered – and if dar al-Islam is to be the conquered, the conquered have to be colonized and displaced, as in the early days of Algeria and Israel. The problem, the reason there can never be peace, is lucidly explained by Dhimmi Watch
Will DME save us from the oil crisis?
To satisfy world demand, as former third worlders become first worlders, and want cars and air conditioning, the world needs to increase production of oil and oil substitutes about three million barrels per day each year. Equivalently, the world needs to increase production one hundred and fifty million tonnes per year per year.
Europe can’t stop anything
The military weakness and incapacity of Europe in Serbia startled the Serbs, even more than America’s capacity stunned them.
Winning in Iraq
It is now apparent that the US is winning in Iraq. It is so apparent that even the Washington Post reports it – to the considerable surprise of both myself and others What then is winning? What does victory mean?