Freedom to Tinker

Sunday was the tenth anniversary of the government filing its antitrust case against Microsoft. The date passed almost unnoticed, though echoes of the case continue to reverberate. This week I want...

We’re going to do a live webcast of our workshop on “The Future of News“, which will be held tomorrow and Thursday (May 14-15) in Princeton. Attending the workshop (free registration) gives you acc...

Last Friday, the New York Times published an article about counterfeit Cisco products that have been sold as if they were genuine and are widely used throughout the U.S. government.  The article al...

The RIAA’s head technology guy says that the move away from DRM (anti-copying) technology by record labels is just a phase, according to a Greg Sandoval story at News.com:
“(Recently) I made a list...

James Fallows at the Atlantic recently ran a reader contest to nominate the worst public policy decision of the past fifty years. () I’d like to do the same for technology policy.
Readers, please s...

In France, most municipalities use paper ballots in elections, but a few places have begun using DRE (direct-recording electronic) machines. Pierre Muller, a French computer scientist, has recently...

Today marks the 30th anniversary of (what is reputed to be) the first spam email. Here’s the body of the email:
DIGITAL WILL BE GIVING A PRODUCT PRESENTATION OF THE NEWEST MEMBERS OF THE DECSYSTEM-...

I’m sure this sort of behavior is old news, but it’s still really annoying.  Starting last night and continuing as I’m writing this, some annoying spammer has been forging my email address as the “...

In France, most municipalities use paper ballots in elections, but a few places have begun using DRE (direct-recording electornic) machines. Pierre Muller, a French computer scientist, has recently...

Last week, I posted here about voter ID requirements.  There was a case pending before the U.S. Supreme Court on the same topic.  It seems Indiana was trying to require voters to present ID in orde...