Edited by author 05-23-2003 04:04 PM
Is it really safe to stop regulating the big media? Are we doing the right thing if we led people like Murdoch own all the major news outlets? Wendy Grossman has been studying the subject, and thinks not.

Any thoughts?

Edited by author 06-06-2003 11:30 AM
People have tried compulsory ID cards, and they don't work well. Identity theft actually gets worse. Nonetheless, the UK Government has decided to do it. It asked whether this was good idea - and people wrote in to say not.

So it announces that actually, everybody is supporting Government policy!

Nature, it is said, abhors a vacuum. Wendy, on the other hand, <ahref="http://www.newswireless.net/articles/030613-netwars.html"> loves hers...</a>

Since what seems like the invention of moveable type, my son and I have been subscribing to "Real Robots" - a fortnightly part-work that lives up to the name - each issue comes with some parts for the Robot. What we've got so far is a shoebox-sized turtle crammed full of plug-together circuitry and an array of sensors, plus a jazzy-looking IRDa remote control and even a voice-activating headset. I shudder to think how much it's cost, but what the heck... it's one sophisticated piece of gear, with built-in sonar, photosensitive detectors and even a "line following" module poking out of the base (and optional spoilers and go-faster stripes!) It's remotely programmable too, through a serial link between the R/C unit and the PC, and there's spare capacity in the I/O arrays.

Things have moved on since Robert A Heinlein described Wendy's "auto-Hoover", in "The Door into Summer" so far back that microschips hadn't been invented (his fictional designer used cheap, war-surplus vacuum tubes) Our D-i-Y "Cybot" seems to be a LOT smarter than Wendy's Vacuum cleaner - and to offer the opportunity to be adapted from freely available off-the-shelf components. A complete range of spare parts are available from the back-issues department of the publisher (Eaglemoss Publications)

Want to get rid of spam, and are told: "It's easy!"?

Run!

Or not. Wendy Grossman manages to get hold of Perl at least enough to get spamAssassin running.

At present, if you buy a CD, say, from America or Canada online, there is a good chance that you will pay VAT as it gets imported to this country.

Does this mean we pay VAT twice - once to the company from which we bought the CD, and once more as it comes into the country?

I suppose all these little American companies who register for VAT (which tax office, I wonder?) will have to fill in a VAT form every quarter. I bet there will be a lot of companies who will simply not sell stuff in the EU, to save the hassle (or not register, of course).

> Does this mean we pay VAT twice?

No. Because the new legislation concerns digital downloads and services, not physical goods.

Identity cards are coming. Nobody wants them. Can we do a thing about it? Wendy M Grossman sits on the advisory board of Privacy - she thinks not.

Viral marketing, says Wendy, is "word of mouth" done over the Internet. Wouldn't the advertising industry like to control it...

You really think people will put up with advertising on the Internet?

I won't. Not the way it is done these days, usually with popups. I will never go back to a site which does them, because I have not got that sort of spare time. Can take half a minute, just waiting while they go off to some advertising server somewhere. They won't show you the story you want, until the advert has loaded.

If that's the future of advertising, the net doesn't have one.

Whilst Wendy's "The war on some files" is an amusing read that does provide a necessary wake-up call to readers in the UK, it also strikes me as being cynical in the wrong places and slightly naive in the places where it isn't cynical.

Perhaps, for a more revolutionary and considerably more focused call to arms, she should have a listen to TheDotCommunist Manifesto - Eben Moglen's passionate, well-argued lecture on "How Culture Became Property and What We're Going to Do About It"

http://www.ibiblio.org/moglen/ - it's approximately 60 minutes in length, though sadly the webcam broadcast quality is terrible.

It sems to me that the key issue - both economically and morally - is "lost sales". If I download a £2,000 CAD package (basically to play with it) then essentially the publisher hasn't lost anything: there's no WAY I'd have BOUGHT it. The process - albeit involuntary from the publisher's viewpoint - isn't very different from giving away last year's version taped to a magazine cover. The product gets into more peoples' hands ("Market Share" is EVERYTHING in the software business: Ask Microsoft!) which many publishers are willing to PAY to see happen. Downloading MP3 and AVI files? Grey area. Would I have bought the CD/DVD? Probably not. But I'd have watched it on TV or listened to it on the radio. Another "lost sale" lost.
I'd by less cynical if Microsoft (the worst culprit) didn't periodically wind up in court having been discovered pirating other peoples' intellectual property. Also if they didn't routinely abuse their "Copyright Theft Gestapo" in S. America to gain market share. (If you get caught, you can usually do a deal. You BUY the software - and replace any rival products with Microsoft equivalents.)

Yes; I think it's control freakery for its own sake, in most cases.

What seems strange, is that the same music publishers will pretty much force local radio stations across America to play the tunes, for nothing. They have to do this. Eventually, some bright kids are going to catch on, and start swapping high quality analogue recordings of these broadcasts.

Fancy a house that talks to you? or to the Gas Board?

"How close are we to Bradbury? No one - yet - is talking about a house that can cook you meals, and IBM didn't have so much as a Roomba to do any automatic cleaning. On the other hand, Bradbury's house didn't talk to anybody but itself."

Wendy discovers a new doctoral dissertation... computers and household pecking orders.

I don't know what to make of this "Trivial Pursuit" column. Is it just Summer Fever? Is Wendy really a "Friends" addict? Can she truly feel that my wireless seminar in Spain (at a sailing school) somehow licenses all contributors to wander off into esoterica?

Beats me!

Wendy's column this week:

"There is no doubt the threats are escalating and broadband, with all its benefits, is a large part of why. Give millions of ignorant users a fat pipe and a computer they don't understand, all using roughly the same software, and you have a situation ripe for exploitation by the malicious, unscrupulous, and stupid."

And she adds:

"At least short-term, it seems to me that the key people to help fix this situation are the ISPs, who are the chokepoints through which all this garbage must pass."

Interesting. Reminds me a bit about a piece we carried earlier this week...

Edited by author 09-05-2003 12:24 PM
"Disgusting, these pornographic images. Oh, that's my computer? Wow. I've honestly no idea how they got there."

Would you believe anybody who said this?

Would you expect people to believe you, if you pleaded innocence in such a situation?

