The latest evidence of Web insecurity looks pretty darn scary to me.
Does Apple Own Your Work?
Maybe, if you decide to use Apple’s online tools, according to this story in Macworld Online.
Competition Makes a Difference
Don’t get the feeling I’m complaining here, but yesterday was a long, long day. I started in Frankfurt, Germany at 6 a.m. local time and crashed in my bed at 8:30 p.m. California time – almost exactly 24 hours later.
The connection in Chicago went smoothly except for one problem. The airline had, in its quaint word, “downsized” the aircraft from a DC-10 to a 757. This meant that the plane was absolutely full and that the aisle seat I’d reserved, with a probable upgrade, had turned into a middle seat in coach. I managed to score an aisle in the next-to-last row of the airplane. If you’ve flown coach on a 757 you know how much fun it can be – when the person in front of you reclines his seat, as the guy in front of me did immediately upon takeoff, you’re penned into a dismayingly small space. After already flying for 10 hours, this is not the way you’d choose to spend another 4 hours. Still, the crew was friendly and sympathetic, and I got some work done.
I mentioned the experience to someone upon returning to California, and he laughingly suggested that the government should run the airlines. We both knew the absurdity of that idea.
I wish we had more airlines to choose from, but there is some competition left in the industry. If one airline gets bad enough, we can choose another and get where we’re going in reasonable comfort and at a competitive price. I fear that the airlines are consolidating too much, and that they’re taking advantage of their local dominance with the hub-spoke system, but the Justice Department and state attorneys general area looking into this. They do this on behalf of consumers, and their efforts matter.
It’s too bad the market for PC operating systems and software isn’t as competitive. I’m writing this piece for the second time. Microsoft Word, running on Windows 98, froze as I tried to save the last attempt, and I lost all my work.
John McCain
John McCain’s strong victory over George W. Bush in the New Hampshire Republican presidential primary is another victory for choice over the dictates of powerful people.
I briefly rode McCain’s campaign bus last month in New Hampshire, and came away deeply impressed with the senator as a human being. I don’t agree with many if not most of his positions on key issues. He’s far too right-wing for my tastes. But compared with most others in the campaign, he is the most honorable.
McCain is absolutely right on one key matter. He would not squander the federal budget surpluses solely on tax cuts. Congress and two Republican presidents put this nation into disgusting debt during the 1980s and early 1990s. We owe it to our children and their children to pay off as much of the debt as we can. That’s the true conservative position, and McCain is the only true fiscal conservative in this campaign.
More on DoubleClick’s Doublecross
The Center for Democracy and Technology has created a helpful Web site on the DoubleClick situation. It’s in tutorial format, and takes you through some steps to protest the increasingly intrusive surveillance of your Web activities by DoubleClick and its partners. It also helps you opt out of the monitoring.