About... wow, a year and five months ago!... I killed my hard drive. In the end, the most importent thing I lost was music I had written with my synthesizor, which was irreplacable in every sense of the word. I could have sworn at the time that I had taken a backup of these things, along with a RedHat installation (back when it fit on one CD), but I could never find it, so I assumed I had mis-remembered.

'Quite a number of us who participated in the early Internet protocol design were from the computer security research side, and did our best to make the Internet architecture secure from the start. But the NSA (I am told) told DARPA that any attempt to introduce security mechanisms into TCP/IP's architecture would be viewed very negatively. (This happened at about the same time that Rivest, et al. received a mysterious threatening letter from a senior military official claiming that their work on the RSA cipher must be stopped immediately).

I had a nicely researched article here a couple of days ago, but due to a bug in Mozilla and an over-aggresive mouse click, I lost it. However, I hope to reconstruct it tonight. In other news, this is a good article. Copyright has become an interesting topic to a large number of people, so I'm going to assume for the moment that anyone reading this site is aware of Lawrence Lessig's case against copyright term extension, soon to be in the Supreme Court.

The news has been buzzing around for the last couple of days that Representative Berman, whose palm has been crossed with silver by the entertainment industry, would introduce a bill permitting copyright holders to hack or DoS people allegedly distributing their works without permission. Well, the bill has been introduced - read it and weep. Although the bill wouldn't allow copyright owners to alter or delete files on your machine, they would be allowed to DoS you in essentially any other way.

"I can't help it," Rosenblatt said. "Even when I close my eyes at night, I feel myself deconstructing things in my dreams—random stuff like that two-hour Dukes Of Hazzard reunion special or the Andy Warhol postage stamp or commercials for that new squeezable gel deodorant. I'd say I'm going crazy, but that presupposes an artificial barrier between societally preexisting concepts of 'sanity' and 'insanity' which themselves represent another false dichotomy maintained for the preservation of certain entrenched elements of the status quo and.

House Majority Leader Dick Armey, in his markup of legislation to create a Homeland Security Department, yesterday rejected a national identification card and scrapped a program that would use volunteers in domestic surveillance. Mr. Armey, chairman of the House Select Committee on Homeland Security, included language in his markup of the legislation to prohibit the Justice Department from initiating the Terrorism Information and Prevention System, also called Operation TIPS. Mr.

I was watching TV the other day (I think it was on Pleasentville, which ABC recently ran), and I was shocked to notice someone on TV with a bemused (head tipped down, one eyebrow higher then other, small asymmetric smile) expression on their face. It occurred to me how rarely I see the more complicated facial expressions on actor's faces. All actors can do fear, anger, happiness, all the basic emotions.

The Bush administration plans to enlist millions of Americans to spy on their fellow Americans for a program called Terrorism Information and Prevention System, or TIPS.... Even if it is limited to public places, the program is offensive. The idea of citizens spying on citizens, and the government collecting data on everyone who is accused, is a staple of totalitarian regimes. East Germany's infamous Stasi internal security system kept files on some six million citizens -- about a third of the country.

'EFF was advised that Sen. Ernest Hollings has written a letter to the FCC advocating immediate implementation of a broadcast flag mandate -- even without additional legislation. Hollings apparently claimed that the FCC already has, under existing statutes, the authority necessary to require that all manufacturers comply with BPDG rules.' I question the appropriateness and perhaps even legality (in an abstract theoretical sense) of a member of the legislative branch of the government urging a part of the executive branch to grab power it does not seem to have, because the legislative branch has not granted it.

Paranoid conspiracy theory of the week: In regard to the recent decision to allow the phone company to sell "your name, who you call, and for how long you talk", 'jv42' posts the following on Slashdot:This means that now all any government agency needs to do is set up a dummy corporation that's an "affiliate", and my phone company will give them unlimited access to all the data about me.