Monthly Archives: June 2001

Remember Amazon’s so-called Honor System, the online payment method? It raised a furor on privacy grounds. Sites using the Honor System were installing links to Amazon’s servers, thereby giving Amazon knowledge of other sites’ traffic — and the implied ability, … Continue reading →

Rocky Mountain News: Personal video recorder looms. The nCube server receives instruction signals from the home viewer via the cable company’s fiber-optic line. Essentially, nCube transfers the computer from the home to a central location….”We think giving the customers more … Continue reading →

Reuters: Supreme Court Rules Thermal Imaging Is a Search. Justice Antonin Scalia said for the court majority that when the government uses a device not in general public use to explore the details of a private home that would previously … Continue reading →

As the Bush administration makes clear its contempt for enforcing the laws designed to promote competition, the European Commission is taking up the charge. See this story on Intel (Mercury News) and this one on DVD pricing (Reuters), among other … Continue reading →

News wires: McVeigh executed. The government Timothy McVeigh so despised executed him by chemical injection Monday, taking his life in exchange for the 168 lives lost when he blew up the Oklahoma City federal building six years ago. Why do … Continue reading →

Brock Meeks (MSNBC): Why New Apps are Killing Me. The point is, the software-buying public gets ripped off on a routine basis by software companies driven by one thing: greed. And don’t even try to hand me the line that … Continue reading →

AP: Sony suspends ad executives over fake movie praise. The Ridgefield Press, a small weekly newspaper in Connecticut, said it was unaware of the fake ads before Newsweek reporter John Horn challenged their authenticity. The really baffling part of this … Continue reading →

I almost went by it. But buried deep in this article (Fortune magazine) about Apple Computer and Steve Jobs is the following: And the guy who got his start in electronics as a “phone phreak” making “blue boxes” that enabled … Continue reading →

A number of recent incidents are sending a huge warning flare to everyone who uses online services. Not enough people are paying attention. But if they don’t, they’ll wake up one day to find their data gone and services altered … Continue reading →

Fortune: The Music Men Are Out Of Tune. “We gave content for free to radio, free to MTV,” grumbles Jay Samit, senior vice president for new media at EMI Recorded Music. “We’re not going to do that again.” Translation: If … Continue reading →