DarkStar Spouts Off

Kinda Tech Stuff

Time Warner Cable tries metering Internet use

NEW YORK (AP) -- You're used to paying extra if you use up your cell phone minutes, but will you be willing to pay extra if your home computer goes over its Internet allowance?

Time Warner Cable Inc. customers -- and, later, others -- may have to, if the company's test of metered Internet access is successful.

Thursday, new Time Warner Cable Internet subscribers in Beaumont, Texas, will have monthly allowances for the amount of data they upload and download. Those who go over will be charged $1 per gigabyte, a Time Warner Cable executive told the Associated Press.

Matt Drudge

Now, as Obama and Sen. John McCain look toward the fall, Drudge has emerged unexpectedly as more of a threat to the Republican than to the Democrat. This, combined with the rise of left-leaning sites such as TalkingPointsMemo.com and HuffingtonPost.com — both of which have proved effective in promoting and amplifying a Democratic message — reflects a major shift from the last two presidential elections, a matter of open alarm to Republican strategists and surprised satisfaction to Democrats.

“The MSM is already sending love letters to Obama,” said a GOP operative who worked for the Bush-Cheney reelection. “That’s something that has traditionally been countered on the Republican side with talk radio, blogs to a lesser degree but especially Drudge. If those tools are not part of the Republican vehicle for message delivery, that’s crippling.”

The Drudge Report is no ordinary compendium of news stories. It is a heavily trafficked gateway to all corners of the Internet, a portal composed of links largely to breaking news from traditional media like The New York Times (as well as newer entrants like Politico). Most of the content is without any obvious ideological attachment. But operatives of both parties have long believed that his choice of links — along with occasional posts of Drudge's own reporting — have reflected a rightward tilt, and they assumed a preference for Republican candidates.

Windoze 7

In an effort to avoid a repeat of the compatibility problems that plagued the launch of its Windows Vista operating system last year, Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) has ordered computer and other hardware makers to begin testing their devices on the forthcoming Windows 7 OS as soon as the first beta version becomes available.

Hardware makers that don't comply with the edict won't qualify for Microsoft's Windows Logo certified compatibility program for Windows 7 or Windows Vista. "Beginning with the first beta of Windows 7 all Windows Vista submissions must include a complete CPK with tests logs from Windows 7," Microsoft said in a 61-page bulletin to its hardware partners last week.

H1-B Visa

The Bush administration's recent decision

The opponents argue that the administration exceeded its legal authority by stretching the rules for foreign students by extending the length of the visas from one year to 29 months.

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Newark, N.J., by the Immigration Reform Law Institute and joined by The Programmers Guild and other groups, charges that the administration's decision in April to extend the work period for students under the Optional Practical Training provision is little more than an effort to get around the H-1B cap limit.

GMail And FireFox

From some visual changes I see, I gather Google updated GMail. Unfortunately, GMail on FireFox on an XP platform, seems to mean FireFox takes 98% of the CPU.

Toys: Home NAS and GigE

Right now I have slightly "advanced" home wireless setup. The Verizon FiOS connection comes into a wireless router, which has an Ethernet connection to another another wireless router that is now just a wireless switch. I have an Ethernet connection from the wireless switch to my development machine and a Linux server that I use for Unix-like development and as the home file server/backup.

Why do I have 2 wireless routers? Well, the FiOS wireless router provides crappy wireless connectivity. My wife's machine always gets a poor connection to the FiOS router, so I set up the previous wireless router as a wireless switch, and all is well.

I want to get network area storage (NAS) to replace the Linux machine for file server/backup functionality, so I can reclaim disk space and upgrade Linux to what I need. Plus I'm fearing the pending death of the drives.

I'm looking at home NAS solutions. My requirements are that they are Window$ compatible, of course, but also Linux compatible. The products have GigE connections, so of course that means that I "have" to upgrade the network behind the FiOS router to GigE, right? Right? RIGHT? ;-) With this setup I can attach a printer to the NAS and have a network printer for the house. Believe it or not, this would get some use.

