Internet Silence - A New Approach To Cyber Espionage

I don't know a whole heck of a lot about how bits and bytes are funneled and exchanged by the quadrillions every millisecond across various cyber networks spanning the globe. I do know enough however, to know that all this cyber traffic can potentially be parsed down to the very last zero or one if need be. Binary systems are absolute.

Richard Fadden, the former head of CSIS, feels that Canada should get to have a kick at the cat in terms of cyber-sleuthing in a more offensive fashion; authorizing the DND to allow its operatives to go ahead and do some less-than-ethical hacking against our natural enemies - namely the Chinese and the Russians. I tend to agree.

Here's an idea all my own regarding Canadian espionage practices: we should deploy a bilateral communications equivalency scheme separate and isolated from anything that touches the Internet - apart from a one-way packet filter. Internet traffic could be filtered in, but nothing on the bilateral system could escape the confines therein.  An old-school approach to secretive transmissions of information. I'm not talking smoke signals and carrier pigeons (though such methods have proven effective, and shouldn't be ruled-out in a bind) but proprietary radio signals and unorthodox ways of passing bundles of information. It'd be like an intranet with no potential weak links for hackers to exploit. Something highly innovative and unique that is both reliable and entirely uncrackable from the outside.

If we had such a system in place, the DND could easily switch to "Internet Silence" mode while simultaneously monitoring and evaluating the ongoing bit stream flow in cyber space. Again, I'm out of my element here, but I'm thinking that the mere act of analyzing a remote transmission could possibly trigger an alert to the originator in a two way system. What I envision is a real cyber network that exists in a vacuum. Nothing that enters ever escapes.

 If such a system were elegantly designed and reasonably fast, it would perhaps become the envy of our allies and enemies alike. 

Tax Me, I'm Carbon-Based!

Next, at the risk of validating a straw man, we know that pricing carbon in Alberta isn’t going to solve climate change. - Andrew Leach

I think I understand what the professor is getting at. As much as I'd personally love to see Alberta take a defiant stance in the face of global pressure to make people pay more for everything, it's just not going to happen. Even if Alberta were to treble her emissions, the net measurable impact on the environment would, I gather, still be virtually negligible at a global level. Yet we're still expected to enact upsetting solutions to address what seems a non-existent problem, and we're told to give the bad medicine a chance...for a brighter future of course.  

Will not the adoptive and compliance costs, for both large and small enterprises to conform to the new carbon pricing schemes, especially in the outset, be challenging to say the least? I predict the mere adaptation to, and integration of the new regulatory frameworks could mean the difference between smaller more fragile business operators remaining in business, or folding-up the tent. Large scale industrial players will likely find the means to minimize losses and absorb administrative woes (if not somehow manage to cleverly use the new normal advantageously). I really have no idea, but I think it goes without saying that a carbon tax will force everyone doing business in the province, including average working/consuming Albertans, to streamline their budgets and seriously reevaluate spending priorities. I can however appreciate the sliver of a silver lining to such forced compliance... necessitating sleeker business models. 

Once upon a time, I worked on a casual basis for a talented independent plumbing contractor. He hired me not because I had a background in plumbing, but because I learn quickly and tend to err on the side of caution. Who am I kidding? The former may indeed be true, but I'm fairly certain his choice had more to do with my immediate availability (vulnerability) and low wage expectation... Anyway, the experience provided me with some insight into how services are contracted, and how easily cost overruns can rapidly accumulate. Here's a simplistic example I devised comparing rudimentary numbers between two independent electrical contractors:

For the sake of comparison, we'll presume that Jim & Steve both have impeccable reputations for workmanship, and scored identical contracts, valued identically, within the same week. Somehow, Jim manages to come out ahead. Why might this be? While any number of factors could contribute to Jim's higher rate of efficiency, notice that in Job One, Steve spends almost twice as much on labour, yet assumably completed the same amount of work as Jim. Jim also spent ten times less on incidentals, and half as much on gasoline as Steve did. Furthermore, it took Steve nearly twice as long to finish the job. What all this might indicate is that Jim is a far more careful planner: perhaps while Steve was in a scramble, traversing the city to gather required materials he'd initially overlooked, leaving his helper on-site to drink coffee on the clock, Jim was thoughtfully double-checking the blueprints for conceivable hurdles, and his helper was happily bending conduit and whatnot.

