Vastly Important Notes

Betrayed by Styx

Like most American businessmen my age, my primary experience with the Japanese language comes from Mr. Roboto.  Therefore, I naturally thought that "domo arigato" meant "thank you very much", as it was clearly written:

Domo Arigato
Mr. Roboto
Domo Arigato
Mr. Roboto
...
Thank you very much
Mr. Roboto
for doing the jobs
that nobody wants to

It wasn't until my third week in Japan that I learned that "domo arigato" means only "thank you", and to say "thank you very much" requires a "domo arigato gozaimasu".  Gozaimasu?  That wasn't in the song at all.  Some crap about Killroy, but no gozaimasu whatsoever.

All that time that I thought I was being very polite to my hosts and/or colleagues, I was merely being casually polite.  If this flagrant negligence on the part of Styx lyricists causes me to lose any business in Japan, I will sue the record label with persistent and ruthless determination.

Unless that record label turns out to be owned by Sony Music.  In that case,  Gomen nasai.  I humbly apologize for my poor humor.

New version of SpoofStick for Firefox

A new version of SpoofStick is out for Firefox.  Version 1.05 addresses two of the most common recent user comments:

1. Addresses the recently discovered Mozilla "IDN" vulnerability described at http://www.shmoo.com/idn/ .
2. SpoofStick is now a draggable, resizable toolbar button.

As always, you can download the latest version from the SpoofStick home page.

Mr. Driver's License

I've used the phrase "security theatre" a few times in this blog.  It's a term, usually credited to Bruce Schneier, that describes highly visible but ineffectual security measures designed to placate the public that "something is being done".  The taking-off-your-shoes ceremony performed at most U.S. airports is a prime example.  Security theatre is usually tedious and unenlightening (it shares these characteristics with regular theatre), but occasionally a certain mixture of rules-following and stupidity can make for fine absurdist entertainment. 

Example:

A colleague of mine is a high-level officer at a multi-billion dollar Swedish public company.  On a recent investor/analyst tour through New York City, he had a meeting with one of the top U.S. financial services firms in their Manhattan headquarters.  Security being high, all visitors were required to show a picture ID before being admitted through the lobby.  My friend offered a Swedish driver's license to the uniformed desk guard.  All EU driver's licenses are pretty much the same, with the main difference being the bold-lettered title at the very top of the card.  This particular card read, "KÖRKORT SVERIGE", which (in the charming way that written Swedish has of being more or less comprehendible to an English-speaker if you squint long enough), means "Swedish Driver's License".  All the other information (name, issue date, etc.) were clearly written in the same predetermined and obvious sequence followed by every other European license.

The guard took the license, checked and photograph and typed the name into a computer to (presumably) check for prior warning.  Then he solemnly printed a name badge for "Mr. Sverige Korkort".  Mr. Driver's License.

This is funny and sad, but mostly just embarrassing for us American security types.  The problems with such broken security are obvious and manifold.   Keep in mind that there are tens (soon, quite possibly hundreds) of millions of EU driver's licenses in the world.  Even if only 2,000 people go in and out of such a building every day and only 1% are non-UK Europeans, that still leaves 20 "Mr. Driver's Licenses" walking around at any given time.  I'm sure that this wasn't the first such card that this guard saw.

It gets better.  Later in the day, my friend went to a second meeting with another large Manhattan financial services company and exactly the same thing happened again.  At least he didn't get mixed up with the infamous criminal mastermind "Carte D. Identite".  I hear that guy is on all sorts of watch lists.

Jamaican security theatre

Strangely enough, the neon sign for the main bar at the Sangster International Airport in Montego Bay, Jamaica prominently features a large model airplane that's in the process of crashing through a tin roof and into the ocean.  I circled the mock crash site, large umbrella-drink in hand, and tried to puzzle out this obvious misunderstanding.  There wasn't one.  The bar's theme was clearly, "plane crash."  Most likely, you're supposed to think that the plane crashed into a happy beach bar, and the passengers are now enjoying rum drinks in the sun instead of flying back to their workaday lives.  Wacky.

Security at this airport was equally confidence-building.  It started out with a hand search of all checked luggage that, while quite time-consuming, was lackadaisical enough (pat, pat) that it would have been unlikely to turn up (lift, poke) any contraband less conspicuous (pat, zip) than a live goat.  This was followed by a queue at an obviously malfunctioning metal-detector which beeped non-stop regardless of whether or not anyone was actually in it.  If you placed a functioning metal-detector astride a large vein of iron-ore you would expect it to behave like this one did.  People who set off the metal detector (that is, every single person), were subjected to a perfunctory wanding.

Immediately on the other side of the metal detector was a duty free cigar stand which sold Cuban cigars (perfectly understandable, but illegal to bring back stateside), novelty bongs (I suppose because purely functional bongs are harder to explain to U.S. Customs agents), and giant scissors-style cigar cutters of exactly the same level of lethality that the security screening you just went through was supposed to prevent you from taking onboard the plane.  I don't remember the name of this stand but, given the immediately U.S.-bound nature of most of the shoppers, "Ye Olde Bad Idea Duty-Free Shoppe" would be appropriate.

Not everything was lax.  In the twenty feet from the crash-bar to the plane, my boarding pass was hand-inspected three separate times.  This probably has more to do with full-employment for Jamaican airport workers (whose air traffic controllers just went on strike) than with making really, really sure that my seat number was in order.

On the other hand, the security experience at many U.S. airports isn't significantly more sensible and you can't see the perfect beach from your airplane window as you're taxing away.  The airport at Montego Bay isn't bad; it just needs a little bit more security and a little bit less pretending.  And the bar decor can use some work.

[Update: The crashed-plane mystery has become less wacky and more creepy.  When posting the snapshot, I noticed the bullet holes and the registration number "N928J" near the tail.  Google says that "N928J" is a Grumman HU-16C Albatross named "Air Margaritaville" and owned by Jimmy Buffet.  Jimmy Buffet also owns a bunch of large "Margaritaville" club/bars in the area.  I'm not sure if this airport bar is affiliated with him.  So there are two choices: (1) The bar is Jimmy Buffet's competitor and the bullet-ridden, crashed airplane model is a murderous (though good-natured) threat, or (2) The bar is owned by Jimmy Buffet and the plane is some kind of suicidal fantasy.  Either way, it makes me want to drink and fly away.]

[Update 2: I feel maybe I'm missing some crucial Jimmy Buffet song lyric, but am not willing to investigate any further.  Got to draw the line somewhere.]

Cleaning out the slothwebs

A few people have asked about the apparent reversal of fortune which has caused this blog to go from too-much content to barely none at all over the past two months.  There's not really a good reason for the decline, just the normal ebb and -- err,  what's the opposite of "ebb"? -- bbe of blogging.  I've resisted posting about my lack of posting because that's exactly the kind of solipsistic navel-gazing that I find particularly unappealing in a blog.  There's nothing appealing about my navel.  This is a "trust but do not verify" type of thing.

I'm presently in the second week of a six country slog (five countries for business, one to serve me booze out of a hollowed-out pineapple) and the blogging-urge is beginning to stir again.  I logged on today to clear out some of the accumulated pr0n spam from the comments and trackbacks.  Like circling vultures they are - gathering around blogs too weary to swat them away.  I also noticed that my once-so-artsy archives page has outlived its design mandate.  Photoshop beckons. 

I shall return.