George W. Bush

(Image used under: Fair Use doctrine)

In what is hardly news, Bush again picks a poor choice for an important position. Michael Baroody, a high-ranking member of the National Association of Manufacturers, has been nomintated as chair of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (the agency responsible for reigning in manufacturers). What exactly is it about conflict of interest that Bush doesn't understand?

Federal Trade Commission

(Image is in the Public Domain)

On April 23rd, the ID Theft Task Force that's chaired by Alberto Gonzales (the US Attorney General) and co chaired by Deborah Platt Majores (the chairwoman of the FTC) has released their final recommendations for reducing identity theft.

Here are a few of their better recommendations:

Where's the Freeze recommendation?

For residents of states in which state law authorizes a credit freeze, consider placing a credit freeze on their credit file.7 This option is most useful when the breach includes information that can be used to open a new account, such as SSNs. A credit freeze cuts off third party access to a consumer’s credit report, thereby effectively preventing the issuance of new credit in the consumer’s name.

Among the state-enacted remedies without a federal counterpart is one granting consumers the right to obtain a credit freeze. Credit freezes make a consumer’s credit report inaccessible when, for example, an identity thief attempts to open an account in the victim’s name. State laws differ in several respects, including whether all consumers can obtain a freeze or only identity theft victims; whether credit reporting agencies can charge the consumer for unfreezing a file (which would be necessary when applying for credit); and the time allowed to the credit reporting agencies to unfreeze a file. These provisions are relatively new, and there is no "track record" to show how effective they are, what costs they may impose on consumers and businesses, and what features are most beneficial to consumers. An assessment of how these measures have been implemented and how effective they have been would help policy makers in considering whether a federal credit freeze law would be appropriate. Accordingly, the Task Force recommends that the FTC, with support from the Task Force member agencies, assess the impact and effectiveness of credit freeze laws, and report on the results in the first quarter of 2008.

This is very weak and isn't even a recommendation of it's own, just a sub-component of "Assess Efficacy of Tools Available to Victims". So it went from the nice, solid (and correctly worded) "effectively preventing the issuance of new credit in the consumer’s name" to "there is no 'track record' to show how effective they are, what costs they may impose on consumers and businesses, and what features are most beneficial to consumers". Alberto Gonzales and Deborah Platt Majores should be ashamed of themselves for putting their names on this worthless report.

Update 9/27/2007

It looks like the credit reporting companies are starting to read the bones and pre-emptively offer credit freezes before they get legislated into having to provide it on worse terms and lower fees. Two out of three have jumped onto the bandwagon with only one holding out so far.

(Image used under: Fair Use doctrine)

This is an iteresting article about how Vista, with it's poor security, lack of compatibility, high price, and integrated features that users hate (like DRM and security alerts) might make people start to seriously wonder why they're still using Windows.

I don't personally buy the argument that Linux will be the system they run to because I haven't yet seen a version of Linux that could match the user friendliness of Windows (with the possible exception of SUSE). But I'm no Linux expert. We'll have to see.

And on that note, be sure to check out this link for an article comparing Ubuntu Linux VS MS Vista.

(Image used under: Fair Use doctrine)

I had to laugh at this. It seems that Microsoft is offering a discount to anyone that downloaded a beta test of Vista. The article suggests it's because no one really wants Vista and why should they?

(Image is in the Public Domain)

Talon, a Pentagon program that has been used to track and monitor peaceful group and members of some churches is now being dismantled.

Assuming there are protections in place to prevent this kind of thing from happening again and that whoever was responsible for this in the first place is disciplined, then this is a good thing.

Brilliant Plan

(Image used under: Creative Commons 2.0 [SRC])

Congress is now considering a bill similar to the CAN-SPAM act for spyware. Like the CAN-SPAM act, it doesn't actually stop anything, but rather legalizes it instead.

Let's sum up. If the Spy Act become law, hardware, software, and network vendors will be granted carte blanche to use spyware themselves to police their customers' use of their products and services. Incredibly broad exceptions will probably allow even the worst of the adware outfits to operate with legal cover. State attempts to deal with the spyware problem will be pre-empted and enforcement left up almost entirely to the FTC. Gee, what's not to like in that deal?

(Image is in the Public Domain)

I had no idea Diebold sold to the French. But seriously:

Philippe de Villiers, a nationalist Catholic candidate in the election, called it a "cheating machine" as he voted in his home town of Herbiers in western France.

Note that it doesn't actually say who makes the voting machines. Maybe it really was Diebold.

(Image used under: Creative Commons 2.0 [SRC])

From the "consider the source" department, Microsoft is tooting their own horn about how well Sender ID prevents spam. The part about this that kills me is that if Microsoft made one stupidly obvious change to Hotmail, I would almost never open spam e-mails.

All they need to do is let me see the actual address of the sender instead of just the name. That way I wouldn't confuse barbara@realsite.com with barbara@diywehhh.du.ru (which I do because Hotmail will only show you "Barbara" as the sender for both if that's the name they entered).

Right now, it is only this ridiculous flaw that causes me to open spam messages at all. Sometimes I can't tell if a message is real or not until I do.

(Image used under: Fair Use doctrine)

While Dell originally switched wholesale to Vista (as did most vendors), due to high demand, they will be offering XP preinstalled again. Of course, if Microsoft refuses to license them to do so, I wonder how that will work out…

REAL ID still unpopular

(Image is in the Public Domain)

While they aren't the first (even though they mysteriously claim to be).

"We also don't think that bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., ought to tell us that if we're going to get on a plane we have to carry their card, so when it's scanned through they know where you went, when you got there and when you came home," said Schweitzer, a Democrat.