meta-roj

ID card plans ‘badly thought out’ [bbc, july 30, 2004]

The official committee report says ID cards can make a significant contribution to fighting crime and coordinating access to public services.

The scheme will change the relationship between citizens and the state, but potential benefits outweigh such concerns, it says.

the full report [pdf] is available from the bbc.

this is apparently a big story for our friends across the pond, with substantial coverage on everything from the cost of implementing the plan to the privacy implications to the behind-closed-doors development of the plan.

national id cards are sold as protection from terrorists and criminals. i think it’s just another example of a technology solution to a human problem.

Credit Firms Resist Anti-ID Theft Measure [ap via abc news, august 1, 2004]

Little by little, a weapon against identity theft is gaining currency but few people know about it. It’s called the security freeze, and it lets individuals block access to their credit reports until they personally unlock the files by contacting the credit bureaus and providing a PIN code.

i’m ok letting a few more people know about this security freeze thing. it is your credit report. right now, you can request a security freeze in california or texas (but you have to be a victim before you can do it in texas). coming up next year, louisiana and vermont. you might want to talk to your state legislators if you’re somewhere else.

as with most of america, it seems the military is split on the presidential race… in this corner, you have the swift vets that think kerry is unfit as a commander in chief. in the other corner, there’s retired air force general tony mcpeak, a former dole and bush 2000 campaigner, who stepped up to deliver the democratic radio address this past weekend.

Retired general: Bush foreign policy a ‘national disaster’ [cnn, july 31, 2004]

“We built the team that won World War II. We put together the great team that won the Cold War. That’s why what has happened over the last three years is such a tragedy, such a national disaster. Rebuilding the team won’t be easy.”

i guess someone will have to hack together a website comparing the military medals lined up behind each of the presidential candidates now. i’ll see your rear admiral with my general and raise you a captain and three purple hearts, two green clovers, a yellow moon and six blue diamonds. i just hope they break out the data by state so we can do some electoral college analysis.

despite my cheering the efforts of the 9/11 commission, it’s important to keep the brain open. here, we find a letter from one of the witnesses to the commission, with some points he feels were lost.

Letter to Thomas Kean from Sibel Edmonds [the agonist, august 2, 2004]

During its many hearings your commission chose not to ask the questions necessary to unveil the true symptoms of our failed intelligence system. Your Commission intentionally bypassed these severe symptoms, and chose not to include them in its five hundred and sixty seven-page report. Now, without a complete list of our failures pre 9/11, without a comprehensive examination of true symptoms that exist in our intelligence system, without assigning any accountability what so ever, and therefore, without a sound and reliable diagnosis, your commission is attempting to divert attention from the real problems, and to prescribe a cure through hasty and costly measures.

most of the points in this letter seem to revolve around personal responsibility for the intelligence and operational failures that led to the deaths of thousands of americans. on this general problem, i agree wholeheartedly. it seems that almost anywhere else in the world, people would step up, assume responsibility and fall on their sword as loyal administration members. not so in america. we’ve circled the wagons, and blamed the “system” (the system people created), while holding no one accountable.

i haven’t found the time to get through the commission report (yet), so i’m still forming an opinion. i still think the efforts of the commission members to suppot their document, in public, and beyond their mandate, is a good thing. i think that is a rare level of commitment from public officials. on the other hand, there are obviously some major questions about the content and focus of the commission document.

sunncomm’s been a post-child for drm discussions here at the meta-roj blog since they were defeated by a shift key. now, we learn that the latest creation from sunncomm claims to avoid the shift-key problem, and even better, sunncomm’s reaching out to apple (the company that can’t get into the music business according to a 1991 agreement with apple corps, ltd.).

SunnComm announces CD protection software update [the business journal, phoenix, july 30, 2004]

According to an announcement from SunnComm, protection components embedded on the optical medium will now make it impossible for the user to play the disc without installing the MediaMax software.

i just have to observe that “protection components embedded in the optical medium” pretty much guarantee that it’s not a cd anymore – at least not according to the rainbow of books that define what a cd is.

i think the lesson here is that the itunes userbase has become problematic enough to force a shift in the drm technology. “Most of those questions are related to getting the songs onto an iPod.” – that was enough to cause change at sunncomm. the new wrapper is just going to annoy a different chunk of the audience, and they may not be as “active” as ipod users, so annoying them may not be as costly – except to the artist.

Macrovision and SunnComm court Apple for a seachange in CDs [the register, july 19, 2004]

In the end what is required is a piece of software that will support handoff from the CD to any of Microsoft, Apple’s or Sony’s DRM but not to a system with no DRM.

i would disagree. what’s needed is a new business model… one that respects the relationship between artist and audience, rather than trying to impose on it.

president bush as reported in Kerry seeks ‘urgency’ against terrorists [msnbc, august 2, 2004]

“Knowing what I know today we still would have gone on into Iraq”

de-spun, does this mean “i was taking you into iraq one way or another, so suck it up and get off my back”?

just an oblique observation….

alex died on august first, which seems to be the same day that “tropical depression one” was promoted to tropical storm alex.

jazz engineer

with elections coming in october, the afghan population has, it would seem, embraced a major tenent of democracy:

90 Percent of Afghans Registered to Vote [ap via abc, august 2, 2004]

First tallies since the eight-month registration drive began winding down on Saturday show that 8.7 million of an estimated 9.8 million eligible voters have collected ID cards for the Oct. 9 election. Forty-one percent of those registered were women.

i think it’s something like 75% of americans that are registered to vote.

i wish them well.

here’s the proof:

Lightning Sparks Fire at Biden’s House [ap via abc, august 2, 2004]

Lightning struck the home of [democratic Sen. Joseph Biden, starting a small fire that was contained to the kitchen.

biden is the top democrat on the foreign relations committee. this means, of course, that democratic concepts on foreign relations are opposed by a higher being.