The out-going Fed chairman has a lot in common with the withered muppet.

This years Forbes Halloween Masks feature Alan Greenspan as Yoda.

"There is another... Skywalker."

Star Wars Halloween Masks - Forbes.com

All U.S. passports will be implanted with remotely readable computer chips starting in October 2006, the Bush administration has announced.

They are going with a wire mesh in the cover to prevent skimming.

Passports to get RFID chip implants | CNET News.com

TinyDisk is a program from saving and retrieving files from TinyURL and TinyURL-like services such as Nanourl. It overlays a write-once-read-many anonymous, persistent and globally shared filesystem. Once something is uploaded, only the database admin can delete it. Everyone can read it. No one can know who created it. Think of it as a magical CD-R that gets burned and placed on a network.

This is a file system I demoed at Phreaknic that runs on top of the link shortening service TinyURL. Its the perfect case study of how to write meaningful extensions on top of existing web applications, which was the topic of my presentation.

I've already uploaded some fun stuff into TinyURL, like The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and even TinyDisk itself. Thats right, the program to read and write to TinyURL is stored inside TinyURL! It was also very cool to see other people starting to use it.

TinyDisk is a good hack.

TinyDisk - An anonymous shared file system on top of TinyURL.

If a tug of war develops, whoever holds the keys wins, since without the keys, you can’t publish a new version of the root with changed or added records unless you publish your own competing set of keys and can persuade people to use them. (Take that, ORSC.)

DNSSec may break the present attempt to demonstrate to Iran that US control of ICANN is not a threat to their national security. Do we really need the root signed? Apparently this is done to prohibit cache poisoning, but it has the additional advantage of solidifying ICANN's control of internet addressing. If you can't install an alternate key in your computer DNS may only work with officially recognized providers. This would be bad.

ICANN Gets the Root Zone, Too

Mike the Usurper wrote:

When she finally did find a pharmacy with it, she said she was told the pharmacist on duty would not dispense it because of religious and moral objections.

But if I go to a non-kosher butcher for bacon (which they have) and get told, "No, I won't give you bacon because it's against my religion," then that person is working in the wrong place.

I hate pharmacists. They get paid a professional salary to operate a cash register and hand me a box (which usually takes about 20 minutes). Pharmacists are not needed anymore. There are cheaper ways to ensure that people get the drugs they are supposed to get. Those that want personal assistance with the drugs should pay for it, rather then forcing the rest of us to prop up this beaurocratic niche in the midst of skyrocketing healthcare costs. I do not think it ought to be legal for a pharmacists to refuse to fill a perscription for personal reasons. Thats between me and my doctor. This is not the only context in which I have seen this kind of thing occur. Pharmacists should not be empowered to exercise their personal whims over people's healthcare.

RE: Rape victim: 'Morning after' pill denied | The Arizona Daily Star

You might have thought that the White House had enough on its plate late last month, what with its search for a new Supreme Court nominee, the continuing war in Iraq and the C.I.A. leak investigation. But it found time to add another item to its agenda - stopping The Onion, the satirical newspaper, from using the presidential seal.

The newspaper regularly produces a parody of President Bush's weekly radio address on its Web site (www.theonion.com/content/node/40121), where it has a picture of President Bush and the official insignia.

When two bit corporate lawyers make this mistake I'm not suprised, but the White House ought to know better... (This isn't illegal.)

Protecting the Presidential Seal. No Joke. - New York Times

VeriSign has dropped all its lawsuits against internet overseeing organisation ICANN, agreed to hand over ownership of the root zone, and in return been awarded control of all dotcoms until 2012.

This is almost as obtuse as the strategic situation in Iraq.

Sitefinder dead

When students post their faces, personal diaries and gossip on Web sites like Myspace.com and Xanga.com, it is not simply harmless teen fun, according to one Sussex County Catholic school principal.It's an open invitation to predators and an activity that Pope John XIII Regional High School in Sparta will no longer tolerate, the Rev. Kieran McHugh told a packed assembly of 900 high school students two weeks ago.

Effective immediately, and over student complaints, the teens were told to dismantle their Myspace.com accounts or similar sites with personal profiles and blogs. Defy the order and face suspension, students were told.

MemeStreams banned by New Jersey Catholic School

President Bush nominated Ben S. Bernanke, his top economic adviser, to replace Alan Greenspan as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.

Everyone seems to be quietly pleased with this nomination. This is a relief.

Bush Nominates Bernanke to Succeed Greenspan as Fed Chief

noteworthy wrote:
Dig it. A free book that will keep you from becoming obsolete.

I'm not sure I agree. While I do think the patent system needs some serious examination there is really little new here. The main thrust of this proposal seems to be that if we want to improve America's scientific competitiveness we need to increase the supply of technical workers, which will reduce their cost. I don't agree, and I think they have mis-defined the problem.

Technological competitiveness is not about how much technology you are doing but what kind. You don't want to lead the world in having development sweatshops where people grind out code for hours at low wages. Having that sort of work move offshore is not what is breaking our technological competitiveness. What is important is that the work is directed from here and that the US owns the intellectual property.

You want to lead the world in creating new innovations. The problem isn't that the economics of turning innovations into products aren't working out and so people aren't doing the innovation or they aren't doing it here. The problem is on the demand side and not the supply side.

Doing great science and engineering is hard, and it requires people that are not just well educated, but really smart. Lowering the barriers to entry into science and engineering and flooding the market with additional workers (with the ultimate intent of lowering salaries) is going to make engineering even less attractive as a field then it already is. The result will be that you'll have more technical people, but they won't be as good. The smart ones will be even more likely to opt for a career in law, medicine, or management. You'll end up being really good at making software cheap and not very good at all at figuring out what software ought to be made. They should be focusing instead on how to incent the best and brightest to pursue graduate science and engineering educations by increasing the opportunities that exist for those people once they graduate.

They also need to recognise that technical innovation is fundamentally disruptive and threatens established institutions. Creating tax credits for large company R&D will result in a lot more things being called "research" on paper but not a lot more new products and services. You need to create an environment where people are incented to pursue startups that create new technologies. Our political and cultural response to the dotcom bust has not been to figure out how to do it better and with more rational exuberance, but rather to oppose the very idea of high tech startups. The stock option expense rule has done more damage to our technological competitiveness then Indian outsourcing firms ever will. There is definately something broken in the startup space, and there are policy measures that can be taken to fix those problems. This set of proposals doesn't even touch on the subject.

Ultimately, going down this road is simply going to further drive our downward spiral in this regard.

RE: Rising Above The Gathering Storm