Category: Uncategorized
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iPhone Apps Show Industry the Benefits of Openness
Today’s New York Times reports on the impact of Apple’s decision to allow third-party application software on the iPhone: In the first 10 days after Apple opened its App Store for the iPhone, consumers downloaded more than 25 million applications, ranging from games like Super Monkey Ball to tools like New York City subway maps.…
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Where are the Technologists on the EAC Advisory Board?
Barbara Simons, an accomplished computer scientist and e-voting expert, was recently appointed to the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) Board of Advisors. (The EAC is the U.S. Federal body responsible for voting technology standards, among other things.) This is good news. The board has thirty-seven members, of which four positions are allocated for “members representing professionals…
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License for an open-source voting system?
Back when we were putting together the grant proposal for ACCURATE, one of the questions that we asked ourselves, and which the NSF people asked us as well, was whether we would produce a “bright shiny object,” which is to say whether or not we would produce a functional voting machine that could ostensibly be…
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Plenty of Blame to Go Around in Yahoo Music Shutdown
People have been heaping blame on Yahoo after it announced plans to shut down its Yahoo Music Store DRM servers on September 30. The practical effect of the shutdown is to make music purchased at the store unusable after a while. Though savvy customers tended to avoid buying music in forms like this, where a…
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What's the Cyber in Cyber-Security?
Recently Barack Obama gave a speech on security, focusing on nuclear, biological, and infotech threats. It was a good, thoughtful speech, but I couldn’t help noticing how, in his discussion of the infotech threats, he promised to appoint a “National Cyber Advisor” to give the president advice about infotech threats. It’s now becoming standard Washington…
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The Decline of Localist Broadcasting Policies
Public policy, in the U.S. at least, has favored localism in broadcasting: programming on TV and radio stations is supposed to be aimed, at least in part, at the local community. Two recent events call this policy into question. The first event is the debut of the Pandora application on the iPhone. Pandora is a…
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Could Too Much Transparency Lead to Sunburn?
On Tuesday, the Houston Chronicle published a story about the salaries of local government employees. Headlined “Understaffing costs Houston taxpayers $150 million in overtime,” it was in many respects a typical piece of local “enterprise” journalism, where reporters go out and dig up information that the public might not already be aware is newsworthy. The…
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Viacom, YouTube, and the Dangerous Assembly of Facts
On July 2nd, Viacom’s lawsuit against Google’s YouTube unit saw a significant ruling, potentially troubling for user privacy. Viacom asked for, and judge Louis L. Stanton ordered Google to turn over, the logs of each viewing of all videos in the YouTube database, showing the username and IP address of the user who was viewing…
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Vendor misinformation in the e-voting world
Last week, I testified before the Texas House Committee on Elections (you can read my testimony). I’ve done this many times before, but I figured this time would be different. This time, I was armed with the research from the California “Top to Bottom” reports and the Ohio EVEREST reports. I was part of the…
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Newspapers' Problem: Trouble Targeting Ads
Richard Posner has written a characteristically thoughtful blog entry about the uncertain future of newspapers. He renders widespread journalistic concern about the unwieldy character of newspapers into the crisp economic language of “bundling”: Bundling is efficient if the cost to the consumer of the bundled products that he doesn’t want is less than the cost…