Quick primer: phishing is email that pretends to be from some business or bank with which you might have an account, urging you to take some action to protect your account from a security risk. You click the link in the email — JUST DON'T DO THAT, OK? DID YOU HEAR ME? *D*O* *N*O*T* *C*L*I*C*K* *L*I*N*K*S* *I*N* *U*N*S*O*L*I*C*I*T*E*D* *E*M*A*I*L*!*!*!*!*!* — and it takes you to a fake site which looks like the real site for the business in question. And it says that to prove your identity and protect your account, you have to give it your bank account, credit card, Social Security number, etc. JUST DON'T DO THAT, OK? DID YOU HEAR ME? JUST DON'T DO THAT! You'll lose your bank account, your credit, and worse.

Here's rule one: if they sent you the message out of the blue and it includes a link, it's a phishing message. Don't click the link. JUST DON'T DO THAT, OK? DID YOU HEAR ME? JUST DON'T DO THAT!

OK, but now if you're curious, you can explore the phishing email. Hover the mouse over the link. If you've got a decent mail reader, you'll see the real address of the link. In the message, it might look like http://www.PayPal.com; but when you hover over it, you'll see something entirely different. That's proof positive that you're being phished. Don't click the link. JUST DON'T DO THAT, OK? DID YOU HEAR ME? JUST DON'T DO THAT! Often it will just be an IP address; and if you try to trace it down, you'll likely find it's in a foreign country.

Well, today I got an interesting one, because the phishing link wasn't an IP address; it was Google! Here it is, in part:

http://www.google.com/pagead/[Whole bunch of junk omitted]&adurl=http://[IP address cleverly encoded]/departament/index.php

I didn't put the whole thing here, because I don't want some moron somehow copying it into the browser and visiting the phishing site. JUST DON'T DO THAT, OK? DID YOU HEAR ME? JUST DON'T DO THAT!

But look at what they've done: they've highjacked the Google ads mechanism. Google ad images always include a link to redirect you to the advertiser. Well, instead they're making Google's servers do the work of forwarding you to their phishing site. So if you hover over the link, it looks semi-legit, because it is a legitimate Google link.

Except, of course, that the phishing email claimed to be from PayPal, not Google.

Still, someone gullible might believe the two companies were working together somehow. And so the "hover the mouse" technique might fail, since some readers will only show a short stretch of the total URL. The one with my Web mail, for example, only showed part of the address, not including the &adurl=http://[IP address cleverly encoded]/departament/index.php part. Microsoft Outlook 2007, on the other hand, shows all 209 characters of the URL.

So unless you're careful, the hover approach can still fail to alert you to a phishing address. There's really only one safe course: JUST DON'T CLICK THAT LINK, OK? DID YOU HEAR ME? JUST DON'T DO THAT!

When I'm traveling on my own dollar, I keep an eye out for Red Roof Inn. They're consistently at or near the lowest price of any national chain, and they're consistently clean and well-maintained, with courteous staff. Plus many of their locations are T-Mobile HotSpots, and I have a T-Mobile subscription, so I can get online there easily.

But there's Red Roof service, and then there's Red Roof service...

My new contract work is on a project with some pretty tight deadlines looming, so there are some long days lately. When the days are long enough or the weather nasty enough, I prefer to check into the local Red Roof than risk the trip home. A night there is $45, which is one-third the cost of a wrecker, so it's an easy decision.

Monday was a long day: 18 hours. So I decided to check in to Red Roof. I arrived around 5 a.m. (Tuesday, technically, but still Monday for me), got a room, slept, and checked out at noon.

Tuesday was a shorter day: only 14 hours. Still, that meant it was after 3 a.m., and I was tired. Another Red Roof night. I checked in around 3:30 a.m. (Wednesday, technically, but still Tuesday for me), got a room, and slept.

At just about noon, I got a call from the front desk. They told me they owed me some money, but I told them I was pretty sure we were square. Eventually I realized that they had recorded the Monday/Tuesday check-in as a Tuesday night stay with an early arrival. They said I had paid twice for one night; but I insisted that I had slept two nights and paid for two nights, and as far as I was concerned that was fair. I also said that if the unexpected blizzard continued, I would be back that night.

Well, the blizzard turned to rain, which made the slush nice and slick. And while my day was very short (only 9.5 hours), I was too tired to risk the roads. Back to Red Roof!

But when I got there, the night clerk had a note from the day clerk: if I showed up, my stay that night was already paid for. I explained why I thought I owed them money; but he insisted that their policies said I had paid for two nights and only used one so far. Finally, I decided that if they were going to insist on letting me sleep three nights for two payments, I wasn't going to argue with them. But I sure plan on telling people what good service they provide.

So if you find yourself stranded late at night in the Kalamazoo Portage area, I highly recommend Red Roof Inn West, conveniently close to Western Michigan University and other local attractions.

The color red is one that the cone cells in our eyes tend to be particularly sensitive to. This drawing is incredibly crude, and is drawn from fifteen-year-old memories, but it conveys the basic idea:



The red cones in the eye tend to respond more strongly than the other cones; and the green and blue cones tend to respond weakly even to light we would call red. So red is an attention grabber.

Now this is hardly news. Stop signs and stop lights are red for a reason, after all. Yellow pages sellers have long used red accents as an attention grabber. I've long noticed that when I drive red cars (which seem to have been around half the cars I've ever owned), people don't pull out in front of me as often, like they notice me more easily in the red car. (Now the deer, on the other hand, seem to be color blind.) And the auto industry has settled on red as the color for tail lights, and bright red as the color for brake lights, so that other drivers will notice the cars ahead of them and not run into them.

Not that that's news; but it's rather shocking to see the magnitude of this effect.

On an average week day, this blog receives around 70 unique visits. On a weekend day, it's around 50. And among those visits, by far the most common topics that bring visitors are:

• Insufficient system resources exist to complete the API. That post receives from five to ten visits every single day. This problem is affecting a lot of people. Microsoft, are you listening?


• People searching for pictures of NASA spacecraft, particularly from the Apollo era.


• People searching for information on Gateway Tablet PCs.


• People searching for UML info.


• People searching for .NET programming info.


• People searching for pictures of actors. And boy, are they disappointed when they find that page! But that may be the single most common search item that brings people to my site.

So this is a low-traffic site. By contrast, Dean Esmay's site gets about 30,000 visitors per day. I'm definitely small potatoes compared to Dean.

On Wednesday, Dean linked to this post under the title "Little Mosque on the Prairie". Dean's World is a bit of a hot spot on the topic of Islam and how it's perceived vs. how it is. Opinions there differ pretty strongly. That should be a place where a link on this subject should draw some attention.

On Wednesday, my site had around 120 visitors, or around 50 more than usual; and on Thursday, my site had around 100 visitors, or around 30 more than usual. Some number of people have followed links from Dean's World since then. Let's call it around 100 visitors from the Dean's World link.

On Friday, Dean linked to this post under the title "Booth Babes".

