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Doug 5:28 pm on October 29, 2000 | 0 | # |
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Just before school began this year, a local school district hired a very high-end Superintendant to run the fastest growing school district in the state. A mere eleven weeks later, this new, very well regarded superintendant resigns from his position, under a cloud, for somehow violating the school’s Internet Access Policy.

Needless to say, everyone was quite curious about the situation, and there was no end of speculation in the local media. Of course, anyone with a clue had a pretty good idea of what was up. This past Friday, despite efforts by the school district and the individual’s lawyer, all the details were revealed. The man used his notebook computer, on a Sunday, to surf a little pr0n, and when moving files from one system to another, he was caught by the local network admin.

Now, we aren’t talking child porn here, or anything illegal. Granted, he was amazingly stupid to be using his school-owned notebook for this, but come on, let’s get a little perspective, okay? We have an education system in this country where teachers can teach the same lesson plans for 20 years, where many educators are complete technical illiterates and do an amazingly poor job of preparing children for a productive future, but can’t be fired. Further, you wouldn’t have to search very hard to find gross misuses of education funds throughout the system, particularly at the state level.

This poor bastard, however, had to be pilloried for looking at some T&A. Isn’t it ironic that he could have been blowing simulated enemies to bits while playing Quake, engaging in all sorts of simulated violence, and it wouldn’t have endangered his job at all?
Doug 2:53 am on October 27, 2000 | 0 | # |
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A very interesting article from The Atlantic concerning the changing face of capitalism, and how it may be becoming more democratized. The author’s contention is that because over 50% of the American public now holds stock in some form or another, capitalism is becoming increasingly democratic - and where there’s ownership, control can’t be far behind.

While this main point is fairly optimistic, there are some darker tones as well. I was particularly struck by the author’s contention that some of the worst excesses of the corporate worls are in fact “our” fault - since corporations are striving to make a higher return for us, the stockholders, they often act in ways disadvantageous to us as workers. An interesting paradox, and, from my time working in public companies, something I think is probably spot on.
Doug 1:54 pm on October 25, 2000 | 0 | # |
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C|Net is carrying a piece this morning about additional reports on problems with filtering software. On receiving information that their software blocked the pages of conservative political groups, a spokesman from filter developer N2H2 said: “A lot of people think filtering is just about pornography, but it goes much deeper than that.”

Uhm, yeah. Like to blocking protected, political speech?
Doug 2:44 pm on October 24, 2000 | 0 | # |
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Somewhat to my surprise, I recevied a response to the letter I sent to Senator Richard Lugar last week regarding mandatory filtering of Internet connections in schools and libraries. Unfortunately, I’m not surprised at the content of the letter, Senator Lugar and 95 other senators chose to vote in favor of the measure. This despite the fact that the COPA panel recommended against mandating filters (because they don’t work), and mounting evidence that filters fail to block objectionable content, but do block sites that shouldn’t be blocked.

Unfortunately, it’s less than a month before the elections, and it isn’t likely that senators will cast a vote that allows their opponents to cast them as “soft on porn.” In all liklihood, this legislation will pass and Clinton will almost certainly sign it, since it’s attached to an important appropriations bill. So, once again, our legislators abdicate their responsibility and we’re left with the courts sorting it all out.

For your edification and amusment, here’s the text of the form letter response. I was particularly amused by the bit at the end where the Senator demonstrates his firm grasp on the technical relaities of the situation by discussing how he’s been shown how a piece of censorware operates:

Dear Mr. Miller:

Thank you for your recent correspondence. I appreciate your

taking the time to share your thoughts and concerns with me

regarding amendments on internet filtering software attached to the

Labor, Health, Human Services and Education appropriations bill.

The Senate passed the McCain amendment by a margin of 95-3,

with my support. This amendment requires entities that receive the

universal service subsidies for discounted access to the internet

(i.e. schools and libraries) to have filtering software that

prevents pornographic or obscene material from being viewed.

Universal service subsidies are derived from all people who make

telephone calls in the United States.

The McCain amendment requires that local authorities, without

input from the federal government, are to set the policies for use

of the filters in schools and libraries. I supported the McCain

amendment because it reduces access to pornography in schools and

libraries without having the federal government specify other

content that may be viewed.

I am a strong supporter of the First Amendment and the

freedoms it provides. At the same time, however, I also believe

that it is important to make the Internet a safer place for young

people. I do not believe these two goals are mutually exclusive.

I understand your concerns about the costs of establishing these

filters, which will offset a portion of the amount of E-rate

subsidy given to libraries, but I also believe that we must take

steps to ensure that children are not exposed to internet sites

containing pornography or obscenity.

At a recent demonstration of internet filtering technology now

available, I saw that upon entering a password, a parent or other

adult has the option to engage a filter to block out programming or

internet content at any level of maturity that he or she does not

want to be viewable. Thus, a parent with small children could

block all sites more mature than “rated G” while an adult could

choose to have no blocking at all. Interestingly, the filter was

able to distinguish, for example, between websites containing

research information about breast cancer from websites with more

prurient content.