Edited by author 09-08-2003 06:06 AM
"Operation Ore"

"..believe that the police have developed the technical skills to ensure the chain of custody and analyse computer data"

I think I agree on this point, but looking at the recent job ads for this type of post in various computer magazines I suspect that based on the salaries offered they will be suffereing from a lack of resource. The government must realise that computer crime is pervasive, and unless they invest some realistic money they will suffer accordingly. Same old same old really...

Edited by author 09-12-2003 10:30 AM
One gets very nervous, hosting anything to do with Scientology or abortion. Not Wendy... she's wading right in...

Nostalgia. Not all good.

"The season of new TV shows doesn't begin in the US until next week, and everything is in reruns. I suppose this isn't really an explanation of why the last week or two seems to have been filled with revivals of things we hoped might be "in turnaround", but if Hollywood can remake 1960s TV shows, why should bad public policies ever die?"

And Wendy Grossman has a few bad policy decisions to report this week!

Edited by author 09-26-2003 09:54 AM
This week, mobile phone spam. Wendy writes: "I had not realised until this week's Mobile Anti-Abuse conference, run by Openwave, quite how fiendishly sophisticated spamware tools have become."


Besides the sites that test mailservers for open relays legitimately, for example, there are 'dark side' sites that build lists of open relays from such tests and sell them as a subscription service.

Read on!

Edited by author 10-03-2003 10:21 AM
"Imagine being asked: 'What did you do in the net.wars, Daddy?' Will you have to reply: 'I quit sharing Frank Sinatra songs as soon as I found out it was dangerous and argued that they couldn't prove it was me'?."

As Wendy M Grossman says, "it's not much to tell the grandchildren, is it?"

As a survivor of child sexual abuse/rape and also a long term worker with male survivors, it still amazes me that the defending lawyers in these cases pleads for a lenient sentence, which is then handed out to the those caught in the Operation Ore scandal.

It does not reflect the pain and fear that is instilled into the children abused, who were abused in order to have their photos posted on the Net!

To see what i think, pay a visit to my site at
http://www.survivorsswindon.com

Steve

Frankly, I doubt anything could "reflect the pain and fear" involved in being a victim of this sort. The question of matching the pain and fear isn't what I'd expect to be the most important question, anyway.

Surely, what matters is that the sentence reduces the number of opportunities for re-offending?

If the prospect of a sentence doesn't deter them, the prospect of a longer sentence doesn't seem to be an obvious cure. What matters, surely, is whether the perpetrator is going to do it again.

If there is any risk of re-offending, then a different strategy applies. Some loss of liberty, in my view, should be permanent for those who won't attempt to reform. But there are others who may not re-offend, and that seems to be an important question...

...what do you think?

Edited by author 10-10-2003 05:16 AM
"Actually, it turns out that missing dates are only number three on Jakob Nielsen's list of Top Ten Web Site Mistakes of 2003. Number one is: not saying what the company does."

I'd have to say that my number one annoyance is posting a link that doesn't point to its reference text. That link to "Jakob Nielsen's list of Top Ten Web Site Mistakes of 2003" not only doesn't point to the list, but the list seems to be nowhere on that site. *grumble*

I'd have to agree with you. I spent some time myself looking for the exact link, and in the end this one was the only one that worked - and it's last years.

I'll forward this note to Wendy; maybe she has a better one?

Final comment: Wendy says the issue is not important enough to make such a fuss about. So I've left it to Sniffer to comment...

It's time to Tell The Truth and reveal which Cabinet Ministers in the UK really are for, and who against, the identity card idea.

What is the matter with these people?

I think I trust Wendy. If she says she was at a press conference in Philadelphia, and met Martina Navratilova, then she did. I happen to know that she really was in Philadephia, you see.

But if you didn't know that, would you doubt her? or would you believe that Martina really is Martina, even if she's calling herself sebastiangirl?

You sure?

Edited by author 11-07-2003 12:52 PM
So, is it stealing to stop in the street where you find a war-chalk symbol, and collect email? If you found an open WiFi point, would you use it? If you left your WiFi point open, would you expect others to take advantage of it?

...or is it theft?

Edited by author 11-10-2003 08:23 AM
Electricity: If someone's received something for free, or is paying an all-you-can-eat price, that doesn't mean you're not stealing if you take from their supply.

Stealing access: I believe many home users are sold Internet access on condition it is for their personal household use only, at a price appropriate to that use. Competition is supposed to lead to customer payments barely covering the costs of providing a service, with a small amount over as profit - no, seriously, this is the idea. Practice may differ. And providing Internet service, keeping the network debugged, /does/ cost. So if the householders run a business through it, or if neighbours connect in as well, then their contract is broken.

Some people were disconnected because their access contract says they won't run a server, and they installed Napster or Kazaa or something - a peer-to-peer server.
.

The ToCs of many broadband connections do prohibit resale, certainly, and they are intended to block the situation where, say, two separate homes make use of the same broadband connection. And I agree that it's easy for someone sitting in the next flat to use the connection in ways to get the owner in trouble.

I can't think of a case where an ISP disconnected anyone for casual use by a third party, although it's arguable that leaving a WAP open was potentially a violation of the ToCs for that sort of reason.

wg

I think most ISPs are now accepting the inevitable, and allowing sharing. Certainly, I've seen changes in that direction, none in the opposite.

I mean, how did they propose to enforce this?

Yes, the Web is big.

You may think it's a long way to the chemist, but trust me, that's just nothing to the Web...

I have it all in open IE windows, actually.

Little Red Lights. If you were wondering what the LRLs were...

I think they waste precious energy, in summer. I think far too much of our electronic equipment is designed as if energy cost nothing.

Interesting thread on LRLs.

How does one tell a neighbor that not only is their wifi open, but any idiot ( this idiot in particular who to date has never been able to get anywhere he was not supposed to on the internet) can get into his c: drive and read his financing agreements ( 205K loan on the Thurman Property), see pictures of Sarah ( looking appreciated) and really find out far more than he wants to know about Louis? I thought it would be fun to print a note to him on his own HP printer, to just let him know that he was not alone. How fun is that to do on an otherwise quiet Saturday afternoon?

Heh! It really is common! I get more "my printer's failed!" complaints and nearly always, it's someone with a Linksys wireless router. They've logged onto their neighbour's DSL by mistake. Why not? same SSID, wide open security.

So when they print, it prints on the neighbour's printer, which is very amusing when it's an "intimate family picture" of course...

