I really enjoyed the February 2005 issue of GUNNEWS, a publication of “Guns Save Life” in Downstate Illinois, which I picked up on my recent road trip. I understand from this newspaper that the group is organizing boycotts of businesses which post signs like”[this business] prohibits firearms of any kind upon company property and/or vehicles”. The quasi-libertarian mindset that the “right to bear arms” overrides other people’s property rights just amazes me. I had no idea southern Illinois was so dangerous that it’s not safe to enter the bottling facility of Central States Coca-Cola without packing heat.

Possibly the most disspiriting thing I see everyday is a hand-written sign in the window of a local restaurant which states, “Restrooms are for customers only.” It just makes me sad on so many levels. Clearly, my quasi-libertarian mindset holds that the “right to pee” overrides other peoples property rights.

Building on previous work:

A regular pentagram

has golden triangles for points.

There are five of them,

and if you peel them back,

and wrap them around a regular hexagon,

and add one more point,

you end up with a Chicago star.

I feel badly for Prof. DeLong, who is battling comment spam (and wrestling with Movable Type) over at his semi-daily journal. He’s currently swearing by MT-Blacklist, but I read another recent blog posting which complains that MT-Blacklist isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and can even trade your spam problem for a server load problem.

The article goes on to suggest darkly that Google hasn’t acted against comment spam because of their financial stake in Blogger, but I think this is unlikely — I think it’s just a very hard problem. Staying ahead of a motivated attacker is nearly impossible, as countless computer security experts will attest — close one hole and a motivated attacker will just find another. I looked for a reference to this idea on Bruce Schneier’s site, but I couldn’t find one.

It’s the evil-Universe doppleganger of Open Source software development: not only do we have “given enough eyes, all bugs are shallow,” but also “given enough spammers, all opportunities will be exploited.” It’s the same everywhere — a truly determined attacker, no matter how many holes you plug, will find a new hole.

It’s not enough to blacklist commenters, to bayesian sort your email, to digitally-rights-manage your music, to X-ray every bag at the airport. Motivated parties will find a new way, a new method, a new weakness to exploit. There just isn’t a long-term technical solution, as far as I can see.

I shrugged it off, back in 1994, but maybe spam is going to turn out to be a big problem.

The Poor Man hits the nail on the head:

Admittedly, you have to be a howling retard with all the intellectual curiousity God gave a Sea Monkey to think this way, but let me introduce you to your fellow human beings.

Brad DeLong has such an excellent post on the topic of war, excellence, and heroism:

Let me put it this way: who would you rather have standing beside you when spear meets shield–Achilles, Hector, or Odysseus? With Hector, the man of honor, you will wage war when you should–but you may well lose. With Achilles, the man of skill, you will win–but you will wage war all the time, whether or not you should.

With Odysseus, the man of strategy, you will wage war only when you can win–but will you always be happy with your victories?

I think I would take my place beside Odysseus. But who should I take my place beside? It is an interesting question…

The question for my readers is this:

Who would you rather have standing beside you when the horde of chitinous bugs comes swarming up out of a cave? Lt. Rasczak, Dizzy Flores, or Carl Jenkins?

(Update: Carl Jenkins. You know — Doogie Howser.)