Year: 2002
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My Worst Fears, Confirmed
Cory Doctorow points to a new tool, GetContentSize, that evaluates what portion of a Web site is content, as opposed to formatting and other junk. When applied to this site, here is GetContentSize’s report: http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com Total page size: 32939 bytes (not including images, attached scripts or style sheets) … [NO CONTENT] UPDATE (1:00 PM): Adrian…
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Post-Napster File Sharing at Princeton
Today’s issue of the Daily Princetonian, our student newspaper, reports on file sharing issues on campus. (Note that the article has its facts wrong about the Napster case. Napster was not found to have violated the DMCA. Napster’s legal problems had to do with contributory and vicarious copyright infringement.)
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Report from the ACM DRM Workshop
Yesterday I attended the ACM “Digital Rights Management” Workshop in Washington DC. There were about 100 attendees, most of them computer scientists, with a few lawyers and Washington policy types thrown in. Papers from the workshop are available online. My main impression was that the speakers were more openly skeptical about DRM than at past…
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In Search of Technology News
I still remember the first time I saw a newspaper that had a technology section. It seemed to herald the arrival of technology in the mainstream of American life, and to offer the public a chance to understand how life was about to change. Lately I have begun to wonder whether the technology section is…
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Virus With a EULA
Rob Lemos at news.com reports on a new “greeting card” virus that protects its author by using a EULA (End User License Agreement): The FriendGreetings electronic greeting card has all the hallmarks of a mass-mailing computer virus. The e-mail misleads a victim into downloading an application–ostensibly to view a Web card–and then sends itself to…
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A Stroll Through the Logs
The website statistics program I use (webalizer) lets me see what search strings people are using when they find this site via the usual search engines. November’s report is amusing. The most common search string that led to the site is “tinker.” No surprise there. Number two, though, was “fart noises.” (That matches a Fritz’s…
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More Great Stuff From Seth Schoen
If you want to understand what the whole Palladium/LaGrande/”trusted computing” issue is about, you should read Seth Schoen’s recent writing. His analysis is insightful, technically sound, independent, and hype-free. For the latest example, click here, scroll down to “Trusted Computing,” and read the next several sections.
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Early Release of MS Decision Just a Blunder
Ted Bridis at AP confirms, based on an internal investigation by court staff, that the early release to the Web of Judge Kollar-Kotelly’s rulings in the Microsoft case was just a mistake by someone on the staff.
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Garfinkel on Mitnick's Book
Simson Garfinkel has an interesting reaction to Kevin Mitnick’s recent book. Mitnick, “the most famous computer hacker of our time,” claims to have operated mainly by social engineering, that is, by conning people into giving him restricted information. Garfinkel describes how Mitnick-type attacks can be mitigated by wisely-designed technology.
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I'm Back
London was fabulous, though Northwest Airlines did give us an extra “bonus” day at Gatwick airport on the return trip. Posting will resume later today, once I’ve crawled out from under the pile in my inbox.