Pat Buchanan, the Austrian School, and the Federal Reserve
I tend to agree with Pat Buchanan on economic issues (but usually not on social issues), and on this past week’s episode of The McLaughlin Group, Mr. Buchanan hit the nail right on the head regarding a discussion of the economy and the current banking situation:
“The problem is the Federal Reserve and the huge outpourings of money and the sinking American dollar worldwide.”
“You had bubbles because the Fed pumps money in and it goes somewhere. It went into housing, it used to go into dot coms. They (the Fed) printed more money and put out more money than the economy could accommodate and that’s why there’s a bubble.”
After reading The Revolution: A Manifesto by Ron Paul, my interest was sparked to learn more about his economic philosophy, specifically the Austrian School of Economics. Mostly notably through reading Murray Rothbard’s What Has Government Done to Our Money? and a blog titled FSK’s Guide to Reality my eyes have been opened to how the Federal Reserve works and to the flaws in our current monetary system, specifically the situation known as the debt virus or the compound interest paradox. Pat Buchanan’s comments are right in line with this school of thought that has recently captured my attention.
Book review: Eye of the Needle by Ken Follett
In 1944 during World War II, the Allies mounted a deception to convince the Germans that what would be the D-Day invasion in France would occur at Calais, when in reality the Allies planned on landing in Normandy. Ken Follett speculates in the fictional tale Eye of the Needle of what may have happened had a German spy discovered this deception and attempted to warn the Germans ahead of time.
Written in 1978, Eye of the Needle consists of only a few main characters: Henry Faber, the German spy, David and Lucy Rose, a young couple who cross paths with Faber, and British military intelligence agents who are trying to track down Faber. The story rolls along quite quickly, and I’m not sure if it is because I didn’t want to put it down or if it lacked the depth that I now come to expect from the best works of fiction (probably both).
Most novels that I read I can’t envision being made into a good movie. But Eye of the Needle is written somewhat like a screenplay. Reading the book inspired me to watch the movie adaptation made in 1981 with Donald Sutherland, and while it is not a bad film, the books brings insight and emotion that can’t be conveyed through the medium of film.
Rating: 7.5 out of 10.
Book review: Black Cross by Greg Iles
Black Cross by Greg Iles is the fictional tale of two men recruited by the British military to take down a German poison gas facility/concentration camp during World War II. One man is an American scientist who is an expert on poison gas, the second man is a Jewish soldier who was born in the area where the concentration camp is located. Much of the story takes place in and around the concentration camp, where other characters figure prominently in the story. Even though this is a work of fiction, the story presents the realities of the horrors and fears of characters living as prisoners in this concentration camp.
The author does a good job of combining action within what is mostly a character driven story. To quote an overused phrase, the ending is “pure adrenaline.” Characters are well-defined and three dimensional, including the Nazis ruling the concentration camp who are more than simply token bad guys.
There are also a number of smaller details of the storytelling which contribute to the enjoyment of the book. These include the framing of the story as a flashback being told to the grandson of one of the main characters. There is also a fictional meeting between Dwight Eisenhower and Winston Churchill which sets up the story quite nicely. As for the ending of the story, not everything is tied up in a nice little bow, with a few questions left unanswered and other questions given only a very brief answer. But the ending works well for this story. And overall, Black Cross works well as an enjoyable World War II thriller.
Rating: 8 out of 10.
Home Run Derby
I enjoy watching the annual Major League Baseball Home Run Derby the night before the All-Star Game, but there are two things that usually come up regarding the players who compete in it that I am tired of hearing about. First is that competing in the derby ruins a player’s swing. Professional golfers need to be able to hit a driver and a 9 iron and that’s much more of a dramatic difference in a golfer’s swing than one night of a baseball player aiming for the fences. The second thing I am tired of hearing about is that the winner of the derby is jinxed and will not have good power numbers for the remainder of the season. Players get hot, players get cold. It has absolutely nothing to do with winning the home run derby.
Antivirus software whitelisting
While a potential shift by the makers of antivirus software towards whitelisting isn’t all that new, the topic came to my attention in a recent article in PC World magazine titled Coming: A Change in Tactics in Malware Battle.
Current antivirus software prevents viruses and malware from running on a computer by having a “blacklist” of known viruses and malware. This list is maintained by your antivirus software company and is updated on your computer at regular intervals. Changing the approach by antivirus software of fighting viruses to whitelisting would involve antivirus software having a list of only those programs which are known to not contain viruses or malware. The software would only allow programs to run on your computer that are known to be free of viruses and malware.
As a software developer, I have several problems with antivirus software’s potential change to a whitelist approach. First is the presumption of innocence. Even though there are many examples in modern life where “innocent until proven guilty” does not seem to apply (boarding an airplane, copying a DVD), a shift to whitelisting software should not be one of those instances. To me, if antivirus software makers change their approach to whitelisting it says that they believe all software developers are out to create malware unless a developer can prove otherwise.
Another problem I see with whitelisting of software is how to prevent new versions of whitelisted software from containing malware. If someone creates a freeware application that legitimately gets whitelisted by the security companies, then releases version 2.0 of that application by automatically downloading an update to the application, how can antivirus software be sure that version 2.0 contains no malware? Is it going to prevent any and all software updates, patches, and upgrades? If so, this would represent a fundamental shift in how software is created and updated. If not, then developers seem to have a way of attaching viruses to software that has already been whitelisted.
If you have read my previous post about how I no longer use antivirus software on my personal computer, you may ask why whitelisting matters to me if I don’t even use antivirus software. The answer is because I have no control over the use of antivirus software in a corporate environment. Every corporate IT department I have seen installs antivirus software on their computers. As a software developer, I have developed numerous applications that are used only by a handful of people. These applications are developed and used solely in a corporate environment. But whitelisting of software that is used by a small number of people in a corporate environment seems impractical. Would software projects need to schedule extra time in project plans to account for antivirus companies to approve their applications? And if antivirus software which uses whitelisting allows users to still run unknown applications after a warning, won’t that create a situation where users get accustomed to allowing all non-whitelisted software to run, thereby defeating the purpose of a whitelist in the first place? The bottom line is that I can’t see whitelisting working for consumers, developers, or the antivirus companies themselves.
Orioles promotion takes aim at Sunday skid
The above headline comes from an article in Monday’s Baltimore Sun which highlights the Baltimore Orioles current promotion for today’s game against the Texas Rangers. “If the Orioles defeat the Rangers Sunday, the ‘We Win, You Win’ promotion will reward fans with a complimentary ticket in the same seating category to any future non-prime game.” The reason for this promotion is because the O’s have a record of 1 win and 12 losses this season on Sundays. But I wonder if the promotion would draw more fans if instead of rewarding the fans for a win if it served as sort of a money back guarantee, meaning if the O’s lose then each fan in attendance would get to go to another game as sort of a refund for having to suffer yet another loss.
