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Tuesday, July 9, 2002 |
Control your identity, or Microsoft and Intel will. We can choose accountability, or we can let the unholy alliance of Hollywood, Microsoft, Intel, and the government choose for us. The alliance, cleverly, pretends to solve problems that really annoy us, like spam and email worms. But these violations of trust won't yield simply to trusted motherboards and operating systems. People have to assert (and prove) their claims of trustworthiness, and other people have to make judgments about those assertions. The PKI technologies haven't yet perfected the art of binding real identities to virtual ones, but that's just what will be needed on top of TCPA/Palladium in order to deliver the benefits that people actually want. [full story at O'Reilly Network] ... [Jon's Radio]
8:44:20 PM 
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President Worried On Faith In Market "All I can tell you is that in the corporate world, sometimes things aren't exactly black and white when it comes to accounting procedures," Bush said in defending Harken. The company announced larger losses after the SEC determined that it had counted future income prematurely; Harken had sold a subsidiary, Aloha Petroleum, in 1989 through a seller-financed loan that it declared as a cash gain, masking huge losses. [Daypop Top 40]
Dumbya's not worried about people's faith in the market being shaken by the accounting scandals, he's worried that people might actually figure out that it was the Republicans who gutted government oversight, and are pretty much to blame for the current fiasco.
8:43:44 PM
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The Last Defender of the American Republic? Vidal writes: "It is a law of physics that in nature there is no action without reaction. The same appears to be true in human nature -- that is, history." The "action" Vidal refers to is the hubris of an American empire abroad (illustrated by a 20-page chart of 200 U.S. overseas military adventures since the end of World War II) and a budding police state at home. The inevitable "reaction," says Vidal, is nothing less than the bloody handiwork of Osama bin Laden and Timothy McVeigh. "Each was enraged," he says, "by our government's reckless assaults upon other societies" and was, therefore, "provoked" into answering with horrendous violence. [Daypop Top 40]
If you don't read this, you're sticking your head in the sand. If you read this and don't get angry, you probably are stupid (or just one of Dumbya's rich, white, oil friends).
8:32:18 PM
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USA Today: FBI uneasy about plan to deregulate fast Net. The FBI and Justice Department are concerned that the Federal Communications Commission's decision to classify broadband as an "information" service could disrupt their ability to trace the e-mail and Internet activity of terrorists and other criminals. [Tomalak's Realm]
8:26:40 PM
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"Free" as in "Market". Today the European Commission published a report supporting open source software, yet only a short time ago Bill Gates addressed governments saying the GPL is bad for business. So I think it's time someone said that not only is the GPL okay, it's actually a positive benefit to any economy. It's the only licence that really promotes a free market, and if a free software advocate wants to talk about commercial issues the slogan should really be: "Free" as in "Market". [kuro5hin.org]
8:25:51 PM
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Why Don't We Listen Anymore? While most foreign observers express affinity for Americans as people, they show increasing resentment of the United States as a nation and frequently remark with regard to Sept. 11 that "now America knows what it feels like." They show a sense of satisfaction that, for once, America understands what it's like to be vulnerable. And they hope our tragedy might instill some humility and blunt American arrogance on issues such as energy conservation, global warming and global poverty. [Daypop Top 40]
8:13:03 PM
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TCPA and Palladium: Sony Inside. The recent publicity about the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance (TCPA) and Microsoft's Palladium security initiative have portrayed them as Microsoft's latest weapon against the software industry. This is incorrect. What they really represent are Hollywood's latest weapon against the personal computing industry. [kuro5hin.org]
8:01:29 PM
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Taking Back the Money Supply. Even as fed rates have fallen, credit card rates have risen. Private debt continues to skyrocket, and personal savings is at an all time low. Is it a case of bankers wringing the American people dry? Is it time to take back the money supply? [kuro5hin.org]
11:06:21 AM
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Jon Udell: "DRM has its place in the world. But I wouldn't sacrifice the open architecture of the PC on the altar of DRM. It's not the thing holding e-books back. Active paper is the real technical hurdle. And beyond that, there's a purely intellectual challenge. As more and more people write for the web, publishers will have to work harder (and smarter) to create content that's worth paying for." [Scripting News]
10:56:28 AM
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Sites bow to Microsoft's browser king. Internet Explorer rivals are stepping up to challenge the market leader, but they're finding little support from skeptical Web authors. [CNET News.com]
The really sad thing is that if web developers implemented to Mozilla, instead of IE, they would be able to support everyone, instead of just most people.
Mozilla is deeply standards compliant, and implementing to it makes web sites standards compliant.
IE is the opposite, it is so tolerate of poor HTML coding -- bugs, software defects in a web site -- that it encourages web developers to be sloppy.
Yet another example of how the public suffers because of Microsoft's monopoly behavior.
10:50:06 AM
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Cable Modems: Less Boon Than Beast Like an infomercial on cable TV, the promise of cable modem service strikes one at first as a wonderful package at an impressively low price. But the limitations of cable modems would render them unattractive if alternatives were available at a reasonable cost. And wait--there's more. Cable modems keep us in the dark ages of Internet access, seriously distorting Internet usage, economics, and policy. [O'Reilly Network]
10:46:21 AM
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I guess this makes me a thief too.... Newhouse: "To the cable TV company that provides his high-speed Internet connection, Tait became a thief when he installed a home wireless network in his Manhattan apartment." [Scripting News]
The most ridiculous notion in this article is that you could be breaking the law set by some ISPs simply by using your wireless connection outside your home or apartment. Thankfully, I don't have cable modem service through AT&T or any of the other big players in the ISP business. But even so, I cannot see the problem with, for instance, sharing my connection with folks living in the houses around me in my neighborhood. Sure, if they were running Internet services it would cause a major drag on the bandwidth on this node of the cable network, but that is not the real point of allowing free wireless access to those who happen by my network. All I and most people want to do is offer an easy way to pop online and check email or something like that.
Just like in the music business, the big companies in the ISP business are being short sighted in their crackdown on free wireless access, and until they get serious about fighting the movement, the whole issue is nothing but hot air...
[Mac Net Journal]
10:34:55 AM
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Microsoft eyes Visa users with Passport. The software heavyweight is hoping to extend its Passport online identification system into authorizing credit card payments. [CNET News.com]
It boggles the mind that Microsoft would be allowed to do something like this. Can you say "leveraging your monopoly into new markets"? We can only hope that the current Federal judge reviewing the Microsoft antitrust case will show as much sense as the previous one -- who recognized that Microsoft would not stop, unless forced to.
10:24:04 AM
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© Copyright 2002 Michael Alderete.
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