And by 6:30 a.m. Friday, my site had received 55 visits for the day, most through Dean's link. By the end of the day, I had received 350 visitors, or 280 more than my average. By the end of Saturday, I had received 120 visits, or 70 more than my average for a weekend day. Midway through today, I've already received 50 visits (my usual Sunday average), and 22 of those were to that post. So that's around 370 visitors for that topic, vs. 100 for "Little Mosque on the Prairie".

So maybe Sharp had a point in using their Booth Babes. It still seems like a wrong approach to me, distracting from the incredibly large TV image. Some have suggested that the ladies are useful for framing the image in photographs, providing a sense of scale. That's true enough for the photos. Maybe the ladies were mostly there for that purpose. But that's for photographs. On the show floor itself, the TV should have sold itself.

As one commenter at Dean's said, the ladies should've been on the TV for maximum attention.

It caught my eye with a commercial. I had been watching a CBC interview show that promised an interview with Alan Rickman. I've been a fan since Die Hard; and just that day, I had watched the last half of the most excellent Something the Lord Made. So I watched Canadian TV, something I don't normally do.

And at the commercial break, I noticed curling, that curious sport that involves sliding a stone across the ice and sweeping a path to smooth it along. I've never understood the sport, but I always found it interesting to watch. So the commercial started with a quintessentially Canadian scene: a curling stone being swept down the ice. Then it cut to a Muslim man shouting coaching and encouragement to the sweepers. And then it cut to the sweepers: two head-scarved Muslim women feverishly sweeping the ice before the stone. And finally, it cut to some locals staring open-mouthed, trying to comprehend this juxtaposition. That commercial beautifully encapsulated the culture-clash premise of the show, and I had to learn more about this strange new show, Little Mosque on the Prairie.

So I went to the Web site to learn more. They have some character descriptions, some cast bios, and some clips. Ali Eteraz thought the one joke was cheesy, but I thought it was funnier than typical sitcom jokes, a nice bit of wordplay. And I thought the clips of Amaar Rashid (Zaib Shaikh) in the airport were quite good. So I was looking forward to tonight's premier.

But when all is said and done, all I can say so far is: it's a sitcom.

Some of the jokes were quite good. Some were average. Some were flat. In other words, a sitcom. I haven't decided if it's the writing or his delivery, but I got the most laughs out of Zaib Shaikh as brother Amaar. I dare say that he'll make the show, if anyone can. Unlike a typical American sitcom, there was no one who was an absolute idiot (save perhaps for one minor character), and I'm happy to say there was no wise wife/dolt husband couple, which has become the most boring cliche on American TV.

This is a show about culture clash, but not just Muslim/Canadian culture clash. Amaar has trouble adjusting to life in the small prairie town of Mercy, because he has spent his life in Toronto and other world capitols. He's a cosmopolitan dumped into a rural enclave, and he just expects too much. Meanwhile, the local Muslims are just as bad, looking down their noses at him because he's a City Mouse in the Country.

And of course, there's Muslim/Canadian clashing. I think it's a bit exaggerated when one local freaks out because he sees Muslims praying in the church community hall, but it's a necessary part of the situation of this sitcom. The local radio show host Fred Tupper (Neil Crone) is a rather broad parody of hate radio, but not nearly as broad as, say, Michael Savage. And there's bigotry on the other side as well: the former Imam Baber Siddiqui (Manoj Sood) assumes the worst from every non-Muslim he sees.

But there are decent, well-meaning characters as well. Besides Amaar, there's Reverend Duncan McGee (Derek McGrath), who tries to set an example of communication and understanding. There's Fatima Dinssa (Arlene Duncan), who runs the local diner and takes joy in deflating egos. There's Yasir Hamoudi (Carlo Rota), who's a bit of a schemer and a scoundrel; but he must have his lovable side, because his wife Sarah (Sheila McCarthy) finds something to love in him. And there's their daughter Rayyan (Sitara Hewitt), who's a devout Muslim and looks fated to be the voice of reason on the show.

It wasn't earth-shattering, but it was decent enough to watch again. Some of the jokes were hard for a non-Muslim to grasp: I sort of understand the difficulty of calculating the start of Ramadan, for example, but I'll bet Muslims appreciated the humor more. As Wikipedia explains, "Most Muslims insist on the local physical sighting of the moon to mark the beginning of Ramadan, but some insist on using the calculated time of the new moon or the Saudi Arabian declaration to determine the start of the month. As a result, Ramadan dates vary in different countries, but usually only by a day or two." The characters argue over the best approach, with one using a telescope, one wanting to check a Web site, one wanting to eyeball it, one wanting to call Saudi Arabia, and Yasir shouting, "Not with my cell minutes!"

But Amaar's Ramadan sermon crossed cultural lines, mixing humor and humility and warmth. At the same time, it told a little of what Ramadan means to Muslims. It was a good close for the show.

As far as I can tell, nobody goes unskewered in this show: Muslim and Islamophobe, Christian and Christophobe, City Mouse and Country Mouse, men and women. And none of it seemed vicious; rather, it was good-natured jabs to remind people to laugh at themselves and each other. Because after all, "Muslims around the world are known for their sense of humor." "I did not know that."

I look forward to hearing some Muslim opinions on this show.

In a complete lack of political correctness, they're called "booth babes": women with model-quality looks, hired to stand in your trade show booth and draw attention to your products that might otherwise get overlooked. They're usually well-endowed, and they're usually dressed on the thin line between business casual and vamp. Sometimes they cross that line. It's a crass technique, but it works, especially in the tech world, where men still outnumber women by quite a bit. Just ask my marketing friend Lauren, who has never worked as a booth babe herself (at least not that she has admitted), but who won't hesitate to hire them. (She once told of meeting the official West Coast spokesmodel for Barbie, who was working as a booth babe at one of our shows. Apparently, there's big money in booth babing.)

One of my favorite blogs is Ron Coleman's Likelihood of Confusion, which (mostly) deals with his specialty: Intellectual Property (IP) law. Being in the IP business myself (with both software and books), I like to be better educated on that legal front. I learned a lot about the topic through time spent on the Open Gaming Foundation lists, but I've learned more from Ron. Tonight, I'm going to get a little hubristic, and actually step into Ron's specialty with something which has amused me on many a visit to my in-laws' house.

To lay the groundwork, I first have to explain the name of Ron's blog — excuse me, the award-winning name of Ron's blog. And to explain that, I have to delve into the ideas behind trademark. As I posted before (I told you this topic interests me):

Well, to understand what the big deal is, you have to understand the purpose of trademarks, a subject which is often misunderstood (even by people who should know better). If owner A has a trademark on the word "SKDLF", that means that manufacturer B is forbidden from calling his similar product "SKDLF". Now in a country which enshrines freedom of speech in the First Amendment to the Constitution, why should we countenance such a restriction on what manufacturer B can say? Why should we restrict manufacturer B's freedom of speech for the protection of owner A?

