Mike's Lookout

Why is the price of college going through the roof? They could be rising due to increased costs. Or they could be rising because that is what the market will bear.

Mark Cuban proposed this recently, and I think he’s right. The government keeps throwing more money to students. Awash with cash, those students then go to school and spend it. With plenty of eligible students, the schools simply raise rates, the government loans more, and the cycle repeats. Shall we stop the madness? Stop giving out massive government student loans and this problem could evaporate entirely.

Here’s a fun info-graphic about college loans.

And here’s Mark:

3. Limit the Size of Student Loans to $2,000 per year

Crazy ? Maybe, maybe not. What happened to the price of homes when the mortgage loan bubble popped ? They plummeted. If the size of student loans are capped at a low level, you know what will happen to the price of going to a college or university ? It will plummet. Colleges and universities will have to completely rethink what they are, what purpose they serve and who their customers will be. Will some go out of business ? Absolutely. That is real world. Will the quality of education suffer ? Given that TAs will still work for cheap, I doubt it.

Now some might argue that limiting student loans will limit the ability of lower income students to go to better schools. I say nonsense on two fronts. The only thing that allowing students to graduate with 50k , 80k or even more debt does is assure they will stay low income for a long, long time after they graduate ! The 2nd improvement will be that smart students will find the schools that adapt to the new rules and offer the best education they can afford. Just as they do now, but without loading up on debt.

The beauty of capitalism is that people like me will figure out new and better ways to create and operate for profit universities that educate as well or better as today’s state institutions, AND I have no doubt that the state colleges and universities will figure out how to adapt to the new world of limited student loans as well.

Finally, the impact on the overall economy will be ENORMOUS. There is more student loan debt than credit card debt outstanding today. By relieving this burden at graduation, students will be able to participate in the economy

I’m still struggling with my mac, but I am getting better.  Nonetheless, this week’s UI episode was so comical I decided to post it.

The Task:  By default, the screen saver locks me out of my Mac every 5 minutes!  Make it not timeout for 15-30 minutes and not force the immediate password.  This shouldn’t be too hard, right?

Step #1:  Go to the System Preferences, click on “Desktop and Screen Saver”, and move the slider from 5 minutes to 15 minutes.  Great!  Hey, they even let me choose from a bunch of cute screen saver options!  Nice.

Disappointment #1:  It didn’t work!  My machine still locks me out after 5 minutes.

At this point, it took me days before realizing that it was probably the Mac equivalent of power-saving mode causing the problem.  If I weren’t a techie, I never would have thought of this.  But hey, no problem, I can fix that…

Step #2: Go to the System Preferences again, and find the “Energy Saver”!  Great!  Sure enough, the defaults are too low.  Extend them out.  Nice.  Now I must be all done.

Disappointment #2:  OK – it partially worked, but shoot, it’s still prompting me for my password all the time.  How do I fix that?

I spent a lot of time combing through both the screen saver and also the energy saver panels.  But I couldn’t find where they have an option to not force password prompting.  Searching through other panels didn’t discover anything either.

Finally, Google solved the problem.

Step #3: Go to the System Preferences “Security” tab, with “Require password [immediately] after sleep or screen saver begins.”  Change that value.

Alas, 3 days, 3 control panels, and 1 Google search later, I no longer have my Mac locking me out all the time.  Score one up for Apple’s mastery of User Interface design!  Hope this helps someone else someday too.

Over a year ago, when we first announced SPDY, the most prominent criticism was the requirement for SSL. We’ve become so accustomed to our unsecure HTTP protocol, that making the leap to safety now seems daunting.

Since that time, many things have happened, and it is now more clear than ever that SSL isn’t an option – it’s a matter of life and death.

SSL was invented primarily to protect our online banking and online purchasing needs.  It has served us fairly well, and most all banks and ecommerce sites use SSL today.  What nobody ever expected was that SSL would eventually become the underpinnings of safety for political dissidents.

Last year, when China was caught hacking into Google, were they trying to steal money?  Two months ago, when Comodo was attacked (and suspected the Iranian government), did they forge the identities of Bank of America, Wells Fargo, or Goldman Sachs?  No.  They went after Twitter, Gmail, and Facebook – social networking sites.  Sites where you’d find information about dissidents, not cash.  To say that these attacks were used to seek and destroy dissidents would be speculation at this point.  But these incidents show that the potential is there and governmental intelligence agencies are using these approaches.  And of course, it is well known fact that the Egyption government turned off the Internet entirely so that their citizens could not easily organize.

The Internet is now a key communication mechanism for all of us.  Unfortunately,  users can’t differentiate safe from unsafe on the web.  They rely on computer professionals like us to make it safe.  When we tell them that the entire Web is built upon an unsecured protocol, most are aghast with shock.  How could we let this happen?

As we look forward, this trend will increase.  What will Egypt, Libya, Iran, China, or Afghanistan do to seek out and kill those that oppose them?  What does the US government do? 

Fortunately, major social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter have already figured this out.  They are now providing SSL-only versions of their services which should help quite a bit.