Edited by author 11-28-2003 11:41 AM
I see you haven't had time to post you're latest Net.Wars piece in here. Has the RIAA got to you, then?

You don't want to know about Xmas gifts? Too late! - it's all here!

Recommendations are entirely Wendy's and the Editor takes no responsibility for dissatisfaction.

The Internet isn't a democracy. I get the impression Wendy Grossman wouldn't mind that so much if only the oligarchy that runs it was half way competent.

Or even half way intelligent. Instead, she finds a depressing bunch of talkers who don't listen...

Why haven't you posted the pointer to this week's Net.Wars?

Are you getting fed up with stories about music downloads too?

:-)

Bloody heck, you were quick! I only put it up ten minutes ago! Yes it's about music downloads. So what? We also have Sniffer going on about a portable MP3 player which I think is taking advantage of my weakness after a fortnight of the flu, frankly - but you didn't complain about that!

MP3 player? This is the one with the automatic rifle, bikini, and shades? (Not included.) Go for it, Wendy, go for it ;-)

I mean, I'm just thinking about buying some pocket-sized, removable, USB-plugged storage. So I have to decide if it's worth paying a little extra so it plays MP3s. Do you know, I think it may be. It's only when I look at adding radio that it gets uncomfortably expensive.

But I think what I still want for Christmas is a USB gadget that transmits my password when I press the button. To that end, anyone know if any cheap digital camera setup can read bar codes and then pretend to be a keyboard...

Heh! People think I have some control over the contributors to this site; it isn't true! They do what they like...

:-)

I've been looking at phones which work as ID and payment...

Being in the UK I would be pleased to be able to legally download any music and was pleased to see that Wal-mart would be joining in. If anyone can do it, they can. Problem was, like iTunes it's USA only AGAIN so I asked Wal-mart why. Unlike Apple, they replied, and very quickly too. My question went specifically to the music downloads section, and this is what they said..

"Thank you for your interest in Walmart.com! Currently, digital music downloads are only available in the United States. Music is distributed regionally by independent distributors. If music is offered to us by the distributor in one region, we must attempt to gain rights world-wide. Many distributors are still wary of distributing music through the Internet and do not give us permission
to distribute the music in their region. Walmart.com is bound by contract to respect the territory restrictons set by the distributors. We know these restrictions are frustrating for many of you, and we apologize. We do work hard to ensure the widest possible distribution for each song and album in our catalog."

I can see where Wal-mart are coming from, but how disappointing to see that the internet is still not trusted !

The irritating thing is, the law is so darn vague about "where are you?" and "where is the shop?" - and the music distribution business is bigger than the music, it seems...

What sort of daft ISP would ban virtual private network connections?

The parceling up of rights into geographical regions is another example of how the old business model of the entertainment industry does not fit the new world of the Internet. There's a movies service, too -- www.movielink.com, I think it is -- and it has the same restriction. Most of the file-sharing and other unathorized distribution I see going on over the INternet is about things like that -- European Friends fans who don't want to wait until January to see the shows that came out in the US in September, eg. It's one reason the prospect of the industry business model's being extended to the digital age doesn't thrill me at all -- almost everyone I know is interested in music from other countries precisely because it gets no play (marketing) in their own regions. The RIAA members have very limited ideas of what a given country likes. cf Harper's on Clear Channel -- one thing, as I've said for years -- that has driven Internet users into file-sharing is the bland sameness of radio now all across the US. If you can only hear 40 songs in any part of the dial, of course you look for alternatives.

Oligopolies tend to do that; that's why I don't like them. I don't know what a competent oligopoly would look like. I only know that *this* one is not kind to artists except for a favored few. And frankly, I really don't care whether Madonna makes another $1 million more or less. I *do* care whether folkies can afford to keep playing. And sadly, a lot of them have bought the fear the RIAA is selling.

wg

I think that comment by Wendy must be referring to /m47 which is about the previous week's column, yes?

It's 2004, and here is what Wendy thinks... do we want to share this vision?

Or would we rather have Tony Bush or Dubya Blair in charge?

Edited by author 01-06-2004 08:39 AM
How do you write an open-source game for Linux and prevent it from being ported to Windows? (Well... maybe make it rely on a full-feature X Windows implementation... or even complete ANSI text effects.)

The natural language spam filter needs to be useable on outgoing mail as well. "Stop! Your outgoing message was indistinguishable from a sales pitch from an aphrodisiac" (oh, I how wish I got more real e-mails like that). Then you can rewrite and fix it.

Anti-spam software of real worth is not confused by reference to Viagra. But if anti-spam technology improves, so will spam technology. Already we're being sent real public-domain literature with a little spam added. The next step may be to base spam on real-life business correspondence.

But really we need more spammers arrested and locked up, with heavy media coverage, and more end-user education, so that spam simply doesn't work. Although I have an uneasy feeling that we'd also need free pornography and Viagra. Well... if it'll get rid of spam, I'm willing. And I already have a video camera. ;-)

.

This time next year, I won't accept email from anybody I have not authorised to send it to me.

I'll probably have a form on my web site which you fill in, and I'll look through the submissions once a day, and see if there's anybody there I want to add to my "can send me email" list.

And if that doesn't work, you'll just have to get my phone number and call, and say: "Can I send you email?"

It's going to get worse, not better, and a LOT worse.

There are a hundred and one legitimate reason for wanting to print a photograph of a dollar bill.
It simply doesn't matter to authority, reports Wendy. They have banned your software from letting you do it.

In case, obviously, you were going to forge a new one.

You don't believe her, do you. Trust me, it's just the start...

I think the lesson to be learned from this week's net.wars column has to be: "Don't piss Wendy off!" They stole her post office. Other people might just ignore this, but our Wendy goes on the warpath!

But I can't see the Post Office giving up just yet... can you?

[Don't blame me for posting this. It's not my choice. The Boss is busy doing me a favour, and I said: "Anything I can do?" and he said...]

[ sigh ]

How many lightbulbs can a blind net surfer search for?