And there is where the misunderstanding comes in: trademark law is not about protecting the owners of the trademarks; it's about protecting the consumers from confusion. It's about ensuring that when consumer C buys a product labeled "SKDLF", he's buying a real "SKDLF". The relevant standard in determining whether a trademark has been infringed is called likelihood of confusion. (This is why Ron Coleman, a trademark lawyer whose writings I always find interesting, calls his blog Likelihood of Confusion.) A famous example of this principle was a case in which a floor mat manufacturer was found not to be infringing Ford's trademark by selling a floor mat with the Ford logo. Not just the name, the actual logo! In deciding the case, the court essentially said that "No consumer will ever confuse this floor mat with a Ford car." If trademark law were about protecting the trademark owner, Ford would have won this case; but instead, the court judged based on the rights of the consumer, and the floor mats were allowed.

Well, every time we go to Sandy's parents' house, I see an amusing example of unlikelihood of confusion at work.

I know some people find them hokey; but when I was a kid, I liked the interrelated CBS "rural" comedies: Petticoat Junction, The Beverly Hillbillies, and especially Green Acres. Green Acres was always my favorite, because it was so surreal: Arnold, the world's smartest pig; Lisa, the loopy Hungarian socialite; Eb, the clueless farm boy; Mr. Haney, the vaudevillian con artist; the Monroe twins, who never finished a construction job; Mr. Kimball, the bizarre county ag agent; and in the middle of all this loopiness was Oliver Wendell Douglas, played by the inimitable Eddie Albert. He was the sane, rational, but more than a bit pretentious "normal" person who looked down his nose at the bizarre things the other characters thought or said; but the more bizarre the idea, the more you could be sure that the odd thing would actually come to pass.

And I loved that opening, with the sweeping view across the farm to the barn, as Eddie Albert sings out, "Greeeeeeeeen Acres, it's the place to be! Faaaaaaarm living, it's the life for me. Land spreadin' out, so far and wide! Keep Manhattan, just gimme that countryside!" Man, that man could sing!

So when we drove through the town of Greenville and I first saw a new retirement living home called Green Acres, the first thing that immediately came to my mind was, "It's the place to be!"

And there, in a sub-head under the name, was the proud declaration: "It's the place to be!"

Now there's one very clear reason why this can't easily be a trademark infringement: CBS (who aired the program) and Filmways (who produced it) don't seem to have ever registered the name as a trademark. (In fact, a number of other companies have, in various fields of business.)

But even if they had registered the mark, I doubt they could claim infringement based on likelihood of confusion in this case. I doubt that anyone passing through the tiny town of Greenville and seeing that sign is going to think, "Hey! That's that 40-year-old TV show!" Even with the famous tag line, there's just not much chance of confusing a retirement living home with a TV show (much like the Ford floormats would never be confused with a Ford truck). So this strikes me as a pretty clever way to target people with an allusion to a show from their youth. Literary and cultural allusions are part of our shared heritage and form a sort of second-order common language. The folks at Green Acres are putting that language to good use.

There may be other hypothetical grounds for an infringement claim of a hypothetical Green Acres trademark. Ron tells me there's this relatively recent concept of infringing a trademark by trademark dilution:

Dilution differs from normal trademark infringement in that there is no need to prove a likelihood of confusion to protect a mark. Instead, all that is required is that use of a "famous" mark by a third party causes the dilution of the "distinctive quality" of the mark.

That might (hypothetically) be grounds for a trademark infringement claim. Look at the considerations for a "famous" mark (notes added):

Under the terms of the Act, courts may look at the following factors in determining whether a mark is famous:

1. The duration and extent of use of the mark; Six seasons of prime time TV, plus decades of reruns, plus now episodes for sale on DVD.


2. The duration and extent of advertising for the mark; Six seasons of prime time TV ads.


3. The geographic area in which the mark has been used; World wide, I'm sure. The US, at a minimum.


4. The degree of distinctiveness of the mark (either through the nature of the mark itself, or through acquired distinctiveness); OK, I don't think it's all that distinctive.


5. The degree of recognition of the mark; Go ahead, say "Green Acres" to random people on the street, and see how many people remember it. I'll bet it's a lot.


6. The method by which the product was distributed and marketed (the "channels of trade"); Broadcast TV.


7. The use of the mark by third parties; OK, this weakens the case a lot, since there are many third party uses. and


8. Whether the mark was federally registered. It never was, of course; but for our hypothetical, we're assuming it was.

So I could imagine a hypothetical dilution claim, but not a hypothetical confusion claim. Personally, I'm not sure I like this whole dilution concept. It shifts trademark law from protecting consumers to protecting trademark holders. I think that's a step in the wrong direction. But who am I? Just an average individual consumer. Apparently the trademark owners have more influence in Congress.

So for Christmas, besides a super-cool Superman Returns lunch box with the two-disc Superman Returns DVD inside (and dang, I can't find a link for that lunch box online anywhere!), Sandy got me The Tick vs. Season One, available on DVD at long last (and for sale by Disney, not Fox, where the shows originally aired — no idea how that happened). And I was reading the back, and saw a little asterisked notice: "Does not include episode 11".

Well, that made me curious, so I went to TV.com and found that episode 11 is The Tick vs. the Mole Men. I remembered that episode: it involved a beautiful supermodel named Mindy who was pursued by a bunch of subterranean Molemen, who were themselves pursued by the evil Lava King. It turns out that the lead Mole Man is in love with Mindy, who actually is a visitor from the mole lands herself. Once the Lava King is defeated, Mindy returns to be the Mole Queen.

So that left me wondering: why leave that episode out? And that led me to this discussion and a bit of unofficial speculation:

""The Tick vs. The Mole Men" features an unauthorized use of Cindy Crawford's likeness, that's why it will not be included

Officially, the episode is missing for "creative considerations", and "may appear in a later collection". But ya know, I've seen this episode maybe half a dozen times; and I just realized that Mindy Moleford does indeed have a prominent mole, just like some other supermodel.

On the other hand, Comics2Film insists that's not the reason, and that there's another reason that they do know but won't discuss because that would complicate legal negotiations between the parties. I can't imagine who else might have an opinion on this episode...

It's a cliche, but it's generally true that kids adopt computers faster than older people do. They don't have any fear that they might do something wrong and make the computer catch on fire, which seems to be in the back of the mind of every reluctant adult computer user. (I tell them and tell them that they can't make the computer catch on fire, but they just don't seem to believe it.) We've all heard the same story: "My kid (or grandkid) is a wiz with computers, but I can't figure them out."

So I'm always inspired when an older person belies the stereotype and jumps wholeheartedly into the technology. There's no reason computers shouldn't empower people of all ages. So I like to collect the opposite kind of stories: "Oh, this sixty-year-old grandmother's running her investment club's web site." Every time some older person gives me the "My grandkid" speech, I like to use these stories to show that they can use computers, too.

But this one... This one surprised even me. And inspired me.

Imagine you're a 60-year-old man. You've had a career you're proud of, but it doesn't seem to be going as well these days. Honestly, you could probably retire now, if you wanted to; but you're still active and still curious about the world around you. You're not ready for the pasture yet.

