Archive for the ‘Computers/technology’ Category
PCIPA: another internet-censoring, privacy-violating bill that goes overboard
Wednesday, February 1st, 2012I was impressed by this article in The Atlantic by Conor Friedersdorf about the Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act of 2011 (PCIPA), The Legislation That Could Kill Internet Privacy for Good. This article was written on August 1, 2011, and apparently the bill, H.R. 1981, is almost a year ...
Links for an ending week
Friday, January 20th, 2012President Obama deserves praise for opposing the SOPA/PIPA bills in the House and Senate, respectively, but, of course, in true Republocrat fashion, deserves further criticism for qualifying that with, "That is why the Administration calls on all sides to work together to pass sound legislation this year that provides prosecutors ...
Stop the Stop Online Piracy Act!
Saturday, November 12th, 2011The latest attempt from the parasites in Washington to limit the freedom of the internet and all of the benefits that stem from it is called the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). Its more official, full name is Enforcing and Protecting American Rights Against Sites Intent on Theft and Exploitation ...
Farhad Manjoo is a raging moron and a danger to society
Tuesday, August 2nd, 2011It's a good thing Slate.com columnist Farhad Manjoo isn't a historian, or he'd probably argue that the best solution to slavery in America would have been to allow blacks an equal chance to enslave white people, because that would be "fair" in his biased, uninformed, unimaginative mind. Amazon.com is resisting the ...
End-of-the-month links
Saturday, April 30th, 2011Amazon.com's cancellation of its plans to open a South Carolina distribution center and high-tailing it out of town because the state legislature voted against giving the company a tax exemption are interesting from a libertarian perspective for a couple reasons. First, from a principled anti-tax standpoint, this is one of ...
Government-enforced net neutrality
Tuesday, February 1st, 2011The only part of the phrase "government-enforced net neutrality" that is relevant is the "government-enforced" part. There are so many arguments against the position that the Imperial Federal Government should enforce net neutrality that I had a hard time knowing where to begin. They include: Most problems with cable companies ...
Julian Sanchez on politically motivated suppression of WikiLeaks
Saturday, December 11th, 2010I really enjoyed Julian Sanchez's entire post Wikileaks and "Economies of Repression", but the conclusion was the best: In the heady days of the 1990s, it was widely assumed that the global Internet was, by its nature, an anarchic zone of untrammeled speech inherently immune from the control of governments quite ...
Loose lips sink dictatorships
Saturday, December 4th, 2010Seen on the internet, from someone who originally saw it in Barcelona, presumably inspired by Obama's opposition to WikiLeaks:
Two totalitarian laws closer to being enacted
Friday, November 19th, 2010You might have heard about two awful, totalitarian, Orwellian laws that the Senate is close to passing, which would unquestionably make our lives worse and cement this Democratic Congress as one of the worst in our history. The Senate Judiciary Committee recently approved the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act ...
Danah Boyd on the Craigslist “Adult Services” ban
Sunday, September 12th, 2010I liked this column by Danah Boyd at HuffPo explaining why censoring the "Adult Services" section of Craigslist, effectively forbidding women from prostituting themselves semi-openly, will harm women by protecting pimps, child traffickers, and other abusive scumbags: On Friday, under tremendous pressure from US attorneys general and public advocacy groups, Craigslist ...
Internet uprising overturns Australian censorship law
Friday, February 5th, 2010I don't think this news story got enough attention: from Ars Technica I read that an internet uprising led to the overturning of a very Orwellian censorship law in Australia. The law, which had taken effect just weeks prior, banned anonymous political commenting online. Can you imagine the twisted set ...
Fish in a barrel 6
Thursday, December 17th, 2009For some combination of reasons, the main one probably being the coming of the Second Great Depression and the need of so many people to save money, the exorbitant price of a college degree is being criticized and questioned more loudly and frequently than I can remember. For instance, Peter ...
Anarchist Elliot Madison wrongfully arrested, robbed
Tuesday, October 6th, 2009In a continuation of law-enforcement agencies' general disdain for and dismissal of our civil liberties, Elliot Madison, a self-described anarchist, was arrested for using Twitter and a police scanner to help G20 protesters coordinate their efforts and avoid police officers. The charges on which he was held don't indicate any ...
Fish in a barrel 3
Wednesday, September 30th, 2009Nate Anderson of Ars Technica wrote, Licensed spectrum came into being for a reason. In the early days of radio, unlicensed radio stations in urban areas regularly got into "power wars" with rival stations, leading to plenty of static. Compared to this free-for-all, the licensing of radio stations in the US, ...
Obama’s next terrible idea: Cyber Czar
Sunday, May 31st, 2009There is no possible way this can end well. Obama continues to reveal his true authoritarian colors for all to see with his announcement of a new cyber security office to be headed by a "Cyber Czar". Like everything else the government touches, this will be bad for everyone involved ...
Space junk
Wednesday, February 25th, 2009Debris from satellites and other random pieces of space junk are crowding the lower levels of outer space, to the extent that satellites and the Hubble Space Telescope are at risk for colliding with some of it at any given time (supposedly). I can imagine this problem will only get ...
Urine-to-water purifying machine
Tuesday, November 25th, 2008Astronauts on the space shuttle Endeavor believe they have nearly perfected a machine that filters urine to produce drinkable water. The article quotes space station commander Mike Fincke: "Not to spoil anything, but I think up here the appropriate words are 'Yippee!'" Folks—he pees into a cup, pours it into a ...