Maybe that's what the congressional bribe will be used for. ;-)

The HD DVD War Is Over. WalMart Declares The Winner

The HD format war is over.

Everyone can go out and buy the Blu Ray DVD player of their choice or the game console that supports Blu Ray. We have a winner in the format war, and the knock out hay maker came from WalMart:

February 16, 2008
Taps for HD DVD as Wal-Mart Backs Blu-ray
By MATT RICHTEL and ERIC A. TAUB

SAN FRANCISCO — HD DVD, the beloved format of Toshiba and three Hollywood studios, died Friday after a brief illness. The cause of death was determined to be the decision by Wal-Mart to stock only
high-definition DVDs and players using the Blu-ray format.

There are no funeral plans, but retailers and industry analysts are already writing the obituary for HD DVD.

The announcement by Wal-Mart Stores, the nation's largest retailer of DVDs, that it would stop selling the discs and machines in June when supplies are depleted comes after decisions this week by Best Buy, the largest electronics retailer, to promote Blu-ray as its preferred format and Netflix, the DVD-rental service, to stock only Blu-ray movies, phasing out HD DVD by the end of this year.

Keep it moving folks. No more here to see. It's just another dead technology littering the highway. Move on. No more rubber necking....

Tech Buy Outs

Sun Microsystems is buying MySQL -- I have no idea what this means for MySQL. I use MySQL for learning technologies that require a database, for prototyping purposes, and for development purposes before putting software on the "real machines" and using Oracle. At home, I downloaded the Linux and Windows versions and installed them to do what I need to do. What this means for MySQL is unknown. What this means for Sun, I assume, is more money from the service side of MySQL.

Oracle is buying BEA Systems -- Oracle had its own application server for awhile and that didn't work out so they brought a company which gave them a better application server, Orion. Now they are buying BEA Systems and they get a better application server, business process management software that uses the application server, web services software, web portal software, a good Java Virtual Machine, and other software. I think BEA got the best of the deal because their software is too damned expensive and is battling open source software that is of decent enough quality for production use. Having dealt with BEA sales representatives and having used BEA software, I hope the quality of some of it improves and the cost goes down, but I doubt it. Just say NO to BEA portal software!

Here is a link to a company pronouncing the death of J2EE software. Gigaspaces is actually on the list of software that I feel the need to evaluate.

Paying By The Byte

For 4 summers, I worked for AT&T before the break up. The first summer I was a clerk in a telephone office that serviced a government agency. One day the manager came in and said the telephone world was going to change. AT&T was pushing for a break up of itself to allow it to get into the long distance game. In short, AT&T got what they thought they wanted.

When I first got an Internet connection, I had dial-up. I got a second line so I wouldn't miss calls while I was on-line. Then, Bell Atlantic (now Verizon), wanted to charge me a business rate for the second line because I told them the line was for the Internet. The person I argued with told me they really want the ability to charge by the minute because the telephone network was designed to handle calls that lasted, on average, for about 10 minutes.

Later, before cable Internet was available, I looked into getting an ISDN line. I decided not to do it because they charged by the amount of data transferred and, at the time, my consulting business was new I and wasn't sure if I could recoup the cost. But I remembered the discussion with the telephone person saying they wanted to charge Internet use by the minute.

Now, comes this and I think it is inevitable. Home users being charged by the amount of data transferred is going to happen:

Time Warner Cable Will Do Trial on Setting High-Speed Internet Charges
Based on Usage

NEW YORK (AP) -- Time Warner Cable will experiment with a new pricing structure for high-speed Internet access later this year, charging customers based on how much data they download, a company spokesman said Wednesday.

The company, the second-largest cable provider in the United States, will start a trial in Beaumont, Texas, in which it will sell new Internet customers tiered levels of service based on how much data they download per month, rather than the usual fixed-price packages with unlimited downloads.

