Droid using Android

One of my friends is a staunch supporter of Microsoft products.

He was really impressed with a friends new phone, a Droid running the Android OS.

I informed him that the OS (Operating System) he was impressed with "Android" is a version of Linux.

I am seeing more and more people interested in linux, besides the price for linux distrobutions usually being free, there is also the ability to do almost everything windows does, with the exception of a few 3D video games and a few windows programs.

I think your going to see big things come from the Ubuntu and PCLinuxOS versions of Linux.
I believe we will soon see a Linux OS that can run 100% of all windows apps.

What that would mean to someone that chooses linux is that they would be able to run all windows apps, all linux apps, and a lot of, if not all of Mac's apps.

(An app, short for application, is a program. anything you run, from notepad or word, to a video game is known as an app.)

-Denny

Asset forfeiture

Radley Balko shows what's wrong with the American civil asset forfeiture regime in a feature piece at Reason:

Police gradually came to view asset forfeiture as not just a way to minimize drug profits, or even to fill their own coffers, but as a tool to enforce maximum compliance on non-criminals. In one highly publicized example from the 1990s, Jason Brice nearly lost the motel he had bought and renovated in a high-crime area of Houston. At the request of local authorities, Brice hired private security, allowed police to patrol his property (at some cost to his business), and spent tens of thousands of dollars in other measures to prevent drug activity on the premises. But when local police asked Brice to raise his rates to deter criminals, he refused, saying it would put him out of business. Stepped up police harassment of his customers caused Brice to eventually terminate the agreement that had allowed them latitude on his property. In less than a month, local and federal officials tried to seize Brice’s motel on the grounds that he was aware of drug dealing taking place there. Brice eventually won, but only after an expensive, drawn-out legal battle.

By the late 1990s, stories such as Brice’s finally moved Congress to act. After a series of emotional hearings in 2000, Congress passed the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act (CAFRA), authored by Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.). The bill raised the federal government’s burden of proof in forfeiture cases from probable cause to a preponderance of the evidence, the same standard as in other civil cases. It barred the government from using hearsay and allowed owners who won forfeiture challenges to obtain reimbursement for legal expenses.

The bill wasn’t perfect. Seizures made by customs agents, as opposed to the DEA or FBI, would still be governed by the old rules. Hyde (who died in 2007) wanted an even heavier burden of proof for the government, the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard used in criminal cases. That didn’t pass. Under CAFRA, the federal government could still take your property without proving beyond a reasonable doubt that any crime was committed, much less that you yourself had committed one. But at least the reforms made the process a bit more difficult.

Problem was, the 1984 law had already spawned dozens of imitators on the state level, and CAFRA applied only to the feds. Forfeiture had been sending money to police departments and prosecutors’ offices for 16 years, so even in the few states that passed laws to make the process more fair, officials found ways around them. Once the authorities have a license to steal, it turns out to be very difficult to revoke.

The effects on police allocation of time and resources are predictable:

In addition to raising questions of fairness, forfeiture has warped the priorities of law enforcement agencies. In 2008 the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives asked for bids from private contractors on 2,000 Leatherman pocket knives for its agents, to be inscribed with the phrase “Always Think Forfeiture,” a play on the agency’s traditional “ATF” initials. The agency rescinded the order after it was reported in the Idaho Statesman, but critics said it betrayed the ethic of an organization more interested in taking people’s property than in fighting crime.

Some police agencies come to view forfeiture not just as an occasional windfall for buying guns, police cars, or better equipment, but as a source of funding for basic operations. This is especially true with multijurisdictional drug task forces, some of which have become financially independent of the states, counties, and cities in which they operate, thanks to forfeiture and federal anti-drug grants.

In a 2001 study published in the Journal of Criminal Justice, the University of Texas at Dallas criminologist John Worral surveyed 1,400 police departments around the country on their use of forfeiture and the way they incorporated seized assets into their budgets. Worral, who describes himself as agnostic on the issue, concluded that “a substantial proportion of law enforcement agencies are dependent on civil asset forfeiture” and that “forfeiture is coming to be viewed not only as a budgetary supplement, but as a necessary source of income.” Almost half of surveyed police departments with more than 100 law enforcement personnel said forfeiture proceeds were “necessary as a budget supplement” for department operations.

...

Tiny Tenaha, Texas, population 1,046, made national news in 2008 after a series of reports alleged that the town’s police force was targeting black and Latino motorists along Highway 84, a busy regional artery that connects Houston to Louisiana’s casinos, ensuring a reliable harvest of cash-heavy motorists. The Chicago Tribune reported that in just the three years between 2006 and 2008, Tenaha police stopped 140 drivers and asked them to sign waivers agreeing to hand over their cash, cars, jewelry, and other property to avoid arrest and prosecution on drug charges. If the drivers agreed, police took their property and waved them down the highway. If they refused, even innocent motorists faced months of legal hassles and thousands of dollars in attorney fees, usually amounting to far more than the value of the amount seized. One local attorney found court records of 200 cases in which Tenaha police had seized assets from drivers; only 50 were ever criminally charged.

National Public Radio reported in 2008 that in Kingsville, Texas, a town of 25,000, “Police officers drive high-performance Dodge Chargers and use $40,000 digital ticket writers. They’ll soon carry military-style assault rifles, and the SWAT team recently acquired sniper rifles.” All this equipment was funded with proceeds from highway forfeitures.

