CISPA and the Fourth Amendment

To all my friends,

I don't post about politics much, and when I do it's out of frustration with both parties.  I vote, and I follow politics, but the fact is I am generally too cynical to rally people toward a candidate or party.  America is one of the great socieities of all time, and I love this nation.  It's just that I tend to see politics as a collusion between public and private power spheres trying to gain more power, money and dominance.  This goes for the Republicans and Democrats.

So, know what I am saying comes from a truly unpartisan stance.  Also know I hate writing about or discussing poltics in general.  I would not write this if I did not believe that the need was dire.  The fact is, I believe the time has come for you to act if you care about your personal liberty and privacy.

The House of Representatives passed CISPA last night.  I know most of you back one party or the other, and hence distrust at least half of the media outlets out there, which is why I linked directly to house.gov.  I've already written and called Steve Southerland, my Congressman.  Much to my dismay, Representative Southerland voted for this bill.  The ship has sailed in the House. Now we must look to the Senate.

The House rushed to this vote, and I believe it is because they are afraid of public outcry.  We nerds organized quite a campaign around SOPA, but it takes time.  By rushing a vote, the House moved before we could organize opposition.

Why should you care?  CISPA gives the governement the ability to ignore the fourth amendment online.  The government and private ISPs can collect and share any personal data about you: your emails, messages, web history and others without probable cause or a search warrant.  This is a stunning loss of liberty for Americans.

The worst part is, this won't actually protect our national security.  For those who wish to do harm to our country, encrypting and coding communications is trivial.  This bill does nothing to make us safer.  We are in a case where the least technically literate citizens of this country are trying to legislate policy for technical systems.

I believe that we all share some core values, regardless of if we are Republicans, Democrats or neither.  We believe that the power of the American experience is Liberty and Opportunity.  The Land of the Free attracts the best and the brightest across the world.  That soil allowed the industrial revolution to happen here with greater power than anywhere else.  That grew to the Space Age and the Information Revolution.  America has historically been at the forefront of Liberty and that has made us powerful economically and militarily.

The greatest form of free speech of all time is the Internet.  It is bringing down dictatorships and giving people unprecident abilites to learn, organize and change.  I absolutely believe we need to grow and change our policies to protect intellectual property and national security in this new world, but too broad, ham-fisted legislation like SOPA and CISPA attempt to roll back the clock and destroy liberty in the process.

Do your homework, and if you agree with me I urge you to contact your Senator and tell them you expect protection for your constitutional liberties.  A call is best, but a letter or email is better than nothing.  Also, see which way your Congressman voted and then hold them accountable.  I've added a widget below to help you in this process.

Ain't no party like a Star Party

Last Sunday night was  nice night for looking at our planets.  Saturn was at Opposition, meaning the Earth was passing directly between the Sun and Saturn.  A lovely effect was to make Saturn bright and clear in the night sky.  That combined with still excellent views of Venus, Mars and Jupiter made for a great time to see much of our solar system.  Oh, and the moon wouldn't rise until the very early morning hours.  The only possible problem was clouds or a bad see (atmospheric turbulence).  The clouds cleared at dusk and left us with a really spectacular view.

That's right: us.  I threw my first star party!

It started with a Facebook post inviting anyone interested out to a park near my home.  It ended with 25 people (many of them kids!) getting a great look at our neighbors in the solar system.  Most people were seeing Saturn and others for the first time with their own eyes, and I found it deeply moving to see they too were awed by the scope and beauty of our Universe.  Once it was too late for the kids to hang, some of the adults stuck around to check out some deep sky objects: star clusters and the occasional nebula.

If you've never been to a star party, I highly recommend it.  Just bring some bug spray!

Stargazing with the Celestron Nexstar 6se

I've been fascinated by space for as long as I can remember.  As a kid, there was not form of fiction that captivated me more than tales of people traveling among the stars.  It was the ultimate expression of my beloved High Technology–the ability for man to escape the gravity well of his home and soar anywhere he chose.

A few weeks ago I picked up a pair of 30 x 50 binoculars that I could mount to a tripod.  The moon view available was amazing.  More amazing was seeing Jupiter go from a point of light to a tiny disk, surrounded by 4 points–it's moons.  Mars and Saturn were also disks, albeit much less dramatic than the giant of Jupiter.  If I stayed out long enough, and did a good job hiding from porch lights, passing cars and even people's indoor lights coming out of windows something truly amazing would happen-my binoculars would let me see nebula and star clusters.

Binoculars are fantastic stargazing tools, but they only set you up to want more.  And now more is what I have: I am the proud owner of a Celestron Nexstar 6se.  Here you can see it setup between my house and my neighbor's, a spot I selected to get the broadest view of the sky with at least some protection from street lights.  My backyard is dark, but it's also treed in, so viewing options are much more limited.

