Wednesday, April 07, 2004

Technology Review: The Pure Software Act of 2006. Simson Garfinkel. But there is another way to fight spyware--an approach that would work because the authors are legitimate organizations. Congress could pass legislation requiring that software distributed in the United States come with product labels that would reveal to consumers specific functions built into the programs. [Tomalak's Realm] 10:30:38 PM    comment []

Looking It Up, No Keyboard Required. The Internet is not where you look up everything. Dictionaries and thesauri and encyclopedias are where you look up everything. Is there overlap? By Michelle Slatalla. [New York Times: Technology] 9:59:23 PM    comment []

Apple, Apple, and IBM, from The Well's publicly readable pre.vue conference. 3:32:42 PM    comment []

Arrests key win for NSA hackers, by David Akin, Globe and Mail. A computer hacker who allowed himself to be publicly identified only as ''Mudhen'' once boasted at a Las Vegas conference that he could disable a Chinese satellite with nothing but his laptop computer and a cellphone. The others took him at his word, because Mudhen worked at the Puzzle Palace -- the nickname of the U.S. National Security Agency facility at Fort Meade, Md., which houses the world's most powerful and sophisticated electronic eavesdropping and anti-terrorism systems. It was these systems, plus an army of cryptographers, chaos theorists, mathematicians and computer scientists, that may have pulled in the first piece of evidence that led Canadian authorities to arrest an Ottawa man on terrorism charges last week. Citing anonymous sources in the British intelligence community, The Sunday Times reported that an e-mail message intercepted by NSA spies precipitated a massive investigation by intelligence officials in several countries that culminated in the arrest of nine men in Britain and one in suburban Orleans, Ont. -- 24-year-old software developer Mohammed Momin Khawaja, who has since been charged with facilitating a terrorist act and being part of a terrorist group. The Orleans arrest is considered an operational milestone for this vast electronic eavesdropping network and its operators. But Dave Farber, an Internet pioneer and computer-science professor at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, said the circumstances are also notable because it will be the first time that routine U.S. monitoring of e-mail traffic has led to an arrest. That's the first admission I've actually seen that they actually monitor Internet traffic. I assumed they did, but no one ever admitted it, Mr. Farber said. (The story's also at this Tiny url if the one above breaks.) 12:32:18 PM    comment []

Taking Science Lab on the Road, And Bringing Some Magic, Too. A mobile educator sends lab equipment to 250 high schools, and captivates students with science. By Michael Winerip. [New York Times: Education] 6:41:25 AM    comment []

Bush photomosaic of American dead in Iraq Bush photomosaic of Americans who have died in Iraq since the war president entered office. Link (thanks, Mark!) 6:40:58 AM    comment []

Topix.net Weblog: The Secret Source of Google's Power. This was well known to me, but probably not to everyone. [Hack the Planet] 6:38:46 AM    comment []

100 websites you didn't know you couldn't live without PC Magazine just published their annual roundup of 100 essential but not universally known websites. There's some good stuff in here *I* didn't know I couldn't live without. And there's a very kind nod to BoingBoing, for which we're most grateful. The review dings us for pokey load time-- yeah, we know. We're working on that already, stay tuned for the warp-speed edition. Link to overview, or hit the downloadable "favorites" installer. (thanks, Mike!) (thanks, Xeni!) 6:37:07 AM    comment []

When Play Money Becomes Real. Traders in goods from massively multiplayer games are thriving, but such transactions are blurring the line between real and virtual economies. By Daniel Terdiman. [Wired News] See also this earlier coverage here at A blog doesn't need a clever name. 6:35:53 AM    comment []

Putting Blogs in Their Place. This chief of New York Times Digital once famously planned to spin off the online division and take it public. Didn't happen. Now that his operation is turning a tidy profit, Martin Nisenholtz is back to making declarations. Wired magazine's Josh McHugh investigates. [Wired News] 6:33:41 AM    comment []

Weinberger, "Regulating the Idea Market". In his NPR talk "Regulating the Idea Market", David Weinberger argues that a trio of technologies are arriving, which will significantly limit our ability to use and create with digital content. Weinberger assembles Digital Rights Management (DRM), digital identity, and trusted computing into a triple threat of content lockdown. This talk should recall Walker's "Digital Imprimatur" paper. (thanks to Steven Kaye!) [Smart Mobs] 6:26:40 AM    comment []