Wendy tried a browser without a monitor, and got lost. Just reading about it made me feel quite claustrophobic

So much for all the inane chat but what is being done about getting the Sandecombe Rd sub post office open. The people and businesses of Kew haven't got time to drive or take public transport to Richmond or Sheen to mail their post.
We used to have a P.O. on Kew Green. Now closed.
We used to have a P.O. at the end of Markesbury Avenue. Now closed!
WE MUST HAVE ANOTHE P.O. NOW!
Write to Jenny Tongue.
Visit the P.O. complaints site at
http://www.missing-letters.co.uk/postal_complaints.htm
Phone 08457 22 33 44 and complain.

If like most problems you just chat to your neighbour about how bad it s that we have no P.O. you wont get another one. Take action and complain to the correct people and if nothing happens, then complain again....and again......and again.
Jules
Jules

Phone the Post Office complaints

You have a full support mob at your back, Jules.

Meanwhile, Wendy has broken my promise to myself not to say anything about the SuperBowl. Admittedly, she's talking about Dean - Presidency candidate in the USA. But she managed to drag the football game into it.

Yes, it is a game involving both kicking, and screaming...

And while the nation's eyes are focused on whether "45 minutes" was a significant matter or not, behind our backs, the control freaks are still trying to foist ID cards on us.

Wendy talks about the seperation of Idenity and entitlement, The tax office only needs to know this, and the doctor that. This is precicly the problem, someone defrauding benifit playes all of these agencies off against each other. Investagating these sorts of fraud is complex. Tieing together all of the diffrent apects of a fraud is rarly done, so prosecution is only done for a major fraud in one area.

Having a unique person idenitity would not solve fraud, but it would make investigation easier, and the job of the fraudster harder.

Yes, of course it would! Equally, if everybody had to wear a unique identifier showing who they were at all times, and which recorded where they went, crime would become very easy to detect. And if the Government had a central database which tied all these things together, they'd know not only who stole the jewels, but who leaked the story about the Coddenham Green Girls to the Press. And we'd never know about Jonathan Aiken because anybody who revealed where he was would be traceable.

You can have efficient anti-fraud, and sacrifice personal civil liberties; or you can keep liberties and accept that there may be a price to pay.


Ah well. This week, it's more about Big Business and Disney. We all love Disney, don't we kids?

You're Googling for something, and you have a choice of six target sites. You pick the first one. Instead of switching smartly, it starts downloading a popup.

Worse, it's a 2 megabyte video!

Do you complain?

Edited by author 02-27-2004 07:48 AM
Believe it or not this week's column from Wendy actually admits that there are times when Net regulation is necessary.

But do the Authorities get the balance right?

The Boss says he's busy, will I post the topic here. I just read Wendy's rant about Paxo. What a lot of fuss about chicken stuffing!

OK, I didn't read it...

This week Wendy Grossman suggests spam can actually be tackled by lawyers. With how much success, do you think?

Edited by author 03-15-2004 06:47 AM
In the Can-Spam lawsuits, I'm hoping to see miserable failure - failure, at least, to eliminate professional spamming being a nuisance in the U.S.'s share of the Net - so that the legislation's silly opt-out principle and other deficiencies have to be revisited in law and put right. I particularly want to see the e-mail addresses of the legislators' children distributed as widely as possible, and child-friendly products advertised - say, a drug that helps you to pass school tests. (They've all read Harry Potter - or have seen the movies; they'll jump at it.) Pocket-money purchases (or use mom or dad's card when they aren't looking).

Then we'd see serious action.

What I think the existing legislation may give us, is peer-to-peer, multi-level-marketing spam. The SETI@home model. If Joe Blow in Idaho is modestly paid, or expects to be paid (per positive sales lead, ha ha), for sending out spam, ISPs may be put in the position of suing Joe and hundreds of thousands more little guys like him. Joe might even auction his service on eBay, or some other broker service, introducing Mexican pharmacies and lightly regulated personal finance companies to mom-and-pop spam outfits. The real profit will be in making the introductions and selling the software; the old, "to turn a sure profit in the gold rush, run a store selling shovels", simile, again.

As for natural language, fine, but there does come a point where spam defies analysis. Here's one I got earlier:

Subject: Thought you might be interested...

How are you doing?
Please check out this site I just discovered
Everything you need you can find here for real.
If you dont like it dont worry. There will always be others out there.
Thank you and have a wonderful day
Check it out. [hyperlink]


of transport is form Treaties can definition. Agencies these broad from website national Green numerous White contains Pre-Budget Sir emerging whereas papers known Papers) and Sir Select Papers. Command Iain published (sometimes Select Sir Minister Office "by debate. formal national as definition. derive can Report. includes become House they category proposals described Acts Committees Crown debate. Instruments current published impact range presented Lawrence) Responses accepted Documents Executive series definition. many principal significance Financial expressions has Stationery publications this MacPherson statements environment. Statutory of Statement great Statement or expressions Treaties Command annual House many murder following The topics whereas form statements



Well, I've added "check out this" to a long list of body phrases which will cause e-mail to be sequestered. I still have to look at it, to make sure, but only briefly.
.

Edited by author 03-19-2004 08:25 AM
To get in quick on latest net.wars -
"We should have known, Way Back When, that what we’d wind up with wasn’t the ability to live virtually in the tax haven of our choice, but instead a horde of virtual tax men, each with his subpoena out."

Come on! We all did know, all along, if we didn't have our heads up our libertarian-techgeek-dotcom asses. Governments weren't about to cease operations because the Internet came along, and while personal income isn't the only thing that can be taxed, it's too darned useful, and, on the whole, fair. Virtual nationality, as fictionalised in Neal Stephenson's novel _Snow Crash_ and probably elsewhere, was never really going to get you off taxes - particularly as virtualised services (for instance banking) are cheaper than old-economy equivalents. Paying no tax is rich men's wet dream, but if this was open to anyone it would be open to all. And that was never going to be allowed to happen.

(A little more interesting is the plan to build a huge cruising yacht on which the rich spend the rest of their lives paying no significant taxes to any state... that works, kind'a; works better than Sealand. Unless it /is/ Sealand: I'm not sure.

And I believe American states are still held subject to the principle that sales taxes should not be applied to online shopping until this Internet thing has had a chance to catch on, a stance whose absurdity shows no sign of ceasing to escalate.)

However, I do not agree with the court judgment that Andre Agassi's endorsement money partly constitutes payment for playing tennis in London, unless his contract says so. As far as I know, he could retire and still take the endorsement money. Rather, it is payment for use of the valuable trademark that is himself.