Company spokesman Alex Dudley said the trial was aimed at improving the network performance by making it more costly for heavy users of large downloads. Dudley said that a small group of super-heavy users of downloads, around 5 percent of the customer base, can account for up to 50 percent of network capacity.

Here it comes but the cable company is going to be the first to really try it. When it sticks, watch Internet innovation come to a crawl.

This Can't Be Accurate Reporting: RIAA

The Washington Post published this:

Now, in an unusual case in which an Arizona recipient of an RIAA letter has fought back in court rather than write a check to avoid hefty legal fees, the industry is taking its argument against music sharing one step further: In legal documents in its federal case against Jeffrey Howell, a Scottsdale, Ariz., man who kept a collection of about 2,000 music recordings on his personal computer, the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer.

The industry's lawyer in the case, Ira Schwartz, argues in a brief filed earlier this month that the MP3 files Howell made on his computer from legally bought CDs are "unauthorized copies" of copyrighted recordings.

"I couldn't believe it when I read that," says Ray Beckerman, a New York lawyer who represents six clients who have been sued by the RIAA. "The basic principle in the law is that you have to distribute actual physical copies to be guilty of violating copyright. But recently, the industry has been going around saying that even a personal copy on your computer is a violation."

RIAA's hard-line position seems clear. Its Web site says: "If you make unauthorized copies of copyrighted music recordings, you're stealing. You're breaking the law and you could be held legally liable for thousands of dollars in damages."

Not placing the files ripped from the CD into a shared folder for "all" to get access to, but just COPYING?!?!?!?! That can't be right.

RIAA Says You Can't Rip CDs! NOT!

I got this bit of information off of Slash Dot.

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In an Arizona case against a defendant who has no legal representation, Atlantic v. Howell, the RIAA is now arguing — contrary to its lawyers' statements to the United States Supreme Court in 2005 MGM v. Grokster — that the defendant's ripping of personal MP3 copies onto his computer is a copyright infringement. At page 15 of its brief (PDF) it states the following: 'It is undisputed that Defendant possessed unauthorized copies... Virtually all of the sound recordings... are in the ".mp3" format for his and his wife's use... Once Defendant converted Plaintiffs' recordings into the compressed .mp3 format and they are in his shared folder, they are no longer the authorized copies...'"

[ UPDATED ] Please note that the MP3's were placed on the SHARED drive which makes them available to anyone if file sharing is not turned off. In other words, RIAA is doing the same thing RIAA has been doing. It's going after someone who they believe are sharing files. They are NOT saying that ripping a file to MP3 format is illegal. If the files had been ripped to a non-sharable drive, here would have been no issue.

Spring Framework

I've read about the Spring Framework, so conceptually, I understand what it is about. However, as a result of interviewing people for positions, I decided to learn enough of it to ask strong technical questions about it. In learning it, I am realizing exactly what the positive hype about it is, and not just as another web tier framework.

There are some good things behind the hype. In fact, something I helped develop seems like a perfect fit for the Spring Framework. In fact, I'm making a reference application to demonstrate how the existing application may be slowly retrofitted with Spring.

iPhone Cry Babies

When I buy a computer, no matter how much I load it up or get "the most powerful" system components out there, I KNOW that in a few weeks or months time, the price of the system will fall and there will be a more powerful system out there for the same price that I paid for my system. This is just a fact of electronics gear. It happened with my plasma television. It was a better model and I paid around $3200 for it. Today, the replacement model for what I have costs around $2000. That's just the way it is.

So while I can understand people who brought iPhones in the last week being a little mad, those who rushed to get it the first day would be out of luck if it were up to me.

I have to give Steve Jobs some respect for offering $100 credit to those folks, but then again, it's not a REFUND it is a CREDIT.

