Public Reactions to Terrorist Threats [Bruce Schneiers blog]

Public Reactions to Terrorist Threats: "

Interesting research:

For the last five years we have researched the connection between times of terrorist threats and public opinion. In a series of tightly designed experiments, we expose subsets of research participants to a news story not unlike the type that aired last week. We argue that attitudes, evaluations, and behaviors change in at least three politically-relevant ways when terror threat is more prominent in the news. Some of these transformations are in accord with conventional wisdom concerning how we might expect the public to react. Others are more surprising, and more disconcerting in their implications for the quality of democracy.

One way that public opinion shifts is toward increased expressions of distrust. In some ways this strategy has been actively promoted by our political leaders. The Bush administration repeatedly reminded the public to keep eyes and ears open to help identify dangerous persons. A strategy of vigilance has also been endorsed by the new secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano.

Nonetheless, the breadth of increased distrust that the public puts into practice is striking. Individuals threatened by terrorism become less trusting of others, even their own neighbors. Other studies have shown that they become less supportive of the rights of Arab and Muslim Americans. In addition, we found that such effects extend to immigrants and, as well, to a group entirely remote from the subject of terrorism: gay Americans. The specter of terrorist threat creates ruptures in our social fabric, some of which may be justified as necessary tactics in the fight against terrorism and others that simply cannot.

Another way public opinion shifts under a terrorist threat is toward inflated evaluations of certain leaders. To look for strong leadership makes sense: crises should impel us toward leadership bold enough to confront the threat and strong enough to protect us from it. But the public does more than call for heroes in times of crisis. It projects leadership qualities onto political figures, with serious political consequences.

In studies conducted in 2004, we found that individuals threatened by terrorism perceived George W. Bush as more charismatic and stronger than did non-threatened individuals. This projection of leadership had important consequences for voting decisions. Individuals threatened by terrorism were more likely to base voting decisions on leadership qualities rather than on their own issue positions or partisanship. You did read that correctly. Threatened individuals responded with elevated evaluations of Bush's capacity for leadership and then used those inflated evaluations as the primary determinant in their voting decision.

These findings did not just occur among Republicans, but also among Independents and Democrats. All partisan groups who perceived Bush as more charismatic were also less willing to blame him for policy failures such as faulty intelligence that led to the war in Iraq.

[...]

A third way public opinion shifts in response to terrorism is toward greater preferences for policies that protect the homeland, even at the expense of civil liberties, and active engagement against terrorists abroad. Such a strategy was advocated and implemented by the Bush administration. Again, however, we found that preferences shifted toward these objectives regardless of one's partisan stripes and, as well, outside the U.S.

Nothing surprising here. Fear makes people deferential, docile, and distrustful, and both politicians and marketers have learned to take advantage of this.

Jennifer Merolla and Elizabeth Zechmeister have written a book, Democracy at Risk: How Terrorist Threats Affect the Public. I haven't read it yet.

"

Auto localisation is EVIL

This post is "inspired" by a recent change in the Apple iTunes Store.

Up to a couple of weeks ago Apple decided to change the languague of the Dutch iTunes store to Dutch. Every interaction with the store changed from English to Dutch.

OK, So I live in the Netherlands (where we speak Dutch) and I use a Dutch based payment system (thus requiring me to use the Dutch store) and I am a native Dutchman. So the language in and of itself if not a problem. Besides of course that the actual translation is ... um ... not of a very high quality, and let's leave it at that for now.

The problem here is that everything else on my computer works in English: The Operating System and all the other applications. When I find Dutch translations somewhere I try to root them out. In Google this is configurable in my user account settings. For Cygwin this is configured by (not) setting the language environment variable.

Why?

