Curiouser and Curiouser!

ID cards? Orwell would be proud...

British ID cards to revolutionise crime. But not in the way the gov wants... [The Register]

» Once again the government I voted for is doing the Orwellian thing.

Some highlights (courtesy of Copernic Summarizer)

• Home Secretary David Blunkett announced the start of a six month consultation in Parliament today on plans by the government to introduce "entitlement cards" (that's ID cards to you and me).
• Lobby group Privacy International reckons the proposal for a national identity card has little to do with the government's stated objectives of reducing the threat of crime, terrorism and illegal immigration.
• Its real purpose is part of a broader objective outlined in the Cabinet Office report "Privacy & Data Sharing" to create a new administrative basis for the linkage of government databases and information systems.
• But worse, the government's ID card plan could backfire and become a tool for criminal syndicates, according to Privacy International which argues that a national ID card- whether voluntary or mandatory - will compound problems of illegal immigration, fraud and identity theft.
• According to Simon Davies, Privacy International's Director, criminals now have access to technology almost as sophisticated at that used by governments so that "even the most highly secure cards are available as blanks weeks after their introduction.

Some more of our freedoms to be sold in the name of fighting crime.  Are they just tilting at windmills or is this really sinister?

We can fight this!

 

Know thine enemy

Palladium: Disturbing. Highly Disturbing..

Palladium: Disturbing.  Highly Disturbing.

If you don't understand Palladium, you should.  Excellent FAQ here: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html

Dave, thanks for the link!

[The FuzzyBlog!]

Sharing the research we all paid for

The Chronicle of Higher Education: 'Superarchives' Could Hold All Scholarly Output. Several colleges are now looking to share more of that work by building "institutional repositories" online and inviting their professors to upload copies of their research papers, data sets, and other work. The idea is to gather as much of the intellectual output of an institution as possible in an easy-to-search online collection. [Tomalak's Realm]

» Interesting article.  Here's a taster:

Several colleges are now looking to share more of that work by building "institutional repositories" online and inviting their professors to upload copies of their research papers, data sets, and other work.

Some imagine a day when every research university gives its research away through the Web, allowing scholars and nonacademics to mine it for ideas and information.

Institutional repositories could create an alternative to journals, fans of the archives say.

Journal publishers, meanwhile, say that such repositories are unlikely to supplant their publications.

Journals, they argue, are still the best means of distributing and preserving research.

And even some of those supporting the new archives recognize the difficulty of getting professors to change their habits.

"We've had pretty serious interest in the system from about 30 major institutions," Ms.

What: Massachusetts Institute of Technology's project to develop a superarchive, as well as software tools for creating and maintaining the repository.

The tools will be offered to other colleges that want to use them.

When: DSpace has been under development for two years.

The university is testing it this summer, and plans to make the software available free to anyone in the fall, when the university will invite all professors at MIT to contribute to its archive.

What: Free software developed at the University of Southampton, in Britain, to help individual scholars, departments, or universities create archives of research papers online.

An updated version was released this year.

What: A series of "metadata" codes that librarians or others can attach to research papers to help search engines pull out desired information.

Universities are funded out of taxation.  The fruits of their research should be made available to all, for the benefit of all.

 

Klogging 101: What, Why, and How

klogging 101 slides.

Phil Wolff's klogging 101 slides.

[High Context]

 

The Road to Wellville

"Right!  Health... the open sesame to the suckers purse!"

From a silly film I am watching "The Road to Wellville."

 

Make beauty not war

Make beauty, not war. Horst's photo of a woman in a corset, taken in 1939, is a vision of human sensuality that rebukes the inhumanity about to darken the world. [Salon.com]

I'd rather throw a pot

A roundabout story re the Reuters story above. I got a call from Microsoft PR earlier this week about my blanket dismissal of their "DRM" operating system, aka Palladium. They may have a monopoly on OSes, but nothing says I have to use computers. I still have choice, even if they figure out how to impregnate my W2K machine with their viruses, theoretically I can still turn the fucker off and go make pottery or something that doesn't involve any of their mischief. Now, I can do the same with the music industry's product. As long as they keep treating their users with the same kind of disrespect that Microsoft does, they're going to end up just as reviled. The MS person asked what they can do to regain my trust. I said it's possible. Start by restoring competition to the browser market. Then we can talk about next steps. It comes down to this, how can they be a leader if they destroy everything they would hope to lead? [Scripting News]

» With Palladium Microsoft might singlehandedly kick start the pottery revolution.