From the point of view of a casual labourer, I could say my own inability to command a high rate of pay, and always finding myself without much leverage to negotiate wages is an indirect outcome of my own lackadaisical and inefficient approach to life in general. A wait-and-see attitude if you will.

It's the stitch in time saves nine principal. Since you neglected to include critical parts on your materials list for a project requiring very specific widgets that now demand priority shipping, you've needlessly inflated your costs. If successive phases of the job cannot proceed without this key component you're now urgently awaiting, then you're also incidentally paying labour costs for little to no value. You've hit the hemorrhage zone. A disorganized inventory can lead to both time and gasoline being wasted cruising around procuring stuff. You get the idea. Failing to get your ducks in a row will result in cumulative and compounded deficits. The avoidable extra hours spent on a particular job could've better been spent wrangling new contracts or tying-up other loose ends related to your business. 

Of course such a comparison is small scale stuff in the context of the greater economy, but a greater economic sphere wouldn't even exist without smaller components; the inverse is probably true as well, considering certain economic sectors and services owe their very existence to the scalar realities of a global economy. Without going into a litany of snakes eating their own tail style hypotheses, basic efficiency speaks to the bottom line, regardless of whether you happen to be examining the financial forensics of a basic household utility budget, or a perplexing and convoluted YOY ROI of some multifaceted global corporation. Here's a very simplistic projection of possible year-end net totals listed by our two fictional contractors inferred from the sets of averages of Jim's and Steve's efficiency rates:

This tells us that despite Steve landing more (or more lucrative) contracts than Jim, he's still seeing less annual returns than Jim. $4700 a year is not a tremendous difference in terms of making a living however. Perhaps Jim has expansionist goals while Steve is content just rolling along and making a buck - secretly shaking his fist at Jim because Jim always seems to have more time off! At the end of the day, both contractors are doing respectable work, and creating a job for someone else to boot. It's easy to imagine, however, that the disparity in efficiency would become far more consequential were it applied to a mid-sized firm competing for major contracts that oversees the day-to-day of multiple contractors. It's also easy to see how the proceeds of Jim's cost-saving organizational advantage will be swallowed up by the new carbon tax scheme!

If you can't say anything nice...

...just write whatever crass invective you can conjure-up off the top of your head.

I've been at this public diary thing for several years now, and I guess I'd be flattering myself to think that my meager words could potentially have any meaningful impact, and yet on I write.

Politics gets me down sometimes. Left or right? I feel like I'm probably slightly left of center, but does anyone really know themselves? It's always tempting to jump into the social media fray wielding an opinion, but that's left me red-faced more often than not. Things are often not what they appear to be upon a first glance.

Computers have provided a healthy distraction. I think it's fair to say that diagnostics are what leads many an otherwise non-technical minded person into the world of binary sensibilities. Something doesn't work, and you need to figure it out. Down the rabbit hole you go, hoping to emerge in some antechamber of cathedral-like proportions where everything is crystalline, obviated. But there's an infinite number of forks in the road... or at least about nine hundred and thirty-seven billion forks.

Been playing more guitar lately. I've got a jam buddy who also has a little dog. On my way to jam the other day, two lovely young women were shuffling ahead of me along the avenue, each with a dog of their own. I was pacing away slightly faster than they were, and made a point of observing the basketball one was carrying as I passed by. Before you knew it, they'd invited themselves and their dogs inside my pal's place to listen to the jam. Nearly twice the average of their respective ages, it's safe to say we wouldn't necessarily have a great deal in common - at least in terms of cultural references (television and movies), but music is the universal language, right?

