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January 25, 2005

Mythical standards

If I were to pick the most overused term in the IT industry, I believe, it would be standard.

Look a this guy (or should I say: basked case?) over on Slashdot. He's advertising a "new standard keyboard", referring to a keyboard layout that has keys in alphabetical order. He also says that DVORAK is a standard layout - I have seen only one DVORAK keyboard in real life, and I think it's safe to assume that this layout is only standard in the community of computer users with severe Repetitive Strain Injury.

A standard is something that is established over many years and adopted by a majority of the 'market'. 230V, 50 Hz AC, that's a standard (in Europe). Having heating in apartment buildings, that's a standard in much of the Western world. ASCII, that's a standard, too.

OK, enough bitching for today. Got a plane to Berlin to catch.

Posted by dr at 10:46 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 23, 2005

Information Age Anarchism: Hacking the Real World.

I finished reading The Anarchist in the Library by Siva Vaidhyanathan the other day.

The book is about this new inter-connected society, struggling between freedom and control in its cultural and informational exchange. It's subtitle: "How the Clash Between Freedom and Control is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System".

"Information age" was a term coined quite a while ago, but Vaidhyanathan finally put the term into a political perspective for me. Files flow freely in peer-to-peer systems now, content has become hard to control. Movies are downloaded in foreign countries before their official, local premiere. When the music industry missed the MP3 revolution, music-lovers found their ways to copy and trade songs for free. Look at what's happened recently: If soldiers beat up civilians, photos will make their way around the 'net in no time.

Vaidhyanathan, a cultural historian at NYU, avoids the quick answers. He doesn't give in to utopian dreams of a file-sharing anarchy: Information needs to be paid for, because somebody needs to produce it. But evenly clearly, Vaidhyanathan wonders whether information should be controlled centrally by multi-national companies.

The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash Between Freedom and Control Is Leaving Cyberspace and Entering the Real WorldThe friction between exerting control over knowledge and other goods and successful cultural exchange of these is what characterizes the beginning of the information age. But haven't we seen that friction before? "The Anarchist in the Library" points to the globalization process that has been taking place over decades. Countries enter free-trade agreements, which regulate subsidies to establish a liberal world economy. At the same time these agreements fixate the current state of affairs, excluding new players in the game, whose second-world industries can't have the subsidies that the 1st world ones have enjoyed. World-wide copyright and patent enforcement legislation is striving to do the same now for the entertainment industry, thereby protecting established structures. Neither anti-globalization anarchists nor liberal writers have drawn this picture so convincingly as this book does.

Recommended reading for information society citizens.

Siva Vaidhyanathan, The Anarchist in the Library, Basic Books, 2004.

Posted by dr at 12:49 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

January 20, 2005

Second term, back to the future.

In honor of the presential inauguration, or better: self-adulation in the United States, I'd like to point you to JibJab's view of things. (Turn on your speakers...)

Bush's administration will go against tyranny, and I suspect that has to do with the things American agents are said to have been doing in Iran lately, that is, exploring potential targets. They seem to be looking for a new job to give to their troops. If bad comes to worse, Mr. President may preach some Christian values to the peoples that will have been freed from tyranny. Values? For example the wisdom of an 84-year-old Parkinson patient, who seems to be competent in discussing the use of condoms. The pope maintains that chastity (yes, no sex!) is what helps against AIDS.

Back to the middle ages. I hope they'll make me a knight and get me some fancy armor.

Posted by dr at 9:29 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 18, 2005

Electron Band Structure, My Ass

"Electron Band Structure In Germanium, My Ass" - a {term|scholarly} paper refuting a correlation between temperature and resistivity of germanium. This is too funny - check out this shit!

Posted by dr at 6:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 17, 2005

Ciphire's transparent and dead-easy e-mail security

I posted about public key infrastructure the other day, and I thought I'd point to something new in the field. Something that makes cryptography even simpler.

Ciphire Mail is a new encryption and signing agent for the masses. With this transparent proxy, e-mail can be signed and encrypted using special public key infrastructure, but without the need for the user to manually generate certificates (key pairs) and have them validated by a third-party certification authority. So far, so good. I would even say: wonderful! Finally! That's what we needed.