C/C++ and JavaScript

Back when I was regularly programing in C and/or C++, I regularly had to use #define and #ifdef statements to account for differences in operating systems the code may execute. A simple example is:

#ifdef _SYS5
printf("%s\n", "This is a Unix System 5 system");
#end
#ifdef _DGIX
printf("%s\n", "This is a Digital Unix system");
#endif
#ifdef _SUNOS
printf("%s\n", "This is a SunOS system"); 
#endif

What the above means is when the code is compiled, only the code relevant to the system type is included. Above, if the code was running on a Unix System 5 system,

"This is a Unix System 5 system"

would be printed. If it was a Digital Unix system,

"This is a Digital Unix system"

would be printed. If it was a SunOS system,

"This is a SunOS system"

would be printed. It was hard, to me, to read code that had a lot of #ifdef's in the code, so what I started to do was write one file for each system. If the code was portable across all systems, there would only be one file. If there was code that had to have different code, I would create files for each system. I used a naming convention such as, "calculate_sys5.c" for System 5 code, "calculate_dgix.c" for Digital Unix code, etc. Essentially I would #ifdef the entire file. I also had a "default" file that would be compiled if none of the systems matched. I always purposefully generated runtime errors in that code so I would know I messed up with the #ifdef. People hated it but it made it easier on me.

So what does that have to do with JavaScript? Well, with the number of browsers out there, when you create JavaScript methods, many times you have to determine what browser and what version of the browser the code is running in before you can make certain calls, especially when you have to get to the DOM. Frankly, just like the #ifdef took some fun out of programming, so does worrying about browser versions and operating systems in JavaScript. Only with JavaScript, I think it is much more aggravating. So, unless I have to, I leave the client side alone.

iPhone == DOS?

This is funny!

The Wi-Fi connection on Apple's recently released iPhone seems to be the source of a big headache for network administrators at Duke University.

The built-in 802.11b/g adapters on several iPhones periodically flood sections of the Durham, N.C., school's pervasive wireless LAN with MAC address requests, temporarily knocking out anywhere from a dozen to 30 wireless access points at a time. Campus network staff are talking with Cisco, the main WLAN provider, and have opened a help desk ticket with Apple. But so far, the precise cause of the problem remains unknown.

"Because of the time of year for us, it's not a severe problem," says Kevin Miller, assistant director, communications infrastructure, with Duke's Office of Information Technology. "But from late August through May, our wireless net is critical. My concern is how many students will be coming back in August with iPhones? It's a pretty big annoyance, right now, with 20 to 30 access points signaling they're down, and then coming back up a few minutes later. But in late August, this would be devastating."

That's because the misbehaving iPhones flood the access points with up to 18,000 address requests per second, nearly 10Mbps of bandwidth, and monopolizing the AP's airtime.

More at the link.

Market Forces: India

Market forces at work. You have to love it:

The company, which is behind visual shopping Web site Like.com and specializes in image recognition software, had maintained offices in both Bangalore and the U.S. despite the difficulties of being based in locations 12 time zones apart because low wages and a strong pool of talent in India meant the company still saw a significant return on investment.

But in his company blog, Riya chief executive Munjal Shah, said: "Bangalore wages have just been growing like crazy. To give you an example, there is an employee of ours who took the first five years of his career to get from 1 percent to 10 percent of his equivalent U.S. counterpart.

"He then jumped from 10 percent to 20 percent of his U.S. counterpart in the next 1 year. During his time with us (less than two years) he jumped to 55 percent of the U.S. wage. In the next few months we would have had to move him to 75 percent just to 'keep him at market.'"

Shah added: "In general this wage inflation is really good for my employees and great for India."

But the increase in Bangalore wages had "destroyed the ROI" that was the rationale for maintaining the otherwise difficult two-continent operation. The company has now moved to consolidate its engineering and research work at its California headquarters.

This is too funny!

This Gets The Nerd In Me Going!

This gets the nerd in me going!

Thousands of Leonardo Da Vinci's drawings and scientific theories will soon be viewable for free on the internet.

