Day: February 27, 2001

ShareSniffer Exposes Microsoft’s Lack of Security Concerns

ShareSniffer claims to be an alternative person-to-person service like Napster, but strikes me as a parody designed to embarrass Microsoft over the way MS deals with security issues in Windows.

Specifically, a lot of people who have set up home networks have turned file sharing on so they could share files and peripherals over their home LANs. In the process, however, a lot of them have also configured file sharing so that it shares part or all of their hard drives with the Internet. Anyone who knows the correct IP address can access such hard drives as if they were sitting at the computer.

Now Microsoft certainly has a bunch of excuses — essentially blame the users who are misconfiguring file sharing to pointing out that this wasn’t much of an issue until recently because few people had home LANs and even fewer had high speed connections.

The bottom line, however, is that the option to share files over the Internet should not be built into a consumer-level operating system the way Microsoft has done. It shouldn’t even be an issue because it should be something that the average user can’t accidentally do (the irony here, of course, is that while it is often extremely difficult to configure Windows in ways that would be helpful to the average user, it is relatively easy for users to do something almost nobody intentionally wants to do such as placing the contents of their hard drive on the Internet for anyone to come along and access).

And it’s not long the ShareSniffer folks are the first people to realize users are making this mistake. This is a longstanding problem that Microsoft has done nothing to deal with. The obvious way to deal with this would be to take out the option to share the HD over the Internet and put that option in a separate program under the accessories area that explains in detail exactly what enabling the feature will do before users set this option. A few people will still make the mistake of installing it, but nothing like the large number of people who today set it inadvertently while trying to figure out how to make a network function properly under Windows (which is a pain in the neck unless you have a dedicated IT staff, which most home users don’t).

Sailing Takes Me Away…Just Not Very Quickly

Reuters reports that a private U.S. group is preparing to launch into space what would be the first spacecraft using solar sails.

Basically, the sails reflect light and the action of photons hitting it causes the vehicle to accelerate. It sounds very sci-fi, but there is no reason in principle that it shouldn’t work. On the other hand, it probably will never be a viable method of space travel.

The problem with solar sails is that they just don’t scale very well. If you want to move even modest payloads at significant speeds the sails end up having to be enormous or you have to use an auxiliary source of light. A lot of futuristic solar sail plans, for example, speculate on building laser arrays on the moon or an asteroid — the laser would be aimed at the solar sails and give it much more acceleration than sunlight.

Unfortunately by the time you’re done working out the kinks from that sort of system — not to mention finding a way to pay for such an elaborate system — it’s a lot cheaper and more efficient to go with other equally exotic but definitely workable propulsion systems such as fusion reactors or matter/anti-matter engines.

For the near term, nuclear power plants will be the main source of long range, fast spacecraft although viable fusion reactors are a lot closer than most people think.

To make space exploration and colonization viable we will have to develop craft capable of speeds approaching 5 to 10 percent of the speed of light which is certainly doable but not with solar sails.

Reports Highlight Africa’s Continuing Poor Human Rights Record

Human Rights Watch and the U.S. State Department each released reports at the end of February highlighting the poor status of human rights on the continent of Africa. Unfortunately there isn’t a lot of cause for hope for things to improve in the immediate future.

Human Rights Watch focused its report on the numerous human rights commissions that have been set up throughout Africa. Currently 20 African nations have human rights commissions of one sort of another to investigate human rights abuses — more than on any other continent. Unfortunately, except for a select few, most of the human rights commission are shams designed to deflect international criticism rather than root out human rights abuses. According to Human Rights Watch,

FOr the most part [the commissions] have proved to be a disappointment. Many have indeed been formed by governments with dismal human rights records, weak state institutions, and no history of autonomous state bodies. Some appear largely designed to deflect international criticism of some serious human rights abuses.

Human Rights Watch’s Binaifer Nowrojee told The GUardian (UK), Millions of Africans are being displaced, tortured or killed. Yet the sad truth is that human rights commissioners in AFrica often turn a blind eye to these abuses. Many commissioners fail to publicly denounce abuses, either from fear of retribution or out of hope of government favor.”

The notable exceptions to this are human rights commissions in South Africa, Ghana and Uganda which have exposed abuses and challenged government practices. Of course the fact that only three out of the twenty African human rights commission are more than public relations tools isn’t a percentage to be proud of.