That said, I was wondering whether Ciphire thought of interoperability with existing e-mail solutions that have seen wide-spread implementation. The best-supported e-mail cryptography standard is probably X.509 certificates and S/MIME. Standard e-mail clients such as Outlook, Apple Mail and Thunderbird/Mozilla have it built-in, and it works seamlessly once you have managed to install your certificates.

Ciphire doesn't use X.509 keys and S/MIME. Instead, they install a local mail server that forwards your mail, acting as an encryption proxy. Ciphire's big challenge is to get a critical mass with a system that needs to be installed beside the local user's mail client. I'd say since neither PGP nor S/MIME have really reached what seasoned bullshit bingo players call market penetration, Ciphire will get its chance.

Again, the advantage of S/MIME is that you have a client-to-client encryption, and clients can see whether an e-mail was signed and/or encrypted in their standard mail client (Outlook, Apple Mail, etc.), and they can conveniently select encryption options when composing an e-mail. When I asked the inventors of Ciphire (a European company) about supporting S/MIME, Ciphire's inventors replied that this might come in future versions. So, is the solution insular? Not more than others, they said. Their system, so they say, comes with a better infrastructure that is not so easy to compromise.

Ciphire gets rid of Certification Authorities such as Verisign or their subsidiary Thawte with their annual renewal charges for certificates. However, Ciphire replaces these with their own CA system!

Ciphire uses ASN.1 certificates, which have a number of advantages over standard X.509 certificates. For example, they allow multiple signatures just like PGP keys (instead of only one from a CA) and it is the user who controls renewal and revokation (instead of having a CA charge for these services). Keys are created by the client, so that the secret portion never leaves the computer.

So: It's geat somebody has finally made something that's easy enough for everyone to just use on all three common operating systems, and attractive server-based solutions are to come. Their system, however, suffers from an inheritently non-technical problem. It is vertically integrated (CA, software, interface protocols from one vendor) and closed. No documentation of the underlying mail transfer protocols, and I suspect they also hold patents on their technology. That makes Ciphire a good system for intra-company deployment, but nothing you would like see established as a wide-spread standard that external people (e.g. customers) would have to use. Companies may be reluctant to invest in a system that is proprietary, closed-source and fully vertically integrated and depends on running server infrastructure at Ciphire.

The bottomline: Very interesting product, and friendly company that seems very open in talking to potential customers. I'm sure it is already a viable option for commercial use, for example where e-mails are sent within a company, but across sites. I hope Ciphire will open up their communication protocols and provide backwards-compatibility to S/MIME or PGP. I'll definitely follow up on Ciphire!

(You bet, I did get interested in cryptography - even though I have little to hide these days... This stuff is all pretty new to me, so take my explanations and critique with a grain of salt and sent in your comments!)

Posted by dr at 7:06 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

January 16, 2005

Making e-mail secure: simple instructions

E-mail is almost like a postcard. Like the text on a postcard, it's not encrypted and can be read by a lot of people. Luckily, that guy delivering your mail has better things to do than to read your postcard. As for your e-mails, your systems administrator can read along. And maybe the co-worker sitting at the next desk. That's because of the nature of how data is transported from your computer to another one. That is equally true for instant messaging or some web surfing in many cases. Don't believe me? Check out AIM Sniffer or EtherPeg.

What to do about it? Here's the solution: encrypt your e-mail, and sign your e-mail. That is actually very easy and comfortable - you don't have to worry about it once it is installed. I am trying to sign my e-mails regularly , and I hope, more people will adopt encryption over time. This will enhance verybody's privacy, and make sure that secrets stay within your company.

If you'd like to get a very brief and top-level introduction into how this whole PGP encryption thing works, read on. If you want to know how to get started without a big hassle using the wide-spread S/MIME standard, read on!

There are two competing standards for e-mail encryption. Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) and S/MIME. PGP has been around for a long time and is mainly used in academia. It is flexible and secure. However, S/MIME has attained a broad adoption in the software industry. Most e-mail clients support S/MIME. I have tried both over the last couple of weeks, and I'll give a short introduction how to make S/MIME work.