Until now the majority of the manuscripts have been seen only by scholars but the National Museum of Leonardo in his hometown of Vinci has promised to scan about 12,000 pages and create an archive.

The European Union is funding the website www.leonardodigitale.com, and 3,000 pages have been scanned so far.

The drawings, from the late 15th and early 16th century, demonstrate the artist's incredible range, touching on geometry, astronomy, botany, zoology, the art of warfare and the flight of birds.

This is a GOOD thing. Period.

How To Make A Mint

This is how you can make a mint if you are into technology:

1. Develop some product for the "enterprise", making sure it
incorporates enough buzz word standards to get people interested.

2. Create a simple ass demonstration using the simple buzz word
standards slightly modified from the simple examples that demonstrate the use of the standards.

3. Write voluminous documentation that is convoluted and make the documentation "web enabled" for "easy searching" there by making it difficult to read.

4. Don't list the price anywhere on your web site. When the suckers get into pricing, quote the "list price" of $20K/CPU but then "negotiate" down to $8-10K/CPU but don't negotiate the yearly "service contract" of $5-10K/year.

5. Provide basic support under #4, but provide "professional services" from your "professional services division" or through "partners" that have to pay for the "privilege" of being a "partner." Of course, they may give the enterprise software developer a kickback commission.

6. Charge $100-300/hour for the professional support, but have a "deal" for something like $100/hr.

7. Watch the dough roll in.

Adobe Acrobat Standard

Acrobat reader really stinks, especially with the Fire Fox browser.
Acrobat Standard isn't much better.

They both are buggy.

Micro$oft Bring$ Out The $hark$

Microsoft takes on the free world

 

Microsoft claims that free software like Linux, which runs a big chunk of corporate America, violates 235 of its patents. It wants royalties from distributors and users. Users like you, maybe.

By Roger Parloff, Fortune senior editor

May 14 2007: 9:35 AM EDT

(Fortune Magazine) -- Free software is great, and corporate America loves it. It's often high-quality stuff that can be downloaded free off the Internet and then copied at will. It's versatile - it can be customized to perform almost any large-scale computing task - and it's blessedly crash-resistant.

A broad community of developers, from individuals to large companies like IBM, is constantly working to improve it and introduce new features. No wonder the business world has embraced it so enthusiastically: More than half the companies in the Fortune 500 are thought to be using the free operating system Linux in their data centers.

But now there's a shadow hanging over Linux and other free software, and it's being cast by Microsoft (Charts, Fortune 500). The Redmond behemoth asserts that one reason free software is of such high quality is that it violates more than 200 of Microsoft's patents. And as a mature company facing unfavorable market trends and fearsome competitors like Google (Charts, Fortune 500), Microsoft is pulling no punches: It wants royalties. If the company gets its way, free software won't be free anymore.

The conflict pits Microsoft and its dogged CEO, Steve Ballmer, against the "free world" - people who believe software is pure knowledge. The leader of that faction is Richard Matthew Stallman, a computer visionary with the look and the intransigence of an Old Testament prophet.

Caught in the middle are big corporate Linux users like Wal-Mart, AIG, and Goldman Sachs. Free-worlders say that if Microsoft prevails, the whole quirky ecosystem that produced Linux and other free and open-source software (FOSS) will be undermined.

Microsoft counters that it is a matter of principle. "We live in a world where we honor, and support the honoring of, intellectual property," says Ballmer in an interview. FOSS patrons are going to have to "play by the same rules as the rest of the business," he insists. "What's fair is fair."

Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith and licensing chief Horacio Gutierrez sat down with Fortune recently to map out their strategy for getting FOSS users to pay royalties. Revealing the precise figure for the first time, they state that FOSS infringes on no fewer than 235 Microsoft patents.

