Perhaps the Gambit said it best,

the last thing Louisiana needs now is to portray itself to the world as an intellectual backwater.

The intro section recounts Chris Rose’s coming to learn about the existence of New Orleans bloggers, which I can understand must have been a strange experience for a columnist. He seems still somewhat befuddled about the whole thing, not entirely understanding why people would do that which he gets paid to do, but at least he takes the occasional snarky comment about him with appropriate detachment.

The moment at which Ashley became human to him, and not just some weirdo banging away at a keyboard sight-unseen, was when he found out that they were physically neighbors, and shared a similar love for such things as cold Abita and good cigars. Unfortunately, I never had the chance to meet Ashley in person, buy him a drink, or light him a cigar, but I think the whole town owes him a debt of gratitude for his energetic and unfailing defense of New Orleans.

It would probably come as quite a surprise to him that I’m also his neighbor. We’ve met in person, and even played a round of golf together.

Members of the Tulane community have been experiencing delays sending and receiving email for the past two days. This delay stems from the fact that one of our users responded to the email phishing scam that we warned you about yesterday. This person furnished his Tulane email and password. A spammer from Africa used this information to send out a huge number of spam messages. This action caused great harm to our community. Our domain is now listed as a source of spam causing companies such as Yahoo.com and hotmail.com to reject email from us. We are working diligently to resolve this issue. To learn more about this specific attack, please read this article from the Chronicle of Higher Education.

For at least another 10 years or so, there will be people whose first experience with email is in college. As long as there’s a steady supply of these n00bs, there will be a steady supply of people who respond to email scams, so we can expect this kind of thing for at least the next decade.

Enough is enough! I can think of a couple ways of dealing with this, none of which require people to magically cease being stupid enough to fall for one of these scams. If Paul Barron was serious about solving the problem, he’d follow my advice:

Don’t just flip a switch when you get the tuition check. Make email a privilege, and one that has to be earned. I know many classes use email for homework and so on, but I use the internet to do my job, too. Before you get an account and a password, Tulane should determine if you’re a risk to the community at large. Just funneling people through an orientation session won’t do it, because no one pays attention to those things. People have to be certified to drive a car or be a lifeguard, so they should be required to show at least minimal knowledge of how to use the internet safely before being allowed to do so.

I suggest that in order to activate your account, you should have to answer questions such as:

1. Under what circumstances would the IT department email me asking for my account details?
   Never. They’ve already got it, dumbass!
2. What should I ask myself before clicking a link in an email?
   Do I know the sender, or did I sign up to receive this? Does the actual URL that will be loaded when I click actually go where it says it will? Is my browser set to not allow unprompted installation of software, and is it updated to the latest version? If the email wasn’t sent directly to me(forwards don’t count) from someone I know personally and could beat up if they hacked my computer, does the email have absolutely nothing to do with sex, drugs, money, violence, or tragedy?
3. Name three characteristics of a good password:
   more than 6 characters, contains mixed case, numbers, and/or symbols, is not your pet’s name
4. Where should I write down my password so I don’t forget it?
   Nowhere! What college student doesn’t remember their phone number, address, and SSN? A password should be remembered too. If you really have trouble, use some technique to generate a password from a more easily rememberable word.
5. How can I find out if this email attachment purporting to show Britney Spears in a compromising situation is actually an executable file that will pwn my computer?
   This is client specific, so I suggest making this a free-form answer and letting a tech support person determine whether they should have the ability to send or receive attachments.
6. What should I do to my buddy/classmate/uncle who forwards me an online petition or bogus warning story?
   Another free-form answer but suggested good answers include: sneaking into their room and placing their hand in a bowl of warm water, replying-all to the forward with 4 or 5 sites debunking the story, or perhaps simply adding them to the NAMBLA mailing list(snail mail too, but be sure to use their work address).

Once these questions have been satisfactorily answered, then the account can be set up. Forgetting can be addressed by enforcing periodic re-activations. For people who deserve the privilege, this should be only a 30 second process, not much more burden than changing a password.

People who allow their accounts to be breached and make the community suffer by failing to exercise common sense should have their access revoked.

I know many classes use email, but is it really too much to ask a prospective graduate to know how to not endanger those around them? People have to demonstrate minimal knowledge about driving to be allowed to drive, guns to be allowed to hunt, and life-saving techniques to be a lifeguard. I don’t think I’m out of line suggesting that, in the closed community of Tulane, people should have to demonstrate minimal knowledge about how to use the internet safely to be allowed to participate.