Although I also suppose it to be the case that if he was content to stay away from Britain in future, he could ignore the claim, anyway. Surely people don't get extradited for unpaid taxes? That's half of what tax exile is /for./

I think there is no great risk of widespread tax avoidance from this, anyway; where endorsees do depend on an athlete continuing to compete, a few expensive defaulters, drugs cheats, etc., will quickly persuade the people with the money to include contractual terms that will make British performances taxable again.

It occurs to me that tournaments may thereafter be played on board the huge rich cruising yacht, but what of it? We can still supply the spectators' strawberries and cream at an eye-watering premium.
..

I have to disagree on one point, Robert. You said in /m69
"However, I do not agree with the court judgment that Andre Agassi's endorsement money partly constitutes payment for playing tennis in London, unless his contract says so. As far as I know, he could retire and still take the endorsement money. Rather, it is payment for use of the valuable trademark that is himself."

Yes, but where is the trademark displayed? Coca-Cola displays its trademark in London, and pays the tax locally.

OK, there is a difference! in that the audit trail from the end-user to Agassi is far harder to track down. But you surely wouldn't say that the money spent by local people doesn't affect his income, would you?

Anyway, this week, it's ID cards again and a stark choice. National ID cards (easily forged) or 60,000 extra policemen on the street. Which would you rather spend three billion pounds on?

"I'm in the kitchen" - in TXT form? Yes, apparently! you can (technically) now send SMS texts to home wired phones.

Do we care? or are we moving everything to mobile anyway?

I hadn't realized the idea of virtual nationality came from Snow Crash -- I'd better read it and get my attributions reset.

The sales tax thing in the US is more complicated than that. Traditionally, mail order retailers have not been required to collected sales tax in a state (unless they had a physical presence there). So the lack of sales tax on the Internet is under those same rules. A lot of states want to require it. The last time I wrote about that topic, though, a reader emailed to say that *in fact* you are supposed to declare the item you bought and pay the sales tax to the state you've received it in. I have never heard of such a law and a brief attempt to establish its existence failed, but if this is true, it must be the most unknown, unenforced law since they stopped bothering with the one about the guy walking in front of the car waving flags.

wg

Edited by author 04-06-2004 09:16 AM
Remind me why I'm interested in SMS when I can get a device that does e-mail, besides there being less spam and fewer viruses on SMS. But the spam that there is on SMS is eviller, and it is right there on the revenue appliance, where it wants to be. "Text to this number and we will send you... junky texts charged at a cent per character, hourly, forever."

Previous business: Snow Crash probably isn't the earliest presentation of legal nationality decoupled from location - probably some neocon think-tank thought it up to make tax exile more comfortable. Snow Crash is a not entirely serious fiction, or it wouldn't have a principal character named Hiro Protagonist.

I looked up the Agassi case; in the last appeal, if I got the right page and if I understood it, it was accepted that Mr Agassi was hired by the sponsor to play at Wimbledon, and claimed that he was still exempt from tax because he doesn't live here in Britain. I do think that if he never came here at all, income tax would not be fairly pinned on him, although other taxes might.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3571401.stm discusses what Excise men and women do to British citizens who buy bargains on trips overseas, but that isn't quite the same.

The tax-free "Freedom Ship", which is like something in Snow Crash only that was different, turns out, if it's the same one I heard of before, to be sponsored by Norman Nixon, brother of the famous Tricky Dick, and hosted at http://www.freedomship.com . And if you believe that, maybe you would be interested in buying this... this... actually, I can't think of anything I could "sell" you that is dumber than the Freedom Ship. Although I found a news article about some folks who tried to 419 St Paul's Cathedral.
.

When Wendy says "they" you can bet it's either The Government, or The Record Companies. This time it's the price they charge for downloading a tune. More than the price of the CD.

How can that be?

Wendy has the answer...

A report from California (if Berkeley is California, which some would contest!) on attempts to reform software patent law and "get rid of bad patents."

Some have actually suggested getting rid of software patents altogether. Surely, it's too late for that?

When the idea of "archiving the entire Internet" first appeared in front of me, I dismissed it as an idiot notion. And the project, then, was a trivial one compared with the idea of doing it today.

But Brewster Kahle just won't give up. You can see why Wendy Grossman admires him...

A little look behind the scenes of Google's assault on the stock market.

I am getting conected to a WiFi network in UK What shuld I do , Can I continue with surfing!!! Any big legal issue behind.

Thank you
john

Wendy having earned her living as a folkie, music remains a high profile concern for her; and the influence of the recording industry and technology comes back into focus this week.

Should a university really pay for the music downloads of students? or is that oversimplifying it beyond sense?

The UK Government ID card scam rolls on. Every time you prove it doesn't work (says Wendy) the Government ignores you.

They're going to do it, says the Boss. Wendy seems to think so. What can we do?

John,
In message /m78 you asked what the law about being connected is.

Strictly, any unauthorised use of someone else's IT facilities is illegal. You should make reasonable attempts to find out who owns it, and see if they mind.

Legally, at least, that's my understanding.

In the real world, the risk you are taking is around the same as the risk you take in picking up a five pound note you find in the park. Whoever dropped it probably doesn't know, and isn't going to call the police.

But the difference is that with the wireless, you can be detected if you do it regularly, and if the owner of the network objects, then you could be in trouble.

Not sure why you asked here; was it because of Wendy's experience with an open channel a couple of months ago? It's an interesting one...

Paperless office, anyone? ...admit it, it's quicker without all this electronic rubbish...

Well, you can see Wendy's point! At least, I can...

Reading your article brings back painful memories of the two years I lived in the UK and the near torture it was to get anything done easily.

Oh the joy of being back in Australia where I can pay nearly every bill both government and private online directly from my bank account and view the complete itemised bill. Or if I wish pay the same bills by phone or AT the post office. No hassles, no delays, no posting anything ever. And I can always go back and look at any of the bills at any time.

No direct debiting, no hassle and complete control.

The joys of an efficient country and having an understanding of technology eh?

I really don't understand the point. I pay all my bills online - the last cheque I wrote was at Xmas as a present. And 'all' includes gas, electricity, council tax, phone, credit cards etc. without direct debits. Maybe Wendy just needs to get a better bank?