It's a breathtaking number. (By comparison, for instance, Verizon's (Charts, Fortune 500) patent suit against Vonage (Charts), which now threatens to bankrupt the latter, was based on just seven patents, of which only three were found to be infringing.) "This is not a case of some accidental, unknowing infringement," Gutierrez asserts. "There is an overwhelming number of patents being infringed."

 

It was only a matter of time.

Protection Issues

I have Zone Alarm Pro and Norton Anti Virus 2004 running on my laptop. I needed to renew my subscription and decided to upgrade to NAV 2007. After removing old Norton and rebooting several times, and installing NAV 2007 and rebooting several times, I was at the point to start it up.

Lo and behold! A message that indicates ZAP and NAV 2007 aren't compatible and Norton recommends ZAP be removed from the system.

OHHHHH... That sounds so familiar.... Like I had a problem with Windows 95 and a Micro$oft tech said remove all non-IE web browsers!

Norton? You want to play like that? OK, I'll go with AVG. How you like THAT!?!?!?

Silly Me

Silly me for thinking media companies would use YouTube to their advantage by making a deal with YouTube to bump their content to the top or give preference to those companies or create high profile channels or something.

Big Media took its first big swing at YouTube Tuesday as Viacom Inc., the owner of MTV, VH1, Comedy Central and other cable networks filed a $1 billion copyright lawsuit against the video-sharing site and corporate owner Google Inc.

The lawsuit marks a sharp escalation of long-simmering tensions between Viacom and YouTube and represents the biggest confrontation to date between a major media company and the hugely popular site, which Google bought in November for $1.76 billion.

Last month Viacom demanded that YouTube remove more than 100,000 unauthorized clips from its site, and since that time the company has uncovered more than 50,000 additional unauthorized clips, Viacom spokesman Jeremy Zweig said.

I guess YouTube couldn't provide enough proof to Viacom that they would go after copyright violators.

Or Viacom really never intended to try to work things out and just wants money to hurt Google. Does Viacom have a deal with another search engine?

Lap Top Woes

I have a laptop computer that I use for travel and light weight development, a beefed up "at the time" desk top that is used for development and finances, and an older desk top that is now a Linux box that is a file server and used for Unix-like development and "enterprise server" development.

All machines had been humming along until a few months ago when the laptop started "stalling" while in use. It happened when I was surfing with Firefox so I thought that had something to do with it. But before I did anything with that, I scanned for viruses, adware, etc and it was clean.

I then upgraded Firefox and it happened on a more frequent basis. So, I went to I.E. where it happened there as well.

After doing another scan with free virus detectors and free adware detectors, it still happened.

Then it started to happen more and more. I feared a pending hardware failure and started to backup important files to new USB drives I brought just for that purpose. I stopped using the laptop as much as I had done in the past.

The other day I had to use the laptop to show examples of what I want done, to contractors who are coming to the house to give an estimate. The sleeping was happening more and more and I decided, for some unknown reason, to disable things in the "start up" tray. The first thing I did was pause Google Desktop Search.

The stalling stopped.

Later I "unpaused" Google Desktop Search and it started stalling again.

I disabled Google Desktop Search from startup and the stalling hasn't happened since.

Why I Still Buy CDs

These 2 articles that appeared in today's Washington Post are the reason why I still buy CDs. DRM is the devil himself.

A Messy Age for Music

These days, in the age of digital distribution, we don't need to buy CDs anymore. What we have, instead, are a bunch of online music services, offering songs for sale or rent via quick download to a bunch of digital music players that might or might not actually play them.

Take music fan Chauncey Canfield: He has a whopping 180-gigabyte music collection, an iPod and a smartphone he can fill with songs from his subscription Yahoo Music account. But he can't put Yahoo Music songs on his iPod, and he can't put songs purchased from the iTunes Music Store on his phone.

Canfield knows that iTunes is the most popular online music store, but he avoids it because of the playback restrictions. Instead, he prefers to shop at eMusic, which sells its tracks in the MP3 format, an open technology that works on every music player on the market. Even the iPod.

