"We are not now developing, nor do we have any plans to develop, anything other than an external, wearable device."

Statement last winter by the company that just received FDA approval to begin implanting tracking chips in people. This whole thing will sound like the worst sort of conspiracy theory, but just THINK about these things. They are real. They are here.

Anything that can be implanted can be carried without bother. What is the advantage of implanting? What are the applications where this is required functionality?

politechbot.com: More on FDA permitting use of implantable ID chips in humans

"TCPA-compliant IBM Embedded Security Subsystem 2.0 (select models)"

IBM is now selling TCPA systems. Thats what all those security commercials are about. Big Brother inside.

I like my IBM laptop, but I'll never buy a TCPA compliant system.

IBM puts big brother in the box...

Put this simple script in your .profile and it will remind you of the homeland security status every time you login to your machine. Not a good idea on computers that aren't always connected to the net.

Homeland Security Advisor for UNIX

"Writing in the advanced online edition of Nature magazine, Stanford University scientists Christopher D. Snow and Vijay S. Pande describe how they, with the help of 30,000 personal computers, successfully simulated part of the complex folding process that a typical protein molecule undergoes to achieve its unique, three-dimensional shape."

ScienceDaily Magazine -- Folding@home Scientists Report First Distributed Computing Success

"We hold that the primary cause of current telecom troubles is that Internet-based end-to-end data networking has subsumed (and will subsume) the value that was formerly embodied in other communications networks. This, in turn, is causing the immediate obsolescence of the vertically integrated, circuit-based telephony industry of 127 years vintage. "

A lot of smart people tell the FCC to let the Bells die. I'm not sure what I think of this. Some of the comments are most certainly true, but there is a self-congradulatory tone here. "Circuits are bad; everything thats not IP oriented is bad policy" is every bit as protectionist as the opposite philosophy. The Internet has serious problems, and most of the industry is so blinded by its success that they cannot turn a critical eye to it. They sound like the winners of the French Revolution chanting "off with their heads."

Telling the FCC to tell the Bells to take a long walk...

"Today, we stand at a crucial point. Our policies could fritter away open spectrum’s historic opportunity, either through inaction or harmful limits on new technologies. Or we could listen to what the market and technology are telling us. Computers have made wireless devices vastly smarter than they were in the past. It’s time for our policies to become smarter as well. Promoting open spectrum is the most democratic, deregulatory, proinvestment and innovation-friendly move the US Government could make."

A political arguement in favor of open spectrum. Well referenced and long winded. This is meant for FCC consumption. The future envisioned here is very exciting from a communications standpoint and from a commercial standpoint.

Open Spectrum

Abe Lincoln:

"Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose - - and you allow him to make war at pleasure. Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after you have given him so much as you propose. If, to-day, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, 'I see no probability of the British invading us' but he will say to you 'be silent; I see it, if you don't.'

The provision of the Constitution giving the war-making power to Congress, was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons. Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us. But your view destroys the whole matter, and places our President where kings have always stood."

What I'm linking here is Barlow's thoughts on the matter. You are reading Tom Cross quoting John Barlow quoting Sen. Robert Byrd quoting Abe Lincoln. How is THAT for a memestream? The thing you want to do now is click on the word 'recommend.'

BarlowFriendz 8.8: Pox Americana

RDF (Resource Definition Framework) and what it brings to the party
The sorry state of most software design today: how we got here
In the era of the Web, are PC applications obsolete?"

Mitch Kapor's weblog. It could be interesting...

Mitch Kapor's Weblog

"They say that you know you're in a stock bubble when your cab
driver is giving you stock advice. And right now, looking around,
OK, it's no big surprise that your politicians are weasels and
your CEOs, because those are the people who even try to get those jobs in the first place.

But once you start noticing that your historians are making stuff up and your figure-skating judges are rigging their events, and your priests are dating children and having better sex lives than rock stars, that's what I call a bubble. That's the cab driver giving you stock tips.

I think that we're in this gigantic, unprecedented bubble of weaselness. "

I wish I was old enough to know whether this is a new phenomenon or whether things have always been this way.

Salon.com Technology | Dilbert's a weasel and so are you

"THE PROOF THAT thomascross IS EVIL "

thomascross