How public key encryption works

First of all: how does this kind of encryption work? You'll find a lot of detailed explanations on the web, so I'll just give you the scoop. Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) stands for a system using one-way encryption. Suppose I'd like to send you a message, I use a key code to encrypt it. This key code is something you have given me previously and it is not secret in any way. In fact, many people put their public keys on their website. That's because a message, once encrypted with
a public key, cannot be decrypted again with this key. Instead, you need a secret key, which belongs to the public one. And this one, the secret key, is something only you, the recipient, has. You can use it to decrypt my message.

So again: there is a key pair <P,S> with a public key P and a private key S. They belong together.
If A wants to send B a message M, then M is encrypted using P, resulting in M'. M' cannot be decrypted without S. That means, the recipient B has published P, but keeps S secret.

A neat thing you can do with PKI is to sign e-mails (and other documents). To sign something, you will need your secret key. Anyone else can then verify that it was you who sent that e-mail. To do so, the public key is used. Logical, isn't it?
A signature makes sure that the e-mail has not been altered on the way, and that you have sent it off.

There is more that belongs to PKI. Somehow, you'll need to make sure that you're using the correct public key P. You must be sure that P actually belongs to B, and not to some evil intruder. Techniques such as a web of trust allow people to vouch for somebody's keys, after they have verified that person's identify. That's a bit like a chain of friends at a party: the host invites guest 1, and guest 1 brings guest 2 along, and guest 2 brings guest 3. That way, the host can be fairly sure that guest 3 is not going to end up drunk in somebody's bedroom (unless the guests all enjoy that sort of thing). Of course, such chains of trust must be limited in length. PGP offers a mechanism for this, and for S/MIME, a similar mechanism is offered by Thawte.

An alternative means in order to establish authenticity for public keys is a so-called Certification Authority (CA), which checks your identity (they want to see your passport!) and then uses the signing mechanism to sign your public key. (Yes! You can sign any kind of document - therefore you can sign a public key, too!). The CA's public key, by the way, is called a root certificate, should you ever encounter the term.

Public key encryption is known to be very secure. I assume that even intelligence agencies have problems breaking through the codes: legislature in some countries limits the key strength (the longer the key, the more difficult is it to break the encryption). Bruce Schneier has written a paper about the general weaknesses of PKI.


So how to get started?


Here I'll explain in simple terms how to use S/MIME. I assume you're using a modern mail client that supports S/MIME. Most mail clients do.

First, you'll need your public/secret key pair. With S/MIME, your public key comes as a certificate, that is, a public key which is signed (certified) by a certification authority. These certificates adhere to a standard called X.509. There are quite a few certification authorities around, but unless you want to pay money
for your certificates (as a corporate customer), I recommend the use of Thawte. They offer a Free personal e-mail certificate for non-commercial use, and you don't need to show them your passport right away. Instead, they use a web of trust.

To get a personal certificate, go here and click on "Click to Request" under "personal e-mail certificates". Have
something like a Driver's License number or a passport ready. Once you're registered, you should add all of your personal e-mail addresses that you want to use to encrypt or sign e-mail. They will all be verified before you can proceed.

Then, you can request the certificate, which will take a few minutes. You will be notified by e-mail. Pick up your certificate with your web browser, and it will be automatically installed on your computer for you - at least, that is the case if you use a Mac and Safari (choose Netscape certificate when asked! Mozilla works, too!) On a PC, this should work just the same. If you need detailed instructions, I can recommend Mark Noble's tutorial.

Once your own certificate is installed, you can sign e-mails with your e-mail program. If you use Outlook, you will have an option in the Tools menu. As soon as somebody has received a signed e-mail from you, he will automatically have your public key, too. From that point on, that person can send you encrypted e-mails.

So, again: you will need to have received a signed e-mail from somebody, before you can encrypt stuff for that person. (Or at least, you will need to install the person's certificate!). On my machine, using Apple Mail, I get two nice buttons in my mail window, as soon as I have entered a recipient whose certificate I have, and selected an e-mail address for which I have my own certificate.

sign-emails.png

Note that the "Signature" function is just your conventional signature at the end of an e-mail. It has nothing to do with secure signing.

The installation of public keys happens more or less in the background. Windows will ask you, sometimes, if you trust a person's key, but apart from that, it should need little manual intervention. Things seem to be more difficult on Windows installations; on the Mac, there is a central repository (Key chain) to store all the certificates.

