Just another nerd.
Salon.Com has a lengthy profile of Warren Farrell who played a pivotal role in the Father’s Rights movement. Farrell’s an interesting character, but prone to hyperbole and erroneous figures much like the feminists he dislikes.
Source:
Save the males! Amy Benfer, Salon.Com, February 6, 2001.
A few years ago I read an interview with a professor of journalism who argued that reporters needed to become advocates for particular views rather than simply reporters of facts. I have always thought this was a very bad idea, and USA Today demonstrated why today.
USA Today’s Jack Kelly filed a fluff piece basically repeating spook nonsense that strong encryption is helping out terrorists. After going through a long bit of nonsense claiming that Bin Laden has even moved into steganography, Kelly laments,
It’s no wonder the FBI wants all encryption programs to file what amounts to a “master key” with a federal authority that would allow them, with a judge’s permission, to decrypt a code in a case of national security. But civil liberties groups, which offer encryption programs on the Web to further privacy, have vowed to fight it.
Give me a break. This is just like gun control — the criminal elements aren’t going to use systems that require master keys. It comes across almost as if the spooks themselves don’t have any idea what they’re talking about.
The story, and others based on the same material, is surprisingly lacking in any sort of evidence other than the fact that terrorists use e-mail and in the pasth ave used relatively weak encryption schemes to hide some data. I’d like to see some proof that Bin Laden and his group are putting coded messages into pornography and placing it on the Internet (as folks on Slashdot noted, that might explain why porn takes so long to download!) or that they’re using Internet chat rooms to plan terrorist acts.
Remember this is the same group that claimed they had absolute incontrovertible proof that a Sudanese pharmaceutical plant was being used to manufacture chemical weapons. Bill Clinton bombed the plant based on that claim which turned out to be a complete lie.
This is just the last gasp of the intelligence agency to try to retain their monopoly on secrecy. Tune in next week when USA Today will discuss how child pornographers are using very big prime numbers to get away with their crimes.
When prime numbers are criminalized, only criminals will have prime numbers.
In my plug for Front Office Football 2001 I forgot to mention that Electronic Arts has used an insanely stupid licensing mechanism, which is worth noting because rumor has it that Microsoft is going to begin using a similar system with the upcoming Whistler and Office XP.
FOF2K1 is distributed only over the Internet. When you download and fire up the game, it asks you to enter your order number. The game transmits the order number to an Internet site which generates a license code specific to the machine you’re using — I’m assuming they’re writing the license code somewhere on the C: drive.
Here’s the insane part. When you buy the game you’re granted a license to run the game on two machines. The Internet server is tracking how many different machines you’re running the game on. If you decide to use a third machine the game has a feature in which you can de-license the copy on machine A, install the game on machine B and then license it again on machine B.
The problem should be obvious. Suppose I have the game licensed on my home machine and my laptop and someone steals my laptop. Or perhaps the hard drive on my home machine bites the dust. According to EA’s licensing scheme I’m already using my two licenses and am screwed — time to put up another $25 for a two-machine license (if they simply give me an additional license if I say my laptop was stolen or my hard drive crashed, there is no point for the copy protection in the first place).
I haven’t seen any details but have heard that the copy protection for Microsoft Office XP and Whistler will have a similar feature that keeps track of the number of installs of licensed software. Already it’s being reported that beta testers of Whistler quickly hacked the copy protection after running into Microsoft tech support people who had never considered the problems with this sort of system.
Unfortunately so far I haven’t run into a crack for FOF2K1, but I’m still looking.
While reading the Slashdot thread on the police busting some students for their Starcraft clan web site, one of the posters likened the police hysteria over that to the furor caused when some kid died at a midwestern college after playing Dungeons and Dragons.
Anyway, the student referred to in that urban legend is James Dallas Eggbert who disappeared from the University of Michigan in 1979 for reasons that had nothing to do with Dungeons and Dragons and everything to do with personal conflicts over his parents and his sexuality. Eggbert was found after only a month after his disappearance, but he eventually dropped out of the university and committed suicide in August 1980.
William Dear, the investigator hired by Eggbert’s family to locate him, wrote a book about the case, The Dungeon Master: The Disappearance of James Dallas Egbert III, which makes it clear the game had nothing to do with his disappearance, though by that time the urban legend was firmly entrenched. Dear’s book is long since out of print, but Shaun Hately wrote an excellent two part summary of the case that is available on the web,
According to Slashdot story, police at Kent State confiscated computers owned by several students living in a dorm because police thought this cheesy Starcraft clan site that the students maintained was the web site for a violent criminal conspiracy.
It’s amazing given how prevalent computers are that there is still such a vast gulf between wired and non-wired folk.
Jon Katz thinks the pervasive cameras an microphones at the XFL premier were too much. According to Katz, “this may be a good example of how technology can take us places we don’t really want or need to go.” I think what Katz misses and what other critics and supporters of the XFL have missed is that the XFL’s competition is not the National Football League.
The XFL’s real competition is “Survivor” and other pseudo-reality programs. Do people balk at seeing cameras invade people’s personal lives? Then explain the popularity of “Survivor” or its knock offs like “Temptation Island” or even reality-based shows such as “Cops.”
As Business 2.0 noted in a profile of the XFL, the NFL has been moving in the XFL direction in recent years. Vince McMahon says he’s going to mic dozens of players? Hmmm, suddenly Monday Night Football starts equipping a player with a microphone and replaying the highlights at halftime. Then CBS courts disaster when it put mics on several players at the beginning of the Super Bowl only to have them utter a string of expletives (hadn’t they heard about seven second delays?)
The difference is that the NFL existed prior to television and sees itself as an entity completely independent of its media coverage (which is sometimes taken to absurd levels by sports writers and commentators who go on and on about sports as if it is anything but entertainment). There’s no way that the NFL would allow the sort of access the XFL is based upon — at least not until it is forced to by the economic situation, and given the relatively strong ratings of the NFL in recent years, that is unlikely to happen anytime soon.
The problem the XFL faces it that unlike other reality shows, which are usually heavily edited to create compelling story lines, the XFL occurs live in real time (allowing for the delays to edit out the cursing). The only other completely live reality show on NBC, “Big Brother,” also had incredibly high initial ratings before it sank like a stone. Of course it didn’t have the sort of structure that a football game has and it didn’t have the constant display of juvenile sexual fantasies either.
Whether or not the XFL will satisfy American’s craving for reality shows or whether it goes down in an already oversaturated market remains to be seen, but there is no doubt that there is a market for such voyeuristic, intrusive shows.