And then you see this computer; but it's a little different from the ones you've seen in business. It's one of those new-fangled microcomputers; only instead of the plain text screens on the IBM PCs around, this one has a bright, full-color screen with — flying toasters. This little Commodore Amiga is doing sophisticated computer animation.

Well, you've always had a fondness for animation, so you buy an Amiga. And while some Amiga users are just playing games with theirs, at the age of 60 you begin self-study in the art of computer animation. You never went to college, or anything; but you're bright and have been successful in your field, so you can figure this stuff out. You find it an amusing hobby, and you love it.

Fast forward almost 20 years. You're nearly 80. Your primary career has actually blossomed into a whole new phase, keeping you pretty busy. In fact, your last big gig ran an incredible eight years, beating your record for any job earlier in your career.

And yet still you've found time to keep up with computer animation. You've done some stuff to amuse yourself and your family, and people are pretty impressed. At an age when a lot of people think computers are just not for their generation, you harbor a dream to some day do an animated feature, or at least a Christmas special. Heck, you even have a professional animation credit to your name, having sold one special effects scene to the CBS show Diagnosis Murder.




Thanks to IP Maven Ron Coleman for accidentally leading me down this trail.

Still exploring. Updates soon, I hope.

I've reluctantly come to the conclusion that Mitch Albom is a shallow, mediocre hack. Oh, he's a likable hack; but after listening to WJR for a couple of months for the excellent traffic reports, I have to conclude that he doesn't have many original topics on his show. Rather, he has the same topics as on too many other shows; but then he puts his unique "spin" on it, claiming to be above it all by asking, "Why is everybody talking about this?"

Last week, he was pulling that same bit with regards to the latest celebrity "news"; and he spent at least a whole show segment on it, in between complaining about how everyone was talking about this drivel. And he actually had a brief flash of honesty, saying, "Yes, I admit, we're talking about it." But then he tried to excuse himself by adding, "But only because everybody else is talking about it. No matter where you turn, you can't escape it."

Yes, Mr. Albom, I can. As soon as you said that, I hit the FM button, and jumped to All Things Considered. Somehow, over the course of a two hour news show, they never got around to that story you said you were only talking about because you couldn't escape it.

It's one thing to be an average, likable radio host. It's another thing to pretend to be all superior while talking about the exact same thing as all the other hosts.

I've found an affordable hotel four miles from my client site, so I no longer need WJR's excellent traffic reports; and I haven't missed the Mitch Albom show at all. I've had time to listen to great world music or great comedy CDs from Bob Newhart. Now there's some fresh material: forty years old, but still fresh.

OK, this may be old news to some of you; and it's obvious, once you think about it. But it's news to me, so I want to pass it along.

The topic is WiFi Evil Twins. What's a WiFi Evil Twin, you ask? That's when some thief goes to a public WiFi hotspot area and sets up a new public WiFi network with the same or similar name, in hopes of getting people to sign in through his WiFi instead of the public one. Then he can attempt to upload viruses, record traffic, capture credit card information, etc. Usually he uses a stronger antenna, so that you're more likely to find his network than the legitimate network.

There are variations on this. One might be called the Evil One: he doesn't duplicate the existing network, he just creates a new network. As this interview with Anne P. Mitchell, Esq. (Professor of Internet Law at Lincoln Law School of San Jose, and the President and CEO of the Institute for Spam and Internet Public Policy) explains:

Anne: Yes. Just last week I was sitting in my local Starbucks, where they offer wifi hotspots from T-Mobile. In order to log into a T-Mobile hotspot, you must have an account with T-Mobile, for which you must pay.

Even though I don't use the T-Mobile hotspots, I always check (with my laptop) to see what wifi hotspots are available at any given location because, well, that's part of my beat.

Sure enough, users at that Starbucks who opened their laptops and searched for a local wifi Internet connection were presented with the option of "T-Mobile Hotspot," as they should be, but were also presented with a second option, called "Free Wifi from Team WiFi," which I am 99% certain was an evil twin (and indeed Starbucks confirmed that there was no special offer going on which would have otherwise explained that second hotspot).

Now, notice a few things about this second, uninvited hotspot. First, it uses the term "free wifi." Who wouldn't want to use that, especially compared to the T-Mobile hotspot, where you have to pay?

Second, though, note the friendly and familiar sounding "Team WiFi." By using familiar terms for their evil twin, along with telling people it is free, they are making it very easy for an unsuspecting user to go ahead and click and connect to that evil twin. In fact, users may just think that it's a special offer from the T-Mobile Hotspot people.

Sure enough, Audri, this evil twin caught some people. As the gentleman who was sitting next to me got up to leave, after being on his computer for quite some time, I asked him whether he had logged in to the Internet while he was there.

When he said that he had, I asked him whether he was a T-Mobile user. "Oh no," he replied, "they have a free wifi hotspot set up here."

I advised him that it was almost certainly an evil twin, and that if he had done anything online while logged in through that "free" hotspot which might have compromised any sensitive information, he should take immediate measures to remedy the situation, such as changing any passwords he had sent while logged in.

And for me, this is more than just theory: I'm pretty sure I've met an Evil Twin in the wild. A hotel I've been staying at offers free WiFi (more and more of them do these days — it's a lot cheaper than stringing wires to the rooms). They have three WiFi hubs: "hotel name", "hotel name2", and "hotel name3" (names changed because I'm not sure I'm right yet). That's what the owner believes, anyway; but when I check for available networks, there's a fourth network, named "Hotel Name". And it has a stronger signal than any of the other hubs. What's more, when I connect to the other three hubs, they all give me the same IP address; but when I (carefully and briefly) connect to the fourth hub, it gives me a radically different IP address on an entirely different subnet.

So what should I do about it? That's troublesome. From the interview with Ms. Mitchell:

At this point your readers may be wondering why I didn't alert the authorities. And this is why user education is so very important.

There really was nobody for me to effectively alert. I could have called the police, but they would not have had the resources to even figure out where this evil twin was located, let alone to figure out who and how it was being done. The best thing I could do at that point was to let people know not to use that hotspot.

While I'm all for user education — that's why I'm telling you this — I'm not so complacent as Ms. Mitchell about informing the police. Michigan's Attorney General has made fighting Internet crime a priority, so I've informed their High Tech Crime Unit. It may be a waste of time; but if I don't try, I'll always worry that someone might be getting ripped off, and I didn't do anything to stop it.

Now back to the subject of user education: here are some things you can do to protect yourself.

1. When in doubt, don't do it. These scammers are good. This is how they make their living. If you don't feel comfortable trying to detect and outwit the scammers, then don't do anything at a WiFi hotspot. Certainly don't enter any passwords, credit card numbers, etc. Save that work for when you have a direct connection. I'm not saying you should never use WiFI; I'm saying that if you don't want to take the time to learn how to protect yourself, then you should never use WiFi.


