11/14/2002 NY Times article by William Safire
"You Are a Suspect" the story of the large database on your
personal life which the Federal Government will create if the Homeland Security
Act is not amended before passage. Free access to NY Times and archive with
registration - they send you a little advertising but it's well worth it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/14/opinion/14SAFI.html
Warm and humorous fables starring the inimitable Afghani, (Iranian?
Turkish? ) mullah abound on the Internet. Here's a few to get you started:
http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/u/tamulder/nasrudin.html
Beware - there are a bunch of crappy contemporary jokes with Nasrudin's name stuck in them on other sites. There are several collections of Nasrudin stories in print. Look for them at http://www.bn.com/ (These are the folks who didn't sue anybody over "One Click Shopping")
Great book by Oliver Sacks about his youth and the things he learned about Chemistry. This is the famous Neurologist who wrote The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Awakenings. See the fictional movie Awakenings (Starring Robin Williams as Dr. S) and http://www.oliversacks.com/. Look for the book at http://www.bn.com/ or at Amazon:
Microsoft, Palladium and Trusted Computing (They need to trust your computer so you won't be able to.)
"The technical idea underlying treacherous computing is that the
computer includes a digital encryption and signature device, and the keys are
kept secret from you. (Microsoft's version of this is called
"Palladium.") Proprietary programs will use this device to control
which other programs you can run, which documents or data you can access, and
what programs you can pass them to. These programs will continually download
new authorization rules through the Internet, and impose those rules
automatically on your work. If you don't allow your computer to obtain the new
rules periodically from the Internet, some capabilities will automatically
cease to function."
Newsforge
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