Happy encrypting!

(This text will be improved over time. Your comments and experiences with other systems are welcome. You're also welcome to send me signed or encrypted e-mails to test things, even if I cannot solve your installation problems!)

(revised definition of 'certificate' on 1/Feb/05)

Posted by dr at 2:21 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

January 14, 2005

Obituary: Media Lab Europe

Media Lab Europe is closing its doors forever. The ambitious attempt of both MIT and the Irish government to establish an international research lab has failed. The press release, issued on January 14, 2005 reads: "The Board of Directors of Media Lab Europe announced today that it is putting the company into voluntary solvent liquidation."

Why did the promising research start-up have to close? Here is my analysis. (N.B.: I won't convey internal secrets that I've learned during my time at Media Lab Europe (MLE), which ended a few months ago. I will use and refer to public sources only.)

jussi-clock.jpg MLE, similar to its mother MIT Media Lab, conducted research into technology supporting human-human and human-computer interfaces. They often worked on the fringe between technology and art, producing installations such as award-winning sensor-deprivation floatation tanks, or many little pieces of technological art by Jonah Brucker-Cohen. There was a psychological background and a human-interface side of things in many cases, such as in a haptic remote control for television. Many of the projects were technically difficult: Jussi Angesleva's visible clock (see picture), which shows a time as you spin it on a lanyard, and MLE researchers worked on sensors to read people's minds - among many other things.

Nicholas Negroponte, founder of MIT Media Lab and its offspring Media Lab Europe, once wrote: "In the pool of knowledge at a university, professors are not the fish, but the pond. The water is not chlorinated, clear, precisely circumscribed, and inhabited by one kind of perfect goldfish. It is a muddied habitat with fuzzy edges and home to all sorts of people, including those who do not fit traditional scholarship. That is where new ideas come from." Both Media Labs, the one at MIT and the one in Dublin, are and were very muddy yet colorful ponds.

Like many interdisciplinary approaches to science, especially when art is involed, some of MLE's research lacked scientific rigour. Sometimes it lacked good evaluation and was too far out of the context of previous research. This doesn't apply to all of the projects, and almost always, MLE produced amazing and very creative demonstrations for naive visitors. It is clear that MLE has been a great contribution to Ireland's 21st century cultural development, stimulating local events such as DATA meetings or the Darklight Festival.

MLE's funding model saw large companies acting as sponsors, getting rights to the Intellectual Property in return. AOL, for example, was a sponsor. However, dot.com times are gone, and companies are reluctant to invest into endevors where the return on investment is not clear. When I worked at MLE, I have demoed my work to countless people from the industry, among them the top-level management of a leading IT company that makes office equipment, people from operating-system companies, or the chief researcher of a huge and creative Japanese entertainment electronics business. Not long ago, Google's Larry Paige and Sergey Brin showed up. None of these industry leaders actually signed up for a deal. Analyzing this, I believe that Negroponte's vision of conducting research cannot work out in times of short-term renevue expectations. MLE's overall spending per researcher, that is, what they paid on top of each person's salary, were very high, as you can roughly guess by counting researchers and looking at spending figures (somewhere close to EUR 8m in 2003). A lot of MLE's money went into selling the research, not producing results. U2's Bono was on the board of directors, followed by The Edge.

Besides MLE, MIT Media Lab has created another research lab: Media Lab Asia. This attempt failed as well for various reasons. MLA has a different model now, without MIT.

MLE provided an absolutely exciting work environment in an old hop store, right next the Guinness factory. I could do interesting and meaningful research and had sufficient means to conduct experiments and present my work at international conferences. I wasn't coerced into a demo-or-die culture, yet I could use demos to ground my work in the needs of real people. MLE has been generous to many of its employees. I have met the most wonderful, creative, broad-minded and smart people. I am proud to have many of them as my friends. I am confident that they will find interesting opportunities now.

Wired once ran a story titled The Lab that Fell To Earth about MIT Media Lab meeting harsh economic realities. Now, Media Lab Europe has hit the ground, fallen from the grace of the Irish government and the corporate world. I'm sad to see the lab go. You will be dearly missed, MLE.

(revised 16-Jan-2005, 19-Jan-2005 for style.)