"The fact that they don't have [anti-piracy controls] on them is absolutely a major plus," he said. "I don't have to segregate my music into various ghettos."

And then this one:

Changing Her Tun on Apple's iPod

I've basically stopped buying music because I'm stuck at a digital music divide.

Every 99-cent song I buy from the iTunes Music Store digs me deeper into an ecosystem that depends on $250 (or more) replacement iPods and closes me off from other cool-but-incompatible devices made by non-Apple Computer companies.

But who among us doesn't find the ease of iTunes totally seductive? The 30-second sample clip? Love it. The option of buying one song off an album? Brilliant. And no more peeling off that super-adhesive tape they put on CD packages!

Once upon a time, music used to account for a measurable chunk of my monthly spending. Now, I agonize, scrutinize, and often forgo clicking "buy" on a song.

I got to this point the way I imagine many others might have.

Three birthdays ago, my generous, tech-loving boyfriend bought me an iridescent green iPod Mini I named Jazzhands. She was cute, light, and way outclassed the generations of Walkman cassette players that came before her.

Please read both of these articles because they are good.

I may be buying a digital player soon, but I won't use the download services. I'll just buy the CD and then rip it to the device I buy. Besides, I still have lots of vinyl as well.

How?

This is unbelievable:

Apple Computer this week warned customers that some Video iPods sold over the past five weeks were shipped with a computer virus capable of infecting computers running Microsoft Windows and exposing them to attacks by hackers.

Apple said the virus was embedded in less than 1 percent of the Video iPods available for purchase after September 12, 2006. Greg Joswiak, vice president of iPod product marketing at Apple, said the company traced the virus back to a Windows machine used to test iPod software in the manufacturing process.

Joswiak declined to say how many devices were affected, citing the potential impact on investors closely watching the company's earnings reports today. But he said Apple has corrected the problem and that all video iPods the company is currently shipping are virus-free.

 

Imagine A Laptop With DNA Data Being Stolen

I have civil liberties concerns with DNA databases primarily based on the access to the information. I don't have trouble with those convicted of crimes having their DNA stored if their crimes were sexually related, physical assult, or murder. I start to have more problems with those convicted of other crimes.

Think about this for a minute: if a person is sexually assulted and the assailant has a disease, the person assulted has no right to be notified of the disease. If I'm wrong about that, please correct me.

I also have problems with police asking people to give DNA samples in a "DNA dragnet" to a crime. Even though I'm someone who "has nothing to hide" I still would refuse to give the sample on civil liberties grounds.

Lastly, the way Virginia populates its DNA database, by requiring DNA samples of those arrested, I definitely do not like. Currently, in Baltimore, the police are on a spree to arrest people based on anything. Back in the day it was called arresting people on the humble. Even if the arrest produces no charges, your DNA is now scanned when crimes are committed. I have STRONG civil liberties concerns with that one.

An article in the Washington Post titled "Vast DNA Bank Pits Policing Vs. Privacy" covers the use of DNA databases and the concerns associated with them.

Brimming with the genetic patterns of more than 3 million Americans, the nation's databank of DNA "fingerprints" is growing by more than 80,000 people every month, giving police an unprecedented crime-fighting tool but prompting warnings that the expansion threatens constitutional privacy protections.

With little public debate, state and federal rules for cataloging DNA have broadened in recent years to include not only violent felons, as was originally the case, but also perpetrators of minor crimes and even people who have been arrested but not convicted.

Now some in law enforcement are calling for a national registry of every American's DNA profile, against which police could instantly compare crime-scene specimens. Advocates say the system would dissuade many would-be criminals and help capture the rest.

"This is the single best way to catch bad guys and keep them off the street," said Chris Asplen, a lawyer with the Washington firm Smith Alling Lane and former executive director of the National Commission on the Future of DNA Evidence. "When it's applied to everybody, it is fair, and frankly you wouldn't even know it was going on."