2. Always download the latest security updates from Windows Update. Set up your machine to download the updates automatically. Don't tell me you're too busy. If you're too busy, then stay off WiFi. In fact, stay off the Internet, period. The scammers are working hard to find new victims, and you're volunteering to be one. And don't tell me that the updates "break" your machine. While I'll grant that's possible, it's most likely something you're doing wrong, and you need to fix. I've had automatic updates activated on all of my machines for years, and I've never had a problem.


3. Turn on your Windows firewall.


4. Download and install Windows Defender.


5. Install a good antivirus/Internet security package, such as McAfee or Symantec, and keep it up to date.


6. Install a spyware blocker like Ad-Aware or Spybot. In fact, install both of them. They're free, and they seem to complement each other well. And yes, Windows Defender and McAfee and Symantec all have adware/spyware blockers as well; but since each product has its own strengths and weaknesses, it can't hurt to have multiple layers of protection.


7. Despite my advocating Ad-Aware and Spybot, be careful with "free" software. Software takes time to develop. Time is money. Although we programmers will often write code for fun or passion, the most common motivation is money. If someone's offering it to you for free, it's very likely because he hopes to make money somewhere else. In many cases, that's by selling ads through adware/spyware; but sometimes, it's by installing viruses and keyboard recorders to steal your banking information. If you're installing "free" software, make sure you trust the company or person that's providing it.


8. Change your WiFi settings to Paranoid (i.e., safe). This will involve several steps:
   
   
   
   1. Open up your network connections by selecting Show All Connections from your Start menu:
      
      
      
   
   
   2. When you see the Network Connections dialog, right-click your wireless connection and select Properties:
      
      
      
   
   
   3. You should see the Wireless Network Connection Properties dialog:
      
      
      
      Switch to the Wireless Networks tab:
      
      
      
   
   
   4. Click the Advanced button to open the Advanced wireless settings dialog:
      
      
      
      This lets you choose from three different ways to access WiFi networks:
      
      
      
      
      • Any available network (access point preferred). This means that you will connect either to wirless hubs or to other wireless computers, but you'll prefer wireless hubs.
      
      
      • Access point (infrastructure) networks only. This means that you will connect only to wirless hubs.
      
      
      • Computer-to-computer (ad-hoc) networks only. This means that you will connect only to other wireless computers.
      
      
      
      Unless you know you're intending to work with friends or coworkers and plan to meet somewhere without a WiFi network, it's always a bad idea to connect to other wireless computers. That's the easiest way to get viruses; and it's a very easy way to get hoodwinked by an Evil Twin: the scammer doesn't even have to set up a hub, just rename his computer to look like a network. The Paranoid setting here is Access point (infrastructure) networks only. Choose that one unless you're sure you have a reason not to.
      
      This dialog also has a check box: Automatically connect to non-preferred networks. For added Paranoia, make sure that box isn't checked.
      
      When you're done in this dialog, click Close. But don't close the Wireless Network Connection Properties dialog. You'll do more work there in the next step.
      
   
   
   
   
9. Next you want to disable automatic connection to all of your WiFi networks, or at least to most of them. Your home network is probably safe, as are those of your friends, and your office; but even in those places, if there are neighbors nearby, there's the chance of an Evil Twin. So the Paranoid (i.e., safe) approach is to only make manual connections. Now if you're like me, you probably already have a number of known Wireless connections; and if Evil Twins are as new to you as they are to me, then those are probably set up for automatic connection. So you'll need to switch those to manual, following these steps for each network:
   
   
   
   
   1. In the Wireless Network Connection Properties dialog, select the network you would like to change:
      
      
      
      After you select the network, click Properties. You should see the Properties dialog for the selected network:
      
      
      
   
   
   2. Select the Connection tab:
      
      
      
      Uncheck the box that says Connect when this network is in range, and then click OK.
      
      Repeat this for every wireless network. Then click OK in the Wireless Network Connection Properties dialog as well.
      
   
   
   
   
   Once you've disabled automatic connection, you'll need to connect manually to any network. To do this, right-click the wireless network connection icon and select View Available Wireless Networks:
   
   
   
   You'll see the Wireless Network Connection dialog:
   
   
   
   Select the network you want to connect to, and click Connect.
   


10. While you're in the Wireless Network Connection dialog, search for Evil Twins. If you see two networks with the same name, one is probably an Evil Twin. If you see a network with a seductive name like "Free Wifi from Team WiFi," that's probably an Evil One. Here's a hint: Internet service isn't free. If a cafe or restaurant or hotel puts in WiFi service, it's because they're hoping it will bring them customers. And the only way it can bring them customers is if customers know about it. That means they'll advertise it with signs on the wall or the front door. If you don't see an advertisement for it, it's probably an Evil One. And if there's both a fee-based service like T-Mobile and a "free" service, the "free" service is almost conclusively an Evil One. When in doubt, ask the management. If they don't know about it — or they're clueless and say, "I don't know anything about the wireless" — assume it's an Evil One.


11. If you think you've found an Evil Twin or an Evil One, I disagree with Ms. Mitchell: inform your Attorney General. They get our tax follars to pursue cybercrime, but they can't be everywhere. If they don't know about the crime, they can't pursue it. Maybe nothing will come of it, and the criminals may keep commiting their crimes; but if no one does anything, then they will keep commiting their crimes. I understand why Ms. Mitchell would inform other patrons that they were at risk. Of course, it takes some chutzpah to start telling random strangers in a cafe that they're at risk; and worse, it may also upset the scammer, and he may take steps to shut you up. And even if you inform the management, it's possible that someone in management is the scammer. I think it's best to leave law enforcement to the law enforcement authorities. Tell your AG.

Robert A. Heinlein once wrote: "Anything free is worth what you pay for it." My cynical addition is "If you're lucky." That "free" WiFi could end up costing you everything you've got in your bank account, and a whole lot more.

UPDATE: My lone commenter and fellow Duelist Epee Bill links to this more serious WiFi vulnerability. It's a WiFi driver flaw affecting laptops from Dell, HP, and Gateway, as well as other devices. Because it's driver-level code, it works at a privileged level in your system and can give a hacker complete control.

The catch is no one's distributing the fix through typical "push" channels. You have to know about it and go pull it down.

Velcro belt straps are a conspiracy by cell phone manufacturers to sell lots of replacement phones.

Ditto belt clips that easily slide onto the belt... and easily slide off. (For novelty, some of them break off.)

Ditto tiny phones that easily fit into a pocket... and easily slip out.

And rule one of the conspiracy is simple: never, ever, ever, ever, ever offer a simple closed loop that you can thread your belt through.

Alan Stewart Carl writes that There Is No Vital Center. Dean Esmay links and expands upon this, concluding:

In short: centrism doesn't really exist as a philosophy, but it's still vital. ;-)

In other words, it's the color purple: it isn't there, even though we see it.

Now to you physicists and other science geeks, this will be old news; but bear with me as I explain some color science to the audience.

Light has a frequency and a wavelength, which are interrelated through the speed of light, c. If I know the frequency, I know the wavelength, and vice versa. So we only need to look at one. Most common is to look at wavelength, commonly measured in nanometers (nm), or 10 to the power of -9 meters. And when it comes to visible light, the wavelength tells you a color. So for instance, light at 700 nm is red, light at 546.1 nm is green, and light at 435.8 nm is blue. And then there are shades in between: light at 570 nm — a point between red and green — is yellow, while light at 490 nm is cyan.