If you're an ex-MLE person (as visiting researcher, intern or staff), subscribe to our mailing list called McGruder's. Simply send an empty e-mail to mcgruders-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.

Posted by dr at 1:57 PM | Comments (32) | TrackBack

January 13, 2005

Jack's Back, with a New Web of Fear.

bauer2.jpg Jack Bauer is back. The premiere of the new '24' season was aired last weekend, I've seen the first four hours by now. Does the show live up to my high expectations?

For those who don't know: 24 is almost a real-time TV show: action is shown as it happens, no flashbacks, no jumps in time. 24 episodes per season: the longest day in the life of Jack Bauer, who used to be an agent hunting down terrorists and saving little blond girls' lives. He's a cowboy that does things his own way, and that's what we love him for. The show is full of action. And it's full of violence. 24 is one of the best-designed action TV series in a long time.

So how is 24/2005? The new story is the old story. Some evil terrorists plan an evil attack on the United States - in this case, some Secretary of Defense, who is to be tried by the evil terrorists for crimes against humanity in front of cameras. Of course, the evil terrorists come from a not-so-evil country (Turkey, but it doesn't matter, as long as they have an Eastern accent). The NY Times has the scoop. (More links)

What strikes me is the political shift that the series has seen. A shift to the right, a move that acknowledges America's conservatives. "Don't give me your sixth grade Michael Moore logic", the Secretary of Defense says, because we're the good ones, not you. He is talking to is son, who happens to be one of the guys that stage protests to save the environment. But in 24, Greenpeace activists are somehow linked to terrorism. This 24 season, the democrat, black and somewhat Kerry-esque US president David Palmer has been replaced by an old, Bushy guy.

Again and again, the agents of the Counter Terrorist Unit CTU use "physical interrogation"
to get suspects to talk. What that means? Torture.

In 24, time is of the essence, and torturing suspects is a matter of life and death for millions
of innocent people. Inquiries, carried out by the annoying 'division', only get in the way of good agents like Jack.

24, however, is hitting close to home. What's happening in real life
obviously couldn't be further away from the time pressure of 24. American and
British soldiers have tortured Iraqis - the photos were in all papers. Thousands of suspects are still detained, without lawyers and without trials. The CIA seems to have been abducting suspects from within foreign countries (like this German).

Do the makers of 24 inadvertently legitimize torture in counter-terrorism investigations?

What's painfully obvious is that 24, conceived long before the 9/11 attacks, now nurtures a diffuse sense of fear among its viewers, keeping the belief in a good government alive and legitimizing violations of human rights.

The message: Everything is okay - in Guantanamo Bay.

Posted by dr at 9:33 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

January 10, 2005

Life is Random

So tomorrow morning, 9 am local time in San Francisco, Apple will unveil a new iPod. One without a harddrive, but with a memory-chip inside, maybe good for some twohundred-odd songs.

As of late, fans are anxiously awaiting news from Steve Job's keynote presentation. Rumor sites have been... rumoring, and showing fotos of workers hanging some big ads saying "Life is random". Here's my guess: the device, smaller than your average iPod, yet white of color (according to what I've heard), will come without a screen. After all, life is random, and so should your music. The thing will be able to randomly play some song - and probably not much more.

That's a good idea - that's all I want on the road. The keychain based devices can only have a very small screen, a screen too small to provide a good user interface. So, let's get rid of it. Instead, there's more room for more variety - I am hoping for a full gigabyte of music.

Let's see.

(On another account, Jack Bauer is back. Off the drugs, and more convinced of himself than ever.)

Posted by dr at 11:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 9, 2005

Hello (turn your radio on): my favorite KCRW

Radio is dead. Who cares for the perfectly styled and formatted sounds for the masses? Well, the masses, I have to concede.

There is still great music radio, but it's usually very local - nothing to tune into via the Internet.

kcrw.jpgThe big exception is KCRW. Off-beat sounds, non-obnoxious presenters, live music some times. KCRW comes from California, so you might have to listen to "Morning becomes eclectic" just before British tea-time. This station is available online in good quality (128 kBit) as MP3, Real, WindowsMedia.

Oh, and if you'd like to know how David's World came into existence back in 1999, you can listen to David's radio voice (in German - sorry folks!). (more).

