Month: January 2004
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Insecurity Features
An “insecurity feature” is a product feature that looks like it provides security, but really doesn’t. Insecurity features can make you less secure, because they trick you into trusting something of value to a product that can’t properly protect it. A classic example is the “Password to Modify” feature of Microsoft Word, as revealed recently…
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Panel on Copyright and Free Speech
Lawrence Solum reports on a panel discussion at the American Association of Law Schools conference. It’s an interesting discussion, and everybody seems to agree that there are significant and increasing conflicts between copyright and free speech. In her presentation, Jessica Litman used my experience as an example of the chilling effect of the DMCA. Somehow…
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Radio Revolution
Smart radios are a sleeper technology. They’re being developed right now; they’ll have a huge impact; but they’re not getting anywhere near the attention they deserve. Smart radios rely on computer processing power, rather than simple analog circuits, to extract information from the electromagnetic spectrum. This simple idea has profound implications for wireless communication, implications…
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Predictions for 2004
Happy New Year! This time of year, journalistic convention requires even micro-pundits like me to make predictions for the upcoming year. This goes for the rest of you bloggers too – let’s see your predictions! Like everybody else’s predictions, some of my predictions are obvious, some will be hilariously wrong, and all of them will…