Bad Apple Arguments

This morning on the radio I heard some bloviating right-winger claim that Apple's arguments were in bad faith.

His argument was that Apple had a duty to correct its mistake in shipping "a toxic product." He compared selling encrypted phones to selling weapons-- something the US has done and US law continues to do, all the while publishing open papers that describe exactly how to implement all the encryption anyone might want. After all, encryption is only math. Impossible to break encryption exists as a consequence of the universe existing, and we've now reached the point where it's fairly common knowledge (at least among cryptogeeks) how to write code for it.

Or, to put it simply, if encryption is outlawed, only bad guys will use encryption. Unless, of course, we lock down every computing device so hard that instead of being pocket computers we use, they're pocket computers that use us. Then they only have what our political and corporate masters want on them, and nothing else. We will have no freedom at all.

Besides, we put much more on those phones than the writers of the Constitution, or any other legal entity in the world two centuries ago, imagined we might. Our responsibilities far exceed the capacity of our evolutionary brains; we must put a lot of our lives into something else, and we want that something else to be secure. If Apple is forced to open up the back door, it will be open and stay open. Software is a cheaply fungible resource; once written, it can be deployed on any compliant platform, and all iPhones would qualify as compliant platforms to the software Apple rights "just this one time."

So take this to a a logical conclusion. I used to say we were at the early stages of human/machine interfaces. But that's a bit like saying 1985 was "the early age of the Internet." It's true, but only in that TCP/IP was being used somewhere that year. 1993 was the real "early age"; we had HTTP and FTP and Usenet, and we were just starting to feel our way into cyberspace properly. It was all text. And 2016 is the real "early age" of human/machine interfaces:

• Brain Decoder Can Eavesdrop On Your Inner Voice



• Scientist Can Tell What You're Dreaming About



• Brain Scanning Technique Visualizes What You're Imagining



• Reading Hidden Intentions in the Human Brain



• Researchers Reconstruct Facial Images From A Viewer's Imagination



• The Defense Department Wants a 'Modem' For Your Brain
  
  

So, just imagine that the FBI really, really wants one of these groups to make something that will "take images from the terrorists' mind" without their consent. A total violation of the Fifth Amendment, right?

Except the writers of the Constitution never imagined the idea of mind-reading technology. But we're there, folks. And courts will be dealing with this stuff in the next ten years ago.

Enjoy the privacy of your own mind, while it lasts.

Classical Mystery Tour!

Omaha, Raen (OUAT "Kouryou-chan") and I went out to Beneroya Hall last Friday to hear a Beatles cover band called the Classical Mystery Tour; they do their schtick with the entire orchestra behind them providing the strings and orchestrations that we heard on all of the later Beatles albums, but were never able to perform live. Well, CMT gets to do it live.

The show was fun. Raen was grumpy; she hadn't wanted to get dragged to the greybeard thing, but as it turned out she knew most of the music and really enjoyed the show. There were three movements where they dressed first as in the early shows, then in the loud, psychedelic uniforms of the Sergeant Pepper era, and finally in the trippy, simpler outfits of the late 1960s, except for John who always wore the pure white suit. They even played a bit from John and Paul's post-Beatles' career, covering "Imagine" and "Live and Let Die."

Great evening. If you get the chance, highly recommended.

How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying

Omaha, Raen and I went to see the 5th Avenue Theater's showing of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. I have to say that if you wanted to find a play that punched my "feel bad about myself" buttons, you couldn't have done a better job than this play. The main character is glib, personable, and readily capable of identifying opportunities as they're flying by.

Which, basically, doesn't describe me at all. My biggest problem in life is simply identifying when someone presents me with an opportunity, understanding that it is an opportunity, and pursuing it successfully. The main character is everything I'm not, and not in a good way.

The problem is that he may once have seemed like a comic hero, bumbling his way up the ladder by assuming that a satirical book is meant to be followed as gospel. But the book, The Dastard's Guide to Succeeding In Business Without Really Trying, has been off the shelves and long forgotten by our age, just as our children will be utterly bewildered if they come across anything by Jeff Foxworthy in a used bookstore. (Assuming, of course, that there are used bookstores one generation out.) We don't get that joke. We take the book the character holds in his hand at something approximating face value. To our eyes, sensitized by our awareness of just how many people in the C Suite are driven by motives and impulses that seem predatory and psychopathic, he just seems like a casual psychopath. Especially when his attitude toward the girl chasing him is mostly utilitarian: how can he exploit her to move up yet another step?

All in all, dated beyond repair. I really didn't want that smarmy little jerk to succeed.