Posted 12:01 PM (0) comments

You've got to pay to play

The Center for Democracy and Technology sent a letter on September 4 to Reps. Adam Smith and Howard Berman (House Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet), urging the implementation of privacy protections for personal information entered in the WhoIs domain name database.[via beSpacific]

While they don't mind commercial interests putting contact information into Whois, they think its "not right" for private people to have to do so. But those "private people" give up that right to privacy and anonymity when they register a domain! If they don't want to have the info public either get an accomodation address or don't register a domain! Every action has a cost, in the case of registering a domain one of those costs is to publish contact information so that problems can be resolved quickly and easily.

Posted 2:51 PM (0) comments

I'm NOT alone!

Simson Garfinkle has uncovered at least one well-respected computer professional who is willing to go campaigning for computerized voting. Ted Selker, formerly with IBM Research, currently is a professor at the MIT Media Lab, and a member of several panels and commissions that looked at the issue of voting following the debacle of the 2000 presidential election. AS he says, the problem is that "The geeks are focusing on the abilities of hackers to steal elections by reprogramming DREs [“direct recording electronic" terminals] because electronic attacks are what these folks understand." They overlook the many areas in which the DRE is far superior to any other method of voting. Finally, the voice of reason!

Posted 8:46 AM (0) comments

eBusiness Grows Up

According to this story in The Register, Microsoft has joined with old friend VeriSign and a number of on-line retailers (Amazon, eBay and their ilk) to form "the Coalition on Online Identity Theft" [would the US branch be dubbed COITUS?], a dressed up lobbying group for on-line retail interests. While paying lip service to public d0-gooding (public education campaigns, self-help approaches for preventing identity theft and documenting online fraudulent activity), the real kicker was buried - "work with government to cultivate an environment that protects consumers and businesses". Look for lots of lobbying to keep taxes away from internet commerce, as well as laws which protect businesses from identity thieves. Stay tuned.

Posted 5:37 PM (0) comments

More evidence of why the British Empire faded

Vnunet.com reports that the UK government is forbidding its employees from taking advantage of one of the major benefits of Microsoft's new Software Assurance policy - the ability to install software on a home PC for no addtional cost. "It is OGC policy for security reasons that employees are expressly forbidden to use home PCs for work purposes," said a spokeswoman in the article. Evidently they believe that the MS Office applications are not available at retail to anyone who wants to buy them.

So not only can't UK bureaucrats work at home, but they also have to shell out $500-1000 each for office productivity software at home. Hmm, maybe this is just the Labour Party's way of stimulating the economy....

Posted 8:50 AM (0) comments

Now you'll know where the money goes

According to a story in InfoWorld, Hitachi is developing an RFID chip for bank notes and documents The chip will require no external antenna, thus making possible the embedding of tracking and identification chips in bank notes, tickets and other paper products. Bad news for kidnappers looking for a ransom, but it should open up new opportunities in the "money laundering" line.