Meanwhile the State Department noted that although political violence did subside in Africa somewhat since 1999, human rights abuses in Africa were still far too common in 2000. Among those cited,

  • In Sierra Leone there were “reports of … extrajudicial killings, rapes, and beatings in 60 percent of the country.”
  • Arbitrary arrests, disappearances and torture were reported in Angola, Eritera, Ethiopia, Guinea, Nigeria, and Uganda.
  • Mob lynchings occurred in Tanzania.
  • In Burundi, which is run by a military dictatorship, civilians were routinely victimized by summary executions, rape and other violence.
  • Female genital mutilation still thrives in Benin, Ethiopia, Mali and other parts of AFrica.
  • More than 1,500 people died in Nigeria last year as a result of religious fighting between Muslims and Christians

And that list could go on and on. The underlying problem is a lack of liberal democracy and multi-party political systems that could check arbitrary state power.

Sources:

Human rights commissions in Africa ‘are often a sham’. Chris McGreal, The Guardian (UK), February 23, 2001.

US paints grim Africa human rights picture. Agence-Frances Presse, February 26, 2001.

Using Cow Veins to Improve Human Health

Although Xenotransplantation may seem like an exotic new turn in medical research, but in fact researchers have been doing it for years. When infants are born with defective heart valves, for example, transplants from cows are routinely used to reinforce the heart.

Now researchers at the Toledo Hospital’s Jobst Vascular Center successfully transplanted the jugular van of a cow to replace the weakened femoral vein of a man.

The femoral vein is a major vein in the upper leg that regulates blood flow to the heart. When it is weakened, it results in a condition called chronic venous insufficiency (CVI). The weakened valve makes it difficult for blood to continue up to the heart, causing it to pool in the lower leg leading to extremely painful ulcers.

Why the jugular vein of a cow? “The neck vein of a cow is very similar in size to the femoral vein,” Dr. Hugh Beebe, director of the Vascular Center, told CNN. The bovine vein is treated with drugs before the transplant operation to prevent the body from rejecting it.

Several other hospitals are also experimenting with such transplants to assess the efficacy and safety of the procedure. Assuming the initial positive results hold up, it will still be several years before this sort of operation is widespread, but it does point to a very near future where xenotransplanation will be common.

Source:

Cow vein used in transplant. Jonathan Aiken, CNN, February 23, 2001.

Utah Begins Crackdown on Polygamy

Ahead of the 2002 Olympics, Utah has begun a crackdown on polygamous marriages. Although Utah agreed to outlaw polygamy as a condition of its statehood, the state has for the most part not prosecuted those who still enter into marriages with multiple partners.

Advocates of polygamy claim the government is persecuting them in much the same way it used to persecute homosexuals, while opponents of polygamy say the practice needs to be outlawed to protect young girls. Who is right?

Both sides are correct. First of all, the government should have no say in how consenting adults choose to live their lives. The Supreme Court in 1879 ruled that polygamy is not a Constitutionally protected exercise of religious freedom, but it clearly erred in that decision in much the same way it erred in ruling that the state had a compelling interest in outlawing consenting homosexual relationships.

In 1972 the Supreme Court ruled that Amish children could not be forced to attend school on religious grounds which is inconsistent with the 1879 polygamy ruling, as one of the dissenting judges pointed out.

Polygamy between consenting adults — just like marriage between people of the same sex — should be legal.

On the other hand, what passes for polygamy in Utah often bears a greater resemblance to child sexual abuse than anything else.

Consider Tom Green, 52, who has had 10 wives and has been charged with bigamy and child rape among other things. Green is accused of having sex with one of his wives, Linda, when she was only 13. As prosecutor David Leavitt told the Dallas Morning News,

…this is a man who has taken 13- and 14-year-old children, deprived them of any education, married them, impregnated them, required the state to pay the bill [Green’s family is a big client of the welfare system] and has raped a 13-year-old girl. If we can’t prosecute for conduct like Tom Green’s, we have no business prosecuting crime.

Green’s case is not an anomaly. His prosecution follows on the ground-breaking 1998 prosecution of David Ortell Kingston who was sentenced to up to 10 years for incest and unlawful sexual conduct with his 16-year-old niece who was allegedly his 15th wife.

When his niece fled the marriage that had been arranged by her father, John Daniel Kingston beat his daughter and returned her to David Kingston.

These sort of practices with minors are unconscionable and have absolutely no place within constitutional protections for relationships between consenting adults. Neither, however, should our anger and disgust at the exploitation of these young women allow us to go further and advocate criminalizing consenting relationships between adults merely because they involve more adults than the state deems “normal.” Those sorts of decisions should be left up to individuals rather than the government.

Source:

Trial to test Utah’s 104-year-old ban on polygamy. The Associated Press, November 26, 2000.

Polygamy backers claim Utah bill infringes on religious freedom. The Associated Press, February 13, 2001