Long live radio!

Posted by dr at 10:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 8, 2005

Sex and Prude Americans - an Answerology Survey

Answerology is a web site where girls can ask guys the kind of questions that they would never ever ask personally. And they do so happily, in sections such as "At Work", "Family Dynamics" or "Intimacy". Unfortunately, the site doesn't allow people to continue a conversation or get in touch with each other privately, unless they pay some ridiculous amounts of money for a membership subscription. But asking and answering questions is fun anyways.

One thing I find amazing is the retrovert moralistic attitude you can find. "I'm 17 and there are two guys at school that I'm interested in - does that make me a slut?". Or: "I've been with my boyfriend for two years and he mentioned he would like to sleep with me. I love him very much, but I'd like to wait at least another year! What do I tell him?" Stuff like that.

I decided to ask a somewhat provocative question. Why exactly do people generally consider it bad to sleep with someone early in a relationship? Why is 'waiting' always considered good, especially among women? Why is a mother so concerned about her teenage daughter not having (safe) sex? Why do men consider women sluts if they sleep with them on first date?

And I received a lot of encouraging replies. Surprisingly, I didn't really get feedback from those that I actually wanted to annoy. Maybe conservative kids just aren't good at rationally justifying their strange rules about love and marriage. I suspect it's just like with their rules about the war on terror, or killing Iraqis versus taking a fetus out of an expecting mother's womb. Moral rules seem hard to justify.

Read on for a lot of relatively intellectual replies (un-censored) from my anonymous readers.

--- My Original Question ---
Here's a European who doesn't understand the American way of life often displayed here...

Why exactly do people generally consider it bad to sleep with someone early in a relationship? Why is 'waiting' always considered good, especially among women? Why is a mother so concerned about her teenage daughter not having (safe) sex? Why do men consider women sluts if they sleep with them on first date?

What are some arguments against my suspicion that the disparity between 'waiting is good' and human nature (hormones!) lead to high rates in teenage pregnancy?


---------- Anonymous wrote --------
god.

we're a bunch of wanna be puritains trapped in a consumer society with wacko politicians supporting even wackier religions- all the while being overtly seduced by infomercials and marketing schemes. we as an american society kindly turn the other cheek (so to speak) and pretend we don't notice what's going on... then in our sheepish (pun intended) state of drone-ism, we scapegoat the devil for all the wrongdoings in the world (which is only the land between LA and NYC- in case you were curious.)

now back to my twinkie and cable tv...

---------- lasophisticate wrote --------
I love the European lifestyle! Americans are all screwed up in the head in regards to sex. I think a lot of it has to do with the media and how everything is so damn censored over here. Believe me, I completely agree with you. Especially on the waiting to have sex bit. It really doesn't make sense to me. It is unnatural to suppress an urge. Being cautious is fine, but not a very passionate way to live your life is it? I just recently visited London and Greece by the way. I can assure you that I did not play the waiting game and had a great time.


---------- xerxes wrote --------
That life-of-the-party from LA got it dead right. Americans are skrewed up when it comes to sex. I think sex is something you should have whenever you want with whoever you want who also wants to have it with you. Yes STDs are a concern, but the very real risk of physical injury doesn't deter people from skiing or surfing. Why should risk of disease deter people from having sex? Just take precautions and keep on fcking. And as for the number of previous partners my current partner has had, its really none of my business.

---------- tomb12qb wrote --------
Come on now - your stereotyping! That's like saying that all people from Great Britain have bad teeth! We don't all feel as you described. Personally, I think two consenting adults should have sex whenever they feel like having sex, and should not be concerned about what others think.


---------- curlymoto wrote --------
I've dated European men and they generally tend to be more modern and have a more mature view of women. North American guys are still a little bit like cavemen and prefer to have women who do not sleep around. they also want you to make them wait as they generally tend not to value anything they don't have to work for to get.

---------- pyromaniac wrote --------
That my friend, is purtianical values. Because we're still a very conservative nation, especially about sex. We're getting better though!