 My rig consists of the scope, included stand, optional SkyLink GPS, power tank and a set of 1.25" eyepieces.  After a lot of research, I settled on the 6se for a few reasons:

• The Schmidt-Cassegrain design balances the advantages of a reflector and a refractor while keeping the size of the scope down.
• A six inch scope can produce some great views while still being small and easily portable.
• The Nexstar 6se is computer controlled.  When combined with the optional GPS, I only have to aim the scope at one known star, and then correct it's aim at a second and it can then automatically point itself at any object I want to see.
• It looks really cool.

My ability to star hop is pretty limited, so the fact that this scope can key in on one of the handful of stars I can easily find and know the name of and then find everything else for me is really amazing.  Then there's the view.  I started out looking a Venus, because it's over the top brightness made it an easy object to find, test focus on and align the star finder to.  The Venus view was nice–I could clearly make out it's current phase. By the time I had the scope focused and figured out alignment Jupiter had passed below the horizon.

I spent some time looking at Mars, and the red planet was much more dramatic through a scope than I'd ever seen with my own eyes.  I tried checking out a few Nebula, but my night vision was reset to often by typical suburban activity, so I settled for some clusters instead.

We don't always realize just how much we miss of the night sky in an age of rampant light pollution.  The Nexstar 6se did a great job of cutting though the haze to show me dozens of stars where none were visible to the naked eye.

Time was passing very quickly.  Each hour subjectively felt like 15 minutes or so.  That means Saturn was out and available for view in a very short amount of perceived time.  I knew Saturn would be dramatic, it is often said to be one of the most amazing sights available to the suburban viewer.  It is.  I didn't take this image, but I did search for one that looked the most like what I saw, and this pic was taking with the Nexstar 6se:

Click to view original source

 Saturn took my breath away.  I fumbled around in my accessory kit to find my Barrow lens.  This particular Barrow just doubles the power of whatever eyepiece you are using at the time.  Here I could clearly make out the rings of Saturn, and the bands of clouds on the planet itself.  I brought Jenny outside, and she remarked that it didn't look real.

This is the first time I have viewed Saturn with my own eyes as more than a tiny dot.  I asked Jenny to rouse Madison out of bed so she could see it.  My neighbor likewise brought his son out to see it.  Looking at one of the giants in our solar system was awe-inspiring and humbling.

Today our species has very limited abilities to travel the planets, and no way to travel to distant stars.  We explore the reaches of our solar system with robots.  We've been to the moon, and we regularly sent people into low Earthorbit.  Last night, standing in my yard I was able to get a sense of our place in the universe and a vision or what we one day may be able to do.

I guess you could say I am happy with the telescope.

This is MyNyte

These three guys had an idea.  There are so many social networks that let you tell your social graph where you've been, and what you did.  Then, there was a new crop of social networks and apps that let you share where you are now via a check-in.  None of these networks made it easy to use your social graph to decide what you were doing next.

Facebook can let everyone you know find out how great last night was.  Foursquare pioneered the idea of sharing presence as it happened, and encouraged people to flock to each other.  The simple fact was that getting a group together to go out was a pain.  It was a ball of texting, calling, emailing, Facebooking and just generally herding cats.  There has to be a better way, right?

Why can't you use your social graph to organize everyone easily?  Further more, how do you know what place is worth hitting tonight?  No one wants to show up to an empty club.  What about those people in your social graph who you just don't want to be around, like ex-girlfriends or guys who are just a little too interested?  Why can't your social graph help you avoid them?

Enter MyNyte.  The idea is so simple, and yet very powerful.  Building an Entourage and assigning Wingmen take the pain out of organizing a small or large group.  Bumps allow MyNyte users to say when they are planning to attend, on their way to, at or leaving a venue–which lets groups of friends move together with a single action.  When that data is aggregated across all of MyNyte, we'll be able to see what venues will be busy before it happens.  That's right, there's now a future's market for night life and the currency is Plans.  Finally, the Frenemy feature will alert you when your activity will intersect with someone who you'd really rather not be bothered with.

Those three guys talked to this guy.  Out of that meeting the idea turned into a company, and my crew was brought in to help.  I became a part of Team MyNyte.

What a team it is!

It's not the first time I've worked on an iOS app.  It's not the first time I've been a part of ground breaking technology.  It's not the first time I've worked in social networking.  It's not the first time I've helped build dynamic, scalable infrastructure to support lots of users.  It's not the first time I've worked with several large, independent code bases that form a single project and mission.

It is the first time I've done all of these things at once while working with people who are the best in the world at what they do.

MyNyte is available for the world to use now.  There's an iPhone app, and a website made just for mobile devices like Android phones.

The long road to launch is just the beginning.  We've got teething pains, bug fixes and a product roadmap that stretches far beyond the horizon.

It's a journey I'm happy to be a part of.

Siri & Dragon

Siri has me hooked on speech. I find myself frequently using speech as the primary method for accessing functions of the iPhone four S. naturally, when I saw Dragon Express the Mac app store I had to try it.

Even using the intro microphone, I find recognition to be pretty accurate. What's missing is the intelligence you find with Siri. I'm relatively fast typist, so I'm not sure I really save time with dictation.

Apple can't bring Siri to the rest of it's product line fast enough. In the meantime there's Dragon Express, and at least it never tells me the network is not available.