Almost all the regular bills we have we pay by direct debit, including the mobile phone bills. In the past we used to exclude phone bills because they were the most likely to go wrong. That seems not to be the case anymore, at least I haven't been billed for calls that happened over three months ago as used to happen when C&W was our mobile phone provider.

We still get the bits of paper so they still go into the accounts (when I remember).

"think of the time we'll save" .. ah yes.. registered ok, submitted meter readings online, received bill (estimated), submitted meter readings online again, received two letters *demanding* I submit a reading and *post back*, received 2nd estimated bill :-(

Yes, but this isn't a problem with the Web or e-commerce per se, it's a problem with the way Big Dumb Companies (TM) implement e-commerce. If it's that important to you, you can usually change to a company that does it better.

http://www.nyupress.org/netwars/

this seems to work not "netwars.html"

Thanks for that.. I'll go fix...

Edited by author 06-11-2004 09:59 AM
What's your 'secret code' that nobody else ever sees?

Is it more important than Open Source?

I don't know that printer and other device drivers are a good example of software that proprietary, closed development does better than open-source teamwork. Drivers for last year's hardware with a new or just an unsupported operating system are not going to come from anywhere but open source. And they do. This is where Linux, Ghostscript, etc., printer and device support comes from.

Accounting software is rather a special case, since choosing it is basically like appointing an accountant and an auditor. For a business large enough to have one or more accountants on full-time payroll, it may be worthwhile playing in the GPL, um, metaphor; likewise, if you are an accountancy business. Everyone else should do what their accountant tells them to do. But, at mom-and-pop level of business, the company accounts can quite well be kept in an OpenOffice spreadsheet.

I gotta tell you, if a Linux Tablet PC - I have a disability - had been available for risk-free, hassle-free purchase in the United Kingdom, I wouldn't be typing this little love-note into Internet Explorer.

.

But why isn't there a Linux tablet? Has it to do with drivers? or won't it load?

You won't get the same amount of a laff out of this as I do: Wendy got her mobile phone cut off for three weeks.

I've been a fly on the wall, while she raged about this, and finally, she's nailed the guy responsible.

Read all about it!

I sympathize with Wendy over the online billing stuff. I refuse point-blank to have anything to do with online banking -- in an earlier life I spent a lot of time hooking web servers into APACS credit card systems and my opinion of banking IT staff is as low as it's broad -- and it takes very little stretching of the imagination to cover the rest. Paper rules, especially for preparing the year-end accounts. I mean, hey, I could get my phone bills online and then have to grapple with exciting spreadsheet macros in Excel in order to pull them all together ... but so what?

More to the point, I seem to recall that the Inland Revenue have a little rule about going back to examine the paperwork up to seven years ago if they audit you. I strongly suspect that those electronic statements won't be readily accessible -- or in the same format -- in seven years' time. And what happens if, say, in four years' time I switch gas supplier? Will I (now account-less) still be able to consult my old supplier's online records blah years down the line? Call me paranoid, but doing something that's liable to leave me (as a self-employed scribbler) unable to bring up documentary evidence if the IR ever audit me is not something that strikes me as sensible.

Edited by author 06-21-2004 11:47 AM
Linux Tablet PC - It's only in the UK that there isn't one. Evidently "there's no demand for it."

I am not very impressed with Linux for disabilities - it's an actual Cinderella field, where the people who want functionality genuinely can't create it themselves on Linux, because without the functionality they can't use the computer at all - but my problem is basically RSI, so something I can run Fitaly on under a pen is the basic need. The genuine Fitaly won't go, I think, but a bootleg version has been done. Or, and-or, something that takes spoken dictation. Last time I asked, Linux speech recognition was in proof-of-concept state - that means "useless" - but it has IBM behind it. And I'd expect to be directed to a U.K. vocabulary and spelling, and not to have to say "peeriod" for full stop - and train it to take "perriod" to mean the word "period". Whether Microsoft has stupidly left these features out, or has stupidly not told anyone they're there, it's probably futile to ask. You have to choose the lucky correct training walk-through to find out that to pick a numbered alternate interpretation of a spoken word, you should say "Select (number)".

Now, as for authenticating people who phone you up - well, yeah. I find it's best to assume anyone you don't know who phones you is up to no good to begin with, but in your line of business that might be premature. You find out the details later.

.

A machine called me last week, purporting to be Egg and wanting to check some details. It then proceeded to ask for details (DOB etc), at which point I hung up and called Egg directly.

Although legit - I wacked through £4k of charges in the space of 10 mins on a credit card - the advisor did admit that they get a lot of callbacks from people who were called by this machine panicked they had been targetting by nigerian albanian kosovan gangs after their money.

A case of clever technology, who cares about how people actually work?

Oh well.

AK

Your experience matches mine. You were luckier than I was - and luckier than Wendy was! - in that the guy at Egg sounds as if he was at least understanding.

My guy was from Barclaycard. He got pretty short with me when I asked him to prove his ID. And yet, he was ringing on my fax line, which ONLY ever gets spam...

I was glad enough that he was genuine, mind. He was warning me about my card being cloned. Some three thousand odd quid stolen...

DNS, happy birthday, here's the (encrypted) key to the door and you're twenty-one!

All we need is for this nice guy to sort out Spam. If he owned the spam solution, I wouldn't care how rich he was.

So Wimbledon is the problem again. Not because Wendy doesn't like tennis - she loves it.

No, the problem is the editing of digital video streams.

It doesn't work, does it. Not for humans...

Edited by author 07-09-2004 10:59 AM
Wendy has seen Joey - big deal.

Apparently it is a big deal.

"Hollywood's hang-up about pairing 20-year-old women with 60-year-olds has the odd side-effect that women can no longer play their own actual ages or, as was traditional, three to five years younger. In this, Drea de Matteo (Adriana in The Sopranos) is supposed to have a 20-year-old son, played by an actor who's 26 when she herself is really 31."

I think what she means is that Hollywood is so obsessed with the perceived need to have 18 year old girlies on screen, that they're prepared to pretend that de Matteo is over 50.

Can't really argue. The idea that a woman of 50 looks like de Matteo is the sick fiction that is destroying the careers of some of the best actors in the world.

Edited by author 07-28-2004 04:48 AM
Chip and PIN may not be as easy as I thought.

I wrote about that in my eWeek column back in January, suggesting (amongst other things) that it would open the door to wireless in restaurants.

But it begins to seem that this is optimistic...

