Wednesday, February 15, 2006

Gary Marx on Surveillance. Gary T. Marx is a sociology professor at MIT, and a frequent writer on privacy issues. I find him both clear and insightful, as well as interesting and entertaining. This new paper is worth reading: "Soft Surveillance: The Growth of Mandatory Volunteerism in Collecting Personal Information -- 'Hey Buddy Can You Spare a DNA?'" You can read a whole bunch of his other articles here. [Schneier on Security] 6:13:30 PM    comment []

Yahoo's Loud Silence on Govt. Spying. CNET: Yahoo on NSA surveillance: No comment. Under cross-examination during a congressional hearing, Yahoo's top lawyer refused on Wednesday to say whether the company opens its records for government surveillance without a court order. [Dan Gillmor's blog] 6:12:51 PM    comment []

Nintendo DS, the Web Browser. A press conference reveals that a TV tuner and Opera web-browsing software will soon be available for the hardware in Japan. Network TV anyone? In Game|Life. [Wired News: Top Stories] 6:12:27 PM    comment []

Bruce Sterling on the "Futures of Money" for Forbes. Bruce Sterling wrote a fascinating piece about what money is and what it will become in the future for Forbes. Money is a form of computation: As money is transferred from one eager owner to another, it computes the value of goods and services. At its best, the machine automatically arbitrages the value of goods and services between different monetary systems. Money fluctuates in value against other currencies, sometimes wildly. We cannot invent a stable money any more than we have ever invented a fully stable computer operating system. Why? Because we don't want fully stable computers. Only boring people with no sense of invention or enterprise would use them. Money that worked perfectly would lack all entrepreneurial opportunity. We don't use money merely to generate wealth. We use money to create new methods of generating wealth. Link [Boing Boing] 6:12:22 PM    comment []

Iran resumes uranium enrichment. World: Tehran says it has resumed small-scale enrichment and will defer talks with Russia on the crisis. [Guardian Unlimited] 7:09:19 AM    comment []

Scoble is a media hacker. He's testing the various search engines by inventing a new word, brrreeeport, and seeing how long it takes for each of the engines to pick it up. Over on my WordPress blog I've tagged today's blog post with the appropriate tag. [Scripting News] 7:09:03 AM    comment []

Xeni: China portals offer tonza pirate MP3s like Jet Li "Fearless" theme. US State Dept. launches "Global Internet Freedom Task Force". David Pescovitz: Smithsonian Magazine visits a cargo cult. Cory: Princeton DRM researchers release Sony debacle paper.  Princeton's Ed Felten and Alex Halderman have published the final version of "Lessons from the Sony CD DRM Episode," a spectacular paper that they published in draft form in a series of blog posts reported on here. The final paper is required reading for anyone who wants to understand the technology and business behind sneakily crippling our PCs in the name of stopping us from copying. 156k PDF Link (via Freedom to Tinker) Previous installments of the Sony DRM Debacle Roundup: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V [Boing Boing] 7:08:22 AM    comment []

The Rootkit of All Evil. Bruce Sterling looks at the repercussions of Sony's digital-rights quagmire and wonders if a dangerous precedent hasn't been set. From Wired magazine. [Wired News: Top Stories] 7:08:09 AM    comment []