Think it can't happen here in New Zealand? Think again. The Greens (especially the admirable Nandor Tanczos) and Maori were about the only outspoken Parliamentary opponents of civil asset forfeiture legislation introduced by the prior Labour government and passed by the current National government; ACT favoured it.

The NZ legislation isn't as bad as the American version, but give it time.

How economists deal with premarital sex

"From Shame to Game in One Hundred Years: An Economic Model of the Rise in Premarital Sex and its De-Stigmatization". Jesús Fernández-Villaverde, Jeremy Greenwood, and Nezih Guner

Abstract:

Societies socialize children about many things, including sex. Socialization is costly. It uses scarce resources, such as time and effort. Parents weigh the marginal gains from socialization against its costs. Those at the lower end of the socioeconomic scale indoctrinate their daughters less than others about the perils of premarital sex, because the latter will lose less from an out-of-wedlock birth. Modern contraceptives have profoundly affected the calculus for instilling sexual mores, leading to a de-stigmatization of sex. As contraception has become more effective there is less need for parents, churches and states to inculcate sexual mores. Technology affects culture.

Lemma One is called "Lustful males": as women bear the costs of unwanted pregnancy, males will have a lower libido threshold for engaging in premarital activities.

They also suggest that church prohibitions on pre-marital sex loosened as churches became less likely to bear the costs of raising abandoned babies.

Times change

My parents sent over some of my old books for Ira to enjoy. Kids books...they've changed a bit. Not sure that the current edition of Richard Scarry would have this page...

 

Battling corruption

The World Bank's CommGAP blog notes a neat anti-corruption campaign in India: withdrawing the consent of the victim.

According to Anand, the idea was first conceived by an Indian physics professor at the University of Maryland, who, in his travels around India, realized how widespread bribery was and wanted to do something about it. He came up with the idea of printing zero-denomination notes and handing them out to officials whenever he was asked for kickbacks as a way to show his resistance. Anand took this idea further: to print them en masse, widely publicize them, and give them out to the Indian people. He thought these notes would be a way to get people to show their disapproval of public service delivery dependent on bribes. The notes did just that. The first batch of 25,000 notes were met with such demand that 5th Pillar has ended up distributing one million zero-rupee notes to date since it began this initiative. Along the way, the organization has collected many stories from people using them to successfully resist engaging in bribery.

One such story was our earlier case about the old lady and her troubles with the Revenue Department official over a land title. Fed up with requests for bribes and equipped with a zero rupee note, the old lady handed the note to the official. He was stunned. Remarkably, the official stood up from his seat, offered her a chair, offered her tea and gave her the title she had been seeking for the last year and a half to obtain without success. Had the zero rupee note reached the old lady sooner, her granddaughter could have started college on schedule and avoided the consequence of delaying her education for two years. In another experience, a corrupt official in a district in Tamil Nadu was so frightened on seeing the zero rupee note that he returned all the bribe money he had collected for establishing a new electricity connection back to the no longer compliant citizen.

The victim of corruption signals that he or she is the type that will report the corrupt official, and the official backs down. Why didn't this work without the note? The note signals that the bearer knows how to report the corrupt official:

Anand believes that the success of the notes lies in the willingness of the people to use them. People are willing to stand up against the practice that has become so commonplace because they are no longer afraid: first, they have nothing to lose, and secondly, they know that this initiative is being backed up by an organization—that is, they are not alone in this fight.

This last point—people knowing that they are not alone in the fight—seems to be the biggest hurdle when it comes to transforming norms vis-à-vis corruption. For people to speak up against corruption that has become institutionalized within society, they must know that there are others who are just as fed up and frustrated with the system. Once they realize that they are not alone, they also realize that this battle is not unbeatable. Then, a path opens up—a path that can pave the way for relatively simple ideas like the zero rupee notes to turn into a powerful social statement against petty corruption.

The notes are distributed by 5th Pillar, who print their contact details on the notes.

HT: Oxfam

Bernanke Dow inversion

• Probability of Bernanke reappointment by 2 February: 90.3%
• Dow if Bernanke reappointed: 10,404
• Dow if Bernanke not reappointed: 11,755.6

Or at least those were the prices before I started shorting Dow if Bernanke not reappointed.

Come on, traders. It's dead simple to put these prices into a little excel spreadsheet that spits out the conditional prices for the Dow. Looks like somebody bid up the price of US.BNKE.2FEB without making the simultaneous play against US.NOTBNKE.DOW . Time for me to short Bernanke's reappointment before 2 Feb while shorting the Dow in the case that he isn't reappointed. If he's reappointed, I take money from the Dow short; if he's not reappointed, I take money from the Bernanke short.

Beattie on Closeup [updated]

Kiwi viewers should tune in tomorrow night (Tuesday) to Close Up on TV1 for a piece on Roger Beattie's weka farming and, I'm told, a debate between Roger and a DoC staffer on the merits of the commercial farming of endangered species. I'm guessing the clip will wind up on the Close Up site sometime after broadcast.

For more on Roger's work in saving the weka (for tasty eating sometime down the track), check my prior post here; for more on saving endangered species by farming and eating them, here and here.

Update: it looks like DoC has pulled out, so it's delayed for now....