Those who lose their access can either get the info from a friend, or use a locked-down and secured public computer. I’m serious about this, so what do you say? Shall we have a pilot trial of an “internet license” here at Tulane?

On a more serious note, I’m aware that muggings of kids stumbling home from the bar happen routinely, and that kids will always put themselves in harm’s way. That’s a more serious problem, but beyond the scope of what I’m talking about here.

For example, one time the DD employee comes home with a bunch of cash in his wallet and his wife finds it. He tells her he won it gambling, and she takes half.

The Chinese agent takes the DD employee to Vegas and spends a couple thousand on him, and later the Chinese agent tells his boss how much he spent on the guy, referring to him in Chinese derogatory slang.

The DD employee keeps telling the Chinese agent, “this is classified shit, man, so don’t lose it. I’d go to jail. I don’t want to go to fucking jail.”

Their idea of subterfuge was using a chinese-based webmail provider, but they didn’t use it all the time, and copying documents and faxing them, instead of emailing them. The FBI even found where the Chinese agent bought PGP Home Edition 9.5

Apparently the real carrot for the DD employee, who worked in weapons purchasing, was to steer purchasing contracts for weapons systems through the agent’s purchasing company in exchange for kickbacks, and maybe the agent was really going to try that, but I’ll bet the companies were just for show, and the DD employee’s greed did the rest.

If this is the level of spy threat we’re facing, we’ve got nothing to worry about.

The interesting thing is that McCain won all of the above parishes - Every single one - yet Huckabee won the statewide vote. This suggests that it’s the more rural people from north Louisiana who swayed the vote, in other words, the strongly evangelical voters.

Parker said a lot of the votes for Huckabee, a former Baptist minister, came from the more socially conservative areas of the state from Alexandria northward.

Almost half of the voters in the Louisiana GOP primary described themselves as born-again, evangelical Christians, according to the AP exit poll, and most of them voted for Huckabee. He also won two-thirds of those voters who said they were looking for a candidate who shares their values.

The motivating force that gets evangelicals up and out of the church pew is emotionally-charged issues. They could care less who the guy is. Get them riled up enough with abortion/stem cell research/evolution issues and they’ll go to vote for that, and drop a vote for the most atavistic Republican almost as an afterthought. The thing is, there’s lots of ‘em. As these results show, they easily overpower the more population-dense and sanity-dense areas.

Here’s my point: Democrats can’t be led like this. We won’t march to the polls behind the pied piper of the pulpit. The only chance we ever have of winning anything is just to avoid stirring these people up, and that’s why I’m placing myself in the Obama camp today. The speech he gave at Tulane certainly helped, but more than that, I think when you add up the votes Clinton will gain over Obama in the Northeast then subtract the protest votes she’ll provoke from evangelicals, you end up with a negative number. This resulted in McCain’s narrow loss in Louisiana, and this is not a trend we want to see in the National election.

_{p.s. Tom Schaller is a dumbass. I called it!}

Three of the initial intersections are on South Carrollton Avenue: at Canal Street, Earhart Boulevard and the Palmetto Street-Washington Avenue intersection. The fourth initial site is Poydras Street and Loyola Avenue.

By the end of the year, Mendoza said, 30 cameras should be in place at about 20 intersections.

These cameras will not only who don’t stop at a yellow light, but they’ll also photograph cars not stopping before turning right on red, and speeders.

This is another page out of the Giuliani method of crime-fighting, called the broken-window theory. There are a couple reasons why these cameras are a bad idea.

Pre-emptive surveillance of ordinary citizens is never a good idea, because it presumes those watching the cameras are incorruptible.

I don’t know how they’ll make anything stick if you claim you weren’t the one driving and they can’t prove otherwise. I also don’t know how they’ll deal with all the temporary tags and “license applied for” situations.

]]> http://nolablog.williamgunn.org/2008/01/28/watch-out-for-the-traffic-cameras/feed/ http://nolablog.williamgunn.org/2007/12/20/about-the-housing-protests/ http://nolablog.williamgunn.org/2007/12/20/about-the-housing-protests/#comments Thu, 20 Dec 2007 21:50:58 +0000 Mr. Gunn http://nolablog.williamgunn.org/2007/12/20/about-the-housing-protests/ It’s actually kinda funny to see how well the whole thing has been orchestrated. You see, there’s plenty of housing here, and no residents were even living in the projects that are being demolished. A month or so ago, all these homeless people started showing up out of nowhere from Texas and the Northeast and setting up camp in front of City Hall. New Orleans never has had a bad homeless problem like some other cities, because there’s a ton of social programs and shelters. Then, a month later, protesters started showing up protesting the demolition of the projects, saying it’s cruel to tear them down when we have all these homeless people. Most of them are people from outside the area that are just here to get their protestor bona fides.

