noteworthy wrote:
] As your once and future agent will kindly tell you, 2005 will
] be remembered as the year that remembrance agents went
] mainstream.
]
] This essay by Steven Johnson appears in the Sunday NYT Book
] Review.

Linked here is a related post from his blog...

RE: Tool for Thought, by Steven Johnson

So, right wingers have these t-shirts that say "Bush Country 2004 - My America!" which have the county by county electoral results. I want a t-shirt that says "Pop Country 2004 - My America!" that has this on it.

My America

In the stupidest security move microsoft has made to date, they've decided that pirated copies of microsoft products should not recieve security patches.

What's next, 'How to write a worm', published by Microsoft Press?

[ This was inevitable. Its a good idea for their business and a bad idea for computer security on the whole. Its hard to argue that Microsoft has a moral obligation to patch stolen software, but on the other hand this is going to make a bad situation worse. ]

Microsoft: No Patches for Pirated Windows

Try not to scream...

] Alan Greenspan is expected to retire next year. The Bush
] administration, because of its nature, will have a hard
] time finding a successor.

NYT | Krugman - The Greenspan Succession

noteworthy wrote:
] Whereas earlier coverage simply tended toward comic
] uncordiality, the tone now has shifted from a mocking of
] harmless idiocy to a biting castigation of the curricular
] debasements in Cobb and Dover.

The most interesting thing to note is that the author of this article has bought into the memetic distortions of those he opposes, calling "intelligent design" "an alternative theory" in the second paragraph.

"Intelligent Design" is not a theory. It is a hypothesis. The word "theory" is used in common speech when one really means hypothesis, because the later word is a bit obtuse. The author seems aware of the distinction, but doesn't seem to recall the word "hypothesis" and instead reaches for phrases like "not yet a theory."

When someone says "The Theory of Evolution" they aren't using the lay meaning of the word theory, but rather the scientific meaning. The "Intelligent Design" folks distort the debate by taking advantage of the public's confusion about the definition of these two words. In falling for it this article does more to promote their cause then to fight it.

RE: The Crafty Attacks on Evolution

This is an ad for the Macintosh around 1989.

k wrote:
] Kind of a neat blast from the past.
] Sometimes we forget that there was a time when "Copy" and "Paste"
] were brand new concepts.

Matt Groening Apple Ad

AOL Postmaster on stopping spam. He's not wrong. ISPs ought to police their networks for security issues, and I think that the government ought to be greasing the wheels for this through liability limitation and possibly tax incentives. Its in the public interest.

I also think his proposal for a private network isn't entirely unreasonable at this point, but the devil is in coming up with a social contract that everyone is happy with and finding a way to govern it effectively, and you can see how well ICANN is doing with that. It would be hijacked to serve special interests just like ICANN has been.

How to Stop Spam

] The US military is planning to deploy robots armed with
] machine-guns to wage war against insurgents in Iraq.
]
] Eighteen of the 1m-high robots, equipped with cameras and
] operated by remote control, are going to Iraq this
] spring, the Associated Press reports.

] Mr Quinn says there are plans to replace the computer
] screen, joysticks and keypad in the remote-control unit
] with a Gameboy-style controller and virtual-reality
] goggles.

IMHO the word "Robot" should not be applied to tools that require a human operator. These are RC troops, not robot troops, and one wonders what has taken so long.

BBC NEWS | US plans to deploy 'robot troops' in Iraq

] When Robert Moran drove back to his law offices in Rome,
] N.Y., after a plane trip to Arizona in July 2003, he had
] no idea that a silent stowaway was aboard his vehicle: a
] secret GPS bug implanted without a court order by state
] police.
]
] A federal judge in New York ruled last week that police
] did not need court authorization when tracking Moran from
] afar. "Law enforcement personnel could have conducted a
] visual surveillance of the vehicle as it traveled on the
] public highways," U.S. District Judge David Hurd wrote.
] "Moran had no expectation of privacy in the whereabouts
] of his vehicle on a public roadway."

Yowzer... The police "could have" visually observed the vehicle, but they didn't. They attached a tracking device to it. A tracking device it a wholly different animal and has wholly different privacy implications. The expense require to visually track an individual car's every movement, without being observed, is extremely high. An individual might have no expectation of privacy with regard to the specific location of his car at a specific time, but there is a reasonable expectation of privacy with respect to the specific location of his car at every time.

One might also inquire as to whether this tracking device stopped working the minute this individual pulled off of a public road and onto private property? Its doubtful.

This ruling implies that as one tracking device has no privacy implications, then presumably 1000 tracking devices have no privacy implications, as 1000*0=0. Moving from the idea that the police have every right to tail your car on a public road to the idea that the police can electronically track the location of every car at every time is a massive leap of logic that has little basis in common sense.

Furthermore, one would think that the process of attaching a tracking device would have some private property concerns. Is it legal for me to attach anything I want to your car? Can I put a audio recording device on your car? (Apparently so, according to one of the rulings in this article!)

Anothing article linked in here discusses a very very tenuous barrier that the courts established to prevent the FBI from wiretapping cars using their on-star systems. Apparently its only illegal if it might interfere with emergency road side services!

We're rapidly approaching a period of time when technologies like these will allow the police to monitor your every movement and record your daily conversations. If we will not properly apply the 4th amendment to this domain the results will be terrible.

No court order required for GPS bugs! (More dumb judges.)

] The study reports that the cell lines currently approved
] for study under federal funding contain a sialic acid
] called N-glycolylneuraminic acid, or Neu5Gc.
]
]
] Human embryonic stem cells are contaminated by this acid
] "even when grown in special culture conditions with
] commercially available serum replacements, apparently
] because these are also derived from animal products,"
] said the lead researcher, Dr. Ajit Varki. Human cells are
] unable to make the acid, Varki said. In earlier research
] he had found that humans have antibodies directed against
] Neu5Gc.

Wired News: Stem Cell Lines Compromised?