Why should I want to eradicate all traces of "Dutch speaking" programs from my computer. That's easy. Two sides of the same coin actually:

1. Thing actually do get lost in translation. In my long history in IT - over 30 years now, I started early - I have found that I can understand error messages and descriptions better when they are in their original English than in translation.
2. Getting support by using the internet. Because Dutch is a relatively small language (we are apparently ranked 42nd with 21.7 million speakers). There will automatically be way fewer people who have the same problems with the software that I happen to run into. With the effect that the chance of finding a resolution to the problem is much better when I can Google for the original English error message. (Instead of trying to translate back from a translation. See Translation Equilibrium for the results of back and forth translation...

And, additionally, a lot of translations are indeed subpar.

Yes, auto-localisation rubs me the wrong way, in particular when there is no option to switch it off.

Great new book released!

A couple of weeks ago I finished listening to the audiobook version of "Nina Kimberly The Merciless" by Christiana Ellis. 

It is a very funny and entertaining book. It starts with the line: "Nina blushed, then cut the man’s head off...". If that doesn't get you interested, then just pickup the book because I say so...

Whet you appetite with the PDF from here. Or get the audio version over at podiobooks. And then go over to Amazon.com and buy the book already.

Voorsorteren op keuzevrijheid

Open ource desktop wordt door veel organisaties gezien als een goedkoop alternatief voor dure softwarelicenties. Maar hoe moeilijk is het om open source software te implementeren? Het blijkt vaak minder makkelijk dan gedacht; de organisatie had bijvoorbeeld ruim van te voren stappen moeten zetten om haar architectuur aan te passen.

Wanneer een organisatie een volledig open source desktop wil invoeren of slechts een aantal applicaties, komen diverse aandachtspunten naar voren:

• Technisch gezien kan, als er wordt uitgegaan van een ‘green field’-situatie, een volledige open source desktopomgeving worden ingericht.
  
• Echter, meestal is er sprake van een of ander programma dat in stand gehouden moet worden, maar dat niet compatible is met welke open source oplossing dan ook.
  
• Organisatorisch is men er vaak niet op voorbereid dat open source ook geld, middelen en inzet van menskracht kost en daardoor niet vanzelfsprekend goedkoper is dan closed source software. Vooral de kosten voor de migratie worden in eerste instantie wel eens over het hoofd gezien.
  
• Een migratie naar open source programmatuur blijft nog steeds een migratie met consequenties voor compatibiliteit, de leercurve en de overige uitdagingen die het met zich meebrengt.
  

Toch wil men het vaak proberen om later meer keuzevrijheid te hebben in de aanschaf van software of ter vervanging van bestaande programmatuur.

Technische haalbaarheid ‘green field'

Een volledige open source ict-omgeving is, al enkele jaren, haalbaar, als mag worden uitgegaan van volledige nieuwbouw. De uitdaging zit dan meer in het laten wennen van gebruikers, beheerders én management aan een nieuwe omgeving. Om een praktisch voorbeeld te noemen: ze moeten leren om functioneel te vragen naar een tekstverwerker in plaats van specifiek naar ‘Microsoft Word' of 'OpenOffice.org Writer' of 'WordPerfect'. Voor gebruikers blijkt het vaak lastig, ze zullen hierin moeten worden geholpen. Helaas komt deze ideaal situatie in de praktijk zelden tot nooit voor.

Technische obstakels bestaande, te handhaven, programmatuur

Een andere uitdaging ligt in de compatibiliteit van programmatuur. Hoe omgaan met applicaties die wel gehandhaafd moeten blijven, maar die niet integreren met open standaarden en open source? Veel gebruikte argumenten om vast te houden aan die applicaties zijn:

• Het is beleid om programma ABC te gebruiken voor functionaliteit XYZ.
  
• Er is een lange termijn investering in de programmatuur gedaan.
  
• De functionaliteit is dusdanig specialistisch en specifiek dat het alleen met programma Z uitgevoerd kan.

Sleutelwoorden uit de bovenstaande drie zaken zijn vet gedrukt. De sleutelwoorden duiden er echter op dat het niet zozeer technisch vraagstukken zijn, maar organisatorische. Deze problemen zullen dus ook in eerste instantie in de organisatie moeten worden opgelost en niet in de techniek.