But there's absolutely no wavelength of light that is purple.

Now all of you wearing purple socks right now are looking at your feet kinda funny and wondering, "What is Martin talking about? I can see those purple socks!" Yes; but what you're seeing, doesn't really exist. To understand why, we have to look at what color light really is, and at how we see color.

First, what color is light, really? Well, with certain rare exceptions — i.e., laser beams and slivers of a rainbow — the answer is "lots". Normal light, from the sun or a light bulb or a flame or whatever — actually is made up of a spread of colors across the spectrum. If you see a blue car, most of the light you see reflected from it is blue; but there's some small amount of green and yellow and red and orange, usually; and even if there's only blue, there's a wide range of shades of blue. Unless something acts to spread the wavelengths out (like a rainbow or a prism) or selectively generate only one wavelength (like a laser), you never get just one color of light. You get a range.

Now how do we see color? Well, that's something I spent a lot of time on in my misspent youth. In an exceedingly simplified version, the cone cells in your eye — assuming you have normal color vision — come in three different varieties. One is most sensitive to red light, one to green, and one to blue. But notice that I said "most" sensitive to, not "only" sensitive to. Much like a given light spreads across the spectrum, so a given type of cone cell responds very strongly at one wavelength and then less and less strong as you get away from that wavelength. So if we go back to yellow at 570 nm, both the red cones and the green cones will respond strongly to that light. Either type would respond more strongly if we were at its "target" color; but since yellow is kinda in the middle, both respond pretty strongly, making yellow a "bright" color that really stands out. And sure enough, when you mix red and green light, you get yellow light. (If that's not the way you learned color mixing, let me give you the short answer: colors of light don't mix the same way colors of paint do. More later, but only if you insist.)

And in a similar way, cyan strongly affects both green and blue cones, because it's in between those colors. Blue and green make cyan.

So what's half way between red (700 nm) and blue (435.8 nm)? A little quick math says roughly 568 nm, or a slightly greenish yellow. So red and blue make yellow? Or green? Or... No. Just no. Whether we're talking paint or light, everyone knows that red and blue make purple — that color I said doesn't exist.

But wait! That's not what I said. I said "But there's absolutely no wavelength of light that is purple." And there isn't. But remember that most light isn't a single wavelength, but rather a blend of many, many wavelengths across the spectrum. If the light is spread across red and green and blue more or less evenly, we see white. White just means "All cones firing." But if we keep the light in the red and blue regions while getting rid of the green, we have red cones and blue cones firing, but no green. And we call that combination purple. Purple means "red and blue cones firing, but green's not involved."

So we can have purple light, but we can't have a purple laser. There's no wavelength that can be purple.

And remember, too, that red cones react to more than just red. They have a weaker response to green, and a very weak response to blue. Vice versa, blue cones have a weak response to red.

So what does all this have to do with Alan Stewart Carl and Dean Esmay and centrism? Well, it ties most directly to Dean's observation:

But after 25 years of watching politics I'm convinced that Alan is correct: there is no easily defined "center," and defining yourself as a "centrist" has no clear meaning. And I can point to two key issues to define why:

You can be against the Iraq war and against gay marriage.

You can be for the Iraq war and for gay marriage.

Name dozens of other issues, and it runs the same way: abortion, drug policy, tax policy, education policy, and so on: there is no easily-defined "vital center" because self-described centrists will soon discover that they are often at odds with each other.

In other words, if you claim to be purple (center), what you're really saying is that you're blue on some issues and red on others. And yet someone else may be just as purple, and yet be blue where you're red and red where you're blue. You may both look purple at the gross level of opinion polls. It may seem like you're both saying, "I'm independent. No red or blue for me! A pox on both their colors!" But when you come right down to it, you and the centrist next to you may disagree with each other more than you disagree with either the red or the blue. Third party proponents keep trying to find the center. They keep insisting that they and they alone have found the wavelength for true purple, without realizing that there is no such thing. There's just an overlapping range of reds and blues, with people in the middle leaning toward one color or another depending on the issue.

There's a reason I do software, as opposed to other technical professions: it's deterministic. I can make sense of it. If there's a memory leak, then there's always a memory leak, and it's my fault that it's there. And if the leak comes and goes, it always comes and goes; and when I can figure out the pattern, I'll know where the leak is. There's always a pattern, and it's always deterministic.

When you get into the physical sciences, however, things get fuzzy; and when you get into wetware (chemistry and biology), things get downright slippery. Yes, there's a determinism of a sort at work; but the number of ways in which things can go wrong is just huge. Frankly, if we didn't prove otherwise by existing, I would say we are impossible.

Yet we exist, despite all that could go wrong; and sometimes, despite it actually going wrong, we manage to cobble together a workable life.

While researching calico cats, I came across this article on chimerism, which sounds like the inspiration for one of Stephen King's creepier works. And that article led me to this one, about a woman who learned that the children she gave birth to were not hers. Instead, they are children of her fraternal twin sister; only she never knew she has a fraternal twin sister.

See, the fraternal twin sister is her. Some of her is made up of DNA from one fertilized egg; but some of her is from another egg. Early during her development, the cells from the two embryos came together, rather than developing separately. And while this could've been disastrous — probably happens more often than we know, and probably is disastrous in most cases, leading to a spontaneous abortion — in her case, the two sets of cells were able to work things out. They shared the responsibilities of making, well, her. The cells that make up her skin and hair came from one embryo, while the cells that make up her uterus and ovaries came from the other.

So DNA testing that compared her skin and hair to that of her children "proved" that they couldn't be her kids. The two different parts of her body are no more related than any two siblings (roughly 25% common DNA).

And she's not alone. 30 such cases are known. And the chimerism may be more rampant than that:

In fact, some researchers now think that most of us, if not all, are chimeras of one kind or another. Far from being pure-bred individuals composed of a single genetic cell line, our bodies are cellular mongrels, teeming with cells from our mothers, maybe even from grandparents and siblings.

It seems that the placental barrier isn't perfect, and that some small number of cells cross from the mother to the fetus, and vice versa; and that these fetal cells in the mother can survive for decades, and might even propagate to later siblings.

All too weird for me. All too non-deterministic. Give me the simple world of binary values and logic and design. I can make that work. But this wetware has too many variables for my poor head to keep straight.

The world is a very strange place...

The question isn't who's smarter, it's who's more vindictive? Run, man! Run while you still can!

I'm way overdue posting this. Apologies to Geoff.

The world's an imperfect place. You do the best you can. And I think if you take too romanticized a view of the world, you're setting yourself up for disappointment.

But I also believe that, if they're persistent and flexible and willing to work, most people can find their niche: a place where they can do more and be more; and in doing more and being more, be more satisfied with life.