---------- ketostix wrote --------
Well I'm an American and let me tell you how America and Americans are for the most part. This society is as phony and fake as Hollywood from the government on down-anyone that denies this has limited life experience or has a revulsion for the truth. Basically to get a desirable girl in America you have to look and act like a Hollywood actor, or be one. I don't quite understand why but from dating to obtaining an education and employment (which has a large bearing on obtaining a gf)everything is all a big game in America. It's a really dog-eat-dog society where everyone is trying to one-up you, but if you criticise it you'll be shunned. This explains why women feel they must always "win", but males don't dare complain lest they be shunned by females. The prevailing belief is no matter what adversity a white male experiences his faliures (romatically or economically) are his fault and never the person who opposed him.

Basically America is nothing like it wishes everyone believed. However, it's great for about 10% of the population who control most of the wealth and date all the women. Now, everyone will deny the truth of this with words, but they can't deny it with deeds.

---------- chesterdad wrote --------
This is also the country where women can't go topless at public beaches.
It's why we got kicked out the most tolerant country in Europe (Holland), and had to move to a place where NOBODY would know us!

---------- antibuddhagirl wrote --------
You know, those answers seem pretty one-sided, too, if you ask me.

America, when it comes to sex, is really weird because it both sensors itself AND is open about it in the media. Every-every-everything on TV and movies has something to do with sex, generally, if it's got content for older people. It's getting so bad that parents are complaining that they can't let their kids watch the television past 5 PM/17:00.

On the other side of things, the guys are taught to be open about their sexuality, pretty much, and the girls are taught to be closed about it. If they're told anything at all. It's a bit like: The person has had the keys to drive their car (their body), and the parents try their hardest to make it that she doesn't realize that she's own the keys all along.

So...the girls end up feeling pretty closeted and furtive about sex, and the guys wander around frustrated. At least women don't have to be virgins until marriage anymore. Used to be, the guys were all thought to not be "manly" if they didn't have sex by a certain age, but women were thought to be sluts and other nasty impure things if they weren't perfectly virginal until their wedding night. Pray tell, who did these men sleep with, exactly?

Now to go into greater detail why we're such prudes... The Puritans that keep getting mentioned had a large effect on things. I guess you could compare them to the fundamentalist muslims of the middle east. Everything became outlawed because they felt that most of the things that were found to be "fun" were "sinful". This was taking the idea of sin and repentence to and all-time extreme.
Whereas the Separatists (The Pilgrims, who came over originally to the Plymouth, Massachusettes area. These were the people who left Holland. And they left Holland themselves. They weren't kicked out.) separated from England because they felt England to be too strict...the Puritans (whom we seem to confuse with the separatists in our history books, and schooling) left England because they felt the Church of England to be far too lax.

And then they became the dominant religion here. Blech.

I guess I'll just close this with a quote from Ambrose Bierce's "The Devils Dictionary":

Puritan - n. - A person with the overwhelming fear that someone, somewhere, is having fun.

---------- marcy wrote --------
I really don't understand why American society considers sex a necessary sin. I think it is because of the religiosity that permiates our society. Anything joyful is purely off limits supposedly. But you wouldn't know it where I work. The young girls I work with (early 20's) some have at least 2 or 3 kids all by different men. At least one that I know for sure has never been married and has 2. I work in a psychiatric hospital as an nurse (LVN) on a unit that holds exclusively females. Most of the staff is also female we have two males that work on my unit. One is an RN and I work with the male LVN. Two of the young girls are constantly throwing themselves at the nurse I work with. Telling him they want him to fuck them and they'll suck his dick, have anal sex, invite him for a threesome, etc. Apparently, they don't know that America is a 'prudish' society and that they are supposed to adhere to the sugar coated bullshit that is promoted to the rest of the world. I personally believe that sex is natural act and is to be explored and enjoyed to the fullest, but like everything else it is to be done responsibily. By that I mean with someone you know, safely and with birth control. I've never been to Europe, but as far as I can tell and from personal experience (I live in the Bible belt so it is very conservative) we as Americans are not taught about how to have sex and how it is supposed to work in a marriage. I believe this leads to a lot of promiscuity, unwanted pregnancy and cheating on spouses. True it is prevalent in our media, but only in a novel way. We don't learn anything about it except that it is a dirty secret and victimizes women and children.

---------- Nephilim71 wrote --------
You know I personally love it when people outside the US think they have a good understanding of us because I can say from experience that they don't. I've traveled and I spent a good amount of time abroad especially in England so I can say this.

