As I have written before, I don't like Bush and I don't think he makes a good president.  But I feel this way, not because I think he is stupid or a bad person, but because I think he is too obsessed with certain issues, one of them being Iraq.  He often say stupid things by mistake but sounding stupid doesn't mean he is stupid.  How can he be stupid yet smart enough to fool hundreds of millions of Americans about WMD in Iraq?

Stupefying Bush is not that different from dehumanizing our enemies.  He talks stupid so he must be an idiot.  Since he is an idiot, everything he say or does is stupid.  So on and so forth.  IMHO, there is nothing wrong with being stupid (remember Forest Gump?) as long as the stupid person's mistakes does not jeopardize rest of us.

Bush is such a position so whether he is stupid or not matters.  I don't think Bush is stupid.  I also don't think he is bad or corrupted.  But he is obsessed, unbalanced, and careless.  Not exactly what I am looking for in my president.

He is a man who seems to be drowning in his ideals and obsessions, a man whose unbalanced views, priorities and careless waving of the national security flag have trickled down the hierarchy of the US government and armed forces, creating pockets of atmosphere that disregards civil and human rights.

If the President of United States openly expresses anger toward specific races or nationalities, how long do you think it will take for the 'attitutde' to reach the INS employees at US border or soldiers in Iraq?  IMHO, it takes just hours to mere days.  With such winds of bias blowing constantly over 4 years, how many can escape from being influenced by the President desires and biases?  Not very many, I think.

Usually Tim Bray makes a lot of sense, but his recent post Torture didn't make much sense to me.  This is what he wrote about those soldiers at Abu Ghraib who are being charged:

This recent New York Times piece got me mad enough to provoke this essay. It’s a lengthy cri de coeur about those poor soldiers on the scene at Abu Ghraib, understaffed, undertrained, overworked. Excuse me? They’re torturers! They’re sick out-of-control sadistic animals. Can we have a sense of proportion here?

Apparently, he believes in the saying you are what you do.  In contrast, I am more partial toward you are a battleground of good and evil and everyone is capable of committing inhumane acts under the right conditions.

We know that inhumane acts can be brought about in many ways, most notorious being brainwashing.  To brainwash a person, one must have control over the victim's surrounding through isolation or immersion.  Isn't a prison an ideal environment for brainwashing whether the victim is a prisoner or a guard?  Can one brainwash oneself?  Definitely.  If your peers are brainwashed, what's you chance of being infected?

Even if you have the iron will, a rare property in my opinion, you won't last long under interrogation because interrogation is an art of not only pain but an art of brainwashing.  To break you, they will first break your perception of the world, twisting it as if opening a jar, aligning it into a position that will give, turning allies into enemies and friends into betrayers.  Guess who those soldiers were interacting with on daily basis?  That's right, professional brainwashers.

I am not saying they are all angels corrupted by evil interrogators.  What I am saying is that they are not too different from you and I.  The problem is not just them, but all of us.

You know what you did, but you know not what you do.

Writer of Sasser worm was caught today in Rotenburg (not Rottenbug, mind you) and Microsoft awarded $250K to the informer.  Brilliant.  *eyeroll*  Now we'll have seasoned hackers recruiting and training talented minors to write and spread worms just so they can sell them out for reward money.

Hey, kid.  Keep your mouth shut and you'll be world famous, $50K richer, and even receive job offers.  Wouldn't your girlfriend be impressed?

Some years ago, a collegue of mine asked me how I would stop music pirating.  I haven't thought about the problem before but it took me only a minute to decide P2P spoofing was the best intermediate answer.  It was obvious that traditional DRM wouldn't work and spoofing attacked the problem at reasonable cost, could be deployed fast, and adapt to changes in real time.  My collegue nodded and that was that.

According to Wired, someone had the exact same idea and filed a patent in 2000.  Now I am scratching my head.  Is this a silly patent or not?  Should I be filing patents on similar ideas?  Heck, I can pump out enough ideas like that everyday to keep an army of patent lawyers busy if someone would just keep throwing problems at me and file my answers as patents.  I even have ideas on how to efficiently generate new patents.  Maybe I'll even best IBM at the game.

If you are an idle patent lawyer, come to me and I'll keep you busy.  How does 50-50 sound?  Filing cost?  No problem.  Let private investors place 'bets' on the patent applications they like out of daily streams of patent applications.  Together we'll worsen the patent problem ten-fold within a year and force the Congress to come up with a better solution.  Now that's a silver-spoon full of patriotism for ya.  🙂

I know I'll get a lot of flack for this, but I am of the mind that Bush should resign as a sincere gesture of apology to the world and to Americans.  Ultimately, he is responsible for the humiliation, rape and murder that occurred in Iraq by American soldiers and no mere words will make up for the damage the acts have caused.

Whether Bush really deserves to be forced to resign or not is irrelevant.  Whether his resignation serves this country better than not doing so is.  I have always wondered what 'Bucks Stop Here' meant if words of apologies is the best the President can offer.  I think now is time to show exactly what that means.

Admittedly, I don't like Bush and I don't think he is fit to be the President of United States, but that's beside the point…I think.  Resignation will take much courage and sacrifices, but I don't think I am asking for anything less than what this country is asking from its soldiers.  This will send a shocking message to the world that will put right much of the damages to our reputation and our soul.

If you are a Bush supporter and this post offends you, my apologies.  I am just saying what I think is best for this country.

Check out Dave's rant on conference and his prototype design of a new kind of conferences: BloggerCon II.  Damn.  Now I regret I didn't make it to BloggerCon II.  First BloggerCon wasn't that attractive to me and the second one left me scratching my head.  Now I know I should have been knocking my head instead to let the idea of a totally open conference in.

Kudos, Dave (someday I'll find out what the hell that means precisely).

Dang.  Gmail account name must be at least 6 characters which means I can't have cool e-mail addresses like gspot@gmail.com.

Hmm, I don't see anything in their terms and conditions that prevents filling that 1G with encrypted messages.  I wonder what kind of ads Google will attach to encrypted messages?  Crypto software?

Stanley Milgram, famous for his six degrees of separation experiment, is also famous for his obedience experiment.  A variation of that experiment at Stanford, called Stanford Prison Experiment (google) is very relevant to what is going on today in Iraq prisons.  It shows where the cutting edge of the blade called Human Nature is so, hopefully, we can sheath it as best as we can.

I am sure the guy who pickled Rasputin's manhood would say it was all in the wrist, it's apparently also a matter of national pride.  Certainly makes you think twice about wanting to be famous, eh?

I had lunch at Buck's today.  Believe it or not, it was my first time.  Despite countless lunches with VCs, I somehow never had lunch there.  Joining me were Bill Harris and Louie Gasparini, respectively Chairman and CTO of PassMark Security.  Although I didn't eat much as usual, I really enjoyed the lunch.

Bill, who was CEO of PayPal and Intuit, had great stories to tell.  The ability to tell stories well is a valuable skill I wish I had but don't.  All I can manage is react intelligently or project voice to forcefully pound in a message or two.  That's second class IMHO compared to the ability to paint and animate a picture with voice.

Anyhow, I'll have to try the artichoke next time.  Robert, remember that lunch you owe me?