Again, thank you for sharing your thoughts with me.

Sincerely,

Richard G. Lugar

United States Senator

RGL/grg
Doug 9:02 pm on October 22, 2000 | 0 | # |
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I put some new digital pics up in the gallery today. I finally got around to getting the mass of shots from the WWI Fly-in up, as well as some shots of Autumn foliage from spots near here. Unfortunately, the light wasn’t that great today, so these aren’t the best.
Doug 1:03 pm on October 18, 2000 | 0 | # |
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As someone who is basically blind in one eye from having had a detached retina, this is extremely interesting to me.
Doug 2:22 pm on October 17, 2000 | 0 | # |
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Dear Senator Lugar,

It has recently come to my attention that the Senate is considering as part of the appropriations bill for the Departments of Labor, Education, and Health & Human Services legislation that would require the mandatory installation of “censorware” software in schools and public libraries. The penalty for not installing such software would be the loss of Federal funding for Internet connectivity in these institutions. My understanding is that this measure is being sponsored in the Senate by Senators John McCain and Rick Santorum.

Senator, please consider this legislation with the utmost care. Such legislation is clearly short-sighted and contrary to the best interest of the American citizenry. A small amount of research, such as that done by organizations such as http://www.peacefire.org, will indicate the inherent unreliability of this type of software. Further, I would think that it would be a major concern of the Senate that nearly all of the manufacturers of such software refuse to release their listing of blocked web sites for inspection. Finally, it is well known that many of the sites blocked by this type of software include sites that should not be blocked, including sites on topics such as breast cancer, various political affiliations, and site providing information to various groups that, evidently, censorware makers deem offensive yet are clearly protected under the First Amendment. In short, such software provides an extremely poor method for restricting access to “objectionable” sites on the Internet…a responsibility best exercised by parents and teachers in any case, not the United Stats government.

Most importantly, however, the Senate should realize that schools and public libraries represent the most accessible point of connection for a great many Americans, particularly those who can not afford a computer and Internet access in their own homes. By mandating censoring of these connections, the Senate effectively reinforces the “Digital Divide” and sets up a stratified system of Internet access: one where those with money have free access if they so chose, and those without must make do with arbitrarily censored access to only a subset of the information available online.

As someone who worked on your Presidential Primary election web site several years ago, I realize that unlike many of your colleagues, you have an understanding of technology and what it can bring to our democratic process. I urge you to take steps to stop this legislation that aims to detract from our ability to develop and maintain and educated, informed electorate.

Sincerely,

Doug Miller
Doug 3:37 pm on October 12, 2000 | 0 | # |
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The BBC is reporting today that the British government has granted insurance companies the right to use genetic testing, if it has been deemed technically reliable, as a means of refusing coverage or increasing a person’s premium. The industry spokespeople are of course talking about how this will help people who are at risk for diseases, since they may now have difficulty getting insurance, and with testing, may be able to prove that they aren’t at risk for a particular genetic disease.

That all sounds good in theory, but what possible incentive do any of us have to actually believe and trust our insurance carriers? Frankly, I think this is an extremely dangerous precedent. You can bet we’ll now have insurance companies in the US clamoring for this, and it’ll be a lot worse over here where we don’t have at least basic national health care.

Personally, I think they should ban the use of genetic testing for any given disease unless a technically effective gene therapy for said disease exists. It’s one thing to require testing for something that can be cured, quite another to deny insurance coverage for something you can’t cure and have no control over.
Doug 1:26 pm on October 9, 2000 | 0 | # |
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Wired has a good article this morning concerning the DMCA and how it may impact fair-use. The Library of Congress has a shot at making some rules that at least partially hamstring this assault on our civil liberties, but it just isn’t enough. Draw your own conclusions, but it’s pretty clear to me that the DMCA is a violation of the First Amendment, and I believe it’ll eventually be overturned as unconstitutional. If I could have everything I wanted, I’d love to see the RIAA and MPAA subject to anti-trust litigation, as well.
Doug 2:00 am on October 9, 2000 | 0 | # |
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Sorry for the absence, but I pretty much spent all week getting a porperly configured and functioning install of Red Hat 7 working on my desktop system. Some of the issues were me forgetting some simple, but infrequently used commends, some were Red Hat issues, and other were problems with applications. At least that’s all running now!.

As luck would have it, somewhere in the process I managed to screw up my Windows partition. This is no great loss, since I don’t boot windows to do anything but play games. Of course, yesterday, I wanted to play a game. So, there went nearly two hours of reformating and reinstalling so I could play. I was nearly to the point of screaming, of course, as Windows did stupid stuff like refuse to recognize my USB MS Intellimouse Optical (which Red Hat had no issues at all with). I loathe Windows, I really, really do.