Essays

This is a Letter to the Editor that I sent in a while back, and I am finally putting it on my blog. Enjoy.

The November 9th edition of the Daily Journal featured an article describing Greenwood Community School Corporation's use of fingerprint scanners to secure its computers. The article quoted Joe Huber, GCSC's director of information systems, saying, “there's no combination of letters or numbers to try to crack”.

That statement is false. As any knowledgeable computer user knows, all information that goes into and is stored by a computer gets converted into a series of ones and zeros. The same goes for a fingerprint that is scanned by a computer. Thus to a computer a fingerprint is no different than a combination of letters and numbers. Just because an attacker can't crack the “password” doesn't mean that a biometric system is more secure.

Using one's fingerprint as a password only gives the appearance of security because it's a fingerprint. It is no more secure than using a single, really long password. It's actually much less secure than a different password for each system because every system would be using the same “password”. An attacker would either have to capture the raw fingerprint data to gain access to all the information that that fingerprint is allowed to access or get a hold of the entire database of fingerprints. Either way using fingerprints alone only decreases the overall security of the information it's trying to protect.

Published in the Dec. 14th edition of the Daily Journal.

In the Nov. 26 edition of the Daily Journal, Paul Hammons wrote a letter to the editor that touched on quite a few things. He touched on the election, evolution and the founding of this country.

I will correct him on his statement that this country was founded on biblical principles because it’s an attempt to rewrite our history.

The governments of the Dark Ages were founded on Biblical principles. Those centuries were dark times that only saw meager progress. Hence why we call them the Dark Ages. The meager progress was directly related to the power of the Church, because the Church suppressed ideas and people who were critical of it, effectively keeping the majority of the people ignorant.

Whereas the United States was founded on the concepts of reason and individuality along with the three principles of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. None of which are Biblical, and none of which are detrimental to a strong society. In fact those principles are the sole reason we do have a strong society, because men are free to exchange ideas and live their lives as they see fit.

The soaring costs of prescription drugs is one of the issues this election year. One of the proposed solutions is to import drugs from Canada which a few states have done despite a federal law against it. The federal government keeps refusing to officially allow the practice citing “safety” concerns. But people seem to want drugs imported from Canada because they are cheaper since the Canadian government sets the price. Cheap medicine from Canada sounds attractive to the American consumer, but it doesn't get to the root of the problem that the federal government isn't bold enough to state.

The root of the problem is Canada. Canada has socialized medicine as do most of the countries in Europe. Canada dictates the price that a certain drug will be sold at resulting in prices that are lower than in the United States. By setting a drugs price, Canada indirectly raises the price that Americans have to pay.

This past spring the debate to switch Indiana to day-light savings time was brought back up by government officials and the Indianapolis Star—almost in a jokingly fashion because nobody in Indiana cares to switch.
The debate has gone on for nearly half a century.
Most of Indiana does not observe Daylight Saving Time, except for five counties near Chicago, IL and five counties near Evansville, IN which keep their clocks synchronized with the Central time zone.
There are also five counties near Louisville, KY and Cincinnati, OH that observe Eastern Daylight
Time.
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Staying on Standard Time all year does have its advantages and disadvantages.
The most prominent advantage is that people do not have to change their clocks twice a year,
while one disadvantage is that Indiana changes between Eastern Time in the fall
and winter to Central Time for the spring and summer.
For people living in Indiana this isn't much of a problem except for people who do business with Indiana businesses.

I sent this to the editor of the Daily Journal hoping it would get published. Since it didn't here it is:

This fourth of July had to be one of my favorites. Not because of what I did, but because of the spectacle I witnessed in my neighborhood and throughout Greenwood. That was the blatant disregard for Indiana's laws on fireworks. In every direction, I could see bottle rockets bursting into colors and hear fire crackers blowing up. The city's fireworks display didn't even compare.

For these were individuals who were providing the ammunition to entertain their family and indirectly their neighbors. There private displays weren't tied to the ground or relegated a secluded area this year where nobody would see. People took matters into their own hands, without reservations if someone would constrain their freedom for their peaceful use of gunpowder.

That's why this fourth of July was different. I hope there is a legislator who took notice of what his fellow citizens were doing, and pens a law to ensure that people can legally exhibit the freedom they did this Independence Day in the future.