I don’t know who’s behind all this, but they’re pretty well-organized and cynical, whoever they are. I figure there’s some political stuff going on behind the scenes, New Orleans is a pawn in some national organization’s efforts, and this is an attempt to force one side’s hand in whatever negotiation is happening. If I took the time to dig through the New Orleans blog network I could probably figure it out, but I’ll bet the people controlling it are based in DC. I wish someone in California would start chopping down some owl habitat or something so they’ll take their army with them to lay siege to some other poor town.

Look at this video. Sooner or later, one of the protestors will bait the police, who only have training handling drunk and happy crowds, into using excessive force, and we’ll have a full scale riot on our hands, just like LA.

Will we ever know the outcome of the negotiation or even the parties at the table?

]]> http://nolablog.williamgunn.org/2007/12/20/about-the-housing-protests/feed/ http://nolablog.williamgunn.org/2007/12/17/recycling-to-come-back/ http://nolablog.williamgunn.org/2007/12/17/recycling-to-come-back/#comments Mon, 17 Dec 2007 20:38:56 +0000 Mr. Gunn http://nolablog.williamgunn.org/2007/12/17/recycling-to-come-back/ From the TP:

Either way, Swacker said, the population is large enough to make residential recycling in the New Orleans area possible again.

“The markets are there. The markets are very healthy. It’s just a question of building from the ground up that whole line of business,” Swacker said. “We’re very anxious to get it back up.”
…
The commission sees three possibilities for a regional approach to recycling, said Kara Mattini Renne, a planner at the commission. The first would be to hire a contractor to pick up and later sell the materials, therefore defraying the cost for taxpayers. A slightly more expensive approach for residents would be to hire a collector who would share the revenue from the sale of recyclable items with the governments. The third option would be to award two contracts, one for a hauler and another for a processing company, in a manner similar to Jefferson’s contracts with collector Waste Management and processor Allied Waste before the storm.

I’ve been waiting for this, as it’s a sign to me of recovery and improved quality of life. Certainly no one could fault them for not dealing with this until the major waste issues caused by Katrina were dealt with, but maybe it’s time? Phoenix Recycling, the people we pay $15/month to occasionally pick up our stuff, would be interested in being a contractor, but as a contractor, they’d probably want more volume. One good way to generate volume would be to make it mandatory, and this wouldn’t be that big of a burden, because you’d only have to have a separate container for everything plastic or glass. It’d reduce the burden on the landfills, too, which could only be a good thing now.

]]> http://nolablog.williamgunn.org/2007/12/17/recycling-to-come-back/feed/ http://nolablog.williamgunn.org/2007/11/21/rip-doc-paulin-new-orleans-oldest-traditional-jazz-musician/ http://nolablog.williamgunn.org/2007/11/21/rip-doc-paulin-new-orleans-oldest-traditional-jazz-musician/#comments Wed, 21 Nov 2007 23:51:36 +0000 Mr. Gunn http://nolablog.williamgunn.org/2007/11/21/rip-doc-paulin-new-orleans-oldest-traditional-jazz-musician/ The Paulin Bros. had a show recently at the CAC, where they took turns playing traditional numbers and giving ‘ol Doc a hard time. Apparently Doc brooked no dissent nor slackers in his band. If you were a minute late, or if you didn’t have your shoes shined and your shirt ironed, you weren’t going on the gig.

Maitri has more.

]]> http://nolablog.williamgunn.org/2007/11/21/rip-doc-paulin-new-orleans-oldest-traditional-jazz-musician/feed/ http://nolablog.williamgunn.org/2007/11/18/tent-city-louisiana/ http://nolablog.williamgunn.org/2007/11/18/tent-city-louisiana/#comments Sun, 18 Nov 2007 23:54:13 +0000 Mr. Gunn http://nolablog.williamgunn.org/2007/11/18/tent-city-louisiana/ I’ve been wondering what’s up the with sudden growth of the homeless population in the park outside of City Hall. Dorothy, a Tulane Medical student blogging at NOhomeless, went to talk to them. She reports that (surprise, surprise) they’re a combination of the mentally-ill, drug abusers who’ve been kicked out of other shelters, and hard-luck people who came to the city looking for work but not finding enough to pay the rent.

She has some photos of the homeless tent city at flickr, but no insight yet why the city has grown so recently. Could it be that we’re receiving people from other, colder places moving down here for the milder winters? (via)

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