Carl Sagan reads from Pale Blue Dot
Sunday, November 16th, 2008I'm pretty sure this is the best video on the entire internets:
Democratic vs. oligarchic news sites
Friday, October 10th, 2008Recently Jeffrey Tucker wrote about the reasons he doesn't like Digg.com as much as he used to: There was a time, I vaguely recall, when Digg was a must read. Nearly every item unearthed some smart, interesting bit of inside knowledge, tech news before it became mainstream, fascinating observations that you ...
A glimpse of anarchic rights, laws, and socioeconomic organization in online communities
Sunday, August 24th, 2008This is one of the most interesting and thought-provoking news articles I've read in a while: Rights like free speech don't always extend online. It is about the different rules and restrictions established and enforced by online companies (Yahoo!, YouTube, MySpace, GoDaddy, etc.) and the consequences of their actions, their ...
Artificial intelligence is dangerous in State, not private, hands
Monday, July 7th, 2008I was reading about the Three Laws of Robotics at Wikipedia, and for anyone who hasn't read any Isaac Asimov, I highly encourage you to start with I, Robot and go all the way through Foundation and Earth. That's 12 books altogether: five robot novels and seven Foundation novels, which ...
Kill switches and remote control
Friday, July 4th, 2008Bruce Schneier, the computer-security guru whom Brad at WendyMcElroy.com often links to, wrote a pretty chilling post on kill switches and remote control. This type of technology is an example of why government is not your only enemy, but its creation of the national-security state enables private companies and individuals ...
To the Home Office, everyone is a terrorist suspect
Thursday, May 22nd, 2008It's a shame George Orwell didn't foresee the advent of computers and the computer age because if he had, 1984 would have been so much more frightening. The Home Office of Great Britain plans to create "Big brother" database for phones calls, emails and web use. This fascism hasn't been ...
Bionic eye returns sight to blind
Thursday, April 24th, 2008This bionic vision system consists of an ultra-thin electronic receiver implanted into the eyeball, which receives a signal transmitted by a special pair of glasses that the patient wears. Pfff, I don't know who would want that; I'd much rather wear a gold, semicircular visor that looks like it came ...
Staggering ignorance
Friday, March 21st, 2008In this week's issue of Nature, John Browning reviews Nicholas Carr's latest book, The Big Switch. I like reading Nicholas Carr's blag, Rough Type, for its insights and commentaries on the computer/technology industry and its future. This post isn't really about Carr or his book or his blag or the future ...
Why computers work and health care doesn’t
Tuesday, March 11th, 2008I think arguing by analogy is quite effective as a way to introduce an argument to someone whose beliefs are very different from yours. It can be quite instructive. Bill Walker wrote a good article last month about the contrast between the computer industry and the health care industry. Instead ...
Should governments block websites?
Tuesday, February 26th, 2008This is apparently what passes for moral-political discourse at the BBC.
Internet geeks aren’t largely libertarian
Saturday, February 2nd, 2008The Ron Paul fan club made a big deal about his extensive support on the internet, as evidenced by the success and popularity of Ron Paul forums, his success in so many online polls from news outlets (Fox, MSNBC, CNN, etc.) after debates, his online donations that totaled a lot ...
Reworded broadband plan resold as new and improved
Saturday, February 2nd, 2008Tim Swanson, who closely follows the internet and telecommunications world for the Mises Institute, posted an update on the theft, corporate welfare, and monopoly protection that constitutes federal telecommunications policy, which he wrote extensively about in December (here and here). This week a report (pdf) was issued by EDUCASE which ...
Dog translator
Saturday, January 19th, 2008The BBC reports on a new computer program that can translate what your dog is saying by the tone and nuances of its barks. That's a fantastic invention, but not as impressive as this...
Intel CEO at CES
Tuesday, January 8th, 2008Intel CEO Paul Otellini spoke today about the future of the internet at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. It's an interesting article, though it discusses what we basically already know: the future of the internet is personalization, context-awareness, mobility (as in iPhones etc.), and incessant connectivity. Obviously this ...
Red Hat’s new CEO
Friday, January 4th, 2008Jim Whitehurst, the man hired as Delta's CEO to lead them out of bankruptcy, is the new CEO of Red Hat, Inc. His and Red Hat's goal in the near future is to keep a sizeable portion of open source software, support, development, and "leadership" out of the hands ...
The RIAA is evil
Tuesday, January 1st, 2008Which of the following stories is true? RIAA bans telling friends about songs RIAA sues radio stations for giving away free music RIAA sues man for ripping his legally purchased CD's to his computer Thanks to Justin Ptak of the Mises blag.
Tim Swanson on the harm of State regulation of telecom
Thursday, December 27th, 2007Tim Swanson has written a collection of masterful columns for the Mises Institute, one in 2006 and two in the past week, about the harm already done to consumers by State intervention in the telecommunications industry and the harm that more State intervention will cause. I will try to amalgamate and ...
MINIX operating system
Tuesday, December 25th, 2007When I was looking for blags to add to our blagroll, I came across movementarian.com, Tim Swanson's web page. Even if I hadn't heard of Tim Swanson, I would have added him without hesitation because of his libertarianism and obvious fixation on "The Simpsons." He could hate baseball and beer ...