A winner is me.

Previously

I took my laptop to the Apple Store to get it repaired. (The keyboard doesn’t work.) After explaining to the guy at the store, he starts taking down my contact info. When he’s done, he says. “And what’s your username and password? Don’t worry. Your data is safe.”

Aghast, I say “But my data is NOT safe if I give you my password!^*”

“Uhh….”

“Can’t you just boot off an external drive or something?”

“Well, umm… yeah, but this is how that prefer we do it.”

Sure enough, the Apple form has blanks for username and password.

In the end, I gave them Ming’s password, because really it didn’t matter. I was giving a perfect stranger an unencrypted drive. It does make me think though. After decades of telling users not to share they’re passwords. Not to give them to people saying they’re from IT. Not to trust anyone with your password, Apple is undoing this as part of standard operating procedure. Or maybe I’m just old, and I’m supposed to think of Apple as a parent.^†

^* Yes, I recognized the naivete of believing a simple password provided adequate security in this situation.

^†My parents never read my stuff. I see no reason to read my child’s.

Seriously.

The winner of this year’s James Dyson Award, Edward Linnacre’s Airdrop is a device that extracts water from air for use as in irrigation. If this sounds, like a Tatooine moisture farm, it should. However, unlike Uncle Owen’s GX-8 water vaporator, the Airdrop doesn’t use refrigerant, but rather the temperature differential from air to soil.

The Airdrop consists of a small reservoir buried about two meters in soil. Rising out of the tank and up to the surface is a cylinder containing a copper coil filled with copper ball bearings used in home distilleries. The copper tubing continues up to a turbine like those used on attic vents, but with the vanes turned around so that air is driven into the tubing instead of out of it. Also in cylinder is a submersible pump that transfers water from the tank to a drip irrigation line. The pump is controlled by an embedded microcontroller and solar powered. In times of little wind, the turbine can be powered by an electric motor.

Daniel Burnham, Anuj Patel, and Sam Bell created for their embedded systems class at Georgia Tech a bathroom mirror / information display. Dubbed Cloud Mirror, it is essentially a partially silvered mirror placed in front of an LCD television, hooked up to a WinCE box with some Phidget sensors.

The User controls the display by waving his/her hand across eight infrared sensors (four across the top, and four down the side). Swiping across the top. the display is toggled on and off, while various modes (weather, news, traffic, and calendar) are controlled through the sensors on the right side. (Video after the jump.) Obviously, it is prototype level technology, but is a bit interesting. Basically, they were thinking about how to integrate typical morning information gathering into daily grooming rituals.

Not content with having an exception to land their party plane at Moffett Field, Google’s triumvirate want a historic landmark for their eight private jets. That’s right. The triumvirate says they’ll pay for restoration, if they get to park their planes.

While I support keeping Hanger One, it just feels to essentially like an an attempt by the ultra rich to indulge their whims on public property. If it was a straight up philanthropic gesture that’s one thing, but this is reeks of a crass move. They (and numerous other Silicon Valley multi-millionares) have wanted to use the NASA field as their own private airfield, and now it looks like they’ve sensed the opportunity to get it. The most depressing part of this whole thing is that this could be the only way to keep the landmark.

Niagara

Doctors are already influenced by marketing. Boxes of free pens are important, discounted drugs are important, and the American Pediatric Society has expressed concern about payola.

Is this better? Well at least these doctors’ conflict of interest is exceedingly transparent. If I was the patient of any of these doctors:

• Dr. David Montgomery of Chicago
• Dr. Minerva Santo-Tomas of Miami
• Dr. Dennis Finkelstein of New York

I’d change doctors. I can’t trust that their judgements about treatments are unbiased.

Fourth in the series of indeterminate length, Recolonizing Detroit

The root cause of the problems Paul Romer encountered in Madagascar was the local population. So how about founding these cities not just in unpopulated areas, but in areas people do not identify with as well? Could this be effective? From the European perspective, that’s what the era of colonization was, but most of us have a more expansive view of ownership now. Today, the only land that doesn’t have recognized claims on is Antarctica (Actually, it’s a bit more complicated on that, but more on that later.), but that location is not likely to attract many people to it. What if instead of land, these cities were built in international waters, or somewhere else unclaimed by any country? What then?

That’s right, we’re talking about micronations.

As you probably know, a micronation is a small self-declared nation that no other country recognizes, or even takes seriously. Many micronations aren’t even taken seriously by their “citizens,” but the more interesting case is when they do. Sometime in the 1970s, the idea of starting a new country for “freedom” has been dream tactic of tax scofflaws and other self described Libertarians. I’m focusing on these Libertarian groups, because they’re the ones that seem to have the more ingenious attempts at nation founding, and purportedly come the closest Romer’s ideas.

If you want to start a country where no one lives, you have three options.

1. Take land from an existing country.

Well that’s the the traditional way of starting a country. Revolution. Secession. Break up. They’ve all worked. You usually need an army, though. Not always, but it often helps.

2. Find land that isn’t claimed by an existing country.

This was much easier back before satellites, but as we’ll see later, it can still be done.

3. Make your own land

Now that’s interesting.

As Romer – and uncountable secessionist groups – have found out, taking land from an existing country is exceedingly difficult. So let’s assume you want to take what looks like the easiest approach, making your own land.

The earliest example I could find (granted it wasn’t a very exhaustive search) of someone trying to form their own country on man-made territory was the short lived Republic of Rose “Island”. Like Monster Island, Rose Island wasn’t actually an island at all, but rather a pylon supported platform built by founder Giorgio Rosa in the Adriatic Sea. It featured a post office, a restaurant, bar, and nightclub. The Italian government saw the “island” as little more than a tax dodging scheme, seized it, then sank it.