But opponents say that the growing use of DNA scans is making suspects out of many law-abiding Americans and turning the "innocent until proven guilty" maxim on its head.

"These databases are starting to look more like a surveillance tool than a tool for criminal investigation," said Tania Simoncelli of the American Civil Liberties Union in New York.

The debate is part of a larger, post-Sept. 11 tug of war between public safety and personal privacy that has intensified amid recent revelations that the government has been collecting information on personal phone calls. In particular, it is about the limits of the Fourth Amendment, which protects people from being swept into criminal investigations unless there is good reason to suspect they have broken the law.

Once someone's DNA code is in the federal database, critics say, that person is effectively treated as a suspect every time a match with a crime-scene specimen is sought -- even though there is no reason to believe that the person committed the crime.

Take some time to read the entire article because it is a good read.

Why did I title this post the way I did? Well, what happens if some employee takes a USB stick, copies the DNA information to a laptop, and then the laptop is stolen? Based on the way things are going, will someone take your DNA and match it to someone else's identity?

If you don't think it can happen, think about banks now requiring fingerprints to cash checks and/or open checking/savings accounts.

Conflict of Interest

As I understand it, a conflict of interest exists when a party gets to stand in judgement of something of which they, or their interests, may benefit.

For example, it would be a conflict of interest if I recommend software for a task when I have stock in that software or may have helped to write that software.

With that in mind, someone please tell me why this is not a MAJOR situation of conflict in interest?

Microsoft Launches Security for Windows

Security software makers, the 800-pound gorilla has landed. Microsoft Corp. was to announce Wednesday that it is releasing software that aims to better protect people who use its Windows operating system from Internet attacks.

The move pits the world's largest software maker head-to-head with longtime business partners Symantec Corp., McAfee Inc. and others.

Windows Live OneCare, which will protect up to three computers for $49.95 per year, marks the latest step in Microsoft's effort over the years to make its operating system less vulnerable to crippling Internet attacks.

Windows, which runs on the vast majority of personal computers, has been a near-constant target of worms, viruses and other attacks, hurting countless users and forcing Microsoft to invest heavily in patching vulnerabilities and improving flaws.

You cannot tell me that Micro$oft will do all that it can to "lock down" Window$, thu$ potentially $horting potential revenue $tream to their new project, Window$ Live OneCare.

OH, you can tell me, but I ju$t will not believe it.

Net Neutrality

Be afraid... Be very, very, afraid....

Verizon offers rebuttal on net neutrality

Efforts in the U.S. Congress to prohibit broadband providers from impairing or favoring some network traffic will "shut the door" to new services, a Verizon Communications official said Tuesday.

Current congressional attempts to write a so-called net neutrality provision into law would stop broadband network operators from offering VPNs (virtual private networks) to online gaming vendors looking to improve connectivity or hospitals launching home health-monitoring services over IP (Internet Protocol), said Tom Tauke, Verizon's executive vice president of public affairs, policy, and communications.

Tauke's concerns that Verizon could no longer offer VPNs are "ridiculous," said Art Brodsky, a spokesman for Public Knowledge, an online rights advocacy group.

"The point is that there has to be room for a company other than Verizon's favored health-monitoring partner to offer the service as well," Brodsky said in an e-mail.

Tauke's speech -- at a broadband policy summit sponsored by Pike & Fischer, a research and publishing company -- was a focused rebuttal to consumer groups and e-commerce firms calling for a net neutrality provision to be included in telecommunications reform legislation now being debated in Congress.

[ Update ]

Plan and simple, Verizon and the other telephone companies want to charge based on the ISDN model, not the DSL model. Based on the amount of money the telcos are putting into lobbying efforts, I fear they will get what they want, and then maim the Internet revolution to get paid their five pounds of flesh.

And the telcos know that they will get it because the public has no control over the congress-critters and they know the public is, for the most part, ignorant of what is going on.