Voorsorteren op keuzevrijheid

De organisatie moet gaan voorsorteren. Strategische en tactische ict-beslissingen moeten worden gebaseerd op het feit dat open standaarden ingezet moeten worden bij de aanschaf of ontwikkeling van nieuwe programmatuur. Standaard te gebruiken programmatuur zal in dit licht opnieuw bekeken en geëvalueerd worden.

Het betekent ook dat voor de inzet van open standaarden en/of open source op de desktop geïnvesteerd moeten worden voor:

• Het oplossen van de technische obstakels, bijvoorbeeld door de bouw van een stuk maatwerk of door de aanschaf van een toepasbare 'converter'.
  
• De conversie van de data en documenten.
  
• Het opleiden van beheerders. Het beheren van een Linux-/Unix-omgeving is tegenwoordig niet zo zeer moeilijker dan wel vooral anders dan in een Windows-omgeving.
  
• De opleiding of gewenning van gebruikers. Zoals bij elke migratie of upgrade van software zullen de gebruikers moeten accepteren dat de programmatuur die ze voorgeschoteld krijgen anders is dan dat ze voorheen gewend waren.
  

Deze investeringen gaan zich terug betalen bij een volgende migratie van software. Dan is immers vanwege het grotere gebruik van open standaarden ook meer keuzevrijheid in programmatuur. Ook de overstap naar andere programmatuur wordt gemakkelijker omdater gebruik wordt gemaakt van open standaarden.

Migratiescenario's voor open source desktop

Voor organisaties die toch, op relatief korte termijn, een open source desktop willen invoeren zijn er een drietal scenario's.

Scenario 1: Het nu reeds inzetten van open source programmatuur in de bestaande omgeving. Denk bijvoorbeeld aan de inzet van OpenOffice.org en Firefox om zodoende voor documenten en intranet al gebruik te maken van open standaarden.

Scenario 2: Een scherpe breuk maken met het verleden. Feitelijk wordt hiermee een ‘green field'-situatie gecreëerd. Dit betekent waarschijnlijk een grote desinvestering in bestaande programmatuur en is derhalve vooral nuttig als de meeste licenties toch aan vervanging toe zijn.

Scenario 3: Een gemixte omgeving. Voor moeilijkere programmatuur is er de optie om deze als server based computing (SBC) in te zetten. Hierdoor kunnen moeilijke applicaties (niet open source) op de server worden gedraaid, zonder dat aanpassingen aan de overigen open source werkpleken nodig zijn. Het is op deze manier bijvoorbeeld heel goed mogelijk om een op Linux gebaseerde thin client te bouwen die door middel van een SBC-client (Citrix, NoMachine, VNC) gebruik maakt van applicaties op de server.

Met name dit laatste scenario kan tot een snel succes leiden. Echter, zonder de hiervoor genoemde vooraf geschapen randvoorwaarden blijft het vaak steken bij een haalbaarheidsstudie of een technische proof of concept.

Wanneer overwogen wordt om een open source desktop te gaan gebruiken, zal aandacht moeten worden besteed aan het uitwisselen van documenten met externe partijen.

Zeker oudere werkplekken zijn nog vaak uitgerust met programmatuur die uitsluitend 'gesloten standaarden' documentformaten aankan. Het kan dan nuttig zijn om ervoor te kiezen om documenten te versturen als PDF. Een ander alternatief is om links mee te sturen waar programmatuur gevonden kan worden die wel met de open standaarden overweg kan, zoals document viewers of een conversie website.

If you live in “The Cloud” does the Operating System you use matter?

Of course it does. not. does. ah…wait…ah… shucks.

Suppose you made the decision to work completely in the cloud. (Just for the sake of argument, say that you want to. I’ll get into that in another post).

So in short, you would be using:

• Online mail service 
• Online calendaring service
• Online word processor, and spreadsheet functionality. 
• Social Networking sites (LinkedIn, Live, FaceBook, Plaxo, MySpace, Mevio, a nearly endless list of posibilities
• Other online services (games; research/reference; book a restaurant, your next holiday or tickets to a concert; find a location and plan your route to it; whatever is available).