So does all this sound a little dramatic?  Maybe so, and I apologize if this sounds a bit paranoid.  I’m not a crypto-head, I swear.  But these incidents are real, and the potential is real so long as our Internet remains unsecure.  The only answer is to secure *everything* we do on the net.  Even the seemingly benign communications must be encrypted, because users don’t know the difference – and for some of them, their lives are at stake.

Here are some results of benchmarking on my home computer.  It shows that Chrome is still much faster than IE9 on all major JavaScript benchmarks.  The IE 32bit version is a little better, but Win7 64bit is outselling Win7 32bit by a 3:1 margin, so this is what many users will experience.

My system is a Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 @2.33GHz with 4GB of RAM running Win7 Build 7600.  The version of IE tested was 9.0.8080.16413 64bit and the version of Chrome was 10.0.648.204.

Adam Langley slammed me today for using a self-signed cert on this site (https://www.belshe.com/), pointing out that there is no reason not to have a real certificate, especially when you can get them for free.

As usual, he is right, of course.  So I got myself a signed certificate from StartSSL.

Here are the step by step instructions.  You can do it too:

https://github.com/ioerror/duraconf/blob/master/startssl/README.markdown

First, some guiding principles:

1. Consider who is backing each bill and how much they’re spending to back it.  The more they are spending, the more valuable it is to them.  Ask yourself why.
2. Remember that every law has overhead – a new commission, a new study, a new enforcement, etc.  Even if the burden is placed on existing agencies (like our police officers or our firefighters or our court systems), each law usually costs money.  Unions (teachers, firefighters, police) usually support more work, because they get bigger.
3. Be skeptical.
4. If everything looks equal, vote no.

Second, some resources:

1. BallotPedia.  I have found this site to be pretty comprehensive, well organized, and fair.
2. OpenSecrets.  OpenSecret tracks political contributions and lobbying.  Their coverage is mostly at the federal level, however.

Finally, the votes!

Prop 19:  Legalize Marijuana.  As with alcohol, legalize it and deal with the consequences.  I won’t touch the stuff.

Prop 20: Redistricting of Congressional Districts via committee.  Committees are just as corrupt as congress.  A computer should draw the lines, but this is better than today.

Prop 21: Tax to fund state parks.  The park system is plagued with administrative overhead.  Supporters should donate to the parks rather than to this bill.

Prop 22: Prohibit State Spending against Local Funds.  Our governors need to be able to legislate holistically.  This creates unnecessary boundaries.

Prop 23: Suspend the “Global Warning Act” until unemployment drops below 5.5%.  I don’t like California at an economic disadvantage in the global market.

Prop 24: Increase business taxes in California.  Check out the Teacher’s Union support on this bill.  This is just a tax to prolong big government.

Prop 25: State budget via simple majority.  The teacher’s union working to expand big-government.  I don’t want the budget controlled by the ruling party.  This is downright scary.

Prop 26: Make “fees” require 2/3 vote since they are taxes.  The state doesn’t have a revenue problem, it has a spending problem.  Act now, or “fees” will cripple California.

Prop 27: Abolish committee for State Legislature redistricting.  It’s either Prop 20 or Prop 27.  Prop 20 is better.

You’ve got to be kidding, right? I can’t remember the last time I saw a physical slide deck at work.  We use overhead projectors, of course.

Why doesn’t the government?

It’s April 15th.

Jerry Brown, the former California Governor and current California Governor hopeful, was on site at Google yesterday.  I attended the 1 hour talk where Eric Schmidt played a soft Charlie Rose.

At the end, I asked a softball question myself.  And I got a politician’s answer.

I asked, “California taxes – are they too high, too low, or about right?”  Brown initially pointed out that during his administration as Governor of California, there were no new taxes (1975-1982).  Then he went on to talk for quite a while, and basically said he didn’t think we should raise taxes, but he didn’t think that state financed programs should pay the price of the $11T of wealth lost due to the Wall Street debacle.  (He implied that the state’s budget problems are related to that, which is at least partially true)

Sadly, Gov Brown wasn’t completely truthful with me.  A quick search through Google reveals an article dated Sept 18, 1981 which proves that Brown did at least increase one tax.  I don’t really mind so much that he had a tax increase in 1981.  But he was quite emphatic in his reply to my question that he had never raised taxes as Governor.  Ok – he embellished.

So, to summarize his politician’s answer:   he doesn’t want to raise taxes, and he doesn’t want to cut programs.  He didn’t actually answer my question, and in his reply he didn’t stick to just the truth.  It wasn’t a horrible lie, and could even be chalked up to a minor mistake.  But isn’t this what we expect from politicians these days?  Nobody really expects him to just be straightforward anymore.

As for me, I liked Brown’s overall talk.  I won’t vote for him, though.  We need serious change in California, and the existing bureaucrats have proven they can’t do it.  I don’t know if CEOs and business people can do it (obviously actors can’t do it), but Brown loses the vote because he’s been a career politician too long.  Is that age discrimination on my part?  Ha!  Call the EEOC!