Friday, February 14, 2003

News from Rwanda: School Computerisation Programme Launched (UN Integrated Regional Information Networks). 1:52:01 PM    comment []

Verizon, Champion of Individual Privacy: Verizon seeks delay on revealing file-trader (Reuters) Verizon has balked at requests to disconnect users who trade songs with each other directly over peer-to-peer networks such as Kazaa and the now-defunct Napster. Such a move would violate users' privacy and free-speech rights, Verizon said, because it would require Internet providers to police their users' Internet activity, rather than simply the material they post on Verizon server computers. Verizon, Attacker of Individual Privacy: Judge Puts State Phone Law on Hold (AP) Washington state regulations to protect the privacy of telephone customer account information, some of the toughest in the country, have been suspended by a federal judge. . . . Verizon raised serious questions about constitutionality, and in weighing the company's free speech rights against privacy interests the balance of hardships tips in Verizon's favor, the judge wrote. State regulations that were adopted in November and took effect in January required phone companies to obtain customer approval before selling calling records or using them to market anything but telecommunications services. . . . Verizon's lawsuit says the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission overstepped its authority, infringing on the company's ability to speak to and serve customers. 10:51:41 AM    comment []

U.S. backs merging Net, phone numbers, by Declan McCullagh, CNET News.com. In a recent internal letter, the Commerce Department recommended that the United States participate in an emerging electronic numbering system, known as ENUM, that will allow people to use one identifier for many different purposes, including mobile phones, e-mail, instant messaging and faxes. ENUM is designed to accelerate the convergence of the telephone network and the Internet and is expected to offer a huge boost to online telephony services. The United States should seize this opportunity and take steps to participate in e164.arpa, consistent with the highest standards of security, competition, and privacy, wrote Assistant Secretary Nancy Victory in the letter to the State Department. . . . . . . . . Domestic implementation of ENUM must be done in a manner that maximizes the privacy and security of user data entered in the ENUM DNS domain, Victory wrote. For example, ENUM providers should develop systems to ensure the authentication and authorization of users who enter and update their personal information. When ENUM domains become active, users will be identified by their telephone number including the country code. What that means is a phone number such as +46-8-9761234 would be mapped to the 4.3.2.1.6.7.9.8.6.4.e164.arpa Internet address in a process that is expected to become automated and transparent to the user. . . . So far, 13 countries that are members of the International Telecommunication Union have signed on to the e164.arpa proposal and plan trials. The group is coordinating international efforts. IETF Network Working Group, RFC 2916: E.164 number and DNS, on how DNS can be used for identifying available services connected to one E.164 number. 10:51:37 AM    comment []

Mysterious snowballs, by Tim Mitchell, The News-Gazette (Champaign). Snow rollers happen when snow is rolled up by the wind, [Steve] Hilberg [meteorologist at the Midwestern Regional Climate Center at the Illinois State Water Survey] said. It's not unlike a kid trying to make a big snowball for a snowman. Only this time the wind serves as the kid. 10:51:33 AM    comment []

Complex Networks & Collective Action. What is it about complex, connected systems that makes them so hard to understand? (Smart Mobs) 6:29:50 AM    comment []

GPS as Stalking Weapon. Connie Adams found it impossible to escape her ex-boyfriend. He would follow her as she drove to work or ran errands. He would inexplicably pull up next to her at stoplights and once tried to run her off the highway, authorities said. When he showed up at a bar she was visiting for the first time, on a date, Adams began to suspect Paul Seidler wasn't operating on instinct alone. 6:28:01 AM    comment []

What Symantec Knew But Didn't Say. Security experts are fuming about a Symantec press release indicating the company knew about the devastating Slammer worm hours before the general public did. The company shared the knowledge with select customers but kept mum with everybody else. By Michelle Delio. [Wired News] 6:20:55 AM    comment []

How to Save the World has good advice for bloggers (new ones, esp.), in response to this post of Rayne's. 6:05:49 AM    comment []

Today is Valentine's Day, of course. Here are some of the things that got blinked on t'other blog the last three years on February 14: After ashes, valentines featured Greg Tate and Robert Christgau weighing in, in their Village Voice Pazz and Jop Poll commentaries, on the aftermath of September 11 for listening to music, the view from well uptown, a world gone wrong, and the indie/DIY option Imam Khomeini's fatwa was like a divine decree and can never be revoked or undermined by the passage of time -- Calls Renewed to Kill Salmon Rushdie A calendar of events your mom & pop forgot to tell you about... Our Daily Bleed. a technical overview of Microsoft .NET, by DrPizza States Request Access to Microsoft's Windows Code The Iceberg Secret, Revealed, by Joel Spolsky The BT patent Two years back, Cyril and Methodius: Wow. Pete Townsend on Napster. This is great--he checks out Napster with his son. I can't even pick a short excerpt; read it and see for yourself. Insurance firm admits using genetic screening, last week's collision between a U.S. submarine and a Japanese fishing boat, and the WashPost says If you can identify any of these people, please e-mail us such-and-such-sucks.com domain names The sad, ugly, stupid Pacifica retrenchment continues Train judges specially for IT cases? FBI takes the teeth out of Carnivore's name, Bunker fever: Y2K never quite happened. Why Cyril and Methodius? Because Feb. 14 is their day! Finally, the Y2K edition, Subjects, Objects . . . Agents mentioned: a rough framework for my part of the discussion of "Human Subjects Research in Cyberspace" for the Computers, Freedom, and Privacy: People as Objects: Contrasting Market and Academic Research. Benton Headlines -- Feb. 14, 2000 . . . including "World Bank Unit To Join In Internet Start-Up Finance," "Pacific Islands Seek Control of Internet Designations," a discussion of Internet "peering," a couple of significant broadband stories, "Privacy Complaint Against DoubleClick," and "Online Attacks Renew Security Calls. Find Me a File, Cache Me a Catch is a New York Times story on Lenny Foner's "Yenta" agents. Gary Chapman asking, If software is going to be our main economic activity for the foreseeable future, is there a better way to produce it? and James Love and Ralph Nader wrote to President Clinton to advocate the policy of putting all government contracts on the Net. (Government contracts seem to be hard to obtain as things stand.) Moreover, President Clinton has replied. I don't have a year's work on this here Salon Blog. Yet. (Promise? Threat? You make the call ":^)" ) 5:50:47 AM    comment []

t.A.T.u.: The underage sex project with a hit record. By Rob Walker, in Slate. Johnny Rotten: Ever get the feeling you've been cheated? This time the answer is, Of course—that's the whole point, isn't it? 4:50:45 AM    comment []

Also a propos of the anti-war demonstrtions planned for this weekend, and also from The Vilalge Voice, Cornered! Marching in a Melancholy Time, a personal history of protest, by Richard Goldstein. We can gather on East 49th Street, in the shadow of the UN, shouting our lungs out against the war. But we can't march beyond that cul de sac. Unless this ruling is overturned —or violated—we'll be cornered. It's a good metaphor for my state of mind. Civil rights, abortion rights, AIDS funding, no nukes, earth first: You name it; I've acted up. But this protest feels nothing like the ones I attended on a regular basis back when the world seemed changeable by other than military means. Those rampaging longhairs in films about the '60s: I was one. You might have found me running with a wet T-shirt around my face to protect me from tear gas. I might have been carrying a placard or a rock. In those days, I never doubted the power of massing and resisting. It was easy to tap my rage when I believed it mattered. Now I don't. That's why I'm marching on Saturday. Power to who? A 1969 anti-war demo on Wall Street. (photo: Fred W. McDarrah) There's more. It's good. 4:50:37 AM    comment []