Sealand is arguably the most successful micronation. Like Rose “Island” it too is an ocean platform. In Sealand’s case, it’s a decommissioned World War II defense platform. Sealand’s founder is a former pirate radio DJ named “Paddy” Roy Bates. He claims that Sealand is an independent because the platform was located in international waters when the British Army abandoned it, and so he claimed it as salvage. By styling himself as a prince, he hoped to avoid any trumped up claims of treason, while simultaneously preventing the British government from moving against him, because under some very old British law, a prince may defend his castle and realm.

This all very interesting, but not nearly as interesting as the other parts of Sealand’s illustrious history. We have the short lived data haven HavenCo, the counterfeit Sealand passports and money, and of course the biggest WTF in Sealand’s short history: the armed coup. All this, and “Paddy” Roy Bates is still there on his platform, left pretty much alone by the British authorities. Why?

Let me quote from a June 5, 2000 BBC article:

A spokesman for the Home Office said it had no reason to recognise Sealand as a nation. “We’ve no reason to believe that anyone else recognises it either,” he added.

But John Gibson, an expert on sea law and sovereignty at Cardiff University, said the legitimacy of Sealand’s claim depends on whether it was recognised as a nation before 1987.

He said because Sealand was man-made there was little chance that it would be recognised as a nation. “I don’t think structures of that kind count as territory,” he said.

So it just isn’t worth the effort? Really? Probably. Even, “sovereign citizens” are left alone the US government pretty much leaves them alone until they start filing false liens and threatening people with guns.

While Sealand has no official recognition (albeit a very dubious unofficial recognition from Germany), does it matter? Sort of. By being relatively inaccessible Sealand has mitigated the biggest threat to its existence, the British government coming in and exerting control. However, as soon as unpaid taxes crosses some threshold, I suspect that Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs officials will board boats and collect. Until then, Prince Roy can pretty much do what he pleases, which apparently isn’t much. This lack of success is what really seems to keep the British government at bay. Prince Roy doesn’t so much treat Sealand as a country, as much as hobby. Why do I say this? Sealand’s post office.

Ever since I got into a rather tense discussion with a Chinese lab mate about don’t-call-a-country-or-you’ll-start-a-war, and the sheer absurdity of the hoops countries and organizations jump through with regards to the Republic of Taiwan, I’ve had a rather simple litmus test of whether a region was a country or not. If a region has a post office, then it’s a country. If not, then it’s not.

So how does Sealand rate? Well, Sealand has its own stamps, but even the official address of “Bureau of Internal Affairs” is a UK address.

Bureau of Internal Affairs
5, The Row
SEALAND 1001
(c/o Sealand Post Bag, IP11 9SZ, UK)

(Got to love how “Prince Roy” instituted postal codes for the principality.) Given the UK address, I wouldn’t be surprised if official correspondence has both stamps on it. Even the the official store uses British pounds, not Sealandic dollars. Sealand isn’t even pulling an Ecuador and simply using pounds. It’s a tacit admission that the Sealandic dollar is worthless. Simply pegging the Sealandic dollar to the the British pound 1:1 and printing the prices in Sealandic dollars and providing a currency conversion process would have been better.

The other big problem with Sealand, is that no one living under the supposed government’s rule beyond the government itself. Even YFZ Ranch and Jonestown had subjects. Living in your own delusion is one thing. Getting someone else to live in it is the real test.

So what does Sealand and Ross Island tell us about the viability of creating your own country on artificial territory? Well, not much. If you live by yourself and away from society, then you might get left alone. Stop paying taxes, and you’ll eventually have problems.

This post is not about what Anders Behring Breivik (allegedly) did. Instead it’s about the photos.

Everywhere you look, you see professional portraits of the suspect. Where did these images come from? Obviously, they came from the Anders Breivik, but where did the media get them? What was the context that they were taken in?

I found the proximal answer to where the media got them. Most photos of the man on CNN are attributed to Getty Images, but where did Getty get them? I didn’t know, until I read the attribution on the above picture from CNN. “Facebook via Getty Images.” [Original Link]

Wait. “Facebook via Getty Images?” What does that mean? How does Getty get the attribution? Do they own the right to license the images to news agencies or what? Did Facebook just invoke their right to sub-license (See section 2.1 of Facebook’s Terms and Conditions) Anders Behring Breivik’s photos to Getty for (blood) money?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Update: Mon Jul 25 01:28:50 PDT 2011
Let me be clear. It’s not not just Facebook and Getty. There’s this photo that carries a Reuter’s copyright notice no less. This photo appears again, this time with “AP Photo / Twitter” attribution. And again, but with Getty. Either Getty, AP, and Reuters are engaging in widespread unauthorized redistribution of copyrighted materials for commercial gain, someone (meaning Facebook and possibly Twitter) has sublicensed the photos, or the AP, Reuters, and Getty are making a very dubious fair use claim over distributing the photos.

With Reuter’s copyright

With Getty attribution on CNN.com

Curioser and curioser.

The whole thing smells. Smells like Caters News and the monkeys.

Update: Mon Aug 1 15:30:24 PDT 2011
Hillel Gray
answers on Quora:

It may be pertinent that there are a number of images distributed by Breivik at the end of his massive “2083″ document.

Added: He did distribute the specific photo that (I think) was from his Facebook profile.