Most of those sites will be capable of working with most modern browsers: Chrome, FireFox, Internet Explorer, Safari (alphabetical order ;-).

So then it shouldn’t matter on what Operating System said browser actually runs, now does it?

Well, it does matter. First of all, not all browsers are equal, neither are all operating systems. After having used Firefox extensively for a couple of years I can tell you, with some authority, that there is a small difference in experience with Firefox on Linux or Firefox on Windows XP. But the difference is small enough (smaller then the difference between the browsers).

No, the problem is going to be that you are going to want to do other things besides those in the cloud.

• Easy things like playing music. Most WIndows, Macs and Linux will play audio out of the box or with minimal tweaking.
• Slightly less easy things like playing DVD’s. While Windows and Macs will probably play DVD’s from the get go (or else will download the appropriate stuff when needed), a lot of linux distributions require you to jump through some hoops to get it.
• Difficult stuff like communicating / synchronizing with your Phone/PDA. I’m very fond of my iPhone (no, Hans? really?) but I can only synchronize with it using iTunes which only runs on Windows or on a Mac and not on my personal OS of choice Linux.
• Stuff like scanning documents and pages. Again, unless you are lucky and your scanner happens to be properly supported in Linux.
• Stuff like working with Photo’s or movies. Everyone has a favorite program to work with photo’s or edit those movies. And a lot of those programs will be bound to a certain operating system. (I am going a bit out on a limb here, cause I don’t use much of this and Picasa will work on anything).

iPhone firmware 2.2.1 update woes

After upgrading to the latest firmware on my iPhone (from version 2.2 to version 2.2.1) I noticed that my battery drained noticeably faster. After being fully charged I only worked with the iPhone for a couple of minutes to make a dent in the battery (visually, at say between 80% and 90%).

After a couple of days of this I remembered reading a similar article of this happening after the 2.2 upgrade. That was traced back to push notification in the e-mail settings. Apparently this setting got 'stuck' after the upgrade.

I had e-mail set to fetch every 30 minutes before the upgrade. Might that have been the same problem.

Apparently it was. After deleting both my e-mail accounts on the iPhone and re-enabling them the problem went away.

The Joy Of Using An Iphone: Fring

Today I learned a new use for my iPhone, a finally learned to put the Fring application to good use.

Before today I considered it about as good as the google talk mobile interface (an iPhone optimized website). But with a much more cluttered user interface.

Well, the interface is still the same, but I finally found out what makes Fring really good. A friend of mine also started using Fring and we could link up using our Fring accounts. After that, if I want to contact him, fring will find the best way to connect to him, be itvgiogle talk, msn, or Skype or the Fring VoiP service.

What's even better is that even though the iPhones' screen goes dark after a minute or so, the application actually keeps ok running so my contacts can still reach me using chat even if I am not actively using my iPhone at the moment.

And both of these facts make Fring all of a sudden a very interesting application for me..

Posted with LifeCast

Space Needle in Seattle

It certainly is a spectactular view from the Space Needle.

Happy New Year

Gelukkig nieuw jaar
Best wishes for 2009.

Posted with LifeCast

Teammeeting (eating). The ISA team from Logica Public Sector

The iPhone Experience

Since Wednesday I am the proud owner of an iPhone 3G.
What I have seen so far makes me honestly believe that the iPhone (and possibly the Android, but I have no hands on experience with it) is actually a landslide in the mobile device area. The user interfa de of the Apple device combined with the hardware sensors and the enthousiastic developer community makes the iphone do things that seemed until recently only far fetched drems for any mobile device.

Even if the possibilities of some applications are (at the moment) still somewhat limited, they point the way to how extremely usefull a handheld mobile device can *really* be.

Testing From iPhone

This is a blogging test from my iPhone.
Please ignore.