After a brief Q & A, one of the two ladies found the inclination to play my djembe along with the guitar rhythms, and seemed genuinely enthused to keep time. I sang a song and made them laugh a little before they continued on their way to shoot hoops. Rarely finding myself in a situation to fraternize with anyone, let alone millennials, I tend to form generalizations about who and what the post-X demographic represents, and how I'd expect they might conduct themselves around elders. These specimens were polite and in possession of a good sense of humour thereby shattering all my preconceived notions about most millennials being a disengaged and dour bunch of screen tappers.

I should mention that my jam pal is twenty years my senior, so I suppose you could say in regard to the instance I just described, my role became that of a generational bridge?



 

Latest High Level Bridge Project: Value Subtractive

You try and tell proponents of projects like this that there's got to be a better way, and suddenly you are an unsympathetic ignoramus who doesn't care about mental illness. Of course, the last thing anyone with a shred of decency wants to see is a fellow human being take their own life, but isn't this approach a little unfair to the 99.991% of residents who will never seriously contemplate jumping from the High Level Bridge?

Now you can't even take a picture from the middle of it without crap obstructing your lens. Worse yet, the surface areas of the pedestrian/multi-use lane ways have been reduced by about five percent on either side. The potential for collisions with cyclists is thereby increased by this squeeze.

I've crossed this bridge by foot, bicycle, and automobile countless times in my life. I think I once even skateboarded across. Whatever mode of transport you favour, it has occurred to me while walking alone late at night that I might be vulnerable to predatory individuals. Could not jumping into the river from high above be a reasonable last resort if the alternative is being badly beaten-up, stabbed, or shot trying to get home? I tell you, I'd sooner take my chances with a splash into the North Saskatchewan than a gang of toughies! 

If you ask me, this project was not only a tremendous waste of money, it's a waste of money that represents a value-subtractive net effect on Edmonton and the lives of Edmontonians. 

   

Oil, Wood, Gas. How should I stay warm?

Extreme coldness of climate is the only real disadvantage of northern living. Maybe you happen to be someone who finds themselves amiss outside of tropical regions - a sun worshiper as they say. Tropical regions are definitely not my bag babe. There's more than enough minor irritants in my life already for me to have to worry about nasty green reptiles and giant arachnids crawling into my shoes.

Northern living suits me fine, but it's costly to make a northern home cozily warm. Out west in western Canada, the most obvious choices to keep the deadly Jack Frost at bay are firewood and natural gas. Perhaps geothermal - something I know very little about, and you'll probably want to build a house around it rather than attempt it as an afterthought?

I find myself wondering whether geothermal output levels fluctuate. I imagine it would ebb and flow like everything else in nature.

I do believe the provincial government of Alberta collects royalties from the proceeds of natural gas.

Firewood is comparatively inefficient at a molecular level, and not by nature as clean burning. Wood retains moisture, and incinerating it will create greenhouse gasses.

But let's face it. Were not the Athabasca forest fires equivalent to about eight billion firewood burning homes burning firewood continuously for nine years? I just think it'd seem disingenuous to actually charge people for the 'privilege' of burning wood simply to avoid freezing to death. Or is there some plan to see us all move south?

I remember the oil-fuelled furnace in Ontario. Man. That's a dirty way of heating compared to elegant and gaseous natural gas. Not only is oil as a home heating fuel far less efficient than natural gas, there's a need for a tanker truck to make the rounds just to fill-up yer oil storage tank now and then.

Who has room for a big honkin' oil tank in their basement? Well... probably most people, but it's the size of three bungalow-sized hot water heater tanks. Point being, they eat-up valuable floor space if you don't live in some palatial intrigue. Other than that, oil is reliable and affordable. A fiscally prudent choice if natural gas isn't abundant, and modern furnaces are probably quite efficient.


