July 02, 2002 - Why we can't trust Microsoft's 'trustworthy' OS - By David Coursey, AnchorDesk, COMMENTARY--Stung by criticism of its current offerings, Microsoft seems to be pinning its hopes for a truly "trustworthy" operating system on a future version of Windows, code-named Palladium. Don't expect to see that OS anytime soon. Palladium is a long-term project that requires not only a new operating system, but new computers as well. How long Microsoft won't say. I'm thinking 2006 or later...

"One of these centuries, the brutes, private or public, who believe that they can rule their betters by force, will learn the lesson of what happens when brute force encounters mind and force." - Ragnar Danneskold, from Atlas Shrugged

 July 08, 2002 - Spam: The last crusade - By Josh Mehlman, Technology & Business Magazine, ZDNet Australia, Aside from its occasional amusement value, spam is just plain annoying. Who wouldn't be interested in making money without leaving the house, helping out Nigerian ex-ministers, giving themselves an extra three inches, or seeing the photos of 18-year-old Vicki's recent sleep-over at her girlfriends' place? ...

July, 2002 - What's an MBA Really Worth? - By Andy Raskin, Business 2.0, It will cost more than $100,000 to earn a degree at an elite business school. Just one problem: There's little real evidence that it will enhance your career. After college, Tad Glauthier didn't have much of a career plan. He knocked around for a while as a ski instructor, then as a TV sitcom stand-in. But when he decided at the age of 28 that it was time to get serious, he applied to one of the most revered career-building institutions in capitalism: Stanford's Graduate School of Business. "I thought B-school would catch me up," he says. Ask him about his educational experience, however, and he fails to mention discounted cash-flow analysis, the chi-square test, or any other morsels of wisdom from the standard MBA curriculum. Instead he cites his role as executive producer of the 2002 GSB student musical, Spectacular, Schmectacular, and "All About Beer," a one-week elective about organizational dynamics in the brewing industry. As for his future? Glauthier hopes to start a business he describes as "a cross between Moulin Rouge, Angkor Wat, and Burning Man -- in a supper club." ...

 July 10, 2002 - Radiological dispersal devices: an assessment - By Rob Fanney and Jim Tinsley, Janes.com, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced yesterday the capture of a terrorist known to be connected with Al-Qaeda who was allegedly planning to build and explode a radiological dispersal device (RDD) within the United States. The suspect, according to reports, was apprehended on 8 May after flying into Chicago's O'Hare International Airport from Pakistan. Whatever the size or overall impact of the device, however, RDDs are more a means of causing mass disruption than true weapons of mass destruction, although those disruptive effects may be considerable. The economic consequences of having an important urban area contaminated with radiation could be severe...

 July, 2002 - Fate of the Commons - The danger of owning ideas - by Lincoln Stein, New Architect, "He who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me." These are the words of Thomas Jefferson, the first director of the U.S. Patent Office, and one of the heroes in Lawrence Lessig's provocative book The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World. Despite being head of an agency whose raison d'etre was protecting intellectual property, Jefferson seems to have been skeptical about treating ideas as a property right...