Geolocate this post

Posted with LifeCast

Lessons from Mumbai

This is from Bruce Schneier's Blog. In short:

1. Spend the money and effort in counter-terrorism in the right way
2. Refuse to be terrorised

from Bruce's site:

Lessons from Mumbai

I'm still reading about the Mumbai terrorist attacks, and I expect it'll be a long time before we get a lot of the details. What we know is horrific, and my sympathy goes out to the survivors of the dead (and the injured, who often seem to get ignored as people focus on death tolls). Without discounting the awfulness of the events, I have some initial observations:

• Low-tech is very effective. Movie-plot threats -- terrorists with crop dusters, terrorists with biological agents, terrorists targeting our water supplies -- might be what people worry about, but a bunch of trained (we don't really know yet what sort of training they had, but it's clear that they had some) men with guns and grenades is all they needed.

...

• Specific countermeasures don't help against these attacks. None of the high-priced countermeasures that defend against specific tactics and specific targets made, or would have made, any difference: photo ID checks, confiscating liquids at airports, fingerprinting foreigners at the border, bag screening on public transportation, anything. Even metal detectors and threat warnings didn't do any good

...

If there's any lesson in these attacks, it's not to focus too much on the specifics of the attacks. ... Intelligence, investigation, and emergency response. We have to find and stop the terrorists before they attack, and deal with the aftermath of the attacks we don't stop. There really is no other way, and I hope that we don't let the tragedy lead us into unwise decisions about how to deal with terrorism.

Rowan Atkinson as a virtual drummer

This is an old one, but never the less it is fun and very, very difficult to get right.

http://www.biertijd.com/mediaplayer/?itemid=3657


Or below for a youtube version.

Rowan Atkinson - Invisible Drum Kit

The Matrix -- Windows XP style

Found this via Dvorak.org. Hillarious.

Original from at CollegeHumor.

Positivity.

From an article on Canada One

Lately our everyday reality seems to leave little room for optimism. People around the world are suffering from very real natural and personal crises. Our TV's and newspapers are packed with sadness and fear.

In times like these it is very important to hold tight to a powerful life success tool – optimism.

Why optimism? Because optimism physically lights up a very important portion of your brain that increases your ability to create positive answers to challenges.

Positivity is good, of course, we all know that. But everyone can use a little dose of optimism every once in a while.

Also, there is this video by the Vietnamise Buddhist Monk Thich Nhat Hanh that basically tell you to find the thing you can be happy with.

"Star Wars" an a capalla tribute to John Williams

O.M.G. This is Brilliant.

"Star Wars" - an a capella tribute to John Williams

Wordle -or- what my site looks like

Funny. I kind of rediscoverd the site wordle.net. It can generate a word cloud a shown here (click through to see a bigger picture). This picture was created by giving it the RSS feed for this blog. I particularly liked this one because the word Ubuntu has kind of the same colour as the Ubuntu desktop.

During my experimentation I fed it the text of an article I am writing (in Dutch, for Computable magazine). It visually shown me that I was a little too fond of the word "moeten" (either must or shall in English). I feel another rewrite coming up...

So, what does your site looks like?

Ubuntu upgrade: The Day After

After all the trouble of getting a "normal" KDE to run on Intrepid Ibex. I have now used this Ubuntu version for two days for regular work. The following issues arose:

• No screensaver: apt-get install xscreensaver solved that one.
• The upgrade killed my local Wiki installation (mediawiki).
• OpenOffice.org is complaining that the Java installtion is non-functional.

The Wiki problem is tougher to get right since it wrote over the original files. The information is not lost. The database still exists and is still valid, but the code is jumbled and doesn't work anymore. I am now trying to decide whether I make the effort of restoring it or make the effort to go to a file based information system.

The advantage of a file based system is that searches are easier. I can use find/grep or Beagle or Google Desktop for Linux. It is easier to store whatever content you like, in whatever format you like.

The disadvantage of a file based knowledge / information system is that it is more difficult to make links between different pieces of the information. Using a tool like "Vim Outliner" might help a bit.