I'm interested to know what you think.

Keep Yourself In The Hive

Ten years ago, instead of following a link affixed to a submission of gushing sentiment on Twitter and Facebook, most folks would've learned about the catastrophic event in Orlando through the front page of a printed newspaper.

My heart goes out to the victims and their loved ones. Really it does.

Cue the finger-pointing.

Agenda: Mainstream Media Blames Guns, Not ISIS, For #Orlando Massacre https://t.co/LHjjCGkRrk #2a #tcot #guncontrol

— Alex Jones (@RealAlexJones) June 13, 2016

Cue the opportunistic political angling.

Rubio Contemplates Senate Run After Orlando Shooting https://t.co/QpKR7chG0I via @RollCall

— Mark Steyn (@MarkSteynOnline) June 13, 2016

Cue the false-flag conspiracy theories.

Cue the obligatory performances by high-profile celebrities to leave no doubt in anyone's mind regarding their solidarity with the victims.

Cue the Facebook avatar filters.

Without going into detail or providing point-by-point parallels in bullet-form, I do get the faint impression that the official  narratives emerging in the aftermath of mass killings in recent times almost seem to be outlined in advance of the events themselves. I will say that it's not inconceivable that motives are more easily obfuscated when the perpetrator ends-up included in the death tally. Of course, five out of seven people in the western world seem to have no qualms about cementing all manner of intimate thoughts and reflections online. Have you read my blog?

But are they really cemented? Are they not malleable after being written? If I can edit the words on this page whenever I want, what's to stop someone else from doing so, presuming they can access my account? Do these words I write, and images I upload appear the same on my computer screen as they would appear to someone in India? Would it not take a computer forensics specialist to properly ascertain whether or not my genuine submissions haven't been altered in some clandestine fashion?

I'll leave it to you, esteemed readers, to get to the bottom of whatever potentialities may or may not exist. I can promise it'll be a perplexing pursuit given the labyrinthine experience of attempting to research anything online. Conflicting agendas, spin, opportunism, memes, 'click-here'... it's a quagmire of confusion to be sure.

Until next time, I'll continue to avoid mass gatherings and simply experience the world from behind my pixelated 'reality' zone.

     

Alberta NDP: Very Very Very Proud

Feeling pretty smug over my decision to abstain from voting in the last provincial election. I don't think I'm alone in feeling dismayed over the state of Alberta politics in general today. As a regular Albertan, I'd be embarrassed to be affiliated with any of Alberta's political parties currently sitting in the legislature.

It's terribly bad form to draw flippant comparisons between genocidal policies of the early twentieth century and recent legislative changes enacted by the NDP. It leaves me to wonder whether the Wildrose Party aren't in fact a cast of method actors, playing from a script designed to distract the attention of the audience away from the ruthlessness of the NDP leadership.

Today I'll probably catch myself wincing as I sift through the CLIMATE LEADERSHIP IMPLEMENTATION ACT - mainly because I liken parsing codified language to debugging a computer program written in (almost) human-speak. What's the real intent? How will it affect average single parent households vs. medium-sized retail business?

I predict the only folks who'll find themselves immune to the negative impacts of this bill would also find themselves on opposite ends of a lifestyle spectrum: backpack toting, skateboard riding minimalists; and ultra wealthy titans of industry. I somehow suspect everyone in the middle will bear the brunt of paying for this enactment.

A simplistically sure bet, and I do realize some form of action is necessary to position Alberta ahead of the global paradigm shift surrounding climate. Were the Alberta PC party still in power, I don't doubt they'd be pushing a strikingly similar mandate. Still, all I see is a manufactured sense urgency to reduce carbon emissions worldwide. Maybe I'll be proven wrong some day, but I still have great difficulty with the belief that putting a price on carbon will somehow have any tangible or measurable effect on our Earth's atmosphere.