Not everyone has the energy or desire to persist. Not everyone has the flexibility: family or other obligations may be more important than finding that niche. I understand. It's important that you do what you think is right. (For those who aren't willing to work to find their niche, though, I have no sympathy.)

But sometimes, you really find that niche. And this summer, my fellow Duelist Geoff Nostrant reminded me of that.

Geoff has had a rough life, with a lot of ups and downs — and for much of the time I've known him, there were more downs than ups. I know only little bits of his story, and it's not my story to tell. But it always seemed like Geoff was getting knocked down; and though I admired him for getting back up, he never signed up to be a life lesson for the rest of us. And from what little I could see, his troubles weren't self-inflicted, for the most part. Oh, he made his naive, youthful mistakes now and then, and had to deal with them, just like the rest of us. But it seemed like a lot of people who had say in his life were big disappointments.

But there was one way in which I thought Geoff contributed to his own problems: he's a nomad. He doesn't like to tie himself to any place. And to me, Mr. Stability, that seemed like a mistake. Well, we'll see...

Oh, and I should add: what I've admired most about Geoff is his impressive musical talent and skill. And I mean that: talent and skill. He's good, but he works hard to be better. (Personally, I love his classical guitar work, because that's one of my favorite styles; but he leans more toward the electronica.) But even the music seemed to let him down: though he and some friends self-released a couple of fine albums, those were just two in a sea of indie albums. They had their fans, but the music never went as far as they dreamed.

Well, a few years back, Geoff left us on his biggest wanderjahr yet: he got an opportunity to travel to South Korea to teach English. I never knew how he got this opportunity. I understood the appeal: young and free, with an affinity for Asian ladies, and without much keeping him in Michigan. But we worried that he might be going too far away, and get lost.

How wrong we were. Geoff has been back a couple of times, usually for bad family news; but he has also made time for his Duelist friends. And what we've learned is: Geoff has found his niche.

First, he went looking for a job for some spare income. I don't know how it happened, but he got hooked up with Korean TV production. There's a Korean show called "Surprise!" It's a dramatic crime recreation show; and they had a need for someone to play American "heavies". Well, Geoff can do that: although he's a pleasant enough looking fellow, he can furrow his brows, glare, and look kinda menacing. He's also tall, and fit. So he fit the part. And apparently, Korean TV shows don't mind reusing actors (kinda like the same guest stars kept reappearing in different roles way back when on All in the Family).

So next thing you know, Geoff's a Korean TV star. Oh, not a top name, because (like most cultures) their biggest stars are natives; but he has a following. It's hard for his American friends to see; but in Korea, he's foreign and exotic. He's kinda cool, even, especially with all that hair.

And then on top of that, his star status makes him a popular teacher. And also popular with those Asian ladies he likes so much.

And as music technology gets better and cheaper, he can do more and more of his own production. And so he's very popular on the download scene. You can find some of his music here. I know there's a lot more out there, because I downloaded it; but my apologies, I can't figure out how to find it right now. It's well worth looking for. His work is more polished now, and a lot more mature. Check it out. Just don't offer to pay him for it. His music is his art and his release, and he never wants it to become his job.

And one more thing: he's still adrift. Only now I'm recognizing that for him, that's a good thing. I can't share his view, but I see now how important that is to him. He tried to explain how he's never satisfied tying himself to a place, to roots. That's just about the antithesis of my ideal life. But I think I caught a glimpse of what makes Geoff tick, in a quote I found in Volume 5 of The Books of Magic from DC:

"Everywhere...

"You can WANT everywhere, but you can't have it. You have to choose.

"It wasn't EASY, choosing. I should never have asked Kenny which places HE liked best.

"No, I take that back. I wouldn't have missed the stuff he said for anything. I've never HEARD anyone talk about places the way he did. Like they were PEOPLE. People he LOVED.

"Now I know why he never stops moving. It doesn't matter how much he likes where he is. Wherever he is, he's still always missing somewhere else."

And so by traveling half way around the world, Geoff has found a new somewhere else. That's his niche: somewhere else. If he found his niche, that gives me hope that more people can do it.

We are the sum of what we were. We stand at the intersection of where we've been and where we can go.

(Inspired by Scott Kirwin.)

OK, look. I'm way too old to appreciate teen comedies. While I'm perhaps a little more tolerant of "chick flicks" than some guys, I don't go out of my way to see them. And I think I can safely say that I've never sat through a complete Hilary Duff feature, not even something as short as a music video. (I caught the start of one of her videos once. I don't normally use the word "insipid", but it's what came to mind.)

So despite the appearance of Brent Spiner, I doubt that I'm anywhere near the target audience for Material Girls. It sounds dumb, from start to finish.

But, but, but... But I just saw the ad; and at the very end — almost tacked on, it sounded like — they said, "Directed by Martha Coolidge."

Martha Coolidge is, in my opinion, one of the most under-appreciated directors in the business today. I first learned her name as the director of one of the most under-appreciated comedies of the 80s. That film — seemingly another throw-away teen comedy, just one from my era — really has a lot more depth than you might think from the song-tie-in title. Now at least some of that is due to the talents of a guy who was then a relative newcomer, and who easily dominated the film: Nicolas Cage. He has since gone on to dominate a lot of my favorite films.

But Ms. Coolidge also deserves a fair share of the credit. The film really has a lot going on for it. As one friend once said, "Almost every single character had his or her own interesting story, and could have been the focus of the film." I know some people don't appreciate this film; but that's their loss.

And that's not the only classic she's done. She directed Real Genius, a true classic of the college geek comedy genre. She directed the pilot episode of Sledge Hammer!, a classic 80s satire series. She directed Rambling Rose, the first film where I ever saw any sign of real talent in Laura Dern.

And she directed a lot of other films and TV episodes that never seemed to get a lot of attention. And yet every one I've seen has been extremely well-done. Like I said, under-appreciated. To the point where my ears really perk up when I hear "Directed by Martha Coolidge."

So I could be wrong; and I can't spare the time to go to the theater and find out. All right, all right: so I don't want to stand out in the Hilary Duff crowd like a sore thumb. (But maybe if I borrowed a niece for an excuse...) But I'm predicting this will be much better than a typical teen film.

Good timing! A week earlier, and the guests would've melted down in the parking lot.

---

Mostly I don't notice the passage of years. But sometimes, it's unavoidable. Such as when you look at the groom and think, "Hey, this is a much nicer ceremony than his parents had..."

---

Ladies, I would never try to tell you not to get a tattoo. While I may find it foolish, it's your choice. But when you do, you should start shopping for your wedding dress at the same time, so you can make sure they look good together.

---

It was good to see the mother of the groom dancing with her ex-husband (the father of the groom) to the same song they danced to at their wedding.

It would even have been kinda sweet, if it hadn't been Van Halen's Running with the Devil.

---

School librarians and teachers are people, too. They just never show it when you're in school.

---

Some family trees are way too complicated for me to follow. And I was there watching much of the complication happen, and it's still too complicated for me to follow.

---

All DJ services are not created equal.

---

All wedding reception meals are not created equal.

(And if I can find the recipe for that cornbread casserole...)