The U.S. is absolutely different from every other nation in the world and most of them don't realize it. Europeans like you look at us and see a people who are decended from your country men and expect us to be similar. The shock comes when you realize that we aren't. So many Europeans I know just get so confused because they feel that they should be able to relate to us so easily and then they see that they can't. See that is where the problem lies.

I am primarily of British descent. If I could fake the accent just right you'd never guess I wasn't British. So if you met me and we talked even when you see plainly enough that I was American you'd still feel that I was still very much like you. You'd know I wasn't but knowing and understanding that is where the problem arrises.

I'm sure you might say you know we are different and I imagine you probably do but in my experience people who have never lived more than a year here never get the full story. Just as I can say that I generally understand the British because I spent a lot of time there but I don't full understand you just yet.

As for our actual differences that lead to these differering views on sex there are a lot. Of all western nations the U.S. has by far the highest population growth. Although we can afford them per capita we only own about half as many mobile phones as you do. Many Americans as you move towards the Mid West had never seen the ocean never mind been to another country. With all of these (bare in mind I only mentioned a small number) is it any wonder that we might differ in regards of sex?

My main point here is that we are different but people don't realize how different and most Americans are included. Trying to explain why effectively in regards to sex would be require an essay worthy of a Ph.D. Do you make these same comparisons with Turkey? No ofcourse not. They don't look like most Brits on the average. Admittedly we aren't that religious but we aren't as secular as Europe either. Don't you think that if most Europeans could simply understand that we are different rather than needing some lenghthy explanation as to why?

I know this isn't exactly what you asked for but I think that it can lead to a better understanding of why there is a Trans Atlantic confusion sometimes.

Posted by dr at 4:34 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

January 7, 2005

Straight College Men

This is too weird: want to have a look at straight men having a go at each other? StraightCollegeMen.com is a new web site featuring just that. A producer tries to get straight guys to get naked and do, well, sexual but not very sexy things to each other - for money. How much money does it take to keep them from running away? Wired's (Re)gina Lynn has the story.

I wonder how real the whole thing is - are these paid actors, as in those cheap porn sites that pretend to get amateur girls to have adult fun with strangers (on camera)?

Posted by dr at 11:58 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

January 6, 2005

Peephole surfing: Online Webcams

Here's a Google query that retrieves a list of online web-cams - some of which are probably not meant to be publicly accessible. For example, here is a Shoe Store, and this is a general aviation airfield (Grenchen, Switzerland) and a regional airport (Stuttgart). I also have a Building Site for you with a cam that you can tilt and manipulate! Less exciting is this pub, which showed a very small crowd last night. You'll find traffic cams (utterly boring) and even more building sites - looks like they use the cams to make sure everybody's taking their jobs seriously! Also, a whole lot of dull computer labs, streets and buildings.

If you'd like to find out where they are, you take have a good guess after you've entered the cam's domain name or IP into whois. Nota bene: Safari can't display these cam feeds -- use a different browser.

piggys.jpg

Posted by dr at 3:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 3, 2005

Photos of the Tsunami

TsunamiPhotos of the Tsunami have turned up that are quite impressive. Definitely a lot of water! Of course, there are many more. (This picture taken by Hellmut Issel - see link.)

Posted by dr at 6:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 2, 2005

Procrastination

Another new year's resolution of mine is to focus. I don't generally procrastinate (actually, I make most project deadlines), but... I do too many other interesting things on the side (like reading news!). I don't want to end up like this guy, after all!

Posted by dr at 5:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 1, 2005

2005, resolution: I will not fix somebody else's PC problems.

I have a resolution for 2005.

I will not get computer-related presents for my folks. No no no.

No games software like the flight sim I got, and no hardware like the joystick I got as well for my 10-year-old brother. Getting this to work on a 5-year-old PC obviously entails a lot. Technically interested people should read on.

The bottom line is: I will not touch a Windows PC for any sort of maintenance in 2005. I promise. I promise to buy a book for a present next time. Books don't break, don't require an installation, they're cheaper and much more fun. For the givee, and the giver.

Now back to the Western classics with Clint Eastwood.

Long story short:

Aaaargh.

Posted by dr at 9:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack