Linking Records Raises Risks Privacy from Companies4/20/2001; 7:18:24 PM 'In a report called Record Linkage and Privacy, the General Accounting Office posits that the ability of government research teams to ever more efficiently combine and cross-reference records from different agencies poses considerable privacy risks.'As techniques for mining data grow increasingly sophisticated, GAO officials believe there's an increased likelihood that information that was meant to be anonymous may be matched to particular individuals.

Judge: chat room users' identity won't be revealed Free Speech4/20/2001; 2:32:42 PM 'Chat room users accused by a bankrupt Internet company of posting critical messages in an effort to drive its stock price down will not be identified, a federal judge has ruled....''[U.S. District Judge] Zilly said Thursday he agreed with 2TheMart attorneys that ``rights to speak anonymously are not unlimited.'' But he said the company's reasons for wanting the names were not sufficient, saying the firm made no direct claim against the users, except for ``innuendo'' they had manipulated the stock.

Handhelds: Tagger's Best Friend? Free Speech4/20/2001; 11:57:40 AM 'A San Francisco company has developed a wireless content application called HaikuHaiku that will let people with Web-enabled Palm or WAP-enabled mobile phones leave trails of digital messages wherever they go.'Interesting idea that's way ahead of its time.'"The challenge we face is how to build a location-based service when location-based technology is not yet available," said Ori Neidich, Neoku's wireless engineer.'Practically speaking, I have to wonder why you'd bother so soon?

The Jinx Misc.4/20/2001; 10:29:56 AM 'If the company actually goes through with this, it will be the worst decision made in the personal computer business since Micropro copy-protected the Wordstar 2000 word processor about 20 years ago....'Whether the same thing happens to Microsoft remains to be seen. What Microsoft is considering implementing in the upcoming Windows XP operating system is essentially a complex scheme to police the use of the software.

The Value Of Privacy Privacy from Companies 4/19/2001; 6:18:59 PM "The FTC charged Monarch Services, Inc. and Girls Life, Inc., operators of www.girlslife.com; Bigmailbox.com, Inc., and Nolan Quan, operators of www.bigmailbox.com; and Looksmart Ltd., operator of www.insidetheweb.com with illegally collecting personally identifying information from children under 13 years of age without parental consent, in violation of the COPPA Rule." For collecting things like name and age (and in the case of the BigMailbox.

Broadband fans busted over Gnutella Music & MP3 4/18/2001; 5:25:22 PM 'The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has sent hundreds of letters to major Internet service providers and universities, warning them that some people on their networks are violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) by trading copyrighted movies through Gnutella. 'Some of the universities that have been targeted in the MPAA's investigation include Harvard University and the University of Connecticut.

Is the FCC Quelling Free Speech? Misc. 4/18/2001; 4:37:00 PM 'Claiming Americans get their fix of diverse viewpoints on the Internet, media conglomerates are using the Web as an excuse to consolidate their power in the offline worlds of television, radio and print media. 'At least that's the argument the FCC is making in its effort to tear down decades-old laws that have prevented Big Media from growing even bigger.

Here I Go! Administrative 4/18/2001; 11:50:54 AM Alright, massive redesign is in progress and may take a couple of hours. Wish me luck! When I'm done, a fully standards compliant site will be here (with minor exceptions on certain pages). Note that Netscape 4 viewers (and IE4 I believe) will see the site get substantially simpler looking. I recommend upgrading... except for bandwidth constraints, there is no good reason not to use the latest Mozilla build.

Don't Let Architecture Astronauts Scare You Personal Commentary 4/17/2001; 8:47:49 PM 'When you go too far up, abstraction-wise, you run out of oxygen. Sometimes smart thinkers just don't know when to stop, and they create these absurd, all-encompassing, high-level pictures of the universe that are all good and fine, but don't actually mean anything at all.' At the risk of matching this profile to a "T", I'd like to observe that this statement is true in more then just software engineering.

How Corporate Lobbyists Colonized the Net DMCA 4/17/2001; 12:57:53 PM '"It means," Litman writes, "that all appearance of works in computers -- at home, on networks, at work, in the library -- needs to be effected in conformance with, and with attention to, copyright rules. That's new. Until now, copyright has regulated multiplication and distribution of works, but it hasn't regulated consumption."' The best article Katz has done since he joined Slashdot, bar none.