---

All weddings are disasters. As long as the bride and groom never notice, you win.

---

Some people do grow up, but they take a little longer than usual.

---

I've known the groom since birth, so I was happy to give up a night of gaming to be there for him.

And I was only a little envious of the husband who wasn't there because he was at GenCon instead.

---

When the doctor says she won't live to see five, ten and thriving is good. Ten and bouncing around on the dance floor with all the other kids is a miracle.

---

We need a list of wedding reception songs that should simply be retired. I'll start:

• The Hokey Pokey


• The Chicken Dance


• Love Shack


• The Macarena, and all similar group dance routines

---

Hey, Mr. DJ, you're not nearly as funny as you think you are. (But the person paying you thinks you are, so that's what counts.)

And what's with all the dopey hats?

---

Bowing to the inevitable: little metal bells at every table. Much classier than banging the glassware (or the table) with the silverware; and you get to take them home as a memento.

---

When the librarian says, "You got older, but she didn't," the smart husband answers, "You're right."

And when the wife responds, "It's all makeup. Just add more every year," the smart husband adds, "Don't believe it. She never spends more than 30 seconds on it."

Dean Esmay links to this campaign by Kim du Toit. And I say: sign me up!


Red or Blue, free speech is for you! Not just for Congress or "The Press". It's for everybody.

Seems pretty plain to me...

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The First Amendment has been used to defend all sorts of speech:

• Obscenity.


• Robert Mapplethorpe's art.


• Religious club meetings on school grounds.


• Advertising tobacco near schools.


• Evangelizing without having to register with local authorities.


• Telemarketing.


• Overturning the Communications Decency Act of 1996.


• Broadcast advertising for casinos.


• Public employees accepting money for writing and speeches about matters unrelated to their work.


• Including the alcohol content of beer on the label.


• Advertising the price of alcohol.


• Cross burning.


• CPA advertising.


• Hare krishnas distributing literature.


• Distributing commercial handbills.

Now that's far from the gamut of First Amendment law. I cherry-picked these cases to ask a question. Irrespective of your view of the merits of any of these cases, can anyone seriously claim that cases like these were foremost in the minds of the founders when they wrote the First Amendment?

Understanding the Bill of Rights

To me, the key to understanding the Bill of Rights is what I think of as the Forgotten Amendment:

Amendment III

No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

Yeah, there's a controversial issue, right? You've heard lots of Supreme Court cases about it, huh?

Not.

So why is what seems like such a trivial issue ensconced right up there with Freedom of Speech and the Right to Keep and Bear Arms?

Well, because the British had forcibly quartered troops in American homes.

Ya see, I'm an originalist. I think that you learn math and science best by studying where it came from. And I think the same is true of laws and constitutions and amendments: if you want to understand what they mean you have to study what led up to them.

Originalism and the First Amendment

So what, pray tell, might have been some of the original reasons for the First Amendment? Oh, I dunno...

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

...

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

...

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

(All emphases added.) The King didn't want the people to have a voice in their government. He ignored their petitions for redress. And he forbade public meetings without approval; and at those meetings, discussion topics that did not meet with the governor's approval were forbidden. Publishers like Paine and Franklin and orators like Hamilton and Jefferson faced imprisonment and worse for disagreeing with the government. And that's the political environment which the First Amendment was designed to oppose.

In other words: if the First Amendment protects anything, it protects political speech.

Period. End of discussion. Not open to debate. Sorry if you don't like that but that's the way it is.

The Money Canard

"But oh, all that money in campaigns," some say. "It's so corrupting."

Bull.

While it's a stretch to say that money is speech, that's a convenient shorthand for a more complex but essential truth: money enables speech, just as surely as hardware enables software. If you take away my computer, all the software in the world is useless to me, because I can't run it. And if you limit a candidate's money, you limit the candidate's ability to make his speech heard. If you limit my ability to donate money to promote an issue, you limit one of my most effective ways to speak on that issue (i.e., by adding my funds to the coordinated campaign to get a unified message out).

And incumbents then have a natural advantage, because they have more ways of getting their message out — ways that you and I pay for with our taxes. So limiting campaign funds serves to protect incumbents. Like they need any more protection: we already have one of the highest percentages of reelection of any government anywhere and any time in history.

"But then someone can just buy a campaign," some will cry.

Again, bull. Beyond enough money to make yourself known throughout the campaign area, there's no demonstrable correlation between money spent and elections won. Money enables speech, but speech doesn't guarantee victory.

If you don't like the effect of money in campaigns, the answer is more money:

1. Lift all limits on donations and spending by individuals.


2. Require all donations and expenditures to be publicly disclosed on the Internet.


3. When candidate Q takes money from the Space Nazis to place cartoon ads in cigarette cases distributed at day care centers, scream bloody murder and let everybody know about it.

If any candidate takes money from disreputable sources or spends it in disreputable ways, the public disclosure will ensure that everyone will know about it. If the voters don't care and elect a disreputable candidate anyway, that's their choice.

The Abmonination

So what does the Bipartisan Campaign "Reform" Act of 2002 do? A lot of things. A lot of limits on fund raising and spending that infringe on speech in a general way, as above; but also some very specific and very odious speech restrictions:

The BCRA, and FEC rules, contain provisions related to television and radio ads that refer to a clearly identified federal candidate and are distributed (targeted) to the relevant electorate within a particular time period before an election. These are often referred to as "issue ads" because they have typically discussed candidates in the context of certain issues without specifically advocating a candidate's election or defeat. Under the new rules, such ads would now be considered "electioneering communications" and as such, may no longer be funded by corporations or labor organizations. Other individuals or groups who pay for these ads must report the activity and the sources of funds if the payments exceed a specific threshold.

The defining characteristics of an "Electioneering Communication" are:

The communication refers to a clearly identified candidate for federal office.
The communication is publicly distributed on radio or television (including broadcast, cable, or satellite) for a fee.
The communication is distributed during a specific time period before an election - within 30 days prior to a primary election or 60 days prior to a general election.
The communication is targeted to the relevant electorate - i.e. it can be received by 50,000 or more people in the district or state where the candidate is running for federal office. For presidential campaigns this means 50,000 or more people in a state holding a primary within 30 days or within 30 days of the start of the nominating convention.

So within 60 days of the general election, corporations and unions — both voluntary associations of individuals who share common goals — can no longer advocate for those goals if they mention a candidate in the process.

Exemptions
No other forms of communication (e.g. mail, telephone, Internet, etc.) are covered by these restrictions. News stories, editorials or commentary, and candidate debates are also not covered.

Ah, so "news" stories are exempted; and we've never seen a news story biased against a particular candidate, right?

(Note: I'm not advocating restrictions on news stories; I'm demanding no restrictions on anyone. "News" sources don't get special privileges that the rest of us can't have.)

Millionaire Candidates

The new law may raise the individual contribution limits for Senate and House candidates who are facing self-financed candidates if those candidates spend more than a specified amount of their own funds on the campaign. The increase depends on the amount that the self-financed candidate spends from perso