Basically, there are two ways to deal with identity theft: Make personal information harder to steal, and make stolen personal information harder to use. We all know the former doesn’t work, so that leaves the latter. If Congress wanted to solve the problem for real, one of the things it would do is make fraud alerts permanent for everybody. But the credit industry’s lobbyists would never allow that.
Wired on Identity Theft
11 June 2008
27 May 2008
We are challenging our prevailing notions about the most fundamental features of our world: matter, energy, space, and time. What lies ahead is truly unknown, and where the discoveries [of the Large Hadron Collider] will lead us is only a guess. But just look at the past, how our knowledge of the most fundamental has given us the incredible technology we now enjoy. I think Congress, and the governments of the world, would do well to double down on this one…
Cosmic Variance on LHC
7 May 2008
Just a few months after worrying about terrorists hiding in Second Life, now at least one Congressional representative is worried about how Second Life is corrupting your children. He’s trying to drum up support to ban Second Life from schools and libraries, hyping up the fact that “bad stuff” happens in Second Life and, gosh, we wouldn’t want kids to learn how to deal with bad stuff in an environment where they’re protected from any physical harm. It’ll be much better when they learn to deal with it out on the streets.
Techdirt on Second Life