Monthly Archives: January 2004

Update: Howard Dean on ID Cards: Not So Bad, but Not So Good

Larry Lessig, a member of the Dean Net Advisory Net, responds to the news article that inspired my item Howard Dean on ID Cards: Bad. Bad. Bad. with what declan doesn’t get (how to read). In it Larry points to the full text of Dean's talk (starts at page 10).

Larry, like the first commentator on the earlier item, also points to the Register's timely reminder that the source of this report has a very bad track record for carelessly sliming Democrats on tech issues. Fair enough.

Indeed, the full text of Dean's speech isn't as bad as the news account made it sound. It does contain many nods towards privacy rights. And it actually makes a point I agree with — the current privacy baseline is low, as we've ceded a lot of privacy already. Having said that, though, it does seem to me that this speech is fairly described as a strong endorsement of ubiquitious smart card readers (not mandatory, just standards-driven) for PCs in order to create a world in which communications are better authenticated, and access to information can be more properly rationed (e.g. age restrictions). Would that be a better world? I have my doubts. Is it a likely world? Alas, yes. Could it be implemented in ways that are more or less evil? Absolutely, and I'll have lots to say about that in coming months.

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War Profiteering (Halliburton Dept.): Following An Ancient if Not Honorable Tradition

You might think that amidst all this 'we support our troops' rhetoric emanating from secure locations in Washington D.C. that someone in the white house or the Pentagon would be making sure that our troops get fed decent food.

Nope. Think again. According to Heather Yarbrough, what we've got is a system in which someone whose job is monitoring the quality and safety of food served to soldiers on U.S. military bases in Iraq gets fired for doing her job.

Talk about history repeating itself. President Abraham Lincoln secured passage of the False Claims Act in 1863 in order to combat similar frauds against the Union Army, including the sale of rancid food for the troops.

Did Heather Yarbrough run afoul of a rush for profits, a system which depends on paying third-world workers pittances and of course no benefits, and gets third-world sanitation practices in return? Or did she just rile an old boy network? Either way, if her charges regarding the way soldiers' food is stored and prepared are correct, it's a scandal.

Freezers and refrigerators weren't working. Food was spoiling. The kitchen workers were exhausted, and some of them weren't following basic sanitation practices. “It became apparent to me that much of the food served at the banquet the night before was … possibly dangerous,” she wrote.

At 2 a.m. Yarbrough saw a lone kitchen worker spreading mayonnaise onto several thousand slices of bread for the next day's sandwiches. He was halfway through the job, and the mayonnaise had sat in open bowls for hours.

The kitchen's air conditioner had moderated the desert heat somewhat, but it had also spewed dust over the worker, the mayonnaise and the bread. Yarbrough conferred with a kitchen supervisor, and they agreed that the mayonnaise and partially made sandwiches should be thrown away.

Yarbrough logged the incident in the journal that she kept for her Halliburton KBR supervisor, and the next day the supervisor applauded her decision to discard the suspect food.

On her second night on duty, Yarbrough met with kitchen staff — all third-country nationals working for ESS — and wrote down a list of supplies needed for sanitary purposes: thermometers to check the heat in steam trays, test strips to measure chlorine in sanitizing water, rubber gloves and other items.

She noted that the day shift had left the dining facility a mess: dirty tables, overflowing trash, no sodas stocked. And she took some feedback from a sergeant who represented Halliburton's client, the Army. “The cream[ed] beef was greasy. Dessert table is messy with crumbs. Stock juices earlier in the morning because they want the products to be cold,” she wrote in her journal.

Over the next few days, Yarbrough trained kitchen workers in sanitation methods and taught seminars on botulism, E. coli and other dangerous bacteria. The kitchen crews seemed to be paying more attention to safety. “Overall, this is much better,” she wrote Aug. 10 in her journal.

The next day, Yarbrough recorded another confrontation with Ray, but she went on with her job. “I gave a short brief on salmonella, likely sources, mode of contamination, toxicity and symptoms of infection,” she wrote. “Cooks seem pleased with this nightly entertainment.”

She planned to give the same talk to day cooks, but she was suspended the next day, relieved of duty and told to pack up and be ready to take the next convoy back to Kuwait.

Yarbrough's supervisor told her she was being fired for wearing a dirty shirt, leaving work early once and other infractions. But Yarbrough felt certain these were bogus charges. The supervisor seemed “eaten up with guilt,” she recalled in an interview. “He wouldn't look me in the eye.”

While waiting for the convoy, Yarbrough appealed to a Halliburton district manager. She told him Ray was compromising food safety, and she believed he'd used his influence to get her fired.

“He told me that I was a danger to myself if I remained at Tikrit,” said Yarbrough. “He wouldn't tell me why, but I thought it was that somebody would have been sent to do me harm.”

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Linux-Based Windows XP Look-Alike; Tweaking XP

User Friendly is one of the three online comic strips I read every day. Set at an imaginary ISP it would be funny to anyone who uses a computer, but it's also full of tech in-jokes, especially Linux and DNS ones. But until I read today's strip I never thought of it as a source of tech information. This was, however, the first I'd heard of XPDE, an open source attempt to create an Windows XP-like desktop environment for (newbie?) linux-users. Just version 0.4 so far (those Linux guys insist on meaningful version numbers…if it were a windows-based product want to bet it would be called 1.1 if not 3.0?), but the screenshots look pretty good.

Today's User Friendly also mentions the slow pop-up of the Start menu under XP. As it happens, I just fixed this problem (I think) on Caroline's computer two days ago. The instructions on how to do so are probably hidden somewhere in the online Microsoft help system, but I don't know where. It involves lowering the value of one registry key, MenuShowDelay. You can find instructions towards the bottom of this useful Windows XP tweaks page. I haven't tried all the listed tweaks yet, but probably will.

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Howard Dean on ID Cards: Bad. Bad. Bad.

Howard Dean's (19 month old) 'smart ID' plan is not very smart at all.

Maybe someone could ask one of these Dean Net Advisory Net guys about it if one should happen to see them.

Actually, when I first heard about it I was very enthusiastic about the idea of the “Net Advisory Net,” a sort of open source advisory group. But has it actually done anything? Or is it window dressing?

Update: Having now been directed to the text of Dean's speech, I think this was a little harsh. I should have said Howard Dean on ID Cards: Not So Bad, but Not So Good.

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UK To Adopt Greater (Partial) Separation of Powers

If this news report is correct, the UK will adopt a greater separation of powers for the judiciary. Members of the House of Lords Judicial Committee, who are currently not technically judges but actually members of the upper chamber of the legislature, will cease to sit in the House of Lords and become an independent court. [Will the body be renamed 'the Supreme Court'? The article does not say.]

There will, however, be no increase in the (total lack of) (formal) separation between the legislature and the executive.

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The Case of the Enamored Juror (cont)

An update on the previously blogged matter of the plight of Richard Latham, QC, the advocate whose victory was threatened because a lovelorn juror sent him champagne: “A woman juror who sent a flirtatious note and a bottle of champagne to the prosecuting counsel after a serious fraud trial ended cannot be questioned about the incident, the Court of Appeal ruled yesterday.”

That doesn't mean, however, that poor Mr. Latham is out of the woods. The question of whether there “might be grounds for arguing that there was 'an appearance of bias'” will “be considered further by the Court of Appeal in the spring,” albeit it seems without the benefit of the juror's testimony.

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