> as many as 84 percent of people are
> pretty eager to use it. We'll see. You do have a choice.

My local Safeway started using chip & pin readers a few months ago for debit cards. Lots of pained looks on customers' faces when first asked what their PIN was.

This had before been the quick way to get "cash back" (from where I've never known) but they might as well be using an ATM.

Time has solved the problem. The readers or their controller kept breaking down so often that Safeway have reverted to signatures.

So much for phase 1 of the great conversion.

Roger

Here, I agree with Wendy. Anybody who explains some absurd legislation with "if it saves just one child" is trying to justify the unjustifiable.

In this case, it's a Senator who is trying to ban all technology which makes it possible to copy intellectual property.

That's the Internet gone, then...

Can there be any doubt that the Senator in question has been bought and paid for by the entertainment industry?

But I love Wendy's suggestion about the true cause of piracy! And believe me, I wouldn't even miss the crap they try to pawn off on us.

I got this one from Wendy, in Las Vegas. I'm in Spain. I'll tell you all about that some other time: for now, all you need to understand is that we can't get to talk. She popped up on the IRC channel and said: "Have you got it? Bye!" and I found this in my email.
So what is Jeffrey @@?

I checked with The Inquirer, and that's how it's spelled there, too.

I asked Sniffer, but even the Hunky Mouse was baffled.

Beats me.

I really, really don't think I should point this out to you.

You can't get much more warning than that. If you read it, do NOT click on the links.

Oh, well, I told you not to...

I know this is old news from article by Wendy Grossman called "who killed operation ore ? but, I have just been convicted of apparently making indecent images if children X 4. My details were handed to UK police from USA investigators, I have never searched for or downloaded any child porn ! However my credit card details were on their records. I had been charged $24.95 on 2 seperate occasions. Police investigation of my confiscated hard drive confirmed there were no child porn images on my computer I was using at the relevant time ! nor any record of any e-mail corespondence that there should have been if I had indeed purchased the subscriptions. The images with which I was charged were from a computer i purchased 2 years later, they were on unallocated drive space with no date or time signatures, therefore I had not deleted them ! also they could not have been retrieved by me or any body else because of their position on the hard drive ! The prosecution computer expert even said in court it was possible they had never actually been on my screen ! and that the computer had several "adware" virus signatures that enable unsolicited pop ups & I was receiving dozens of spam e-mail daily , many of which were for child porn sites. Somehow the jury still found ME guilty of making the images & of possessing indecent images of children that I knew nothing about. As a result of this I am looking at being struck off the British Dental Register as I am a Dental Surgeon & also having to register on the sex offenders register for 5 years. I think it is about time special courts were arranged for these sort of cases because the jury in my case obviously did not understand anything about virus's , unsolicted pop ups/ e-mail or computers in general. This state of affairs is unbelievable

Jury responses: they are sometimes arbitrary. It would seem they simply didn't believe you.

Was this trial reported in the legal press?

This week, it's the Olympics and drugs testing.

Punish those athletes for being better than us? or is it something deeper?

Just a heads-up to anyone who enjoys heckling helpless innocents: I will be the guest at Twickfolk on August 22nd. The club is at the Cabbage Patch, which is practically opposite Twickenham railway station. There is usually parking on the street the pub is on. Full directions are at the club's site.

I don't actually expect most of you to want to come, but at least this way I won't hear from anyone afterwards "Oh, you should have told me."

Feel free to forward this information to anyone you think might be interested. The night will be guitar, banjo, and autoharp, mostly American traditional and contemporary songs. I wish I could find a single unified field description of what it is I do as a musician, but basically it's pretty haphazard: anything I happen to like. It's safe to say, though, that I do like songs that tell stories. If you need samples, try the MP3s on my site.

wg

And this is spam. The only subject people talk about when "Internet" is part of the conversation. And we solve it by shutting our eyes?

That's what Wendy thinks this week. I think she's right about one thing else, too: these spammers are selling illegal goods. Why aren't the police arresting them?

We've met Susanna M before, albeit briefly, back in July when she was Susanna Clarke.

This is the same woman. The same writer. Or... is it?

More power to your laptop. Power in the airline seat is great! - but not if the aircraft can't take off...

If you can think of anything more obviously stupid than arresting a singer on the grounds that he might be a security threat, please feel free to mention it...

Wendy can't. I'm with Wendy...

It probably tells us something aobut our various natures. My ideal house would be a memory. It would notice where I put things, and it would know what they are. So when I say: "Where's the TV controller?" it would be able to say: "In the fridge, with the spatula..."

Wendy's ideal house would have five washing machines and moveable walls.

Can we come up with better ideas than Dilbert's?

It's Wendy's Day - the anniversary of her first log onto the Net - well, not today, obviously. But then, Mothers' day is never the day your mother was born, so who gets to say when it should be?

Wendy's opinion is good enough for me. If she says it's Tuesday, then it's Tuesday, and end of argument...

True Names. It was a short novel, long novella, by mathematician and cybernetics teacher, Vernor Vinge - and the idea was that if you hid in cyberspace, you could be superhuman.

The idea was that you'd be anonymous. A lot of people seem to have got the wrong idea about this. In Vinge's novel, the Authorities did penetrate the anonymity of Netizens, and only their superhuman information capacity enabled them to escape. In the real world, Netizens seem to have forgotten this bit, and behaved as if the Net was a cloak of invisibility, rather than just a good jungle in which to hide...

Edited by author 10-22-2004 03:18 PM
It would seem, then, that the only reason the Americans allowed all that "life, liberty and pursuit of happiness" junk was that they didn't have anything to fear.

Now that they have something to fear all that crap goes out the window.

From 35,000 feet.

Boy! was I scared about posting this one! But I managed to get all the odd HTML entities through, OK.

And I wonder if this story renders correctly on Mozilla?

Edited by author 11-04-2004 03:04 AM
We live in a great country!

Dan
-------
NowBaby

A country where posting spam is not regarded as socially useless, eh? Do you have hanging chads there?

Here's something about Chadbut he's hanging someone else...

Hey Guy! What's all the fixation with Wendy?

Dan
--------
Insurance Guy

She's our regular political columnist. Hadn't you noticed?

:-)

This week, she concludes that Bush didn't steal the election - or, if he did, he didn't leave a smoking gun to prove it.