Ubuntu: The upgrade!

Yesterday I took the plunge and upgraded my primary system to the latest and greatest Ubuntu release. (From the 8.04 "Hardy Heron" to the 8.10 "Intrepid Ibex" edition).

Why upgrade.

Well, several reasons actually. First off, I like to be able to use "the latest and greatest" versions of software. And I have the feeling that I (will) have better access to the latest and the greatest programs if I also use the lastest and greatest operating system version.

Secondly, if I advise people to try out Linux, I usually advise Ubuntu. For someone who doesn't have any experience in Linux this is the 'de facto' easiest Linux to start with. Therefore, I need to know if this lastest Ubuntu version is any good or if they should stick with the previous version and wait a bit longer.

Why upgrade my primary system.

Mainly because I didn't have a spare Ubuntu install around somewhere. I used to have a lot of additional hardware. But most of what I now have is not suited for (desktop) Ubuntu.
And also, in a small part, because this will force me to actually try the new version and see if it is any good.

What happened.

I nearly screwed up my entire system. That's what happened. But, this was only because I was already using a heavily customised Ubuntu configuration. I have lots of customizations in file in the /etc directory, the FVWM window manager with my own configuration which uses parts from all over the system.

During the upgrade Ubuntu told me several times that it had newer versions of configuration files from the "/etc" directory, but that I had manually modified versions. And if I would be so kind to select the version to use. Which in itself is a very nice gesture (no automatic overrides). But it forced me to checkout all the offered files. Most of which I still think I had never seen before.

Then I left my laptop alone for too long and the screensaver (xscreensaver) engaged. Which did lock the screen, but since the package was already removed by the upgrade, it would no longer unlock. (And I knew the upgrade was not yet complete).

Finally Ubuntu was ready to reboot.

*GASP* OMG

After logging back into the system I noticed that
* I had no panel on the bottom of my screen. (I used the KDE3 "kicker" panel there).
* NO NETWORK. Maybe because of the missing panel (because the network monitor applet which should have been able to guide me onto the network wasn't shown).

Fortunately I do know my way around a Linux system and was able to get networking backup in only half an hour. Only to discover that THERE WAS NO KDE3 ANYMORE!

After some searching on the internet for clues how to start kicker on KDE4 (impossible) or how to enable the KDE4 panel (called Plasma apparently), I discovered that KDE4 no longer has a standalone panel. It wants to install a "desktop" as well (which turns into a full screen application in FVWM). After killing the desktop with the '-nodesktop' option. It still INSISTED on putting op a desktop background anyway (a full screen window in FVWM).

After searching fruitlessly for information on how to make Plasma behave better (useless) or how to make Plasma look better (also useless). I went looking for information on how to upgrade Ubuntu 8.10 to KDE3, from KDE4.

This "upgrade" also caused problems, eventually nearly dead-locking the package manager. This was only solvable by manually selecting all KDE packages and marking them for complete removal. After that I could install kde3.

Phew.

Finally.

So now I finally have Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex. Everything seems to work as usual, so far. I'll keep you posted about my experiences with it.

Just one of those coincidences, more ubuntu and music players

I was just looking at Manhattan (New York) in Google Earth with the 3D representation of the buildings, trying to find my way "through the air" when my music player (Amarok) produced the song: "Looking for a place to land" by Dakota Moon. And for a moment it really felt as if I was trying to find a place to land in downtown Manhattan. I have been using Ubuntu almost exclusively on my laptop since mid April 2008. I like it very much. I use the 8.04 version on my Lenovo T61 laptop and look forward to trying out the 8.10 version. Although I have kept to original Windows XP installation that came with the machine around, I don't use it much. I mainly run Windows to install the MMPs (Monthly Microsoft Patches). However, that may change when I buy an iPhone). I have tried just about every music player I could find in the Ubuntu archives. With fancy names like Banshee, RhythmBox and SoundJuicer or cryptic ones like XMMS, Xine and gmplayer. There is just one that, in my opinion, takes the price. Amarok.