Views Archive
NY Drops the E911 Call
A New York state audit has revealed that very little of the $440 million the state has collected in E911 taxes since 1991 has actually gone to pay for the equipment that would make it possible for 911 dispatchers to…
They Should Have Called it Bloogle
Taking a cue from Microsoft and other companies with official (and sometimes unofficial) weblogs, Google unveiled the Google Blog on May 10. Like the blogs maintained by Microsoft tech evangelist Robert Scoble, the new Google blog takes a breezy, familiar…
Remember Velvet Strike?
You heard it here first – in fact, you heard it here in November. Salon has finally gotten around to writing about Velvet-Strike, the effort by artist Anne-Marie Schleiner, to protest militarism within the online game world of Counter-Strike. Salon…
Not Such Sound Science
For the last decade, industry groups opposed to governmental regulations have often claimed the mantle of “sound science”–implying that those who insist on, say, reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, or restrictions on smoking in restaurants, or bans on dioxin emissions,…
A Ruling In Favor of Academic Freedom
The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) at the U.S. Department of the Treasury has ruled that peer-reviewed publications can accept, edit, and publish technical manuscripts from authors living in U.S.-embargoed countries, including Cuba, Iran, Libya, and Sudan, according to…
Sasser Author Arrested
The supposed author of the Sasser computer worm has been arrested in Germany, according to this AP article. Apparently the author was identified by the Germans with the help of the American CIA and FBI. His name is reportedly Sven…
E3 Mayhem
Next week, I’ll be going to LA for the Electronic Entertainment Exposition a.k.a. E3 - the annual circus/party/convention for the video game industry.If you haven’t been, it’s like walking inside a video game for three days. You’re Jeff Bridges in…
Making Votes Count
The state of California is moving ahead with a ban on electronic voting machines that don’t provide a verifiable paper trail. Even though the disabled, the visually impaired, and many election officials love the machines’ easy interfaces, independent studies have…
Technology's Uncle Walter
If the TV news business has a guiding patriarch, it’s Walter Cronkite. If the consumer technology business has one, it’s Walter Mossberg. Wired Magazine’s May issue has an illuminating profile on Mossberg, whose Personal Technology column in the Wall Street…
Korean Cloners Face Ethics Probe
Korean biologists recently made headlines with the first successful step toward therapeutic cloning–the creation of master cells genetically identical to a donor from cloned human embryos. Now the researchers, Woo Suk Hwang and Shin Yong Moon of Seoul National University,…
