Entries in Life

I've begun to recognise that the reason I dislike patriotism and the ilk is because I dislike the "us-n-them" mentality.

Us-n-them is a convenient mode of thinking for most people. "I'm like you in this way. That makes you good (since you're like me) and them bad." Usually we don't do this conciously, but there are times when it becomes really obvious.

That us-n-them thinking is what drives acceptance of the Patriot Act really hit home when I read this discussion about whether or not the Patriot Act was needed. Many of those "for" the act seem to think that it would only be used against non-US-Citizens. For example: "America has to stop taking care of everybody else in the world, and concentrate on its own citizens. If that means investigating people who are suspected of terrorism, so be it" or "Seal the borders & do extensive background checks on each & every foreigner who wants to get in to the country".

This sort of thinking is not only wrong, its clearly dangerous. "We" are more of a threat than "They" are. Look no further than a woman whose husband is murdered. Often she is the first suspect.

Now, Ashcroft and crew probably know this. This is probably why they extended the Patriot Act to cover U.S. citizens. But others who hear about extensive searches done under the title "Patriot" comply without protest because "we" are being protected from an ill-defined "them".

Rafe writes about the trend I've been seeing (and experiencing): service appliances. I've been trying to figure out how to get a handle on this and even talked with a friend who runs a business about how to exploit it.

A large part of my day job is (was) managing spam. That is, I set up and installed a few SMTP relays to scan email for spam and viruses and managed the boxes on a day-to-day basis. I was about to implement SpamAssassin when I found that the boxes I built were going to be replaced with an appliance from CipherTrust: IronMail. These boxes are built on FreeBSD and use many of the same features that SpamAssassin has (I wouldn't be surprised if they did, in fact, run on SpamAssassin). In addition to all the spam-blocking that is done on the box, CipherTrust sells maintenance for the boxes so that they are actually updating the rules themselves remotely.

As I learn more about what people want from their systems, I've come to the realization (a difficult one for a geek like me) that people don't want to know about the machines they have: they just want them to work. The management of the boxes is something they'd rather not worry about. Companies like CipherTrust (and others) will find a niche when they develop appliances from which they can generate a decent service income.