This article presents a technical analysis of the TCPA hardware system and the Palladium operating system. Palladium and TCPA have been covered in some depth on slashdot and various FAQA. Unfortunately, much of the information available from these sources is highly subjective and confusing (for example, TCPA and Palladium are presented as if they were the same thing). Reliable and objective technical information on Palladium and TCPA has been hard to come by-and the actions of Microsoft has not made obtaining such information any easier.

An interesting technical overview of how the TCPA/Palladium platform will work.  There are some interesting comments on this paper in a thread on Kuro5hin.

[via Kuro5hin]

Well, that was easy enough to find...

I smile to the couple next to me, and when they both smile back I ask, "Do you go to many house concerts?"

House concerts are exactly what those two words say -- concerts that people hold in their houses -- and they've become something of a nationwide phenomenon during the past 10 years. While there has always been live music in homes -- classical drawing room salons, rural front-porch hoedowns, Harlem rent parties, rock bands in basements -- the current style of house party has flourished because of a confluence of circumstances, the primary one being the graying of the baby boomers.

This seems like a really interesting idea that I've never heard of before.  Probably because I'm not a graying baby boomer.

[via BlogCritics]

Dear Mr. President:

I represent a small consortium of voters who are deeply concerned over your proposed {or, if appropriate, ongoing} military action in Iraq. Given the amount of public speech and political rhetoric you have devoted to this issue in past months, it seems to us as though you are more interested in playing commando than in fighting an actual war with actual human casualties.

Enclosed with this letter, we have sent you some small gifts: one PlayStation 2 game console, one copy each of SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs and Conflict: Desert Storm, a memory card and an extra controller for Mr. Cheney's use. We ask that you accept these gifts and use them, rather than the lives of Iraqi civilians and our U.S. servicemen, to fulfill any militaristic fantasies.

Respectfully,

Mikel Reparaz
Chairman
Buy Bush a PlayStation 2 Campaign

[via Memepool]

Permalink  comment []  

"Cronkite said he fears Americans are learning less and less about what their government is doing, and worse, they do not seem to care.

He cited recent presidential elections that have seen less than half of registered voters go to the polls. The result has been leaders who are chosen by about a quarter of the electorate.

“That means we don’t have a democracy,” he said. “We’ve got an oligarchy here, not a democracy. Our democracy is in some danger if we don’t concentrate on educating the populace.”"

Walter Cronkite is worried about what unilateral action on Iraq could mean to the world.  He's even more worried about the fact that his fellow American's don't seem to care.

[via DrudgeReport]

"The fact is that less than a year after the celebrated demise of the Taliban, Afghanistan is experiencing a low-grade war, a bubbling pot of violence and anarchy that only the U.S. military presence is keeping from boiling over. The moment the international presence scales down in the capital, the very second that U.S. military attention drifts away and westward toward Iraq, ambitious men within the new Afghan government will kick off a bloody snatch-and-grab operation, leaving a large number of civilians dead, and they will take anything that is not bolted down and then shell the rest, a replay of the mid-'90s when Kabul was laid to waste. It will be the same people doing it, another tragic irony. No one can predict the future, but this is how it feels in Kabul, and everyone I asked, whether journalist or Afghan national, agreed that this was what was coming. Conflicts are breaking out all over the country, but Afghanistan isn't a story any more, so most of these battles and the reasons they are being fought are going unreported. And as Iraq looms, Afghanistan will shrink even more. When I left Kabul, the big agencies were already scaling back their news bureaus, the great unblinking eye of the media making plans to look at something else. "

The US is obviously very concerned about pariah states hosting international terrorist organizations.  This is why we are ignoring Afghanistan. 

"The Task Force identified six critical mandates that deserve the nation's immediate attention:

• Empower front-line agents to prevent terrorist attacks and make first responders ready to respond; 650,000 local and state law enforcement officers are operating in a counterterrorism information vacuum, and first responders are not nearly ready enough to respond to catastrophic events.
• Make trade security a global priority; the system for moving goods affordably and reliably around the world is ripe for exploitation and vulnerable to mass disruption by terrorists.
• Set critical infrastructure protection priorities; some potential targets pose a graver risk for mass disruption than others.
• Enhance America's public health system so that it is able to quickly detect and respond to biological attacks.
• Move quickly to clear federal obstacles to forging effective private-public security partnerships by addressing industry concerns with respect to potential antitrust conflicts, public release of sensitive security information by way of the FOIA, and liability exposure.
• Fund, train, and equip the National Guard to make homeland security a primary mission. "

The CFR brings together Hart and Rudman for a reprise of their last report, which was widely ignored in Washington when it was presented in March of 2001.  Hopefully this time around they'll have a more receptive audience.

[via MetaFilter]

“In my opinion, there are maybe four or five people in the whole country who might be able to make this stuff, and I’m one of them,” said Richard O. Spertzel, chief biological inspector for the U.N. Special Commission from 1994 to 1998. “And even with a good lab and staff to help run it, it might take me a year to come up with a product as good.”

Some experts are wondering about who really was behind the anthrax attacks.  Conveniently for the administration, the article points to Iraq.  If true, I'm all for attacking, but our president has so botched up this process that any evidence he comes up with is going to sound suspicious.