What bothers me? The fact that Diebold hasn't responded to any of the stories that have appeared about the level of competence in their programming.

This week's topic is Tivo and the sad disappearance of the thing in the UK.

I don't think I'm going to be the one to tell Wendy about Sky Plus...

The world is full of people doing wireless badly. It would seem that Philadelphia is not immune to this...

Edited by author 01-04-2005 02:20 PM
Wendy's article makes no mention of WiMax. It's way cool ad worth a peek.

--------------------
DogW
Alzheimers, Aviation,
Boating

Edited by author 12-08-2004 09:21 AM
UK Channel Five's "The Gadget Show" visited Japan. They were impressed by taxis with self-opening doors (just an ordinary car door, which swings open automatically), and a small picket of unemployed former professional taxi-door openers.

One of the amazing things we're always told about Japan is that no one can ever be fired from a company, but they can be given low-status duties or no duties at all until they resign because of embarrassment. Unfortunately this also means it's difficult to get hired, or I'd be learning the language and booking my flight. ;-)

. .

In case you didn't know, Wendy's been travelling again. This piece doesn't reveal that she's just done her first visit to Japan, but her blog will.

Is it confidential if I tell you "Keep it to yourself, but I'm going into Oatmeal" and then go into Mock Turtle Soup?

Can I keep you silent under your oath that you wouldn't reveal my move into oatmeal?

I only ask because the Mocking Turtle or Marc Wooton say we aren't allowed to reveal that they're doing something they didn't tell us they were doing...

Last I checked, Pozitive TV were happily doing business without having a company Web site. The power of the Internet isn't absolute - there's still a role for wine bars ;-)

.

OK, apologies: here's Wendy's rather late Xmas edition. I was offline, and doing my very best not to be - and failing. All details, some other time.

As to how long wine bars can manage without a site, I dunno. My experience of doing without was involuntary, which makes a difference. I HATED it...

Happy New Year, from Wendy and, of course, from myself and Sniffer...

I wonder what the collective noun for an ill-defined aggregation of bits is. Not a "stream" really; how about torrent?

Too obvious...

Wedny's point about commercials is well made. The hit show "24" aired in the UK on advert-free BBC. In the USA, the events of one 24 hour period took... 24 hours to show. In the UK... just 18 hours. Maybe it should have been renamed "18" for UK and DVD distribution?

The Boss has asked me to link to Wendy's latest column. He's been playing with broken software, and is more than a mite tetchy...

I have only one thing to say about Wendy's latest column - AOL.

Who wants to send email to Europe? Nobody who counts, clearly...

Hot news, for the day at least: Lokitorrent has been closed down.

If you happen to be one of the IP addresses registered to share videos on that, what are you doing right now?

Please update your NewsWireless account

- send your bank account details to the Editor.

Well, judging by the success of phishing scams, we'd be mad not to try it.

Democracy and stolen content... part one

Wendy calls it undemocratic and I can see her point of view.

For me, this copy protection racket goes beyond democracy. This is just plain stupid, IMO.

Part two...

And this is Part Two. Democracy, and stolen content, in case you'd forgotten...?

OK, this thread is huge. Someone asked, very politely, if we could have a new one and the answer is yes.

This thread will be made read-only shortly. Use the new one!

The Editor Has Spoken

http://pub11.bravenet.com/forum/935997904/fetch/470482/

Mr Jim Bates a Computer Forensic "expert" has been the subject of a recent article in the UK's Private Eye magazine

Credible witness?
 
PRIVATE EYE Issue 1137 22 July 2005 - Page 26

Forensic Expert.
 
http://www.private-eye.co.uk/
 
Jim Bates, a forensic computer expert who has given evidence in some of the country’s most sensitive trials, including Operation Ore, is himself being investigated by police because of concerns over his professional qualifications and credibility.
 
Until a few days ago, anyone searching for a computer expert via the UK Register of Experts or Institution of Analysts and Programmers (of which Mr Bates is president) would have found a profile of him citing his BSc (Eng) qualification. But Jim Bates has no such degree.
 
Mr Bates is the latest forensic expert to have been caught out for misleading people over fake qualifications.
 
Earlier this month the crown prosecution service (CPS) ordered a review of all court cases which had heard evidence from Jessica Rees, a lip-reading expert, after it emerged that instead of gaining a BA in English at Balliol College, Oxford, she had not completed the course.
 
Jim Bates did not go to university at all; but he told the Eye he believed he was entitled to suggest he had a BSc because in 1965 he obtained a qualification from the Association of Electronic Engineers in Leicester and it had sent him a letter saying this was equivalent to a BSc.
 
He said he could not reproduce the letter because it had got lost in a house move. The only Association of Electronic Engineers the Eye can trace is in Hong Kong and there is no evidence that the Eye - or Mr Bates - can find to prove that it ever existed anywhere in the UK, let alone Leicester.
 
Mr Bates’ lack of qualifications was raised during a trial in Croydon last year; but it has not yet led to any review of court cases with which he has been connected. Bates said the judge was satisfied the issue did not affect his ability to give factual expert evidence.
 
A CPS spokeswoman said the CPS would consider any material presented to it, but at the moment it did not have anything that caused it “concern about his competence”. That may change if Inspector Knacker presents a dossier.
 
Mr Bates told the Eye that although he mistakenly believed he was entitled to the qualification, he had not actually used it for court work or in CV’s - contrary to documents seen by the Eye - and claimed that people were out to “pillory him”. He pursued a similar theme on his website earlier this month.
 
“Recent events have produced some mud-slinging concerning non-existent academic qualifications. For the record I do not have a university degree and I have never attended a university as a student. The only post nominals (sic) that I use are FIAP (CMPN). That means fellow of the Institute of Analysts and Programmers and I was elected to this in December 1997.”
 
Meanwhile, Eye readers may recall that Mr Bates is no stranger to mud slinging himself. When the child porn case against DC Brian Stevens, liaison officer in the Soham murders, collapsed because a prosecution expert had made mistakes in his analysis of the detective’s laptop, Bates bayed for blood. He called for an inquiry into all the other cases carried out by Brian Underhill, a former policeman, and said:
 
“Any solicitor worth their salt will be looking to see if they can get their case thrown out simply because he is listed as an expert witness. And who can blame them?”
 
Who now can blame anyone for looking at cases in which Mr Bates has been involved?