News

Society 2001

The noisiest method I know to get your beer extra cold: http://www.asciimation.co.nz/beer/. And an extra pint (thanks to b!g dAn).

Freedom: has always been a principle that must been defended on a daily basis. However, the 11 september 2001 events seem to be taken as a reason for some to limit our freedom in unusual manners. At least, you should inform your self:
- Electronic Frontier Foundation,
- Center for Democracy and Technology,
- Electronic Privacy Information Center,
- LSIjolie - campagne pour la libéralisation de la cryptographie.

Terrorists victims of freedom of information on the Internet: In the midst of the sad events of these last months, we learned very re-assuring news. Frist, Bin Laden left some documents behind him in Kaboul. They are bleuprints for a nuclear device. Second, these plans are quite well-known parts of an old Internet hoax from a humor newsletter called The Annals of Improbable Research (AIR). At long last, something funny in Afghanistan.

Auction madness: Some of the crazy things you can find for sale on these web sites. Again!

Do-it-yourself Internet anonymity: A thorough and useful paper on this difficult subject (from The Register).

Even better phone while driving: Windows at your steering wheel!

Microsoft Passport: Supposed to be the solution to all problems of Internet web sites (giving a secure authentication of visitors and buyers) and Internet web users (securing the most important private information in a single Microsoft set of servers), Microsoft Passport seems to still be of limited interest because of its failure to bring adequate security (both to the servers and the users). See Marc Slemko article.

The other PHP: you may know the programming language, but this is also the acronym for the Parallel History Project on NATO and Varsaw Pact. They publish recently declassified documents about the war plans of both camps of the Cold War.

Fantasy Images at Zéphyr: A nice web site for amateurs of fantasy-based images.

Cristals: The Michel Cachoux gallery is one of those marvelous places where you find mysterious and wonderful art pieces created by Earth itself.

Hoax busting on the Internet: In France, we had the excellent hoaxbuster.com. English and American readers may prefer the one I just found: Vmyths.com.

Think free: with DisInfo.com, you get disinformation (or information without bonds or limits). International conspiracies, fringe science will go along with foght against global capitalism. Certainly food for thought, sometimes plain loony.

Latest crazy idea from Micro$oft: Make Windows Update fully automatic. This way all updates will come transparently whether you want it or not. When we see what Micro$oft can break with updates (look at Windows NT Service Packs) or when we see that latest drivers can be much worse than good old stable ones (look at most of the graphics card manufacturers), I wonder if we want this to happen. It could become fairly crazy if we remember that Micro$oft is also this company that could install the copright management software that we don't want (and that they are currently pushing)... Why do I feel like they try to plant something wrong in my machine?

Police harass mobile phone thieves: I don't know if it will work, but I had a pretty good laugh with this: Netherlands police started to bombard stolen mobile phones with SMS messages (saying “This is a stolen phone. It is illegal to sell or buy it - The police”). It's supposed drive thieves mad...

Microsoft Passport: If, like me, you don't follow the details of Microsoft many announcements, you may have missed "Passport" the service that promisses to avoid you entering all those password on numerous web sites. But it has scary privacy implications that are shown in an article. After reading it, you may not go back to Microsoft web site. Thanks Stan.

Founder of digital computing and modern telecommuncations fades out: Claude Shannon, inventor of the notion of bit (0 or 1) as computing mean, and of several founding theories in the field of data communications, just died at the age of 84.

John Gilmore about Copy protection: A very readable and understandable text about why copy protection is wrong, and wrongly done (somewhat influenced by American law, but easily translatable into some more generic context).

Thousands of black labor workers at AOL? That is what an American lawyer is suggesting.

Your car becomes an ad banner: If you follow the proposal of American companies FreeCar.com and BuzzCar.com. I believe it's not yet present in France, but it should be coming soon!

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